Wasteland Wonderland - Part 1 (7 page)

I lean forward. I keep walking because
there’s nothing to do except to keep going, to keep moving. Because
the alternative is to crawl into a ball and die. Walking the
tunnels, lost and drugged, hallucinating… this is a great way to
vanish and go missing. A great way to disappear in the dark and
never find a way out. A great and efficient way to die. Maybe this
is what I get for all the bad things I’ve done.

Maybe this is what I deserve for being a
killer, for failing Ruby.

The shadows created by the red flashlight
come to life, they dance around me. At first they are friendly, at
first they are companions for this journey.

But then they turn.

They begin to stalk me and hunt me.

They realize I am not going to make it. They
realize I am prey. They realize I will be a free meal very, very
shortly.

I remind myself that I am hallucinating. This
is not real. The monsters of shadow and darkness are not real. I
don’t need to worry about them, I don’t need to be afraid of
them.

What I need to fear is behind me.

The Overseer.

A small army of Enforcers.

Behind me are heavily armed soldiers who want
me dead, who have been ordered to kill me.

I turn the torch off because I don’t need it.
I’ve got the wall of the tunnel for guidance. And when the red
light disappears, so do the monsters. They disappear because a
shadow needs a light source.

Without light, they will die. Just like
everything else.

I begin breathing harder and harder. My
chest, my lungs are heaving, my heart is beating faster, working
overtime.

I hear something behind me.

Footsteps.

Breathing that is not my own.

Something, someone has been stalking me for
real.

Not a shadow.

“Who have you talked to?” says the
Overseer.

He says this as calm as you like. He is in no
rush.

Son of a bitch is toying with me.

I keep walking. I fumble for the gun my
brother gave me. It’s the only one that is loaded.

“No one,” I answer.

“Stop lying. Everyone you talk to, everyone
you have spoken with has died. You can stop the killing.”

I don’t know if he’s telling the truth or
not.

“The Librarian,” he says. “The owner of that
bar...”

“The Mayor?” I ask.

“If he does not cooperate, he will surely die
as well.”

Overseers are supposed to help, to care, to
maintain. They’re not supposed to be cold blooded killers.

They’re not supposed to be hunters.

They’re not supposed to be assassins.

“What the hell are you doing?” I ask. “Why am
I still alive?”

“I am curious,” he says.

“About what?”

“I am curious as to
how
you are still
alive. No one has ever survived that much poison, for this amount
of time.”

“Why don’t you just use a knife or a bullet
like everyone else?”

“Because. I am not like everyone else.”

“No. You’re different. You’re better. Or at
least, you’re supposed to be better.”

“I
am
better.”

I have a hold of the gun. All I need to do is
draw and turn and shoot. He’s right behind me. I can’t miss. I
won’t
miss. I picture it all in my mind, the gunshot, the
flash.

And then I hear a gunshot.

And another.

“Hector! Get down.”

I hear the bullets zipping past my head, my
ears. I
feel
the bullets flying past.

I drop to the ground.

Someone grabs me. I can’t tell if it’s the
Overseer.

Their hands are soft. Smooth.

“Ruby?”

No. It can’t be. And it isn’t. I’m still
hallucinating. I brush the person away, pushing them over. I get to
my feet slowly. The whole world tilts on its axis. The Buried City
becomes inverted and I’m walking on a ceiling of an underground
subway system.

I shake my head. I get my bearings. I start
jogging. There is gun fire behind me. Explosions echo and
reverberate through the tunnel. Someone is packing some serious
heat, it wasn’t the Overseer. I look down at the waist of my pants.
My brother’s gun is still tucked away, so that means I’m not the
one shooting.

It takes me a long time to figure this out.
Longer than I’m proud to admit.

More gun fire.

Grenades.

Who the hell in the Buried City has
grenades?

None of this makes sense. And I realize I
could be dreaming all this up. I could be lying face down in a dark
tunnel, in a dark ditch, dying, breathing my last. The gunfire
stops, and when the echoes fade, there is silence.

My own breathing.

My racing heart.

I tell myself to run.

“Run, you dumb son of a bitch. Run!”

Darkness.

I’ve been running and walking and wandering
through the dark. For what feels like an eternity. The dark is
endless. And even though I’m underground, even though I’m in a
labyrinth of subway tunnels, even though I’m somewhere in the
Buried City, it may as well be outer goddamn space. And no matter
how fast I run, no matter how fast I walk, I will never reach the
light.

I will never reach the light because there is
no light.

This must be what an interstellar trip into
outer space, to the edge of the solar system is like.

Dark.

Endless.

My mind is going around in circles. And this
is my fear, that I am lost. That I am walking in circles. I’m too
afraid to switch the torch on. I don’t want the shadows to come to
life. I don’t want them to stalk me anymore.

I keep moving.

And I keep thinking about how my brother
could be dead.

No.

There’s no way.

If the blast from the frag grenade didn’t
kill me, it didn’t kill him.

But what if I’m already dead?

I try not to think about how I might already
be dead. I try not to think about how I could be taking a long walk
into the afterlife.

Instead, I think about what the hell is going
on. And I think about where I’ve gone wrong. Maybe, just maybe,
I’ve been too soft. Too complacent. Too forgiving. I didn’t believe
the rumors about the Lord of Wonderland, about the Collector. I
didn’t believe the Mayor, the Enforcers, I didn’t believe my own
brother when he said they’d sent an Overseer to the Buried
City.

I didn’t even believe Overseers existed. Not
until I got into a fight with one.

A fight to the death.

It’s funny how you never feel so alive when
you’re fighting to the death, when you’re trying not to die. It’s
funny and sad. I shouldn’t need that kind of excitement and stress
to make me feel alive.

But I do.

Death. It’s really the only thing that can
make me appreciate life.

And Ruby. She made me appreciate life. She
made me appreciate it like no one else ever has. But she’s dead
now. She’s dead because I couldn’t save her. Couldn’t protect her.
And now I’m thinking about the promise I made her. I swore to her
that I’d make things right. That I’d find the bastards responsible
and I’d make them pay.

But what have I accomplished?

I’ve taken out a few Mercs. I’ve taken out a
few Enforcers. Soldiers who were just following orders. And the
Mercs were just trying to get paid, trying to make a living.

This is not good enough. This… all of this
violence and killing is accomplishing jack shit.

What I need to do is, I need to go after the
source.

The people in charge.

The people Ruby was running from.

Wonderland.

I need to go after Wonderland…

Yeah.

Its sounds crazy. It sounds like an
impossibility, but this is what I need to do.

I need to find out what secrets Ruby knew. I
need to find out what secrets got her killed.

Something is rotten in Wonderland.

And I need to find out what.

Wonderland is the last operational space
station in this part of the world. For decades, for over a century,
the Shuttles have been coming back here to ferry the last of us to
the Arks.

As a result, every single surviving human has
flocked to Wonderland. And when it became full, overcrowded, filled
to capacity, people took up residence here, in the Buried City. And
when the Buried City became overcrowded and riddled with crime and
filth, they took up residence in the Canyons. They turned them into
permanent refugee camps. And we all waited patiently for our turn,
for our ticket into Wonderland, for our ticket to one of the great
continental Arks. And because space was limited, because the
majority of people had to wait, Wonderland, and the people in
charge of Wonderland became powerful. They became Kings and Queens.
Princes and Princesses.

The citizens of Wonderland became the lucky
few, the wealthy elite, the first class citizens of Earth.

Wonderland is power. The power to save. The
power to condemn. No one, not a single person left alive on Earth
would dare go against Wonderland. Doing so would accomplish
nothing, except guarantee that you lived out your remaining days in
the Wasteland.

The flip side of this is that once a person
gained access, once they were chosen, they would never leave.

They would never return to the Buried City,
or to the Canyons.

So why would someone leave, why would anyone
give up their one shot of surviving the Red Giant?

They wouldn’t. No one ever has.

And yet Ruby did.

She ran.

She escaped.

I’ve been thinking about this non-stop. I
keep thinking it over and over.

The voice in my head keeps repeating it. And
so I repeat it out loud. “Why did she leave? Why did she escape?
What was she running from?”

Something is rotten in Wonderland…

I shake my head. I can’t figure it out. Maybe
I never will. And I’m fine with that because it makes my life
easier. It means all I have to do is find out who is responsible
for Ruby’s death.

And make them pay. Kill them good and
proper.

And I’m pretty sure I know who’s
responsible.

The Overseer.

The Lord.

The Collector.

They’re all gonna pay.

I suddenly realize that I’ve been walking up
hill, up a gentle incline. The air is getting warmer. The wall of
the tunnel is getting hot. Just like my brother said it would be
like. Just like I knew it would be like. I must be close to a
surface subway station. I think I’m safe for the moment. Need to
keep moving though. Need to keep stumbling forwards.

Upwards.

Towards the surface.

Towards the Wasteland.

I’ve got the keys to the Sunspeeder. That’s a
start. I can make it to the Canyons. Re-group. Recover. Plan my
attack.

Bastards won’t know what hit them.

The tunnel opens up. I see a platform. I see
a stairway that leads up to the rest of the subway station, to the
outside world.

But I stop.

I hesitate.

On the cusp of this threshold.

I hesitate because it feels like I’m running
away, it feels like I’m giving up. “I’m not running. I’m not giving
up. I just need to prepare myself.”

I climb up onto the platform, climb up and
out of the tunnel. I climb the stairs and it’s only now that I
realize and appreciate just how deep and buried the Buried City
actually is.

Because all I’m doing is climbing up.

I climb another set of stairs. The air starts
to burn my nostrils and my throat and my lungs as I breathe, as I
inhale. I pause on the last landing of the stairwell. The stairs
open up into a vast chamber. The entrance to the station. Huge
windows. I can’t help but think it looks like a church, a place of
worship. Light pours in from the Red Giant, the shadows are long
and I thank a higher power that these shadows are no longer coming
to life.

It must be getting late.

This is a good thing, because as soon as that
sun sets, I’ll need to make my move outside. Then again, maybe I
should go right now. Have I put enough distance between myself and
the Overseer?

Suddenly I feel eyeballs on me. I feel people
watching me, stalking me.

Am I still hallucinating?

The long shadows remain still.

A gun barrel is pressed into my back.

“No sudden movements,” she says.

A girl.

She has a soft voice.

Soft yet deadly.

“You move pretty quick for a dead man,” she says.

“I was moving quick because I was being
chased by...”

By what?

An Overseer.

Shadows.

Death.

She says, “Drop the gun.”

I didn’t even realize I was holding it,
barely holding it, barely aiming it. “First, you tell me who you
are and what you’re doing here. Why are you following me? And why
do you have a long barreled rifle aimed at my head?”

The girl takes a step back and I turn
slightly to get a look at her.

She is beautiful. She is not from here.

She lowers the barrel slightly. It’s now
aimed at my chest. “The Overseer won’t stop, you know? He never
rests. He never sleeps. Girls have tried to run before. Tried to
escape. They never make it far. They never make it out of the Long
Tunnel. They never make it past the vault door.”

“Ruby made it,” I say.

“And so did I. But I only made it because of
Ruby. And because something else has been distracting the top
brass, the Lord, the Collector. They’ve all been busy. Busy and
distracted. It’s the only reason we were able to make it as far as
we did.”

“What could possibly be so important? Why are
they so distracted?”

The girl shakes her head. She hesitates.
Thinking. Eventually she says, “I don’t know. But whatever it is,
it’s something big. Something huge.”