When Alec exited the stadium, he noticed Berk with his back to a wall, smoking a cigarette. His lips were itching for one, and he hadn't known it till then. He decided to throw caution to the wind and asked.
Berk looked him up and down warily, then unfolded the pack and handed him one.
"You sure you know what you're doing, Mr Alec?" Said Berk, eyes squinted mistrustfully.
I sure hope so would have been his immediate answer, so he gave him a reassuring nod and told him not to worry.
"By the way, we ever met before?"
Alec raised his eyebrows.
"Didn't think so. You just look familiar is all." Berk pressed his cigarette to his lips, burned it to the filter and tossed it.
"Mr Alec, our star of the evening," a lilting voice came from behind. "If you wanted a cigarette, you should have asked me. I'll get you as many as you need." Samanthe strutted toward him at the head of a formation.
"I'd appreciate that," and he really would. "Who're your friends?"
"We're your clients, Mr Alec," said the neat council member, Casp, emerging from the rear.
"Oh."
"We're to understand you've made the proper inquisitions and hold a firm grasp over the numbers, directions of approach as well as nest locations of the incoming PDAs?" He said, pushing his glasses up his nondescript nose.
"Yes," he said firmly.
"And you've formed a tight plan that will allow you to complete your job without risks of damage or casualty to Garden?" He readjusted the cuffs on his mediocre coat.
"Yes," he lied.
"Very well. I trust you, for now. I just don't want another Infestation 98 right on my doorstep." he scratched his forgettable beard.
"Nobody does."
Samanthe butted in. "We've gone through this, Casp. The die is cast."
The man called Casp glanced awkwardly at Alec and apologized for his thoroughness. Nothing less than the fate of his town was at stake after all and sometimes great events required men to act thorough. He properly introduced himself to Alec, who promptly forgot his name.
After shaking the hands of the rest of the council members and forgetting their names consecutively, Samanthe led the party to the Hutt, where the aftershow began. Alec had to decline a shot of rum – job policy - which the other members dunked with glee.
"The point is," he was explaining Union procedure, which the Extermination Task Force – the Death Squad - had to obey, "they cannot begin cleansing until their investigation unit has found proof, first-hand or otherwise, of either greater than average number of assault, or serious injury." The picture or the poor girl, Zoe, flashed in his mind.
"Does that mean the uhh… cleansing unit tags along with the investigation unit?" Samanthe deduced.
"It's the other way around. The Death Squad is a kind of emergency response team, but a team of 'confirmers' tags along. The one thing that can hold them back is this rule. That's where you come in."
At the end of the meeting, Buck gave him a serious look, saying "I understand. We'll do everything we can."
After the council dispersed, Samanthe offered him a room upstairs, which she could because she owned the joint. He gave pretense at a refusal, but she insisted he needed rest and was right. He felt just about ready to topple over. Dragging himself up by the bannister, he found his door next to a little window overlooking the cliffs he'd escaped with his life, at the expense of Golem's.
Shutting the door behind him, he slid to the floor. Dear lord, sitting felt good. He checked his transceiver and tried to contact Larry and was partly successful.
Over the static, Alec heard "..-all you whe… get there…," which he figured was about as much as he needed to know.
He kept his phone close and listened for any sign of Larry's arrival, knowing it might only take him a few more hours to get there. With luck, he'd outrun the Death Squad, and then…
Sleep overtook him. His head slid to the floor with a thud. As he fell from consciousness, slipping from it as if sinking from the surface of a lake, he was gripped by an unyielding horror. Beyond reaching Larry and retrieving Hyperion, he had no plan. Hyperion would not want to help. It only cared to help itself, when it did. It hated being told what to do. And Alec was quite certain it enjoyed killing.
It was a dream. Alec knew this right away - he'd had it many times before. Only made sense it repeated itself now. Part memory, part nightmare, there for the sole purpose of reminding him. He was smoking and it felt good. That was surprising. It's been a long time since smoking felt good in the waking world. Nowadays it was only perfunctory, but it had felt good then.
Black smoke coiled from the cigarette and refused to evaporate. It squashed and contorted, twisting itself around his body. He tried to drop the cig, but his mouth was sewn shut and he couldn't move it. The smoke enveloped his limbs. Struggling to move his body, he tripped and landed splayed on the floor. A thrashed-up, bloody face met his on the ground. He screamed a muffled scream and forced himself back.
Cold terror drenched his whole being like ice, as it had countless times before. Awake, he could never recall the corpses to this extent. In memory they were hazy, blurred. But within the nightmare they were as real as they had been on that day.
Crimson blood spilled in spiral rivulets over the crinkled skin, coiling itself around twisted flesh that draped the fractured bones inside. A mouth-hole with teeth jutting out like spikes. A hand with fingers cracked in reverse spirals. None of it looked like it could ever have been alive, but it must have been.
A rabid scream from behind rippled gooseflesh down his back. He froze stiff. An unwilling part of his mind hoped he hadn't pissed himself in his sleep again. The phantasm of black smoke gripped him hard, pushing him to turn around. The more he resisted it, the more it pushed. He didn't want to see the thing that screamed. Anything but that. It was fear deep as an ocean sinkhole. An exclamation fired in his synapses, warning him that resisting any longer would break him into the void and would scar him permanently.
He obeyed the dream and allowed it to turn him, leaving the corpses at his back. Hyperion stood atop the knoll. It shook violently, rasping, jaw opening and closing. Hethoughthebeastcouldbepennedhahahowfoolishtheboy It had never been like that. It was absolutely covered in blood. itwasamonsteryoudeaniedfearbutyoufearitnowandlookwhatitdonehahaha "DID YOU DO THIS?" He yelled, tears swelling in his eyes and it looked at him, eyes bulging, nostrils flaring.
And then it cried. It cried and his ears bled static, the world drunk with dizziness embraced him stars dancing dancing shaking
He was wet again.
"Wake up, Alec!" Her eyes glistened with alarm.
He saw he was in the cabin Samanthe had rented out for him. She was there, putting down an empty glass. Water dripped down his face. "Thanks," he said.
"No problem. You scared us all half to death. Thought somebody was being killed upstairs," she replied.
He stood with an effort. Could feel no warmness in his crotch. Good. Hadn't pissed himself after all. "The council's still here?"
She laughed. "The council are resting their old bones right about now. The night patrol guys are on a break. I'm serving downstairs." She handed him a towel from the bathroom. "Everything all right?"
"Just a bad dream."
"Must have been a bastard of abad dream. What happened to your cute little friend anyway?"
It took him a while to realize she meant Golem. He could hardly reveal it was crushed beneath the stampede he had just denied the existence of. "Ran into a bad situation. Golem…" was churned to fine bits beneath a living machine that grounds forest to dust "Had to split." He stretched, heard the back joints popping off one after another. His bones hurt all over and he felt no less tired than he had before his sleep episode.
She gazed out the window thoughtfully. "Hope he manages fine on his own."
Wouldn't bet on it, thought Alec. Then they were both silent. Moonlight seeped through the window, illuminating the quaint room and lighting Samanthe's hair aglow. He thought she looked quite beautiful. She was in deep thought. There was an unmistakable frown on her lips and, for a glimmer of a moment, Alec witnessed a deep, piercing lamentation within.
"Samanthe?"
She blinked. "You should join us downstairs," she said, moving over to the door. Her face lit up and she looked the way she had before, but it resembled a mask now. "You must be starving. We haven't forgotten to prepare lunch for our Exterminator.
"I'll come down in a bit," he said. "Thanks again."
Samanthe nodded and closed the door. He pulled out his phone right away. The transceiver screeched noise. He wound into the room's tiny bathroom and took a cold shower to clear his thoughts. It was more important than ever that he keep his mind clear. He was thankful for the clothes Clara had lent him. The people he'd met in Garden were kind and thought of others, the way residents of small places seemed to. However, it was tough to partake in the village's special charm, what with the doomsday clock ticking out above their heads.
He made his way downstairs. The little barroom whooped to see the man of the hour arrive.
"Mr Alec, we thought you was being killed upstairs back there," some young man with a rifle slung over his back said. A couple of them clapped him on the back as he stumbled to the bar. Berk was huddled in a corner with his buddies. They were drenched in the light of a TV. Alec didn't have to get near to see they were watching a taped rerun of the Showtime Arena (colloquially known as the Cockfighters' League) Brutal Beatdown Compilation. That was bad. He hoped animals tearing each other on the behest of their trainers would be the worst of what they'd be seeing. He sat down at the bar and crossed his fingers. Samanthe served him a decent meal and he dug in.
"Can't say I imagined you waitressed," he told her.
"I don't," she replied amiably, "but it's martial law in Garden, which means nobody turns up for work." She slipped into the backroom with a box. Altaria sat on the bench with a group of younger men. They doted on it, patting it and feeding it crackers. The atmosphere was congenial. Everybody in the room knew each other.
"You know, this little crisis of ours might do us a lot of good in the long run," an old man sitting next to him said, sipping on a fragrant herbal tea. It was the headman, clad in his brown suit. His brow was sweaty and he wiped it routinely with a linen handkerchief.
"The way I see it, there's no time for the long run right now. That's for the survivors to mull over," said Alec back.
The headman didn't lose a beat. "Just look at everybody in here, the people of this town are more connected now than they've been in a long while."
Alec looked over the room and saw that filled as it was with boisterous men and boys, even a few women. They were raising up a ruckus, eating, drinking and carousing all over each other. Alec wondered whether they'd keep their cheer if they saw what he had seen. "There's nothing like chaos to bring people together," said Alec.
"When we come through this, this town will flourish," Buck insisted.
Alec thought it best to leave the man his fantasies. Then he remembered the headman's speech from the auditorium. "You said something before, about the village having experienced crisis before."
The headman laughed, as if reminded of some old joke. Samanthe returned to the barroom with a helping of beer which she distributed among the folk. They parted in her path respectfully, lowering their voices as she came near. She was the one serving them, yet they were the ones bowing to her. She looked like the Garden manager. If that was the case, Alec wondered what exactly the headman's role might be. He remembered the man that silenced a crowd of two hundred just by clearing his throat. The man who sipped his tea so casually beside him.
Buck pointed a finger carved from wood. "Look at that wall, friend."
It was covered in old photographs. A group of men linked together at the shoulder, posing for the picture in front of the newly built Hutt. A middle aged man squatting with a rifle next to his kill, a prime Standtler. His clothes were the same as the ones Alec himself was wearing. He smiled despite himself, thinking of Clara. A farmer holding a pitchfork, mud-soaked Swinub clustering at his feet.
"That's my old man," said Samanthe, hands on hips. "Used to have a couple of farms. Clime got too warm for the cold little piglets later on and we had to sell all our land." She placed a bottle in front of him but he pushed it away. There was something else between the pictures. Something…
It was the quarry. Some decades ago by the looks of it. The infinitely gaping black hole was nowhere in sight. The mountain was carved on the surface, teeming with vehicles and men. Bulldozers, LHD loaders, breakers, scoops, a pair of Conkeldurr carrying equipment. A monstrous excavator right in the center, giant loads of broken stone strewn about. A lively, profitable image if there ever was one.
"I'm curious," Alec said, hypnotized.
Samanthe startled. "Huh?"
"Could the two of you explain just what the hell happened at the quarry?"
She narrowed her eyes.
Buck released a strange noise from his throat. "Well, son…"
A whooping shook the barroom timbers. Commotion stirred up at Berk's table. "The TV! Look at the TV!" Someone yelled. The room settled. Alec uncrossed his sweaty fingers. It was game over. All heads turned to the screen where two large animal shapes collided, particles shimmering. The announcer blared semi-coherently. "Weeell, folks! Looks like we got a threepointhit in the stomachregion as Aurorus draws back, taking defensive action against the foe…"
Slowly, all eyes leveled directly at the Exterminator himself. A whisper: "It's him."
An astonished Berk broke the silence. "You're fucking Winston Allstar!"
Alec faced the well-polished wood of the bar. "That was a made-up name. One I ditched it a long time ago."
"But-but that's you!" He pointed frantically to a handsome young man on the screen, sharply sneering on the Arena ground. The young man on-screen raised his arm, shouting a command. The monster he willed grunted, launch forth toward its his foe. "I have a fricking authographed copy of your face on my bedroom door!" A pretty face, hard to deny, almost unrecognizable to the man sitting at the bar in a small mountain village called Garden.
"Ain't you the guy who whupped Tearstone's ass and almost killt his Salamance?" An old man said.
The headman's sturdy hand fell on Alec's shoulder. "I think you're unmasked now. Just about every man in this village has sat in the Hutt one time or another and watched a Winston Allstar bout. Even if he vanished ten years ago."
On-screen, a monster called Hyperion rammed a four-legged Aurorus, actually knocking it into the air, before slamming it down to the dirt ("aaaand that's a threescorehit, knockoutKO, countdown –oh! The foe keeps attacking…"). Two referee Machoke jumped in and failed to hold the monster back as it hatefully pummeled its opponent even after the victor was clear. The screen flickered and the Beatdown Compilation resumed to some other, more recent match Alec couldn't recognize. He didn't keep up anymore.
"I remember now! You were injured," said Berk. "Attacked by your own mons and almost died."
Alec felt a pang in his gut. His past followed him everywhere he went. He was dismayed to see Hyperion repeated on the compilation. The Winged Furies Match. The one that made Allstar a household name. And Hyperion. It was the snapping moment. Alec glanced away just in time, before it drove the Archeops' long neck into the earth.
"Mr Allstar," a young man suddenly appeared behind him, starry in the eyes, "may I ask for an autograph?" There was a posse of soft-faced boys behind him, all suspiciously in possession of clean napkins.
Alec was thinking about the bluntest way to refuse a crowd. "I-"
A vintage grandfather clock in the corner beat three times, drowning them out.
"Alright, fangirls, playtime is done," Samanthe announced. "The watch continues. I'm sure the Exterminator will be glad to sign all your dirty napkins after we're not in mortal peril anymore." Altaria snapped to attention and strutted out of the room, taking wing to the dark skies, door flapping in its wake. The men stood up disheartened.
"I recommend you get some more rest," he heard Samanthe say to him. "I don't much care about your past. All I care about is your competence. We're going to need you in top shape when the moment comes."
Alec found it hard to disagree with her. He left the stool when his phone screeched. At once he knew what it meant.
"We're here, Alec." No interference at all. "There's some kind of wall blocking the way and I found your van. Jane the Rod's with me. We're holding on, but it's getting restless. Hurry up if you can, Alec."
Alec put the speaker to his mouth. "I'll be right over, Larry. Hang tight."
He went out, giving Samanthe a reassuring nod. He spotted Berk and hurried to him.
"I need your help," he said and Berk gave him a look of newfound admiration that said he'd do just about anything for him.
Ten minutes later they were standing in front of the Garden Ranger Depot. It was no more than a weathered little shack, but it was of no consequence. Berk used his keys to open it and they went inside. Inside was a paltry little equipment storage closet with communication systems that didn't work for lack of connection as well as a tiny living space with a kitchen and a sofe.
While Berk apologized profusely for the mishap they'd had earlier in the day, Alec picked out a decently sprung Injector and took a half-full box of rattling neutralizer needles. He clapped Berk on the back to get him to stop talking and left the place through the garage on a '96 Ranger Issue four-wheeler. By the time he hit the gravel road leading out of town, he was going 50 kilometers per hour.
He resented his past, didn't like talking about it. Now that it had been unearthed in Garden, he no longer felt comfortable there. Not that he did in the first place, given the circumstances. The shadowed forest flowed away and behind on each side. The isolation was pleasant, a sort of respite from burden. But time and the miles went quickly. The treetops cleared, revealing an empty sky. No helicopter lights anymore. They had likely landed already.
A Graveler carcass lay in the middle of the road, arm and leg missing. Another up ahead. And then the wall Golem had smashed through.
On foot the path had taken him hours, but less than twenty minutes on wheels. He dismounted and sprung his Injector, clicking the clip a few times just to be sure. He squeezed through the opening Golem had made and saw his van with a decal of his younger face on its side. It was scrunched together. The metal body was damaged. On the other end of the road was a big, sturdy truck - a large animal transportation vehicle. It was flipped over on its side. One of its back doors laid twenty meters away from the truck.
"Alec, you bastard," Larry croaked from somewhere nearby. A hoarse, painful moan. "Run…"
Jane the Rod, a hulking stone of a woman, laid motionless in a tree, limbs like a fallen ragdoll. Right away, Alec knew he'd done something he shouldn't have. This was all his fault. And punishment would be swift.
Eyes glimmered in the darkness. Something big was approaching, hissing like a steam engine.
Alec ran for the crack in the stone wall to escape. He was almost on the other side, when the monster smashed into the wall and splintered it asunder like a pile of twigs. It clenched his whole arm in one grip and tossed him overhead. His back connected painfully with the roof of his beaten truck. Before he could rise, the titanic thing lifted the van and shook him off. Alec flopped to the floor, scrambling on all fours to get away when it snatched him by his shirt and tossed him into the bough of a tree.
Without hesitating, Alec forced his aching arm to grab the Injector at his belt and pointed it at the titan. Without anticipation, it charged at him, knocking the weapon out of his hand. Alec knew at once his life was over. Then it crawled to a halt and merely rammed him hard against the tree. Its eyes brimming with hatred a hair's length away from his own. He could have kissed it.
As he felt his back being impaled on a sharp branch, he yelled its name.
It roared back, a wall of sound blasting in all directions, killing his ears. Behind Hyperion, the night came alive with dozens of car lights. The humming of an engine, suddenly right behind Hyperion's hulking body. It might have squashed them both, had Hyperion not twisted in a split second, swinging that stalactite of an arm that had been meant for Alec straight at the armored jeep's reinforced chassis. The car was knocked off its wheels, flipping twice before landing on its side. Its occupants disengaged, forming a line beside the vehicle and pointing heavy looking arms. The lights behind them flared like suns. Vehicles emerged from the shadows. The platoon was here.
The Death Squad had arrived, right on time.
Hello, KK Lemon here. The story of Garden inexorably rushes to its conclusion. The final three chapters will be specially big and exciting, so if you enjoy reading Garden as much as I did writing it, I'd very much like to know what you think. Send me a review and I'll be eternally glad!
