Shadowplays

by W. D. Gagliani

  Yet, he had to admit, those proud people didn’t look happy. Regimented. They appeared fettered, chained by something beyond their control. Maybe they didn’t have as many answers as they wanted others to believe.

  Hostile eyes followed his progress across the clearing, silently disapproving of him and everything he stood for - a lax lifestyle, uncontrolled small-scale industry, maybe even freedom itself. The feelings were obvious to Hal, and he wondered what Joanna could sense. On second thought, he decided, it was better not to know. Until afterwards, at least. As in so many things.

  “You’re from Utopia?” one of the men snickered. He was small and wiry, his bald head mostly covered by a black beret with jump wings pinned to the front. “You’re what they sent?” He looked sideways at his companions, a half-smile on his pointed, ratty face. He reminded Halloran of a not-so-jolly Phil Collins, a drummer, singer and songwriter from Hal’s youth.

  “That’s right.” Halloran mustered some pride, but his own voice sounded like a croak to his ears. He stood stiffly, hands on hips. “We came for Macauley.”

  “I’m Murphy, an’ you can hav’im.” He pointed to something Hal hadn’t noticed, a cocoon of cloth tightly bound with nylon climbing rope. It was the length of a man and trembled, as if it were cold.

  “What have you done to him?” Hal’s vision blurred as he realized that this was no mere peace offering from Second Chance, this favor. Their gesture was a warning of some kind.

  “He raped and killed one of our women,” Murphy said with a snarl. “Like, it seems, he did one o’yours. We got a way to remind scum like ‘im what he did, though.” He nodded, and one of the women untied the end of the cocoon. Inside lay a man Hal did not recognize. His head had been shaved bare, and scabs had formed in those numerous places where the razor had slipped. The woman unwrapped the cloth completely, exposing the man’s buttocks. Each side had been branded with a hot iron - the left buttock with a capital R and the right buttock with a capital M. Both burns were badly inflamed and blistered, with fluid shining amidst the puckered skin. The woman stood and aimed a booted kick at his buttocks. He groaned in pain.

  Halloran winced. It was Macauley.

  “Would’ve shot ‘im,” Murphy said, “but we heard you folks had the prior claim, so we taught’im his little lesson instead.” He glared at Halloran. “Keeps the crime rate down.” Then he smiled and the effect was, if anything, worse. Murphy aimed his thumb at the woman. “She’s the girl’s sister, see. Did the brandin’. Had to give her that, at least.” He giggled humorlessly. “She wanted to castrate ‘im.” Murphy rolled Macauley over with an ungentle nudge of his boot. “We let’im keep his balls,” Murphy said, “but he had to pay the appropriate price…”

  Hal fought the urge to retch. Mac’s groin was a mass of purple bruises, and though his scrotum seemed intact, his penis had been severed at the root and the wound roughly cauterized with tar. Almost dried blood and pus oozed from beneath the tar and into his scorched pubic hair.

  Hal felt his gorge rising, but swallowed the sour taste quickly. Then he clamped his teeth down on his tongue and forced himself to watch with spreading numbness as the woman rewrapped the bundle with rough movements and jerks of the nylon rope.

  Still near retching, Hal nodded in vague agreement. All he wanted now was to leave. He wished he had never left his own log cabin within Utopia’s protective stockade. Wished he would never have to leave it again. He cursed Ryerson. Why had the sonofabitch sent him? As punishment for having been Macauley’s friend?

  He swallowed. “Can we take him now?”

  Murphy laughed. “He’s all yours, balls and all, that’s for sure. Treat’im nice.” He winked past Hal, at Joanna. “We’ll be in touch, Man From Utopia. Keep listenin’ to 98.90. Got some business propositions for your president, or whatever old Ryerson’s callin’ himself these days.” He lowered his voice to a mock stage whisper. “Just to whet his appetite, tell’im we been hearin’ expansionist

  noises out of the LA Zone. Might make ‘is day, at that.” He turned and started off without so much as a nod, followed closely by his companions. They melted into the tree line.

  Hal turned to find Joanna behind him. He hadn’t noticed her approach, and felt a bit angry that she had disobeyed. “You heard?”

  “About the LA Zone? Yes?” She looked at him with a bewildered expression on her face.

  “I’m not sure I believe them,” he said. “LA couldn’t fight the whole Federation -”

  “I believe them. It’s true,” she said shortly.

  He felt naked in her presence, and even more naked because she knew it. It had to be true, then. Her abilities, the brewing civil war, all of it. Was everything to end soon, for the second time? If allegiances had to be formed all over again, then nothing had been learned. Nothing at all.

  Hal knelt next to Macauley and loosened the nylon binding. “This poor bastard’s not going to make it.”

  “We’ll have to try,” Joanna urged. “He’ll die here if we don’t.”

  “What’s the difference?” Hal’s bitterness surfaced. “Ryerson just wants to execute him anyway. Why not just leave him? That’s punishment enough.”

  She frowned and shot Hal a glance, nodding in Macauley’s direction. “We’re not like them, Hal. He should be tried by the Council. If he’s convicted, he’ll die lawfully.”

  Hal could see she meant it, that she believed in Utopian justice. A point or two for Ryerson’s propaganda, he thought. “With those brands on his ass and … and everything else, he doesn’t stand a chance of acquittal. He’s guilty twice over, and already been judged. He tapped Macauley gently on the shoulder, remembering a friendship once shared. “Can you hear me, Mac?”

  “Yeah.” It was faint, but it was Mac.

  “Why’d you do it? Twice, for Christ’s sake - Didn’t you learn anything?”

  Hal cringed at the lameness of his question.

  Why in hell did you have to put me in this position, you bastard?

  He wanted to ask that, too, and more, but he couldn’t. It was better to forget their friendship. It was better to forget everything. It was always better to forget.

  Macauley’s shoulder moved weakly, once. A shrug.

  “You know we have to try to take you back…”

  A faint nod, the bald head blue where the hair had been.

  “Can you walk?” Joanna’s voice, a whisper.

  Silence, then a croak. “A little.”

  “Let’s get you up, then,” Hal said, attempting to lift him from under the shoulders. Macauley was dead weight. Hal grunted with effort and managed to raise Macauley onto his knees, so the tortured man looked as if he were praying.

  “Why don’t you just let me fucking die on my own? I don’t need your help.” Macauley looked at Joanna with faint recognition. His face was haggard and dirty, streaked with what might have been grease. The pain from his torture showed in his eyes and in the unnatural pucker of his dry lips.

  “Move! Get up!” Almost demonically, Hal suddenly wanted to kick the man to his feet, knock him down, and kick him up again. He noticed Joanna’s gaze, quizzical and pitying, and sent out an apology in his mind. Confusion lapped at the edges of his brain. He wanted to go home. This was not - should not have been - his responsibility.

  Macauley rose slowly to his feet, ignoring his own nakedness. Joanna handed him a long strip of stained cloth from his now abandoned cocoon, and - wincing - he wrapped it around his waist loosely. He began to walk, slowly and unsteadily, in the direction Hal and Joanna had trekked. Silently, they followed, picking their steps with care. Hal wondered what they looked like. Disciples following Moses onto Sinai to receive the words of justice, perhaps. The image was nonsensical, yet it ate away at Hal.

  The question of justice sat uneasily on his mind.

  *

  Distinct shades of color blur his vision. Behind him the shadow of China Mountain crawls up the slope.

  The butt of the pistol chafes at his
stomach, but he does not take it from the waistband.

  Ahead of him, Macauley scrapes over obstacles in unreal slow motion that Hal is sure he must be imagining.

  Hal remembers his nightmare - Macauley has always been in it, in one form or another. Perhaps not his face, but his essence, representing the humans who raped and murdered a whole planet. Yes, Macauley has always been part of the nightmare. Except his scars are in a different place. Hal glances at his own hands. They are shadowed now, by the mountain. The shadow has caught up to the three, is overtaking them. Maybe that’s why he can’t see his hands, he thinks.

  Joanna leads the way, shotgun in hand. She turns and helps Macauley when he has difficulty, which is often, and seems to know why Hal can’t, why he won’t.

  That’s right, Hal remembers, she knows.

  He avoids looking at his hands, afraid of what he might see.

  We’re all guilty, every last one of us.

  *

  The bus insolently faced the wrong direction, oblivious to their fatigue.

  Macauley lay in the road on his side, breathing in ragged jerks and bathed in dusty, chalky sweat.

  “I’ll try my best,” Hal said as he climbed into the driver’s seat. He hoped it was enough to answer the unasked question he had sensed. When Joanna smiled he hid his own smile, confident now that it was unneeded. He turned the key and was reassured by the scratchy growl from under the rusted hood. He pumped the gas pedal rapidly, hoping it would catch. It did, momentarily, then died.

  Another attempt. This time, as if with bubbling laughter, the engine caught and held on, belching blue smoke from the exhaust pipe.

  “All aboard.”

  Joanna helped a hunched Macauley up the steps. He was like a child, and made no move to help himself.

  Joanna glared at Hal, then guided Macauley to one of the long bench seats just aft of the driver’s. She poured him a cup of water from a milky jug and he drank sparingly, with effort. Macauley’s burns were inflamed and bloody and his groin a stomach turning mess, but he hadn’t spoken or complained at all since the beginning of the climb, and didn’t seem inclined to do so now. He had retreated into a sort of protective shell that allowed only for walking and being guided. Hal shook his head. Sorrow? Shame? He wasn’t sure what to feel.

  Hal shifted and picked his way backward, nervous with the rapidly-fading light. The road was narrow and snaky, mach harder to maneuver in reduced visibility than earlier. Joanna stood in the rear, near the sheet-metal cage, calling out instructions which he tried to follow religiously. A mile and a half took an hour, but finally Hal had enough space to perform a shaky Y-turn that threatened to send them spinning into the valley. Across dark space, China Mountain watched inscrutably as he inched forward to the edge of the road, then backward as far as he could, turning the wheels as sharply as he dared. Then forward. Backward. And again, inch by inch. The presence of China Mountain made him nervous, reminding him that Second Chance lay on the far side and that bandits roamed the hills. China Mountain was silent, but somehow eloquent in its silence.

  With a sigh, Hal stepped gingerly on the brake. The bus pointed the way home in the pitch darkness.

  Hal navigated the road like a river, with only the light from one lonely headlamp to guide him. He hoped the beam wouldn’t attract any of those bandits. They had been known to ambush single vehicles for weapons, goods, and women, and the Browning in his pants was constant reminder that it wouldn’t be much of a fight.

  “Jo, I think you should ride in the cage,” he shouted. It wasn’t much protection, but it was better than nothing.

  “What?”

  “You - never mind,” he mumbled. “You know damn well what I said.”

  She came forward and stood near him as he drove, comforting him merely with her presence. He liked that. There was nothing he could say and, even if there had been, there was no need.

  Hal was working the pistol out of his waistband when the right wheel plunged into a deep rut and the bus jerked to a halt hard enough to send Joanna flying into the side of the door. The engine screamed with strain as the steering wheel spun uselessly. Hal cursed and tried to turn it even a fraction of an inch, hoping to gain some grip on the road and force the bus to work its way out of the rut.

  “Are you all right?” She nodded as she straightened against the support bars.

  Without any warning burp or groan, the engine stopped; gave up. There was a sudden relaxing of metal tension and structural stress, and the carriage sagged back into the rut with a metal screech and the loud hiss of escaping air as accompaniment.

  There were no tools. And there was no spare, anyway.

  Hal ushered his passengers off the bus without a word. Hal led the way, attempting to ignore the fatigue that gnawed at muscle and bone. Macauley was weaker now, wracked with a sudden fever. His skin blazed to the touch. He only managed to debark by wrapping a trembling arm around Joanna and hanging onto her as she stepped down. Her breath wheezed out of bruised lungs - courtesy of the initial jar, which had sent her sprawling into the side door. Hal wasn’t sure how many miles lay between them and the mirage-like Utopia, but he remained happy in ignorance.

  He looked one last time at the bus, and an empty feeling grew in the pit of his stomach. Emptier than he would ever have imagined. “Goodbye, old girl,” he whispered. Then he set off after Joanna and Macauley for what seemed like the millionth time that day. Scraping sounds were loud in his ears.

  Bandits? Let them come, he thought with deep bitterness.

  *

  Ryerson and Harvey greeted them with handcuffs.

  “Almost gave up on you two,” Ryerson said as he swung the armored gate closed and bolted it. “Glad to have you back.” He looked at them over his spectacles in a typical Ryerson pose and didn’t mention the missing bus, the only Utopian motor vehicle left.

  Harvey took Macauley into custody, after reading him the rights guaranteed by Utopian law. Ryerson wanted everything done legally, so there could be no question.

  “When’s the trial?” Hal already knew the answer.

  “We’ll start tomorrow.” Ryerson removed his glasses. Were his hands shaking? “What the hell happened to his ass and his -”

  “Law and order.” Hal walked away, toward his cabin. Let Joanna explain that, he thought. A feeling of emotional weariness swept over him like a cold winter wind.

  When he turned to close his plank door, he felt a jab of relief and warmth. Joanna was there, her face an intermittent flash in the light of a lantern that hung swinging nearby. Her hand was on the rough doorhandle.

  “I thought I could help you light a fire,” she said. “It’s getting cold.”

  He stepped aside and let her enter.

  *

  The trial lasted three days.

  Hal and Joanna winced when the single shot came from behind Ryerson’s place and echoed between the mountains of what had once been Idaho.

  And Hal thought: Seven rounds, that’s all we have left… Why the hell does it matter?

  As he held Joanna tightly, he could not wipe his mind of an image, real or imagined, in which Macauley - convicted rapist and murderer and one-time friend - went to his death with something too much like pride on his fever-ridden features. What had it proven, any of it? That men would never change?

  Hal waited for sleep to come, once again placing himself at the mercy of his nightmare, where Macauleys and Hallorans and deluded Ryersons scrape through the darkness, their scars hidden and their hands held out of sight.

  “I know,” Joanna whispered in his ear, as he began to doze.

  * * *

  PORT OF CALL

  Published in EXTREMES 3: TERROR ON THE HIGH SEAS; Honorable Mention in THE YEAR’S BEST FANTASY & HORROR (15th edition)

  1

  No one ever really challenged the official account of the events which now force me to confess and relate my own role as unwitting accomplice. Perhaps instigator, my blurred memory sometimes nudges. Certainly vi
ctim, though it’s much too late to care. An inquest was held, of course, but Harding’s politician friends somehow smoothed the waters - ha! even after all these years I see irony and humor in that phrase, and yet I weep for my soul even at the thought.

  Harding, we learned, benefitted from highly placed connections I later suspected might have dated back to the War and his somehow slightly soiled record as first mate aboard a frigate which may or may not have carried questionable cargo on behalf of powers other than the Naval Secretariat. But such was the War, and men often dabbled in side projects of doubtful ethical natures, given the desperation and huge amounts of cash floating about. Any connections Harding had made in the War were safely left behind until this spot of trouble cropped up, and then the favor was repaid and that put Closed on the whole deal for every one of us, as well, deserving of such mercy or not.

  It is only because I feel the darkness coming that I bother to put to paper this account. I guarantee that it’s no balm for my soul, and true sleep has evaded me all these years, so I write only to unburden and not to seek a forgiveness no one can provide.

  When Harding stepped from his cabin with the bulbous Mauser pistol gripped in his claw-like hand and pointed at me, I nearly felt the 9mm Parabellum slugs tear through my flesh. His index finger seemed about to caress the trigger but for some modicum of spasm control, while his hand never wavered. I hoped there would be no spasm while the muzzle stared into my gaze like a one-eyed serpent.

  “You and your men will stand down and return to your stations and proceed with supervision of the loading, or I will deal with you myself - and worry about the Admiralty later.”

  The sweat, that constant slick sheen of precious fluids leaving us every moment of the sweltering Indian day, the curry-flavored sweat was in his eyes and it must have stung, but he didn’t even blink.

  Looking into Harding’s eyes you knew he meant every word. There was little doubt in my mind that his pistol skills would account for a half dozen of us. He’d had the ringleaders pegged thanks to the traitorous Spaniard, Idalgo, who had served as Harding’s eyes and ears amongst the crew for the duration of the journey, and whose gaunt frame now stepped from behind Harding’s bulk to add another gun barrel aimed at us, his that of a tiny and womanish revolver - a strangely ineffectual weapon - held in a shaky, oily grip.