Wasteland Wonderland - Part 1 (5 page)

Funny, I didn’t think Enforcers had
mothers.

“You don’t die from this,” I say. “The gut
shot. At least, not right away. It’ll be slow. It’ll be painful.
Extremely painful. I’ve seen it, out in the Wasteland. Trust me,
you don’t want to go through it.”

He is crying and screaming and eventually he
says, “What… what do you want from me?”

“I want a name. I want to know what’s going
on.”

“They don’t tell us anything. We’re soldiers.
We’re property. We’re weapons of Wonderland.”

The other guy said the same thing.

I’m just a soldier.

Sounds like they’ve been brainwashed to
follow orders and to not ask questions.

To give your life.

To sacrifice yourself.

“What were your orders?” I ask.

“To find you. Find out who you’d talked to.
Kill you…”

“Why?”

“Because you kidnapped a girl. You helped her
escape. You… tricked…” he trails off because maybe he realizes that
everything he’s been told is a lie. “She was someone very
important. Someone very close to the Collector. You killed
her!”

“Looks like you’ve been played for a
fool.”

He starts laughing. And he looks crazy with
his blood covered mouth and his blood stained teeth. He’s
delusional from blood loss. From pain. “You think I’m the fool?
You’re the fool. You’re so dead, you don’t even realize it. You
want answers? You better speak to the Mayor of the Buried City.
They sent an Overseer with us. An
Overseer
. You’re so
dead.”

“The Mayor?”

I’m starting to realize everyone is in on
this.

The Mayor.

The Sheriff.

Wonderland.

Everyone wants me dead. Just like they wanted
Ruby dead.

Someone is trying to clean up their mess.

Someone is trying real hard.

Sending Enforcers.

Supplying the Mercs.

Sending an Overseer.

The good people of Wonderland are scared
about something.

Lost secrets.

Skeletons in the closet.

I shoot the Enforcer in the head, putting him
out of his misery.

I keep his gun.

I’ve got a feeling I’m going to need it.

I apologized to Lisa on the way out. Told her to keep the steel,
the weapons. I gave her the names of a few people who would be very
interested in all those dead bodies.

I realize that because there’s a whole lot of
Enforcers walking through the alleys of the Buried City, the Mayor
has to have given them the green light to administer their own form
of justice. Consequence free.

The last Enforcer confirmed this theory of
mine. Said I should pay him a visit.

So I decide to pay the Mayor a visit.

The Mayor’s office is heavily guarded. The
entire building is. But I don’t feel like killing people who don’t
deserve to be killed. So I give them the slip.

And then I’m standing in the Mayor’s office
and he’s sitting behind his massive hardwood desk and he’s giving
me a look that says I’m out of my goddamn mind for coming here.

He says, “You’re out of your goddamn mind for
coming here, you know that? You’ve got a lot of nerve. How many
people have you killed?”

I shrug my shoulders. “To be honest. I’ve
lost count. A train full of Mercs. A few more at that sleazy motel
when you tried to ambush me, when you tried to frame me for
something I didn’t do. I’m up to four Enforcers. I know that. Been
counting those bastards. The Lord is going to be pissed.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Just give me some damn answers. The killing
will stop. I’ll leave the Buried City. I’ll Exile myself. You won’t
never see me again. I’m not afraid of the Wasteland.”

“There’ll be no Exile. Not this time. And you
don’t get to decide when it’s over. It’ll be over when you’re dead
and rotting in the Wasteland. Or maybe they’ll put your body on
display in the city square. A bullet in your skull, a knife in your
back, your gut full of poison. Don’t you get that?”

“Speaking of poison…”

“Look, Hector, I don’t know anything. I
swear. This all came out of the blue. We hadn’t heard a peep out of
Wonderland in five years. Five long years. I was starting to think
no one was home. I was starting to think we’d been left
behind.”

“Maybe we have.”

“No, they’re just waiting like the rest of
us,” he says quickly. “And besides, we’ve seen choppers flying over
the ruins, we’ve seen Spider Tanks crawling through the Wasteland.
But let me just ask you one question…”

“Fire away.”

“Did you kill her?”

“No. I didn’t kill her. But someone did.
Someone poisoned her.”

“Poisoned?” he asks, like he doesn’t already
fucking know.

“Yeah. Wasn’t ordinary poison neither. I’ve
never seen anything like it. Only one place it could’ve come from.
Only one place
she
could’ve come from.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m not the smartest guy around. My brother
got the brains and the looks. But I know when something is messed
up. And this right here, this whole situation… this is messed up.
The girl… Ruby… she was on the run. Don’t know what she was running
from. But it had to have been big and bad. Mean and scary. Why else
would she leave Wonderland? Why else would she come here to this
godforsaken city?”

“You’re asking too many questions, Hector. If
you come quietly, if you make some promises, I can cut you a deal.
I can get you a ticket out of this city and off this rock.”

“So you’re working with them?”

“What the hell do you think this is? Them?
There is no them. We’re all in this together. It’s us. We’re the
last people on Earth. If we don’t work together, if we don’t follow
the rules, we don’t survive this.”

“The last guy I killed, an Enforcer, he said
they sent an Overseer. I’ve never seen an Overseer in my life. And
I’ve seen a lot of things.”

“Ark America. They can get you a place, your
own bedroom, your own bathroom. That’s more than a lot of people
ever get. They’ll forgive you, if you leave quietly, if you keep
your mouth shut.”

“There’s no forgiveness. Not until I make
this right. Not until I make these people pay for what they did to
Ruby.”

“She belonged to the Collector, you know. She
was a prized possession.”

“So I keep hearing. But if you ask me, it’s
pretty messed up to think of people as possessions.”

“These are powerful people you’re messing
with.”

“Where’s the Overseer?”

“I don’t know. I doubt he’s still here. He’s
probably gone back to Wonderland.”

That’s a lie.

“Humor me,” I say. “If he was still here.
Where would he be?”

“Maybe the Library. Maybe the Casino.”

“How are they moving between Wonderland and
the Buried City?”

“However they want. They’ve got
transportation. Like I said, they’ve still got Spider Tanks and
choppers. You know that.”

“No. I mean, how would they move
undetected.”

The main entrance to the Buried City is a
massive train station. It’s located near the center of a once great
city. A great city that now lies in ruins. Half the danger of
transporting people to Wonderland was getting in and out of the
ruins. Lot of nasties hiding in the rubble, in the abandoned
buildings and skyscrapers. I cannot believe they were hiding a
tunnel from us.

People died for crying out loud.

A lot of people.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the
Mayor says.

“Yes. You do. There’s a tunnel. According to
my recently deceased friend, it connects this place with
Wonderland. I need you to tell me all about it.”

The Mayor lowers his head. He is sweating
bullets. He is afraid.

They’re probably watching him.

The room is probably bugged.

I don’t care.

“Fine,” he says. “It’s beyond the Water
Treatment Plant. They call it the Long Tunnel. But it’s locked. And
you need an access code. No one knows it. At least, no one this
side of the door knows it. And no one on this side of the door has
a key. Not even me. Not the Sheriff. No one.”

“Any of the bosses?”

“No.”

The Mayor finally tells the truth. Actually
didn’t take as long as I expected. “Thanks a bunch.” I toss him the
knife I took off the Enforcer that I shot in the neck. It’s made
from high quality forged steel. It has a serrated edge. It is well
balanced. It is worth a lot. “For your trouble,” I say.

The Mayor picks up the knife. He studies the
blade. “You should get a move on.”

“Why’s that?”

“They’re coming for you.”

“Who?”

He stabs the knife into the hardwood desk.
“Everyone.”

I thought about killing the Mayor. How corrupt is he? How far gone?
I decided not to. He’d helped my brother get me out of the
underworld way back when, helped broker the deal. He even gave me a
map of the Wasteland before I was Exiled. So yeah, for this reason,
I don’t kill him.

Maybe I’m getting soft.

Anyway, the good Mayor said I’d find what I’m
looking for at either the Library or the Casino.

I decide to make my way to the Great Library
of the Buried City first. I do this because the Casino is run by
some people that I’d rather not deal with right now. It’s run by
some people who probably still want me dead and buried and
Exiled.

It’s funny, here we are at the end of the
world, the end of life on Earth, and people still want to gamble,
people still want to risk it all for the small chance of victory,
for the small chance of beating the big odds.

People gamble with everything. Everything
from food and water, to tokens, even people’s lives. There’s a
rumor flying around that a guy lost his ticket to Wonderland a few
years ago, more than a few years ago. But then there are also the
rumors of people winning. Winning big. Winning their way into
Wonderland.

Maybe this is why people do it.

To win big.

On to one of the Shuttles.

Winning a home on one of the Arks.

So yeah, maybe this is why people keep
gambling, keep taking their chances and risking it all. Maybe it’s
why they keep putting their lives and their family’s lives up as
collateral.

The weird thing is, the slot machines, they
take coins, they take gold dollars and silver dollars and pounds
sterling and pennies and nickels and dimes, even though these coins
are worth more if they are melted down and made into something
useful. If I had to take a guess, I’d say that to the people who
gamble with them, the coins, they represent hope. And to the
gangsters who run the Casino, these worthless coins represent
control
.

I picture myself walking in there right
now.

I picture the fight.

I picture all the trouble.

I shake my head. I’m going to need some time
to prepare myself for something like that.

So it’s off to the Library I go.

My brother and I have used the Library as a
meeting place before. The Mayor knows this. I guess it could be a
trap, a set up. But it would be no worse a trap than the Casino
would be.

Anyway, there’s only one way to find out. I
head for the Great Library, a building that contains the entire
history of mankind, both real and fake, biased and unbiased. Within
the pages of the books, within the dusty covers are lies and truths
and stories too fantastic to be real.

Usually the place is full. Full of people who
want to better themselves by reading up on the terrible history of
the human race, full of people who want to escape from this world
into a fictitious world with fictitious characters.

I once asked my brother why he reads so much,
why he spent so much time in the Library.

“To learn everything I possibly can,” he
answered. “To reject the useless and keep the useful.”

I said, “Bullshit. What’s the real
reason?”

He said so he could become a better liar. “To
be a good liar, you need to know the truth of things.”

I never understood what he meant by that, but
then again, he was always smarter than me.

Bastard.

I walk to the front desk and I’m surprised to
find the place isn’t entirely deserted.

The Librarian is still here.

Nice old lady. Runs the place by herself. Not
sure of her name. I was always better with faces.

“Hector,” she says because she knows my name,
because maybe she knows everyone’s name. “There’s someone here to
see you. He’s waiting in the back. In the law stacks.”

“Friend?” I ask.

“A better friend than you deserve.”

I walk past the main common area, past rows
and rows of hardwood tables adorned with reading lamps. The tables
and the reading area give way to rows and rows of bookshelves.
Towards the back, there’s a stairwell that leads down into a lower
level basement.

The Law Library.

An entire library, an entire basement devoted
to the laws of the human race, to a dying civilization.

Down in the basement there are more shelves.
Some of them are moveable to save room. You can slide them
together. Like a giant accordion.

Someone grabs my shoulder. There’s only one
person who’d be brave enough to sneak up on me like that. Only one
person who
could
sneak up on me like that.

My brother pulls me into a forgotten row of
shelves that contain forgotten laws.

He’s holding a set of keys. “There’s a
Sunspeeder with your name on it. You can make it. It’s not too
late. Provided you leave right now.”

“Why the hell would I leave? I like it here.
Life’s just starting to get interesting again.”

“This isn’t a joke, Hector. You’ve pissed off
a lot of people. You’ve pissed off the wrong people. You need to
go. You need to go right now.”