by Kolin Wood
What is this summons about? he thought as the door to the General’s office came into view up ahead. His palms felt slick with sweat, and he rubbed them on his thick, dark shirt. Whatever this was, it couldn’t be good news.
He reached the door, took a breath, and knocked loudly. From inside, he heard the scraping of a chair and the sound of heavy boots walking in his direction. The door opened inward, casting a dim light, which only served to enhance the scene and provide a sufficient backdrop to the horror that stood before him. The whole of the left side of the General’s face was swollen with shiny, pink skin that was pulled taught from just under his hair line down to the corner of his mouth. In the centre, a yellow and weeping wound held court where his eye should have been. Dead skin hung dried and split to either side. The stench that emitted from it was sweet and sour and made him want to heave. It was the first time he had seen it properly. Normally, it was at least partly covered by that nasty, bloody, yellowing bandage. Water filled Pock’s mouth.
The General was quick to notice the look.
“Hello, James, please, come on in,” he said.
He moved to one side and extended his arm, momentarily removing the sight and smell from Pock’s immediate vicinity.
James. Already, from only this initial greeting, he knew that something was up. The whole charade felt far too formal. The door was closed shut behind them and a lock slid over. The General ushered him to his usual chair and Pock obliged, settling back into the soft, worn leather. Before him, the huge, dark wooden desk lay piled with papers and books of all different types and shapes. Pock scanned them over in an effort to delay the need to have to look up again into that deformed face.
“I have been thinking.” The General paused, drawing on dramatic effect. “The time has come. Change is upon us and we need to act.”
Pock looked up, trying to keep focused on the ‘good’ side of the man’s face, but it was impossible.
“I want you to pack a bag and go to the New Capital,” the General continued. “And I want you to go tonight.” The delivery was straight, matter of fact, and in no way open for discussion.
The words, as they came, did not register with Pock straight away. They swirled around in his head like a wind, depositing fragments of information as they went.
Go to the New Capital. Tonight?
Realisation, slow to set in, brought with it a huge twist of anxiety.
Leave the prison… Tonight?!
Pock’s throat constricted, painfully twisting and limiting his breathing.
“W… why?” he asked quietly.
But he knew, even before the words had escaped, that it was a stupid thing to say.
Why? Oh, I don’t know, let’s see. Perhaps it is the fact that there is a huge, un-treatable, rotting, cancerous lesion attached to the side of his face that smells like a dead body. That a good enough reason for you? Huh? No? Or perhaps it’s the fact that we are living in a stone fortress plagued by rapists and murderers, whose only purpose is the fixation on the next taste of blood and sex… that count, maybe?
Pock closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to clear the vortex.
“The boys…” The General stopped as if realising that the labelling of these animals as boys was completely unethical. “As you can see, this… thing,” he spat, pointing to the side of his face, “is doing its level best to put me in a box.”
Pock flicked his eyes over at it again. Light twinkled in the weeping yellow centre. The taste in his already foul-tasting mouth worsened considerably.
“My time here is limited. This I know, but I’m not quite ready to hang up my gloves, not just yet. The… boys,”—-he swallowed, still no closer to making the statement sound sincere—“need guidance and, most of all, control. If I leave them now…” His voice trailed off, as if it were running out of batteries. Inner turmoil was clearly stemming his thought process.
Pock just stared. Does he really believe what he is saying? Boys… control?
“Either I find help for this,” he continued, more firmly but just a confunsingly. “Or I take the bastard knife to it myself. It is that simple. I need you to find me some help. I… I cannot—will not—leave them, not yet.”
Pock knew he was right about one thing; whatever was causing his face to swell like that, the cancer, was surely going to kill him. He breathed in slowly, blocking off his nose from the stench which had suddenly found its way across the desk top.
“W… W…. Where will I go?” he said eventually. “I don’t know anybody. And even if I did, why would they help me?” Pock forced his eyes down, embarrassed by the needy tone of his voice.
The General shifted in his seat, the pain of moving immediately evident. “You have been a great help to me throughout this, James. I know it has been difficult for you”—he winced—“and I admire your steely attitude at not allowing them to get to you. You are different than the rest of them. There is a purpose for you after this; I’m sure of that. And that is why I need it to be you. You are the only one I trust.” The part of the face that still looked human had taken on a sincere look. “Go to the New Capital, see what is what. I will give you some decent trade as I believe that is the cost of entry. Find out who’s in charge, what their authority is, and how they maintain it. For all we know there is a police force out there… maybe they’re even looking for us.”
The statement hit home hard. A police force? Surely there was no such authoritative body left? How would a country, with a police force still active, have allowed such a travesty of justice to have gone on for so long?
“Establish a base and see if you can find a doctor. Then sit tight and send word back to us.”
Pock felt sick. This was really happening and there was nothing that he could do. The New Capital… Alone… It had been years since the last time he had set foot outside of the walls. Nobody ever asked for him to be part of their scavenging parties, and he never offered to go. He knew what they entailed: destruction, pain, the women… The General himself also very rarely bothered going. Look what happened on the last one! he thought but kept to himself.
“But…” Pock started, struggling to find anything to say.
“I’m afraid there are no buts, James… it’s settled, and you leave tonight. Now, go to the surgery and ask Doc to come and see me. I have something for him to do also.”
Pock knew better than to argue. It was clear that his mind had been made up. There had been no niceties, no small talk. This was an order, clear and simple. He nodded and stood, turned on his heel, and walked towards the door, glad to be away from the sight and smell of that horrific face.
As he exited the room, the thoughts swirled and raced. He would be leaving tonight—that much was certain—but it was as simple as that. There was no way his conscience would allow him to walk away from this; not anymore.
Tonight he would settle a few outstanding scores.
Tonight, people were going to die.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Pock approached the hospital wing. He hated it this far in. It brought him farther away from the light, the entrance, and escape. This way there was only monsters; the Doc, the numbers, the rotting bodies. Even the smell here was different; thicker, meatier, more intense.
He stopped at the entrance to the surgery. A set of double, swing-open, discoloured and lustreless doors stood before him. Fresh smudges from bloody handprints were evident in the centre of each. The viewing glass in both door panels had been smashed, but it allowed him a distorted and limited view inside.
In the centre of the room was a gurney, upended so as to be standing. Pock could make out the shape of a man strapped to it. His head was slumped forward, probably due to the fact that he was either unconscious or dead, but he saw it to be the same guy that had been kidnapped during the recent foray to the big house; the one which had almost ended in disaster a few nights previous. Nearby stood an empty chair; straps of gory rope hung limply from either armrest. A huge, dark puddle, pooled at its bas
e, allowing a dull reflection of light from the two single candles that burned bright on the opposite ends of the table behind. The rest of the room was in almost total darkness, creating a feeling like the scene of an intimate play set in a small, black amphitheatre. There was no sign of Doc.
The un-oiled hinges of the door cried out as they turned crudely in their rusted-bevel bases. Pock took a few timid paces into the room, wishing for a torch so that he could scan the far recesses of the walls. The door clicked shut behind him. He froze, listening to the sound of his own breathing and his heart beating in his ears. The man on the gurney had not moved. Pock studied his chest for any signs of breathing or life, a flicker of the eyelids, or a twitch of the fingers, but saw nothing.
He took another step forward, realising that he was now walking almost completely on tip toes. For a strange, lucid second, he flashed back to creeping down his hallway at home all those years ago after having snuck in, not wanting to awaken his likely drunken and abusive mother out of fear of a beating or some worse reprisal. With a shudder, he quickly dispelled the memory.
He was only a few steps from the empty chair, and he could now see that the dark puddle it sat in was blood. Not just a splash, but a puddle, at least five feet in diameter, in stark contrast to the pale, shiny floor. Pock stopped and stared. Whatever had lost this amount of blood was surely dead. In fact, he was not sure whether a single body could even hold so much. Somewhere, deep in the recesses of his memory from a long time ago, he thought he remembered that a human body held approximately seven pints of blood. Pock tried to imagine seven bottles of milk smashed on the floor compared to the size of the resultant puddle, quickly coming to the conclusion that it was probably a pretty close match.
The smell of the puddle was pungent this close up. It was the same aroma that hung in the corridor but much sharper, more metallic. Pock sucked in a deep gulp of air through his mouth, which stung at his sensitive gums, and took a few more softly, trodden steps forward until he was standing right next to the gurney supporting the bound man.
“Have you come to athitht me, Pock?” a voice suddenly spoke from directly behind him.
Pock jumped forward with shock, a foot sliding in the glutinous pool of blood to his left. He reached out, blindly grabbing one of the heavy, grey straps binding the torso of the man. The gurney groaned under the additional weight, but held fast.
Standing bolt-upright, not three feet from him, stood Doc, a strange half-smile on his face. He never left the prison, spending days and weeks locked in this surgery, and the result was an almost translucent effect on his skin. His glasses were tucked into the top chest pocket of his almost completely crimson doctor’s smock.
Pock composed himself, finding no lubrication as he cleared his throat, causing his tongue to stick in his mouth.
“The”—cough—“General, wants to see you”—cough—“right away,” he managed, looking back at the door to emphasise the point.
Doc closed his eyes slowly while taking a deep breath in as if contemplating the idea. Clearly, the stench in here did not bother him. He looked like an athlete preparing for an arduous physical moment, his skinny shoulders rising and falling in a slow and controlled motion. When his eyes opened again, Pock was sure he could see the smallest hint of genuine sadness there. He watched as Doc turned to the man on the gurney and put a hand up to his face. He began stroking it gently.
He’s treating him as if he were a pet, Pock thought.
“It seems our appointment will have to wait, Mr. Marshall.” The voice was soft and soothing, almost matronly. “But don’t worry; I learned a lot from your boy. You should be no problems at all; a doddle, in fact.”
He tapped on the cheek gently whilst he pushed his forehead against the man’s own in an almost team mate-like fashion then suddenly pulled away and strode towards the surgery door, leaving Pock to follow obediently in his wake.
***
Bennet Marshall opened one eye slowly, hoping that they were gone. His face throbbed and burned, and his entire scalp was itching unbearably. The rest of his body from his shoulders down had turned numb hours ago. Without moving his head, he tried to rely on his peripheral vision to determine if the room was empty or whether it was simply another trick. The vision on the left side of his face was blurry from the fractured eye socket he had received when he was hit with the butt of his gun back at the house. The skin surrounding it felt hot and tight like an over-filled water balloon, implying a huge swelling underneath. He lifted his head, bringing fresh pain from his neck. He had thrashed around so much during the previous few hours, it felt as though he had maybe given himself whiplash, but that was the least of his problems.
The room was indeed empty. Shadows danced to the flicker of the two homemade candles on the desk. Between the two points of light, a dark shape lay, spread eagle and still. To anybody else, the shape would have looked indiscernible as anything, a lump of half-butchered meat perhaps. And they would have been partly right. But to Bennet, it was something far more gruesome—the decomposing body of his son. A pitiful wheeze croaked from deep inside his chest. The body of the boy was right in his line of sight, and his only escape from it the past few hours had been to close his eyes. He had only been able to do this when the monster’s back was turned for fear of a tortured reprisal and, as a result, he had witnessed most of the brutal autopsy. Now alone, he looked over the body again.
The head and face no longer existed. What rested there now was simply a bloody pulp of dark matter. In the time since his decapitation, the pulpy mess of what remained had spread slowly across the dirty steel surface, finally resting in random splashes on the floor. Dark footprints, like the tracks of a beast around a watering hole, littered the surrounding tiles.
He snapped his head to the side, squeezing his eyes shut and ignoring the almost unbearable pain in his neck as hot tears flowed freely down his face. The back of his throat was burned raw. Mucus fell in a stringy column from his nose.
My baby boy… my poor and beautiful, little, baby boy.
During the horror of his son’s dissection, he had not cried or even uttered a single word. There was no way he would have given the sick little fucker the pleasure of allowing him to know the effect of his mistreatment. Instead, he had glazed over his eyes, feigning his part as a spectator, and swept his mind as far away as he could possibly transport it. As his own flesh and blood sprayed the floor to the maddening cackle of the twisted surgeon, he had thought of his old life, his house, his dog, the golf course that he and his best mate, Charlie, had always played on every Sunday in the summer. Good memories from a distant time in an almost forgotten place.
Now alone, however, it was like a river had been released in full from a heavy dam; grief flooded every receptor in his body. In an attempt to stem a scream, he bit down hard on his bottom lip. Fresh blood flooded his mouth, but he was unable to taste it. The sound of his wife wailing to him as she was dragged down the corridor and out of sight… his daughter, calling for him, pleading Daddy as she was led away that very first night of their incarceration by some other twisted, little psycho, echoed in his mind. Questions bounded around his brain at a million miles an hour, smashing together like atoms in a nuclear reactor.
Are they still alive? And if they are, what horrors have they already endured, frightened and alone, while I’ve been strapped here, completely unable to offer a single bit of assistance? How could everything have gone so wrong so fast?
The guilt and pain tore at his heart, shredding it into smaller and smaller pieces, leaving him shaking on the gurney, his body heaving with huge pitiful sobs. He had sworn to protect them –his family, and he had failed.
Hinges screamed once again, and he was jolted back into the room with a start. He snapped his head towards the sound as his heart sank low into the pit of his stomach. What else could he possibly be put through? He was a strong man, but he was not sure if he could take much more.
To his right, he could just about see the
door. It continued to swing a little, almost closed, blocking out the darkness beyond.
Nothing.
“Hello?” Bennet said, his throat parched and worn like old sandpaper. “Who’s there?”
Nobody replied. From behind, he was sure he heard a scuttling from the shadows.
If it’s not a person then maybe it’s an animal of some kind. Could a rat open the door enough to get in? No… maybe a dog? He craned his neck as far as it would go, trying to utilise the sight in his good eye. Fresh sweat began to flow freely down the sides of his face.
“Hello? Please… somebody help me!”
A deep pain unfurled in the pit of his stomach, causing him to twist in his bonds. It felt as though somebody had pushed their fist into his intestines and was slowly squeezing and tugging at them with hot and heavy hands. He looked down. His torso was mostly visible through the front of his torn open shirt. His thick chest was a multi-coloured palette of bruises. A deep gash from the sharp edge of somebody’s boot was a few centimetres from his left nipple.
As he looked at each wound, the pain and stinging registered in his brain. Underneath his chest, it looked as though somebody had painted the outline of Africa on his stomach and filled it in black, stretching wide from the top at the sternum, thinning to the cape of Good Hope before disappearing down under the elastic of his combat trousers.
Internal bleeding for sure, he thought.
How long it had been spreading was anybody’s guess, but Bennet felt fresh hot tears spring at the sight of his mortally wounded midsection.
So this is it… the end.
He had seen enough injuries in his time to know that this one was going to kill him. But he was not dead yet. He had to try and do something. The few minutes reprieve that he had just been bought were only a glimmer of hope, but they were still hope. Maybe there was somebody out there, somebody that could help him.