Bloodcrier: The Complete Two-Book Series

by Richard Denoncourt

  She looked afraid now. “What sacrifice?”

  “Your own blood. Keep him away from Charlotte. No matter what happens, you’re going to have to make a choice. It’s either Michael or Charlotte. You can’t have both. The world you want to live in isn’t big enough for the three of you, and if you try to make it that way, we’re all doomed.”

  Arielle broke out of his grasp. The look she gave him was one of utter shock, as if Blake had betrayed her somehow.

  “We’ll talk when he gets back,” she said. Without another glance at him, she turned and left the room.

  5

  Colonel Simon Keagan studied himself in the standing mirror.

  He fastened the last few buttons of his gray-green shirt, which matched the color of his uniform. Today was going to be brutally hot. He could tell by the sweat already glistening along the top of his forehead. These were the days he dreaded—when just putting on his uniform made him sweat. By lunchtime, he would have dark stains the size of dinner plates around his armpits.

  He left the top button unfastened—everyone at Camp Brazen did it, even the visiting officers—but he made sure his insignia was straight and free of grime. That was another thing that seemed to coat his entire body at all times, even after a shower—that grainy, microscopic layer of sand that infiltrated every crevice of every building in this damned city, including his apartment on the top floor of Block 7A, where he lived with the other officers who worked at the camp.

  “Simon, honey,” his wife, Andrea, called from the kitchen. “You sure you don’t want coffee?”

  “It’ll just dehydrate me,” he said. “Water is fine.”

  “No liquor, no cigarettes,” she said, “and now, no coffee. I truly have a model husband.”

  Smiling, he grabbed his peaked cap with its gaudy insignia, then placed it delicately over his scalp. Even after three weeks, he was still getting used to the thing. Despite his long-standing tenure in the Republic’s army, Simon Keagan was unlike other offices in that he kept his hair a couple of inches long on top. He enjoyed combing it after a cold shower, liked the way it glistened, black as an oil slick in the morning sunlight. The cap just messed it up. Plus, a peaked cap in enemy territory might as well be a sign proclaiming to the enemy, “Shoot me, I’m an officer!” But Harris Kole insisted on his officers maintaining every ounce of what he called “prideful bearing,” even out in the Eastlands.

  The hot, dusty Eastlands, where the only things that blossomed were military careers. Everything else was dead and barren. But that was why Simon Keagan had agreed to be stationed there—he had a career to nurture and a family to feed. Not that he’d been given much of a choice. Fortunately, with the experience and favor he would gain out here, he could go a long way toward a cushy police captain post back home, where he could spend his days overseeing a quiet detainment center or something predictable like that.

  “She’s quiet this morning,” he said, stepping into the narrow space between the kitchen and the dining table to gaze at his five-month-old daughter Sarah. She sat in an old highchair some of his men had found while scavenging in the city. Without being ordered to do so, they had spent a dozen of their off-duty hours searching for baby supplies, which they then presented to Keagan as a “welcome aboard” gift. They were good men.

  “That’s because she gets to see her daddy in his hat today,” Andrea said.

  She sat at the table next to Sarah, busily wiping the girl’s mouth with a napkin. Sarah made a happy gurgling sound as she reached for her father. Simon went to pick her up, but Andrea flashed her palm at him, freezing him in place.

  “She’ll spit up all over your shirt,” she warned. “Then you’ll have to change it.”

  “Oh, come on. She’s a colonel’s daughter. She has more decorum than that.”

  Andrea gave him a tired smile. “You know she will. I need her to keep the food down. We’re running low as it is.”

  “On what? Oatmeal?”

  Andrea lifted a spoonful of what appeared to be green mush. Definitely wasn’t oatmeal. It smelled like a vegetable of some sort. She brought it to Sarah’s mouth, but the baby wasn’t having it. Instead, she grinned at her father.

  “Everything,” Andrea said. “Especially oatmeal. I’m down to feeding her lunch food for breakfast. You’d think a colonel’s benefits would include regular shipments of food that wasn’t military rations.”

  Keagan placed his hand on his daughter’s head, then stroked it gently. She babbled excitedly, then burped, sending up a tiny torrent of pale green fluid.

  “See what I mean?” Andrea said, going for the napkin again.

  Keagan beat her to it. He grabbed the napkin and wiped Sarah’s face clean, then dabbed a bit of his daughter’s puke on his wife’s nose. Disgusted, she scrunched it at him.

  Chuckling, Simon bent over the table to kiss his wife. She moved her face so the dirty tip of her nose landed in his mouth. A moment later, they were kissing like teenagers, sharing the not-so-unpleasant taste of sweet peas their little girl had spit up.

  When he arrived outside, Colonel Simon Keagan made sure to spit several times before getting into his truck, so his men wouldn’t smell it on him. They drove toward Camp Brazen, and he was already covered in sweat by the time they arrived at the gate.

  The prisoner—a naked, emaciated man in his thirties—was covered in sores. He could barely hold himself upright. A rope supported part of his weight, attaching him to the ceiling. His wrists had been bound behind his back, and the rope pulled just enough to strain his shoulder muscles without tearing them apart. That wouldn’t be the case for long.

  “I don’t know anything,” the man said. Spit ran over his lower lip, a dangling thread. “I swear to God.”

  “Don’t swear to God, you hapless fool,” said the bearish man looming in front of him. He sounded slightly amused. “There is no God—only the Party.”

  The officer who had spoken was one rank higher than Colonel Keagan, though he wasn’t the camp’s warden. He was only visiting, almost like a consultant. But Keagan, despite being Warden Colonel of Camp Brazen, didn’t dare defy him in any matter. The man was General Stephen Forrest Halsidier. He even introduced himself that way, always with his middle name included.

  “Then I swear on the Party,” the prisoner said, staring beseechingly up at the general. “If I knew anything, I would have killed myself rather than be captured by you.”

  “Spoken like a true soldier,” Halsidier said. “Like someone who would rise naturally through the ranks of any military force. Don’t you see, Jason? Your courage is what’s giving you away.”

  Halsidier wore bright blue latex gloves, like a surgeon. They formed a sharp contrast against his dark green uniform. He clasped one of his gloved hands on the prisoner’s right shoulder, next to a festering, red-black sore. The prisoner winced at the man’s grip.

  “You’ve been like this for two days now,” Halsidier said, his voice as low and artificially assuring as that of a father trying to get a stubborn son to see reason. “Your rat bites are infected. Your shoulder muscles must hurt a great deal, and we haven’t even raised the rope halfway. We do that, and they’ll split apart like a handkerchief being torn in two. I know you’re a spy for the NDR, and I’m only going to ask you one more time before things get really bad…”

  Simon Keagan watched—and learned.

  The prisoner pulled in a ragged breath, almost a sob but not quite. This one was different. The fact he hadn’t cried once meant he was one of the stronger ones—a soldier probably chosen by the NDR to be a spy because of his bravery. Keagan admired that. He always admired the ones who didn’t cry, yet he knew it was a risky emotion for a man in his position. Identifying with the enemy was the last thing a warden of a prison camp should ever allow himself to do.

  Halsidier shifted his grip, then pressed his thumb against the infected sore. The prisoner let out a yelp, but he quickly bit back any other cries of agony. Tears filled his eyes. Keagan thought t
he man would start bawling. He wanted him to. It would appease Halsidier’s ego and save the prisoner—Jason…but no, names made them seem like people—from one of the worst torture devices Keagan had ever seen.

  Once a prisoner’s shoulders were torn off the bone, their life was over. There were no doctors skilled enough to repair them—not out here where the camp’s only doctor was a hack with the kind of crude experience typical of the Eastlands—and without the use of their arms…

  He shuddered to think about it. For some reason, his daughter’s face popped into his head. She smiled, but then her face contorted with fear. Keagan drove away the thought. It had been happening more and more lately, the visions of his daughter’s—and sometimes his wife’s—face, reacting in horror at what took place in the camp.

  “Hurts, doesn’t it?” Halsidier asked. “You think you know pain, but all I need to do is make a simple gesture, and my men will pull that rope until your wrists go above your head. Then, you know what’ll happen? Your shoulders will twist out of their sockets so fast you’ll hear them pop like chicken bones cracked in half. But that isn’t the pain I’m talking about. It’s after that—when I leave you here to hang day and night by shreds of torn-apart muscle—that you’ll wish someone would cut all the way through, just so you can finally lie down.”

  The prisoner gave Halsidier a steely look. Then he spit in the general’s face. Keagan flinched, all too aware of what would come next. Jason was in for a world of pain.

  Halsidier yanked his hand off the man’s shoulder. He retreated, nodding slightly as he studied the prisoner. Keagan expected the general to wipe the saliva off his face with the back of his hand, to at least ask for a towel—they kept many on hand, mostly to wipe off blood spatter—or maybe have some sort of outburst. Men in his position often did when they failed to get what they wanted.

  But this was no ordinary man. Keagan had heard the rumors. General Halsidier had been hand-selected by the One President, Harris Kole, because of an unusual trait that made him stand apart from most of the other officers.

  That trait was a complete lack of hesitation or remorse. The ability to torture and kill as easily as a normal man put salt on his eggs during breakfast. Or so Keagan had heard.

  “Let’s see,” Halsidier calmly said.

  Then he did something even Keagan found difficult to comprehend, let alone believe. The rumors were true after all.

  He pressed his index and middle fingers together, then tucked his hand under the right side of his chin. Despite the spit running down his face, the man was actually checking his own pulse. Keagan stared in stunned disbelief.

  Halsidier stood like that, hand against his throat, for several moments. The other guards in the room traded looks of confusion. The prisoner showed no hint of concern, though his breathing had visibly quickened from what must have been a jolt of adrenaline.

  “You know, I love this job,” Halsidier idly said, letting his arm drop to his side. “For the most part, it’s pretty boring, just like everything else in my life. I have a boring wife who fucks the way glaciers melt, and two boring sons whose governing concerns in life are girls and passing exams at the academy. I’m surrounded by boring, empty uniforms who only know how to salute and punch a clock.”

  Keagan watched as the prisoner’s saliva continued to run down the side of Halsidier’s face. The general didn’t seem to notice or care.

  “But,” Halsidier said, “every once in a while, I come across someone like you. A soldier who displays real courage. A warrior who I’m sure made his commanding officer immensely proud. Most men would respect that. And I, like most men, respect the hell out of you, Jason. But the problem with most men, like my colleague over here…” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at Keagan, who stiffened slightly. “…is that they regret having to treat you this way, because they respect you. Torture you, stuff like that. I don’t regret doing it, not at all. The only thing I regret is I didn’t get to you sooner, when you were just a boy. Then I would have turned you over to my side of things. You would have made a fine killer in my army. Instead, those idiots in the NDR made you a scout, which is how you ended up here.

  “Unfortunately, you were born on the wrong side of the wall. That’s all. You didn’t choose to serve who you serve. You didn’t choose to come here or get yourself caught by soldiers who happen to be better trained than you are. They were just lucky, and you weren’t. That’s why I’m enjoying this moment. I see you—a fine specimen of a soldier who just happened to be extremely unlucky—and I get shivers up my spine thinking about what it’ll take to break you, to turn you over to my side, to make you see things my way. Because then, maybe my desire will come true—maybe I’ll get to see what a warrior like you might accomplish in my army. I’ll get to see that bravery every single day out in the field, and I’ll know it was me who gave you that second chance. I was the one who gave you a choice, even though you weren’t born on my side of the wall.

  “Forget about luck. I’m not offering a lucky break. I may respect you, but I’ll torture you and kill you just the same. It’s no skin off my back. The world that gave birth to us—to you and me—will continue its meaningless dance around a sun that’ll burn out someday. Just fizzle out with a pathetic, cosmic hiss and turn our planet into a ball of ice. Everything dead on its frozen surface. So, I ask you—what good is that? What will your death mean to the universe? Nothing. What will it mean to me? Just a perk of my job. On to the next one.

  “So, I’m offering you a choice, Jason. Throw luck to the dogs. Grab fate by the throat, then tell her she’s an evil bitch for putting you where you are. Spit in her face, just like you spit in mine. Be a man…and take control of your life.”

  Halsidier’s voice had risen to a shout. His face was red, the veins beneath his skin bulging. Keagan found himself breathing rapidly, not from fear, but from excitement.

  This is how you break a prisoner. Just like this.

  “W-what exactly are you…offering me?” the prisoner asked, his voice quivering slightly.

  Halsidier smiled.

  They took the prisoner to a more comfortable room, where they interrogated him in the presence of a mildly telepathic guard who was able to discern if anything Jason said was a lie. Jason told them everything they wanted to know, all of it declared true by the ment guard.

  The next morning, at sunrise, General Halsidier had his men round up every prisoner at Camp Brazen. In the dawning light, they watched as the guards led Jason, handcuffed and shaking, up a small set of a stairs and onto a wooden platform. Oddly enough, it resembled a stage. They watched Halsidier point a pistol at the man’s head and force him to confess what he’d done, how he had allowed himself to be broken.

  Only a fraction of the prisoners watched Halsidier pull the trigger. Most couldn’t. Keagan was surprised to see how many closed their eyes. But then, he probably would have done the same in their shoes.

  As he watched the man’s blood and brains spray across the platform, a single thought captivated him.

  Halsidier is a genius.

  At breakfast that morning, seated in the mess hall with the other highest-ranking officers, Halsidier spoke with a light bounce in his shoulders, as if he were telling a funny joke and couldn’t wait to get to the punchline.

  “No one spits in my face and gets away with it,” he said. “No one, not even my little terrier Buddy. I only wish that spiteful piece of shit prisoner had pissed himself. Nothing like the smell of a man’s bladder breaking right before you shoot him in the head. Even better if he shits himself.”

  The officers at the table shared weak chuckles, avoiding each other’s eyes as they went back to their plates of slightly green eggs and stiff cornbread.

  Keagan glanced at the general, suddenly uncomfortably aware Halsidier was staring back at him. At a complete loss as to what was expected of him, Keagan shrugged and said, “I’m sure it smells better than these eggs, anyway.”

  A shiver ran through the general’s
body as he tried to suppress an emotion eager to burst from his chest. Then he tipped his head back and roared with laughter, even pounding the table with his fist. Soon, the other officers laughed with genuine spirit that made Keagan feel as though he did, in fact, have a bright future ahead of him—that maybe Halsidier was the key to making the best out of this spiteful warden assignment out in the middle of nowhere.

  Just make him like you, Keagan thought as he smiled at his plate of eggs. Make him laugh, maybe challenge him a bit.

  But whatever you do, don’t show any fear or mercy.

  Ever.

  6

  The soldiers found the boy scavenger during one of their headhunting assignments in the old city. They called it headhunting, but, in reality, the outings were meant to find scavengers who could be kidnapped and made useful to their cause. Today was about to be their lucky day.

  They caught him off guard as he tried to climb out of a window, barefoot and clumsy as hell. He quickly dropped and fell into a crouch, a feral expression in his eyes. Dressed in tattered clothing, covered in dust and grime, he appeared to be around sixteen or seventeen years of age.

  As he rose to a standing position, they saw he was taller than normal kids his age. Skinny, too—but not gaunt like the other scavengers they sometimes came across in these parts. That meant he was somewhat well fed, which probably meant he was part of a group who lived out here like a pack of rats.

  “Stop right there. Put your hands up. Don’t make a single move unless I tell you to,” one soldier said, aiming his pistol at the boy’s chest. His partner did the same. “You alone? You have buddies nearby?”

  The violent expression on the boy’s face melted away, replaced by a look so solemn it was almost pathetic. The sunburn on his cheeks and forehead told them he spent a lot of time outdoors. Definitely a scavenger, and probably a good one if his apparent health was any indication.