Gears of War: The Slab (Gears of War 5)

by Karen Traviss

  Because the staff had left the inmates to fend for themselves and live largely off what they grew and produced, the prisoners now had a food supply and the warders didn’t. And the screws were effectively imprisoned here with the rest of them. Reeve tried not to gloat, but he was in a minority. Jarvi and Ospen were stranded in the prison with only a phone line for company, and Merino had put a twenty-six-hour guard on the kitchens and the yard.

  Ospen stood at the barred door that marked the divide between the worlds. Merino was leaning against the wall on the other side, beaming. Reeve watched with the other inmates. It was great theater.

  “Good morning, Officer,” Merino said. “And how are you?”

  “I want to talk,” Ospen said.

  “Got all the time in the world, buddy.”

  “Let’s trade.”

  Merino rattled the keys on his belt, warder-style. Boy, Jarvi’s timing had been fantastic. “What have you got that we could possibly want?”

  “Cut the crap, Merino. We’re starving. We’re living on a hundred grams of rice and five centimeters of sausage a day.”

  “Sounds like a euphemism to me, officer. The sausage, I mean. Yeah, I’d want more than five centimeters …”

  That got a belly laugh from the inmates. Merino probably wouldn’t have done it to Jarvi, but this was Ospen and everyone knew what the bastard had gotten up to over the years. Now they were making him pay. It was just too bad that Jarvi was collateral damage. Reeve wanted to do something about that. Behind the crowd of prisoners enjoying turned tables for once in their lives, the doors to the outer yard opened and Marcus walked in with a bucket brimming with greens, the early summer crops. He glanced at Ospen and tilted his head slowly to one side like the whole tableau fascinated him.

  “Okay, Merino, what do you want?” Ospen asked.

  Merino’s smile faded a line at a time. “You’re a thieving motherfucker,” he said. “You’ve been skimming off our supplies ever since the day you started here, and as far as I’m concerned, watching you starve to death could be the proof I need that there is a god after all.”

  “A-fuckin’-men!” Chunky cheered, still busy with some goddamn crochet or hook-work or whatever the hell it was now. He roared with laughter. “Testify, brother!”

  “Yeah, time you tried eating the dog food,” Leuchars sneered.

  Ospen wasn’t the worst screw they could have been saddled with. The drafted prison guards were nothing like the handpicked career sadists who’d staffed the Slab when it was fully operational, because the older inmates recalled the last of those, and the stories they’d told Reeve about the regime made it sound like a Gorasni labor camp. Ospen was just rotten, like most humans were when they were given the opportunity to get away with something for nothing. But this was the wrong time to be the guy who stole supplies. Yeah, maybe there was a god after all.

  Ospen’s jaw tightened. “Remember this blockade isn’t going to last forever. You’re going to have to face us sooner or later.”

  Merino turned around slowly and began doing an exaggerated head count of the inmates. “One, two, three, four … stop me if I’m outnumbering you, Officer Ospen.”

  “I’m going to make you pay for this, you asshole.”

  “You could unlock that door, walk in, and try it right now. But you’re too scared to. You won’t let the dogs loose, either, because you’re too scared of them as well.” Merino looked in Marcus’s direction. “Damn shame Campbell wasn’t on duty instead of Jarvi. Would have been educational for him to stroll in here on his own, eh, Fenix?”

  Marcus looked Ospen up and down. “I hear you got drafted,” he said. “Don’t worry. The army’ll wait for you.”

  “Who asked your goddamn opinion?”

  “That’s no way to talk to the man with the cabbages.”

  “You’re fucking enjoying this, aren’t you?”

  Merino laughed. “Payback.”

  “Just remember who’s got the rifles.”

  Marcus sort of perked up at that. Reeve had a pretty good idea now of what would kick off his temper—boy, did he have one, however tightly he reined it in—and threats were close to the top of the list.

  “You’ve got a hundred rounds,” Marcus said. “I’m betting you couldn’t make a fifth of them count. That’d leave you unarmed with twenty of us still standing.”

  Ospen was getting madder by the second. “Well, while you’re feeling full of shit about that, asshole, I’m the guy who’s supposed to be fixing your ticket out of here. You want to think about that?”

  It all went quiet. Marcus froze for a moment and then shouldered his way forward through the small crowd. “You what?” he growled.

  “You heard. Your buddy paid to spring you.”

  Marcus didn’t seem to need to ask who that was. The blood really did drain from his face. It was hard to tell whether he was shocked or furious or both.

  “Fucking idiot,” he snarled. Reeve thought he meant Ospen, but maybe not. He slammed the bucket down and stood looking at the floor, arms at his side and fists balled. “Goddamn it.”

  He stalked off back to the cells. Nobody had any idea what was going on, but Ospen decided to get lippy. “I knew that’d shut you up.” He looked at Merino. “So what about a deal? Some of the carp. You can spare some fish.”

  Merino pushed himself away from the wall and the inmates started dispersing. “Go fuck yourself, Ospen. Ask the Chairman for an air drop.”

  Reeve went after Marcus. He wanted to think it was concern for the guy, but the idea that someone was trying to get him out three years after he’d been convinced they’d all done as he’d asked and forgotten him was … compelling. Gears could get in anywhere and do pretty well anything from what Reeve could gather. If they could take on grubs hand to hand, then breaking into the Slab was probably a piece of piss for them. When he caught up with Marcus, he was back in his cell giving himself a haircut with a razor, using a piece of broken glass propped at an angle for a mirror. He still kept his hair army-short and shaved every day while he waited for his personal war to resume. He didn’t even look at Reeve.

  “I take it you didn’t know about that,” Reeve said.

  “Of course I didn’t frigging know.”

  “So he’s still got your back after all these years. That’s some buddy you’ve got there. Dom, yeah?”

  “I’ve only got one.”

  “He doesn’t give up easy.”

  Marcus swung around, razor pointed like a finger to make his point. “How the hell has he paid for anything? He’s got fuck all to sell, so what’s he done to pay? Shit, maybe Anya’s in this too. I told them. I told them to damn well forget me.”

  Reeve had to ask. “So what are you going to do?”

  “What do you mean, what am I going to do?”

  “You didn’t even ask Ospen what the plan was.”

  “That’s because I’m not doing it.”

  “Aw, come on.”

  Marcus’s temper was a weird, cold thing. He didn’t rage and shout. It was more growling through gritted teeth, all simmering fury, and just occasionally it erupted in a silent, instant punch. He went back to his haircut. If he’d calmed down and thought about it, he could have asked Chunky to do it because the guy owned the one set of clippers in the Slab these days. He was using them to trim his rag mats.

  “Marcus, you’d be more use out there than in here,” Reeve said. “Admit it.”

  “I’m in here for a reason. I got guys killed.”

  “Do it for Dom, then.”

  Marcus did that slow turn that said he was low on patience. “I’d do anything for Dom. But I won’t let him fuck up his life for me. They’ll catch him, and they’ll shoot him.”

  Reeve held his hands up in mute surrender and walked away. It was always the best thing to do, because there was no arguing with Marcus. Crazy bastard: he was throwing away a chance to get out of here. Reeve suspected that after all this time nobody would give a damn what he’d done as lon
g as he could still shoot straight. The war wasn’t exactly going well and that was obvious even inside the granite walls of the prison. Reeve could hear the steady pounding of guns and the drone of Ravens overhead. The grubs weren’t giving way. When he went out into the yard—a little more risky these days because of the Reavers—he could see the smoke to the northeast, toward the city. But the Slab seemed to be forgotten by both humans and grubs.

  Jarvi was leaning on the windowsill above the yard, staring up at the sky. Reeve thought he had to be missing his wife. He didn’t know if Ospen was married, but if he was, his missus must have been grateful for the break.

  Damn, this might go on for months.

  “We should have stuck the psychos in the freezer.” Edouain walked up and stood beside him. “Terrible waste of protein.”

  “Ruskin had all the recipes, though.” The nutters had all been cremated in the far corner of the yard on a makeshift bonfire. Nobody from the JD had shown up and nothing had been said, so either Jarvi hadn’t reported it—who was counting, after all?—or he had and nobody in authority gave a shit, which was more likely. “I hope Jarvi didn’t tell the JD, actually. They’ll only cut our rations when the supply drops resume.”

  “The water’s flooding back through the old tunnel, by the way.”

  “So?”

  “It started last month when there were all those explosions.”

  “Jarvi said he was told they collapsed the sewers to stop the grubs.”

  “Well, that worked a treat, didn’t it?”

  Two Ravens flew low overhead, drowning out all conversation for a few moments. All the rules had changed. Authority had lost control both inside the prison and outside, but there was nowhere worth escaping to, just as Merino had always said. Sitting here and waiting for the worst wasn’t an option, though. It was a terrible limbo that Reeve could only stand the same way as everyone else—simply by focusing on surviving the day, which meant concentrating on the food supply.

  The fighting went on the next day, and the next, and the day after that. Marcus went back to his daily round of exercise and endless damn digging in the yard, but he seemed to have stopped talking completely, like he was so angry about this Dom guy and his rescue that he couldn’t stop rehearsing the argument in his head.

  It was definitely getting to him. Everyone in this place had their bad days, their sleepless nights, and the goddamn dogs didn’t help matters much with their barking and whining, but Marcus had nightmares. Reeve didn’t sleep too well and in a cell block with only forty guys in it, he heard pretty well everything some nights. He’d lost count of the times that he’d laid awake and heard Marcus wake up with a yelp, panting like he’d run a marathon, or listened to him pacing up and down or even doing his goddamn exercises at some ludicrous hour. Reeve could always hear the thud as he dropped down from doing chins on the joist. Anya must have had the patience of a saint to put up with all that. But maybe Marcus was a totally different guy when he was back among the people he cared about.

  Reeve doubted that, though.

  Ospen didn’t come back and try to do any more deals. For a few days, Reeve didn’t even see anything of Jarvi, although he was pretty sure that Marcus slipped him some vegetables when nobody was looking. He was out in the yard all day and Jarvi spent a fair bit of time at that window. Reeve didn’t mind as long as Jarvi didn’t share any of the food with Ospen, because the bastard deserved to choke.

  Two men couldn’t make their own supplies last forever, though.

  One morning around the end of the month—Reeve had to check the days marked off on someone else’s cell wall, because he’d given up counting long ago—Chunky came down the hall, slapping his hands to get attention and summon everyone.

  “Officer Jarvi wants to talk,” he said. “Come on, folks, let’s listen to the man.”

  Jarvi stood at the door, looking as threadbare and gaunt as any of the inmates. He had a rifle slung on his back. It seemed more precaution than threat, but he definitely looked resigned to something.

  “Guys,” he said. “This isn’t going to end anytime soon. There’s a kilometer of wall-to-wall grubs out there, and we’re in this shit together.”

  The small crowd of prisoners parted to let Merino through. Reeve couldn’t see Marcus. “Well, you’re not going to offer us our freedom, obviously,” Merino said. “Because we’re not dumb enough to walk out there. So I’m enthralled. Do tell.”

  “I’ve got to shoot the dogs,” Jarvi said. “We’re running out of dog food, and we might even need that ourselves, but … well, hungry dogs are too damn dangerous for my liking.”

  There was a brief silence, then a ripple of cheers. “Fuck yeah,” Leuchars said. “If you think that’s going to get you on our good side, great. But you can’t handle them without Parmenter around anyway.”

  “No, I meant that if you guys want any meat, I’ll swap it for some mycoprotein or vegetables, and somewhere to store the carcasses.”

  Reeve had to give Jarvi points for presentation. He just said it and waited. Damn, the dogs were still barking out there somewhere, even howling. But the guys in here had probably eaten a whole lot worse over the years without realizing it or asking too many questions, and meat was meat.

  “Including Jerry?” Chunky asked.

  “Why, you fond of him or something?”

  “No, but Parmenter’s gonna go nuts.”

  “Parmenter’s not starving,” Jarvi said.

  “Okay.” Merino nodded, doing his I-can-be-reasonable act. “But you show us twelve dead mutts, or the deal’s off.”

  “Done,” said Jarvi.

  Reeve just looked at Merino as the inmates wandered off, grumbling. “You’re not that keen on filet of Pellesian, are you?”

  “No,” Merino said. “But I like the idea of evening up the odds.”

  About an hour later, the first shots rang out, two close together. Reeve was washing his smalls in a bowl in the yard, enjoying the sunshine and only taking the minimum notice of the ongoing firefight in the distance. Marcus, still messing around with the damn carp pond like it was his hobby, snapped to attention instantly and laid down the rake he was using to drag weed out of the water. He headed for the doors.

  “It’s the dogs,” Reeve called. “Jarvi’s shooting them for meat. All of them.”

  Marcus changed course and diverted to Reeve’s position. “You’re shitting me.”

  “Nope. If you’d shown up earlier, you’d have heard. He’s splitting them with us. Course, everyone’s going to argue over who gets the mastiff. You got any good dog meat recipes?”

  Marcus just looked faintly disgusted. “You’re not seriously going to eat that.”

  “Sure I am.” Reeve rolled up his sleeve and reminded Marcus how much was left of his forearm muscles after the dog attack. “Don’t you want to sink your teeth in something that sank its teeth in you? Have the last goddamn laugh?”

  “I’ll try vegetarian,” Marcus muttered. “I’m a humorless bastard.”

  The shooting went on longer than Reeve expected, along with the frantic barking. Either Jarvi wanted to make sure he only expended one round per animal and was having trouble getting clear shots, or he was losing his nerve. Reeve counted the shots. The barking thinned out.

  Eight … nine … ten.

  Damn, it couldn’t have been easy. Those damn things were loose in a pack, even if they were stuck between the mesh partitions. Reeve tried to think how he’d have tackled that scenario, just to make sure his skills weren’t rusting too much.

  Eleven.

  The barking had stopped completely. Another shot rang out.

  Twelve.

  “Bye bye, Jerry,” Reeve said, and started rinsing his socks.

  OFFICE OF THE CHAIRMAN, HOUSE OF SOVEREIGNS: LATE REAP, 13 A.E.

  “Sir? Sir, I’m sorry, but you need to hear this.”

  Jillian hovered in the doorway. Prescott leaned back in his seat, knowing that it had to be important for her to interrup
t a transmission to Adam Fenix.

  “Wait a moment, Adam,” he said. Should he mute the audio? No, he had a pretty good idea what this might be about, and it did Adam no harm to be reminded of the stakes back home in Jacinto. “What is it?”

  “The Colonel says they’ve suppressed the Reavers and they’re going into West Barricade now. No promises, he says, but this may have turned the battle.”

  Prescott gave her a smile. “First good news I’ve had in weeks. Thank you, Jillian.”

  She had no choice but to glance at the screen. Wherever Adam sat to receive the video link, the daytime backdrop on Azura was inevitably a window with a view on some exquisite tropical landscape. Prescott watched the reaction on her face, just the merest hint of longing, and wondered when the best time might be to arrange for her to slip out of the city. It would be a shock for her sister, of course, but a knock on the door in the middle of the night and an order to grab a bag and ask no questions was a small price to pay for salvation. Every civilian kept a grab bag by the door anyway. It was part of the compulsory civil emergency drill for a population used to being evacuated time after time.

  Jillian closed the door after her and Prescott swiveled in his chair to face Adam again. “Sorry. Where were we?”

  “Am I supposed to ask what that was all about?” Adam asked. “You’re too diligent to forget to mute the call.”

  “Perhaps.” They knew one another far too well now. “We’ve been fighting a Locust incursion on the western side of the city for a couple of months, but Hoffman seems to have worn down their air assets. Which means ground forces stand a better chance of pushing into the area and clearing them off the Andius road.”

  “Ah, and the point being that the prison is in that sector.”

  “The prison’s been cut off for some time,” Prescott said.

  Adam sat back in his chair and took off his glasses, laying them flat on the desk in front of him and gazing down as he moved the hinged arms back and forth like a child playing with a toy. It was his build-up to a burst of temper.

  “And you never thought to mention that, Richard. The last few welfare reports on Marcus were fiction, then.”