by James Harden
Chapter 12
A few hours later I’m coming good.
I’m in the bathroom of this long abandoned subway station.
Angel is standing behind me. She’s reloading my guns.
My guns.
“I just want a clean break,” she says. “I want to get away. I thought I could stay quiet, stay hidden. But I’m starting to realize the only way to escape is to kill the Overseer.”
“What about the Collector? What about the Lord?”
“They rarely leave Wonderland. And they rarely get their hands dirty. They leave it all up to the Overseer.”
We essentially want the same things.
This fallen Angel and I.
She wants a life. A new life. She wants freedom from the terror and tyranny of Wonderland.
I want revenge.
It looks like the stars have aligned.
The problem is, killing the Overseer will be no easy feat. Even with all the hardware that Angel has collected, accumulated, stolen. She has a large rucksack full of guns and ammunition. Full of other things that go bang and boom.
Again, I think about selling all of this, living like a King. But this is a fantasy.
“If we want to get the drop on them,” Angel says. “We need to keep moving. We stay here, he’ll find us.”
“I’m all ears. Where do we go? What do we do?”
“The Water Treatment Plant. That’s where will find what we’re looking for.”
She keeps telling me how we need to do this.
Every little thing. Every angle and every detail.
She’s got it all figured out.
But I keep saying, no.
No.
It’s not bloody enough. It’s not painful enough.
She has to explain to me that they, the Overseers, they don’t bleed like we do. They don’t feel pain like we do. Not emotional. Not physical. The way to beat them, the way to torture them and exact revenge, you stop him from doing his job. If it’s no longer effective, if it’s no longer able to do its job, it will feel pain. A kind of pain.
Some version of pain.
And I say… “Like if I chopped off its legs and arms and mangled its spine…”
Angel thinks it over. “Yes. That will definitely piss it off.”
She called the Overseer an ‘it’. I guess that’s accurate. I guess it’s not really human. It may walk like a man, talk like a man. But I can assure you, it ain’t a man. Combing your hair in the morning and smiling at strangers does not make you a man.
Angel hands me my weapons.
My brother’s gun.
The Enforcer’s blood covered gun.
The rapid fire… the work of art.
I slide the hand guns down the waist of my pants and I slip the rapid fire over my shoulder and around my neck. I get comfortable and I get my mind right.
The heat is starting to rise again. I must’ve slept through the night while the poison worked its way out of my system.
“Shit, they’re here,” Angel says from the door of the bathroom.
We are being chased and hunted by a small army of Enforcers. They can track weapons. Bullets.
They can track their girls.
Their property.
“How’d they get here so fast?” she asks. “We’re miles from the center of the city. Miles from anywhere.”
“They can track the weapons,” I explain.
I take out my brother’s gun, slide the magazine out. On the base of one of the bullets is the word, ‘Omega’.
Omega Camp is the official name of Wonderland.
No one uses the official name anymore. At least, no one left on Earth.
These bullets and most of these weapons would’ve been manufactured, or at the very least they would’ve been modified in house, within the walls of Wonderland.
“I don’t know how they do it,” I say. “But they can. And that’s how they found us. They can probably track you somehow.”
Angel shakes her head. “We all disabled our tracking devices. And at the very least, they shouldn’t be able to get a lock on us underground.”
Doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter because I’m feeling better. Well, not better. Not a hundred percent. But I feel like killing some people who deserve to be killed.
Enforcers.
The Overseer.
They’re all part of a problem. They’re all complicit. And they’re all about to pay a heavy, heavy price for their compliance.
I say, “You might wanna hang back, Angel.”
She slides an elongated briefcase out of the rucksack, out of her magical rucksack full of magical and deadly things. “Hang back? And let you have all the fun? No way. These guys have made my life a living hell since I was old enough to…”
She trails off.
I don’t ask why.
She opens the long briefcase. Contained within the briefcase are a bunch of parts which she puts together like a jigsaw puzzle. Bit by bit. Piece by piece.
And in a few short minutes, she’s got herself a sniper rifle. There’s no scope, but down here, we’re not going to need a scope.
“Do you know how to use that thing?” I ask, completely underestimating her.
“Yeah. One of these bastards taught me. He was bored. Figured he teach a pretty young girl how to fire a large and ugly weapon. The first time I fired it, the recoil nearly killed me, nearly took my head off. I cried. He laughed. Bastard.”
“I’m sorry…”
“Don’t be sorry. Because now I know how to use this,” she says, shouldering the sniper rifle, checking the barrel. “I now know how to kill a human being.”
I nod my head and I’m smiling. “Then let’s get to it.”
I tell her to hide behind a billboard on the upper level of the subway. A billboard that advertises the ‘Trans-continental Hyperloop’. What an age to be alive, I think to myself. Anyway, I tell Angel it’ll be warmer up there. And that she won’t be used to the heat. But she’ll have a great line of sight, a great vantage point. I tell her to use a knife to cut a hole in the billboard. Cut a few holes.
I tell her, “Don’t point the barrel through the hole. They’ll be able to see it. Hang back. Line them up. Take your time. And remember, it’ll be hot up there, even more so than right here, even though we’re literally only one level lower.”
She tells me she can handle it. She tells me she won’t let me down. She hands me two grenades and takes her rucksack and wishes me good luck.
Angel makes her way up the stairs, makes her way to her sniper’s nest.
I turn my head to the side. I can hear them walking up the dark tunnel, marching, noisy and arrogant. It’s time to start killing, time to get revenge for Ruby.
For the guy who poured me my drinks at that sleazy ass bar.
For Meryl, the sweet old librarian who knew my name even though I didn’t know hers. She knew my name because she knew everyone’s name. She kept that place open, kept it from falling into waste. She warned us, cut the power, gave us a chance to escape. I know this act of defiance and bravery cost her dearly. I know it cost Meryl her life. The Enforcers would not have hesitated putting a bullet in her brain. Her brain, within it, the knowledge and wisdom of the Library she kept alive.
Now it’s all gone. Dead and gone.
Maybe they didn’t use a bullet. Maybe they didn’t want to waste one on an old lady. Maybe they just used a knife. I’m picturing all the ways that Meryl could’ve died. And I’m getting pretty worked up. And it’s getting hard to focus.
And I need to focus.
Killing an army is hard work.
“Hector! Lay down your weapons. Get on the ground. Put your hands behind your head. And no one will get hurt.”
“Okay. Sure. I’ll do that.”
Idiots. Why are they wasting their breath? Haven’t they learnt their lesson?
The grenades that Angel gave me are not regular grenades. They’re not explosive frag grenades. One is a flash-bang
grenade and the other is a smoke grenade. I pull the pins out with my teeth. I spit them on the ground and I throw the flash-bang into the subway tunnel.
The flash-bang is louder and brighter than I ever imagined. It’s the kind of brightness you’d expect from an exploding star, or a few thousand nuclear warheads detonating all at once. The flash-bang moves into a strobe light mode and all hell and chaos erupts. I see the Enforcers scatter like roaches, taking cover.
They return fire. Well, they try to. Their aim is sporadic and completely inaccurate. At the very back of their pathetic group, I think I see the Overseer. He’s standing in the background, standing in the dark tunnel.
He’s not bothering to hide or take cover. I can’t be certain, but it looks like he is smiling.
The flashing continues.
On and off.
Light.
Bright like the sun, like the Red Giant.
Dark.
Like the edge of space.
The Overseer disappears. Smart move, buddy.
I throw the smoke grenade. And I unleash with the rapid fire gun. An entire magazine. I shoot where the Enforcers are taking cover, where they think they are hiding. They are wrong. They are not hidden. I stand on the platform and mow them down. I run out of bullets. I let the gun fall to my side. I take out my brother’s antique handgun.
I aim.
Fire.
Angel provides support from above. She’s better than I expected. She’s a crack shot, a dead eye.
The Enforcers fall in the tunnel. Dying. Choking on blood and smoke. I hold my hand up, telling Angel to stop shooting. One Enforcer is left, he is wearing a poncho. He has a scar over his left eye.
He has a bullet in his stomach.
I jump down into the tunnel and grab him by the scruff of his neck. I throw him onto the platform. “Talk.”
He says nothing. And he does nothing except crawl into a smaller and smaller ball. Blood pours out of his body.
Angel appears beside me. “Just end him.”
“He might know something. I saw him, the night Ruby died. He was asking around. He was stalking her. He was real close.”
He looks shorter than I remember. Not as thin. Then again, I was stone drunk that night. I could barely see straight.
“See that patch on his shoulder?” Angel says.
I tear the poncho away. There’s a patch that looks like a spear.
“He’s a commander,” she explains. “Bad son of a bitch. Sadistic. But trust me, he can’t tell you anything. He can’t tell you anything you need to know. The scar over his eye, it’s like an initiation. A rite of passage. It’s to let people know who he is and what he’s done. To let people know that he’s a made man.”
I slit his throat and he bleeds to death in less than a minute.
I jump back down into the tunnel.
“What are you doing?” Angel asks.
“Getting ammo…”
She throws the ruck sack on the ground. “Got everything we need right here. You get anymore, we won’t be able to carry it.”
“I just need some ammo for this.”
I show her the rapid fire gun. The work of art. The pure killing machine. I think I’m in love with it.
“What’s it take?” she asks. “Nine millimeters, right?”
“I don’t know. It’s not mine. And I’m no expert. I’ve just been pointing and shooting.”
I slide the empty magazine out and throw it up to her.
“Yeah, nine millimeters,” she says. “I’ve got hundreds of these.”
She throws me a magazine. And another. Heavy and full of bullets, full of little promises of death and pain and revenge.
No.
More than revenge… retribution.
Justice.
I load the gun and instantly feel a whole lot better about my current situation, about myself, about life.
I strip two corpses of their thermo suits. I try and find ones that have the least amount of blood on them, the least amount of holes. I keep looking over my shoulder as I work. I know the Overseer is lurking in the tunnel somewhere. He’s hanging back for some reason.
I don’t know why he doesn’t come and finish the job. Pump me full of poison. Torture me. Bury me in the Wasteland. I know he’s capable of doing just that. He’s capable of doing it single handedly.
But he’s not doing any of this.
Which begs the question, why is he sending Enforcers to their death?
He’s hanging back. Smiling. Laughing. He’s enjoying this. He’s having the time of his life.
And so am I.
Maybe we’re not so different.
I strip an Enforcer of his thermo suit. He’s still alive.
He begs…
And he begs.
For what? I’m not sure.
He’s semi-naked and bleeding and dying and afraid.
And the only thing I can give him is a quick death.
I slit his throat. He stops begging.
