by J. L. Harden
“If she survives, we’ll have to make her see things our way.”
I’ll ask her nicely.
And then I’ll ask her not so nicely.
But then again, maybe it would be better if we just annihilate every single last Wasteland Raider. Maybe it would be better for us, for the people of the Buried City, better for the people living in the Canyons, for everyone, if the Raiders were all dead. But this is another pipe dream. Another fantasy. Engaging and fighting the Raiders above ground, on their turf, out in the open, is suicide.
“But on to more pressing matters,” Alphonse says. “What the fuck are we going to do about the horde that’s coming for us right fucking now?”
I wonder if we told them we just killed their leader… would they stop? Would they turn around and leave us alone?
Probably, definitely not.
Alphonse is holding on to his axe with both hands. Holding on tight. He’s ready to get down to business. Ready to kill his way out of this trap. But I need a minute to think, to plan this out. Because out here, atop the Tower of the Wasteland, it’s easy to get distracted. And even though the heat is enough to drive you insane, up here, on the very highest floors of this ridiculous skyscraper, it’s kind of peaceful.
The view is amazing.
The Wasteland.
The Ruined City.
The sandstorm way out on the horizon.
The massive Solar Panel Farm.
The giant dust cloud caused by the explosion.
The gentle sound of the wind.
It is very amazing and very, very awe-inspiring.
But then you take a deep breath to soak it all in, and you realize the wind is the kind of wind that burns your airways. It’s a bit like breathing in fire and smoke and acid fumes all at once. And then you realize that no sane person could ever… or should ever … live out here. No matter how peaceful, no matter how good the view is.
But yeah, Alphonse is right. We need to focus. We need to figure out what to do about the horde and we need to figure out how to get down from this tower.
We need to escape. Unseen. Unharmed.
With our lives and our limbs intact.
Need to get down the stairwell.
Need to get away from this tower.
Because first things first, before we save everyone or anyone… we need to save ourselves. We need to ensure our short term survival.
“I think we’ll have to climb down the rest of the way,” I say.
“Climb?” London says. “You’ve got to be kidding. We’re too high up!”
“We’ll have to climb down the elevator shaft. There’s no other way down.”
“And what do we do about the approaching army of Raiders?”
“It took us over an hour to climb, but I’d bet that throne of explosives in the observation room the Raiders could do it in half that time. Which means, we don’t have long.”
And my mind kicks into overdrive…
We’re outnumbered a hundred to one, a thousand to one. It might as well be a million to one because there’s no way the three of us can take on an army of Wasteland Raiders.
The Magician was right before, when she said they could breach the walls of Wonderland if they wanted to. They could burn the walls to the ground. Doesn’t matter how well armed the Enforcers are, doesn’t matter how many Spider Tanks and gunships they have. A full on assault from a horde of Raiders would overwhelm any and all defensive measures. Sure, a lot of Raiders would die… more than just die… they’d be obliterated, they’d be vaporized by the big guns, the heavy guns, by super high-tech and advanced weaponry, but there’s no way they could stop all of them from getting through.
And there’s no way they could fight them out in the open, on the plains of the Wasteland. There’s no way they could defend the Walls of Wonderland forever.
You’d need to funnel them inside. Into a kill box. A choke point. But not even Wasteland Raiders are stupid enough to do that.
No. They’d destroy the walls first, exhaust Wonderland’s defenses, exhaust their manpower.
They’d kill their will to fight.
That’s how the Wasteland Raiders would destroy Wonderland. If they wanted to. If they needed to.
But this right here… this is not an attack on Wonderland. This is not an assault. This is not an onslaught. They have designed this as a trap. And because of this, they think they have the upper hand. And honestly, until about five minutes ago, they totally had the upper hand.
But now?
Now they’re running head first up the narrow and winding stairwell of this enormous tower.
They’ve willingly entered into a bottleneck. A kill box. A choke point.
They’re not expecting anyone to drop a hammer on them. They’re not expecting anyone to fight back. Not on their turf. Not in this heat. Not in their fortress of a tower.
What they are expecting… is a girl.
The Magician’s apprentice.
Two dead warriors.
A free meal.
The flesh and strength of their enemies.
This is what they’re expecting.
We move back inside and I look over at the throne of explosives and ammunition and weapons that the Magician’s apprentice was sitting on when we arrived.
A plan takes shape in my mind. I tell London and Alphonse how it’s going to play out…
We set the stairwell on fire.
We set fire to the Tower of the Ruined City.
We do our level best to blow it up…
We cook these Raiders alive…
The throne is partly made of barrels of gasoline, a relic, a memory of a former world. There’s napalm as well. An old and deadly weapon of mass destruction. There are crates of explosive tipped bullets, grenades, mortars, incendiary devices, plastic explosives.
There’s even sticks of fucking dynamite.
These are perfect tools. These are old world weapons salvaged from god knows where. But old or not, they’ll still pack a punch. They’ll still do a job and obliterate anything and everything in a confined space.
A confined space like a stairwell.
We’re outnumbered a hundred to one.
A thousand to one.
We’re outgunned.
But we’ve got access to more explosives than anyone outside of Wonderland has ever seen. More explosives than anyone has seen since the days of the Last Great Wars.
An army of Wasteland Raiders is a devastating and terrifying thing to behold. But so is a throne made of explosives and weapons of mass destruction.
We get to work immediately.
First the fuel drums.
A hundred gallons of pure gasoline.
And then the napalm.
We pour it down the stairwell, creating a waterfall of fuel, a waterfall of highly flammable and highly volatile liquid.
And then we wait.
And we wait.
For the perfect time.
For the Raiders to march headfirst into the kill box.
Into our trap.
We can hear them marching.
We can hear them yelling and shouting and howling for blood and flesh.
If they’re worried about walking through a waterfall of gasoline and napalm, they don’t show it.
They have no idea what happens next.
We throw the grenades first, right down the center gap in the stairwell. They fall maybe thirty floors before they detonate. Some of the grenades are short fused, some of them have a few more seconds before they detonate.
The first explosions rock the stairwell. The sound is deafening and painful.
Not sure how many Raiders just died.
Not a lot.
They continue to march.
They continue to shout and howl.
Some of them are screaming.
We throw more grenades.
Alphonse asks me if we should throw the dynamite, or if we should save it.
I say throw it. Because we need to
kill every single one of these mad bastards. We need every one of them dead and burned and incinerated. We need every one of them dead so that the Magician and whoever else is in charge of these wild men will think long and hard about fighting the people of the Buried City. So they’ll think long and hard about the deal they’ve made with Wonderland. But most importantly, if we really are about to go to war, then we need to thin their ranks. We need to decimate their numbers.
Alphonse throws a handful of dynamite over the railing, into the stairwell. The fuse on each stick of dynamite is about six inches long. And as soon as the fuse hits the waterfall of gas and napalm that’s cascading down the stairs… everything ignites.
The fuel…
The napalm…
The dynamite…
The air…
Everything is on fire…
And we’re forced to take cover…
We dive back out into the observation floor, closing the door as explosion after explosion rocks this great tower.
The Tower of the Ruined City…
The Tower of the Wasteland.
Whatever you want to fucking call it…
We’re doing our best to burn this monstrosity, this relic, this testament to mankind’s wastefulness and extravagance, to our delusions of grandeur… we’re trying our level best to burn it down.
And we’re doing our best to annihilate an army of Wasteland Raiders.
Smoke fills the stairwell, begins to rise, begins to fill the observation room. And I want to watch them burn. I want to watch them suffer. Just to be sure. Just to be certain. Because you can never be too careful in this fucked up post-apocalyptic world.
Never.
But as much as I’d like to, as much as I need to, we can’t watch. We can’t hang around any longer.
Smoke billows up and out of the stairwell. Thick and black and deadly.
It is becoming impossible to breathe.
It is time to go.
Chapter 17
I tell Alphonse to keep the C4. It’s rare and stable and very useful.
And by useful I mean deadly.
We immediately start climbing down the elevator shaft. There’s a very handy emergency ladder built into the walls of the shaft. However this does nothing to make the task of climbing all the way down to the ground floor any less daunting.
Alphonse leads the way.
He’s followed by London.
And then me.
We’re not even a quarter of the way down when the tracking device strapped to my left wrist beeps to life.
With signs of life…
Hector.
His vitals, his heartbeat.
Strong and steady.
He’s alive and well.
But this is not why the tracking device is beeping.
It is beeping because the proximity alarm has been tripped.
His location.
He’s close.
Less than three miles.
He’s close.
He’s so fucking close.
Alphonse looks up at me. “What the hell is that noise?”
I tell London to give me the sniper rifle.
“It’s all right,” she says. “I can carry it.”
“Just give it to me!”
She hands it up and I snatch the rifle out of her hands. I pry open the elevator doors on the one hundredth and tenth floor and race to the nearest window.
Sniper rifle at the ready.
I scan the horizon… the grid of the Ruined City… the frayed and broken edges.
There’s a Spider tank off in the distance, heading for the Canyons. I check the GPS tracking device again. The small display screen show’s a map of the city, of the Wasteland. Hector is on the move. He’s in that fucking tank.
What the hell is going on? Where the hell is he going? Why the fuck is he in a goddamn Spider Tank? I can’t figure out why he’s still alive. Can’t figure out the why of it or the how it.
I look through the scope. It’s definitely a Spider Tank. Definitely from Wonderland. I see the giant Greek letter for Omega stenciled on the side of the tank and on the roof.
For some reason the driver is exposed, or maybe he’s just a scout.
I take out my semi-automatic pistol and shoot out the floor to ceiling window in front of me. The first couple of shots do nothing but punch holes straight through the glass. It takes a few more rounds but eventually the glass begins to splinter and shatter and then eventually it breaks altogether and the hot wind rushes in and burns my skin and my lungs and pushes me back.
I steady my balance and I take careful aim with the sniper rifle. I adjust for the height and the wind and the distance.
And then I hold my breath.
For one second.
Two.
Three.
Four.
I take the shot.
The bullet is a tracer bullet, loaded into the magazine by the original owner of this weapon so they would know when to reload. Also handy to let other shooters know exactly where you’re targeting.
Anyway, the tracer bullet leaves a streak of light in its wake, like a shooting star. And it arcs and curves and dips its way towards the Spider tank.
For three and a half seconds.
A lifetime…
It hits the Enforcer and he doubles over. A second later, someone pulls him down into the tank. Or maybe he just falls down. But the tank keeps moving. It keeps on rolling. It doesn’t stop. Doesn’t even pause.
He wasn’t the driver. Just a scout.
Damn.
And I’m out of bullets.
I watch the tank as it drives off into the distance, into the vast plains of the Wasteland. I check the tracking device again. Hector is onboard all right.
I just don’t know why.
Alphonse and London walk up behind me. And Alphonse says, “Have you lost your mind?”
I point to the horizon, to the edge of the city. “My brother is in that tank. A prisoner of Wonderland.”
Alphonse gives me a look that says he doesn’t believe me. “What the hell’s gotten into you, man?”
“Spider tank,” I say under my breath, to myself. “Heading for the canyons.”
I show Alphonse the tracking device strapped to my wrist, show him the small screen. The map. The blue ball that represents Hector. I show Alphonse and I say, “Hector. My brother. He’s in that tank. He’s on the move. I need to go and get him. I need to save him.”
And I need to stop that tank from doing whatever the hell it’s about to do…
Max called them Extermination Events. He said Wonderland will do this as a pre-emptive strike, to quell any possibility of an uprising, any possibility of resistance or sabotage. He said they can’t possibly take everyone.
I tell the others, “I need to follow that tank. I need to get my brother. Because believe me, we’re going to need him when the time comes…”
When the bullets start flying, when the shells and the bombs start dropping.
When the blood starts flowing.
When the war begins…
I tell them we should move inside. If they track the bullet, that tank could unleash hell on this tower in the form of laser guided missiles and cluster bombs. So we better get moving. Because if they wanted to, they could level this monstrous tower in a heartbeat.
We climb down the elevator shaft. A painstaking process. It takes us over two hours to get to the ground floor.
I tell Alphonse and London to get to the Morgue, to Maximillian Schroder. “He’s the one who can make you invisible. Don’t stop moving. If you stop, they’ll find you.”
I think about Mia and the farm and the power. I think about the farm falling into total and complete darkness. I think about huge sections of the Buried City falling dark. And it’s right about now the full effect of my failure, of failing to stop the Magician and the Wasteland Raiders is starting to hit.
“Tell Mia, I’m sorry. I tried. We tried. But we were too late. Tell her it
’s not over yet. We can still fix this. We can rebuild.”
We rebuild because we have to rebuild.
And then we go our separate ways. Alphonse and London head below ground and I head for the old spot. A secret spot. An old concrete bunker from the days of the Last Great Wars. It’s hidden in the Wasteland, a buried treasure chest of goodies and survival equipment. There’s a Sunspeeder, there’s weapons, there’s ammunition, there’s a couple of thermo suits, food, water.
All the essentials.
I’m going to load up. Regroup. And then I’m going get Hector and I’m going to make these sons of bitches pay.
I’m going to make Wonderland pay.
For everything that they’ve done and everything that they plan to do.
For their lies. Their deceit.
For all their tyranny and oppression.
I’m going to make them pay a heavy fucking price.
I’m coming Hector. Just hold on.
I check the tracking device again.
He’s heart rate is steady.
Strong.
Still can’t figure out what’s going on. Can’t figure out why he’s still alive. Can’t figure out what the hell he’s doing on a Spider Tank.
And why is that Spider Tank heading straight for the Canyons?
I’ve got this awful and terrible feeling that Max was right. I’ve got this terrible feeling that the Final Exodus has begun. That the last Extermination Event has begun. That the Earth’s remaining population of humans is about to get a whole lot smaller.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Coming Soon!
Wasteland Wonderland
Part 4
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Copyright © 2016 by James Harden
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.