The Way of Death

by James Von Ohlen

  As he lay there, meandering through his thoughts, footsteps began to sound. Heels clicking on tiles, echoing and moving closer. They paused outside the door to the holding cell and a small panel mounted in the door opened just long enough for a pair of dark eyes in a pale face to look around the room. Bloodshot and angry.

  “The big one is awake,” a man’s voice said as the panel closed. A locking mechanism within the door clicked a few times, and it opened. Four in total walked into the room. Reiji looked up at them disinterestedly and cocked one eyebrow.

  “This is the one?” A woman asked as she stepped forward from the group. Tall, and thick in the shoulders. A bull’s neck to match. Built like a pit wrestler back in the capital. Her face and voice gave her away as a woman though. Too pretty to be a man, though not pretty enough to draw attention for it, Reiji thought.

  Long bleached-blonde hair was pulled up into a ponytail, revealing that the sides of her head had been shaved. Reiji instantly dislike this woman. A woman’s long hair was a sign of her health and fertility. Short hair on a woman was a sign of disease and malnutrition. What kind of lunatic would intentionally try to look like a diseased animal?

  A thick sword hung from a holster on her right hip. As Reiji looked she cocked the same hip to one side, bringing the grip of the blade within easy reach of her hand. Like a bladeslinger out of a movie. He wondered if she’d ever used the sword, even once, in a fight or training. His eyes moved down to polished, black leather boots with a sizable heel on them. For fashion or crushing bones, he couldn’t tell. Looking back up, he saw the woman staring at him.

  Hard, brown eyes glared at him from beneath thick, black eyebrows. Eyebrows hilariously mismatched with the color of the woman’s hair. Reiji began to chuckle as he looked at her.

  “Oh,” she began, her voice rising like she might be asking a question. “It’s still alive, then.” She smiled. “We’ll be able to collect a larger bounty.” She sounded far too pleased with herself for Reiji’s liking.

  “Reiji Ikeda, if I’m not mistaken,” she continued. “At least that’s the name we found in the bounty hunter’s registry associated with your fingerprints.” She clasped her hands behind her back, still staring at him while she talked.

  “Of course, other biometrics,” she took a deep breath and sighed before continuing. “Other biometrics returned various other names. Hansen, Smith, Mata. A few others. But, no matter. What’s important is that you match the description of a wanted man. Facing a murder charge and with a decent sized bounty on your head.” She smiled again. It wasn’t a bad smile, he thought. Shit, a few more weeks on the trail with only the retard for company, and she’d look as good as any of the whores back at Pleasures of Meat.

  “I make no claims as to my identity,” Reiji offered as his thoughts spun. If they knew who he was, there really would be no going back. “But who might you be?”

  She raised an eyebrow and sneered, curling her lip as though irritated. She looked to be considering stepping on him with her shiny black boots. “I am Corina. And I am the Garrison Commander at Fort Houston. You,” she sneered again. “Will not speak again unless spoken to.”

  Likely an idle threat, he considered. But then again he was chained to the floor and at least three potentially hostile men were standing just behind Her Highness Lady Garrison Commander.

  “So not only are you most likely an already wanted man,” she continued. “But you’ve shown up here in a stolen Cent-Sec APC. And you left the doors open when you and your friend tried to run. Inside, we found a stolen Cent-Sec combat exoskeleton. Both of which have been blamed by eye witness account for the murder of some thirty Cent-Sec soldiers and two dozen or so constables in the town of Milton.”

  “Sounds like a whole lot of trouble,” one of the men standing behind Corina offered, voicing his opinion. She didn’t take her eyes off Reiji.

  “A whole lot of trouble indeed,” Corina began again. “Your trail of death and destruction seems to stretch all the way back to the capital, unless my sources are mistaken. You’ve been quite busy the past month or so.” Her eyes gleamed for a second with something unmistakable. Reiji had seen it enough times to know it by now. Seeing it in her eyes made him shiver involuntarily.

  Desire.

  It was always the crazy ones who showed it. Something about the women of Lexington drove them to salivate over the most violent and potentially dangerous thugs. They simply couldn’t get enough of them. And now apparently Reiji ranked among said thugs.

  He’d always preferred a life of anonymity, free to go about his business as he saw fit. But even as a wanted man with a heavy price on his head, there were still benefits to be had. Or at least the potential for them, he thought looking the woman over and then shaking his head. Not my style, he concluded.

  Corina’s eyes spoke that she had understood the movement and she sneered yet again, curling her lip at one side. “Who’s the boy?” she spat, stepping forward and placing one hand on the pommel of her sword.

  “My hostage,” Reiji answered without thought. Not a bad improvisation, he mused. “I used him as a shield to make my getaway from Milton. Just haven’t gotten around to cutting his throat yet.”

  “Bullshit.” The answer fell from her mouth with as much ease as his lie had. “There is a description of a boy acting as your traveling companion in Milton. But there are no indications of his identity.”

  Reiji could see her game. She was trying to figure out if the boy was worth keeping alive. Petty criminals as well as big name criminals could earn bounties on their heads. But only the guys who really pissed off someone at Cent-Com, say by slaughtering their soldiers and stealing priceless military equipment from them, had even bigger prices on being captured alive than on being returned as pieces of a body.

  That way, they could make an example out of them with myriad variations of public torture for a week or so and then an execution. If the boy had a name, even a fake one as it would take them a while to check up on it, then he might live just a little longer.

  “Tod the ‘Tard,” Reiji answered. “Terror of the wastes and my right hand man.” Reiji’s voice croaked from his throat as he spoke. Dry and uncomfortable. He needed a drink of… anything. “Killed a dozen constables and twice as many whores on his own when we attacked Milton.”

  “I fucked her right in the pussy!” Tod’s voice filled the small room as he spoke enthusiastically. Startling the Alcosa Mining crew as he shared his favorite observation of his first encounter with the ladies at Pleasures of Meat.

  All eyes turned to the boy who grinned wide, but remained silent. Reiji saw something there, in the boy’s eyes. He recognized it instantly. It was something he couldn’t help but take some small measure of pride in. The boy was sizing up his foes. Measuring how far away they were, and if he could reach them and take them down before they could retaliate.

  “Not now, Tod,” Reiji’s voice reached him and the boy lowered his gaze, still grinning ear to ear.

  “So you freely admit to your crimes?” Corina asked, looking over Reiji as if he was a piece of meat in a butcher’s shop.

  “In Milton,” Reiji answered. “I do. Me and the boy premeditated our attack on the town. Solely for the purpose of killing as many as possible. We poisoned their water supply and killed their horses. We intentionally started the fire that no doubt burned the whole town down, and murdered some forty or fifty citizens of Milton as we made our escape. We even took a handful of women along with us and used them in every hole before we left them stranded in the wastes.”

  That ought to do it, Reiji thought. While she was busy thinking about how she was going to spend the likely nonexistent bounty on the boy, Tod would get to live a few days more.

  “Well,” Corina began, her lip curling in disgust. “I guess we’ll have to check and see what kind of bounty there might be on your friend. Of course,” she paused and looked back to Reiji. “That will just be the icing on the fortune I’m…we’re,” she corrected herself
, “going to make. This assignment will be just a distant memory of dirty times. Fun times perhaps,” she added cryptically with a sidelong glance at the men with her. “But times best left in the past.”

  Corina looked over her shoulder at the man who’d spoken a few moments before. “We’ll all be living in The Gardens and drinking champagne all day.”

  Reiji felt like telling her the truth about The Gardens. He’d collected a few bounties there in his time. It wasn’t anywhere as nice or safe as most people in the slums thought it to be. The fabled luxury was just that. A fable. Something that the desperately poor dreamed about. The mention of the place pegged the area that Garrison Commander Corina had grown up in to a few lower-end neighborhoods in the sprawling capital slums.

  “And the APC,” the soldier spoke in response. “With the reward on its return and the exoskeleton combined, it’s going to be a doozy.” His eyes shone as he clearly spent a few seconds dreaming about what he could do with all of that money. Likely his dreams ended at a few months spent smoking narcotics in a high-end whorehouse, and then being found dead of an overdose, lying in a gutter somewhere.

  Corina turned her attention away from Reiji and Tod, and back to the men at her heels. “Keep them both alive for now. We’ll get paid more that way.” She turned back to Reiji. “But, if they step out of line, by all means, feel free to royally fuck them up.” She smiled at Reiji before turning and walking out of the cell. He could hear the heels of her boots clicking on the tiles for some distance until the door was closed again.

  Reiji let out a long breath and stared at the ceiling. If what Corina had said about the size of his bounty was true, then the personnel of Fort Houston wouldn’t be transporting him back to civilization. In those rare instances where someone fucked up so colossally that Cent-Com’s only remedy for their behavior was public execution, Cent-Sec would be dispatched to retrieve him and the boy.

  He didn’t know how long that would give them to figure things out here and escape. It could be several weeks before anyone made it out here, all the way to the middle of fucking-nowhere, by convoy. Or, if they decided to come by air, it could be a few hours to a day.

  And since there was no way of knowing, he would have to assume the worst. The worst being that he would clapped in manacles, blindfolded and gagged, and onboard a transport shuttle carrying his ass back to civilization where he would face torture and execution within twenty-four hours.

  But where to begin? Reiji’s mind raced through the actions available to him. The chain that held him to the floor didn’t seem all that sturdy. Eventually he might be able to pull it out of its housing. And he might also be able to pound through the locked door with his bare fists and then fly away into the night on a rocket powered by his own farts.

  Pursuing his own thoughts, Reiji lost track of time. The sounds of footsteps outside the door became less regular, and his eyes almost stopped burning. Almost, but not quite. He found himself staring at Tod, examining the collar clamped around the boy’s neck and the chain that held it to the floor.

  An assumption that the same system was what held him in place was probably safe. The clamp on the collar seemed like it would be easy enough to open, if he only had something to work at it with. Realization that he was still wearing the same clothing he’d had on in the APC struck him.

  Reiji casually reached down and into the top of his right boot as if to scratch an itch. His moment of hope dashed as he realized that he had been searched and the boot-knife taken. That something as small as that blade could have made a difference might have seemed strange to him in the distant past, but he’d learned repeatedly over the years just how useful a hidden weapon could be.

  Back to the drawing board, Reiji thought as he pulled his hand out of his boot.

  “Hey, Rage,” Tod spoke in a low voice. What he seemed to think might be a conspiratorial whisper. Reiji turned to the boy to see him holding a knife, half hidden by his boot and half hidden by his hand, a solid 15 centimeters in length. At least he had the good sense to keep it out of sight. It was likely the cell was being monitored, though Reiji saw no obvious cameras in the small room.

  “Where did that come from?” Reiji asked with no small amount of surprise, keeping his voice low.

  “Took it from one of them guys,” Tod began, still talking in a low voice. “When we were fighting them. Just like you showed me. After they took mine. He didn’t notice.”

  Reiji raised a single eyebrow at the revelation. The kid was turning out to be pretty damned good. And maybe it was just his imagination, or the after effects of the neural-disruption he’d suffered during his capture and subsequent beating, but the boy almost sounded normal when he spoke. As if his natural slur was disappearing.

  “Tod,” Reiji began as he grinned. “You just might be the smartest person I’ve ever met.” The boy beamed with pride at the compliment. “Keep that hidden until I ask for it. And when I do, get it to me as fast as you can.”

  Tod nodded once and grunted to show he understood.

  Hours passed in silence before the door clicked several times, signaling being unlocked. It swung open a few seconds later and two men, one comically thin and the other comically fat, entered carrying trays with what appeared to be some type of food and a small bottle of water. They didn’t want their captives to die before they could be handed over, thus decreasing the bounty they could collect.

  “How thoughtful of you,” Reiji spoke in a mocking tone as one of the men put the tray he carried on the ground and pushed it towards Reiji with his foot.

  “Go fuck yourself, halfbreed,” was the fat man’s reply before he spit in the middle of Reiji’s gruel-filled plate. The other man laughed and pushed another tray towards Tod with his own boots, making sure to put his foot in the middle of the food. For a fraction of second Reiji considered calling for the knife from Tod and burying it in the fat man’s second or third chin.

  That would be utterly satisfying, but ultimately detrimental to their escape. The two men laughed and turned to leave the room.

  “Eat up boys,” the thin man spoke. “You’re gonna need your strength.” The pair laughed again as though sharing an inside joke and stepped out of the room, closing the door behind them.

  Reiji reached for the food and poked a single finger into the porridge. He smelled it and found nothing offensive about it. In his experience such things were usually tasteless, but could do quite a bit to keep a man alive when he was hungry. He put the tip of his finger in his mouth, tasting the gruel.

  It was dull, with the hint of a chemical tang in the aftertaste. Drugged then, but to what end? He’d already been captured. And if they wanted him dead, a few men with blades could do so at their convenience.

  “Tod,” Reiji spoke. The boy looked up from his food. “Don’t eat it.”

  “But I’m hungry, Rage,” the boy answered in a pitiful tone.

  “Poisoned.” A one word response was all that was needed. Something flared behind the boy’s eyes and he threw the bowl against the door, spreading a pattern of spilled slop that resembled what might have sprung from a severed artery.

  Reiji laughed his approval and cast his own bowl alongside the boy’s. Tod lifted the bottle of water to throw as well, but Reiji stopped him. He sipped his own water, tasting nothing strange and gave the boy a nod. Without waiting for further notice, Tod downed the entire bottle in one long gulp.

  There was no natural light in the room, making it difficult to tell what time it was, or how much time had passed since they’d awoken. Eventually more food came, delivered by the Laurel and Hardy duo of makeshift soldiers. Three more times.

  Each time Reiji refused to eat his. Fasting was nothing new to him. Going hungry would take a lot longer than a day or two to kill a grown man. But the boy was miserable. He relented and allowed Tod to eat the last meal served to him.

  Warm, colorless, flavorless slop in a plastic bowl. The most unappealing meal Reiji had ever seen. But the boy ate it like it was
sweet ambrosia sent from the Gods themselves.

  Tod stared longingly at the bowl sitting on the floor by Reiji’s bare feet. He’d pulled his boots off long ago and stretched out. As he watched the hunger in the boy’s eyes, Reiji pushed the bowl over to him. If the first bowl hadn’t killed him, maybe the second wouldn’t do it either.

  In a few minutes the gruel was gone and Tod was licking the bowl, looking far more like the retard Reiji had first seen in the farmhouse in the desert wastes. But what a change a few weeks could make, he thought as the boy finished the bowl and tossed it back to him.

  Tod slept for most of the time they were in the holding cell, leaving Reiji to his thoughts. Part of him wondered what Gavin had found that he feared Reiji would take from him. He could think of plenty of reasons to betray an employer, but nothing struck him as the type of thing you’d find on a data crystal. The location of some type of treasure perhaps. But what kind of treasure could be valuable enough to kill for, and not large enough to just share?

  Part of him just wanted to find the man and then kill him. Slowly. And given half a chance, that was exactly what he going to do. Kill everyone in Fort Houston, make his way to his destination, the location coordinates still seared into his mind from the data plug he’d found them on, and find Gavin. Gut him, cut him into pieces, and feed those pieces to whatever he could find that would eat them. Pigs. Maybe dogs. Then he would kill the animals that had eaten the man as well.

  He considered it a shame that his data crystal and neural interface plug weren’t here with him. Then at least he’d be able to train while being held. At least they hadn’t taken the neural interface implant out of his head. It was likely they hadn’t even recognized what it was, thinking it was just some type of dermal jewelry. So instead of training, he pondered his revenge. And the course his life would have to take after he achieved it.

  Life as a wanted man in Cent-Com held territory, which was officially the entire planet, could be very short and bothersome. In practice the reach of Cent-Com was a little less than that. There were places where they had no presence and held no sway. Backwaters at best.