by Sean Platt
“I’ve been here for four months,” he finally said. “We’re forced to work on a farm just outside the walls each morning. We work all day then come back here just before dark. This container’s our home. We sleep on the floor. We piss and shit in the buckets. And we eat and drink whatever they give us once a day. Same routine every day, no weekends off.”
It sounded awful for sure, but Brent could imagine much worse.
“That’s it? Just work?” Sammy said, echoing Brent’s thoughts. “Everyone does as they’re told, and this is as bad as it gets?”
Brent could hear his wheels turning. Like him, Sammy was looking for a way out, maybe hoping Marina was watching, biding her time in the outskirts, surveying the situation until she could bring Ed, Boricio, and the rest of the team to save them.
“I don’t know what you define as ‘bad as it gets.’ That shit bucket I mentioned, it’s a communal one, so yeah, whatever that’s worth to ya … ”
The old man coughed again, covering his mouth with one hand while pointing to the end of the container, in front of the big bandit-looking man, with the other.
“One there, and another while we’re working the land. That’s two buckets for us all to share. And no food or water, except for at noon. We get a helping of fruits or vegetables with our water, once a day. Never good, and never seconds. I’ve not eaten meat since about a week before I got here. If that fits your definition, congratulations, you’ll do fine.”
He shrugged, coughed again, then added, “At least you’ll get used to it. It’s easier once you’re alone.”
“Alone?” Sammy repeated.
“I was dragged in here with my wife.”
“What happened to her?” Brent asked.
The man shook his head.
Ben surprised everyone. He left Brent’s leg, approached the old man, tugged on his pant leg, and said, “What happened? Where is your wife now? It’s okay to say it; I lost my mommy, too.”
The old man looked up at Ben, his eyes getting heavy with tears. Then he looked over at Teagan and Becca and the rest of them.
“They usually take the young ones first. But one day it was down to just me and Susan. So they took her.”
Brent swallowed. “Took her for what?”
“They did it right there, in one of the other containers.” The old man shook his head. “For hours, she screamed.”
“Did what?” Brent asked, afraid of the answer.
He stared at Brent and started coughing. The container echoed with his violent hacking, loud enough that Brent wondered if the guards might come to see what was wrong, if the man didn’t lose a vital organ first.
His voice dropped to the ugliest whisper. He glanced once more at the children before whispering, “They’ll come for your children first; they’ll take the woman next.”
The last few words left the man’s mouth like sandpaper scraping wood. Brent wanted him to keep talking, but the man wouldn’t, or couldn’t, say more. He raised his hand, palm out, while shaking his head and occasionally hacking.
Brent said, “Can you at least tell us your name?”
“Wilson.” he coughed. “Not that it matters. I don’t expect we’ll all be together long enough to become friends. Either my time’ll be up, or yours. Nobody stays for too long. I’ve been here four months, and that’s the record … by about two.”
Silence covered them like a blanket through the night.
**
Brent was only awake for a few minutes when the heavy steel container doors creaked open on their giant hinges. He’d yet to speak or even look around, keeping his eyes closed, staying inside himself while trying to gather his strength. The guards made him feel like a chicken for not using his waking moments to comfort his son.
A guard said, “Time to work, slaves.”
Brent squinted, feeling half-blind. The day wasn’t especially bright, but compared to the container’s black shadows, it felt for a moment like staring into the sun. He felt the guards fasten another steel wire to his collar, linking it to the others, like some kind of prison chain gang, before unlinking the wires that held them to the pole running along the floor.
Brent marched in line out of the container, still dazed and confused, unsure of everyone’s position in the line. The container had been emptied, but he didn’t know where Teagan, Becca, or Sammy were in relation to him. Ben walked inches away, his tiny hand curled into Brent’s pant leg.
By the time his eyes were finally working, Brent could see that the old man with the bad cough — Wilson — was marching directly in front of him, just behind Teagan and Becca, along with everyone else. Shuffling feet behind him probably belonged to Sammy and a couple of guards. Maybe the big guy at the end of the container, if he were alive. Brent didn’t dare look back to find out.
They reached the end of the cul-de-sac, passed through a tall gate, built from scraps, and entered another walled-off area: a farm, alongside a stretch of woodland.
Marcus stood waiting, shirtless, his body gleaming in sweat and his scar even uglier in the morning sun. “New slaves, this is where you’ll work. Old slaves, you know what to do.”
They were all still wearing their collars and chains. If any of them ran, they’d have to drag the entire postapocalyptic chain gang behind them, or get yanked back by the force of the crowd.
Not that anyone could run, surrounded by guards as they were.
Becca began to cry. To Brent’s surprise, the guards allowed Teagan to lean down and whisper into her daughter’s ear. Brent couldn’t hear but could easily imagine what she’d said. Marcus stood staring at the pair, off to the side, away from slaves and guards, arms folded across his chest, glaring at the girls with his milky-white eye.
Becca finally stopped crying, and Teagan stood.
Marcus said, “Is she done?”
Teagan nodded.
“She best be.”
His three words sounded like a funeral dirge.
Marcus turned and led the slaves into The Farm’s heart, past a group of leering men, including Tommy and the purple-haired freak from last night. To Brent’s surprise, they kept on walking, finally stopping at a field a few hundred yards past The Farm, where they met up with two other groups. Brent’s faction stopped in between the other two. He tried to count chained bodies without being obvious. Maybe forty men and women total. In front of the slaves sat a long rectangular wooden box.
Brent thought of Marina and wondered if they had any hope of rescue.
The Reaper pointed to a patch of dirt behind him. “Twelve feet deep, and large,” he said then nodded to a pair of guards flanking his body on either side.
The guards opened the box and revealed a bounty of shovels. They handed them out, one per slave, including smaller spades for Ben, Becca, and two children from the other groups.
The guards fell back and left the slaves to dig.
Knowing what to do, the other two groups began piercing the dirt with their shovels. Brent followed along, then Teagan, whispering for Becca to follow her lead.
Ben said, “We’re supposed to dig?”
“Yep.” Brent nodded and kneeled beside his son. “We’re going to look for treasure.”
“Okay, Dad,” Ben said, understanding the lie.
Brent finally turned back and saw Sammy, just behind Ben, and felt a chill from the man’s obvious fear.
They dug in silence until Brent finally gathered enough courage to lean closer to Wilson. “What are we digging?”
He dreaded the answer but needed to know.
“A mass grave. Means there’s gonna be a culling soon.
“A culling?”
“Every once in a while, they pick the weakest among us and shoot ‘em. I suggest you never get sick or injure yourself.”
Wilson coughed.
“You okay?” a guard asked.
“Of course,” he said, without lifting his eyes from the dig.
* * * *
CHAPTER 3 — Ed Keenan
&nbs
p; Ed stared at the tracking chip Lisa had carved from the girl: a small black square with circuitry covered by clear plastic, similar to ones he’d seen in the field back in his Agency days. Hell, he’d cut one out of his leg once when an operation was in danger of going south and he needed to get deeper undercover without agents breathing down his neck. This one was a bit different in that it packed a small explosive charge. Lisa had thankfully managed to figure out a way to disarm it before it blew up.
Lisa and Boricio stood beside Ed while Barrow and Jevonne were farther down the tunnel, watching over an unconscious Luca and the girl.
“So, you believe her, that she didn’t know this shit was in her?” Boricio asked Lisa.
“I do.”
“And more importantly,” Ed added, “Luca did. He was inside her head. He said we could trust her.”
Boricio looked back at the girl. “I dunno. She coulda got inside his head and tricked him. He might be an old man, but he’s probably got a teenager’s hormones.”
“What is it with you?” Lisa’s voice edged frustration. “First, you were defending this girl when Mary was hell bent on killing her, and now you’re what — thinking Mary was right?”
“I dunno. I mean, probably not. I’m just not used to feeling like a fucking rat in a cage. For the past few years, we’ve been taking the fight to them, disrupting operations, killing aliens, and now they’re showing up on our doorstep, surprising us. I don’t like it.”
Ed said, “Well, it’s not like we’ve disrupted much of their operations. We’re firing pea shooters against cannons. But I think with the girl, we can maybe find a way inside and turn the tables. But if we keep treating her like the enemy, she won’t trust us. She’ll sell us out if she thinks she’s safer back on The Island.”
“So, what, I gotta make nice?” Boricio asked.
“I think it’s our only play.”
“What if we use the chip to trap them?” Lisa suggested. “Lead them to an ambush?”
Ed looked at the chip again. “If this were back in the day, I’d say that’s a workable plan, but we don’t have anything on hand to temporarily block the signal. And I’m not about to go scouting for shit in The City. I think we crush this and figure out what the girl can do. Meanwhile, I’ll get in touch with Beta Team and see if they’ve got eyes on Mary.”
“No,” Boricio said, “I’m going out to find her. She said she was headed to The Farm. But the fact that she’s not answering her radio has me worried that her plans have changed, or someone changed them for her.”
“We need you here,” Ed said. “In case they’ve already got a bead on us. Luca isn’t up to teleporting again. We need everyone at the Chandler House.”
They were in what Las Orillas locals called The Catacombs, an old network of service and equestrian tunnels that saw a lot of use during Prohibition. Alpha and Beta Teams had staked out a section of The Catacombs back when they’d first returned to this world. They’d sealed off the entrances, which had been easy to find. Now there were only a handful of ways in and out of the tunnels. You had to know where to look to find the hidden doors — which meant bandits and aliens would have to know of The Catacombs and be actively searching for them or might have stumbled onto them by sheer chance, or captured and tortured one of the rebels into revealing their locations. But for now, The Catacombs provided safe passage in areas it would be otherwise difficult to traverse.
The Chandler House basement, an old historic home that had once belonged to a famous playwright, was Beta Team headquarters, and judging from their current location, just two miles south.
“It’s only two miles, then you can go look for her. Do you have any idea where she is?”
“No, like I said, she was headed to The Farm. But something’s happened.”
“So, what, you’re gonna go to The Farm? Or back to the warehouse?”
“How far away from the warehouse are we now?”
“We’re about four miles from the warehouse,” Lisa said.
“So that would put Chandler House six miles away? Shit. That’s a lot of time off the ticking clock. No bueno.”
Ed was trying to think of the best tack to take with Boricio. Lisa went with blunt.
“Mary left us, remember? She got pissed and stormed off. We didn’t ostracize her or anything. She left, not even thinking about how that would affect our missions. So please, Boricio, ask yourself what serves the greater good: keeping Luca safe or going out in the streets and looking for her when she’s probably already close to The Farm.”
For a moment, Ed thought Boricio was about to go off on Lisa. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d tangled. Instead, he nodded and said, “Okay.” There was something in that nod, and the way his shoulders slumped, that made Ed wonder if the one-man wrecking ball was finally tired of fighting. Ed knew that feeling all too well.
Ed dropped the tracking chip and crushed it with his boot heel.
* * * *
CHAPTER 4 — Brent Foster
Brent tried to fall asleep, unable to remember ever feeling more exhausted from a day of work.
His shoulders weighed a thousand pounds, his arms and legs were tight and burning, hands blistered and speckled in blood. Ben and Becca, to their credit, somehow plugged away, even if they were crying half the day. Brent and Teagan had shared a single, sweet, foulmouthed kiss, barely stolen, after the long day had finally ended, just before getting shoved and shut inside the container. The moment had been sweeter than his midday water.
Last night’s silence made more sense after the weeklong day. The slaves weren’t just scared. They were absolutely exhausted. And the arrival of new prisoners had stolen precious moments of their sleep.
He remembered what Wilson had said about not getting sick. And in Brent’s experience, the best way to stay healthy was to get a decent sleep.
Eventually, he drifted off on the cold metal container floor, with Ben sleeping against his back.
Seconds into sleep’s embrace, the door creaked open, and a blast of halogen lights jarred him awake.
It wasn’t yet morning.
Two men tromped into the container, Purple Hair and Tommy — neither of whom had stopped taking every opportunity to undress Teagan with their eyes since the group marched through the gates of Hell.
Tommy walked straight to Lara.
“No!”
Meghan reached out and swatted at Tommy, trying to protect her daughter. Brent could see a horrible gleam in his eye and a satisfied twist in his smile as he pulled back his hand like the string of a bow and smacked her with a loud THWAP across the cheek.
Lara, just starting to fight, immediately settled.
“Are you okay, Mom?” she asked with surprising calm.
Tommy wiped slobber from his mouth. “She will be if you behave.”
Meghan, now crying, stood to face him. She screeched, lurched forward, and clawed at Tommy’s face.
Purple Hair ignored the quarrel and started pawing at Lara, rubbing her breasts with one hand while cupping her ass with the other.
Tommy sent Meghan sprawling to the floor with a shove, and into a curled ball with a kick. Then he laughed and went to join his buddy.
Meghan whimpered.
Again, Brent felt like a coward, doing nothing to intervene. Too consumed with worry for what would happen to his family if he stepped up to help another. He felt Ben clutching his back. The boy whispered, “Do something, Daddy.”
Brent had felt like a shadow of his best self since his return to Earth. He longed to do something now, to stop the wrong being executed before him. Doing nothing was teaching Ben that this atrocity was acceptable, that he was fine with it happening. That maybe he’d let the same thing happen to him, or Teagan, or Becca.
But what choice did he have? Anything he could do might draw attention to his family. Or Sammy.
The bandits unhooked Lara’s collar and dragged her out, laughing.
Just outside the door, Purple Hair said, “Think she�
��s tight?”
Tommy whistled. “I bet she’s like that Indian bitch.”
The door closed, and for a few minutes the only thing beyond the container’s cautious, collective breath were Meghan’s quiet sobs coming from the corner.
Then came the nightmare’s soundtrack, barely audible though it may as well have been a bullhorn, coming from behind the ugly metal walls one container over.
Protests, screams, and cries cut with grunts of male pleasure.
Laughter, muffled jokes, the echoes of slapping.
It went on too long.
Maybe an hour. It felt like a day.
Meghan sobbed. Teagan crawled over to her side of the container and held her.
Becca lived under one of Brent’s arms, and Ben in the other.
Sammy paced.
The rest of the container pretended they couldn’t hear.
Ben looked up at Brent, “Why didn’t you do anything, Dad?”
He looked down, wiping tears from his eyes. “Because I didn’t want them to hurt either of you.”
Ben simply stared ahead, as if processing. Brent wasn’t sure how his son would file that — Dad as a coward or Dad doing what he had to in order to protect his family.
Finally, the door opened.
Lara was thrown inside, panting, trying to catch her breath, clothes bloody. She ran to her mom, but Meghan didn’t embrace her. Instead, she launched herself at the bandits and pummeled them both with her fists.
“You want some too, you feisty bitch?” Purple Hair asked, punching her in the gut.
Tommy grabbed the woman from behind, in a choke hold, as Purple Hair continued to hit her.
Lara screamed, “Stop! Please stop!”
They ignored her until they were ready to stop, and that wasn’t until Meghan was an almost lifeless bloody heap on the floor.
Then Tommy hooked the girl’s wire back up to the pole and left without another word.
Purple Hair spit on the mother then followed his tattooed friend.