And it hadn’t taken long to get the lay of the land.
The entire Crank Palace had been designed in a pattern of circles. Sections of rings, bordered on both sides with circular roads or dirt paths. They grew smaller as he walked, gradually; he imagined an astronaut of old might compare it to seeing the Earth’s horizon take on its curvature as you rose higher toward space in your rocket ship. And from way up there, Newt figured the Palace must look like a giant game of darts, a bull’s-eye in the middle. That bull’s-eye was where he headed, and he heard a general clamor of noise coming from that direction.
Another memory leaked out of his Swiped mind—watching a football game on the telly, hearing the roar of the crowd when a striker kicked a goal. It couldn’t have been a thing happening in real time; it was a match recorded long ago by his... mum. Yes, his mum. He remembered watching it, clearly.
And the sound of that crowd was what he heard now, increasing in volume with every step. The central hub of the Palace must be a gathering spot of sorts; a large group of people definitely awaited him there, as if he were a gladiator about to step into the Coliseum of ancient times. His wiser half told him to turn around, to at least convince Terry or Keisha to go along with him. But that wasn’t going to happen. Newt needed to know what he’d gotten himself into.
Each diminishing ring of land that he passed grew more crowded with tiny cabins, shabby huts, and tents—although there were far fewer of those, now—squeezed in amongst trees, the ground littered with trash. He had a sense that his captors had purposefully dropped them off in a spot still considered the outskirts of the Crank Palace, not fully developed yet—probably planned at one point but abandoned. Most of the structures had broken windows, the glass long missing by the looks of it. He could only assume that shards of glass were the chief weapon around these parts.
He didn’t see many people—just a few spotted here and there, mostly a quick glimpse of their backs as they disappeared into whatever shack they considered their home, closing the door behind them. He heard a lock engage every now and then, wondering what good they did in such shabbily built structures. More than a few sets of eyeballs peered out at him as he walked by, giving him the shivers. He chided himself for not grabbing his Launcher before taking the walk; he could’ve kept it hidden inside the backpack. Right then he’d settle for the knife he also left behind and considered searching the area for a stray piece of glass.
Before his next thought could collect itself, a man stood in front of him, seemingly appearing out of nowhere. He had a glazed look in his eyes, staring at Newt but more like he stared through Newt, into some otherworldly distance that made him happy. He had a look of...
Bliss.
Bliss.
Newt’s own mind did something like hiccup inside his skull. The memories that continued to strain against the dam of the Swipe bulged outward, for a moment mixing with his recent recollections. He knew what the Bliss was. A drug given to the Flare-infected that was supposed to stall the effects and symptoms of the brain-destroying disease. Looking at this man in front of him, swaying on his feet as if to some unheard tune, eyes glossed over, an expression of delirious glee on his face, Newt wondered. Maybe the drug just got you high so you could forget for a while. Who knew? Newt had stopped walking but started again, stepping around the stranger.
“Don’t you want some?” the man asked. “I heard they’re gonna stop giving it out soon. Better get it while you can.”
Without any shame, with complete awareness that he was the kind of person for whom the drug had been intended, Newt said, “Yeah, I want some. Got any?”
The man made a weird noise that might’ve been a chuckle. “Now why in the hell would I have asked you that if I didn’t have any?” Another chuckle, snort, whatever that sound was that came out of his nose with a little spray of snot. “How much you got to pay for it?”
“How much I got?” Newt sighed. “I got nothin’.”
The man took an exaggerated step toward the side of the path, squared himself on his feet, then swept forward in a ridiculous, grand bow, one hand crossed over his belly, the other rising up behind him.
He spoke to the ground. “Then I’m sorry to have disturbed you, my good man. As you were.”
“As I was,” Newt muttered.
He walked toward the crowd noise that hovered in the air like smog.
* * *
No one else bothered him, at least not directly. He certainly saw some things that bothered him.
A naked woman clung upside down to the lowest branch of a tree, her arms and legs wrapped around the bark-scratchy wood above her. She made no noise, made no noticeable effort to let herself down, but followed Newt with her eyes as he hurried to scoot past her. There were enough bare-knuckled fights breaking out on the streets and between the huts to keep him entertained if he got bored. A man sat on one of the rings of streets, filthy beyond measure, his back rigid and straight as he sang a soft tune of gibberish. Nearby, two women stood facing each other, staring into one another’s eyes, saying nothing, completely still. At their feet lay a man looking blissfully at the sky. Literally with the Bliss, judging by the false glee in his eyes.
These sights increased the farther he went, discouraging him with each step, until he finally came upon a wall, maybe 12 feet high. Unlike the barrier that bordered the Crank Palace as a whole, this wall wasn’t made up of wooden planks, nailed together. This one was cement, or stucco, once painted but now a patchwork of crusty flakes of pastels. An archway stretched over an opening in the wall, which led to the crowd he’d been hearing on the other side, a swath of people milling about like giant, fired-up ants. At the top of the opening’s arch, there was a sign with bright letters that seemed as out of place as a kindergarten—from which it very likely might’ve been stolen—would have been in that nasty place.
CENTRAL ZONE
Newt paused, looking at the sign. Maybe he should go back. Hadn’t he learned enough for one day? Wouldn’t he feel safer with a weapon or a friend? Yes and yes. But he walked through the archway regardless, into a sea of frantic activity.
The “zone” was wide and circular, just as he’d imagined—the bull’s-eye of the Crank Palace from above. Along its outer edge, a ring of dilapidated shops, offices, and restaurants faced inward, most of them looking like they hadn’t run a respectable business in years. Where once windows and doors had resided, there were now only empty spots of darkness or hastily nailed-up boards. The glass had been taken long ago. Not many eligible signs remained, either, though one said, in clear black letters against a white background, “Howard’s Hoagies: The Best Sammies in the Valley!”
Hundreds of people jammed the paved central area, every last one of them either busy with activity or busy making a beeline for some undisclosed location for some undisclosed purpose. There was lots of yelling, lots of laughing, lots of talking, lots of arguing. In no surprise whatsoever, Newt saw at least seven brawls from where he stood at the entrance. These were often broken up by plain-clothed people holding full-sized Launchers, people who appeared healthier and stronger than those around them. Calmer, a more rational bearing. Or maybe it was just because they were the ones holding weapons—Newt assumed these were the Munies, those immune from the Flare, that worked here either for money or out of the goodness of their precious little hearts. Keisha had mentioned them in their very first conversation but he’d never followed up on it because they’d spent the next hour running for their lives from the Crank sweeps.
It was weird that there were other people like Tommy, Minho, Teresa, and the rest, who for some reason stayed stable and sane despite the viral intrusion. Immune. It shouldn’t be weird—of course there were others out there, statistically speaking. Maybe it just rubbed him the wrong way because he was still distraught that he hadn’t been the same as his friends. He had a sudden itch to write in his journal, to share some of these feelings. Tonight. Pausing to take another deep breath, he marveled at how much and how quickly
he was changing. He felt like an old, sentimental geezer in moments like this.
Movement, a blur that approached in his peripheral vision from the right, snapped him out of it. A woman ran up to him, a middle-aged, short-haired lady with a wrinkly face and bright-blue eyes. She swatted him on the upper arm and kept running, didn’t say a word to him. Such things didn’t seem to faze anyone else in the huge clearing.
Welcome to Crank Palace, he thought. Welcome to the Central Zone.
Welcome to your future.
Chapter Nine
Ignoring his suddenly intense desire to run, to go back to Keisha and Dante, to huddle up in a tiny cabin far away from this madhouse, Newt forced himself to walk the perimeter. Tried to hide his limp as much as possible. He liked to think he was brave, but he felt the fear of so much unpredictability, swirling all around him like the waters of a raging ocean, sharp rocks hidden beneath the dark, white-capped surface.
The former businesses he walked past had a variety of functions, a few only needing a quick glance to know he should just move right along. Drug dens and the like. A lot of the others had become informal eateries, usually a couple of those Launcher-bearing guards keeping watch on the inside to make sure things didn’t get out of hand—it was an unstable trifecta, indeed: Cranks, food, hunger.
Newt stepped into the next foodie place he came across because it was mostly empty on the inside. A man stood behind a grill—like something you’d find at a real neighborhood cookout, Newt supposed—seemingly not caring that only about half the smoke from the meat he cooked escaped through the open windows in the front. The rest hovered like a mini-weather system along the ceiling of the establishment. Newt coughed a couple of times, then asked a guard standing nearby how much it cost to eat there.
The man was either chewing on some of the goods himself or smacking on gum. He had a Launcher strung over his shoulder and looked as bored out of his mind as one can be.
“Huh?” he asked, trying to make that single word sound as rude as possible.
“I just got here,” Newt responded, smart enough to avoid any kind of arrogant display. “How does... money work around here? How can I earn some to buy food?”
The man swallowed—Newt could actually hear the gulp of it. “Officially? There ain’t no money. This place is welfare, man, didn’t you get the post in your hotel room?” He laughed at that but stopped when Newt didn’t join in. “Old Leroy here will give you a bite or two. He’s one of the best around, cooks like his grandmammy taught him, no doubt. But sniff around the Palace a bit and you’ll, uh, how do I wanna say it, you know... Improve your circumstances. Yeah, there ya go. There ain’t no money but you can definitely be poor. Know what I mean, big guy?”
Newt just shook his head and said, “No.”
“Well, ain’t you a lot of fun. Get some food before I decide to kick your ratty blond-haired ass out of here. Get on, now. I ain’t in the mood to talk to no Cranks, anyhow.”
Newt understood survival. He understood it more than most.
He happily accepted a plate of food and chowed it down, even though he’d eaten just an hour or two earlier. It was beef again. Chicken again. Apparently the Crank Palace had no idea what a fruit or vegetable was. As Newt took his last couple of bites and wiped his mouth with a scrawny, half-wet napkin, he had an amusing but very apt question pop into his mind.
Where in the hell were they getting all these cows and chickens?
* * *
Something had switched in his mind and he was ready to leave. He hated the sinking feeling of uncertainty that consumed him—could he go back to that shack and live unhappily ever after with Keisha, Dante, Terry, and a crazy woman with burns all over her hands and knees? Really. What was he going to do here? What was the plan? He’d staved it off for a while, but those hated fingers of despair were clutching at his heart. But in the immediate future of the next 30 minutes, an hour, the rest of the day... He just wanted to be with familiar people again, no matter how slight the familiar part of the equation might be.
Walking quickly, now, he hurried to finish his circular sojourn around the Central Zone.
A few more eateries. A gym for boxers—an idea that shone supreme if they could just get the brawlers off the paved clearing and into the makeshift ring they’d set up inside. A market with crafts and odds and ends. A library—a place so crammed with books and ratty but cushioned chairs that it seemed the very definition of cozy; Newt swore to come back there soon. Keisha would love it; he had no doubt. Another location was packed wall to wall with bodies; at first Newt recoiled, thinking it a morgue or mortuary, but he soon saw the bodies… moving. They were clothed in odd apparel, writhing on the floor to bizarre music. Dance club? A cult? He hightailed it out of there.
And then there was the bowling alley. He couldn’t believe it. Earlier he’d made a joke in his mind about such a thing being in the Crank Palace, but there it was—although there hadn’t been a whole lot of bowling going on for a very long time. A joke, after all. Newt had no memory whatsoever of holding a bowling ball, much less playing the game. And yet he understood what it was in concept, had images in his mind of the activity in full swing. But here, the wooden lanes used for such play had been torn up, stacks of them scattered toward the far sides, where people manned actual fires in the niches where bowling pins once stood. They’d probably burned those, too. Sleeping bags, blankets, people lay everywhere. Maybe it was that long line of makeshift fireplaces, but the gloomy place had a cozy warmth similar to the library that made him want to come back. And no one was fighting, at least at the moment.
Newt left through the open door—based on the rusted, dangling hinges, the actual door had been tossed in some distant past—and headed toward the big arch, the exit. Along the way, he was jostled, bumped, hugged, pushed, fell down twice, was helped up once. He caught sight of immunes glaring at him, their Launchers held rigid in their arms, whispering to other Munies, sharing secrets. He couldn’t understand what value WICKED saw in making sure that people knew who he was, what he’d been through, and that he’d arrived at the hottest club in town for Cranks. He had to get out of that place. He needed sleep.
Finally he made it to the arch, went under the bright-colored letters of its sign, half-running and fully relieved to be on the relative quiet of the path that lead to the outer rings of the Palace. He slowed himself to a brisk walk, realized he was completely covered in sweat and that his face felt like it’d been roasted by the sun for hours. Yes, he definitely needed sleep. Maybe a solid 24 hours of it.
He stopped.
Three raggedy-looking Cranks stood in his way, each one holding a steel pipe, as if they’d just robbed the same plumbing store for makeshift weapons. Newt thought he must really be losing his mind because the sight of them made him laugh. It was stupid. Comical. Like something from a 10-year-old’s vision of the baddest people on Earth. One of the Cranks even had a bandana tied around his head and affected an evil grin that made him look like he had something wrong with his lips.
“I’m not in the mood,” Newt said. He knew with absolute certainty that he could pass a lie detector test right there on the spot, declaring to the officiator that he’d be perfectly okay with these idiots putting him out of his misery.
But fate decided not to call his bluff, at least not yet.
One of the thugs—a man with long, greasy black hair and muscles bulging out of the rips in his shirt—walked up to Newt and stopped about three feet in front of him. Every instinct and internal alarm told Newt to run like hell, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. The ever-expanding crazy part of his brain urged him to lash out and punch the guy in the nose, get the brawl started and hope for the best. Instead, he waited.
“We know who you are,” the man said, finally. For such a tough-looking fellow, he sure had a soft voice. The word velvety came to Newt’s mind and he had an absurd urge to laugh.
“Out with it, then,” Newt muttered. “Who am I?”
Surpr
isingly, the man took on a somewhat humbled air. “We know the things they did to you. To the ones taken. We know the utter shite you’ve been through. At no choice of your own, trying to find a cure for the likes of us. We’re here to tell you that it’s... appreciated. That people like us honor you.”
Newt swallowed, rendered speechless. This man didn’t appear to have any intent of beating the tar out of him, after all. That, or this was all a ruse to... what? Catch him off guard? Nonsense. These blokes could take him down without breaking a sweat.
“Sorry,” the man said. “A tad on the cheesy side. We’re just...” He straightened his back, lifted his chin a little. “Hell, man. We just wanted you to know that a lot of us are on your side. No one will mess with you. Not until they get through us, first, anyway. I don’t know what else to say. I kinda feel like an ass.”
Newt nodded, a little thrown off balance but honestly thrilled at the prospect that he might have his own personal security detail.
“Thank you,” he replied, worried anything more elaborate might shatter the whole deal.
The man nodded back, then looked around awkwardly as if he hadn’t thought this far ahead when he’d imagined the scenario. He stepped to the side of the path, gestured for his two partners to do the same. They did.
“My name is Jonesy,” he said. “Well, that’s what they call me anyway. Just give a holler if you need us for anything. We’ll always be right around the bend.”
“Okay,” Newt replied, knowing he could never fully trust a few Cranks holding pipes. But he didn’t want them as enemies, either. That was for sure. “Thanks, again. Seriously. Thanks.”
Crank Palace Page 5