Wasteland

by Noah Mann

It was a needless admonition that I hissed at her. Chuckles and Eyepatch were already dragging her and Neil away, shoving them against the decorative iron fence at one end of the courtyard. There they took waiting chains and wrapped them around my friends’ necks, padlocking both ends to the solid metal barrier, tightening the restraints, cinching it so that Elaine and Neil had no choice but to watch what was about to happen to me.

  “He chose you because you did a bad thing to Brick and Eddie,” Moto said.

  There was a theatrical craziness to the man that made watching him almost enjoyable. Almost.

  “Down on your knees,” Moto ordered.

  I suspected that my fate was sealed. That all our fates were sealed. This was the end of the road, the end of hope, for the three of us. For me, I imagined that my demise would begin, somehow, with the insect the savage held in its jar. The woman’s words from last night echoed now in my thoughts.

  I failed...

  She wasn’t the only one.

  But if I was to go, I certainly wasn’t starting that journey on my knees. Not willingly.

  “Not a chance,” I told Moto. “Not for you. Not for any man.”

  He smiled and petted the jar. The insect within buzz and hopped and flew frantically against its confines.

  “Doc will be able to make plenty of meals from your friends,” Moto said, glancing toward Neil and Elaine.

  What we’d seen in the lockup was what my friends were destined for. To be pieced out as sustenance. Like living cattle, offering up a steak today, a roast tomorrow, until only ribs and vitals remained. Death.

  That was not what awaited me.

  Without warning, Moto swung a leg at me, connecting the blunt end of his boot with my groin, doubling me over, gasping for breath with a dull wave of pain radiating from the point of impact. It was a sensation any boy knew. The missed catch of a baseball when young. An errant blow during martial arts lessons. Here, though, it had been intended. As he wanted, Moto had me on my knees.

  But that was only the beginning. The worst physical pain I’d ever experienced, beyond what I could even imagine, was coming my way.

  Before I could work my way off my knees, Eyepatch and Chuckles pounced on me, throwing me to the ground, pinning me there, handcuffs behind digging into the flesh of my back as they put their whole weight on my shoulders and legs to still me.

  “That’s better,” Moto said, and knelt awkwardly next to me. “I can’t say you’re going to enjoy this, but I certainly am.”

  He held the jar in one arm and reached with his free hand to my chest, ripping my shirt open and spreading the flaps of fabric to expose the bare skin beneath. He ogled my pale flesh, ribs sharp against the skin. With a giddy laugh he brought a hand over those long, skinny bones, and tapped them as if they were the bars of a xylophone.

  “Bing ba bing ba BONG!” Moto mimicked some imagined tune.

  The insect launched itself at the punctured lid, thudding again and again. Wanting out.

  It was about to get its way.

  “Do you know what a tarantula hawk is?” Moto asked me, then looked toward Neil and Elaine when I offered no answer. “Either of you? Anyone?”

  He looked back to me and placed the jar on my stomach. The cool of its glass felt oddly welcome.

  “This,” Moto began, “is a tarantula hawk. The name, I grant you, is something of a misnomer. I’ll let you in a little secret—it’s not actually a hawk. Not a bird at all. It’s actually a kind of wasp. And the way it survives, the way it used to survive, was by stinging a tarantula and laying an egg on the paralyzed little bugger. Then guess what the baby would do when it hatches. Guess. Anyone?”

  The insect, fiery red stripes around its abdomen, clawed at the glass, ends of its menacing legs barbed like hooks.

  “The baby wiggles its way into the spider and hits the buffet,” Moto shared. “And baby will be very, very hungry.”

  I looked at the black eyes of the insect and I saw pain.

  “I find it amazing how some creatures are able to adapt,” Moto said. “All the spiders that this beauty depended on are gone. Gone! So what is she to do? She pulls a Darwin and adapts.”

  There was a hint of intelligence about the youngish man. I wondered if, in the time before the blight, he might have been a bright, capable student. And I wondered if, had madness not overpowered what was good in him, he would have been little different than me. Or Neil. Or any other of the billions who’d been unable to hang on.

  But the ‘what if’ mattered not at all, now. He was mad. Homicidally crazy. And I was at his mercy.

  “I’ll give you a little inside information,” Moto said, leaning close, his breath damp against my ear. “I gave her a little help. I gave her something to replace the tarantula.”

  He eased back, sitting again, smiling down at me with insane, awful pleasure.

  “I’m going to miss Brick and Eddie,” Moto said. “But I’m so glad their death meant that you could be here for this.”

  It was going to be excruciating, I knew. The sight of the bright, almost prehistoric-looking insect drove that point home. It was an anomaly of adaptation. A creature that looked not only adept at inflicting pain, but that took some joy in it. A bold, maybe crazy assumption on my part, I knew, but that did not convince me that I was wrong.

  “This is always so fun to watch,” Moto said.

  I tensed, muscles straining. That was when I felt it. Skin tearing, peeling back, the thinness of my wrists gouged by the handcuffs. But with the sensation, with that pain, I also felt movement. The metal restraint pressed into the small of my back shifted lower on my hand, almost over the bulge where thumb bent toward palm.

  “So, so fun,” Moto repeated, then shook the jar, stunning the insect within as he unscrewed the lid and flipped the now open container quickly over and pressed it against my stomach. “And here we go.”

  The wobbly wasp rolled lazily atop my skin. The sharp points of its legs worked to right it, and soon the horrific creature was standing. I tried to hold still, while at the same time twisting and pulling one hand against the ring of steel circling it between my spine and the dirty courtyard floor.

  “Go ahead, baby,” Moto said. “Show him what you’ve got.”

  I turned my wrist against the binding as Moto tapped the upturned container sharply. Skin tore over the base of my thumb. The insect buzzed, leaping into the confined space, wings flailing, legs clawing at the glass for purchase.

  “Aren’t you hungry, baby?” Moto asked.

  Again I pulled. More skin shredded. The cuff slid down a half an inch. A little more and I’d be able to jerk my hand free.

  That was when the insect landed and stabbed its stinger into the skin near the lowest rib on the left side of my abdomen.

  Fire...

  That was the reaction my brain registered, and for that instant, and for an indeterminate amount of time that followed, it was all my mind could intelligibly comprehend. Not escape. Not resisting. Not freedom. Just fire.

  It felt as though some red hot implement had seized a fold of my skin and twisted, sharp agony spreading high and low, from my toes to the crest of my scalp, every inch of my body sizzling as though lightning had enveloped me. Vague, muddled thoughts rattled about during those moments, paramount among them an odd surprise that I couldn’t smell my own flesh burning, as I was certain the insect had set me ablaze.

  But in that hellish assault, while the stinger pumped venom into me, and as my friends screamed out my name, I was able to seize on one lucid thought. One meaningful desire.

  Pull...

  I had to get my hand free. That was the necessity my brain was allowing me to recall through the pain.

  Pull...

  I could get my hand out if I tried. If I wanted to. If I willed myself to endure.

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” I screamed, feeling the tarantula hawk grab tight with its spiny legs as I readied to free myself.

  Before I could, I heard a gunshot.

&nbs
p; Thirty Three

  The shot that took Eyepatch’s head off above the ears came from a rooftop to the south. I hadn’t witnessed it myself, but a flinching glance toward the sharp crack as blood and brain matter rained upon me noted a puff of smoke, gray against brilliant blue, at the upper edge of a red brick structure, some thirty feet in the air. One hand was nearly free of the cuffs behind my back as the dead thug folded atop my body. Fighting the fire of the sting and ignoring the pain of metal scraping skin, a quick tug released that hand.

  That was when, an instant after the first shot, a second from the same location tore through Chuckles’ chest from the front, severing his spinal cord as it exited. He flopped backwards, dead weight and momentum piling his dying body into Moto. A third shot, aimed for my tormentor, missed as he fell away, sending a burst of dusty earth into the air as it slammed into the courtyard. If there was to be any opportunity for me, for any of us, to escape, this was it. I rolled Eyepatch off of me as blood fountained from his dying comrade. The hellish stinging insect gripped the flesh of my chest as it continued to drive its painful barb into me. With one hand I smashed it, tearing its pulpy carcass from my skin and hurling it aside as my other hand, cuff still circling it, seized a pistol from the dead thug’s holster. Staying low and moving, I turned toward Moto, pistol raised, the earthy green Glock aimed at him.

  Or at where he had been. Only empty space and a trail of bloody footprints hinted at where he might be, within the low building on the western side of the courtyard.

  Another shot sounded. And then another. The rounds seemed aimed at the building where Moto had taken refuge.

  “In his jacket pocket!” Elaine shouted. “The keys! Left side!”

  Chuckles was still gasping like a beached fish, everything below his neck immobilized. I fired a bullet into his brain to finish him off and dug into the pocket, fishing the small ring of keys from within. I hurried to my friends and unlocked the chains around their necks that bound them to the fence, then freed their hands from the cuffs.

  More shots rang out. A scream pierced the silence after one, coming from the far side of the building. Whoever was shooting had taken another one out.

  “We have to get my pack,” I said, grabbing an AK from one of our dead captors and tossing it to Neil.

  “The seeds and the notebook,” Elaine said.

  I nodded, wincing still from the effects of the sting. She took an M-16 lying next to Chuckles and covered the building into which Moto had fled. We’d been brought outside through the same door he’d escaped into, a warren of hallways beyond it leading back to the cages. And who knew where else.

  “Who the hell is shooting?” Neil asked.

  “Does it matter?” Elaine answered with her own question.

  “Not if they keep shooting the right people,” Neil said.

  “It’s got to be in there,” I said.

  Elaine nodded. She rose and moved toward the door as still more shots sounded. They were not wild. Not any type of suppressing fire. They were aimed. At chosen targets. Precise covering fire.

  Neil and I followed Elaine. My friend wasn’t waiting for any practiced entry. Instead he stood dead straight in front of the door and fired two bursts through it. Elaine and I broke through as he raised the muzzle, signaling for us to move.

  Inside we paused for just a moment, our choice to backtrack toward the cages, or move down one of the unfamiliar corridors.

  I suggested the latter with a nod.

  More shots rang out beyond the walls, the single, aimed shots, and a few rounds of automatic fire, someone shooting back at the gunman who’d freed us.

  “Three doors,” Neil said softly, noting what lay ahead of us.

  “We have to check them all,” I said.

  “I’ll cover the hallway,” Elaine said.

  That would leave entries to Neil and me. And we had to move fast. Every second we wasted was another that reinforcements could arrive.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  Neil nodded and kicked the door. We rushed in, finding a bunk room of sorts, empty, beds unmade, clothes piled.

  “Next,” I said.

  We shifted across the hallway and down ten feet.

  “Go,” I said.

  Neil kicked this door and we moved quickly through the opening as shots volleyed outside, sustained automatic fire ending after a few measured single shots.

  “Fletch...”

  Neil motioned with the muzzle of his AK to the corner of the room, which appeared to have been used for storage and weaponry. There were boxes of ammunition, loaded magazines, and, right where my friend had indicated, our weapons and packs. Except for one item.

  “Your Benelli’s not here,” I said as I gathered up what had been taken from us.

  “Bastards,” Neil said, taking his pack and filling it with loaded magazines for the AK.

  Elaine took her pack and MP5 as I passed it to her, then I opened my bag and looked inside, allowing a breath.

  “It’s all here,” I said.

  “Let’s go,” Neil said, moving past, a fire in his eyes.

  “You okay?” I asked him.

  “I loved that shotgun,” he answered, the announcement almost comical considering our situation.

  “We may have to fight our way out of here,” Elaine reminded us.

  “As long as we can fight back,” Neil said, “I’m up for it.”

  We pressed forward, down the hallway as the gunfire from outside subsided, a total, eerie calm rising in its wake. A door on the west wall of the building lay at the end of the dim corridor, light bleeding in beneath it. Light from outside.

  “Everybody ready?”

  Neil and Elaine both nodded at my question. They wanted to be out of this place. Away from the horror, the madness.

  “If we get separated, head north,” I said.

  “Let’s just not get separated,” Neil countered.

  “I’m with him,” Elaine said, agreeing with my friend.

  It seemed we were all going to make it out together, or not at all.

  “Okay,” I said, and reached for the door handle.

  Part Four

  Countdown

  Thirty Four

  We emerged from the building ready to fight, Neil and Elaine immediately swinging their weapons to the south at a figure stumbling up the street toward us.

  “No!” I shouted, pushing the barrel of Neil’s adopted AK downward.

  It was Ben, hobbling fast toward us, Dragunov sniper rifle held across his chest. He’d acquired boots and a shirt since the last time I’d laid eyes on him, both from the professor’s home, I imagined.

  “Introductions later,” Ben said, moving past us. “We’ve got to get transport. Down the block.”

  “What the hell is going on?” Neil asked.

  “Follow him,” I said.

  Elaine and I covered the area as our group, now numbering four, made its way down the street, hugging the walls of empty storefronts, Ben slowing us as we approached a driveway. He stopped and looked back.

  “This is their motor pool,” he said. “Two guards. I think I got both. There’s something in there that looks like it will hold us all.”

  I looked to Neil and Elaine.

  “I’m first,” she said, stepping past Ben, her MP5 ready.

  Neil covered the street now, ahead and behind as I backed up Elaine.

  “Go,” I said.

  She moved fast around the corner. I followed, both of us noting a pair of bodies in plain view, one moving, trying to crawl toward a side door into the adjacent building. I fired two suppressed shots into the man, and he went still.

  “That’s gotta be what he’s talking about,” Elaine said, approaching an ungainly mashup of vehicular parts.

  Two motorcycles had been joined by a crossbar, their frames a yard apart, welds and bolted fasteners making them one. Lengths of steel reached back from this ungainly pairing to a flatbed extension made of wood and freewheeling tires mounted to the f
rame.

  “You think it runs?” Elaine asked.

  “It better,” Neil said, both he and Ben joining us. “From the sound of it there are a half dozen people on foot crossing the rooftops.”

  Neil slung his AK and tossed his gear to me as he swung a leg over one of the motorcycles.

  “Everybody get on,” he said.

  “You ride better than you fly?” I asked him, joining Elaine on the flatbed as Ben hopped on the second cycle next to my friend.

  “No,” Neil said, searching the makeshift controls for the way to start the vehicle. “You want to give it a go?”

  “You’re already in the seat,” I said.

  From above and close, voices rose, shouts and threats, followed by random shots. Our pursuers didn’t know where we were, but they soon would.

  “Here,” Ben said, reaching to a switch box mounted between the cycles.

  He flipped a switch, then another, a series of clicks and a hum resulting.

  “Give it gas,” Ben said, and Neil twisted the throttle.

  The motors of both cycles revved to life.

  “Get us out of here,” Ben said.

  Neil clutched it and shifted into gear, cables and connectors synchronizing the commands on both cycles. The rear wheels began to turn. We were on the move.

  “Over there!”

  The alert came from the rooftop, those above still unseen.

  “They heard us,” Elaine said.

  And once they made it to ground level, they’d be after us. Unless we made that impossible.

  “Cover the roof,” I said.

  Elaine brought her MP5 to bear as I knelt awkwardly on the accelerating vehicle and took aim at what remained in the parking lot, squeezing off rounds at every cycle, puncturing fuel tanks, flattening tires, shredding engine parts. Reloading once as we sped down the street, I left a half dozen of their transports damaged. They wouldn’t be following us with anything from that mix of cycles.

  “There they are,” Elaine said calmly as she began firing.

  I joined her, sending rounds toward the rooftop overlooking the motor pool, causing the men who’d appeared there to seek cover. We rounded a corner down the block without a shot being fired at us.