by Bill Etem
Chapter 10. Escape from Menzies
Well, Seraphinaria, Misevasundia et. Al. freed 1,000 Avallonian P.O.W.s from the most miserable conditions. The Avallonian P.O.W.s were found languishing in a dark dungeon, full of hideous instruments of torture. So, we’ve been over how the Hibernians – those inveterate barbarians! - were not going to negotiate with any hostage-takers. The Hibernians would simply say to the hostage-takers: we don’t care if you cut the throats of your hostages or not. We’ll give you 5 minutes to surrender, and then if you still refuse to surrender we’ll douse both the hostages and you hostage-takers with kerosene, and we’ll then ignite the lot of you! Therefore, logic tells us that a tunnel had to be dug if there was going to be any liberation of any Avallonian P.O.W.s. And that’s exactly what happened. Our Avallonian heroes, the single moms, along with Martha, Al, Katie and Debra, used hammers and chisels to punch a large hole through the wall of the subterranean dungeon. Of course lots of boards and posts had to be purchased beforehand, and then positioned in the tunnel to keep the roof of the tunnel from collapsing. Al and a few others had 4 weeks to dig 30 feet down, and then dig 200 feet horizontally, and then punched a large hole through the stone wall of the dungeon. So, if they advanced 10 feet every day, that’s doable. It had to be doable, obviously, because that’s exactly how it was done. The guards didn’t hear the sounds of chisels chipping away at the wall of the dungeon, because the dungeon was 30 feet below street level, and the nearest guard was a long way from the dungeon, because the stench there was unendurable, due to all the excrement and all the body odor of unwashed prisoners etc., etc. So, to keep strictly to the facts surrounding the flight of the pungent Avallonian horde of 1,000 escapees from Hibernia, it was like this: eventually, the escapees had to be hosed down, scrubbed with soap, shaved, trimmed, fed etc., etc. They weren’t going to get very far if they couldn’t blend into Hibernian society to at least some minimal degree. And they weren’t going to blend in with Hibernian society - barbaric though it is in so many ways! - even to a minimal degree, if they stank to high heaven and if they look exactly like people who had just bust out of a dungeon after they had been held in that dungeon for five or ten years. This need to scrub and shave and trim and feed and medicate the 1,000 man and woman horde is not any sort of evidence that I’m straying from the facts. It is simply a fact that the liberated prisoners needed to be made presentable; they needed to blend in with their surroundings. And this fact was foreseen by our heroes, by the single moms, and that’s why they located an abandoned building before they sprang the prisoners, as they needed a large place where they could set up shop, so to speak. Showers or at least sponge baths, food, clothing, identity papers were dispensed from this ancient warehouse that was about ready to be razed. It was a get in fast, get out fast sort of operation. The escapees had a ten minute hike to get from one end of the tunnel, which was in the bedroom of Al’s basement level apartment, to the ancient warehouse. Al and Martha and Katie and Debra were armed with scissors and after shave lotion, perfume and deodorant etc. They hacked away at the ten-year growths of beard as best they could. They doused the escapees with any sort of perfume they could lay their hands on, and then they got them into some clothes; knives where passed back to the people still in the dungeon and the tunnel, so they could fight off the guards if they were forced to fight to escape with their lives. Once they had been shaved some and fumigated some, and given some clothes to wear they were off in packs of fifty, led by one of the single moms, to the ancient warehouse. Each pack of 50 escapees loitered a little close to Al’s apartment before setting off for the warehouse. They would have to fight off any cops which showed up, to give the others still in the tunnel and in the dungeon a chance to escape. Once an escapee was out of the tunnel, he might spend 5 minutes at or near Al’s place, and then 15 minutes at the ancient warehouse getting washed, shaved, fed etc. He was given a map drawn by Debra’s skilful hand with which he could find the next rendezvous point. And then he was off with his pack of 50 other escapees, but without the aid now of any warrior girls, as they now had to get their kids out of the city. In the instructions they received directing the escapees to this latest rendezvous point, which was 20 miles south of the city, the escapees were told to take very circuitous routes. It was natural to assume the Hibernian army would soon be called up en masse to round up the escapees. But if reports of escapees were coming in from all over the eastern and western and southern parts of Menzies, it would be impossible for the army to concentrate its forces on one point. Once the escapees reached the rendezvous point 20 miles south of Menzies, where most of the gear and provisions had been stored away by Al and the warrior girls: the tents, the blankets, the ruck sacks, the money and the food, then all the Avallonians could band together and strike out over the rough country, chased perhaps by an ill-prepared ill-equipped Hibernian army. No doubt the escapees would have to take it slowly at first. They might require three days just to reach the rendezvous point 20 miles south of the city. One’s muscles will atrophy a good deal when one sits on one’s butt for ten years.
The warrior women and their kids waited at the rendezvous point south of the city for four days but at least half escapees never arrived at the rendezvous point. Then they waited three more days. Not one escapee arrived during those three days. This rendezvous point was close to a high hill, atop which one was afforded an excellent view of the city of Menzies. The day after the women got to the rendezvous point they noticed two huge clouds of smoke filling the skies over Menzies. On the fourth day at least ten fires were burning in Menzies. By the seventh day it seemed as if the whole city was on fire. Martha, from reading newspaper accounts off what happened during their flight south, said she should have known what was going to happen. There were roughly 1,000 escapees, 90% of which were male. All of the female prisoners and roughly half of the males were marching south, heading for their homes in Avallonia. But the other half of the males were looking for revenge. They found Menzies easy to loot and pillage. It was payback time for them. The escapees who passed by Seraphinaria’s company at the rendezvous point described the mindset of the men who pillaged Menzies. Who deserved to be pillaged more than the people who kept us in darkness and chains for all those years than the Hibernians in Menzies? As Martha described things: `We unleashed 500 John Rambos on that city.’ As it turned out from the accounts of the first group of escapees, those heading for Avallonia, first, most of the escapees were attacked by the police and the citizens of Menzies. It was the Hibernians who drew first blood, so to speak. From the newspaper accounts Martha later read there were no rapes or unprovoked murders perpetrated by the escapees. At first they weren’t looking to hurt anyone. But once they got a few big meals in them, once they got their strength back, then, when they were cornered by mobs of citizens trying to force them back to the dungeon, when they were forced to fight, the Avallonian escapees began to slaughter hundreds or thousands of people. It was a matter of enormous debate as to who first used kerosene filled flame throwers. But, whoever it was, it little mattered to the peaceful population of the city. Menzies was set ablaze. In a matter of weeks the city of Menzies was ruled by gangs, with the Avallonian escapees who chose to remain in Menzies forming the strongest gang. It is debatable as to how much there was to rule over. For mile after mile Menzies was little more than a smoldering scene of burned-out concrete buildings, with a population devoid of the means of production necessary to feed and house and medicate its citizens. In the coming months how could millions not succumb to famine and pestilence?