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fiction: serial fiction
faraway: chapter eleven
The fifth group had just departed on the helicopter when it started. Spaulding was reading Grayson's report in his makeshift headquarters, occassionally glancing over at Simpson, who had not moved since being ordered to sit still hours ago.
"Wary but not dangerous ..." Spaulding muttered, reading the paper to himself, "facilities are ramshackle but large, full medical care re-established, only had to appoint one person to a government post in negotiations ... good, Stuart, you'll be fine out there until ..."
Spaulding was unable to finish his thought when Hathaway ran in. Spaulding looked up slowly, seeing Hathaway as a kind of bad omen, a raven on a rainy day, come with more news of failure and lack somewhere in Spaulding's perfect prison.
Hathaway started to speak and remembered himself, also glancing at the pistol resting on the table in front of Spaulding. Self-consciously, Spaulding holstered the sidearm and nodded to Hathaway.
"There's a major problem, sir ..." Hathaway began, shakily.
"Of course there is," Spaulding purred, beginning to settle into this rhythm of disasters.
"... the prisoners, sir," Hathaway sputtered, "they ... they've set fires, and ..."
"They've been burning fires non stop," Spaulding said tiredly. "What's so ..."
"Sir!" Hathaway said excitedly. Spaulding stopped to take notice of the man, veins on his forehad poking out from under sweat-pressed locks of brown hair, his hands trembling.
"Sir, they've blocked the hallways with mattresses and set them on fire," Hathaway said anxiously, wringing his hands. "All the hallways. There's no way down, and the smoke is filling the halls.
Realization marched across Spaulding's face as he leapt up. "Withdraw everybody! Get them all in here, as fast as you can! Up, up, we have to all relocate, as high as we can!"
Hathaway ran out without being dismissed and Spaulding made for the open door. He yelled down, "Move everything, move everybody, up as high as we can get. Seal those doors, tight! Move as close to the roof exit as we can, line the halls, whatever! Go!"
Spaulding turned back to see what he needed to bring and saw Simpson, standing dead center of the room and looking at him with a vacant kind of grin. Spaulding considered how fast he'd have to draw his sidearm to get out of this alive.
"Sir," Simpson said calmly, his voice serene and undisturbed. "I know you normally don't like to hear them, but if I may offer a suggestion?"
Spaulding relaxed just a little, happy his time to kill Simpson hadn't surprised him. "Of course, Commander," Spaulding said, ignoring the sounds of panic behind him and using the rank as a reminder of a shared responsibility. "I'd love to hear your thoughts."
"I have pre-selected a group of guards ..." Simpson said, casually opening the breast pocket on his uniform, "... ones with no family and slightly higher-than-normal aggressive tendencies. I took the liberty of speaking with them, as months have gone on, and they are all prepared to carry out any actions necessary to secure the prison. If you or I issue the command 'Tyr Seven,' they're all prepared to help me with ... settling down the prisoners." Simpson smoothly walked over, handed over the old-fashioned paper notepad, and walked back to his place.
Spaulding looked over the list -- it was long, and some of the men listed were dead, as noted by Spaulding's knowledge and a red star by Simpson -- but most of them were in service and fairly dangerous in their own right. "'Tyr' ..." Spaulding noted aloud, "the Norse god of war."
Simpson smiled slightly, staring at Spaulding.
"Collateral damage?" Spaulding asked, hesitantly.
"Sizeable," Simpson said, almost a purr, "but no more structural than the last large explosion. Survivable, given the orders in place."
Spaulding looked at Simpson, a statue of madness in the dim candle and lantern light. "You may not survive such an order, Commander."
The right corner of Simpson's mouth bent in a smirk as he replied, "Yes, sir."
Mentally, Spaulding shrugged, realizing he could send as big a bomb at the prisoners as they'd sent at him.
"You are authorized to carry out Tyr Seven, Commander," Spaulding said.
Without a word, Simpson walked back over to his bag, retrieved it, and walked out of the room. Spaulding shuddered uncomfortably and ran to order somebody to open every roof external vent possible before they were all smothered to death.
• • •
Lots of things went wrong.
Starting the fires safely wasn't as easy as I envisioned it, Damu thought to himself as he waited with a large group of rebels in the passages built in the walls. Two men had died, setting fire to the mattress mountains from the staff side, pillars of fire now clogging every hallway around the cafeteria, itself the only access point to the higher levels the guards could consider safe. The haste to jam those last mattresses in place, effectively corking the halls and trapping the smoke on the guard side, caught two slow moving firestarters before they could make it back to safety. Damu cursed himself for changing his mind and making the stacks fifteen mattresses thick instead of five, wondering if that longer distance killed those men. Unabated, he decided it was the cost of doing business, and settled himself in calm meditation.
The screams and bustle outside had died down three or four hours before, but Damu wanted no chance for mistakes, and made sure every group knew his was to go first, despite getting lots of flak for charging into battle from Collins and Harata.
"The general who leads from the front gets an arrow in his chest!" Harata had said, furious. Collins agreed, "They trust you, so stay alive long enough to see them through this!"
Damu had ignored them, a rare and uncomfortable change. He saw the looks on the men's faces when he joined them, the calm appreciation. I made the right choice, he decided. This group -- mostly gang bangers from Chicago -- made him agree to not go in first, which he reluctantly agreed to. They all wore gas masks, as did fourteen other groups of about forty men each, with the remainder waiting behind them with damp cloths and anger as their only protection against the smoke.
Damu closed his eyes and tried to concentrate, tried to remember the meditation techniques his uncle Seker taught him. The ability to feel things happening, to listen to time itself and know when to act. To be honest, Damu was never very good at it, always too impatient, Seker said. Much like his father. Damu felt reminded of those quiet sessions in that back yard on 58th Place, knowing that the voice in his head constantly saying "GO!" was just his own impatience. Still, everyone was looking at him for the word that would mean death to some of these men ...
"Let's do this," Damu said quietly, trying to sound certain, "just like we planned."
Quietly and carefully, two men pried open the hatch, this one bulkier than most, and stepped out, their exit covered by pistols from two more. They each wandered opposite directions into the smoke, stepping carefully, saying nothing. Two by two, men entered the corridor through the irregular hatch, until two thirds the number were in the hall, including Damu. The rest stayed, as a reserve, in case things went wrong. Damu signalled silently, pointing and then pumping his fist, a hand sign the men recognized from the practice he made them go through to get their weapons. Some rushed ahead to tap on walls and bring forth more men, some simply set up positions to send hails of gunfire against any hostiles that could emerge from the smoke, still thick enough to preclude vision more than a few feet in any direction.
Two minutes passed before the first scouts came back with reports. Damu didn't know most of their names, and the masks made it even harder to recognize them, which he regretted. You should know someone's name if you're sending them to die, he thought grimly.
A scout, one of the extremely rare white prisoners still in the population, walked up first, his mask hiding his face and his fear. "Hey, the second groups on this hall are out, and there's some guards in the hall that must not have made it in time, dead from the smoke."
Damu nodded -- this made sense. "What about the cafeteria?"
"Locked down, barricaded probably," the scount replied, wiping sweat from his forehead. "The doors are closed shut and I didn't wanna get too close yet."
"We'll have to get close sooner or later," Damu said quietly. "Okay, run back and secure a position. Uh ... you two, can you go with him and secure a forward position near the cafeteria doors."
The two men nearby, muscled and tattooed, nodded assent, and walked off, the white scout behind them. Damu felt a slight pang, as though he'd never see them alive again, but fought it down.
"Everybody else, split up in teams of eight," Damu barked, "just like we practiced, sweep the halls, deal with anything, don't hesitate to use grenades. One always hangs back just in case, to report back if something goes wrong! Let's go!"
Damu fell into step with the nearest bunch of guys, milling around and looking antsy, and they started down a hallway, splitting off from the larger body of men. Their footsteps resonated in the empty, smoky halls as they proceeded slowly, always watching out. Damu thought to himself that they had taken to the laughable amount of drilling and training he'd given quickly, almost all of them already comfortable with firearms and dealing death. His musings were interrupted when the point, a chubby Black man with a clean shaven head and arms like sides of ham, held up a single fist, signalling "all stop." Another angled for a look, aiming his rifle as he went, and nodded. Shoulders rolled and safeties went off, as the point man signalled for a slow advance with four fingers.
In a few yards, they came upon what the point man had seen -- a clump of mostly white corpses in black uniforms, bodies laid out in pools of blood and piles of debris.
"The bombs," someone to Damu's right said glumly, meaning the explosive charge set off by a group of nihilist rebels earlier. The fact that the bodies they found were mostly white, meaning that the White Knights had been kept here and borne the brunt of this pain.
"Thor," Damu said quietly, almost a whisper. "Try and find him if you can. His brother may be on the way with a lotta guns, and we'll be better off if he sees him, alive or dead."
They all nodded. Some started slowly poking through the rubble, while others swung their weapons around warily, on the lookout for danger. Damu felt a wave of pride, remembering his father's words about his mission: "reclaiming that which the world has thrown away, to make a finer world."
They started to spread out a little, looking, searching. The first shot that rang out was a surprise to them all, and they dutifully crouched and scanned their field of vision. Sure enough, around a bend in the hallway perhaps fifteen meters down, two guards in tactical gear were drawing beads through the haze and firing. Damu opened his mouth to shout for grenades when two flew over his head, banking off the wall behind the guards seconds later. The explosion tore the guards apart, an arm flying ten yards to land with a flop, and screams from behind let him know there were more who felt his wrath. The point man and three more hurdled debris and rushed the corner, the rest holding back. From behind him, Damu heard a from inside one of the chambers off this corridor ask if Thor had a swastika tattooed on his chest or his arm.
"Arm, I think" another voice called, and the first replied, "Got 'im. He's alive."
Damu signalled the rest to hold and rushed in. Sure enough, there was Thor, a huge gash in his head and a finger missing, but otherwise none the worse for wear, his chest falling and rising evenly.
"Ain't this some sh*t?" the original voice asked, a dark skinned man with glasses on under his mask who stood a head taller than Damu. "This guy makes it."
"There's another one over here," another voice said, "worse off."
Damu walked over and saw the Knight, a tattoo across his neck reading "NI**ER KILER," and sighed at the typo and the waste of life. Blood flowed from his knee, where a leg once belonged, and the left arm was also long gone. "This guy's not gonna make it," Damu said aloud before firing a blast into the man's head, stilling him. No one seemed to mind. "Three of you, drag Thor back to the passages," Damu ordered, "tie his ass up well, kick him in the head to make sure he stays down. Then rejoin us, aight?"
The men responded quietly, picking Thor up like a ragged doll, arms flailing as he went, and made their way out into the smoke. Damu returned to the hall and found the point man and his partners stripping the guards' bodies of ammunition and supplies. He glanced down the hall and saw a more disturbing site -- a child, her red dress torn by shrapnel, her flawless raven hair spread about on the floor, sopping wet with her blood. Damu walked over and looked down at the body, a nametag reading "SAMANTHA" cheerfully announcing itself from her chest. Another man, one Damu actually knew named Jenkins, walked up and sucked his teeth.
"The guards had kids," Jenkins surmised.
Damu nodded, brooding.
Jenkins cocked his rifle to clear the chamber of a round and said, "F**k them too."
Not for the first time, Damu wondered if it was worth it, if any of this would indeed make that finer world. Not for the first time, his sense of duty and obligation to his pledge overrode his pangs of doubt and fear.
"Let's keep moving," Damu said loud enough to be heard, and his troop continued on.
• • •
Simpson heard them coming before they got close to the turn in the corridor, and signalled his men to stop. He stood waiting with fifteen of his Tyr 7 recruits, ones he found in the personnel files with similar observations as Spaulding had assigned to him. None had as much training or discipline, but they all leapt at the chance of forming a praetorian guard with a wider mandate for releasing their aggressions. In groups of sixteen, they were making their way towards the prison and a chance to counterattack.
Simpson checked his vest and his weapon, some of the finer materials from the armory, secured long before the looting. A voice in Simpson's head had vaguely wondered at the time if it was appropriate to secure the best weaponry for what could arguably be called personal use. He smiled to himself, satisfied in his forethought.
The first prisoner came around the corner nonchalantly, munching on a ration bar and looking like he was on a nature hike or a recreational stroll. He didn't pause for backup, and the silenced shot that took him down was a peripheral whisper compared to the clamor of conversation beyond the corner. The prisoner, a lanky one Simpson recalled seeing on the basketball courts often, fell straight down, his knees refusing linearity and buckling, allowing his tall form to collapse to the ground like a pile of laundry. The next man around the corner almost tripped over the body of the first, and another breezy silenced shot helped him continue his fall downwards, a cascade of his blood raining on the wall behind. That started the sound of protests, and Simpson pulled his fist down quickly, signalling a full charge. All of his men surged forward in a mass and rushed around the corner, firing as they went. Simpson lagged behind his men, stopping to appraise the first two bodies with a dreamy gaze.
"Two can play commando ..." Simpson whispered thoughtfully before cresting the corner. He turned to see all but two of the prisoners slain, their bodies resting across one another like children tuckered out from a long day of play, their blood oozing together in a kind of paste. The final two, obviously the rear guard, had fallen back behind the corpses and were firing furiously around a farther corner. Simpson's men, all identical to him at this point, had formed a two tiered skirmish line with riot gear shields deflecting what few bullets made their way to them.
One helmeted trooper turned to Simpson and said, "They're terrible shots, sir."
Simpson nodded absently and said, "Give me your riot shield and prepare to make room for me to get through."
The man said nothing, dumbfounded by the command for a moment, but consented, giving Simpson his own shield. "I'll get this back to you," Simpson smiled, lowering his own face shield and tapping the nearest man on the shoulder. With a bellow, Simpson barrelled down the hallway, running low to the ground, shield ahead of him, until he found the two prisoners, terrified, at the end. He fired five shots into the chest of the one on the left as he blocked the second's return fire with the shield. Simpson then rushed the remaining prisoner, smashing his shield into the man's body, and that body into the wall with all the force Simpson could muster. The corners of Simpson's mouth turned up at the sound of cracking bones, and he noted the broken man's weapon fall from his limp fingers. Simpson leaned back and swung the shield like a bat, sending teeth and blood dancing through the air and against the wall. Simpson pulled the shield back once more, and rammed it through the prisoner's chest, showering viscera in every direction, killing the man instantly. Simpson stood, smiling happily, reviewing this act. He turned to see his men looking at him amazed.
"Ready to get back to work?" Simpson asked breathily.
They all cheered and rooted him on, following him as he lead deeper towards the prison's core.
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