End Times V: Kingdom of Hell

by Shane Carrow

  “I think it’s fine,” I croaked, nauseous with terror.

  “Wrong,” Draeger said, and pressed the iron against my shoulder.

  I screamed. I can’t even begin to describe how painful it was, and I don’t want to, because I’m close enough to vomiting now as it is. Even thinking about that room makes me sick.

  The brand on the wound was nothing. Nothing compared to what happened over the next ten, twenty, thirty minutes? I can’t remember. It’s one enormous, awful inferno of agony and terror and utter helplessness. I blacked out a few times, I think, only to be brought round again by Draeger. He was talking the whole time, about how I could tell him where the codebook was, I think. At one point, just before pressing the iron against my forehead, he mentioned something about the history of branding – Roman slaves and medieval criminals and Jews in concentration camps. I don’t know. I don’t care. I was half out of my mind. Across the thousand kilometres that separated us, over the lush green dairy farms and the zombie-haunted plains and the alpine snows, I could feel Aaron twisting in agony just as I was. A brief, psychotic glimpse of the Endeavour’s medical bay, of the ghostly faces of Simon and Jonas and Andy, gripping his arms and his head, trying to hold him still while he screamed and writhed in phantom pain.

  I feel terrible about this, but somehow that helped me. It made me feel less alone.

  Eventually Draeger was done. I think D’Costa may have said something; a warning, or a caution. Ease me into it. Go slowly. Can’t have me dying of shock when there’s scheduled months ahead of us, oh no, can’t have that. I sat there in excruciating pain, on a tide of misery and fury, with nothing in my head except a ferocious, uncontrollable urge to break free from the chair and rip Draeger’s face off with my bare hands.

  “I’m going to kill you,” I said hoarsely as he left the room. “I’m going to fucking kill you, and if I don’t, my brother will. I promise you that. I promise you that.”

  He didn’t even turn around.

  Afterwards they sent a doctor in. I almost could have laughed. He opened his kit bag on the floor and set about swabbing and disinfecting, running an alcohol pad across the blistery red burns that now covered my chest and stomach. Sustainable torture. Draeger didn’t want me dying on him this early.

  “Morphine,” I whispered to the doctor. My skin felt like it had been ripped apart by a swarm of broken glass. “Please.”

  “Sorry, mate,” he said. “I don’t have any.”

  “Liar,” I snarled. I could see the bottles and syringes sitting right there in his kit.

  “I’m not allowed to, all right?” he said irritably. He had the tone of somebody refusing a child’s pleas for chocolate. Affronted. As though I was asking for some lavish indulgence. By the door, the guards were still staring straight off into space. Just another duty roster. Just another prisoner being tortured for information.

  “Are you people brainwashed?” I hissed. “Are you that fucking weak? Can’t you see what’s happening here? Can’t you see what’s going on? One little fuck-up and that’s it, you’re done. You’re sitting here in the chair instead of me. You only have as many rights as he lets you. He’s a fucking psycho and you’re the ones who give him the power! It doesn’t have to be like this!”

  “Just shut up, kid,” the doctor sighed, packing up his bag. “Save your breath. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  When they escorted me back to my cell, I didn’t fight back. My skin hurt too much to even think about making sudden movements. I didn’t try to run off or spit in their faces. I just walked as slowly and gingerly as possible.

  And then I screamed my fucking head off, from pain and frustration and deep, deep hatred.

  Later on, I called Aaron, tears running down my face. I’m sorry, I said. I’m so, so, sorry.

  Jesus, Matt, what the hell are you sorry for?

  For putting you through this. Because you have to feel it as well. Because of this stupid fucking link we have.

  Aaron gave a weak laugh. Matt. That’s nothing. That’s nothing, OK? All I get is the pain, and it doesn’t even hold a candle to what you must be feeling. And mine’s just pain. No... no damage.

  He hesitated as he said that, well aware that it wasn’t the right thing to say. The sick horror of the scarring – the burns on my face, across my chest, on my stomach – swelled up in my mind. If I ever make it out of here, I’ll be disfigured for life.

  Aaron must have known what I was thinking. The Endeavour says the sick bay can heal scar tissue, he quickly reassured me. Anything they do to you, we can fix right back up, once you get home.

  Which was a lie. The seemingly magical qualities of the Endeavour’s sick bay had healed wounds of mine during my stay there, but it had damn well left plenty of scars behind. As far as the human body is concerned, a scar means your wound is healed. The body doesn’t care about cosmetic appeal.

  Not that it matters. Because I’m never getting out of here.

  Aaron, please, I whispered. You have to do something. Anything. I’m dying here. I don’t even know if I said anything to him or not. I can’t remember. I might have screamed out the location a hundred times. I can’t fucking do this!

  You’re doing okay, Matt, he said desperately. You’re strong. I know you are. You can handle this. Fuck, I would have been ready to give in just from what I felt down here. You’re getting worse than that and you’re still handling it. Just... Jesus, lie to him if you have to. Buy some time. Whatever it takes. We’re going to get you of there. We’re going to bring you home. I promise you.

  Impossible. I’m in a cell in the heart of Armidale, the heart of New England. Behind solid walls and thick locks and armed guards. Behind the full military might of a balkanised Australia’s most powerful new nation.

  I can tell Draeger where the PAL codes are. Or I can die.

  But I can’t keep being tortured. I can’t handle this.

  No. Fuck that. I’m going to kill him. I’m going to rip his fucking heart out of his chest and tear his throat out. I’m going to do that. Just that. That’s all I need. Draeger’s blood. On the fucking floor. Spilling out of him. I don’t care what happens after that.

  I’m never going to see Aaron again. I’m never going to see Ellie again.

  I’m never going to meet my child.

  September 22

  For the first time Draeger came to me in the torture cell alone. No guards, no D’Costa. He had a backpack over his shoulder which he dropped bluntly on the floor, folding his arms, staring at me.

  I was a mess. My face was swollen and covered in dried blood, and I was squinting through puffy eyes. I was having trouble breathing – stress or anxiety or damage to my windpipe, I don’t know. I was still barefoot and shirtless, wearing nothing but a pair of jeans, my upper body covered in gruesome red burns and blisters.

  “ Have you been talking to your brother, Matthew?” Draeger asked. “How is he?”

  “Doing better than me,” I rasped.

  “Hmm.” He folded his arms and started walking around me, in a slow circle, as he liked to do. Whenever he was out of my field of vision I felt a constant low-grade panic, certain that he was about to break my arm or slit my throat or something. “I’m still not sure whether to believe that, or whether to call it bullshit. Stranger things have certainly happened, these days. And I don’t know why you’d fill all those pages with such an elaborate lie.”

  “Believe whatever you want.”

  “Which of you is older?”

  “Aaron,” I said. “By about twenty minutes.” He seemed to be asking pretty pointless questions, and I was fine with that, desperate to put off the agony for as long as possible.

  “You get along well?”

  “He’s my brother.”

  “You went to school together?”

  “Rossmoyne Senior High,” I mumbled. “We graduated last year.”

  Draeger finished his circuit and stood before me again. “You know, you both have Biblical nam
es,” he said. “Matthew was one of Christ’s Apostles. Aaron was the brother of Moses. Were your parents religious?”

  “No,” I said wearily. “They just liked the names.”

  He grunted, and unzipped his backpack, pulling out a multitool. He played with it for a moment, flicking it around his fingers, watching me with his expression hovering between the usual calmness and the flickers of insanity. I felt a painful sense of dread at what was coming next, felt the hysteria hammering away inside me, ready to break free.

  “You’re doing very well, you know,” he said conversationally. “I’ve had hardened military men crack after just a few hours. Aaron must be of great help to you. Either that or you’re just a tough son of a bitch.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Yes. I’ve heard it all, Matthew. I’ve heard all your screams and your begging and your anger. It’s a waste of time. The only thing that makes it stop is telling me what I want to know. The sooner you learn that, the less of this you have to go through.”

  He unfolded a knife from the multitool and slashed at my face. I felt a hot line drawn across it, part of my lip cut open, and as I was still reeling my head back he slashed me again, across the other cheek. Then he slammed my face with an open-palmed punch and I felt a hideous grinding pain as my nose broke.

  And I realised that I couldn’t take this anymore.

  And I screamed out for him to stop, and I screamed out that I would tell him where the codebook was.

  He stopped, pulled back. Stared at me with one hand gripping my hair and one hand holding the knife, the blade dripping with my blood. He almost seemed disappointed.

  “Where?” he growled.

  I licked my ragged lips, tasted blood and iron. A million different thoughts were swirling around in my mind, all screaming for attention.

  And it was then that I realised that no matter what, no matter what, I could never let this man get what he wanted. If he did, then the pain I was going through would be multiplied a thousandfold. Inflicted on people whom I’d never met, people who’d been scrabbling for the bare bones of survival all this terrible year, people who would have all their faint dreams of relief dashed because I’d been too weak and stupid and pathetic to stand up to him. Gone in a heartbeat. Fried up or left to lie in ruins in agony, flash burns, radiation poisoning, shadows on the footpath, wherever it might be, whatever other survivor stronghold or loyalist ADF base he might choose to use it on. It all came down to me, right here, in this dark little room.

  “Near the quarry,” I croaked. “There’s an RFS station. I left them in a cupboard…”

  “They’re not in the RFS station,” he said simply, and I felt a sick groan rise up inside me. “If you think I haven’t read every word of your little journal carefully, if you think I don’t have field teams out there retracing your steps, if you think I don’t know exactly where you’ve been and when you’ve been there between now and when you jumped out of that plane, then you must be more of a stupid fucking idiot than you look.”

  He released my hair. “There is nothing I hate more than liars, Matthew,” he snarled. “They are the bane of an interrogator. People will say anything to stop the pain. It’s a habit that needs to be knocked out of them, as early as possible. They need to learn to tell the truth.” He grabbed my hair again and stared me right in the eye. “So for every lie you tell, Matthew, I’m going to cut one of your fingers off.”

  And then he flipped some hideous little cutting tool out of the wedge of metal in his hand, reached behind the chair, clamped it around the little finger of my left hand and sliced right through it.

  I felt the bone tearing, the flesh ripped clear. Screaming. Excruciating. The sense of my pinkie finger dropping wetly to the floor. Pulling at the handcuffs in agony, tearing at my wrists, my twisted hands soaked in blood. My vision was swimming as I went into shock. I was spitting furious vengeance at Draeger, hating him, swearing that he would be punished. “You’ll go to hell for this,” I gasped. “You think this is what Jesus would do? You’ll burn in hell. You’ll burn in hell forever.”

  Draeger was calmly wiping my blood off the multitool with a rag. “You don’t believe in Jesus and you don’t believe in hell, Matthew,” he said calmly, his voice distant and blurred.

  “No,” I spat, wheezing for air, heart thrumming like a hummingbird, my whole left arm throbbing, the terrible vivid unfairness of it all scalded into my mind. “But you do.”

  And then – this was just before I blacked out, as my vision was blurring and my mind delirious, so I’m not certain that I heard right, not sure that it’s true – Draeger leaned over me and whispered, “No. I don’t.”

  When I woke up I was lying in my cell on my back. I could feel my little finger twisting and moving about, flexing this way and that, and for a brief moment the ludicrous thought that it might have been reattached swam into my mind. I raised my head to peer at it. My hand was swathed in bandages, already soaked red. A stub where the finger should have been. The feeling of movement was just phantom pain, a nervous echo.

  I cried for a long time. Not for the loss of the finger, or the pain, or even for the feeling of sheer pathetic domination. I cried because I’d given in. Because for a split second, I’d been about to tell Draeger where the codebook was, before the few better senses still holed up somewhere in my brain seized control for a vital second and gave him a false answer.

  I cried because that single moment of weakness had made it clear what I would have to do.

  I called Aaron. He was right there, immediately. He’d probably been waiting for me all day. While I’d been unconscious, I’d felt him floating on the outskirts of my mind. I’d actually felt that a lot since I’d been recaptured, as though I was desperate to be close to him, desperate to remind myself that there was still a world out there.

  Matt, he said grimly. How are you doing?

  I nearly told him, I said sadly. I nearly told him where they were, and when he realised I was lying he cut my finger off.

  You’re going to be okay, Matt, he said, clutching at straws. You’re going to be all right, okay? And one day we’ll kill him. You or me or Tobias, I don’t know. But we’ll kill him.

  No, I said. I’m not going to be all right and we are never going to kill him. Don’t lie to me.

  You don’t know what’s going to happen, Aaron said angrily. I haven’t slept in days, Matt. We’ve been talking to Christmas Island, trying to contact all the scattered bases, trying to put a team together. We’re trying to get you out of there. We can! We just need time!

  We don’t have time, I said weakly. It’s been three days. Three days, and I nearly snapped in there. I nearly gave in. Tomorrow I will give in. And I can’t let that happen. I paused for a moment, wracked with sorrow, connected to my brother in that dark psychological world on the inside of my eyelids. Aaron, I called you to say goodbye.

  No! Aaron screamed. He sounded for all the world like a spoilt kid who’d gotten a Christmas present he didn’t want. You can’t fucking say that to me!

  This isn’t a choice you get to make, I murmured. This is just something I have to do. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything, Aaron. You’ve done your best. You’ve done absolutely everything you can. I love you more than anyone in the world, Aaron, and I want to you to know how much it’s all meant to me. But I can’t risk this. I have to finish it.

  Goddamn it, Matt! Aaron yelled at me. I can’t handle this! Do you realise that? If you die, then I won’t be able to fucking cope! I will give up and I will break down and I will die! You are the only thing that has brought me this far and I need you more than anything else and if I don’t have you then I won’t be able to fucking go on, so don’t you fucking give up on me now!

  I paused for a moment, overwhelmed with grief. For a very long time, being hunted across the mountainsides of New England, lying in a dark cell, sitting in a chair and being branded, the only thing that had kept me sane was my brother. Even when Rahvi was with me, what
really kept me going was the knowledge that I had Aaron – and that larger silent network of Jonas and Andy and Simon and the rest of the Jagungal resistance, propping me up, lending me support, while I was a fugitive in a foreign land. Every nightly conversation was a reinforcement of that support, a simple message of love and care and the knowledge that I wasn’t alone.

  I had never realised that maybe Aaron had been relying on me just as much. Maybe even more so.

  Please, Matt, Aaron sobbed. I’m begging you. Just wait. The Endeavour has an idea. A plan. We don’t know if it will work but we want to try. Please just let us try. Please, just wait. One more day. Just one more day. Then I promise you can do whatever you want. Please, Matt!

  Okay, I said, and Aaron broke down into a flood of thankful tears.

  To tell you the truth, I have no idea how I’d even begin to go about killing myself in a bare and empty cell.

  September 23

  Again, soldiers at the cell door. Again, Draeger swaggering into the torture room. Again, the sense of hysteria and panic and sick, nauseous fear. Only this time I wasn’t controlling it. This time I was already weeping piteously as Draeger came into the room, already begging for him to stop.

  “So tell me where the codebook is,” he said, arms outstretched.

  But I didn’t. I still had that much self-control, at least.

  Draeger shrugged, as one of the soldiers handed him a long metal rod. A cattle prod. I was already groaning, a low continuous drone, over and over again. He pressed it against my bare stomach and shocked me. It felt like somebody had smashed a red-hot baseball bat into my torso, and I screamed.

  More of the same. Over and over. I don’t even recall. I was lost in a completely mind-bending world of pain, of screaming, of psychosis. A blind world, my eyes either squeezed shut or rolling back into my head. A world punctuated by Draeger’s stern lecturing, by the crackling of the cattle prod, by the smell of my own burning skin. My mind was being stretched to breaking point.

  So it was hardly a surprise when I felt Aaron leaking in around the edges. No words. It was back to the most basic of feelings, before the Endeavour had walked us through the techniques for calm and proper communication. It was an expression of our most fundamental thoughts and urges: terror and agony on my part, an overwhelming desire to help on his. We were tethered together on a level I couldn’t even begin to imagine, a vast, impregnable, shining link stretching across another plane of reality to a point a thousand kilometres away from me. I seized it and refused to let go, tried my hardest to block out the pain and the horror and the sound of my own screams. I pushed deeper into my own mind, and closer to Aaron’s.