Strangeways

by Matthew Samm

She calmed him down, she gave him the hug he needed and then she told him what he needed to hear. He needed to let the fists fly. Don’t hold back. Hurt them. Make it so they don’t want to look at you again, let alone hurt you. She thought it might be enough to keep him safe. She had no idea the fire she had lit beneath him.

  The following day, at school, she watched it happen. She noticed Isaac looking furtive, sneaking glances around him at every opportunity. She also noticed the boys. It had to be them.

  They first spotted him as he exited the shared lunch hall. They whispered to each other before dropping their lunch trays on a nearby table and rushing out after. Alix followed them as well.

  They went down the corridor towards the Phys Ed department. Isaac was leaning against the cupboard where all the equipment was stored. Soccer balls, basketballs, footballs, punch bags, kick bags…and dumbbells; a full rack of them, ranging in size from 5lbs to over 100lbs.

  They must have pushed him inside because when Alix arrived, she heard a struggle and lung-bursting screams which settled to whimpers. She knew her brother had failed their father’s test. He’d been beaten again and now he’d have to go back to their father with fresh shames and look him in the eye.

  Alix remembered pulling the door open and noticing the silence. She became aware of deep breathing, her eyes focusing on her brother. Exhaling heavily, he stood in the middle of three unconscious, bloodied bodies. A 10lbs dumbbell hanging limply from his right hand, which was still shaking.

  That was only the beginning. He was never bullied again. He was never truly her brother again. He was something both more and less. He now had the ability to hold his own in this world, but his humanity shuddered. He seemed less affected by cruelty, almost like it was a necessity in life.

  It had only got worse. He’d changed from bullied to bully, tormenting all three of the boys until they aged out. He never bullied anyone else, but it only took a sideways glance to set him into attack mode. Which was fueled even more so when their mother and sister had been killed.

  Their father had been forced to step in on many occasions. He wouldn’t save his son from torment, but he would save himself and the Wardens from poor publicity.

  The expulsion had been the final straw for their father. He couldn’t hide that, and they’d have to deal with the bad press anyway. It had led to the awful conversation at the dinner table just the night before.

  Her father should learn. You can’t unsay things. You can’t erase the wounds you cause. You can’t treat your children like Wardens until they are Wardens. Hopefully, her father would learn. If she could get Isaac back, hopefully, their father would treat him with a little more love and care, rather than as a cold mentor.

  She couldn’t help but think of her own role in her brother’s fall. It was her words that had given him the strength to pick up that dumbbell and do what their father wanted. She had to take some of the blame for his downfall, although, she realized, he couldn’t stay the victim forever. Maybe she needed more of a role in her brother’s life. Maybe she needed to guide him more, to be the mentor her father was, but provide him with more love instead of criticism, guiding him to the light. That was what her mother did so well…when she was around.

  To do this, she would need to get him back. She suddenly realized how much she wanted to succeed. She would take Isaac back from the scum who took him and then, when he was safe, she would make sure they knew not to cross the Wardens again, and especially not her.

  The fire burned in her chest. She had never wanted to punish a criminal more. She’d face Mad Jack and show her brother what he meant to her. Mad Jack would fall before her and beg for mercy.

  Alix looked out as they descended through the clouds and the sun streamed through the hovercraft window, blinking rapidly as it temporarily blinded her. She’d been lost in her thoughts for nearly an hour and they were rapidly approaching the drop.

  A voice from the cockpit crackled through the speaker. “Miss Venner, this is Captain Sharpe, we’re approaching the drop shortly. Underneath your seat, you’ll find a chute. It’s linked to one of the crates. Put it on and clip yourself to the crate marked with a black bee.”

  Alix immediately scanned the crate in front of her and saw the black bee. It was directly in front of her eyes, but only a shade darker than the crate itself. She’d only have been able to see it from her current seat. No one would be able to see it on video.

  She reached under her seat and felt the package tucked under there. Pulling it out, she slipped her arms through the loops. It flattened against her back and hugged her contours. Made to measure, like all Warden gear.

  Alix stood and walked towards the crate in front of her, searching for the hookup. She found it and clipped the ripcord to the belay. There were two ridges for her feet to stand on and two hand holds. She stood on them and held tight.

  “60 seconds”, came the voice over the radio.

  Alix felt her stomach roil with adrenaline. She’d never done this before. She had to rely on the tech working perfectly. She’d have to adapt. She knew that her father would not make this mission too easy for her, he’d want it to be ‘a challenge’, as he’d put it.

  “15 seconds.”

  Alix tightened her grip on the handles, and everything seemed to quieten down. There was no turning back now. Even if she wanted to, she would not have the time to unclip herself safely before the crate heaved her from the hovercraft’s hold.

  In the silence, with her ear to the crate, she thought she heard a low growl. She strained to listen more, pressing herself into the steel. Definitely. From inside the crate, she heard snapping and braying, howling and snarling. This was the bait crate.

  Realization slotted into position. She was on this one because it would cause the most chaos when the Islanders came towards it. She’d be able to slip away easily.

  Mid-thought, the timer hit zero and the rear doors flashed open in less than a half second. Crate one vanished, then crate two. Finally, she saw the security latches release on the floor slide and crate three, with her trembling body attached, flew from the hovercraft.

  Her stomach disappeared on her as gravity ceased to have any effect on her bones and organs, and still, she clung to the crate.

  She was aware of the wind slamming her helmet but didn’t feel any of the sensations, the equipment doing its job perfectly.

  Slowly, her body acclimated as the crate fell and she began to glance around her surroundings in the flourishing daylight. There were no people visible. Usually, they announce the drops so that people gather, but, with her mission, they were waiting.

  Below her, was a clearing surrounded by crude ‘houses’ cobbled together with detritus from trees, old crates and stone. In the centre of the clearing, a charred patch of earth, a remnant of a fire burning on previous nights. Surrounding the clearing stood forest, dissected by clear paths cutting through the greenery. In other times, this area would have been idyllic.

  She felt her chutes deploy, the clip snapping free in the same mechanism, and instinctively released her hold on the crate. It disappeared for a few more seconds before deploying a single chute. Her chutes angled towards the forest, the twin canopies, less than half the size of the crate’s main chute, provided surgical control over her descent. The crate’s chute simply arrested the fall to survivable levels.

  When she was over the forest, a blaring fog horn cascaded around the island, ricocheting off the mountains and hills, the undergrowth deadening the sound in some areas and heightening it in others.

  As Alix disappeared in the canopy, she began to see people emerge from the shanty town she’d seen on her descent. They scanned the sky, pointing when they saw the crates.

  Her final glance was to look up and see, in the distance, the other crates fall to the island. They too had deployed canopies and she imagined the other islanders doing the same as those nearby.

  Then she was in the trees, her mini-chutes allowing her to maneuver to what looked like a sturdy
branch. She landed with cat-like agility and tapped a button on her chute straps. The mini canopy retracted itself, folding up into the pack she carried on her back.

  There was a dull thud nearby and she assumed the crate, on which she’d hitched a ride, had landed in the clearing.

  Alix shimmied down the tree in seconds, her Warden athleticism giving her almost supernatural agility.

  She stuck to the undergrowth, not wanting to run into anybody on the trail, and headed towards the still echoing thud. She scanned another tree and free-climbed the bark, hopping silently up the branches until she could see events unfold in the clearing.

  The crate had landed on top of the wisps of campfire from the previous night. Men and women surrounded it. They were wiry and carried makeshift weapons, generally spears fashioned out of wood and tipped with rusting metal from previous crates.

  One man, the largest, wore a ragged shirt and rapidly decaying hiking trousers smeared with dirt. Through the shirt, she spied taut muscle which spasmed as he prowled backwards and forwards, a safe distance in front of the drop.

  He pointed at one of the men and gestured towards the crate. This second man nodded and vanished into the forest. He returned seconds later with a rock, which he hurled at the crate, the collision echoing around the clearing again.

  Alix noticed one of the cameras scan around to pick up this man. The other cameras were similarly picking out interesting members of the gathering tribe. There were cameras on every crate and they each did this every time. They were never a giveaway to the Islanders. There was no way they could use the cameras to guess which the bait crate was, and which were the supplies.

  Seeing that the stones had not sprung the crate, the leader motioned to another man and whirled his hand in a tornado motion.

  This second man nodded and moved towards the edge of the clearing, out of Alix’s sight. She craned her neck to look, but the man wasn’t gone long. He charged towards the crate, reaching top speed as he approached. He veered in front of the box, trying to get close enough to spring the crate, but far enough away to escape any repercussions should this be the bait crate. He had not gone close enough and the crate failed to spring.

  Finally, the leader took a step back and motioned to one of the women. They vanished into one of the shanty houses and reappeared a few moments later supporting an elderly man. He needed a cane to support his weight, as well as the shoulders of the woman.

  The elderly man was taken to the leader, who placed a hand on his shoulder and looked deep into his eyes. With the words flowing, the elderly man nodded and smiled; a warm smile that spread across to his ears.

  Alix knew what was going to happen. She’d seen it on video and the commentators of that episode had explained the process. If all else failed, the elderly or infirm would volunteer to walk towards the crate and ensure the supply crate opened. If it contained supplies, the volunteer would receive extra rations as a thank you for putting their life on the line. If it didn’t, they were the first to feel the full brunt of whatever trap was laid within.

  The elderly man turned towards the crate and the other gatherers stepped backwards. Those that had weapons braced themselves. There was a significant chance they could be fighting for their lives in the next few moments.

  The elderly man slowly progressed to the front panel. He showed no signs of hesitation and was moving as quickly as his worn knees would carry him.

  Alix knew what this was. This was the bait crate. The elderly man was meandering towards his death. Alix wanted to scream at him to stop. She knew they were criminals, but she wasn’t, and she couldn’t let an old man go to his death when she could stop it.

  Her father’s face flashed into her mind and his disapproving look. ‘They’re criminals’, he would say. ‘They deserve to be here and to suffer the fate that awaits them’.

  Alix fought with herself for a few moments. Finally, she couldn’t stand it and made up her mind to save the man. It might even show good will towards the islanders if she did. Perhaps she could negotiate for her brother’s release diplomatically if she saved one of the islanders from death.

  She never got the chance. As she began her descent down the thick trunk, she heard the panels of the crate slam open. The old man had sprung the crate.

  When the massacre ended, Alix had never seen so much blood.

  5

  The old man was hit first. He didn’t see the attack coming, but he must have been aware, as the snarling assaulted his ears and he felt the teeth clamp on to his flesh.

  Alix watched from the trees. There was a whole pack, froth bubbling from their diseased lips; dead, zombified eyes lashing out at targets for their teeth.

  They were enormous dogs, their mouths foaming with killing lust. An entire pack hurtled from the crate, flowing past the old man, still feebly struggling against the killing muscle atop him. They snapped at anyone who couldn’t flee quickly enough and downed several of the unarmed islanders.

  Quickly, the only targets available were the armed men and a colossal fight ensured. Teeth versus crude weaponry; decaying savage against decaying savage. The crowds in the city would love this episode. It was an action-packed cavalcade of death and excitement. They’d still need to edit it down, make sure the show really crackled, driving the hungry public wild with self-righteous bloodshed.

  Eventually, all the dogs were put down and Alix watched the aftermath. She counted at least nine islanders unmoving, laid on the ground in widening crimson puddles. A further six cradled injuries or appealed for help. Mixed between them all were the dogs, bleeding and howling with their last breaths. Not all had been dispatched. Some had fled into the forest; another problem for another day.

  Alix felt sickened by the sight and had to remind herself that these people deserved to be here. They had forsaken their right to civility and law when they repeatedly committed their crimes.

  The Islanders began clearing the wreckage, dragging the dead to one of the outer huts and dragging the dead dogs into the forest. The dogs were clearly going to be buried, but it wasn’t clear what was going to happen to the human bodies. They were being taken inside; they weren’t going to be buried. Alix felt herself wretch as she entertained a sickening possibility. When resources were scarce, people would do anything to survive.

  Alix distracted herself from the thought with the mission to hand. She used her vantage point to see more of the island. It had once been connected to the mainland, but, when Strangeways was first devised, this remote section of the mainland was sectioned off. Now, it was about the same size as old Manhattan but covered in forests.

  Where the trees failed, the landscape undulated into craggy mountain tops and deep, gouged valleys. Surrounding the island, on the mainland, stood guard stations. Huge towers with spotlights and heavily armed sentries. Their mission was to kill anyone who attempted to leave Strangeways. They rarely missed and now, the Islanders rarely tried.

  She didn’t know how many people lived on the island, but she knew it was overcrowded. Some wild animals lived in the forests, and the newly escaped dogs would add to the resources, but few had the skills to guarantee a kill.

  That was one of the reasons they relied so heavily on the crate drops and why her father could fashion a wildly popular video show from their suffering. Just when she started to feel a pang of sorrow for the Islanders, her conditioned response kicked in. Reminding herself that these people were criminal scum, monsters who probably eat the flesh of the dead to survive.

  In the centre of her field of vision, just protruding from a gap in the canopy stood a building, larger and more sturdily built than the shanty huts in this clearing.

  Alix tried to think like her father would want her to. Where would they take Isaac? They’d take him to the centre of Strangeways, where it would be virtually impossible to reach and where they’d have the greatest chance of spotting any offensive against them.

  The larger structure in the middle had to be the place. That’s where Mad Ja
ck would have taken Isaac. Alix made her decision but took a second to think, for the first time, about Mad Jack. She’d watched his son die in the cells. His son deserved it after killing her mother and sister, but the rumors about Mad Jack were far more terrifying.

  Mad Jack Brooks was utterly fearless. He was completely undeterred by risk or personal danger. If he wanted something, he took it. If there was someone in the way, he’d remove them regardless of the cost to them or himself. It was said that if Mad Jack held a grudge against someone, their best choice would be suicide: death would be certain in either case.

  Alix had seen his mug shot once and quivered merely at the sight of him. His head was shaved close to the bone and expanded as it reached his body until it was impossible to tell where his head ended, and his neck began. Finally, his traps spread into bulbous, powerful shoulder muscles and a rigid body.

  She would have to face him eventually. It was the secondary purpose of her visit to the island. Once her brother was safe, she wanted her own vengeance against Mad Jack. She knew her father wasn’t going to commit suicide and if the legends were true; if Mad Jack would keep coming back until his grudge was satisfied and her father dead, she knew that only by beating him, would the grudge be lifted.

  Yet defeating Mad Jack felt impossible. He was built like a bull. If she ended up in his arms, he’d simply crush the life out of her and all her training, all her plans would be for naught. She would be walking a tightrope, with no safety net if she fell.

  She began to think about the crimes Mad Jack had committed and his pulse barely raised when he’d killed the men; how he’d defeated every Warden placed before him and how he ended up on the island even though he didn’t reoffend. She couldn’t drift off into a daydream. The crate had bought her a distraction and she could not squander it. She felt a spasm of guilt as she imagined her father’s eyes frowning at her poor decision-making. She began to climb down the tree, reaching the bottom in seconds, jumping the final few meters and rolling as her feet first contacted the forest floor, ensuring there was no sound.