Rage & Fury
by
Darryl Hadfield
Published by Henchman Press
Cover by Cedar Sanderson
Rage & Fury copyright 2018 Darryl Hadfield
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Published in the United States of America.
Chapter 1: Hi.
You know, I never figured myself to be the kind to tell my story - not to this level of detail, anyway.
Then again, things change - as they always do - and my current circumstances dictated that it was time to be a bit more open about how I got to where I am.
If that sounds a bit like a story lead-in, well, I DID tell you I was going to tell a story, you ignorant shit. Why weren't you expecting it?
sigh. That's the same reason why I've seen so many people die at my hands - they just weren't expecting it.
I was always a pretty blunt person - growing up in the streets meant it was a necessity; if you play the kinds of games that some people do now, you end up NOT growing up. You gotta show your power up front to the people who will try to control you and manipulate you - or you end up controlled, manipulated... and then, usually, dead.
I learned this early on, although I honestly don’t remember a lot of my younger years. I must have been that young, but I just don’t recall anything from before oh… I guess I was probably a teenager, but I never knew my birthday so I also never really had any sort of feel for how old I was. You’d be surprised how that can make a big difference to you when you’re a kid and everyone’s older than you.
You learn to make friends with those older people, too - or at least, allies – people who’ll stand with you, against other people who find people to stand with them. We had a group of people that hung together. There was no real name for us, and no-one had any other names, just the one everyone called you. Looking back, it seems very strange to me that now I know people who have two, three, or even more names that they’re born with – when I only had one. We referred to people in other gangs as belonging to the leader of those other gangs – for example, I was “Pip’s kid, James” to anyone in any other gang.
Pip (what a faggoty name, right?) was one of the oldest guys I knew, but he was funny, too. That's probably why so many people liked him, both from our gang, and others - he made us all laugh. I liked him too - he was sort of a father-figure to me, although to be honest I had no inkling at the time of what a “father-figure” was, because I never knew my father. Maybe it was Pip? I have no idea.
Pip ran our gang. He handled what little money we got from trading with the tennies, or that we found, or that we stole. He also handled making sure we got what we needed in the way of food and clothes. HA! He did a real shit job of that; most of the people in our gang were scrawny and if not for the fact that the weather was nice, we’d have died from exposure because none of us had any really decent clothes or shoes.
Most of the people in our gang fit into one of three categories.
The strong-arm fighter types were the ones who guarded our shit and who fought other gangs who came to take it (or, hey, the ones who went to take shit from other gangs). They were the ones who usually got the best clothes, shoes, food, and weapons, and… other things.
The scroungers were the next group – the ones who went out and looked for stuff and brought it back to the rest of the gang. That was me. We got enough of clothes, shoes, food, etc… to survive but it wasn’t much. This is where yours truly fit in, at least early on. We got what was left after the other groups were taken care of. That always seemed weird to me, because we were the ones who did the bulk of the work that kept the rest of the gang alive –sure, we weren’t the ones who had to do the fighting or defending, but geez, our gang stole practically nothing compared to how much the scroungers found and collected.
The third group was, well, I didn’t really understand it at the time, but now I’d call them “Morale builders.” The women who were there for the pleasure of the leader and the fighters. These would normally also get to slack off, have a relatively easy life, although they sometimes got pushed out to scrounge with the rest of us. This is where mom fit in, although I didn’t really realize it at the time.
I remember my mom – Mary - but only vaguely... the strongest memory I have of her was her stroking my hair, when I had a headache that hurt so much that banging my head against the cinder block walls of the tenement room we lived in made it hurt less. She sat next to me in that nasty, gray-brown ... dress maybe? A shirt? Anyway, she sat there and talked quietly, I don't even remember what she said, I just remember she sat next to me and talked quietly, sometimes reaching over and stroking my hair. Too bad that was about the nicest thing she ever did for me – she was just checked out otherwise, too vapid to recognize that the world around here, me included, could use some of her attention.
Mary just didn’t care, though – that’s the kind of woman she was. For the life of me, I don’t get why anyone wanted her around; she was neither attractive nor seductive. For that matter, she wasn’t that smart, either. I remember hearing a tennie soldier use the phrase “mouth breather” one time, and mom was the first person I thought of. How the hell did I end up the way I am, when I came from her? My dad must have been a fucking genius, that’s for sure.
Hah, that's kind of funny. I actually remember saying to someone that I like to tell stories and when I do, I get distracted and move easily from one story to the next... That's probably because telling the stories means I can re-live the good times, and reinforce how I managed to get through the rough times - and made it to a ripe old age. That takes a lot of stories… but you’ll hear more about them later. You probably won’t like some, and won’t believe others, but that’s your problem, not mine.
Despite my bitching earlier, life wasn't all bad. I remember occasionally getting to eat enough that my stomach didn't growl through the night, and sometimes not feeling like the world was just a stopping point between birth and death. I once heard the phrase, "A slave is just a grave with the ends knocked out." That's about how I felt, although I wasn't a slave exactly.. I could have left anytime I wanted. The problem was that when that's all you know, it's hard to want something else because, well, "the evil you know vs. the evil you don't."
We collected shit from other buildings, or found trash on the street, or salvaged it from houses if we ventured far enough away. Then, we traded that stuff with other street gangs - or, occasionally, we'd trade to the people who lived in the tenements (sort of like little city-states all unto themselves - we called them "tennies") and they'd do something with it. I didn’t go to school until a long time later (Yeah, I’ll tell you that story later, too) so I was usually out on the streets, scrounging. Sometimes I'd find some cool stuff - we always looked for metal because that was always useful to the tennies and they'd trade us good stuff for it - food, booze, you name it. We'd sneak further and further out (never into the sewers, though... we were crazy, not stupid), eventually into the places where they had smaller tenements, and even houses. I never told anyone, but that's actually how I got my first really awesome blade.
The hardest part was that the most valuable stuff – scrap metal - was usually the heaviest and bulkiest, and we never had any backpacks (“rucks”) like the military guys had. We had to carry it, by hand, from wherever we found it to either the collection point where the tennies would trade us and then turn around and hand off to the arkscraper crews, or, we’d lug it back to the building we lived in. Sometimes, you could get away with selling stuff directly to the tennies without telling anyone else and just pocketing the cash. The tenement soldiers looked down on us,
but without us, they wouldn’t have half the shit that they do. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t take more than a few things to those guys to sell directly. Pre-manufactured metal things like knives and tools always got a good price. Any time I was able to find and then sell some of that, I’d pocket some and hand the rest off to my gang leader like I’d found something less valuable – it kept him off my back, and meant I got to keep a bit of what I found, and hauled back with my own hands.
I was one of the smarter kids apparently, because except for once, I never got caught skimming, and damn near everyone else did. Turns out I got ratted out for that one time, early on. That was just one more inequality in the world, and I had no idea at the time how much that would affect me later. That was okay, though - I just got smarter and smarter about it, arranging for the tennie soldiers to come meet me, rather than going to a collection point.
Later, when a couple of them trusted me, they’d just hand me cash in exchange for directions to where the promised stuff was. I never stiffed them – because they had the firepower to knock out me and everyone else, or worse, to rat me out to my gang’s leader. The best part about this was that now I didn’t have to carry that shit all over the place and risk getting ambushed by the freaks who were starting to hide in the sewers, or worse, get ratted out for selling shit and not giving it all to Pip. Remember what I said about making friends with the older people? This is a prime example. This saved my ass at least once, and later proved to pay off way better than I ever thought it could or would.
A lot of the usual stuff was simple… clean wood (“Lumber” although I didn’t know the term then), other building materials, sometimes biological stuff like plants that the arkies did something with to turn it into edible food. Tools and other stuff always got sold at a premium price if it still worked, and that was always supposed to go through our leader, Pip. Trying to cheat Pip out of anything high-dollar was a quick trip to the hurt locker, and I’d somehow managed to avoid that.
Later on, me and a few guys with me found some even bigger stuff – and instead of selling it, we just… kept it. Why not? No reason to sell it and hey, you never know, maybe it’ll do us some good, and better us than those tennie soldier jerks. What about cheating Pip out of the gang’s cut? Oh… yeah, that won’t make sense just yet… let’s just say, it took a while but he finally got the point about leaving me alone.
So yeah, about Pip... Pip was a funny guy, and I liked him. He ran our gang, and most everyone in (and out of) the gang liked him, too... It’s funny the things you remember about some people, and Pip was no exception. He had these weird little candies, never told us where he got them, but he always had a few. They were kind of squishy, and tasted different based on their color - at least that's what I thought. He loved the black ones, but I hated them, on the rare occasions he actually shared them.
He also was... very hands-on. Sure, we liked him - but he was pretty rough with you, if you did something he didn't like. More than a few times, I'd collected a cuff upside the side of my head because I didn't move out of his way fast enough, or kicked out of the way if I didn't move fast enough, or... you know, I never could seem to get out of his way fast enough.
That wasn't the worst part, though. He was a liar. Worse, he believed the shit he made up, like it actually happened that way.
No matter what anyone else saw, heard, or otherwise directly witnessed... he would decide what was "truth" and that's what we had to use - on pain of, well, you get the picture. It meant that once he had it into his head that something was a certain way, reality didn't matter - what he thought was how it actually was. Why the fuck do we like people who are such assholes? It’s like there’s something wrong in people who’re like that – you like the people who treat you like shit, and you crave even the smallest bit of attention from them.
One evening, he caught me from behind, on the way up the stairs to the second floor where our sleeping room was.
"Jimmy, what the fuck, kid?" He had a sort of drawl that was easy to mistake for joking, even when he was upset or angry - and his face was equally lazy looking, so you didn't know until you either got hit or he started laughing, whether you were in trouble or not.
I turned around. "What up Pip?"
"Kid, you stole my beans. You gotta pay." Beans? Oh yeah, those squishy things.
"Nuh-unh Pip, I ain't stupid enough to take any yours." I was, actually, a lot smarter than even that - but I wasn't about to let him know that. He was, despite a funny guy, a dangerous one too, and like I said, he was very "hands-on." I wasn't about to cross him.
"You grabbed, kid. Ain't cool, and now you gotta pay." He jabbed a finger into my chest, hard enough that I winced at the pain. "My FAVES."
What the fuck? This asshat thought I stole some of those nasty-tasting black candies of his??
He grabbed my collar and yanked me closer. "You owe me black beans, kid. If you don't have them, you'll hafta pay some other way." Stars sprang up in my vision as his fist connected, my ear stinging and my head ringing.
"NO PIP! I didn't take nuthin'! I swear!" Goddamn, my head hurt, and I could feel tears welling up in my eyes because of the pain. "I was out all day lookin for trade stuff for you!"
He clearly didn't care, as I was shoved backwards, landing on the stairs, the breath knocked out of me. That really hurt... and that was the first time I remember recognizing the rage.
"You little fuck, I'll teach you to steal my shit." He grabbed one leg and started dragging me down the stairs, my arms flailing helplessly and my cries sounding wimpy and weak in my own ears - what little I could hear, anyway, over that damn ringing.
We had a big blue barrel that sat next to a window, where someone rigged a pipe to let rainwater collect in the barrel. Pip dragged me over to the barrel, dropped my leg, and stepped on my head, holding me there. He grabbed one of the rags on the floor next to the barrel, dunking it in the water, muttering something about "teach that kid a lesson he'll never forget" and pulled the rag out, and...
HOLY FUCK that was even worse! My head was pinned down by his boot, but it felt like he'd just cut my shins open! The wet rag made an ad-hoc whip that was unbelievably painful when swung against my legs by a fully grown man.
The tears were flowing freely at this point, and I had another first that day... I blacked out, thankfully, because the pain was gone.
When I woke up hours later, I was propped against a wall in our sleeping room... It was dark outside, and I ached everywhere. My legs - barely covered by the raggedy pants I had on - had welts on them that I winced as I touched. My fingers would barely move - thankfully, they weren't broken - but they ached too... and my knuckles? I could feel scabs on them. What the hell had happened?
The noise of me moving around woke up some of the other kids in the room... who came over to check on me. It turns out that while I'd blacked out, I wasn't unconscious. One said she saw me grab Pip's boot and yank it off my head, which made him fall over backwards. I'd apparently gotten up and started attacking him - a grown man who had height, weight, and reach advantage - and bruised his face up pretty badly, including a huge black eye I hung on him before he retaliated and punched back.
Apparently, he got back up and was kicking me with those big boots of his. I had the bruises and bumps on my body, face, back, legs, everywhere – and the kids in the room were the ones who picked up my limp, unconscious body and carried it up the stairs after Pip was done with me.
Then, I heard the hardest and most painful thing in my short life at that point.
Remember that nice lady who stroked my hair? Turns out she's the same lady who, for some reason I just don't understand, is who told Pip that I'd stolen his candy.
Did I mention the black ones that I hated so much, were her favorite, too?
Chapter 2: The House
I was always a bigger kid... short and fat at first, not sure how the hell that fat part happened with the miniscule amount of food we put in our mouths. Pip wasn't exactly gene
rous with food and stuff he could keep for himself. Anyway, I was always the "don't fuck with me" kid... and I had another friend, Easy, who gravitated towards me. We were fairly close friends, and he was a good guy. He was the opposite to my fat little ass; his ribs were always showing, and he was tiny - he looked like he was way younger than me.
A few days after Pip kicked my ass all over the place, and I was finally able to walk again, I knew I needed to get out of there and stay away for a while. Easy and me, we decided to take a longer trip and see what we could find further out than we normally went.
We actually already knew where we were headed; there was a strange house that had never been looted or burned, but we knew it was abandoned – nothing ever changed on the outside, and I’d even left a little rock on top of the front door handle that never moved.
It was a tiny two-story place over in Riverdale that, again, had this really eerie, but also really solid feel to it. Bars on the windows both in front of and behind the busted glass, metal shutters behind the inside set of bars.. no big windows anywhere, front door sounded like it was solid metal, and the few places where people had tried busting through the front door, or even the walls, with crowbars and sledge hammers never really got very far until they were hitting metal. Who the fuck wraps a house in metal and then puts brick and shit around that to hide it?
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