Wasteland Wonderland - Part 1 (3 page)

Ark America. Ark Europe…

Turns out, this plan was a pipe dream. Turns
out, this plan was pure fantasy. They haven’t processed anyone in
well over five years. Our dangerous yet lucrative job as Wasteland
guide and transporter had become obsolete. The work had dried up.
And favors don’t mean jack shit when you go around killing
Enforcers.

Anyway, the second thing people want, and
will always want…
need
… is knowledge.

Information.

Secrets.

We are curious by nature, and the more things
we know, the better prepared we can be and the more power and
control we can have over any given situation. Over any person or
enemy.

Knowledge and information can get you
power.

Riches.

Knowledge is a dangerous thing.

I’m convinced this is what got Ruby killed.
She knew things she wasn’t supposed to know. She said she knew
everything
. And for knowing everything, for knowing secret
things she wasn’t supposed to know, she paid the price.

She paid with her life.

So yeah, information. I need it. And I know
just where to get it.

The deep tunnels are a dangerous place in a
dangerous city. They’re full of dive bars and sleazy clubs. A lot
of them are converted subway carriages. Trains that go nowhere
except into eternal darkness. Only the worst and the best people
head into the deep tunnels.

Early on, the Buried City had trouble with
things and people from far away places coming out of the dark. The
Mayor of the Buried City at the time had the ingenious plan to
brick the tunnels up and collapse them in certain places. He wanted
to seal us off from the dangers of the outside world. He even put
armed patrols at these choke points just in case. But even with all
these safety measures, sometimes, desperate and hungry and mutated
people still get through. Sometimes,
things
still get
through. Big things. Scary things. And that’s why only the best and
the worst people come to the tunnels. That’s why you never come
down here without a knife. Or a really big stick.

And here I am with a knife, a gun, and two
extra mags.

No wonder I feel good about this.

The bar I’m headed for is called ‘Terminal’.
It’s ten carriages long and the closer you get to the brick walls,
to the edge of the Buried City, to the eternal dark, the better the
bar gets.

Or worse, depending on your outlook.

Either way, the beer gets stronger, the smoke
gets thicker, the music gets louder, and the girls get
friendlier.

There’s a new guy guarding the entrance.

Big guy. Young. Obviously on the juice.

He’s not going to let me in.

“Bar’s full,” he says.

“All ten carriages?”

“You don’t want to go through all ten. Trust
me, buddy.”

I resist the urge to say, I ain’t your buddy.
I resist the urge to say, don’t you fucking know who I am?

I am Hector Ramirez. The Exiled. The survivor
of the Wasteland.

I grab his throat with one hand and put my
fist through his face with my other hand. His head snaps back and
he falls to the ground in a heap. I step over his body and slide
the door open.

Standing near the entrance is the lovely
owner and operator of this prestigious establishment.

Lisa says, “Oh, Hector. I’m sorry. Did Sammy
give you some trouble?”

“Kid needs to lay off the juice. Messes with
his ability to think straight.”

“He’s new. He’s from the Narrow Canyon. He
didn’t know no better.”

“Narrow Canyon? How’d he get so big living in
the Narrow Canyon?”

“He’s not a goldfish, Hector.”

“No, he is not. And I’m guessing you’ve been
feeding him well.”

“Like you said, maybe he needs to lay off the
juice.”

“I’m usually right about these things.”

“You’re not here to cause trouble, are
you?”

“Me? Never. I’m just looking for a
friend.”

“Well, it seems you’re quite the popular
fellow tonight. Had a few people asking about you.”

“Just a few?”

“More than a few.”

She motions with her head towards the
back.

“Carriage ten?” I ask.

“Of course.”

“Thanks, Lisa. You’re the best. I’ll try not
to make a mess.”

“Appreciate it.”

I make my way towards the tenth and final
carriage, towards the darkness. It’s around about the eighth
carriage where I start to get maybe a little worried. It’s more
crowded than usual.

I’m walking into a bottleneck. A kill box.
The perfect place for an ambush.

Oh well. Nothing to do but keep going.

In the ninth carriage I start to notice
people walking the opposite way, heading for the exit.

I enter the tenth carriage.

Usually the music is loud back here, usually
the atmosphere is wild and crazy.

The carriage door slides shut behind me.

There is no music.

No smoke.

No one is drinking.

All eyes are on me.

And I say, “You all know who I am. I’m not in
the business of killing Mercs.”

To my right, a mouthy little fucker by the
name of Will says, “Hector, you’ve got a price on your head. A big
fucking price. And we’re in the business of getting paid.”

There’s ten… maybe twelve guys in this
carriage. I don’t want to fight them all. I don’t want to kill them
all.

Not yet.

I show them the gun in the waist of my
pants.

Will stumbles back.

And everyone stumbles back.

None of them are packing heat like this. They
can’t afford weapons. Or ammo. And it looks like the Enforcers
aren’t supplying these guys, at least not with guns.

I take my brother’s exquisite gun out and
show them the barrel. I give them a good look at it.

I point the gun at Will. “Forget the price on
my head. If you don’t give me some answers, there’ll be a big
fucking hole in
your
head.”

Will has his hands up. Self-preservation is a
wonderful thing. He points towards the back of the carriage,
sitting at the far end of the bar is a man who has to be an
Enforcer. I say he has to be because he’s the only one who’s not
afraid of the gun.

The Mercs leave us alone for the time being.
I know they won’t leave me alone for good. I saw the desperate look
in their eyes, in Will’s eyes. They want to get paid. They
need
to get paid.

I know I will have to deal with them
eventually.

Anyway, me and my new best friend exit the
rear of the car. And now that we’re in the tunnel, moving away from
the train, it’s getting darker. Somewhere ahead, a few miles maybe,
is a reinforced concrete slab and a brick wall. Maybe a few other
traps.

This is supposed to make everyone in the
Buried City feel safe.

It doesn’t.

“You ever been down here?” I ask the
Enforcer. “You ever seen the barricade fail?”

He shakes his head.

“The things that come out of the tunnels,” I
say. “Out of the dark… it’ll make a grown man cry. Hell, it’ll make
a grown man piss his pants.”

“Then it’s a good thing I’m packing heat,” he
says, showing me a kind of gun I’ve never seen before.

“Must be nice,” I say. “Living in Wonderland.
Having access to weaponry like that.”

He ignores me, ignores my small talk. I am
not offended.

“You took your time getting here,” he
says.

“I didn’t realize I was on a schedule.”

“Who else did you talk to?” he asks, getting
straight down to business. “Where have you been? And where did you
get that gun?”

“This is my gun. I’ve always had this. Had it
since I was a pup.”

“We know who is packing. We track those kinds
of weapons. And you, you have never owned such a fine piece of
hardware.”

“How could you possibly track something like
this?”

He doesn’t answer me. He doesn’t want to give
away information that he’s not supposed to. But what he doesn’t
realize is that while he’s bragging about his fancy gun and his
people’s abilities to track weapons and keep tabs, he’s giving away
good solid intel.

Giving it away for free.

Which means… he’s either dumber than he
looks, or he doesn’t care what he tells me because he’s about to
put two bullets in my chest and one in my skull.

“You killed Enforcers,” he says. “Good men.
Good citizens of Wonderland. They were my friends. Usually the
punishment is Exile. But not in this case.”

“I’m sorry about that. Really, I am. But you
people gave me no choice. And what the hell were you people even
doing there? Why the frame? Why the set up? What did you want with
the girl?”

“You don’t get to ask the questions.”

“I’m a dead man,” I say, trying to reason
with him. “You can tell me. You can tell me everything because I
won’t tell anyone when I’m dead. And right now, there’s no one else
around. It’s just you and me and whatever is lurking in these dark
tunnels.”

“I’m just following orders.”

“That’s a lie.”

I shift my eyes to the dark. Off in the
distance, I picture something there, something big. And I say, “We
think they’re mutants. From the radiation. From all those fucking
bombs they dropped during the Great Wars.”

“You’re not going to scare me.”

“It’s funny, isn’t it? We were fighting wars
over land and food and water. And all the while we were dropping
nukes. We were destroying the very things we were fighting over. We
were sealing our fate. Or at the very least, we were speeding it
up.”

“The Great Wars led to the Truce, which led
to the building of the Arks. The wars were a necessary evil.”

“Is that what they teach you in Wonderland?
Is that what they tell you?”

He slowly reaches for his fancy gun. Rapid
fire. Large mag. Silenced barrel. This guy is carrying around a
fortune. A treasure. And he doesn’t even realize. I see him flick
the safety off…

He is sick of talking.

“There is no escape,” he says. “My partner is
waiting in the bar. You are trapped.”

I smile. “That’s funny, because the way I see
it, you’re trapped down here with me.”

He looks at me like I’m crazy. He looks at me
and he can’t figure out why I’m smiling.

He shifts his weight, stepping back. He
swallows hard. It’s right about now that he is starting to feel
extremely uneasy. I tend to have that effect on people.

“You hear that?” I ask.

Again, I look off into the dark. I picture
the monstrosities, the twisted abominations. I picture creatures
from the depths of the Wasteland.

He doesn’t buy my bluff.

But then all of a sudden there is a noise. A
loud thump. An even louder roar.
A roar
. Maybe there really
is something coming this way.

The Enforcer turns and he raises his weapon.
He’s expecting a monster, something from his imagination, from his
nightmares. He’s heard the stories. Of course he has. And even
though he hides his fear well, I know he is scared.

But there’s nothing there, nothing but the
monsters of his mind.

The barricades do their job this time.

Anyway, while the Enforcer is distracted, I
move behind him with my knife in hand. I put him in a choke hold.
My forearm and bicep lock around his neck. He automatically stands
up, he automatically struggles, arching his back. I slide the knife
into his spine. His legs go limp. He doesn’t scream. He lets out a
weird whimpering breathless sound.

I let him down gently and relieve him of his
weapons.

A knife.

The gun.

Two extra magazines of ammunition.

If I wanted to, I could trade these items and
live like a King in the Buried City. But I don’t want to live like
a King. I want answers. I want revenge.

The Enforcer looks up at me, no longer hiding
his fear.

He’s afraid.

He’s always been afraid.

“I’m sorry to do this to you,” I say, half
lying, half telling the truth. “But I’m not ready to die. I’ve got
stuff to do. And I need answers. So now, I’m going to ask you a
bunch of questions. And you’re going to answer every single one of
them.”

He coughs blood and spits it at me. “I’m not
answering a goddamn thing.”

He whispers this through clenched teeth.

“I just paralyzed you. I can do worse.”

He tries to act tough but his eyes betray
him. “I don’t know anything. I’m just a soldier. I’m just following
orders. We were told to bring you in. To find out what you know. To
find out who else you had talked to. And then …”

“Exile me?”

“No. Not Exile. Execute… publically… as a
warning.”

“I killed maybe a handful of Mercs that you
and your people don’t give a shit about. I killed two Enforcers.
They attacked me first. They provoked me and I defended myself in
the heat of battle. This wasn’t cold blooded. This wasn’t
pre-meditated. The punishment should be Exile.”

He is shaking his head. “You don’t get it, do
you? It’s not about the killing…”

“Then what’s it about?”

Again, he clams up. Because whatever it’s
about is big.

Or maybe he doesn’t fully know.

Maybe this guy has been lied to…

I’m just a soldier.

“You had nothing to do with her death, did
you?” I say, thinking out loud, talking to myself. “Whoever killed
Ruby was no Enforcer. No butcher. She was poisoned. She was
poisoned with something I’ve never seen, never even knew existed.
She didn’t suffer. She was in no pain. You wouldn’t even know she
was dead if you saw her. You’d have to feel for her pulse. It was
almost like she’d been preserved. A beautiful work of art for the
whole world to see.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” he
asks. “What did she tell you?”

He asks this question like he is genuinely
interested, like he really, really wants to know. He is genuinely
curious. He is curious because he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know a
goddamn thing.