Wasteland Wonderland - Part 1 (9 page)

“See that patch on his shoulder?” Angel
says.

I tear the poncho away. There’s a patch that
looks like a spear.

“He’s a commander,” she explains. “Bad son of
a bitch. Sadistic. But trust me, he can’t tell you anything. He
can’t tell you anything you need to know. The scar over his eye,
it’s like an initiation. A rite of passage. It’s to let people know
who he is and what he’s done. To let people know that he’s a made
man.”

I slit his throat and he bleeds to death in
less than a minute.

I jump back down into the tunnel.

“What are you doing?” Angel asks.

“Getting ammo…”

She throws the ruck sack on the ground. “Got
everything we need right here. You get anymore, we won’t be able to
carry it.”

“I just need some ammo for this.”

I show her the rapid fire gun. The work of
art. The pure killing machine. I think I’m in love with it.

“What’s it take?” she asks. “Nine
millimeters, right?”

“I don’t know. It’s not mine. And I’m no
expert. I’ve just been pointing and shooting.”

I slide the empty magazine out and throw it
up to her.

“Yeah, nine millimeters,” she says. “I’ve got
hundreds of these.”

She throws me a magazine. And another. Heavy
and full of bullets, full of little promises of death and pain and
revenge.

No.

More than revenge… retribution.

Justice.

I load the gun and instantly feel a whole lot
better about my current situation, about myself, about life.

I strip two corpses of their thermo suits. I
try and find ones that have the least amount of blood on them, the
least amount of holes. I keep looking over my shoulder as I work. I
know the Overseer is lurking in the tunnel somewhere. He’s hanging
back for some reason.

I don’t know why he doesn’t come and finish
the job. Pump me full of poison. Torture me. Bury me in the
Wasteland. I know he’s capable of doing just that. He’s capable of
doing it single handedly.

But he’s not doing any of this.

Which begs the question, why is he sending
Enforcers to their death?

He’s hanging back. Smiling. Laughing. He’s
enjoying this. He’s having the time of his life.

And so am I.

Maybe we’re not so different.

I strip an Enforcer of his thermo suit. He’s
still alive.

He begs…

And he begs.

For what? I’m not sure.

He’s semi-naked and bleeding and dying and
afraid.

And the only thing I can give him is a quick
death.

I slit his throat. He stops begging.

For some reason, despite the fact that I’m surrounded by dead
bodies, I start thinking about how Angel and I, we’re at a
crossroad. I can basically see the Wasteland. Well, I can’t
actually see it, but I sure as hell can feel it.

I see the tunnel that leads back down into
the Buried City.

Up.

Down.

These are our two choices.

We can escape into the ruins of the above
ground city. We can escape into the Wasteland. We can run. Live to
fight another day. Or we can head back into the darkness of the
subway tunnels, back into the depths of the Buried City, we can
fight today.

We can fight right fucking now.

I take a deep breath. My heart beat slows
down, the adrenalin rush of the fight subsides. My head clears. I
feel like I should think these two options through. I hear my
brother’s voice. The voice of reason. Know yourself, your
strengths, your limitations.

Know your enemy.

Know your terrain.

Consider your origins and your options
carefully.

I look around, taking my surroundings in.
Studying my terrain, my battlefield. I love these abandoned subway
stations. The ones closest to the surface. I love them because they
are completely abandoned, completely empty. Rats don’t even come up
here.

The only downside is, it’s too damn hot.

Angel is sweating and breathing hard. She’s
not used to her body having to work like this, for every breath.
And even though she doesn’t want to show it, show weakness, I can
tell she’s hurting. And to be honest, so am I. I’m hurting bad. My
brother was right, it’s hotter now. A lot hotter.

But I don’t care. I could stay up here all
day. There’s no one else around to tell you what to do, or what you
should be doing. No hustle and bustle of the Buried City.

The quiet.

The silence.

And the raging heat.

It’s almost peaceful.

Almost.

I lay the two thermo suits out on the ground,
sizing them up, wondering if one of them will actually fit me.

“What are those for?” Angel asks.

I motion with my head to the ceiling.
“They’re for the Wasteland. This suit will protect you from the
sun, so we can move around during the day.”

“No, I know what they are. I mean, you’re not
planning on running are you?”

“What else is there left to do?”

“I told you, we need to kill the Overseer. We
don’t survive, we don’t get to live if we don’t kill the
Overseer.”

“Honey, I’m not sure he can be killed.”

She points to the rucksack. “I’ve got enough
heat here to bring down the walls of Wonderland. If you won’t help
me, I’ll do this thing on my own.”

And I believe her. One hundred percent.

“And don’t call me Honey,” she adds.

Angel’s got the right attitude. She’s got the
stomach. But if she goes in by herself, guns blazing, she won’t
accomplish anything other than leaving a young and very beautiful
corpse.

Come to think of it, a few well-placed
bullets will take care of her beauty.

I look up at the sunlight filtering through
the dusty windows of the subway station. “I figured that maybe I’ve
killed enough people on Ruby’s behalf that I’m about even. Up
there, in the Wasteland, we can disappear. We can start over. I’ll
find you a place in the Narrow Canyon. Or the Deep Canyon. They
won’t find you.”

“They will. They’ll find us both. They have
their ways. And you might’ve killed a hundred Enforcers, but you
haven’t killed the thing, the people responsible for Ruby’s
death.”

Damn. She’s right. I know she’s right. And
she won’t let me off the hook.

“The Overseer,” I whisper.

Angel lays it all down. “The Overseer. The
Lord. The Collector. They work together. And together, they are
invincible. Together, they are all knowing and all powerful. They
own this place. The Buried City. They own Wonderland and the
Canyons. They are the Kings of Earth. And unless we do something,
something drastic, the tyranny won’t stop. We’ve got a chance now.
A real chance. They rarely leave Wonderland, but the Overseer is
here. He’s right here. He’s so goddamn close. We can take him out.
We can start the rebellion.”

Rebellion
.

“What the hell are we rebelling against?” I
ask.

“Lies and secrets,” she answers. “Tyranny and
slavery. We’re rebelling against Wonderland.”

“You really need to tell me what the hell is
going on.”

“You do this for me, you kill the Overseer,
and I’ll tell you everything you need to know. He’s the muscle,
he’s their ultimate weapon. He protects the Lord and the Collector.
If he goes, if we kill him, they’ll have no protection. No
safety.”

Rebellion. It’s a crazy and rare word. A
dangerous word. People get killed just for talking about it like we
are, for talking about it in dark tunnels and dark alleys, in
abandoned subway stations and Buried Cities.

I can’t be sure, but I think I know what’s
going on. I’m just too scared to say it out loud, too scared to
even think it. I know the Shuttles are taking longer and longer to
get back to Earth. I know the Arks are moving further away, deeper
into space.

It’s been five long years since anyone was
processed. Since anyone left this rock.

We are the last ones left.

Angel doesn’t tell me, doesn’t spell it out.
She says I’m better off not knowing. Maybe we’re all better
off.

What difference would it make?

I shake my head. All that matters is getting
my revenge. Ruby died in my arms. I failed to protect her. And
Angel is right, it doesn’t matter how many people I kill, how many
Enforcers and Mercs. If I don’t kill the person responsible, it’ll
all be for nothing.

So I tell Angel I’m ready to do this.

I’m ready for the hunt.

I’m ready to start the rebellion.

I’m ready to kill the Overseer of
Wonderland.

Angel stuffs the thermo suits into her rucksack of goodies. I head
back to the bathroom to wash the blood off my hands and off my
face. Angel tells me to hurry up. She knows the Overseer won’t hang
back forever. Eventually he’ll come a calling.

Better that we have the advantage.

I tell her I won’t be long. And then I’m
standing in the disabled toilet of an abandoned subway station. I’m
looking at myself in the mirror, staring. I barely recognize
myself.

I check over my shoulder to make sure that
I’m actually alone. And then I speak to Ruby, a girl I barely knew,
a girl I loved.

A girl I wish I could’ve known better.

“I owe you Ruby. Don’t worry. I’ll make it
right. I’ll kill them all. I’ll kill them for you.”

I fight back tears, which is weird because
I’m not one for crying. But here I am, choking up.

I clear my throat and I tell myself to focus.
I tell myself that I’m feeling pretty good about doing what I’m
about to be doing. I’m feeling justified and righteous.

But then the self-doubt starts talking to me,
nagging.

It’s almost as if this feeling, this anxiety,
it’s almost as if it magically transforms into a person. A being
that lives inside my head, or right next to me. His arm around my
shoulder.

Self Doubt says, “What if Ruby was just using
you? She didn’t like you. She wasn’t even attracted to you. She’d
heard about you, just like that guy with the scar over his face had
heard about you. It was just sheer luck that she’d found you
first.”

I say, “Shut the hell up.”

Because that’s probably true, but either way,
I screwed up. I failed.

I owe Ruby. I owe her big time.

The paralyzing personification of Self Doubt
crawls off, disappearing into nothingness.

I owe Ruby.

So let’s go and make things right. I walk out
of the bathroom and look longingly towards the upper levels of the
subway station. Dark orange light pours in through the massive
church like windows. Beyond those walls and those windows, beyond
the ruins of a once great city, is the Wasteland. Beyond those
walls and windows is freedom.

I turn away from it, turn towards the subway
platform. I help Angel with her rucksack but she brushes me off.
She’s got it. She can carry it. She can handle it.

We head for the tunnels, the darkness, we
make our way back towards the Buried City.

Towards the Overseer.

As we walk through the tunnels, my mind again
goes off on its own. I try to keep it focused, try to keep it under
control. But it is nearly impossible.

I start thinking about the main players of
this messed up situation I find myself in.

The Overseer.

The Lord.

The Collector.

And then there’s the girls. Desperate and
pretty and smooth. Delicate, yet tough as nails.

Something is rotten in Wonderland all right.
It has to be rotten for someone like Ruby, for someone like Angel
to run. To escape. Something big is going down. And I find myself
smack bang in the middle of it all. And I can’t help but think that
once the word gets out, once the genie gets out of the bottle and
the cat is let out of the bag, there’ll be no going back.

Angel says there’ll be a rebellion.

She says there’ll be war.

I try not to think too much about that.

I try not to get ahead of myself.

I try and stay focused.

Because if things go about as well as they
possibly can, I won’t be around to see another war, another
rebellion.

And I’m fine with that.

I think.

We come to a fork in the tunnel and Angel
leads the way. I ask her how she knows which tunnel to take and she
says because before she escaped, she forced herself to memorize
great sections of the tunnels. Not all of them. But a lot.

She knows the way to the Water Treatment
Plant. She knows the way to the vault door and the Long Tunnel.

We continue to walk through the darkness, my
brother’s red flashlight our only source of light. I continue to
think about the main players. The people responsible for everything
that’s happened… for everything that’s about to happen.

First, there’s the man in charge of it
all…

No one knows his name. Well, no one that I
hang out with knows his name.

Everyone just calls him the Lord of
Wonderland.

He was left here, left behind on Earth, left
in charge of it all, an entire planet. How something like that
doesn’t go to your head is beyond me. And maybe this is what’s
happened. He’s gone mad with power and privilege and arrogance.
Rumor has it, he was a military man. A five star general, or an
Admiral, something high ranking and highly decorated.

A veteran of the Great Wars.

The Last Wars.

So they left him here, to rule, to
organize.

Over the years and decades he became known as
the Lord. Over the years, he became a hermit, refusing to leave the
safety of his Wonderland Palace. I can’t blame him. The powers to
be, all the royalty and politicians and military people leave you
here, on Earth, in the Wasteland, you might has well take advantage
of every luxury afforded to you.

Hell, I’d probably do the exact same
thing.

Second, is the Lord’s right hand man. He’s a
guy by the name of the Collector. Again, I don’t actually know this
guy’s real name… everyone just calls him the Collector because
that’s what he does.