We were aboard the VTOLs, thinking we were being transferred to another base or training facility. We didn’t have much in terms of gear other than our duffels and our uniforms, so the assumption was safe. Rumors were buzzing on the transport that we were going to be training with military units. Some of the guys even said we were going off-world to a simulation ground. All it proved was that none of the lads knew shit. Even now, I’m not sure where it was we were dropped, but it was Earth. When the transports came to a hover, the crew chiefs slid the doors open and pushed us out.
“Where’s the other VTOL?” I said. No one else seemed to notice that one transport had landed. Instead, we were all confused. When our boots touched the ground and the VTOLs flew away, we thought there had been some mistake. We were in the remnants of an old city grave, which I didn’t know. Skyscrapers surrounded us, some toppled into each other after hundreds of years of decay. Fire barrels were lit, which served as the only illumination. Centuries old concrete broken, exposing the earth and vegetation beneath. We must have been in an older part of the city. The tall skyscrapers loomed over us a couple of hundred meters away. In our vicinity, there was an old chapel, a library, and a strip mall, all full of grime and overgrowth. The ground was uneven, water pooling like a river down the main road. There was no welcome party, no Interpol instructors, and no sign of Lieutenant Grange. There were some destitutes shying away from us. Many of us fanned out to try and get some information on the situation, checking out empty buildings and primitive structures. An old man talking to what I presumed his granddaughter was down the city block.
“Hey, old man,” one of us said. “Where is this?!”
The old man spoke a language we couldn’t figure, but he didn’t respond to us. He just spoke about us to his grandchild before retreating into his shelter. A slight drizzle sprinkled us before quickly turning into a torrential rain. At first it didn’t bother us. But as we took cover in whatever structures we could, we saw the rain wasn’t letting up. It would continue for weeks. As no instructors ever came for us, we quickly surmised that this was our training.
We quickly set out for established shelters with clean rooms so we could eat and drink. Our clothes were becoming drenched and the air cold as we searched. Some of us we able to find a few rooms in various buildings that still had working airlocks. We gathered water and what little food we had in our duffels. The first instinct we had was to stick as close to each other as possible. There was around twenty of us and that would be our strength. But this was anticipated by our instructors. It was our first mistake to rely on such an instinct. Infiltrators act alone. A few of us set out for food or help from the locals. I was inside with my eyes closed, resting and wondering what was to come. Then, a scream wailed from out in the streets calling for help. My mate next to me was afraid.
“That sounded like Jenson!” my mate gasped. Jenson and him seemed close, friends from before. The screaming wasn’t subsiding. All of us hustled and ran into the main street and into the downpour where we heard the scream. Jensen and a few others from the scavenging party laid stripped of all clothing, groaning in the street. A crude double-G symbol had been branded into their chests. Some of the group shuddered at the sight. This training, if it even was such, was something else entirely. Just when a few of the lads moved towards the dazed men on the ground, as if on cue with the loud thunderclap, we saw something in the streets. It was too dark to make them out, but they were feral looking men. Each strike of lightning illuminated the area, momentarily lighting their eyes and silhouettes. Most of them tattooed heavily from waist to neck. Ragged and angry, their faces tightened like dried leather with wild eyes as more and more started to appear until they greatly outnumbered us. We started to form up. We had no weapons, no means of defending ourselves.
“Stay tight, guys,” I said.
On the bright side, they had few weapons, short of clubs and bits of wood. Other than that, they were unarmed. The next thing I remember was chanting in the same language as the locals. Right before forty or so of them rushed us. We did our best to manage, but it was a brutal clash of fists, elbows, and knees. We were tough bastards, but we were overwhelmed. In the mess, I remember feeling my knees give out as I took a blow to the jaw. I tumbled and tried to pick myself up but took a moment to look at the carnage. It was a real street fight. We may have had prominent close quarters training, but we were shaken to our bones that night. Looking over to one of the guys, his face was bruised and puffed to a berry, blood flowing from his lower left eye onto his chin. What kind of training was this? Either this was the most elaborate demonstration or my deepest suspicion was true. But, as I laid there, my head spinning, I could feel one of them grab me, starting to drag me off.
“Let bloody go of me…!” I groaned. I was dazed and confused alright. Too much so to fight back. As I was rushed off, I saw our guys being overrun and jumped, kicked, and punched in the streets. It was humility. The buff and brawn of us outmatched by scrawny savages. The remarkable training that Interpol bestowed on us was meaningless in the land of the vile lawlessness. I tried to worm my way free, but they had my shoulder hooked around their arms. The locals watched from inside their shacks and huts, nobody lifting a finger to help, and I didn’t blame them. That was the message.
Some of our lot began to separate themselves in the grizzly fight, barely managing to overcome the mob. When they glanced to see me being dragged off, they called to me, wanting to help, but their hands were full fending off the attackers. The men dragging me threw me down to the muddy ground, the landing knocking the air out of me. Then they began stripping me down. First it was my boots. One of the savages even lined them up with his own foot to size it up with his. Then my jacket and shirt were stripped off, my skin exposed to the cold rain, each drop feeling like a small needle. It kicked sense into me. My mates looked to me again, being cornered into a building.
“Roberts!” my mate shouted. “Roberts, wait there, buddy. We’re coming for you!” Just then, he took a mean club strike to his gut. It was no good.
As the bastard tried to strip me down to my skivvies, I drove my foot into his jaw, breaking it. He fell to the ground groaning and screaming while the other tried to stomp me, but I quickly rolled out of the way. I sprang up to face him. His breather had two big red lips painted on it and one half of his face perfectly and heavily tattooed.
“Come at me, creeper!” I shouted at him. He started laughing as he stepped towards me. As he lunged his fist at me, I sidestepped and drove my palm into his throat. He fell to the ground, choking. When I looked to the fight in the street again, more attackers were flooding in from the surrounding buildings. My friend looked at me, hoping I would help him in some manner. Then at least ten more attackers sprinted after me, armed with firearms. Nothing fancy or modern for that matter. Shooters so old they were more liability to the triggerman than the target. But bullets struck the ground and debris around me. I made a decision that was as necessary as it was painful. The training, whatever it was, was not important to me anymore, but survival was. They would call me a coward for it. I ran.
Deeper into the massive city-grave with the hope of losing my pursuers. And eventually, I did.
Over a week had passed since that night. I had found refuge in a large skyscraper, one of the largest in the city, and one with an active airlock. It was an old panic room from Old Earth, but towards the later years, everyone took precaution and installed clean rooms. But it was rare to still find one that worked. I sat behind an old wooden desk in the room, contemplating everything. My only goal now was to escape. Sod the Infiltration. Screw Interpol. But there wasn’t air travel above, not VTOLs. Traveling that far by foot before finding civilization was slim and dangerous. I wouldn’t make it a hundred kilometers with no shelter, no place to take in filtered air. I still had no handle on where I was on the planet. The language spoken and scraps of documentation I had found lying about was all in foreign symbols to me.
It was hard to not thi
nk of the irony of it all. Still a child, I was abducted off the streets and forced into an undercity gang. Then I got out, tried to gain respect with fellow cadets, but DRS kids rarely got it. Now, I was right back in it with worse circumstances. Fury built up inside me like no other time in my life. I stood up in a flash and kicked over the desk in a violent fit and yelled, releasing my built-up rage. I breathed heavily, trying to suppress it. When I felt the pendant around my neck dangling, shaken loose out of my recently scavenged coat, I calmed. Identical to Caine’s, we both got one when we made it topside, a gift from our mother. A pendant of Saint Jude, patron saint of lost causes. I started hyperventilating and slumped to the ground with my knees curled to my chest and started sobbing. Crying like a child, I was broken.
A month later, I heard gunfire in the streets. I affixed my breather and looked outside. Gangland wars. I was high enough to be safe from being spotted and close enough to get a good vantage of everything transpiring in the streets. There had to be at least four different factions fighting each other. Gunfire at close range, clubs and stabbing weapons, flame bottles. Men ripping each other apart down there, and for what? Some goddamn feud? Bloodsport? Territory control? It was hard to tell. A closer inspection and I saw one of the factions was the same that attacked us. They were wearing scraps of our clothing, already badly worn and customized into their own style. I hoped that some of the boys found refuge like I had. Spending time in this new territory, I began to pick up on the local dialect. I couldn’t trust anyone. I would eavesdrop on locals and begin to piece together certain phrases and exclamations. Scraps of reading here and there helped a little, but I could by no means carry on a full conversation without someone immediately detecting my accent. In the streets, I heard things such as for the Club of Costau, or burn the bastards. When the battle concluded, the winner I couldn’t discern, the gangs collected what dead they could manage. After them, scavengers came to pick up whatever pieces of gear or supplies that were left behind.
They weren’t allied with anyone, nor were they openly hostile. They were poorly equipped themselves. As far as I could tell, they were the Lost, like those in Freedom. I made my way down and scavenged what I could as well. When I began rummaging through a body, another scavenger, a man in his mid-twenties, looked to me while he was looking through a fallen satchel. He wasn’t alarmed or envious of my lootings, just curious.
“What clan are you?” he said in the foreign dialect. I looked up, not sure if he was talking to me, but he clearly was.
“What’s yours?” I said as best I could in the local tongue. The man smiled and moved onto another body. It was obvious he knew my origins and allegiances, that being not from around there. It was all calculated on my part. No way would I try what I did with a gang.
“So, you’re like us, nobody to see and nowhere to go?” he said. And that’s why we called them the Lost. A universal term for such undercity dwellers.
“Have you a spot? A shelter?” He looked at me curiously for only a moment when I said that.
“We do. Breatherless, so no daily Nutri-Shots to survive.”
Nutri-Shots, vitamin and hydration injections, could keep a man going for weeks, but the Lost and gangers pushed the invention far past its intended purpose, practically living on them. The Nutri-Shots were dropped in supply drops into undercities throughout the world by Interpol, FEMA, Valiant Corp., the WHO, and several other non-profit groups, but it wasn’t nearly enough and most of the contents just ended up going to the gangers.
“Listen, I can pull my weight. Scavenge, hunt, scout.”
“I’m sure you could. You seem to be doing pretty well on your own.” As I finished bagging a few meal bars and a small pack of water, I thought about what he said. The Lost weren’t very trusting, just as the gangs weren’t. But the Lost only feared for their own safety. They had their fill of abuse and warlord law. Getting burned by other bastards was part of their life. All the more reason why my answer had to be sincere. And it was.
“Truth is…” I mumbled, “I’m tired of being alone.” He took a moment to look at me and realized I wasn’t being deceptive. Infiltration wasn’t so much about pulling off a fantastic lie but, rather, putting your truths out for all to see. He nodded and handed me a shard of a meal bar, a gesture of good faith. I gave him a Nutri-Shot I had pilfered from a ganger days ago, worth considerably more in value than even a whole meal bar.
Three months later, I was out scouting the streets with Piston, the one who let me join his small group. He knew me as Dill. I told him I was once from London’s Red Sector and that I was ‘trafficked’ and escaped here. So, he believed me when I said I had no idea where I was. We were in The Far City, a region in the western outskirts of New Prague. Knowing where I was didn’t make it any easier to get home, but it was certainly tantalizing. The four factions in the city, which we nicknamed by the Lost as “The Colors” on account that each faction was very adamant of their different banners and color schemes, were opposing but took equal parts of the region in accordance with each other. Some strange mutual respect between them and the color with the most was Gardener’s Gangers, the same group that attacked us when we first set foot here. They coordinated “Judgements” or wars with each other, chances to earn tribute and stakes over territories. But, most importantly, there was no way to slip out without gaining the attention of them and, if I did, wildland raiders would get me for sure. I needed a trusted connection for transport up and out of the city. Ironically, the best chance was one of the gangs. They had contacts outside of The Far City and, likewise, a chance to get out.
Piston and I were salvaging a crashed VTOL. Piston was a tinkerer, the go-to bloke in the clan that could fix any manner of machinery to at least running order. Fairly impressive for someone who hadn’t been topside. The VTOL was a transport but must have just offloaded somewhere, or picked clean by the gangers since there wasn’t much to salvage in the cargo bay. But Piston was after the engine parts. It was trashed, but some of the smaller bits could be useful in his eyes. Rummaging around the craft began to infuriate me. It was an EP-22, the civilian version of Interpol’s EP-24 Condor. They were nearly identical in appearance save for paint schemes and the civilian model’s extra cargo space. But it was enough to remind me of Interpol itself. It seemed long ago since I had been riding inside of one. Coupled with what little we gain each time out of salvages such as this, it just made everything worse. As I cut my finger trying to bend a panel to get access to some electrical components, I threw my grab bag on the ground and sat down in frustration.
“What are we doing here, Piston?” I said, my accent now indistinguishable from the locals. “We come out here to grab mere scraps when the colors are grabbing anything of any real value.” Piston was in the cockpit gathering whatever control boards he could that weren’t damaged.
“We make it another day. Isn’t that of any value?”
“That’s not what I mean. We’re the only scouts in the clan that ever go out this far and bring back anything worth a damn. We’re taking all the risks. And for what? An equal share?!” Piston stopped to look at me, seeing that I was clearly upset.
“The clan isn’t greedy. We do what we do to help those who aren’t as capable.”
“I know, I know, I just—”
“Just what, Dill?”
I didn’t say anything and I didn’t have to. He knew exactly where my reservations were coming from because he had the same feelings. As I sat there, he shook his head.
“I understand what you’re saying. The clan can more than sustain itself without us, but it seems like we’re the only ones doing shit like this. We’re literally inside of Red Rat territory.”
“So why not leave?” I said.
“Leave? What, leave the clan?” Piston scoffed. He pretended to be shocked to hear me say that, but I still think he had been waiting for someone to ask him.
“Yeah, why not? The Colors are always recruiting guys with real skills. That’s us, my son. I’d
say take our chances with Gardener’s Gangers.”
Piston didn’t know about the attack at out landing area. But if he had, he would ask me why I’d ever suggested such a bonehead move.
It’s true, I carried hate for The Gardeners. Which is why I couldn’t understand why they earned so much respect. They didn’t harass the locals and supposedly The Gardener himself suggested the ceasefires to collect dead and wounded after battles. But I knew what I saw. Fresh prey in the streets and they went for us. Joining their ranks would give me satisfaction in deceiving them and maybe even a shot at getting out of here. But then, the idea of getting square with the bastard Gardener sounded just fine. My satisfaction didn’t lay in staying away from the enemy; it came from getting close enough to get my hands around him.
Almost a year now. One full year since that night. When I first met Piston, on the remains of that gang war, some part of me still thought it was a test. Part of me hoped it was a test. But so long has passed since then, and that hope was gone now. If one of the blokes in my class looked at me now, they’d keep walking, just figuring I was another street thug. My head was buzzed, my body lean but thin, and covered in the colors of The Gardener’s Gangers.
It wasn’t easy joining their ranks. First, we had to be evaluated to ever see if either of us was worth taking on. Piston fell in nicely due to his mechanical prowess, something The Gardener had been lacking for some time. But me, on the other hand, well, I was a bit harder to place. The only suitable place they saw me as was a bruiser, a fighter. They tested me, of course. I had my Interpol training at hand, but I had to make it look sloppy. I took a few blows, bruises, and aches, but I was clearly dominant. I was in luck too; the fighters always reaped better rewards in the Judgments, but at heavy risk, naturally. I eventually convinced Piston to “audition” for the fighters, you could say I needed an ally in all of it and he was a decent enough bloke. More decent than most folk topside. He wasn’t a fighter per se, but he could get around and he more than knew his way around a pair of knuckles. With some convincing, the gangers agreed to accept him as a fighter.
The Bloodlust: (Volume Three of the Virion Series) Page 13
