The Bar at the End of the World

by Tom Abrahams

  She spent the next hour and a half preparing a meal. She cleaned up, wiping the blade of an heirloom knife given to her by her old master, and returned it to her pocket. She put a glass of water and a plate on a metal tray, draped a plain cotton frock over her shoulder, and carried them through the labyrinth of corridors that made up the Tic compound.

  Incandescent light bulbs hung from the ceiling along the corridors. They were spaced apart enough for one cast to catch the next, giving the illusion of constant light as one traversed the narrow passageways.

  At the end of the maze, Brina found a padlocked door. A glassless window filled with heavy gauge wire mesh sat lower than eye level for her.

  She leaned over and then jerked back from the opening and winced. Her face turned sour at the stench seeping from the cell. She sucked in a cleaner breath and held it. Through the dark, she made out the small shape curled into the corner of the cell.

  “Adaliah,” she said, almost whispering, “are you hungry?”

  The woman in the corner shifted. Brina could hear her raspy breathing.

  “I have food for you,” Brina said. “An enviro-pork biscuit. It’s salted. And there’s a glass of water. Both are preferable to the dry cereal, yes?”

  Li coughed. It was a dry, hacking cough that spread gooseflesh across Brina’s arms.

  “I also have a dress for you,” she said. “You’ve been without anything to keep you warm, and it’s cold here. There’s no denying that. How are your wounds?”

  Li moved from the corner. She stayed low to the ground, crawling across the floor. She stopped short of the dim cast of boxed light that leaked through the opening.

  “Water?” she asked. Her voice was so raspy now, Brina barely recognized it. “Food? Real food?”

  Brina lifted the tray to the opening. “Yes. Would you like it?”

  “Yes,” said Li.

  Brina squatted and set the tray on the floor. She slid back a metal bar at the base of the door and opened a pass-through large enough for the tray and its contents, then bundled up the frock and shoved it through. She closed the pass-through and locked the bar.

  Li crawled to the tray and grabbed the biscuit. She shoveled it into her mouth and chewed. Crumbs of hard biscuit and flecks of artificial pork spilled from her dry, cracked lips.

  “Don’t eat it too fast,” Brina warned, peering through the opening. “You’re bound to get an upset stomach.”

  This was her good cop to the bad one she’d played days earlier. Her effort to peel back the layers of a ripened fruit. This wasn’t kindness. It was calculated ruthlessness.

  Li plucked the glass of water and guzzled half as she chewed the biscuit. She slurped and chomped, licking the dampened biscuit paste from the roof of her mouth. She worked it into a clump and chewed it again.

  “I know where Ezekiel is,” Brina said.

  Li stopped chewing, her mouth open. The half-empty glass of water shook in her trembling grip. She lifted her chin, one eye twitching, and met Brina’s gaze.

  The corners of Brina’s mouth curled upward. It wasn’t a smile. It was a gloat.

  “I know he’s here in the city,” she said.

  The expression on Li’s face shifted and morphed. She wiped her mouth with the back of her arm, taking a shaky sip of the water.

  Li stood, her body much thinner than when the Tic had taken her from her home. Her ribs pressed against her skin like a wet greyhound’s. Dried blood, brown and blotchy, covered her hands and wrists. She wobbled for an instant and steadied herself to step forward and over the tray of food.

  She brushed her bangs from her forehead. “How do you know?”

  “Overseers,” Brina said. “I hear things. See things.”

  “They told you?”

  “Indirectly,” said Brina, “in so many words.”

  Li took another step, her pale skin stretching across her ribs as she moved. Her chest fluttered from her beating heart. “Where is he? Can I see him?”

  “I’m not an Overseer,” Brina said. “I’m not a Marine or a government worker. But you know that.”

  Li lowered her chin and looked at the floor. Her fingers balled into fists at her sides.

  “You should get dressed,” said Brina. “You’re liable to catch a cold.”

  The tension eased from Li’s body and she nodded. She bent over to grab the balled-up frock and lost her balance. She collapsed to one knee, then fell onto her side, rattling the tray and the glass.

  Brina watched quietly. Li struggled with the dress, unable to unwind it. She tried finding the bottom of it, the armholes, the place for her head. She couldn’t. Brina decided the girl was either too weak or too jumbled in her head to figure it out.

  The matron glanced over her shoulder at the dimly lit corridor and then reached into her waist pocket. She fished out the key ring and found a rusted metal skeleton key that appeared to be the right size for the lock on the cell door.

  “I can’t watch anymore,” said Brina. “Let me help you.”

  Brina slid the key into the lock and turned. It didn’t budge. She tried another and then a third until the mechanism clicked and she was able to slide open the door. She heaved it to her left with all her strength, grunting. It scraped along metal tracks in the floor and ceiling and recessed into the wall to Brina’s left.

  A wave of vile odors washed over Brina as she finished opening the door, a mix of smells that reminded her of childbirth. She covered her face in her elbow sleeve for a moment and stepped into the cell.

  Normal precautions would have dictated Li be bound and that an armed guard was present, but Brina thought this girl too weak to be a threat. She was covered in filth, was basically a living skeleton, and couldn’t even figure out how to untangle a simple dress.

  Brina sucked in a breath from the crook of her arm and knelt to help Li with her clothing. The girl inched backward, recoiling in fear.

  “I will not hurt you, dear,” she said, half-truthful. “I’ve done what I can do. I’m helping you now. That’s what you need.”

  Brina was squatting, her heels flat on the floor. She picked up the dress and shook it like wet laundry about to hang on a line. Then she ran her hands through the sleeves, turning them right side out.

  “Here you go,” she said. “Dip your head.”

  Li eyed her warily for a moment and then did as she was told. She lowered her head and Brina slid the bunched dress over her head.

  “Now,” said Brina, “one arm at a time. Start with that one.”

  Li slid her left arm through one hole. Her hand popped out from the bottom of the fabric.

  “Now your other one,” Brina prompted.

  Li slid her right arm through the other hole, twisting her body. Brina held the fabric firm, stretching it to aid the girl, when Li’s hand popped through the end of the arm and grabbed the glass of water from the tray.

  In a swift motion, she slammed the glass against the side of Brina’s head. It shattered against bone and flesh. Bright stars filled Brina’s vision. She fell back, dazed and bloodied. Shards of glass protruded from her temple and above her ear.

  The dress hiked around her waist, Li jumped on her like a spider monkey. She blindly drummed Brina’s face and neck and chest with her tightly balled fists.

  Aside from the woozy grunts and moans from Brina as she was pounded into unconsciousness, and the thuds of Li’s connecting blows, there was no sound in the cell or the corridor beyond. Nobody coming to help her.

  Chapter Eleven

  Li straddled Brina and kicked the woman in the gut with her heel. She pulled the dress down, pressing it flat against her stomach to lessen the wrinkles, and bent over to take Brina by the wrists.

  She dragged the woman across the floor, dropping her in the dark corner next to the dead carcasses of three rats whose necks were broken. Li kicked her again. She searched her tormenter’s pockets and found a set of keys. She took them and moved toward the open door.

  On her way out, she grab
bed the rest of the biscuit, picked it clean of glass, and shoved it into her cheek, letting the salty flavor of the fake pig soak into her gums as she exited the cell, closed the heavy door, and locked it.

  It wouldn’t be long before the woman was conscious again, calling for help. Li needed to find her way out of the dank labyrinth and fast.

  Despite her wounds and her weak, malnourished muscles, she moved swiftly from hall to hall. Adrenaline powered her toward freedom. Freedom, she knew, was relative in the protectorate. But anything was better than this.

  She turned left and left then right. Everything looked the same. The walls, the floors, the single incandescent bulbs that hung from the ceiling all ran together.

  She’d been navigating her way through the maze for ten minutes and was convinced she was retracing her steps when she heard a man’s voice. Its baritone carried across the solid surfaces of the compound. Li stopped moving. The man was close enough she could make out his breaths between words, but he was far enough away she couldn’t understand what he was saying or to whom he was speaking. She pressed herself flat against a wall in that narrow space where the lights from the bulbs didn’t meet.

  Hiding there, she clenched the keys in her hand. She picked the longest and widest of the keys and set it beneath and between the knuckles of her right hand’s index and middle fingers.

  She inched along the wall closer to the voice. She turned another corner and saw a fan of yellow light stretching from an open door only twenty feet ahead of her on the right. He was in there.

  One hand sliding against the cool wall, she moved toward the light. The man was clearly talking to someone on a Com device.

  In a lithe movement, unencumbered by the loose-fitting frock, she edged her way to the door, squatted, and peeked into the room, into the light.

  The man had his back to her, leaning against a table, headphones covering his ears. He held a transceiver in his right hand. A rifle lay on the desk behind him.

  Li didn’t know his role within the Tic. She didn’t recognize him, at least not from behind. His broad, rounded shoulders and thick neck told her the man was an enforcer of some type. The Tic was full of men like that. She’d learned as much from her time with Zeke. She’d also learned the Tic’s reach was far greater than anyone outside the organization could know.

  Li crept into the room. She checked behind her in the hall. It was quiet. Nobody was coming. The man with the headphones laughed. He leaned back, his free hand flat on the table and his elbow locked. He held the radio in the other.

  She crouched behind the opposite side of the table and listened. She waited for him to end the call so whoever he was talking to wouldn’t be alarmed. When he said goodbye and stopped the transmission, he turned. That was when she pounced.

  Li leapt up onto the table and lunged forward. She grabbed at him, latching onto his torso. She wrapped her legs around him and yanked his head to her chest.

  The man staggered back from the momentum and dropped the radio. It clattered to the hard floor. He crashed into the wall and wobbled to one side. The headset twisted on the sides of his face. He groped at her, trying to free himself from her strong hold. She squeezed her thighs at his ribs and forced the air from his lungs.

  With one hand she grabbed a handful of his hair, pulling on it. He grunted and tried pulling away. She slammed the other fist into the side of his neck. She pulled back and jammed her fist again. And again.

  The key protruding from between her fingers punctured his skin and widened the jagged hole with each successive punch. The man cried out in pain. His voice muffled, he cursed and groaned. He reached for his neck and found her wrist, wrapping a hand around it.

  She managed another jab before he stopped her. And it was too late. He lost his balance and fell. Li landed on top of him. One leg was trapped beneath his weight, but she wriggled free. As he lay on the floor, clutching his leaking neck and writhing in pain, she crawled to the radio.

  She picked it up. It still worked. Li adjusted the frequency, finding the one she’d been trained to memorize. She took a beat to gather her breath and watched the enforcer slide into unconsciousness. She stood, crossed the room, and shut the door, locking it.

  She leaned against it and drew the radio to her mouth. She slid down the door, resting on her heels, and settled herself as calmly as her fading adrenaline would allow. Exhaustion then threatened to overtake her. Her body ached. Her muscles throbbed with acid. Her vision spun.

  She was dehydrated, she was weak, but she was the operative into which they’d molded her. This, she reminded herself, was why she’d trained, why she’d studied, why she’d given up years of her life. Everything was in motion now. She pressed the transmit key on the secure sub-channel and kept her voice low.

  “Overseer base, this is 29,” she said. “Do you copy?”

  The reply was immediate. “29, copy. What is your CP?”

  She repeated the code phrase, the one that defined the meaning of her name, Adaliah.

  “Overseer base,” she said, her fingers trembling as they held the transmission key, “this is one who draws water, poverty, cloud, death.”

  There was a pause. “29, copy. We’ve activated your retrieval chip. Prepare for extraction.”

  She looked at the inside of her wrist. A dim red light smaller than the hole in the enforcer’s neck began to strobe. She exhaled, not realizing she’d been holding her breath.

  “Overseer base, copy that,” she said. “Awaiting extraction.”

  She dropped the radio to the floor and touched the flashing light in her wrist. Her time spying on the Tic, on behalf of the government, was finally over.

  Chapter Twelve

  Archibald, the Overseer lieutenant in charge of the Tactical Marine Force, stood with his hands behind his back. His right hand held his left wrist, rubbing his swollen thumb back and forth. The sour look on his face was a mixture of disappointment and disgust. The relief he’d felt as he learned that his missing spy hadn’t flipped on them evaporated with new information that made him want to punch something or someone.

  His puffy left hand flexed and relaxed, flexed and relaxed. He said nothing as the Marine in front of him, hat in hand, explained the failure to stop and detain the two vehicles, which had escaped and destroyed two of their transports.

  Frederick stood next to him with his arms folded across his chest. He too was silent.

  The three of them were in Archibald’s expansive Fascio office. It was sparsely decorated, save the tapestries that hung on the walls and the large blood-red rug that covered much of the honed, travertine floor. They stood on the rug, at the center of the room. Dust danced in the rays of sunlight that filtered through the shuttered windows.

  The Marine wiped his brow with his sleeve and winced from touching the purple and yellow bruising across his forehead. He stared at Archibald’s chest, not daring to look the lieutenant in the eyes.

  “As I said,” the Marine told him in as certain a tone as he could muster, “we had them, sir. We had them dead to rights. Out of nowhere, this—”

  “You’ve already told me,” boomed Archibald, breaking from his usual calm. He stopped rubbing his thumb across his hand. He held his hands out in front of his face and wiggled his fingers like he was sprinkling imaginary fairy dust. “Some magical weapon stopped you in your tracks. It crushed our armored transports and injured the entire TMF teams inside them.”

  The Marine glanced at his feet, squeezing his hat in his hands.

  “They’ve slipped into the city, then?” Archibald pressed.

  The Marine lifted his head. “Yes, sir. Through one of the Tic tunnels.”

  “These were Tic vehicles?”

  “Yes,” said the Marine. “Both ran on internal combustion engines, we’re pretty certain. Telltale Tic.”

  “Yet the Tic tipped us off to these infiltrators?” asked Archibald, shifting his attention to Frederick. “Do I understand that correctly?”

  Frederick nodded. �
��Partially. There was back-channel chatter that suggested we look for a 1970s Plymouth Superbird. There was no mention of the accompanying pickup truck.”

  Archibald stepped from the rug and onto the travertine. His footsteps echoed as he moved to his desk. He sat on the edge of it and picked up a glass full of melting ice.

  He rubbed his thumb across the condensation and drank the melt, clanging the cubes around in the glass. Then he shook one into his mouth and sucked on it.

  With it in his cheek, he spoke to Frederick. “Intelligence like that isn’t unusual though.” He motioned to his colleague with the glass. “The Tic tips us off all the time. They sacrifice one of their own here or there in exchange for occasional leniency.”

  “True,” Frederick agreed. “They’ll fall on the sword now and then; sacrifice the one for the good of the whole, so to speak.”

  “But we’ve never seen this magic weapon before,” said Archibald.

  The Marine stared at the rug, shifting his weight in his boots.

  Frederick shook his head. He unfolded his arms and stuffed them into his pockets. He followed a swirl of dust moving across a shaft of light in front of his face. “Do you think it was a setup? Maybe they used us?”

  “It’s possible,” said Frederick. “We should know soon.”

  “How so?”

  “One of our operatives is coming in,” said Frederick. “A woman we’ve had with the Tic for a while now. She was deeply embedded in their operations. She’s been feeding back valuable intel for months now.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Adaliah Bancroft,” Frederick said. “She’s a smart one. We recruited her into our ranks, trained her, set her loose.”

  “Is she the source of the information about the…Plymouth?” asked Archibald. “Was she the one who tipped us?”

  Frederick shook his head. “No, she wasn’t. I don’t know the source of that information.”