The Tank

by Nicola Lombardi

  Giovanni had heard tales about convicts preferring trying to die in the fall rather than agonizing for an undefined amount of time. This was possible, of course, only if there was a long distance between the Shutter and the superficial layer of guests. If that was not the case, a voluntary self-harming fall could only lead to painful wounds and broken bones. There were even cases where those who were already lying in that mass of bodies tried to exploit the newcomers’ arrival to try and get their neck broken.

  They were plausible stories. But there were also some that, on the contrary, were more fit for old drunk seawolves trying to tell the most absurd story, like in Moby Dick. For example, Giovanni was shocked hearing a third or fourth hand account about the convicts of a Tank managing to stand against the wall, climbing on each other’s shoulder like the members of a circus until they reached the Shutter. Balance wasn’t an issue since their hands were free (helping each other with their teeth, breaking the plastic cuffs wasn’t so difficult). Once on the top, one of the convicts supposedly managed to open the Suffering - or whatever its nickname in that particular Tank was - and entered the Shutter. Only the Keeper’s presence of mind (he was by chance walking by the screen) avoided a disaster. The ingredients for an urban legend were all there.

  It was a suggestive story anyway.

  There was another tale about a convict - whose name seemed to change each time, even if every version seemed to agree on him being a dealer of heavy drugs - who before falling had spread his legs, propping himself up against the walls of the Shutter; the Keeper was forced to open the first door and he was almost thrown in the Tank by the convict. That was a good one too, one of those that sticks into your head and never leaves.

  Like the one of a guy who hid a lighter in his rectum and tried to set himself and all the others on fire, but the continuous movements of the human mass made him sink, making his plan fail. Of course there were other versions were he was hiding a swiss knife and this kind of episodes lead the NMO to more through body inspections (this was actually fake since nobody thought about confiscating from convicts belts or other pieces of clothing with which they could kill themselves; once they were thrown in the Tank, what they did was their business).

  There were also accounts of cannibalism, practiced by the convicts who reached the ultimate level of degradation, madness and despair. But those were tales best left for camping: everyone gathered around a campfire at night listening to the narrator. It didn’t matter if some of them had plot holes or made pretty clear that they had been invented on the spot just to frighten those who listened. It was exactly what they were looking for.

  Giovanni realized he had ridden his train of thought for too long, letting the recorded footage play for several minutes. He rapidly went beck to the recording mode, but as soon as he tried to look for the newcomers in that tangle of human bodies, there was a beep from the Postman. He immediately turned to face the smaller screen and he saw the incoming message icon. With a suddenly heavier heart he rapidly clicked it and a short yet eloquent sentence appeared: “All good with the first delivery, but watch the protocol.”

  Giovanni instinctively smiled. It was a bitter smile, as if he was squeezing a slice of lemon with his teeth. Watch the protocol...

  Those two sons of bitches, Scar and his comrade. They didn’t pass on the chance to report his error to the higher ups. He bet they even made it worse than it actually was.

  “Bastards...”

  Well, it was too late. It wasn’t a tragedy after all. It was his first delivery and surely enough they would turn a blind eye. Or should he expect a Warning? No, no...the tone of the message didn’t look menacing. He had to answer though. Opening a message immediately signalled its reception, so he couldn’t avoid it.

  “I thank you”, he wrote “And humbly apologise for the hitch in the execution of the procedure. It won’t happen again.”

  He read it from the top, satisfied by the humble yet martial tone he had managed to convey. Then, to have a bit of fun, he added: “And tell those two idiots that if they show their faces around here I’ll personally kick their asses into the Tank.” He remained still for several moments, a weird smile on his lips, his finger over the ENTER button. He tried to imagine what would happen if the actually lowered his fingertip of about one centimeter and pressed. He had sent three people to hell by pressing a button just a few minutes earlier. With that same gesture he could end up destroying his dreams, hopes, maybe even his own life. Crazy. Just by pressing a button...

  He carefully cancelled that last sentence and sent his answer.

  He sat back on the armchair and held his hands to his chest looking at the big screen he had personally re-named the Well. There, in that moldy circular mess, tens and tens of bodies were crawling, sliding on top of each other, pushing and kicking to remain on the surface just to once meow fill their lungs with hot, stinking air.

  ***

  The other two deliveries went smoothly, or almost. Giovanni expected to see the same EGs as that morning, but it wasn’t so. There were different Guards each time, at least in that same day. They surely had their own reasons. It was better that way.

  At 1:30 P.M. - exactly as written in the fax, not late by a single minute - three north-african rapists, at 6:00 P.M two slavs who assaulted and old couple to rob them and a revolutionary. Giovanni, who had no right to ask the EGs for further explanations regarding the crimes committed by the convicts and had to make do with what was written in the communications he received, wasn’t sure about the true nature of what the last convict had done to be brought to him. The label of revolutionary implied a large variety of actions, more or less glaring, taken against the NMO.

  He had read something about that too, of course: the choices and decision of the regime were written on the pages of recent history, not just on newspapers. A revolutionary was someone who theorized returning to democratic social structures, who printed clandestine propaganda, who made satire...and who planted bombs.

  While cherishing the other guests’ exclusion from society, Giovanni didn’t get any satisfaction from seeing the revolutionary (so-called Ettore Assonitis, same age as him) approach the Shutter with the other two convicts. And when the young man passed by him - gaunt and with a bruised face - the Keeper surely didn’t expect him to talk.

  “I just threw...some fliers...in the university.”

  He said so in a low voice, trembling and drowsy from the sedatives. Giovanni opened his mouth, but didn’t reply. He knew he was not allowed to. But he was left breathless.

  He completed the procedure under the EGs watchful eyes while telling himself that he was simply an arm to the NMO. Not a heart, not a brain. Just an arm.

  ***

  Neither that second evening did he eat much. A lot had happened in a single day. He would get used to it. Some days would be better, others worse. He just needed to learn the ropes, then everything would ho smoothly. A year is long, he told himself. But two days have already come and gone.

  6 - Nocturnal Accidents

  The first very unsettling episode happened on January 23rd, in the dead of night, when Giovanni could finally tell he had integrated with the Tank’s routine at a psychological level.

  He was woken up by someone knocking at the door.

  Since the year had began everything was going according to plan. The white truck with a red tetragram on the sides, the one that brought provisions, punctually came twice a week, on Tuesdays and on Fridays. In the late morning Giovanni would put the grey styrofoam bin full of left-overs and junk in the elevator, then get the one containing fresh food. Of course, he couldn’t choose the menu, but the food and drinks the NMO sent him were reasonably varied and of good quality.

  The ironing and laundry service, which conveniently came on the same two days as the provisions, but in the early afternoon, was impeccable too. There was another truck (with a blue tetragram) and, without any need for interpersonal communication, the dirty sheets and clothes were put in a basket
and substituted by those withdrawn and cleaned the previous time.

  The average number of delivered convicts was between five and seven a day. He watched any possible kind of criminal walk into the Shutter. There were foreigners and fellow countrymen alike: thieves, murderers, crooks, pimps, drug-dealers, robbers, religious integralists, mafia thugs, rapists, pedophiles...beasts only fit for slaughter. Tumors to be removed. He hadn’t met any politicians yet, but there was a very simple reason for that: those who had perpetrated the ruse known as the Fourth Republic were already out of business; many once and for all, having probably inaugurated Tank 1 years earlier. Members of Mafia groups, families and similar historical and social aberrations had grown rare; the army had conducted carried out a great number of incursions in the so called hot zones of organised crime and cleaned them up using strong-arm tactics (which to be fair were the only effective ones).

  There were also a lot of foreigners, but in a lower percentage that before. When the NMO substituted the former government, one of its first military-political measures was to gather and deport all clandestine immigrants, from nomads to false refugees; predictably, many had managed to get back in the country, but they had been caught.

  There were usually two Escort Guards, but in case of single deliveries one was sufficient. Some days earlier Scar had come to the Tank, but there was no more than an impersonal exchange of formulae between Giovanni and him. The Keeper’s initial distaste in his regards was gone, he felt he had finally managed to fit in the context and could confidently manage both his job and relationships with other people. Each to its place and things would go smoothly.

  He also had some bad dreams during the first nights. Nothing major. He kept seeing the Well. Predictable. The psychologist had warned him.

  “You could have nightmares, especially during the first few weeks”, he had told him. “Don’t worry, it’s normal. Life in the Tank isn’t easy as it might seem. There’s a lot of people in there, it’s true. But you are alone. Are you aware of that?”

  Giovanni had answered with confidence, smiling widely. To tell the truth, he was never one-hundred percent sure of the things he said during the interviews. He wasn’t sure he had been completely honest. He could doubtlessly say - but only yo himself - that he had more than once lied about his character and personality in order to be seen as the ideal candidate. Did it mean he had cheated? Maybe, maybe not. No doubt the others had done the same. The difference was he had succeeded. He felt he had had enough common sense and intuition in order to understand what he was expected to answer during tests; thus he managed to conform. Maybe that guy Alex, the one who came second, was more fit for the job, but he was the one who took it, and that was it.

  The reasons why he wanted that job so much were essentially two. The first was ideological. The NMO always fascinated him. He agreed with it on every topic: politics, military, law, social welfare. He remembered that when he was a kid his home had been robbed by gypsies and since then, maybe, a feeling of rebellion towards some social categories had started to grow; a feeling that had grown to include all those people who could be seen as cancers hanging from an otherwise healthy tissue. The second reason was a lot more practical, he had to admit it. At the end of his year of service he would receive an monetary compensation that would allow him to realize one of his dreams: a long vacation somewhere in the Pacific or the Atlantic. An island, for example. He couldn’t say he knew them, but the Bahamas had a good ring to them...it was about the money. He was doing it for that, too.

  ***

  Yeah, he had had nightmares. Considering what he had to see every single day, there was nothing to be surprised of. He lived surrounded by death, fear and suffering. The Tank itself was drenched in them. They seeped from the walls, saturated the very air he breathed. Moreover, it wouldn’t be long before the first Cleansing of the year. Giovanni thought it would test him further and give his subconscious new tools to have fun creating new, more unpleasant dreams.

  But the nightmare he had that night was particularly vivid. And the impression that it wasn’t completely a nightmare wouldn’t leave before a long time.

  Nothing out of the ordinary had happened that day. Two triple deliveries, the usual formalities, some exercise, a light meal, a documentary on african animals on Tv. He read a few pages from a book by Verne, then he fell asleep. In the dead of night, from the unaccessible caves of his mind, somebody...

  ...starts crawling from dark depths ridden with corpses and agonizing men. He digs a way up moving limbs, pulling ragged clothes, biting when necessary, and kicking. A constant rattle comes in and out his searing throat, becoming a beastly baying resounding in the curved walls of steel and concrete.

  The man keeps on climbing without rest, it is Giovanni and a stranger at the same time. In the dream, sounds and smells are as real as the phosphorescent darkness stagnantly pulsating in the damp gaps between the seemingly endless bodies. Many of them are crawling too, their hands tied behind their backs and their mouths dirty with blood, telling stories of atrocious appetites. The man climbing upwards - Giovanni - uses his teeth too, but not to feed. He does so to make the others get out of his way, let him pass and reach the superficial layer of bodies, fill his lungs with the blessed air above them, see the light.

  The weight on him gets less and less oppressing the more he advances, a centimeter at a time. There are groans, screams and cries everywhere. The smell is unbearable. It gets under the skin, closing the pores. Blood, sweat, urine, feces...

  And he is finally out! Shaking off the hands trying to grab his legs and clothes to pull him back in that meat vortex, the man starts walking on that shaking, growling mass. He steppes on faces, making black spurts come out of crushed cartilage, breaks bones and joints among creaking sounds and ape-like screams. From a seemingly unreachable height a yellow, dust-particle light pours on him in gashes that have the same rhythm as his heartbeat. Giovanni knows that light comes from from the glass walls of the Shutter, like he knows that is the man’s goal, his goal.

  He walks to the closest wall and puts his hands on it. The concrete is cold and rough on his wounded palms. An intense, burning, yet not unpleasant feeling runs through his whole body. It is like an unknown energy invigorating him. He feels reborn. He plunges his nails in the wall, penetrating it like claws, and starts climbing like a monstrous spiders, leaving behind the deadly miasma that still claims him. Until he reaches the Shutter. There he bends at unnatural angles, jumps and grips the Suffering, inserting bony but tough fingers between the shutters...and when they open to let him in, an asthmatic breath comes out of his lungs, slimily echoing on the cabin’s walls. All he has to do is reach out with his arm and push, and with a dark droning the first sliding door welcomes him with a whisper. Come, you have reached the Ring...Giovanni is not that man anymore. He is lying on his bed and when he hears three loud knocks on the flat’s door he springs up. He exits the room, his legs shaking, the sole of his feet snapping on the ice-cold floor. He reaches the door and cautiously puts an ear on the surface of fake wood. He listens and listens...on the other side he can hear a tired, laboured breath. It belongs to somebody who went a long way reach him. And nothing can make him go away.

  Giovanni says “Who’s there?”

  And a voice - trembling, yet menacing - answers: “I just wanted to throw some fliers.”

  ***

  In that moment Giovanni woke up for real.

  His first feeling was to be rolled up in square meters of crawling skin. He had his knees bent against chest in a fetal position, like when he was a kid and had a bad dream. His heart as beating like crazy and drool came out of his mouth as he raised his head. His conscience - at least the part that managed to wake up in his brain - told him to calm down. It was a nightmare, nothing more. And if it wasn’t for the fact that he could still hear the knocking echoing in his ears he probably would. The impression that someone had really knocked, and loudly, stuck to his brain, and he would never be able to go back
to sleep without checking first.

  He reached out to turn on the screen of the digital alarm clock on the bedside table. He felt he had dreamt for hours, but only eleven minutes after midnight had passed. He reluctantly pulled the sheets aside, sat on his bed and looked for his loafers with his feet (he had woken up just a few minutes earlier, in his dream, and he remembered how cold the floor was).

  A pale ray of yellow and grey light came into the room through the window - which was never dark, not even at night - filtering from behind milky white clouds that foreshadowed snowing, and the floodlights of the Camp’s sentinels. Being on the north-western side of the building, the bedroom was never flooded with too much sunlight and the morning sun came as a discreet, pink halo.

  But the dawn was still far away. And so was sleep. His eyes had already adapted to the dim light and trying not to make any noise - even if there was nobody there - he got out of his room, whose door he usually left open, and for a few moments he remained still in front of the reinforced entrance.

  His eyes were fixed on the tips his loafers, but his ears tried to scan the almost complete silence where the low, continuos buzzing of the fridge was the only thing he could hear.

  He thought about asking: “Who’s there?” But he didn’t know how he would react if the same answer he heard in his dream would come from the other side.

  He still had to go out and check. It was his duty. Even if he wouldn’t probably report that episode. It was something personal after all. He had a nightmare and the acoustic illusion had continued once awake.

  Everything in the Control was calm and still, apart from the resell larvae in the Well. There, inside the big screen, day and night had no meaning. Time didn’t exist for the Tank’s convicts. Dawn, midday, dusk, midnight...a quick look was enough to confirm that everything was ok. What was he expecting, to find the Tank empty? And maybe that all those who had swarmed the Ring were waiting for him to come out? The mere thought made him smile, but he felt hundreds of tiny pinheads in the back of his head.