Chasm

by Stephen Laws

  “Jay!” shrieked Damon. “Don’t let them hurt me again! Please God, don’t let them hurt me again…”

  But his voice was drowned in the tumult.

  And then they were being dragged from the platform and down into the howling crowd of youngsters.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Journal of Jay O’Connor:

  Hell on Earth

  We were dragged out of the town hall by the Caffney brothers, through a mob of screaming kids. Juliet was torn away from me by the one called Don-Paul, the youngest brother, I guess. He looked ready to explode after what Annie had done to him. For a moment, I thought I was just going to go wild myself. Thinking that I’d lost Juliet for ever, then to find her again…only to have her dragged away once more. I don’t know how to describe it; except that the anger was blood-red behind my eyes, and I was ready to kill one of this insane family. But the extra beating I’d taken from Henry Caffney, and especially the kick he’d given me when he threw me out on to the stage, had done more than winded me. It had robbed me of all my strength.

  Two teenage kids grabbed me by my tied hands, and the next thing I knew I was being dragged down the stairs and into the Council Chamber, face first. At the bottom of the stairs, through a tangle of legs, I saw Simon lunge down towards me. He laughed when I recoiled from the carving knife he held up to my face. He stooped and cut the ropes that tied my ankles, and then my hands. I was jerked to my feet. That’s when I saw Juliet again; up ahead, being dragged through the screaming crowd by Don-Paul.

  Everything was a confused blur after that. The kids began throwing things, jumping up and down in their seats as we were led through them. I tried to look back to see if the others were also being dragged out, but could see only a jumble of twisting bodies.

  They dragged me out through the main reception area and down the stone stairs into the street. I didn’t know what they had in mind for us all, but I knew it couldn’t be good. I tried to concentrate on my breathing as they kept me on my knees while the others caught up. Tried to pull myself together. Patrick Caffney took me by the hair and made me look up at his face. He was waiting for the others to get themselves organised as they poured out on to the streets, occasionally giving a wild yell of encouragement and waving the shotgun in the air with his other hand. Finally I was jerked to my feet. I was taller than Patrick, and he didn’t like that one little bit.

  Hastily, I looked around for Juliet.

  She was holding Lisa, trying to give her comfort and support. It looked as if Annie couldn’t be roused after Patrick had clobbered her, so they’d strung her up again beneath one of those rough wooden poles that we’d been brought in on. The two big kids at either end had drug-blank faces and drug-blank eyes. Lisa tried to touch Annie, tried to make her wake up. Henry shoved Juliet and Lisa to one side, barking an order.

  Patrick pushed me ahead. The kids parted as I blundered into them, and there was Alex kneeling amidst them, his hands still tied. Candy was kneeling next to him, holding his head and sobbing. Like mine, Alex’s legs and feet had been freed. But if I thought that I was in a pretty bad state, Alex was in a worse condition. Up close, I could see that he had been savagely beaten. He looked up at me with dull eyes when I was shoved towards him. Candy was juddering with fear and withdrawal symptoms.

  “Help him!” barked Patrick.

  “Come on, you two,” I said. “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”

  I hauled Alex up, and threw one of his arms over my shoulder. Candy did the same, but to little effect. I felt like I was carrying them both.

  That’s when I saw Damon, being dragged down the town hall steps by a rope leash around his neck. Simon Caffney was holding the other end, laughing like a fucking maniac. Damon groped in front of him, staggered and fell at the halfway point, bouncing and rolling down the stairs. Simon marched on through the crowd of ragged kids, the rope over his shoulder, pulling Damon along the ground effortlessly behind him. The middle-aged woman suddenly appeared in a huddle of kids, all hanging on to her as she was dragged down the steps. Still smiling that same insane smile. Blood had leaked from her mouth down her chin. For her own sake, I hoped that her mind had completely gone. Daddie-Paul Caffney appeared on a concrete ramp beside the stairs, the two dark-haired twin girls pushing him. Even in the darkness, I could see the bastard smiling like some indulgent, kindly old grandfather. Which was he now? Daddie-Paul or the Vorla, or some hellish combination of both?

  The crowd waited until he reached the street and had been pushed ahead, into the lead. When he waved his hand, they followed. Even though I was moving, Patrick kept jabbing me in the back with the shotgun, urging me on. I fought to control my temper. If it blew now, it wasn’t going to do anyone any good, and would only get me another beating or worse.

  Slowly, we trudged on along this ruined street. Rubble and detritus had been cleared from our path. But other things had been left on either side.

  To give us a hellish floor show as we marched.

  The Caffneys had been busy in this part of the city; putting their mark on it.

  Bodies hung from crooked streetlamps. Men and women, some still wearing the rags of their clothes; others naked and tortured beforehand. Some had been simply hanged, their hands tied behind their backs. Most of them seemed to have been up there for a long time. You couldn’t look at the terrible, rotting faces for very long. The smell was hellish. Others had been strung up with wire, and then burned.

  Every once in a while, Patrick would jab at me and point to something at the side of the street, grinning.

  The remains of a man, tied in a sitting position with his back against the burned-out skeleton of a car. A fire had been built between his legs while he was still alive. The pavement was blackened in a great patch around his crotch. His skeletal face was frozen in a silent scream.

  Another jab, more grinning.

  A naked woman, hanging from a store frontage. Her hands had been tied behind her back and she had been hauled up in that position by her wrists so that her shoulder joints had first dislocated and then snapped completely. It was a grotesque and horrifying sight as she twirled slowly in the air.

  Another jab, another grin.

  A stained and ragged pile of what at first looked like old clothes. As we passed them, I saw that they were a pile of severed arms and legs; still in shirt or jacket sleeves; still in trouser legs.

  On either side now, a line of hastily improvised wooden crosses, X-shaped, the bottom resting in the rubble on the pavements. Men and women had been crucified there.

  All adults. No children.

  I wondered how many of them were related to this tribe of kids. How many brothers and sisters had been slaughtered and laid out on display? How many fathers and mothers of the kids here had been tortured and crucified? I looked at the wild and painted faces all around me. They looked crazed. Was it just plain fear of the Caffneys, or had some of them actually begun to enjoy this new lifestyle? Christ, we had only been stranded here for a year or so. Did it take so little time for everything to degenerate like this? I supposed that in the Vorla they’d had a hell of a teacher.

  I lost track of how long we marched. The sights all around us seemed to do something to time. We were in a Hell of the Vorla’s own making, and it seemed that time had no meaning here. I couldn’t make out whether we were marching in a circle or straight ahead. Wasn’t Hell supposed to be like this? Pain and death and torment for ever and ever, amen?

  When the old man raised his hand again, the two girls stopped pushing his wheelchair. The crowd behind came to a halt, Patrick grabbing my shoulder and pulling me to a stop, like I was dead keen to go on and find out where we were being taken or something. There were still ruined buildings on either side of the street, but there was a clear space up ahead. I could see the remains of a wire-mesh fence and a security gate. It had all been torn down. Beyond, I could see the silhouettes of what seemed to be huge tanks and cylinders. Massive oil drums and criss-cross connecting p
ipes, hundreds of feet long and as thick as a man was tall. Was this some kind of petrol plant or refinery?

  Was something wrong with Old Man Caffney? His head seemed to be sagging and his two daughters were fussing around him. I strained to look, and Patrick hissed something at me. I took the hint and stayed still. Was the internal war between Daddie-Paul and the Vorla taking place again?

  The old man waved once more, and we moved on.

  When we reached the fence and the gate, I could see that the ’quake hadn’t been responsible for it all being torn down. This had been done by human hands, to gain access to what was on the other side. A sign lay on the road as we passed: Petro-Ammyln Inc.

  We had just passed through the remains of the torn fence when we halted again. From behind, Henry began to shout some kids’ names. About a dozen or so ran forward to the old man’s wheelchair and positioned themselves around him. They moved on ahead, in a knot of bodies. Patrick jabbed me with the shotgun again, and we were on the move once more.

  Now I could see what lay ahead of us.

  A crevasse had opened up in the road ahead, zigzagging through shattered tarmac just inside where the gates had once been. There was a familiar ragged cliff-edge before us, stretching off into the darkness on our right and left. Whatever lay beyond was separated by a gap about fifty feet wide. Could it be that the remains of this petrol plant, or whatever, were stranded on a plateau? Or was this just a bloody great crack in the ground? Was this refinery where we were headed, or was it something beyond? There was no way of telling at the moment. I strained to see how we were going to get over the abyss, wondered if there was a way round—then saw that the Caffney clan had been busy once again.

  Another of the familiar tower bridges had been built on this side, and then toppled over the Chasm to the other cliff-edge. Had we all been carried over this one on our way to the town hall “council meeting”? Or was this just a side bridge? Again, no way of telling. But it seemed to me that a great deal more care had been taken here than over the other, bigger bridges. For a start, this one had a flattened level surface, with something that might have been a handrail or barrier on either side.

  This was an important place.

  Because this bridge had been carefully constructed so that Daddie-Paul Caffney’s wheelchair could be pushed easily over the Chasm to the other side.

  Sure enough, he was being wheeled over there now, with his dozen little helpers all clustered around to make sure that he would be safe.

  “Safety first, eh?” I said to Patrick Caffney.

  He grinned and jabbed me with the shotgun.

  I slapped it away.

  For a moment I thought I’d lost it and gone a step too far. Caffney’s eyes hardened into that manic stare. But almost immediately the look was gone. He grinned back at me.

  “I’m going to enjoy hurting you,” he said simply.

  He gestured ahead with the gun; this time like he was being really polite.

  Carrying Alex, Candy and I moved on ahead.

  Compared to the other crossings of the Chasm I’d had to endure, this one wasn’t so bad. It felt pretty solid beneath my feet; iron spars and wood hammered and tied together into one compacted and seamless mass. Imagine a clapped-out car shoved into a junk-yard compressor, then turned into a solid metal cube. The surface beneath us was just like the surface of one of those cubes; impacted, crushed and smooth. Christ knows how they’d done it—but they’d done it.

  Behind Daddie-Paul Caffney, I saw Juliet and Lisa trying to keep Annie from being swung all over the place beneath the pole. Don-Paul thought it was a fucking great joke. I kept wishing that he’d miss his footing and go over the edge. Somewhere behind us, I heard Damon howl in pain. Simon Caffney laughed again. I wondered what living next door to the Caffneys had been like on that council housing estate, before the “psychic earthquake” hit Edmonville. I supposed they’d made it hell for their neighbours. Now they were doing it quite literally. To most of the survivors, New Edmonville was a nightmare place, a real Hell. To the Caffneys, it must have seemed like all their dreams had come true. No police to control them; no more social mores to observe. Just do what you like, when you like. A paradise for sadists and monsters.

  As we crossed, I could see that the cliff-edge we were heading for curved away on our left, making it wider there than at the crossing. And there was some sort of strange construction right on the cliff-edge that we’d just left, maybe a hundred feet away. At first I thought it was some kind of plant or metal wreckage left dangling over the side by the ’quake. But as we moved, I could see that it had the same “home-made” quality as the tower bridge we were walking on. Now it was clear that it was some kind of wooden platform, built right on the cliff-edge and jutting out maybe twenty feet or so over the Chasm. I could see two wooden struts at a forty-five-degree angle beneath the rectangle of wood, keeping it anchored against the rough cliff wall. Whoever had built this strange construction obviously had no fear of heights, since they’d have to climb down beneath the platform to anchor it like that. I remembered the kids who had built the first tower bridge we’d seen. They’d seemed unafraid of the drop into the Chasm then. Or had it been that they’d been goaded to that frenzy of construction by the greater fear of what the Caffneys and the Vorla might do if they didn’t get the job done in time? What had the Caffney clan been up to over there? Why rig up a platform like that if they had built a bridge as well? I could see some kind of rope piled up on the platform. Patrick caught me looking, and jabbed me hard. I faced front and continued on.

  The platform, or whatever, was lost from sight when we reached the other side.

  Daddie-Paul Caffney was trundled on ahead through the maze of pipes and the shadows of great steel canisters on either side. Some of the plant and pipework in here had collapsed and burst in the ’quake, and the ground crackled underfoot as we walked. There had been fires here at one time, and it looked like one of the fifty-foot-high canisters had ruptured and burned. But the fire must have been dampened down, otherwise there wouldn’t have been anything left standing here.

  There was another pause while the daughters crowded around Daddie-Paul in his wheelchair. Another “turn” perhaps? It didn’t last long this time, and we continued on.

  I still couldn’t see past the silhouettes of giant tanks and pipes ahead, to work out whether this was a separate plateau or not. But when we were a couple of hundred yards “inland”, Daddie-Paul Caffney called a halt and had his wheelchair turned around to face us all. In the darkness and the shadows of the containers, it wasn’t possible to see any faces. But I saw the pole-carriers suddenly dump Annie on the ground. Lisa cried out and moved to her. Juliet tried to help, and was flung back against one of the pipes at ground level by Don-Paul.

  “You touch her again and I’ll…” I lunged forward instinctually. Patrick held the shotgun to my face, and Don-Paul stepped in my direction.

  “Don-Paul!” commanded Old Man Caffney, stopping him in his tracks. He shuffled uneasily, looking back at his father.

  “He’s asking for it.”

  “And he’ll get it,” said Daddie-Paul. “Just be patient.”

  The crowd following finally bunched up around us. They shuffled and coughed, and it brought back a crazy memory to me. This was like the time back in Burleigh High, when the kids gathered at assembly before the classes began. They shuffled and coughed, just like this, waiting for the head teacher to make the usual announcements and get the day under way. These were kids, for Christ’s sake. The same kids I’d seen when I’d been cleaning the school windows, or washing the toilet floors. It was truly bizarre.

  There was a flurry of activity within the shadowed figures. Someone was shoving through. They parted, and Damon’s wretched form was flung to the ground in the centre of the crowd. As he moaned and gibbered, it seemed barely possible that this was the Damon we remembered. They had reduced him to some pitiable thing that was barely human any more. Simon Caffney stepped over his body,
seized the rope leash and dragged him to the wheelchair.

  Damon gibbered and pleaded at the old man’s feet.

  “Last chance, Damon,” said the old man.

  “I don’t know! I swear to Christ, I don’t know!”

  Another gesture with his hand, and Daddie-Paul was being pushed away from us, back the way he’d come. I watched him go, and began to wonder. Quite apart from the fact that something pretty bad had been planned for us, something about the old man’s behaviour didn’t scan. Not just the bizarre shifting between Daddie-Paul and the Vorla, but something else. Something that ate at me. A little voice was frantically whispering in my ear, but I was either too exhausted or too afraid to understand what it was saying. Something about the old man…something about the internal battle that was taking place…something about the place we’d been brought to…

  Damon screamed, snapping my attention back to him.

  Don-Paul and Simon had seized him by the hands and were dragging him through the crowd to one side. The crowd parted silently, and Damon was suddenly flung back against what seemed to be a wire-mesh fence. He begged and pleaded with them as they held his hands up and strapped his forearms to the mesh above his head. But no one could understand what he was gibbering. It was a hideous, sickening sound. And there was nothing that anyone could do about it. There seemed to be broken, angular pipes and shattered machinery all around his feet. Strange, angular frames; like some kind of mini-junk pile. But it was too difficult to tell in the darkness.

  Henry Caffney motioned to his brothers.

  Don-Paul moved quickly to Juliet and dragged her into the clearing that had been made in front of Damon. That was it. I lunged forward. Candy cried out as Alex sagged against her. But Patrick had me by the neck from behind before I could take more than two steps. Bracing a foot in the small of my back, he kicked hard and I staggered out into the clearing, falling to my knees. Then Candy, Alex and Lisa were dragged out by a bunch of kids until we were all kneeling together. Only the mad middle-aged woman remained standing, surrounded by kids, all hanging on to her arms while she smiled and nodded, smiled and nodded.