by James Harden
Chapter 14
Angel stuffs the thermo suits into her rucksack of goodies. I head back to the bathroom to wash the blood off my hands and off my face. Angel tells me to hurry up. She knows the Overseer won’t hang back forever. Eventually he’ll come a calling.
Better that we have the advantage.
I tell her I won’t be long. And then I’m standing in the disabled toilet of an abandoned subway station. I’m looking at myself in the mirror, staring. I barely recognize myself.
I check over my shoulder to make sure that I’m actually alone. And then I speak to Ruby, a girl I barely knew, a girl I loved.
A girl I wish I could’ve known better.
“I owe you Ruby. Don’t worry. I’ll make it right. I’ll kill them all. I’ll kill them for you.”
I fight back tears, which is weird because I’m not one for crying. But here I am, choking up.
I clear my throat and I tell myself to focus. I tell myself that I’m feeling pretty good about doing what I’m about to be doing. I’m feeling justified and righteous.
But then the self-doubt starts talking to me, nagging.
It’s almost as if this feeling, this anxiety, it’s almost as if it magically transforms into a person. A being that lives inside my head, or right next to me. His arm around my shoulder.
Self Doubt says, “What if Ruby was just using you? She didn’t like you. She wasn’t even attracted to you. She’d heard about you, just like that guy with the scar over his face had heard about you. It was just sheer luck that she’d found you first.”
I say, “Shut the hell up.”
Because that’s probably true, but either way, I screwed up. I failed.
I owe Ruby. I owe her big time.
The paralyzing personification of Self Doubt crawls off, disappearing into nothingness.
I owe Ruby.
So let’s go and make things right. I walk out of the bathroom and look longingly towards the upper levels of the subway station. Dark orange light pours in through the massive church like windows. Beyond those walls and those windows, beyond the ruins of a once great city, is the Wasteland. Beyond those walls and windows is freedom.
I turn away from it, turn towards the subway platform. I help Angel with her rucksack but she brushes me off. She’s got it. She can carry it. She can handle it.
We head for the tunnels, the darkness, we make our way back towards the Buried City.
Towards the Overseer.
As we walk through the tunnels, my mind again goes off on its own. I try to keep it focused, try to keep it under control. But it is nearly impossible.
I start thinking about the main players of this messed up situation I find myself in.
The Overseer.
The Lord.
The Collector.
And then there’s the girls. Desperate and pretty and smooth. Delicate, yet tough as nails.
Something is rotten in Wonderland all right. It has to be rotten for someone like Ruby, for someone like Angel to run. To escape. Something big is going down. And I find myself smack bang in the middle of it all. And I can’t help but think that once the word gets out, once the genie gets out of the bottle and the cat is let out of the bag, there’ll be no going back.
Angel says there’ll be a rebellion.
She says there’ll be war.
I try not to think too much about that.
I try not to get ahead of myself.
I try and stay focused.
Because if things go about as well as they possibly can, I won’t be around to see another war, another rebellion.
And I’m fine with that.
I think.
We come to a fork in the tunnel and Angel leads the way. I ask her how she knows which tunnel to take and she says because before she escaped, she forced herself to memorize great sections of the tunnels. Not all of them. But a lot.
She knows the way to the Water Treatment Plant. She knows the way to the vault door and the Long Tunnel.
We continue to walk through the darkness, my brother’s red flashlight our only source of light. I continue to think about the main players. The people responsible for everything that’s happened… for everything that’s about to happen.
First, there’s the man in charge of it all…
No one knows his name. Well, no one that I hang out with knows his name.
Everyone just calls him the Lord of Wonderland.
He was left here, left behind on Earth, left in charge of it all, an entire planet. How something like that doesn’t go to your head is beyond me. And maybe this is what’s happened. He’s gone mad with power and privilege and arrogance. Rumor has it, he was a military man. A five star general, or an Admiral, something high ranking and highly decorated.
A veteran of the Great Wars.
The Last Wars.
So they left him here, to rule, to organize.
Over the years and decades he became known as the Lord. Over the years, he became a hermit, refusing to leave the safety of his Wonderland Palace. I can’t blame him. The powers to be, all the royalty and politicians and military people leave you here, on Earth, in the Wasteland, you might has well take advantage of every luxury afforded to you.
Hell, I’d probably do the exact same thing.
Second, is the Lord’s right hand man. He’s a guy by the name of the Collector. Again, I don’t actually know this guy’s real name… everyone just calls him the Collector because that’s what he does.
He collects people.
He collects people to come and live in Wonderland.
And from there, they can buy a ticket, a seat on one of the Shuttles headed for the continental Arks, the last refuge of the human race, the life boats of mankind.
Problem is, it’s been a damn long time since he’s collected anyone.
Five long years. Five long and hot years.
The hottest on record.
Last of all is the Overseer. A person, a thing, who up until a few hours ago, I thought was just a myth. But what I’m quickly finding out is… that not only is the Overseer real, but everything I’ve ever heard about him is real. All the rumors. All the tall tales and drunken stories in those sleazy bars and pubs and back alleys. They’re all fucking real. He’s a genetically enhanced super soldier who just might be invincible.
He might just be unkillable.
I laugh to myself because I’m about to find out real soon if this is the case. I’m going to kill an invincible super soldier. I’m going to kill a myth.
Or I am going to die trying.
It sounds like madness.
“What’s so funny?” Angel asks, looking at me sideways.
I shake my head. “Nothing is funny. Everything is funny. Life. Where are we going?”
I realize I’m not making much sense.
Angel doesn’t seem to mind.
She points ahead. “Like I said, we’re going to the Water Treatment Plant. There’s a tunnel behind the plant that leads directly to Wonderland. The Overseer, he’s bound to come through there.”
According to one of the Enforcer’s I killed, there’s a tunnel connecting Wonderland to the Buried City.
A secret tunnel.
Blocking this passageway is a door that no one on this side of the door knows the code to and no one has a key to.
Angel confirms the intel. “That’s how the girls, that’s how Ruby and I, that’s how we escaped. Ruby was able to get the access code and the key. Don’t know how she did it.”
Ruby was smart. Tough. Resourceful. More and more, I find myself wishing I could’ve had the chance to know her better. More and more, I’m realizing how much of a tragedy it was that she was murdered.
We arrive at the Water Treatment Plant and it’s lousy with Mercs waiting for me and for other marks, waiting to cash in on a big fat score. They’re so desperate and hungry they don’t even bother hiding.
They’re out in the open for all to see.
It looks like the actual worke
rs, the engineers and the maintenance staff, the people who keep the residents of the Buried City alive and hydrated have clocked off work for the day.
They knew something big was about to go down so they got the hell out of dodge.
Smart move.
Or maybe they were tipped off.
Every now and then I see what I think might be an Enforcer. But it’s not. Maybe they’re better at keeping themselves hidden. Or maybe they’ve all bugged out. Maybe they’ve all run back home to Wonderland to lick their wounds and reattach their lost limbs.
Can’t blame them.
Then again, maybe I’ve killed all the Enforcers.
I guess it’s possible. I sure have killed a lot of those bastards.
Angel and myself, we’re crouched down real low, we’re on the other side of a massive reservoir of water. It’s so massive it may as well be a lake. To our backs is smooth rock. There’s no chance of anyone sneaking up on us.
In front of us, beyond the lake, is the plant. And beyond that is the vault door and the tunnel that leads to Wonderland.
We can’t see the vault door, but Angel assures me it’s there. She then explains to me that there’s protocols and contingency plans. Worst case scenario type things.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I mean, Wonderland has the power and the position to take control of this water source if they need it. They can then do whatever they want with it. Drink it. Poison it. Use it to flood the Buried City. Whatever they want.”
She has a large night vision scope attached to her sniper rifle now. She’s given me a quick look. That’s how I can see all the Mercs and none of the Enforcers.
“I’m getting worried,” I say.
“About what?”
“There are no Enforcers here. Why are there no Enforcers?”
I give her the rifle so she can see what I’m talking about.
“Maybe you killed them all,” she says, scanning the plant. “Or maybe, just maybe, the Overseer realized that throwing Enforcers at you was a waste of everybody’s time.”
She hands the rifle back to me so I can have another look.
“What are you going to do?” she asks.
Angel has made me memorize the access code to Wonderland. She thinks the Overseer will have the key on him.
But I won’t even need the access code. There’s no way I’m getting anywhere near the vault door. I’m assuming it’s got some sort of failsafe activated. And it’s probably guarded by some sort of automated weapon system.
But that’s beside the point. All I have to do is go over there, make some noise, and wait.
The Overseer will show. He’ll show and then it’ll be me and him. All I need to do is take him down and then Angel and her friends can make a clean break. Angel and her friends will have a chance. And I can get my revenge and my forgiveness from Ruby’s ghost. I’ll probably die doing this, but I’ll die doing the right thing. I’ll die doing the good thing, fighting the good fight.
“Well?” Angel asks. “What are you going to do?”
“If I don’t make it back, you take that thermo suit and you get the hell out of here.”
I give her the keys to the Sunspeeder.
“What’s this?”
“There’s a Sunspeeder. It’s hidden in the Wasteland. It’s hidden someplace that’s real hard to find.” I give her the coordinates anyway. Just in case. “You’ll need a GPS tracking device to find it. Worse comes to worst, maybe you can trade the keys for something. The Sunspeeder is old, but it’s good to go.”
She takes the keys off me. “You still haven’t answered my question. What are you going to do?”
I make sure my guns are loaded and secured and I say, “I’m going to make this right.”
For Ruby.
