by Adam Steel
In front of Max, a pair of in-mates were caught in the crossfire, and ‘jiggled’ like badly animated string puppets as they were peppered with bullets. He gritted his teeth. It had been a long time since he had been in a fire fight, but all the right instincts remained. Max stayed down as the bullets zipped overhead. That was not the case for Gordon. He pulled Max upright, and threw his cuffed arm over the nearest guards’ head from behind. Max was lifted like a rag doll as the colossus next to him, throttled the guard. Around them, the men from the truck were steadily advancing on them.
‘Keys!’ Gordon demanded, as he crushed the life from the guard.
‘Get his keys!’ he screamed at Max.
Max relieved the throttled guard of his keys, and unlocked the cuff from around Gordon’s wrist and Gordon immediately took off towards the gaping hole in the wall without looking back. As soon as the prisoners had begun to break the line and scatter, Clarke had recovered her senses. She smashed two of them back down with swipes from her stun baton. It glowed bright blue in her hand, as she went to work on the would-be escapists. Her example rallied the three other guards around them. Clarke was wielding her stun-baton: whacking the escaping prisoners as they fled. She was charging round the compound like a tormented bull: except that the Matadors were the ones doing the running. She cracked the stun-baton and took them down hard and fast: unfazed by the gun battle going on around her.
Max fell back to the floor: taking position behind the felled guard’s body. He tried to take stock of the situation. It was difficult without Apexir. He wasn’t used to it. Combat seemed much faster without it.
The attackers were taking losses. More guards had taken up positions on the wall and were firing with deadly proficiency at the invaders and fleeing prisoners. They had high powered rifles, with telescopic sights, and their aim was excellent. Outside the wall, Kojo leaned out from the driver’s seat of one of the cars. He could see the carnage through the gaping hole in the wall. The wall guards were taking a heavy toll on his men. He realised that the breakout might fail if they couldn’t silence the wall guards, but from his angle, he couldn’t get a clear line of fire at them. He gestured to a man sat behind him.
‘Smoke dose fucks,’ he said simply, hinting at the top of the wall.
The man grinned back at him and hauled a bulky, metal object out of the car. The man knelt down next to the vehicle and quickly snapped together the assembly of a shoulder-mounted, rocket-propelled grenade launcher. He clipped the rocket into place, and took aim at the ramparts above.
Kojo smiled.
The gang members were in it for a smash and grab. Max didn’t need to be told who they were here for. Marko’s buddies had come to organise him ‘a little homecoming.’ That much was obvious. The gang members reminded him of Marko. They were dark-skinned and dressed in colourful Caribbean attire.
His phone call had worked and he was sure that Jack was behind the stunt. The gang members couldn’t have known where Marko would have been incarcerated, or when the transfer was taking place.
Max found it difficult to see Marko in the mass panic of screaming, shooting and commotion. From where he was on the ground, he could see the tangled mess of the truck’s wheels. A body had got wound around the wire (between the axle) and was hanging in a ragged, bloody mess, underneath it. Max tried to focus. Find Marko. Where Marko is that’s the way out. They’ll protect him…give him cover…when he goes for the hole in the wall. That was where I need to be. That’s my best chance of survival, he thought.
Max spotted him.
Marko was bodily dragging Victor along toward the massive gaping hole (where once a high wall and barbed wire fence had been).
‘Yahso bredren!’ he waved frantically with his free hand. ‘Ove' 'ere! Get mi outta dis!’
Max began to crawl rapidly (hand over fist) towards the pair, when he saw he was going to be too late. One of the wall guards had a ‘bead’ on Marko and would fell him any second. If Marko dies his friends will pull out. Then you’re all going to be shot, a voice inside his head told him. Max scrambled to his feet – lunged – and hit Marko straight in the back. The two men crashed to the ground. Victor landed beside them. He was screaming. Marko swung at Max with his free hand.
‘Cha! Wa da 'ell mon? Why?’ he cursed.
Victor lay moaning beside him. He was covered in blood and he had taken the bullet intended for Marko. Marko clicked on fast. He dragged Victor onwards.
‘Give tanks mon’…yuh save mi ass gud. Come wit wi,’ he breathed to Max.
Marko was frantically gesturing to the gang members to come over and rescue them.
‘Hurry da fuck up!’ Marko screamed at the gang.
He was trying to extricate himself from the wounded Victor.
Max looked up at the wall. The sniper who had felled Victor, was drawing a bead on them, and this time, there would be no escape. A distant ‘whoosh,’ was a prelude to the explosion of stone and rubble that erupted where the man used to be. The rocket propelled grenade had struck from the other side of the wall. The guard’s remains were catapulted from the wall leaving a huge chunk of stone missing from the top.
The ground trembled.
The gang members took advantage of the disruption on the wall and charged for Marko pushing him to the floor. One of them stood on the outstretched arm of the wounded Victor and shot his hand clean off: leaving him writhing and screaming in agony. The spray of blood covered Marko down one side. The gang member grabbed at the shoulder of Marko’s prison uniform. Marko looked surprised, and pleased, at the neat extrication. The gang member dragged him over the pile of rubble, towards two waiting cars that had pulled up behind what was left of the wall. Max followed, keeping low, as the men made the bolt for the exit. Behind them, more guard reinforcements were charging out from Alpha Wing into the chaos.
Clarke was stabbing at one of the gang members with her stun-baton. She was spitting a torrent of abuse. She managed to stab one of them hard in the groin and a waft of smoke came from his flies. He dropped to his knees, clutching his crotch, as the waves of pain ran through him. She dropped him and looked for her next target.
Three men were making a dash for CURE Prison’s newest exit. Her eyes narrowed into slits when she spied Marko’s dreadlocks bouncing along. A pair of blood splattered handcuffs dangled from his right wrist. Marseilles. This is your doing. You’re not going to escape from me. Not now…Not ever. She thundered after the three men.
Marko and Max vaulted across the rubble to freedom. They were almost the last out. Behind them, the last few gang members were withdrawing with their prize. Much of the dust had settled, robbing them on their last bit of cover. Bodies littered the parade grounds. Marko and Max piled into the backseat of one of the waiting cars.
Kojo kicked the car into gear and its engine roared to life. A stampeding bull (dressed in a warden’s outfit) charged across the rubble from behind them and crashed through the hole. It leapt onto the gangster with the rocket propelled grenade launcher and smashed him across the head with a short length of pipe.
‘Drive! DRIVE!’ Marko screamed desperately at Kojo as the car backed up.
Bullets rained around it: punching holes into the metal work. Kojo leaned out the window as he drove and casually emptied the cartridge from a sub-machine gun towards the gap in the wall. He didn’t even try to aim. His face was cold and calm. As they pulled away, they saw Clarke (half in - half out) of the remaining car. She was trying to get at one of the men in the back. One of the gunmen slugged the rabid warden right across the face with a gun butt; knocking her clean out. Her huge backside hung unceremoniously out of the backseat. The last of remaining gang members piled into the vehicle beside her.
Kojo threw his empty gun from the window and spun the car around. As they sped away from the scene of carnage (with the second car hot on their tail) Max looked back through the rear of the car window. He noticed a sign painted across the back doors of the truck.
It read:
/> “How’s my driving? Call 0800-EAT SHIT”
Red-Man’s Audience Chamber
Later that day
The iron bolts were drawn back across the door as Marko Marseilles approached. His prison uniform was gone. His chest was bare except for a long flowing red cloak that was clipped around his shoulders. Scars zig-zagged across his dark frame. They were a testament to Clarke’s unrelenting cruelty and a lifetime of violence. Kojo walked beside him and together they marched down the corridor towards a sun-crested door. When they approached it swung open revealing the inner sanctum of Jomo Marseilles aka Red-Man’s, audience chamber. Nobody was seated at the banquet table this time. Instead, they stood up against the walls on either side of the chamber, awaiting Marko’s return. This time, they were all unarmed. Instead of weapons, each of them held a glass containing a sparkling, pink liquid.
‘Mi bredda!’ a jubilant voice echoed, ‘Is a great ting fi hab yah back in di sun wit us!’ it announced in delight.
Jomo rose from his throne across the room (which cleverly disguised his true height). His arms were wide open and his thick dreadlocks fell about his shoulders like a nest of snakes. They mingled with his necklaces as he moved. He discarded the girls that were draped across his legs when he got up. The room cheered when Jomo and Marko met the centre of the room and embraced. At the back, Kojo silently took his leave.
'Is good fi be back Mi bredda!' Marko returned.
He clapped his older brother on the back sending his jewellery, and beaded locks, flying. Jomo glanced up from the embrace. He was looking at the fat man, with greying hair, standing off to one side.
‘Jacky boy - yah dun us proud mon!’
Marko followed Red-Man’s look across, to see Jack slouched up against the wall, smoking a cigar.
He had no drink.
Jack merely shrugged, as if it were an effortless task.
‘Nice wun Jacky,’ Marko agreed, ‘Owe yu wun mon,’ he said, in a slightly amused voice.
‘No problem,’ Jack said, looking considerably happier at that prospect.
He was glad there had been no mention yet of how many of the gang members had been killed in the reckless escape plan. The fact that Marko was here, and alive, had rendered other considerations obsolete.
Jomo addressed the room with arms splaying wide. ‘Marko 'as returned fi us - wi family again!’ he roared.
The room let out another resounding cheer in response taking an unannounced toast from their glasses.
‘Ahh….Marko - di gurlz 'as missed yah bredda.’
Jomo gestured at the two girls who were draped over his chair. They were blowing imaginary kisses towards them. A lustful grin spread across Marko’s face. He winked at the two girls who were enticing him erotically.
‘Ah…di girls. Mi can get dose anywhere mi bredda,’ Marko said casually. ‘Mi been missing someting much bekke…’
Marko’s voice trailed off as his eyes moved across to the banquet table. They settled upon a large pile of small red pills which were heaped into a gold chalice. The sight of them had caused his right eye to twitch uncontrollably. During his stint in Vigilance the withdrawal side-effects from Apexir had begun to take hold and Marko’s brain had screamed nightly messages of torture at him. His mental oasis of tranquillity had been drowned by the pink ocean that surrounded it. Each day in his cell, the gentle lapping waves had become ever more turbulent, until his mind was wracked with a never-ending storm of red crashing waves that pummelled against the walls of his psyche threatening to drown him forever amongst the turbulent waters. The pathetic substitute drugs (issued randomly according to Warden Clarke’s mood) had done little to calm the crimson tide. Marko had felt that his skull might split under the pressure. Every fibre of him had ached for the peace that the little red pills would bring. Marko had known that he was too far gone to ever be rehabilitated. Not that he had cared about that. He had wanted to slip back into the warm pink velvet layer that lay under his senses, he had wanted to bathe in it and feel it wash over him. It was his own personal paradise and he longed to bask in it once more.
Jomo caught the twitch and nodded sympathetically, ‘I know yah been missin' you ‘fun-in-di-sun’ my bredda, but now wi got some ting much bette,’ ’ he said.
Marko barely looked at him. His hands were already reaching for the pills, like a dying man in the desert groping for water. Jomo caught his arm in mid-movement: noting the burned, charred, fingers.
‘LOUIS!’ he yelled, ‘Come, mon.’
A figure stepped out of the darkness from behind Jomo’s throne. Jack watched as Louis emerged. Louis was a tall thin figure with white rimmed, rounded spectacles. He wore a badly stained laboratory coat, and moved in twitches and jerks. Jack thought that he looked like an oversized stick-insect. Jack knew exactly who he was. His skin crawled into goose bumps at the sight of him. It was as if his own skin was trying to escape from the man.
Louis was French, and had once worked for the budding ISIAH organisation, as a bio-chemist. He had worked primarily in chemicals and new drug formula (like Jack) had been discarded when it was decided that his work was no longer of paramount importance. He was another casualty of Utopia’s formation. Louis had once been a top runner in his field and had quickly fell into Apexir abuse when it first because apparent the drug’s recreational promise. He now worked for Jomo and had helped to construct his Apexir empire manufacturing and refining the drug for the crime lord. Louis made Jack very uncomfortable. Jack felt that it was bad enough to be tied in with Jomo’s gang, but it was well established that Louis was a psychopath and he used human subjects for his monstrous drug trials. Jack had unwittingly sent a few people to him and he hated himself for it. The images of red-stalk-eyed-corpses stared at him accusingly. Jack tried to shut them out as Louis’s screechy voice echoed around the chamber in stuttering jerks.
‘Oui! Oui! - I am here…yes…yes boss man…Here I am...F-F-F-For you boss…Yes-yes!’ he stumbled over the words.
Louis’s hands shook uncontrollably. His speech was babbled and uncoordinated. Both his nostrils were heavily blood stained: a tell-tale sign of a heavy Apexir addict. Jomo clapped his hand heavily on Louis’s back as he drew up alongside, knocking the wind out of him.
‘Yah remember Louis - a course Marko?’
Marko mumbled a half response. He tried to reach again for the pile of bleeders.
‘'e’s been working on some ting a liddle extra special fa us during yuh absence. Isn’t dat right mi mon?’ Jomo continued.
He was directing the question at Louis, who nodded rapidly in response.
‘Oui…Yes! -Yes boss! I-I have it…almost…so close to be ready for you…pour mes amis…I work hard for it…yes! soon!’ he stuttered in a confused mixture of French and English language.
Droplets of drool shot from his mouth as he garbled out the words.
Jack raised an eyebrow. Louis sounded incomprehensible to him and he suspected that the man must have been deranged before he started his drug addiction, let alone now, after he had been sampling his own experiments. Behind Louis’s glasses, his eyes rolled madly as he spoke. Jack supposed that the man’s brains were reduced the equivalent of a fried egg: sizzling and popping madly as they cooked in the demented man’s skull. Jack was thinking that whatever the human wreckage in front of him was going on about it was bound to be something diabolically evil.
Jomo interrupted Louis’s babble with a gesture of his hand. He placed his arm around Marko’s shoulder and led him a few steps from the table: whispering in his ear.
‘Louis 'as develop a new formula of di bleeders. Di next level fa all our fine customers mi bredda.’
Marko’s eyes acknowledged Jomo for the first time since he had seen the pills. His brain struggled for reason amongst the pounding and smashing of the red waves.
‘Bredda. Wi can develop a new strain. A second bleeder. A much greater paradise fa yah…Fa all our friends,’ Jomo whispered seductively.
Louis didn’t catch
Red-Man’s words. He was whispering quietly to himself, in his own incomprehensible language. Jomo held out his hand. A small half-filled glass vial sat in his palm. The liquid inside was a deeper red than the other bleeders on the table.
‘Fa yuh mi bredda,’ he offered in a low fatherly voice.
Marko snatched the vial from his hand. At the sight of the vial, Louis almost hopped over. His arms were flailing and he was babbling constantly in rabbity squeals.
‘Non! non! non! Not ready boss! - not complete yet…Non…Non…Est dangereux!’ he shrieked.
He was jumping up and down frantically and his face had gone as white as a cloud but before he could stop him Marko had undone the cap and swigged the liquid down in one gulp. Louis looked petrified. He backed off clasping his hands together in front of his chest. A tiny, twisted squeal escaped his lips. The empty vial fell from Marko’s hand and shattered on the floor. Jack backed up against the wall as Marko’s body began to tremble. The wall pressed up against his back as he tried to distance himself from the chamber as if he could simply melt through the wall. He knew that if Louis’s latest ‘improvement’ on Apexir did, what he was imagining, then none of them would have very long to live when Jomo saw the unfortunate results. Jomo’s eyes widened and his face contorted into a picture of rage at Louis’s warning. He turned on him furiously.