Lex Talionis

by Keira Michelle Telford

  “These guys aren’t exactly cunning criminal masterminds. If the situation gets sticky, we’ll cut loose. It’s no big deal. Right, Luka?” She turns to her best friend for support.

  “Uh-huh,” he mumbles, carefully positioning himself on the head of dead brown bear, trying not to get blood on his clothes.

  “What is that?” Silver kicks at the face of the animal. “Some kind of bear?”

  “Did you not pay attention in natural history class at all?”

  Silver shrugs. “We were told they were all extinct. How was I supposed to know I’d end up on a different continent, sitting on a”—she looks beneath her, at a mess of gray fur and blood—“dog?”

  “Wolf,” Luka educates her.

  “Same damn thing.”

  Luka looks around by his feet, trying to put names to the other animal faces. The corpses are piled one on top of another, blood oozing and pooling in the grooves along the truck bed. Most are fresh, clean kills, but some are a day or two old. Some are squished, their bodies broken and mangled, and were obviously picked up at the side of the road. Some faces are too deformed to identify, but others he remembers from school textbooks: wild boar, elk, more deer, and some kind of large feline.

  It looks like an orange lion without a mane, but on the short journey from the Manchester City border to the old Great Northern Warehouse building on Watson Street, he doesn’t get much of a chance to ruminate on it. Besides, the view is much more interesting.

  This is the second area they’ve passed today that reminds Silver of the Amaranthe prison district—the Fringe District, as it’s called—to which she was once banished for six years.

  It looks like they’re recovering from a recent bombing, construction work going on everywhere. The people appear filthy and malnourished, the buildings seem dangerously dilapidated, and the streets are filled with rubble, beggars, and stray animals.

  All clothing appears to be handmade, using ribbon or wool thread to lace the garments together instead of having buttons or zippers. Men are mostly in loose white shirts and cotton trousers, wearing boots made from animal hide. The women are either wearing long, layered dresses, laced from waist to bust, or tight trousers—made from cotton or leather—with calf-length boots and men’s white shirts. Over the top of these shirts, they cinch underbust corsets, or overbust, bodice-style waistcoats, showing off their feminine curves.

  Shop signs are handmade, too. Nothing looks printed. They look like a group of people who make the most of what they have, with limited resources to produce their own goods. Passing a blacksmith and farrier who’s busy forging a horseshoe, Silver realizes they haven’t seen any other vehicles on the road. Perhaps gasoline is expensive. Perhaps their cars run on something different. Do they have electricity?

  Once they reach the warehouse, that question is answered for her. Below faded painted lettering that identifies the large, rectangular, red brick building as the Great Northern Railway Company’s Goods Warehouse, there’s an electric sign. It’s lit up, the letters that once spelled ‘Great Northern’ now rearranged to spell ‘Rare North Gent’.

  Silver has her doubts that any man here could be considered a gentleman.

  Stationed outside the warehouse, a couple of armed guards dressed in military fatigues recognize Huck and Rex and open up a large bay door into some kind of loading dock. Here, Huck pulls the truck up alongside a long, narrow table, and after exchanging some words with two other similarly dressed men, they start to unload the contents of their haul: one bear; three wolves; two deer, one of which is roadkill; four boar; one weird lion; and a handful of rabbits and badgers, many of them flattened.

  When they’re done, leaving Silver, Alex and Luka handcuffed in the truck bed, a message is relayed to someone elsewhere in the building—presumably Slade—and they pass the time waiting for him by rooting through their prisoners’ belongings.

  Silver scowls as they pluck a silky nightdress out of her bag. She’s not scowling at them, though, she’s scowling at Alex—he was the one who packed it.

  “When did you think I’d be wearing that?”

  “A man can hope.”

  Before Silver has a chance to beat that thought right out of his head, a man with an entourage of five more guards enters the room, looking like something out of a Charles Dickens novel.

  This is Slade.

  It must be.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Slade is in his late forties, his hair white and cut short. He has a long, well-groomed beard that hangs below his chin, and he appears to be wearing dark eyeliner. From the feet up, he’s wearing a polished pair of men’s dress shoes, pinstripe trousers—with matching waistcoat and jacket—and a white dress shirt with a silk puff tie. The only thing he’s missing is a top hat.

  A wind-up pocket watch is nestled in the pocket of his waistcoat, and he carries with him a hand carved walking stick, the top decorated with gold and silver, the sides inlayed with human fingernails—some male, some female.

  He looks every bit the gentleman, except for the neck tattoos and one conspicuously missing front tooth. His fingers are adorned with rings, and one would think—given the rest of his appearance—that he should have well-manicured nails, but they’re much too long and there’s dirt embedded underneath.

  “Whatchu brought me today?” He beams at Huck, eager to inspect the victuals. “I have me a craving for some …”

  His words evaporate when he catches sight of the rest of Huck’s catch. Namely, three living, breathing humans—one of which is a pretty woman.

  “Well, well, well.” He saunters closer. “What delightful treasures did you stumble upon today?”

  “Two culls and a mort by the Hyde Road entrance,” Huck declares proudly.

  Silver flashes Alex a quizzical look, but does the math and assumes the meaning: two men and a woman.

  “They asked for you by name, boss,” Rex adds, perched on the roof of the truck’s cab, picking at his toenails.

  Curious to know more, Slade approaches the truck and points his walking stick in their general direction. “How do you odd ducks know my name? Whispered on the dying breath of my enemies, I hope.”

  “We ran into a friend of yours on our way here,” Silver fields the question. “Apparently, your friend, Trevor, needs some shooting lessons.”

  More interested in her accent than he is in hearing about the incompetence of his business associates, he narrows his beady eyes on her. “Where did you lot come from? You ain’t from here.”

  “Our helicopter was shot down in the forest some miles east,” Alex answers before Silver, seeking to draw Slade’s focus away from her.

  “You was in that flying bucket?” Slade grins, baring that gaping hole in his mouth where a front tooth should be.

  “You were the one who shot it down?” Silver assumes, judging by the look of pride on his face.

  “I’ll shoot down anything what bears the symbol of the Crown.” He pins his eyes back on her. “And usually, I’ll kill whoever’s in it.”

  “We don’t work for the Crown,” Luka says quickly, hoping to get on Slade’s good side before his mood turns too far south. “We’re not even British.”

  “Then why are you on British soil, mate?”

  “We had nowhere else to go.”

  “And I’m to take pity on you, is that it?” Quickly tiring of them, Slade begins to inspect the meat while he talks to them over his shoulder. “If I gave credence to every sob story I heard, I’d—”

  “Be a decent human being?” Silver cuts him off.

  Discarding a maggoty rabbit carcass, he spins on his heels and locks her in his sights.

  “A poor man,” he sets her straight, then addresses Alex and Luka. “Have you not taught your doggess how to control her tongue?”

  “She’s not my bitch.” Alex’s jaw tenses. “She’s my wife.”

  Slade feigns confusion, his expression and his mannerisms exaggerated and somewhat theatrical. “That’s different, is it?�
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  “Where we come from, women are treated with respect.”

  “Really?” Slade pretends to be outraged. “Fuck. Let me show you how we treat our sluts here. Consider this an education.”

  He turns, whacks one of his bodyguards in the back of the knee with his walking stick, drops the man to the hard concrete floor, and forces him to kneel. In that position, he grabs the man’s head and holds him in place, then pretends to face fuck him.

  He thrusts his pelvis against the man’s face over and over again, pantomiming arousal and the pleasure of receiving a blowjob. This abuse continues until he finishes the act off with a fake orgasm—which includes pressing the man’s face firmly against his crotch and holding him there for several seconds—then he pushes the man away from him like a used toy.

  “Woo!” he yells at the top of his lungs, the sound echoing around the loading dock. “That, my friend, is what women are good for.” He leans on the tailgate of the truck, keeping out of reach. “Tell me, does yours like to suck cock?”

  While his attention is on Alex, thriving on Alex’s rising anger, Silver slides her foot along the truck bed, kicking a splash of blood up into his face.

  “I love cock,” she taunts him. “Just not yours.”

  Behaving quite calmly for the deranged lunatic he appears to be, Slade licks some of the blood off his lips, then smears the rest of it on his cheeks with his palms, creating streaks like war paint.

  “Thank you, darlin’.” He blows her a kiss. “I needed my makeup done.”

  “You’re a psychotic little prick.” Her eyes burn into him, annoyed that he wasn’t shaken by the blood.

  “I think I told you this was gonna be a bad idea,” Alex reminds her. “But you never listen to me.”

  She sticks her tongue out at him.

  “How does this work, then?” Slade, leaning on the tailgate again, bobs a finger back and forth between Alex and Luka. “Two blokes, one tail, all alone on the open road. Do you alternate? Or do you take her at the same time? One in her notch, one in her gob? Or does she like it up the arse?”

  Alex lunges for him, but the handcuffs hold him back.

  “You’ve got a little fire in your belly. I like that.” Slade laughs. “But you’re in my house now!” he suddenly bellows, causing two of his bodyguards to flinch.

  The sound echoes.

  He waits till the reverberations stop, then wags a finger at Alex. “My house, my rules,” he says sweetly. “No more tough chap.”

  “All we wanted was a place to stay.” Silver pulls on her handcuffs, trying to get herself loose. “But if you’re not in the mood for visitors, we can go elsewhere.”

  “Does this look like a boarding house to you?” Slade crabs at her, then turns to one of his bodyguards. “Put ‘em downstairs with the other one.”

  Huck, suddenly very sheepish, twirls his bowler hat in his hands, fussing with the frayed edges, and takes a few hesitant steps forward. “Payment, chief?”

  Flabbergasted by the demand, Slade backs Huck up against the table, pushing the end of the walking stick against his throat. “You owe me, you dithering berk.”

  “Owe you? What for?”

  “You sold me rotten meat a fortnight ago.” He pushes harder on Huck’s throat. “Whatchu trying to do? Kill me?”

  “I … I didn’t know, sir,” he stammers, not nearly so brave or gobby in Slade’s presence. “Forgive me.”

  Slade picks up the vile, sloppy, maggot infested rabbit by the puff tail and shoves it into Huck’s face, rubbing it against him.

  “How do you like it? Is it tasty?”

  Huck coughs and sputters, inhaling one or two maggots before Slade finally backs off.

  “You’ll get nuffink for ‘em till I find out how much they’re worth.” He straightens his jacket, getting ready to leave. “Now bugger off, the pair of you. I hate looking at you.”

  As he strides out of the room, accompanied by two of his bodyguards, the other three release Silver, Alex and Luka from the truck and escort them into the bowels of the warehouse.

  Several hundred feet down a dark, windy stairwell constructed inside an old elevator shaft, they’re dragged out into a vast tunnel network beneath Manchester City. Once part of the old Manchester and Salford canal, which was abandoned before it was ever completed, this section of tunneling was converted into an air raid shelter in World War Two. Bits and pieces of the shelter still remain, including some offices, some civilian housing areas, a tuck shop, and a toilet block.

  The whole place is an eerie reminder of a long lost epoch, and it makes Silver shudder. Wind whistles down the passageways, causing unsettling, ghostlike murmurs and echoes, and it’s cold. Bone chillingly cold. If you look close enough, you can still see the faint remnants of wartime slogans, and a list of rules painted on the walls by military officials: no smoking; no insobriety; no gambling; no obscene language; no rowdiness; and no unseemly conduct.

  Portions of the tunnel have electric lighting wired along the ceiling, but other parts of it are bathed in darkness. The only way to navigate these pitch black passageways is by flashlight or memory.

  The toilet block, thankfully, has some minimal lighting. A floodlight connected to a rat-eaten extension cable hums and clicks, and spills out one wide beam of light into the long, debris-filled room. Brick blast walls—built to protect the integrity of the shelter from bombings during the war—jut out awkwardly from the tunnel walls, making navigation of the area slow.

  The toilet stalls—Slade’s makeshift prison cells—are also made of brick, and line the sides of the tunnel. In a poor state of repair, some of the brickwork is crumbling, leaving the top edges jagged and uneven. The toilets themselves are long since gone, except for in one stall—the one Silver happens to be thrown in—where the rusted cylindrical base still remains.

  She kicks at it and large, fat millipede crawls out.

  “Ugh!” She stomps on it.

  To keep them contained, each ‘cell’ is sealed off with a locked, prison-like door that appears to be constructed from thick, recycled metal bars. The effort is unimpressive, to say the least. Looking up, Silver estimates the walls to be no more than seven-and-a-half feet high, which is a perfectly scalable height if you’re dexterous and strong—which she is.

  She’s not worried.

  The guards leave without uttering a single word, dumping the trio’s hold-alls and weapons in a careless pile on the other side of the tunnel, waiting to be picked through and despoiled. Everything seems very casual, which suggests to Silver that they’ve either never done this before and are underestimating the task, or the very opposite: that they do this a lot, and have grown lazy with the repetition. In any case, they’re about to face the consequences of their shoddy work.

  That is, as soon as Silver can be bothered.

  “Well, this is great.” She slumps against a wall in her cell, sliding slowly down to the floor. “I can’t be assed with this shit. Who’s up for having a nap first?”

  “I won’t say ‘I told you so’,” Alex calls out from the neighboring stall.

  “You already did.”

  “Then I won’t say it again.”

  Silver leans her head back and sighs, looking up at the arched tunnel roof, watching shadows dance on it as moths flit around in front of the floodlight. She’s just getting used to the tomblike, hollow silence of the place when there’s a scuffle in the stall to her left.

  “Luka, is that you?” she asks hopefully.

  “Is that me what?” he calls back, his voice emanating from somewhere on the other side of Alex.

  Must be rats, Silver thinks, giving no more thought to it. A second later, however, there’s another scuffle, and this time, the noise has weight to it. Moving into a crouching position, Silver accidentally replicates the noise by scraping her boot along the grainy concrete floor.

  Hmm.

  Examining the dividing stall wall, Silver tugs her hunting knife out of her boot and uses the tip to pick a
way at the cement holding one of the bricks. In a few minutes, she loosens it enough to be able to push the slim blade all the way through.

  She does the same on all four sides, creating little pockets of space, then turns the knife around and uses the hilt to bash the brick through to the other side.

  Once.

  Twice.

  After hearing the first hit, Alex’s curiosity is piqued. “What are you doing?” he asks suspiciously.

  “Exploring.”

  Three times, and she feels it give a little.

  Four times.

  Five times, and … bingo! The brick bursts through the mortar on the other side and tumbles to the floor.

  Eager to get a glimpse of what’s in the other stall, Silver gets on her hands and knees and presses her face close to the hole, peering into the dark cubicle of space beyond. She’s prepared to see the silhouette of another person, or the shadowy hint of a leg or a foot. She’s prepared to see nothing, and to find out that it was only a rat after all. What she’s not prepared for is to see another pair of eyes staring right back at her.

  “Goddamnit!” She reels back, her heart thumping.

  “Silver?” Alex and Luka call her name in unison, each waiting with bated breath for her to respond.

  “I’m okay.” She dusts herself off. “Just startled.”

  “By what?” There’s trepidation in Luka’s voice.

  “I’m not sure yet.” She leans toward the hole again, more cautiously this time.

  “Who are you?” a barely audible male voice rasps from the other side, his throat scratchy and dry.

  “Who am I?” Silver sounds affronted. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Tomkin.”

  Silver scrunches up her face. “Is that supposed to be a name?”

  “Is Silver?” He’s been listening.

  “Fair enough.” She sits down and gets comfortable near the hole. “So I guess you got caught by these freaks, too, huh?”

  “Me and a group of my kin were ambushed outside the city a week ago.” He speaks slowly, every word painful to articulate. “Slade’s men stole our horses, and nabbed me along with them.”