The Tank

by Nicola Lombardi

  5 - First Deliveries

  There would be nine deliveries during that second day of January, divided in groups of three. A little above average, but it would compensate for the previous day’s lack of activity.

  Giovanni received via fax a list of the delivered, a document he thoroughly examined. After studying every procedure using duplicates he finally had his first official communication in his hands. He smiles. It was a tangible proof that it was all really happening and he wasn’t living a reverie, as it would often happen to him during his months of exams and selections.

  He hadn’t slept much that night. Sleep - however tired he thought to be - arrived late. It often happens to be physically tired but with a brain so bombarded by stimuli that it just won’t stay put. He was stuck in some kind of dream, at least as far as he could remember. It seemed to him to have experienced a very personal, weird version of what would be his first delivery, but now, one hour after waking up and with a stomach full of coffee, he found impossible to gather the details scattered somewhere in his mind.

  The document - written on the NMO’s headed paper and signed by a Penal Executive Office’s supervisor - had twelve names and surnames on it, together with the age and charges for which each one of them had been tried and condemned. In a corner, after the UC acronym, the Unlocking Code 473 had been handwritten.

  To the attention of the est. Keeper of Tank 9 was written on the recipient’s space. It had a nice ring to it. He thought that, more or less in that same moment, his colleagues were feeling a similar wave of pride receiving the announcement of their first delivery, being at the beginning of their brand new year-long assignment like he was.

  The Tank he was assigned to was the most recently built, being only three years old. It was also the tallest and most capacious. The other eight, scattered throughout the nation’s territory, were barely twelve meter tall and managed at most fifty/sixty people per month. This one could host at least twice those people, as stated by the previous year’s movements. Moreover, they weren’t as well equipped on a technological level; the oldest Tanks didn’t even have structures like the Shutter, but used more rudimental devices like hatches and slides. He would be a liar denying that such observations didn’t please him. He had heard voices about a tenth Tank, but it was nothing more that a project; they didn’t even agree on its location. It would probably be for female prisoners, as it was for all even-numbered Tanks. The NMO opposed sexual promiscuity, even if confined in such an extreme environment.

  He looked out his bedroom’s window just in time to see the van approaching the Tank. He quickly looked at his watch: 7:59. He then re-read one line of the fax, which he had fixed to a clipboard he found in the Control: first delivery: 8:00 A.M.

  “Great...” He said.

  The vehicle parked beside the elevator’s entrance, but it was already out of the Keeper’s line of sight, who had leaned to watch the manoeuvres, but to no avail. Giovanni got back to the vestibule, breathing in deeply and, with a big sigh, getting rid of the tension he felt contracting his stomach’s muscles. With the fingers of his right hand he caressed the holster that was strapped to his waist and almost felt the weapon vibrating with a life of its own.

  In a flash he mentally reviewed the various phases of the procedure he had simulated so many times before, both during training and in his mind.

  The red Spy lit up and a loud buzz, short, hoarse, but peremptory, informed him that the elevator was moving up. Giovanni cleared his throat, hating himself for the palpitations that were slowing down his reaction times; he then opened the reinforced door and stepped in the Ring.

  With wide steps he reached the elevator and stopped in front of it right in the moment when the sliding doors opened.

  The five people inside the cabin - two EGs (Escort Guards, shaved heads and mirrored sunglasses, one of them on the front of the group and one in the back) and three civilians - stood staring at him for a few seconds, as if his presence there surprised them. He stared back at them in silence, feeling his throat suddenly go dry. Had he forgotten something? No, he was sure there were no particular formulae or greetings for that circumstance.

  Then, with a brisk nod from the soldier standing right in front of him, barely perceivable yet very eloquent, he realized he had made an enormous mistake: he got confused because of his excitement, like a rookie at his first day of work.

  When the convicts were being delivered, the Keeper had to stand in front of the Shutter, not the elevator. How could he start off with such a blunder? He felt a sudden warmth starting from behind his ears and expanding to his cheeks.

  Trying to maintain a neutral expression he quickly turned around and, with a martial bearing, he approached the Shutter’s glass door. He could hear the steps of the five people following behind him and almost felt a wave of mockery and blame coming from the two expressionless soldiers. He cursed himself for his clumsiness. He new that form and substance were equally important in the eyes of the NMO and he hoped that his mistake would have no consequences.

  When he was in position, Giovanni turn back to the newly arrived. In that moment the first of the EGs, who had a small, reddish cut on his left cheek coming from a hastily shave, took a form out of its pocked and read it out loud: “As per disposition 4816/35 we deliver today the following convicts to the Keeper of Tank 9: Calogero Calatafimi, fifty-six, child abduction...”

  Giovanni raised the clipboard and drew a tick beside the first name.

  “...Pietro Calatifimi, forty-nine, child abduction; Goran Pashkov, thirty-one, multiple murder while driving drunk.”

  Giovanni finished ticking each name, then grabbed the form the guard was handing him and signed it, trying not to meet his gaze: he wouldn’t be able to see them anyway, hidden as they were behind lenses that would only reflect two small reflections of his own face; he also felt that, had he been able to see it, it would be condescending and paternalistic, annoying him so much he would end up making some other unforgivable mistake.

  He gave the form back with an automatic motion, then focused on the polished push-button panel beside the Shutter’s door and began to input the Unlocking Code, trying to appear confident. The UC was changed every day and, for security reason, had to be known only by the Keeper and the Centre’s staff. Because of this he kept his clipboard up to serve as barrier with a hint of childish satisfaction. Moreover, the number that was given to him wasn’t the right one: he had to add the day’s number to each digit. It was January 2nd, so the UC 473 would become 695. Giovanni held his breath while pressing the golden buttons, spacing each digit using asterisks.

  The unlocking program allowed only one mistake. In the event he would input the code incorrectly once, a red spy would start beeping. In case of a second mistake the EGs had to temporarily suspend the procedure and investigate. Only after proving the Keeper’s good faith could the procedure be resumed. Of course that would cost him a warning. Three warnings and you were out. Giovanni thought back at the pock-marked face of Alex couldn’t-remember-the-surname, the guy who graded right behind him, who would be more that happy take his place.

  No way, friend. Find something else to do.

  The UC worked. Giovanni breathed out quietly in order to hide the apprehension that almost paralysed him while an invisible hydraulic mechanism made the glass and metal door slide in the circular wall. It was like a whisper, a silky rustle. The small room known as the Shutter appeared in front of him.

  It was a tiny room with crystal walls, extending over the Tank’s circumference for about a meter. A sort of balcony, about as large as the elevator’s cabin, small and closed on all sides, suspended over the dark, circular abyss ful of dying bodies. From where they stood, Giovanni and the others couldn’t hear nor smell anything. The Shutter’s far wall was a second two-shutter door named Disposal Door (the staff had re-named it the Suffering, quoting the inscription on the gates of Hell in Dante Alighieri’s “Inferno”).

  “Come on, marche!”

&nbs
p; Giovanni came to. It was the second Guard who had talked, the one behind the small ground. Using the barrel of his standard-issue Beretta 13-S as a prod he made the three convicts, rigorously in a line, approach the Shutter, while Scar - the one with a wound on his cheek - had moved on one side to let them pass and make sure that everything would go according to plan. It was like Giovanni hadn’t really noticed them before that moment. He was so concentrated on his task and his pondering that he had forgotten about a whole chapter of the manual: interrelations with the convicts.

  Convicts are not human beings anymore.

  Convicts have no right to speak.

  The Keeper has no obligation to talk to the convict, unless he has to enforce order, together with the EGs.

  Convicts are cattle. No, that wasn’t written on the manual. But it was implied. To the NMO, certain deeds and choices equalled regressing. Cattle Nothing more.

  Giovanni gave them a hard look. Two children kidnappers. A drunk-driving murderer. Yet another one. He felt the urge to push them himself to make them get in the Shutter faster, but he knew he had to behave. Feelings had to be suffocated, annihilated: the instructors repeated it over and over again.

  While walking past him, The three convict’s eyes shortly crossed his. They didn’t show any particular emotion, probably because they weren’t feeling any. They had been sedated. The treatment was administered half an hour before the delivery and wore off half an hour after the Unloading. The procedure was used to limit, if not completely eliminate, any sudden panic-induced reaction. On the other hand it also relived the convicts of the terrifying experience of being in the Shutter. Giovanni thought they didn’t deserve such magnanimity and should be forced to live every single horrifying moment. What comforted him was that once the effect of the pill they had to ingest wore off they would have all the time in the world to reach new peaks of unparalleled horror, pain and despair.

  The three walked shuffling their feet with vacuous gazes, getting in the Shutter like calves to the slaughter. As usual, their hands were tied behind their backs by narrow, yet resistant milled plastic cuffs: once tightened they were worse that the regular metal ones.

  Once they were position once behind the other - the with his chest pressed against the Suffering and the last one with his back barely beyond the first door - the Shutter had reached its maximum capacity. A joke recurred in the training course, probably recycled year after year. The instructor would suddenly ask: “How many people fit in the Shutter?” to which the candidates would promptly answer: “Three.” The answer was right, of course. But they could be unexpectedly be corrected: “Wrong. None. Only cattle fit in the Shutter.” To which they would start laughing, only to be immediately stopped by a quick hand gesture. It was better if the higher ups, for example Stevanich, didn’t hear certain jokes. His sense of humor was next to zero. Had word of such amenities reach his ear, nobody could predict his reaction. And Giovanni, even if he thought of him as a modern Vlad Tepes, felt more in sintony with him than with the goliardic spirit that almost always found its home in the lower ranks of strict and intransigent hierarchies.

  “Keeper?”

  Scar’s mellow, yet mocking voice called him to his duty. This time he wouldn’t just shut up, so he stared right in the man’s mirror lenses: “Don’t worry, Guard. I know my duty.”

  After such an answer, not wanting to give the Guard time to retort, he brought his thumb to the Closing button and vigorously pressed it, tightening his lips. Again the hidden mechanism’s quiet rustle. The dark glass door closed.

  From the outside Goran’s hair and red jersey were barely visible as he was the nearest, while the other two were no more that opaque silhouettes. It seemed to him that they were dangling on their feet, lost, trapped like rats in a glass cage.

  The next button was the Disposal one (and there too trivial jokes about toilets and excrements had sprawled). Giovanni waited for a second, implicitly stating that he was aware of what he had to do and how he should do it.

  From the Ring’s side a muffled clang could be heard, followed by a buzz similar to the one of a dentist’s drill. Not the sharp, piercing one, rather the slow, chunky one that rotated with a low-pitched noise making the whole skull vibrate while extracting a rotten tooth. It was the sound of the platform moving.

  What was happening inside the Shutter was inexorable in its simplicity. The Suffering had opened and the gum platform had started rotating forward. A small treadmill.

  Giovanni counted in his head to thirteen, as he had been taught, then once again pressed the Disposal button. The buzz stopped immediately and another clang informed them that the Suffering had closed. Operation complete.

  Scar didn’t comment. He wrote something on the form - probably the time at which the procedure had concluded - then said to Giovanni: “All being well, we will be back for two other deliveries today.”

  Giovanni lifted the clipboard with the fax and showed it as if it was a giant banknote. “As per communication. And be on time.”

  The two EGs looked at each other and, even if their expression remained unchanged, one could very well read the silent question that remained hung up in the air: Which of us is going to shoot him?

  No, pals, you can’t do that was Giovanni’s answer, who simply started at their glasses. When the Guards turned on their heels and moved towards the elevator one could hear the noise of the ice breaking off their bodies to leave invisible puddles on the linoleum floor.

  Giovanni waited, listening to the clattering noise of the elevator cabin’s descent down the concrete shaft.

  Bravo, he told himself.

  He immediately realized that his childish self-complementing was a two-bladed weapon. Yes, he had behaved well, both with the Disposal procedure and with the EGs, but he sure didn’t help strengthening the esprit de corps that the NMO’s higher ups valued so much. It was the barely noticeable movement of the clipboard insistently tapping against his thigh that made him realize his hands were shaking.

  ***

  Once back in his flat he rapidly went to drink a glass of cold water. While he tried to focus on each second of pleasure given to him by the liquid caressing his dry throat he felt his mind detaching from all those all-in-all inane reflections on his behaviour and adhering, as if attracted by a giant magnet, to the true core of the matter: he had just carried his first execution. It was no simulation. He was finally truly part of the garbage disposal, as he had heard calling the Disposal. Three examples of the garbage corroding the Country day after day had been detached from the social context (expression taken from the manual word by word) and he was on the frontline for a whole year. Cleaning. That was the word. Everything else could easily slide to the background.

  He went to the Control Room (already re-named Control for short) and sat before the console.

  There they were, on the screen. Greenish, bent, crawling: his first three disposals. The gaping mouths, the legs shaken by convulsions, the feet that convulsively hit heads, stomachs, backs...he shivered, feeling a euphoric tingling on his skin. There had to be an awful smell in there. And the dark was almost absolute, apart from the dim neon light coming from the Ring and through the opaque walls of the Shutter, up on the top. A true hellhole.

  He raised the hand that still held the empty glass in a toast to whoever invented the Tank system. It was that rigor, that inflexibility, that he had so enthusiastically greeted with the rise of the NMO.

  No more in-between measures, no more accepting everything, no more cultural and religious invasions, no more impunity, with the suffocating rhetoric of idiotic do-godders. And also no more overcrowded jails, indulgences, nepotism, the soft line, which was no more than intellectual weakness, unequivocal symptom of decadence of any social order.

  Since the NMO had seized the power crime had decreased by 60% in ten years. Giovanni remembered how things were before. He was young when the military coup that ended that unbearable farce known as the Fourth Republic. He had read a lot about i
t and the comparison wasn’t hard at all. The ancient pillars of corruption, clientelism, immorality and false politics had been destroyed with wrecking balls. If strong-arm tactics were necessary, well, bless them!

  The movement in the screen didn’t seem to stop anytime soon. Giovanni observed it driven by curiosity while his body started relaxing after all the physical tension. At that moment he realized he hadn’t been able to watch the three convicts fall, filling him with dissatisfaction. Could he do something about that?

  Sure.

  He knew the console’s commands, like he knew that every single moment of the closed-circuit recordings was stored in the enormous hard drive in the central database. He didn’t hesitate and, willing to put his knowledge into practice, switched from REC mode to PLAY, then rewinded the timeline until he found what he was looking for...there it was!

  The Shutter was always visible in the lower section of the screen. It was practically a darker rectangle on the circular edge. Giovanni sat back on the armchair and when the Suffering’s shutters opened he couldn’t help but whistle with satisfaction.

  The first silhouette hesitated, standing on the edge like a shy diver. Then, undoubtedly pushed by the other two convicts, who were being dragged by the moving platform, he turned on his heels trying to get back in and fell on his back. Down under many shining dots disappeared and heads bent like mushroom that suddenly rot; the prisoners had recognised the Shutter’s sound, shut their eyes and moved trying to avoid the crash. Which happened, of course; found and painful in its greenish silence. The second convict jumped and “landed” on his feet, immediately bending over in a whirlwind of bodies twisting and screaming. There was a way to listen to the sounds coming from the Tank but Giovanni was so fascinated that didn’t think about turning the audio channel on. The third convict landed on his head, violently becoming a part of the big family (another unofficial term. Maybe he had managed to break his neck.