Chemicaust (Mad Element Saga)

by Daniel Moore

the asphalt by poor maintenance and he felt dwarfed by the crowd beyond the gates. Dirty strips of red silk fluttered to the ground behind him as the guard looked him up and down. It wasn’t safe for a soldier alone in a city like this, a squad or even a pair of soldiers might traverse the streets unmolested, but what Luke represented was an opportunity to seek revenge on Michael’s holy regime. The dress-pants were a liability, as were the red leather boots, but less-so. For a moment Luke was thinking like a soldier again, and then it was lost.

  As the civilian guarding the gate let him through with a creaking of rusty hinges, Luke realized that he could let himself be killed, a possibility that had not occurred to him earlier. He couldn’t force the drive to stop repairing his tissues or maintain his life, but he could discard what chem remained to him and let the villagers beat him, or hang him, or butcher him for meat. He stood, barely within the city. The south gate clanged shut behind him with a sharp metal twang. There was a crowd on the main street, dealing what little wares they possessed from vehicle shells and dilapidated store-fronts.

  The road stretched for miles and then turned in the distance, disappearing from sight. Buildings towered in the distance, shining with glass. Very little of the city was occupied, it had been built to support a population in the hundreds of thousands and the squatters who called it home took up fewer than sixty houses, though each of those might play host to a large extended family. The majority of the city was at the market, the stands of which took up only two lanes of the highway’s four. They were silent and stared almost uniformly in his direction. Except for a few children who ignored his presence, screaming at one another as they played ‘seeks’ in the ruins that constituted store-houses and homes, the entire population of the town, those on the street, and those peering from windows above, were concerned with his presence. A dog, hairless from acid rain, went to barking as he walked closer. The children stopped their games so that it became the only sound. There was a definite tensing on both sides – Luke had no weapon except the drive, which was running dry, and he noticed with horror that many of the men and quite a few women had shifted hands to hip-holsters, or moved closer to rifles leaned at ease behind shop counters. In the windows above Luke noticed the glint of glass rifle-sights. Luke felt out-gunned and concerned for his well-being. Each of these feelings was new to the soldier and the shock of such realities did nothing to help the structure of his pace. His well-conditioned walk broke into a light-footed and unsteady lilt; his face broke from a lack of emotion into a grimace. He looked drunk, stumbling and furious.

  There was a dull thud and the warmth of blood lit his vision again, a second blow followed the first and his vision went black for a moment, but he remained standing. The drive would not allow him to lose consciousness. Chaos ensued, those unwilling to fight a soldier of the corps ran for shelter, further into the city, or ducked into hiding nearby. A gunshot whistled by his ear, another round entered above his kidney and exited his body on the other side. Of course, as long as the drive functioned such trivial wounds would be repaired in a matter of moments. There were men running towards him, and the guard at the gate who had levelled the blows from behind was grasping at him, tugging on his arm, prying open the gills of the drive. Luke didn’t resist as the drive in his arm was forced open and the chem vial removed. He expected to die; his grimace turned to a smile. The guard at the gate brought his shovel to bear once more, this time smashing it into his good eye. With the chem gone the damage wasn’t repaired.

  Luke woke with ropes around his hands and chains around his feet. He was standing, held up by two men who looked underfed and unwilling to continue their current occupation. Luke forced his weight onto his feet and stumbled back, his back hit something cool and metallic, he looked from where he was to where he had been and gathered that he had been dragged and tied to a streetlight. Not much time had passed. Luke hadn’t noticed the gate-guard when he entered, he had acknowledged him, but hadn’t seen him clearly. Now he saw.

  The man was deeply tanned from the sun, he wore rough cotton pants dyed a dark black and pock-marked from chemical exposure. Around his head he wore a bandana which had once been red, but was now black with age. Luke new what it meant and had overlooked it, accidentally, or sub-consciously, he didn’t know which. Over his eyes the man wore protective goggles, large and round for keeping out the sting of a sand-storm, but tinted red with a solution meant to prevent damage to the glass from strong acids. He was physically fit, well fed, and like the clothing he wore, his exposed torso was pocked with damage from chem rain. In one hand he held the violet chem which had fed into Luke’s veins, and in the other, a hypodermic. The drives on the civilians who surrounded Luke would all be empty – for ages the corps had prevented civilian access to heavy-chem with moderate success. What the man in the black bandana did now, taking the chem for himself in front of so many who hungered for its possession, was reckless. No one moved against him. The two holding Luke let go and moved away.

  The guard filled the hypo from the vial and held it point up, flicking it with one finger to remove air he pushed gently on the plunger, careful not to waste a drop. At his feet lay a blood-stained shovel. The hypo full, and his prisoner contained, the man stooped to retrieve his tool and one of the men beside Luke broke into motion. Charging the man with the shovel while his head was down, Luke’s guard threw a shoulder into the man. From behind Luke and above a bullet whistled and put an end to both men struggling on the ground. There was a scream from the man who had first claimed the vial, and a gentle spurting of blood. From his attacker there wasn’t a sound, the bullet had gone directly through his spine, near the neck, and ended his life immediately. The man with the shovel was drenched in his own blood, his shoulder torn apart by the rifle round, and blood gushed still from the man on top of him. There was silence, Luke’s second guard stood stock-still. Smart man.

  The man with the shovel coughed, expelling his own blood and that of his attacker, and pushed the corpse off of him so that he could rise. He tried to right himself and struggle to his feet but using his arm was a mistake, pain shot through his shoulder and all he could manage was a slight roll away from the corpse of his attacker followed by compulsive vomiting. It was a liquid vomit, mixed with blood. The man had been drinking, but hadn’t eaten for some time. Luke kept still. He understood what would come next. The hypo was broken, crushed under the weight of the two men. The purple chem was quickly soaking into the dry asphalt. The magic cure-all was gone, only the man on the ground hadn’t realized it yet. The guard to Luke’s left was crying silently, tears streaming down his face. Behind him Luke heard footsteps.

  A woman in a brown leather trench-coat appeared in Luke’s peripherals, a cloud moved over the sun and shade fell along the street. There were other men and women appearing from the store-fronts along the street, approaching cautiously. “Lucas, you damn fool!” The woman spat at the wounded man, a hiss of curses snaked from her breath as she approached the two on the ground, kneeling, using a long rifle held in her right hand as support. She tested the pulse of the dead man automatically, her left hand came away covered in blood. It wasn’t spurting anymore but it would take time for the blood to quit draining from the dead man’s wound. The vial of chem could have saved either of them.

  Lucas was barely alive. He rolled onto his back again, his face smeared with the dust of the highway, with blood and with vomit. Luke closed his eyes; he heard the whispering footsteps of the guard to his left leaving. “Lucas!” he imagined the woman turning on the wounded man, “You asshole Lucas!” Luke opened his eyes, the wounded man had closed his and lay as if sleeping, in the middle of the street. The woman leaned close over him, her deep brown dragged through the blood and mess of his face. She had both hands over his wound, applying pressure, and was yelling at the man, her face barely inches from his own. “If you keep ignoring me Lucas, you’ll never hear the end of it! You’ll hang for this! They’ll tear you apart! You wake up dammit, you wake up!” She took he
r hands from the wound and slapped his face. “You wake up damn you! Wake up.” She made the last words a demand and then rose as if expecting him to stand up as well. She spun on her heel, quickly enough to cause her jacket to flare about her waist. Luke smiled, now, he thought, I will die.

  The barrel of the rifle rested on his forehead. It was cool against sunburnt skin, the smell of gunpowder sharp in Luke’s nostrils. Luke had faced death on many occasions, but this was the first where instincts weren’t suppressed, where, if he wanted to, Luke could be afraid. He wasn’t. He grinned and said quite clearly, “pull the trigger lady.” The muzzle of the rifle went away, Luke blinked and the butt of the rifle came hammering home.

  Luke hadn’t expected to wake up, but his head was pounding hard enough to rule out contemplation of the events which had just unfolded. He focussed on immediate realities. It was dark outside, and he was inside, so time had passed, and he’d been moved. He was calm and cool, starring out of a window at the back of the streetlight he’d been tied to