by Jim Heskett
The night he became a serf.
Paulo threw back the cafeteria’s outer door to find a guard with his back to him. Paulo shot him in the base of the skull. One quick tap. Killing was already getting easier. Blood spattered Paulo’s face as the guard crumpled. Five meters away, another guard was standing by another door. The guard was holding a rifle, but he dropped it on the floor and raised his hands.
“Don’t shoot, please,” the guard said, stammering. Hands shaking. “I don’t want to do this. I never wanted to do this.”
Paulo considered his next move, finger hovering above the trigger.
“What’s happening outside?” the guard asked. “Is this some training exercise?”
Paulo shook his head. “It’s Wybert’s reckoning. That’s what it is.” He flicked the nose of his rifle toward the door behind him and slowly stepped out of the way. “You can go. Try to find a safe spot to hide.”
The guard sprinted past Paulo, out of the door. The volume of the gunshots rose when the door opened and dimmed when it shut again. For a moment, he enjoyed the quiet. The notion that for a small span of time, he didn’t have to level his weapon at anyone in anger. That he wouldn’t be forced to erase anyone from this planet.
But he couldn’t linger for long. He had a job to do.
He sprinted toward the stairs, rifle raised. Ready to kill anyone who stood in his way, despite how little he actually wanted to kill anyone. Funny how quickly he could become a set of tasks, instead of a thinking human being.
At the second floor, he had to pause a moment to remember where to go. It had been a long time since he’d walked the halls of the training center. Memories of here flooded his senses. So many days spent staring out the window, asking himself if this was his real life. Expecting that he would wake up to a different world, only to be in the same prison.
Paulo didn’t realize the extent of his anger until this moment. Right now, he experienced the full fury of ten years of slavery at the hands of a wicked and selfish man. Wybert. He would die in agony before the day was done. Paulo would do it himself if he could.
He dashed up another flight of stairs, onto the classroom level. There, he found a hallway lined with doors. At kid eye-level, a series of paper cutouts stapled to the walls. Many with names scribbled on them in colorful ink. He flung back the first door on the right to find a set of desks, filled with children. Six of them, no more than eight or nine years old. Many of them cried at the sight of this older boy with a rifle, storming into their classroom. They pulled back from him, shrinking away. A couple fled their desks and tried to hide underneath them.
He swung the weapon around, checking each corner of the room. “Where are the teachers? The guards?”
“They all left,” one boy said. Older than most, he might have been eleven. Maybe even twelve. Almost old enough to graduate. He stood up, his eyes full of fear. But he met Paulo’s gaze and didn’t back down. “Who are you? What do we do?”
“My name is Paulo, and I’m a serf, just like you. Come with me. We’re going somewhere safe.”
The children filed out, and they explored the other classrooms in the hall until they’d collected all the children. Fifteen of them in total, some barely old enough to wipe their own culos, others almost old enough to be assigned a job on the plantación. Most of them said nothing and did exactly as they were told. A quality ingrained in them from their first day off the back of whatever truck had brought them here.
Paulo escorted them all to the ground floor, and then into the kitchen. With the stainless steel walls and heavy doors, this was the safest place. This room looked designed to withstand a bomb.
Once he’d counted them all, he picked out the oldest-looking boy and girl and walked them to the far side of the room. He knelt down in front of them and stowed his rifle behind his back. A few lightheaded seconds ticked by as he tried to catch his breath.
“When I leave,” he said, “lock this door behind me. Show the little ones how to hide under the food prep tables. Whatever happens, you two are in charge, and you need to make sure they’ll do what you say.”
“Okay,” the girl said, her lip quivering.
“Soon, someone will come looking for you. If it’s a guerrero or a farmer, open the door. If it is a guard, or a soldado, or Wybert, don’t let them in. They can’t open the door from the outside. This isn’t over until the shooting stops out there.”
The boy and girl, though shaking, nodded.
Paulo reached out and squeezed the boy’s shoulder. Only a couple years younger than him. “You can do this. And when it’s over, everything will change. We’re going to get your freedom.”
Then, he backed out of the room, letting the door slam shut. The lock clicked into place. The children were safe. For now.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Tenney dropped into the foxholes when he noticed a stray rifle magazine on the ground next to a dead guard. He tried to insert it into his rifle, but it wouldn’t fit. So, he dropped his rifle with its empty magazine and picked up the one no longer needed by the dead guard. With so few weapons taken from the Quartermaster, they had to make do. They had to steal what they could as they progressed.
A few meters away in the dirt, the giant Estéban dropped to his knees and hoisted a rifle high. He spat some shots up toward the wall, at an impossible distance away. After a full second of unleashing rounds, a sniper positioned at the top dropped his weapon and tumbled over the inner side of the wall. He twisted as his body sank to the ground. An unbelievably lucky shot.
“Some of us are going to push toward the mansion,” Estéban said, “I’m going that way as soon as I clear out the snipers.” He gave a salute and raced away, aiming his rifle high, toward a sniper in a perch a few hundred meters down.
Malina landed on the foxhole floor behind Tenney. She tried to smile, but it came out as tense and flat. Gunshots all around them. Smoke in the air. A level of chaos unlike anything Tenney had ever seen. But he’d expected this. He tried not to let it overwhelm him.
“Let’s go,” he said, reaching out to pull on her arm. Over her shoulder, two of Wybert’s guards appeared, hustling along the foxhole corridor. Tenney raised the new rifle with one hand and pushed her aside with the other. He only had a split second to think, but the last thing he wanted was to blow out her eardrums.
His rifle rattled, punching holes in both of the guards, who were still trying to raise their weapons at him. They jiggled and collapsed into a pile on the ground. One of them landed directly on top of the other. Blood from a hole in his head dripped down onto the other’s face. The sight was a gruesome spectacle to witness, even for Tenney. It made him lightheaded for a moment. His stomach wasn’t as strong as he’d thought. But, he blinked and averted his eyes so he wouldn’t get lost in it.
Malina, though, stared at the two dying guards, shaking all over. Her feet seemed rooted in place.
“We need to keep pace with the battle,” Tenney said, trying to snap her out of her paralysis. “Come on, Mal. Let’s help out our people.”
Her head shook left and right, her eyes vacant. “What’s the point? We’re dying out here. We won’t last long when there are still so many more of them than us. They were prepared for this. We aren’t.”
His heart snapped in two. Although she didn’t say it, Malina didn’t have to. Tenney knew this was all his fault. He was the one who’d spent weeks spreading info through the serfs. Infecting them with the desire to rise up. Getting them ready for war. Convincing them it was possible. All the while, he never stopped to consider if it was actually possible.
And she was right. They were dying. For what? To open the gates? To gain freedom? If they all died out here, then what did it matter?
As if on cue, he watched a farm serf carrying a shovel over her head take a bullet to the throat. Too far away for Tenney to do anything about it. She staggered, hand trying to stem the bleeding, but she soon dropped the shovel and collapsed to the ground.
Malin
a watched this too. Something in her face changed. Her eyes lit up like they were on fire.
He opened his mouth to speak, but a figure appeared at the top of the foxholes. A soldado, one of the well-armed ones. Tenney leaped forward, placing his body in front of Malina’s. He raised his rifle and pressed the trigger as he braced himself against any potential return fire. A volley of bullets smacked into the guard. His body fell forward, toppling into the foxhole.
But, he wasn’t dead. His body armor had stopped the bullets. Tenney wrapped his finger around the trigger, and he lifted the barrel of his rifle.
But, the guard’s neck exploded in a burst of red. Tenney spun around to see Malina screaming, her finger on the trigger of her rifle. Blood had sprayed her face, her clothes, her hair. Tenney too. They were both colored in red.
He wrapped his arms around Malina, and in a second, she stopped screaming. He pushed her back to arm’s length. Took her face in his hands.
“This isn’t what I wanted,” she said. “This isn’t what I thought it would be.”
He wasn’t sure if it was what he’d wanted, either, but he couldn’t admit that. Whatever the intent, they were now in the middle of a war. No going back. He needed to be strong, for her. To show nothing but confidence. If he didn’t, they might not last for another hour out here.
“I know. But this is the ugliness before it can be beautiful. This is what we have to do to gain our freedom.”
She nodded, still bleary and vacant.
Feet shuffled above them, and he raised his rifle. A guerrero in a black battle suit sprinted by. He paused and then shouted down at Tenney. “Block quadrant is clear. We’ve pushed a lot of them into the forest, and the rest fled back to the mansion. Heavy losses, but we’re going to keep on advancing. We’re going to work on trapping them. The Katherian Strategy seems to be our best bet to avoid defeat.”
“Understood,” Tenney said. He didn’t need to tell the guerrero that as a farm serf, he hadn’t studied war tactics for a decade before this. He had no idea what the Katherian Strategy was. If the guerreros were able to organize and use their training against the guards, then that was fine with Tenney. Whatever it took to win. “Thank you.”
The guerrero nodded and then rushed off.
“Now,” he said, grasping Malina by the shoulders. “We’re going to take this into our hands and do it our way.”
“What do you mean?”
“We go to the mansion, and we end it.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Yorick hadn’t yet dropped his gun. Diego stood behind Rosia with a pistol against her head, hugging close so she couldn’t escape. Where had the leader of the Reds found a pistol? Yorick had rarely seen them around the plantación. The guerreros and guards all carried rifles, and there were only two or three variations of those.
“Drop it, now,” Diego said.
Rosia shook her head. “Yorick, don’t you do what he says. Shoot him. We don’t have time for this. Wybert could be figuring a way to leave, right now,”
“What’s your angle?” Yorick said. Curiosity overcame him.
Diego cocked his head. “Angle?”
“We’re trying to free ourselves of this place. Why are you constantly standing in our way? Why do you care about any of this?”
The Red leader smirked. “Because there are so many things you don’t know about. So many things you don’t understand. If you walk out of those gates, then everything falls apart, and you’re too dumb to realize that. All you care about is implementing your foolish anarchy plan. You have no idea what the real world is like.”
While Diego had been talking, Yorick slid his finger to the trigger of the rifle, with the barrel leveled at Diego’s waist. The problem was that Rosia’s midsection covered up most of Diego’s frame. Too small an area to risk a shot, especially since Yorick didn’t have time to lift the rifle to aim.
But he had to take a chance. Each tick of the clock was another second lost. Wybert could escape. Diego’s finger could slip on the trigger, and he’d blow a hole in her head.
Yorick met Rosia’s gaze, and he flicked his eyes to the left. She nodded and jerked her hips that way, exposing Diego’s lower torso.
Yorick pulled the trigger. A single shot punctured Diego’s thigh, driving him back against the wall, and releasing his grip on Rosia. She broke free and punched him in the nose. His face flattened under the pressure of her rapid smack. She then swiped at his pistol, knocking it to the floor.
The older guerrero gasped, grunted, and sunk down. Rosia picked up her rifle from the grate and pointed it at Diego’s head. Weapon trained on him, she knelt down and snatched the pistol which she then inserted into the back of her unzipped suit.
Yorick reached out and put a hand on the barrel of her weapon. “No,” he said. “We need to go, now. Save your bullets for the one who needs it.”
She hesitated a second as Diego, on the floor, panted. Hand on his leg, trying to stem the flow of blood. Huffing and puffing, squirming like a rabbit in a snare. They didn’t have to shoot him. Diego would be dead in a few minutes, anyway. They didn’t have time to stand here and deal with a dying man.
Rosia finally nodded and gripped her rifle. And the two of them left him there, bleeding and moaning. In a few minutes, Diego wouldn’t matter. The pistol fell out of the back of her suit as she ran, and Yorick jumped over it. Didn’t matter.
Their tired legs carried them down the hall, through a couple more twists and turns. They came to the door they had previously found to lead them into the classroom level. Having the lights on made a big difference in navigating underground. Also, the arrows on the floor helped.
Realization flourished as he shifted his rifle around to retrieve the lock picker from his pocket. The arrows on the floor. With the lights off, you weren’t supposed to know how to navigate the tunnels. But with the lights on, it was easy.
Wybert expected people to be down here. But how, and why?
Yorick held the magnetic unlocker device up to the door and it clicked open. Rosia shoved the nose of her rifle against the door to flick it all the way. As with the tunnel, the lights were fully on inside.
“Where to?” Rosia said.
Yorick didn’t know. They were in a hallway littered with classroom doors. “To the mansion, but I have no idea where that is.”
They hadn’t gotten that far last time, in their fruitless attempts to find Hamon and Tenney. The robot crashing to the floor and the outrageous commotion it caused had made them reluctant to stick around to explore further.
Rosia dashed along the hallway. He followed close behind, and at the end, they came to a blind corner. As she rounded the bend, he could see it on her face. Trouble. She raised her rifle and squeezed the trigger. Light flashed across her face as a volley of bullets streamed out. Again, the echoing barrage of live fire forced his eyes shut and made his ears ring instantly.
By the time Yorick had recovered and rounded the corner, rifle up, it didn’t matter anymore. Two guards were wriggling on the floor, blood spouting from multiple holes across their bodies.
Yorick’s breath caught in his throat. So much violence. He’d seen what real bullets could do to a person, mostly from the bodies set against the wall to be punished for breaking the lord's law. He’d seen how a real bullet could pass through a person and even destroy something behind it. And, he’d seen the blood-spattered bullet holes left in the wall once the bodies had been cleared away. Wybert never had that area of the wall repaired as he would if there were cracks or damage to any other section. The bullet holes and blood stains stayed. Permanent mementos of his power.
Wybert was pure evil. And Yorick had no love for these guards, many of whom took pleasure in bullying the serfs. He could almost rationalize killing them as a terrible thing they had to do for the greater good.
But to see them torn to pieces, crying for help, the life rushing out of them in crimson red. Hard to take in. When this was over, Yorick would have to face the things
he’d done these last few days.
If they survived, that was.
“Go,” Rosia shouted, and dashed ahead. Only then did Yorick note that this hallway ended in stairs leading up. There were handrails on either side of the stairs. Smooth, made from brass or gold, with inlaid patterns. Fancy. Expensive. These stairs led to the mansion. Had to.
They thundered up the stairs, and Yorick placed the lock picker device against the panel next to the door at the top. It clicked and then drifted open a centimeter.
He held up a closed fist and then extended his pinky finger. She did the same, and they touched pinkies together.
“Always,” he said.
“Always,” she said.
Yorick and Rosia swung the door open and jumped through it, into the mansion of Lord Wybert, with its glittering gold and shimmering white. They found themselves in a large greeting room, marble under their feet.
Opposite a dozen of the lord's personal guard.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Tenney threw back the front door to the mansion. Behind him was Malina, the farm serf Estéban, and a Blue named Paulo who’d met up with them after securing the children above the cafeteria. Tenney would’ve loved to have brought everyone to assault the mansion. But, the truth was harsh: many of the serfs were dead. They’d won a few skirmishes, had driven back clusters of guards and soldados, but there were more losses than victories. Estéban, Paulo, and Malina were some of the only serfs left.
The guards had slaughtered most of the farm serfs within the first ten minutes. Most of the rest in the next ten minutes. The guerreros, with their years of strategic battle training, fared better, but many of them had died, too. The king’s soldados were more ruthless than any of them had been prepared for. Their body armor proved difficult to penetrate, and their weapons too accurate.