This Machine Kills

by Steve Liszka

  “How did they get me here?”

  “They carried you, they even managed to carry Lennox.”

  “Lennox is here too?”

  “That’s right Taylor. Didn’t think you’d get rid of me that easily did you?”

  Lennox sounded even further away than Doyle was. Despite the distance, Taylor couldn’t fail to hear the pain in his voice.

  “How badly are you hurt?” he asked, catching himself off-guard.

  “What the fuck do you care?”

  Even though the sneaky son-of-a-bitch had tried to kill him, he did care. Lennox was one of his men.

  “So you finally plucked up the balls to take me out,” he said, changing tact, “I wonder whose idea that was?”

  “I only wished Rudy had persuaded us to do it years ago,” Lennox answered, “we could have saved ourselves a whole lot of your bullshit.”

  “Speaking of Rudy,” Taylor said, sounding friendly, “I saw how he left you for dead back there. You really know how to pick your friends.”

  “Fuck Rudy,” Lennox snapped, “fuck you, and fuck those assholes who killed Skinner.”

  His voice grew tender; “They didn’t need to do that… he never did them any harm.”

  None of them said anything else for a long time; it was like their minds had turned to thoughts of what was going to happen to them.

  It was Doyle who eventually voiced their concerns, “What do you think they’ll do to us?”

  Although his voice remained composed, Taylor could detect the fear in him. It reminded him of Doyle’s first tour with the unit, when he had doubted the new recruit’s abilities. It made him realise that even though Doyle had more than proved him wrong, he was still a kid. He shouldn’t have been there; stuck in a dark basement in the middle of the Old-Town, clinging to the hope he wasn’t going to be put down like some dumb animal.

  “I don’t know what they want with us,” Taylor said, speaking not just to reassure Doyle but to try and distract himself from the pain.

  “But if they wanted us dead, we would be by now. Let’s just play things cool and we should all get out of this in one piece.”

  Taylor heard a sarcastic laugh coming from Lennox’s direction.

  “You’re so full of shit Taylor, you can’t even be honest with the kid now. Not even at the end. Listen to me Doyle…”

  When Lennox began speaking again, the sarcasm was gone from his voice; he had now adopted the tone of concern.

  “I know we shit on you back there and that was wrong, but now, you need to believe what I’m saying. They’re probably going to torture us to find out what we know about the Shepherd… After that, once they believe you’re not lying to them they’ll kill us… Don’t try and be brave, don’t let them do that to you for the sake of it. Just tell them what they want to know. It’ll be easier that way.”

  Taylor could feel himself growing angry at Lennox’s scare-mongering tactics. Why would he try and destroy the boy’s hope? It may have been the only thing he had left.

  “Don’t listen to him Doyle, you’ll be fine, I promise.”

  “Bullshit,” Lennox yelled back, “you need to stop lying to him… Let me tell you something Doyle, I know that your precious Sargent likes to make out that he’s so much better than the rest of us, but it’s all bullshit. He’s no better than the rest of the team, in fact the fucker’s worse, much worse. He just likes to pretend he’s a saint, that’s all.”

  “Shut-up Lennox!” Taylor shouted.

  “No Taylor, you fucking shut-up for once. Why don’t you tell him what sort of cold-hearted bastard you really are? Then we’ll see how much he thinks of you,” Lennox took a sharp increase of breath at the stabbing pain in his gut.

  When nothing else was said, Taylor relaxed. Perhaps Doyle would believe in him enough to not bring up Lennox’s accusations.

  A cold tingle ran down his spine when Doyle finally spoke, “Sarge, what’s he talking about?”

  Taylor thought about feigning ignorance but it was too late, and he was too tired and in too much pain to lie. Instead, for the first time in five years, he began to tell the truth.

  “It happened when we were in Canada… Officially the war had already finished before I even got there, but defeating the army was only the start of it. Trying to suppress the people was a whole different ball game.”

  Taylor was surprised to find it easier to talk about than he’d expected. Maybe it had something to do with being blindfolded and alone in a room where no one could see him own up to his shame. He wasn’t a religious man, but he could see now why confession was carried out in a small dark room where the priest could only hear but not see the person pouring out their guilt.

  “When we first got there it was much simpler, back then the resistance movement were hiding away in the towns and villages. SecForce usually sent in the jets to bomb the shit out of them first, then we’d go in and mop up the survivors. But when they realised that wasn’t going to work for them, they gave up the towns and took to the hills and forests. That’s where they attacked us from in their raids. It was classic guerrilla warfare and it fucking well worked.”

  Taylor tried to straighten up from his slouched position, “I tell you something Doyle, their army may not have been up to much, but the rebels, those fucking Canucks, I’ve never seen a tougher bunch. They hid out there all winter in the freezing cold. We tried everything to flush them out but nothing would budge them. We napalmed the forests, poisoned their water sources, but nothing worked. They knew their own land and knew how to live off it, nothing we did seemed to have any impact. They didn’t even have sophisticated weaponry, they’d just come down and set a tent full of rations alight or pour sand in a few of the vehicle’s petrol tanks… Troopers were too afraid to walk around the camps in case they were shot by the fucking hunting rifles they were fighting us with.”

  “Why don’t you just skip to the good bit,” Lennox pushed, “he’s gonna love it.”

  Taylor ignored him.

  “We’d been there for nearly eighteen months when we got intelligence that a group of rebels had set up base in the mountains not far from where my unit was based. I was in charge of leading the attack and it was a job none of my men wanted. They were cold and tired from constant fighting and the last thing we needed was to go back into the hills... We attacked the camp at night and for once we seemed to have the upper hand on them. This time they hadn’t been expecting us. That was before one of my guys walked straight through a trip wire and both his legs were ripped off in the explosion… I’ll never forget his face as he tried to crawl towards me. He wanted me to save him but I couldn’t. He was a kid even younger than you and I left him there to die alone. We had to attack before we lost momentum.”

  Taylor took a deep breath before speaking again, “After two hours of fighting, we finally managed to subdue them. Of the twenty men I started with, only nine were still with me at the end… At first we thought the camp was nothing more than a few tents but then one of my men found an entrance to an underground tunnel. I couldn’t believe it when I saw what was down there; it looked like a giant rabbit warren… We’d already killed eighteen hostiles and took three prisoners, but when we got underground, we realised that there were far more of them than we’d ever anticipated. There must have been eight or nine older men in the tunnels along with twenty or thirty women and children. They were cold and hungry and scared of what my men were going to do to them but I didn’t give a shit. I had just watched half of my unit be massacred and all I could think about was revenge. My boys wanted blood and I wasn’t going to stop them… They killed the prisoners and the other men first before turning on the women. Some of them were raped, some mutilated, but all were eventually killed… After that they finished off the kids… No one really wanted to hurt the children but we couldn’t let them go either. They’d seen too much…. We left them in the tunnels, then when we went back above ground each of the men took a grenade and threw it back into the hole. That way no o
ne knew who actually killed them… The explosion was so powerful it felt like there was an earthquake going on beneath us. We never heard any screams so I don’t know if they died instantly or if they suffered first… not hearing anything definitely made it easier.”

  Taylor stopped speaking and the silence that followed pressed down on his chest, making his ribs hurt even more.

  He could sense Doyle preparing to speak long before he actually did.

  “Sarge? Did-”

  “No, it’s like Lennox said,” Taylor had already anticipated his words, “I’m far too good for that. I just stood back and let it go on. If I wanted to, I could have stopped it but I didn’t, I just let my men do whatever they wanted. I didn’t even have the guts to throw one of my own grenades in the hole so I could share their guilt with them. That’s who I am Doyle, a real hero.”

  “What happened?” Doyle asked.

  “A few weeks later I confessed. They couldn’t even trust me to keep my mouth shut. I implicated all my men just so I didn’t have to feel guilty anymore. SecForce covered it up of course… they always do.”

  Taylor sniffed, “That’s why I ended up back here. They knew I’d crack if they left me in Canada so they brought me back to work the Old-Town; somewhere they thought I wouldn’t cause any more trouble.”

  When Taylor said no more, Lennox saw his cue, “So there you go Doyle. That’s what your brave leader is all about… What do you think of him now?”

  The question was punctuated by a grunt of pain.

  After a long pause, Doyle gave his half-hearted answer, “Shut-up Lennox.”

  Taylor could hear his voice was soaked with disappointment.

  A shuffling noise coming from somewhere in his immediate vicinity drew Taylor’s attention away from the others. It was close, much closer than Doyle was to him. He suddenly became sure there was someone else in the room with him and once the idea had taken hold, the more obvious it became. Taylor started to feel like this other person had been there the whole time, listening to his outpouring of guilt. He heard the shuffling noise again.

  “Who’s there,” he whispered, not wanting to alert Doyle to his fears.

  He now clearly heard footsteps walking towards him.

  “It’s time to go,” a voice said quietly “someone wants to talk to you.”

  Taylor recognised the voice but no matter how hard he tried, couldn’t put a face to it.

  The footsteps stopped as he felt a hand grab him under his armpit and yank him to his feet. Whoever it was, he was strong.

  Taylor heard the voice again, “Put your hands behind your back.”

  After being spun around by his captor, he was handcuffed once more. A hand roughly grabbed him by the back of his neck and guided him to what must have been the exit to the room. The blanket that had been wrapped around him fell to the floor and he felt the cold muzzle of a pistol pressing into his back. He gave an involuntary gasp as it contacted with his skin.

  His captor leaned forward and whispered into Taylor’s ear.

  “By the way, I loved your story.”

  Chapter 22

  It was a short walk before they arrived at their destination. The jailer had said nothing to Taylor since leaving his place of confession. After ascending a steep flight of stairs, he felt a slight breeze as they walked down what he thought was a narrow corridor. When he was suddenly stopped and pushed into a space on his left, he realised his assessment of the local geography had proven correct.

  It was warmer here. He could feel from the crowded hush that it was a small space he was now in. After the man had brought him to a halt, there was silence followed by muted whispers in the corner of the room. Taylor felt the guard reappear behind him and speak in his ear once more,

  “I’m going to take the blindfold off now. Try anything and I’ll shoot you in the back.”

  With his hands still in cuffs behind him, Taylor wondered just how good the person whose face he still could not recall, thought he was. The blindfold fell away from his face as he heard the man take a couple of steps back. He slowly opened his eyes and tried to focus on the room, but at first it was too dark to see anything. Slowly, he became aware of a patch of light in front of him, and as his eyes adapted, he saw this was where the moonlight had punctured the small window in the room and burnt its image onto the ground.

  “Hello Taylor,” a softly spoken voice said.

  This time he knew exactly who it belonged to.

  From the shadows of the room he could just about make out the figure of a man. As the shape stepped into the moonlight, Taylor was able to cast his eyes on him. Even though he was wearing the hood that disguised his features, Taylor knew it was Jacob.

  “I hope we got to you before they did too much damage,” he said, sounding apologetic.

  “You?” Taylor answered sounding surprised. Yet even as he spoke, he was beginning to put things into their appropriate places.

  “It’s you isn’t it? You’re the Shepherd.”

  Jacob let out a little chuckle; it sounded involuntary and not meant to patronise, “Not exactly.”

  Taylor still needed answers if the pieces of the jigsaw were going to fit together.

  “So why did you send me to the school...why would you risk your own people getting hurt?”

  Jacob sighed, “The school was a necessary risk we had to take to make sure we had the right one.”

  “The right what?”

  “Everyone knew the raid was going to happen, we told them all to leave but some people…some people are stubborn. They didn’t want to leave their animals. They get quite attached to them, you know.”

  The jigsaw pieces began to disappear as he realised he still knew nothing.

  “Then why was Nails, I mean Ben there? He must have known what would have happened if we found him.”

  “Ah yes Ben, that was unfortunate. I’m sorry for his death, I genuinely am… He told me you used to be friends. I think that’s why he stayed, he wanted to know if it was you who informed on us.”

  Taylor had a sickening thought. It helped explained Ben’s hostility towards him before he was killed.

  “He thought it was me who gave up the information,” he said quietly, “Ben died thinking I betrayed him.”

  Jacob took a step forward, revealing a little more of himself in the moonlight. Taylor could only just make out his face beneath the shadow of the hood but he could see that something about him was different.

  “Hopefully Ben’s death will not have been in vain.”

  Taylor didn’t like the implication in Jacob’s voice.

  “You said something about making sure you’ve got the right one, what did you mean?”

  “It wasn’t just you that we’ve had our eye on, we thought that maybe we could trust Sergeant Dyer too. That’s why we gave you both the information about the school. We wanted to see which, or indeed if either of you could be trusted to keep quiet… We needed to know if we had your sympathies.”

  Taylor watched as Jacob’s silhouette shook its head, “Let’s just say Dyer failed the test.”

  “Look,” Taylor said, feeling angry at his failure to comprehend what was happening, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, what do mean you were testing us? Testing us for what?”

  “To see which one of you would lead us?” Jacob said as if the answer was obvious.

  Taylor had to take a moment to process the words before he spoke again.

  “Lead you?” it sounded ridiculous just saying it, “Why would I want to lead you? You’re the Shepherd.”

  Jacob stepped fully into the moonlight and Taylor saw what it was that was different about him. The scarf he had been hiding behind was gone. His mutilated face was now fully on display.

  “No,” he said, “I’m not the Shepherd. You are.”

  Taylor stared at the burnt figure in front of him, trying to work out his game. He knew the man was smart, so why was he talking like a fool?

  “What?” he finally ask
ed, when Jacob offered no further explanation.

  “I said it’s you. You’re the Shepherd, or at least you will be.”

  Taylor laughed, “I thought it was your body that was damaged, not your brain.”

  “I’m not joking,” Jacob said, the tone of his voice reinforcing his claim, “we need a leader to take us out of this wasteland. We’re going back to the City where we can live as equals, not slaves.”

  “You may not have heard,” Taylor answered when the smile on his face had faded, “but the City is permanently closed. The wall made sure of that.”

  Jacob looked unperturbed, “And that’s exactly why we need someone like you to get us in. Plus, the people here already know you from your fighting days. You’re the perfect man for the job.”

  “You already had the perfect man for the job,” Taylor said, “you had Ben. You should have made him your leader. He was a better man than I’ll ever be.”

  Now that his eyes had grown accustomed to the light, he could see the true horror of Jacob’s injuries. His nose and lips were all but gone and the skin seemed to hang from his face, making Taylor think of a waxwork model that had melted under hot lamps. Despite his injuries though, there was something about Jacob’s dark black eyes that helped retain his humanity. Just from his eyes alone, Taylor warranted that he had once been a good-looking man. The other thing about Jacob was that somehow, even with the burns, Taylor recognised him. He didn’t know from where, but he had known him before his accident.

  “We did consider Ben to lead us but the fact he was one of our own was the very reason we didn’t choose him. And before you ask, it couldn’t have been me either, not with a face like this.”

  Jacob removed his hood, revealing a skull that was just as badly disfigured. Two small tufts of hair still grew there; one just above his left ear and the other on the top of his head. Other than that he was completely bald from where the fire had destroyed his fragile skin.

  “One thing I learnt from their media machine is that image is everything.”