Wasteland Wonderland - Part 1 (8 page)

Yeah, something isn’t right. And I still
can’t figure it out. Not now. My mind is a mess, a haze of smoke
and shadows and heat mirages. “Wait, why the hell did you escape
from Wonderland? Why the hell would you want to come here?”

“You people really don’t know anything, do
you?”

“Know what?”

“Wonderland isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
It isn’t what it seems.”

“What do you mean?”

“Trust me, you’re better off not
knowing.”

“That’s funny. I killed an Enforcer earlier.
Tortured him. He said the exact same thing. Said I’d be better off
not knowing. But I think I deserve to know. I think I’ve earned the
right to know.”

“You haven’t earned shit.”

“I swore an oath to Ruby… I made a
promise.”

She lowers the gun some more. “Did… did Ruby
tell you her name?”

“Yeah.”

“She must’ve liked you…”

I think back to when Ruby hesitated. At the
time, I thought she was thinking of a fake name. But maybe she was
thinking about whether or not to tell me her real name.

“She must’ve liked you a lot,” the girl
continues. “We agreed, if we ever made it out, that we’d use a fake
name. We’d stay underground. We agreed we wouldn’t tell anyone
where we were from or what was really going on. It’s better if the
people don’t know.”

“Or maybe she knew she was dying,” I offer.
“So she figured she had nothing to lose.”

“Maybe.”

Yeah. Maybe. I’ll never know.

“So, Wonderland?” I ask. “What’s the
deal?”

“Like I said, we promised each other we
wouldn’t talk about Wonderland.”

“Why not?”

“Because talking about Wonderland, knowing
the truth about Wonderland, will get you killed.”

“I’m dead anyway. I’ve been poisoned. Ruby is
dead. The Overseer will get you eventually.”

“It’s not you I’m worried about. It’s not me.
It’s not any of the girls.”

“What? I’m not following.”

“If word gets out, if the truth gets out,
it’ll be lights out for everyone. They will destroy the Buried
City. They’ll kill everyone. They’ll burn it down and then flood
it. Or maybe they’ll cut off the oxygen supply. They have their
ways. They’ll be efficient about it. And then they’ll go after
everyone in the Canyons. It’ll be a massacre. A slaughter. That’s
why we promised to keep our mouths shut. And that’s why you’re
better off not knowing. Ignorance is bliss, right? Well, living in
ignorance is better than not living at all.”

She steps forward, towards me, and she has a
needle in her hand. “But, you’re not dead yet.”

“What is that?”

“It’ll counteract the poison.”

“How can I trust you? How do I know it’s not
more poison?”

“You don’t know. And you can’t trust me. Not
yet. But I’m all you’ve got.”

She’s right. I’m slowly dying. The poison
will kill me just as surely as it killed Ruby. On the other hand,
if what this girl has in her hypodermic needle is more poison, it
will finish me off quickly.

A quick and painless death is better than
most people get.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

She thinks about it for a second. Maybe to
think of a fake name, or maybe she’s deciding whether or not to
tell me her real name.

Eventually she sticks me with the needle,
right into my neck. And she says, “My name is Angel.”

Angel…

My brother used to read me parts of this book
called the Bible. He would only read bits and pieces, and I only
remember bits and pieces.

A valley of death.

A garden of peace.

A fallen Angel by the name of Lucifer.

A fallen Angel of Light. The Devil.

Is Angel the Devil?

I feel a warm rush up my arm. And then I
don’t feel anything else.

A few hours later I’m coming good.

I’m in the bathroom of this long abandoned
subway station.

Angel is standing behind me. She’s reloading
my guns.

My guns.

“I just want a clean break,” she says. “I
want to get away. I thought I could stay quiet, stay hidden. But
I’m starting to realize the only way to escape is to kill the
Overseer.”

“What about the Collector? What about the
Lord?”

“They rarely leave Wonderland. And they
rarely get their hands dirty. They leave it all up to the
Overseer.”

We essentially want the same things.

This fallen Angel and I.

She wants a life. A new life. She wants
freedom from the terror and tyranny of Wonderland.

I want revenge.

It looks like the stars have aligned.

The problem is, killing the Overseer will be
no easy feat. Even with all the hardware that Angel has collected,
accumulated, stolen. She has a large rucksack full of guns and
ammunition. Full of other things that go bang and boom.

Again, I think about selling all of this,
living like a King. But this is a fantasy.

“If we want to get the drop on them,” Angel
says. “We need to keep moving. We stay here, he’ll find us.”

“I’m all ears. Where do we go? What do we
do?”

“The Water Treatment Plant. That’s where will
find what we’re looking for.”

She keeps telling me how we need to do
this.

Every little thing. Every angle and every
detail.

She’s got it all figured out.

But I keep saying, no.

No.

It’s not bloody enough. It’s not painful
enough.

She has to explain to me that they, the
Overseers, they don’t bleed like we do. They don’t feel pain like
we do. Not emotional. Not physical. The way to beat them, the way
to torture them and exact revenge, you stop him from doing his job.
If it’s no longer effective, if it’s no longer able to do its job,
it will feel pain. A kind of pain.

Some version of pain.

And I say… “Like if I chopped off its legs
and arms and mangled its spine…”

Angel thinks it over. “Yes. That will
definitely piss it off.”

She called the Overseer an ‘it’. I guess
that’s accurate. I guess it’s not really human. It may walk like a
man, talk like a man. But I can assure you, it ain’t a man. Combing
your hair in the morning and smiling at strangers does not make you
a man.

Angel hands me my weapons.

My brother’s gun.

The Enforcer’s blood covered gun.

The rapid fire… the work of art.

I slide the hand guns down the waist of my
pants and I slip the rapid fire over my shoulder and around my
neck. I get comfortable and I get my mind right.

The heat is starting to rise again. I must’ve
slept through the night while the poison worked its way out of my
system.

“Shit, they’re here,” Angel says from the
door of the bathroom.

We are being chased and hunted by a small
army of Enforcers. They can track weapons. Bullets.

They can track their girls.

Their property.

“How’d they get here so fast?” she asks.
“We’re miles from the center of the city. Miles from anywhere.”

“They can track the weapons,” I explain.

I take out my brother’s gun, slide the
magazine out. On the base of one of the bullets is the word,
‘Omega’.

Omega Camp is the official name of
Wonderland.

No one uses the official name anymore. At
least, no one left on Earth.

These bullets and most of these weapons
would’ve been manufactured, or at the very least they would’ve been
modified in house, within the walls of Wonderland.

“I don’t know how they do it,” I say. “But
they can. And that’s how they found us. They can probably track you
somehow.”

Angel shakes her head. “We all disabled our
tracking devices. And at the very least, they shouldn’t be able to
get a lock on us underground.”

Doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter
because I’m feeling better. Well, not better. Not a hundred
percent. But I feel like killing some people who deserve to be
killed.

Enforcers.

The Overseer.

They’re all part of a problem. They’re all
complicit. And they’re all about to pay a heavy, heavy price for
their compliance.

I say, “You might wanna hang back,
Angel.”

She slides an elongated briefcase out of the
rucksack, out of her magical rucksack full of magical and deadly
things. “Hang back? And let you have all the fun? No way. These
guys have made my life a living hell since I was old enough
to…”

She trails off.

I don’t ask why.

She opens the long briefcase. Contained
within the briefcase are a bunch of parts which she puts together
like a jigsaw puzzle. Bit by bit. Piece by piece.

And in a few short minutes, she’s got herself
a sniper rifle. There’s no scope, but down here, we’re not going to
need a scope.

“Do you know how to use that thing?” I ask,
completely underestimating her.

“Yeah. One of these bastards taught me. He
was bored. Figured he teach a pretty young girl how to fire a large
and ugly weapon. The first time I fired it, the recoil nearly
killed me, nearly took my head off. I cried. He laughed.
Bastard.”

“I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be sorry. Because now I know how to
use this,” she says, shouldering the sniper rifle, checking the
barrel. “I now know how to kill a human being.”

I nod my head and I’m smiling. “Then let’s
get to it.”

I tell her to hide behind a billboard on the
upper level of the subway. A billboard that advertises the
‘Trans-continental Hyperloop’. What an age to be alive, I think to
myself. Anyway, I tell Angel it’ll be warmer up there. And that she
won’t be used to the heat. But she’ll have a great line of sight, a
great vantage point. I tell her to use a knife to cut a hole in the
billboard. Cut a few holes.

I tell her, “Don’t point the barrel through
the hole. They’ll be able to see it. Hang back. Line them up. Take
your time. And remember, it’ll be hot up there, even more so than
right here, even though we’re literally only one level lower.”

She tells me she can handle it. She tells me
she won’t let me down. She hands me two grenades and takes her
rucksack and wishes me good luck.

Angel makes her way up the stairs, makes her
way to her sniper’s nest.

I turn my head to the side. I can hear them
walking up the dark tunnel, marching, noisy and arrogant. It’s time
to start killing, time to get revenge for Ruby.

For the guy who poured me my drinks at that
sleazy ass bar.

For Meryl, the sweet old librarian who knew
my name even though I didn’t know hers. She knew my name because
she knew everyone’s name. She kept that place open, kept it from
falling into waste. She warned us, cut the power, gave us a chance
to escape. I know this act of defiance and bravery cost her dearly.
I know it cost Meryl her life. The Enforcers would not have
hesitated putting a bullet in her brain. Her brain, within it, the
knowledge and wisdom of the Library she kept alive.

Now it’s all gone. Dead and gone.

Maybe they didn’t use a bullet. Maybe they
didn’t want to waste one on an old lady. Maybe they just used a
knife. I’m picturing all the ways that Meryl could’ve died. And I’m
getting pretty worked up. And it’s getting hard to focus.

And I
need
to focus.

Killing an army is hard work.

“Hector! Lay down your weapons. Get on the
ground. Put your hands behind your head. And no one will get
hurt.”

“Okay. Sure. I’ll do that.”

Idiots. Why are they wasting their breath?
Haven’t they learnt their lesson?

The grenades that Angel gave me are not
regular grenades. They’re not explosive frag grenades. One is a
flash-bang grenade and the other is a smoke grenade. I pull the
pins out with my teeth. I spit them on the ground and I throw the
flash-bang into the subway tunnel.

The flash-bang is louder and brighter than I
ever imagined. It’s the kind of brightness you’d expect from an
exploding star, or a few thousand nuclear warheads detonating all
at once. The flash-bang moves into a strobe light mode and all hell
and chaos erupts. I see the Enforcers scatter like roaches, taking
cover.

They return fire. Well, they try to. Their
aim is sporadic and completely inaccurate. At the very back of
their pathetic group, I think I see the Overseer. He’s standing in
the background, standing in the dark tunnel.

He’s not bothering to hide or take cover. I
can’t be certain, but it looks like he is smiling.

The flashing continues.

On and off.

Light.

Bright like the sun, like the Red Giant.

Dark.

Like the edge of space.

The Overseer disappears. Smart move,
buddy.

I throw the smoke grenade. And I unleash with
the rapid fire gun. An entire magazine. I shoot where the Enforcers
are taking cover, where they
think
they are hiding. They are
wrong. They are not hidden. I stand on the platform and mow them
down. I run out of bullets. I let the gun fall to my side. I take
out my brother’s antique handgun.

I aim.

Fire.

Angel provides support from above. She’s
better than I expected. She’s a crack shot, a dead eye.

The Enforcers fall in the tunnel. Dying.
Choking on blood and smoke. I hold my hand up, telling Angel to
stop shooting. One Enforcer is left, he is wearing a poncho. He has
a scar over his left eye.

He has a bullet in his stomach.

I jump down into the tunnel and grab him by
the scruff of his neck. I throw him onto the platform. “Talk.”

He says nothing. And he does nothing except
crawl into a smaller and smaller ball. Blood pours out of his
body.

Angel appears beside me. “Just end him.”

“He might know something. I saw him, the
night Ruby died. He was asking around. He was stalking her. He was
real close.”

He looks shorter than I remember. Not as
thin. Then again, I was stone drunk that night. I could barely see
straight.