King's County

by James Carrick

  I asked Geake to give me a boost. He put his hands together and I stepped and threw myself up, closing both eyes and reaching my arms out for a handhold.

  It was easy. I was at the stairs near the surface looking down the shaft at Geake. A quick look confirmed the beetle thing was nowhere around.

  A bundle of the ropes hit me in the face. They were tied together to make one long one. Walter’s voice called out hollow and distant like he really was as far away as he seemed.

  "Put one end around your waist and throw the other end down here!"

  First Geake then Walter, I pulled them up the short distance to the surface.

  The sun was out now, harsh and hot. A strong wind, utterly dry, raced through the grounds stinging us with sand. We turned our backs to it. The gigantic dog/man statue loomed ahead.

  Walter pointed to a dark smudge at the base of the cliff.

  "There’s the door! Let’s go, quickly, it’s gonna get worse!"

  Walter hiked off but I stopped him,

  "Take the rope. Everybody tie together again."

  Walter and Geake alongside, I led the way to the door. The sand blew steadily now, accelerating, tiny, jagged pieces tore into my exposed neck and head.

  "Listen up! Everybody close your eyes - we’re jogging. Now!"

  I counted 15 steps before hitting the far wall with my head. My eyes opened automatically to a horrible, disorienting blur. I felt someone grab my arm and pull me to the side. We clattered to the ground together, through the door, into the next car.

  &

  The floor was loose wooden slats and it was damp. Dark water sloshed underneath. I smelled animals and cigarettes. Raucous noises came from behind a moldy bamboo door.

  We went in.

  "Jesus Christ, I thought he was joking," Walter said. "I can't believe he actually went through with this."

  It was a strange, excited crowd of different kinds of people speaking different languages. Everyone’s attention was focused on something in the middle of the room.

  "Ha, ha ha, what’s with the ropes? - you guys must be together or something, right?"

  He was just a kid, looked about 10, but he had the demeanor of a man. No telling how old he really was.

  "Shut up, you little shit," Geake said pointing his finger.

  "Hey, relax, buddy!" The kid said over his shoulder but quickly escaped into the confusion of the main room.

  Geake untied the rope from his belt and stormed ahead. I saw he still had the sword tucked into his belt.

  Walter untied and handed me his end,

  "You guys are too much trouble for me."

  Geake pushed his way into the crowd. He was a head taller than most of them.

  A bell rang. The general commotion going on in the center of the room intensified. A voice came over a loud speaker in a language I didn't understand.

  It was a circular pit sunk into the ground, well lit, with a clean sandy bottom. There were three roosters, huge things with red and blue feathers, stalking along the edge. They worked together, covering each other's blind spots against a dozen or so menacing shiny black snakes.

  They were cobras. A bolder one rose and flared his neck.

  The roosters moved together. The center one, the point of their counter attack, lashed out with a silver razor spur molded to his orange leg cutting the snake nearly in half.

  Half the room cheered. Everyone yelled into the pit. Geake searched the crowd, pushing aside anyone in his way.

  From across the pit I saw Richelieu glued to the action below. He didn't see me. Walter pulled my shoulder around to talk to him,

  "Your friend is going to get adios-ed if he keeps doing that," he said. Geake was calling out for Penny by name now and grabbing people at random to interrogate them.

  "I need a drink. I'll get you one, too. Preference?"

  "No," I said. "No drinks. I feel like shit."

  It was true. The vitamins and drugs I had taken earlier had gotten me this far. But after all the drinking the day before, the antics in Miami, and then this adventure with Geake, my body was seriously weakened. I needed the chip. I wondered how much longer I'd last in this insanely over stimulating environment. On top of everything, the pain in my heel was now constant.

  I tried to ignore the pain. I leaned on the rail and watched the fight. The roosters won in short time, though not without losing one of the flankers. After all the snakes were disemboweled and dismembered, the surviving two birds returned to their fallen comrade. They bowed their heads all the way to the ground in tribute then lay beside him, guarding him. One retrieved his spur, pulling it off with his curved black beak.

  "Here, take it. Trust me." Walter shoved a cold cup of beer in my face. I shook my head.

  "I know, but you should drink it. It's got what you need," he said.

  I ignored him and turned around to check the pit. The roosters and snakes were gone.

  "Suit yourself." Walter said behind me. I could feel him lingering but when I turned around to tell him off he was gone.

  "Everybody, Everybody, Everybody! Now - for the moment - you, sir. You...throw him in! Throw him in! You will fight next!"

  Geake was mobbed but they didn't have it easy. He swung his arms while trying to back away. A few were hit hard.

  Eventually they got him. There were too many for him to fight off. Geake lost his balance and tumbled over the wall into the pit.

  The crowd to my left stirred and gave way for something. I couldn't see what. Cheers rose up over chattering noises of approval. Spectators pulled out a part of the wall revealing steps that entered the pit.

  It was a shock seeing him: A baboon, a meter and a half tall, walking fully upright. He walked under me and I saw up close his dry, grey velvety snout and red eyes and nostrils. He was perfectly calm and well behaved, wearing a leather belt with leather suspenders holding up his green canvas pants and no shirt or shoes.

  Geake remembered his sword and drew it. The baboon didn't seem concerned, looking right past Geake to acknowledge his fans in the first row with a crude wave.

  The noise around the pit multiplied; they loved his confidence. Geake saw an opening and swung the strange looking bronze sword.

  Geake missed. He recovered and tried an awkward jab. The baboon batted it away baring his fangs. Geake swung again, over and over, to no effect until he was frustrated and bleeding. The baboon - "Marcellus" the crowd called him - was too fast. Every lunging swing Marcellus easily dodged then followed with a quick slapping scratch to Geake’s face or arm.

  Geake caught his breath while his enemy played to the crowd at the other side. Marcellus did a flip and leapt up to high-five the fans. They rained small candies on him which he scooped up and happily ate.

  "Sergeant, get your shit together! Remember to close one eye. Try both eyes!"

  I didn’t know if Geake had heard me until he made his move. Marcellus saw him coming and was ready but Geake closed much quicker than anyone expected.

  The fight was soon over. The first charge yielded a solid hit to the baboon’s neck. Geake stood back to watch him die, stumbling around, squirting gouts of garnet blood on the white sand.

  The crowd hated Geake. Anything they could get their hands on they threw. A bottle dinged audibly off of his big head.

  A flash, like a ghost, he was out of the pit and on the main floor swinging his sword.

  I joined him, closing one eye broke most of the distance effect. He was slashing anyone in front of him, killing them. Those nearby were too slow to escape - I shielded behind him.

  The room cleared out in only seconds. The survivors had disappeared. Several lay dead. With an eye closed, the rambling, spacious den was much smaller with an odd, inward tilted look.

  Geake rested. His sword was deformed. The curved end was twisted out of shape.

  "Are you finished?" I said. No response. He just breathed and scanned the room for threats. Blood dripped from deep scratches, some of them by his own hand.

&nb
sp; We walked toward where the door to the next car should be. I saw Richelieu. Geake went ahead. He didn't know him and didn't care.

  Richelieu's little body lay on top of one of his whores. He looked ridiculous in his white pin-striped suit and matching hat with a pair of red lensed glasses falling off his face. I couldn't help but hate him. When I looked up, Geake had gone on without me.

  *

  The door out was actually a ladder leading down to a waiting boat. I had both eyes open. My boots thumped onto the deck – and I was sent through to the other car, abruptly finding myself in a dim, wet forest.

  A few short steps brought me out of the woods. After trudging cross a dewy meadow of knee high grass, I was on a college campus of imposing dark Neo-Gothic buildings covered in vines and moss. It was foggy and seemed to be just before dawn.

  I wandered around exploring but I could feel the confining mechanisms of the car's system at work, keeping me to a few specific lines of travel. As there were accessible houses and buildings on both sides of the cobblestone path, the system had little space to work with.

  Under a yellow street lamp, I found Yuri lying on the ground with his guts out.

  "Could you lend a hand?" His voice was weak but didn't lack the confidence I remembered it having,

  "Nobody’s helping me. I need to get stabilized so I can heal."

  His two goats lingered in a garden behind him. They were trying to eat the rose bushes. Yuri was trying to gather up his intestines in his hands but everything was too slippery and he had become uncoordinated.

  "Find something, cloth or something, to wrap around my waist. And I'll need some help getting up and, if you don't mind, I need you to walk me to the front cars."

  "Where's the guy who did this to you?"

  The question seemed to embarrass him,

  "You know who that was, don't you? Help me first, then you can explain it for me. Here, give me your shirt."

  I didn't give him my shirt. I saw something hanging from the next lamp post, a red and gray pennant. It was made of dense wool and would be better for the job.

  Yuri was strong but he had lost all color. I helped him walk. He pointed to a sundial in the garden so I took him over to it.

  Yuri pushed a button on the side and the face of the sundial opened revealing an old fashioned keypad. He typed a series of numbers.

  "Don't lose your grip on me. I’m shutting down the system here and in the next car. It might disorient you."

  He pushed the green ENTER button and the scene fell in around me. I almost did lose my grip.

  We were in a long windowless room, the walls were smooth and off-white with a matrix of gray dots. The street lamp was next to me not behind me as it seemed before. I felt a nibbling at my back pocket. It was one of the goats. He was as indifferent as ever.

  I walked Yuri the 10 or 12m to the door. The ground was littered with odd objects, plastic pipes and bottles, candles, a crudely made leather bound book. There was the occasional plant or small tree and some things I didn't recognize at all. There was blood, trails of it and small pools, though no wounded or dead.

  Like the other doors, there was no obvious handle just an outline in the wall. Yuri told me to walk into it. As I did, it silently slid aside exposing a black space. We entered and it closed behind us. The opposite door opened:

  A square gate, flat beige and traced with a meandering red pattern, framed a dejected looking girl sitting cross-legged on the smooth floor. She wore a simple white wrap held together with gold clasps. The white contrasted with her tanned skin. She looked up, unsurprised to see us, and I was stopped by her watery crystalline blue eyes.

  Seemingly out of habit, she offered me a goblet of a strongly aromatic flavored wine. I couldn't accept it. Both my hands were helping to hold Yuri together.

  "He’s down there," she said. "He’s going to take her away from me, I know it."

  Down the car we shuffled along past odd artifacts strewn around the ground, clay cups, ropes, mirrors, vases of a design I vaguely recognized, simple wooden furniture, some of it broken.

  Panels of rough hewn slabs hindered the way, real stone - they formed part of a labyrinth. The hologram effect would have filled in the rest had Yuri not turned it off.

  He breathed very weakly now. It was getting harder to hold him up as he lost consciousness. For the first time, I wondered if he might actually die.

  I needed to rest my arm. I set him down in a chair and leaned his head against the stone partition. Yuri’s pant legs were soaked with his blood. Putting my ear to his chest, his heart beat was faint and shallow. He wasn’t responding to me and he was too heavy to pick back up. Seeing no other option, I continued on alone.

  My arm ached despite relieving the burden. The light-headed feeling from earlier had settled down into a dull, manageable anxiety but I was now starting to see things in the corners of my eyes. The pain in my heel was spreading up my leg.

  The labyrinth ended with a wide limestone wall muraled in charging black bulls. On either side of it was a narrow space, just barely enough to squeeze around.

  There they were. Geake held a man by his neck against the blank side wall of the train. The man's brown leather shoes were off the ground. He was maybe forty (forty looking) and wearing understated dark woolen slacks and a starched white dress shirt. He also wore eyeglasses, gold framed, and a matching gold wristwatch with a brown leather band that precisely matched the color of his shoes and belt.

  Before them were three heaps of black furred bodies - corpses, or carcasses. Big things. Geake’s mangled sword laid beside them.

  "Glad you made it, Waller. What do you think: Does he live or die?"

  "He looks harmless to me. Why not let him go," I said.

  Geake let go of his neck but pushed him down and grabbed him by the ankles, easily hoisting him back up to dangle helplessly. The man didn't say anything. He seemed to be waiting for something while his face reddened and swelled.

  "He’s harmless now, isn't he? Now that he's helpless. But he's not innocent. Hand me the sword."

  I picked up the sword but didn't give it to him.

  The man spoke, his voice was well measured and clear of concern,

  "If you kill me, you'll be trapped - here, on this train. For a long, long time, in fact, you’ll probably die here."

  "Why is that? And why should I believe you?" Geake said. "I think you'd say anything to save your neck."

  "The system won’t restart, nothing will work - if I die. But the train will go on running for years. Penny will die here with you. Slowly, perhaps, and she’ll blame you. She’ll blame your rage and so will you. You’ll probably end up killing yourself."

  Geake bonked the man's dangling head on the floor, but not too hard.

  "Well, you'll never get to find out!" Geake said and swung him back and forth, releasing him to land on top of the dead things.

  Geake looked at me, then at his sword in my hand. He shook his head and walked into the next car.

  The man was Leland. We introduced ourselves. I told him about Yuri and he assured me that there would be time to save him as long as I could help him get to his private car.

  I went first. The next car was like the ones at the back of the train. The bulk of the partiers lived in these cars, or slept here between cycles. They were empty now. The cabin doors were all opened. I could hear Geake speaking to someone at the end of the car.

  Leland followed closely behind. I signaled him to wait before approaching Geake.

  They were at a small table in an alcove. She had a mug in front of her with a hand supporting her tired head. I heard Geake trying to convince her to leave with him. Penny looked up to see who I was.

  "This is Waller. He was with me in Alaska, for a little while."

  "Hi,” I said, “It's nice to finally meet you. Geake, I'm taking Leland to his car."

  He nodded and turned his attention back to Penny. There wouldn't be any trouble.

  I followed Leland through f
our more cars. We didn’t talk much. I was moving through mud. The edges of my vision became obscured by thick brown webs. Both my feet started to swell and go numb. Our footsteps sounded muffled - I was stumbling, dragging the bad leg now. At the door to his car, the numbness had risen to the top of my thighs. Leland turned and saw my face. His concerned frown was the last thing I saw before going dark.

  *

  "You're awake. Your buddy’s leaving. See if you can get up."