by J. L. Harden
But he did just try and kill me.
And this is all I know for certain.
So for trying to kill me, for attempting to end my life… I slide the knife into his heart.
And then I slit his throat.
Chapter 4
I hide the blood as best as I can. I drag Merle into one of the beds and cover him with a blanket. If the Enforcers come in here and sniff around, I’m done for. But from the outside, it should pass. Then again, maybe they’re monitoring each cell. Which would mean I am already good and screwed.
Rob returns to the cell by himself. No escort. No Enforcers in sight.
Strange.
The cell door slides open. He enters and he sees the dead body immediately. My pathetic attempt to hide the mess and the corpse does nothing.
But even after he sees Merle and all that blood… he remains calm and composed. “You took my advice.”
“Had no choice.”
“Good. That man was a killer, a threat to everything we hold dear. You did the right thing. He was a ticking time bomb. And thanks to you, he cannot hurt anyone.”
The door is still open. Air that feels cold and fresh rushes into the cell.
“Why is the door still open?” I ask.
“Because they are coming for you.”
“Who?”
“Everyone.”
“Everyone?”
“An entire squad of Enforcers. I overheard them as they escorted me back to this wing.”
“Let them come.”
“They are fully armed. They will shoot you where you stand if you do not cooperate.”
“They’ll try. But they won’t succeed.”
“They will succeed. You are trapped in this cell. You are cornered. And if you die, you will be unable to find Ruby’s killer.”
I’m getting ready for the fight. I’m planning it all out. How I’ll need to move, where I’ll need to be. Might have to use Merle’s corpse and even Rob as human shields and then I’ll need to use one of the Enforcers as a human shield. If I pull that off, I might just have a chance.
I’m thinking about this, visualizing the fight, but then he says the name… just the name… and he goes right ahead and he makes an excellent point. If I’m dead, I’m useless. He goes right ahead and reminds me why I’m doing what I’m doing.
Ruby.
“You knew her, didn’t you?” I ask.
“I know a great many things. But no, I did not know her personally.”
Nothing makes much sense right now and I’m too stupid to figure it out.
“I know she came through here,” Rob adds. “She wanted to see this place for herself. She wanted to be sure…”
“Sure of what?”
“Hector, you don’t have long. If we go now, we can make it.”
“Go?”
“We need to escape. I am sick of waiting. I know of another way in to Wonderland. But before we get in, we must get out. The quarantine facility is not what it seems. We must escape this place before it is too late.”
Welcome to purgatory…
Do I stay and fight? Or do I run? I have no idea.
“What’s taking the Enforcers so long?” I ask.
“They are waiting for reinforcements. They know who you are, Hector. They know what you have done. They know exactly how many people you have killed. They know exactly how many Enforcers you have killed. The door is open as a trick. They are tempting you to make a run for it so they can shoot you with impunity. Their actions will be justified. Your death, and the manner in which you die, will be acceptable to the prisoners of this quarantine facility.”
“Prisoners?”
“It is what they are.”
I guess he has a point.
“Please, if you follow me, they will never see you escape.”
“Surely this place is being monitored.”
“There are numerous security measures. And there are numerous and omnipresent cameras. But none of them are operational. They have not been operational for a very long time.”
I can’t trust this guy. I don’t even know this guy. And even though he was right about Merle, there’s no fucking way I’m trusting him.
“If you stay here you will die,” he says. “And you will never know the truth. You will never know about Ruby.”
And this is everything to me right now. I need the truth. He knows it.
“Follow me,” he says. “I know the way.” He picks up the knife I hid under the mattress, like he already knew where I hid it, like he knew exactly where I hid it. “Take this. You will need it.”
I need a lot of things. I need a real knife. One that is proper forged and proper sharp. I need a gun. Any kind of gun. A few spare magazines would be nice as well. I need a drink. I need a shot of fortified brew and a beer to chase away the taste. And I need answers. I need to know the how of it and the why of it because I’m not done yet. I swore an oath. I made a promise.
I’m going to make it right, Ruby. I’m going to make them pay.
So I follow Rob out of the cell and if he leads me into a trap, I’ll kill him first. And I say, “If you lead me into a trap, if you’re lying about anything, I will kill you first.”
And he says, “Then it is a good thing I am not lying.”
Chapter 5
Rob leads the way down a never ending corridor lined with cell doors. Some cell doors are made of iron bars. Most are solid metal with a small window built into the door. I resist the urge to look inside to see what kind of people are locked up here. There’s no time. Rob makes sure we stick to the middle of this endless corridor. He doesn’t want anyone to see us.
“Why not?” I ask.
“If anyone sees us they could raise an alarm. We can’t take that risk.”
“Speaking of risk, are you sure we should be making this escape in broad daylight?”
“This is the best time to do it. Not even Enforcers have patrols outside during the day. It is too hot. And at night, they have the advantage.”
“How so?”
“They can see in the dark. We cannot.”
He waves me forward, tells me to lower my voice. If we’re caught now, we’re dead. The Enforcers will kill us on sight. Or perhaps they’ll torture us first.
“I hope you have a plan,” I say.
“I do. It is a desperate plan. A daring plan. And this is exactly why it will work. They will not expect this. Not in a million years.”
He leads us into a stairwell. A side passage. And then down. “This place, this facility and the outer walls are constantly under construction. My theory is that not only is maintenance and construction necessary, but it also gives a good chunk of the Wonderland population a job to do. At any rate, they have been building these rooms at certain interval points around the quarantine facility. This particular one is still under construction. And because of this, there is an opening. It is a weak point in their defenses, a chink in their armor.”
“An opening to the outside?”
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly? What the fuck does that mean?”
“There is an opening that leads down, underground, into the Long Tunnel. This tunnel, leads from Wonderland central, all the way to the Wasteland, and eventually, to the Buried City.”
We crouch in the dark. Rob has his head to the side, listening for any signs of life.
“Won’t this place be crawling with construction workers?” I ask.
“No. They only work at night.”
“What about the guards? What about the Enforcers? Won’t they be guarding the place?”
“There might be one or two. But the rest have been pulled from guard duty. Sent as reinforcements.”
“Reinforcements for what?”
“To fight you. To kill you.”
“They wouldn’t send everyone.”
“They would. And they did.”
He stands from his crouching position and leads me forward into the building, into the construction
site. Most of the building is made of concrete. The interior walls are exposed and unfinished. These walls appear to be made of something that looks like wood, but couldn’t possibly be. Not unless Wonderland is somehow growing a forest.
The place is covered in dust, dust from the Wasteland, and dust from the building and construction process. The place is littered with tools.
Power tools.
Building materials.
We move towards the outer wall of the building. Rob points to a crawl space. Barely big enough for a man to fit through. “In there,” he says. “The weak point.”
He picks up a chisel and a flashlight that had been left lying on the ground by the workers. He climbs into the crawl space and I follow.
It gets dark.
Impossible to see.
Rob turns the flashlight on and points it at our target, our escape route. Funny thing is, it doesn’t look like much of an escape route. It looks like a wall. A dead end. It looks impenetrable.
“Because this is the outer wall, they will build several layers of heat resistant concrete,” Rob explains. “But as advanced as the materials are, they will still feel the wrath of the Red Giant. The materials will expand during the day, contract at night. Quite severely.”
“That’s fascinating, Rob. But what’s this got to do with our escape plan?”
He points to the wall in front of us. “This is a special layer, made from a kind of synthetic material that is specifically designed to expand and contract, designed to cushion and protect against this harsh effect. Essentially, it acts as padding between the multiple layers of concrete.”
“So?”
“At the moment, on the other side of this synthetic material, is nothing but hot, fresh air. They haven’t built the outer wall of the building yet. All we have to do is cut through this and we’ll be free men.”
The penny drops and I snatch the chisel out of his hand and I get down to it. I start chipping away at the plastic or rubber or whatever it is. I start filing away in a desperate attempt to break it open, to make a hole big enough to squeeze through.
It doesn’t take long before I’m pouring with sweat.
A few minutes pass and I’ve made barely any progress.
The material is a lot more durable than it looks.
I keep working and digging and chipping and filing away, using every part of the chisel.
But still nothing happens.
I feel Rob shift uncomfortably. I feel him tense up. He’s holding his breath. I’m getting the impression that I was his best hope to get through this defense, through this barrier. This threshold. He needed a strongman, he needed someone to do the manual labor and I’m failing him.
And he starts to panic.
“It is not working,” he says anxiously. He looks over his shoulder. “We will have to go back. Or find another way. Maybe if we explain to the Enforcers…”
“No. There’s no going back. They’ll kill us for this.” They’ll torture us first. Kill us slow. “We need to get through this wall. Or we die trying.”
“But the chisel is not doing anything. The plastic is too strong. What are we to do?”
“There are power tools back there. An electric saw. It should be strong enough to cut through this.”
“A power tool? The Enforcers will definitely hear that.”
“Maybe. Or maybe not.”
“This is a dangerous plan.”
“It’s our only option. We should be able to cut through pretty fast. We cut through and we run.”
“Running might be a problem. On the other side of this wall is a kind of moat. A trench. Another defensive measure.”
“How far down? How long is the drop?”
“I’m not sure. Twenty feet?”
“We’ll have to jump. We’ll have to risk it.”
We’ll have to risk it because we are risking everything. And the reward will either be freedom, or a broken leg and a death sentence. I volunteer to go and get the power saw. I know the one I want. I know the one that will do the job. I move back out of the crawl space, back into the open of the dusty construction site.
And my heart sinks. I hear voices. Two men. Two guards.
No. Not guards. Workers.
They talk about plans. They talk about the schedule and how far behind they are. They talk about how unhappy the Lord is. If they see me, they’ll raise the alarm. Or at least, they’ll try and raise an alarm. And of course, I won’t let them. I am fully prepared to do what needs to be done. But I don’t want to kill two innocent men if I can help it.
I hide behind a load bearing beam while the men walk slowly through the site, checking the progress of their work. When their voices get distant, softer, I make my move. I grab the electric saw and move back into the crawlspace. Rob is waiting, illuminated rather eerily by the flashlight. I see panic in his eyes. I hear it in his voice. “What took you so long?”
“We’ve got company.”
“Enforcers?”
“No. Construction workers.”
“What are they doing here at this time of day?”
“Not sure. I got the feeling they were just checking up on things.”
“This is bad. They will hear this machine. They will raise the alarm.”
“We’ll be long gone by the time any Enforcer gets here.”
Before Rob can stop me, I switch the power saw on. It is the loudest noise I have ever experienced. In the confines of the crawlspace, the noise is amplified a hundred fold. And to go from sneaking around, quiet as church mice, as tunnel rats, to the unholy noise of this machine, which quite frankly sounds louder than a thousand machine guns on full auto, louder than a thousand nukes going off all at once, it is absolutely shocking and terrifying.
But there’s no going back now.
We are way beyond the point of no return. I slice open a square hole. I do this in less than a minute. I turn the saw off and the ringing in my ears is deafening. Rob has his eyes closed. His face is scrunched up in a look of pain. He has his hands over his ears.
I tap him on the shoulder. “Let’s go!”
I say this louder than I intended, but there’s no point in being quiet anymore. We make our move. Rob goes first, squeezing through the tiny hole. I follow. And as soon as I’m outside, the heat hits me and the sunlight hits me. The rays are strong and powerful and direct and it blinds me and takes my breath away. Rob seems to be coping remarkably well. Or maybe he’s just concerned about other things. More pressing matters. He’s looking straight down, over a precipice. I realize he wasn’t exaggerating about the trench. Because right now, it feels like we’re standing on the edge of a cliff.
“We will have to climb down,” he says. “Lower ourselves down and then drop the rest of the way. And just pray to the Red Giant that we do not break any bones when we hit the ground.”
I scan the area for any alternatives. For a rope. A ladder. For a miracle. But I find nothing.
“We have to hurry,” Rob says. “There are guard towers all along the quarantine facility. The longer we stay out here, the more chance there is of being spotted.”
And the construction workers have no doubt run off to get back up.
I look out ahead over the trench. Way off in the distance is one of the outer walls of Wonderland. A huge and never ending structure. As wide as the horizon. Spaced evenly along the top of the wall, about every half mile or so, are the gun towers. These are automatic sentry guns, big guns, heavy guns. They are amazingly advanced and deadly and they pick up on movement and body heat and any signs of life. As soon as they get a lock on something, something or someone that isn’t an Enforcer, they unleash hell.
We will need to stay as far away as possible from those guns.
Rob grabs me by the arm. “Come on!”
He begins lowering himself onto the edge, sitting down and swinging his legs over and twisting himself around. He lowers himself down and holds on to the edge and then he drops, sliding and falling down the wall of
the trench. He lands with a thud and falls to his ass. But he appears to be okay.
I follow his lead, carefully lowering myself down, and then dropping and falling, scraping and grazing my hands on the wall.
My hands are cut up a bit… but I survive the fall. No broken bones. I get to my feet quickly.
“Where to now?” I ask.
“Is that coat you are wearing heat proof?”
“To an extent… yeah.”
“Good.”
“Why?”
“Because we will not be staying underground. We need to keep moving. We are going back out into the Wasteland.”
Chapter 6
We stick to the wall of the trench, running as fast as we can, trying as best as we can to control our breathing, trying as best as we can to make no sound. We come to a large circular drain, jutting out from the wall of the trench. Iron bars cover the opening, but two of these bars have been cut, leaving just enough room for a fully grown man to fit through.
Rob leads the way, into the drain. We don’t question why the bars had been cut, or who had cut them. Fear of being caught pushes us forward, faster and faster. There’s no time to question this gift. I follow Rob, sticking close. Light begins to fade as we move deeper into the drain. The drain, which is essentially a tunnel, is big enough to walk through. And lucky for us, it is completely dry.
“Where the hell does this lead?” I ask. “Do you know where you’re going?”
“Yes. Up ahead. This drain connects to the Long Tunnel. It is the only way to escape.”
I guess it beats trying to climb the outer walls and trying to evade the automatic gun towers.
We walk in silence. It gets darker. Rob turns the flashlight on and I’m wondering if that back there, that whole situation, is that as good as it gets for me, is that as close as I get to Wonderland?
A prisoner in the quarantine facility.
Locked up in a cell with a cellmate who wanted to kill me.
Yeah, maybe that’s as good as it gets.
But who cares? Sure, I’m heading away from Wonderland, in the complete opposite direction, but I’m not really all that fussed on finding Salvation. Because what I really want is revenge. And I’ve got a good feeling I’m getting closer to Ruby’s killer.