Red America, Chapter Three:
Courage And Sacrifice
Kitty Pryde stumbled backwards as the monster known as Omega Red stomped towards her, holding Frank Castle aloft in one of its metal tentacles. Castle was being tossed about like a rag-doll, his rifle still spraying bullets everywhere and sending them ricocheting crazily around the large chamber, bouncing off old brickwork and embedding themselves deep into the concrete floor. There was a loud click as the rifle cycled dry and its hammer slammed down on an empty chamber. Screaming with frustration and fury, Castle up-ended the gun, grasped its still-smoking barrel, and clubbed Omega Red across the face with it, enraged. Omega Red's face was swung to the side by the blow, blood fountaining from a torn lip, but then he turned his visage back towards the man in his grasp, his leering expression saying more than anything he could have said aloud.
From the monster's bloodied facial expression, it seemed that he'd lost his patience with the annoying insects facing him – and that impression was confirmed with what he did next. The tentacle from his right wrist still coiled around Castle's waist, Omega Red then extended the coil on his other wrist and wrapped it around the man's neck. Kitty screamed as she heard the grisly, squelching crack of vertebrae being pulped, and then she froze, watching Omega Red toss Castle's twitching corpse away like a broken toy as if it were happening in slow motion. She watched the hulking beast-man survey his handiwork, and then began scrambling away as he began to advance on where she was standing. Kitty didn't know why she was so scared – after all, she'd killed men herself, in virtually the same way, so it made no sense for her to be so frightened – but she did know that she couldn't move. She was paralysed by her fear, like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an onrushing juggernaut. She watched as Omega Red towered above her, his bloodstained smile widening as he looked her over like a piece of meat on a butcher's slab.
And then the same tentacle that had killed Castle wrapped itself around her neck, fresh blood leaving streaked marks on her skin. Kitty closed her tear-filled eyes and waited to hear her spine snap…
… but it never did. When sounds of shouting and punching filled the air, Kitty opened her eyes – to see a dozen or so Madrox dupes attacking Omega Red with fists and feet, kicking and striking at his few vulnerable areas as hard as they could – hard enough to make the monster let go of Kitty and drop her roughly to the floor while he turned his attention to the new threat in front of him. "Run!" the closest Madrox to her shouted. "We'll be right behind you!" The words were scarcely out of his mouth when Omega Red lashed out with the boot of one powerful leg and kicked his head clear from his shoulders. Blood and brain matter splattered the slimy floor of the sewer as the smashed skull hit the side of the chamber, and as it did so, the rest of the Madroxes staggered, clutching their heads in sympathetic agony. Kitty realised what Madrox was trying to do and steeled her nerve. She had to make this chance count. Picking herself up from the floor and reaching for the dagger on one hip, she reversed it in her hand, spinning it expertly so that she had a good grip on it. Then she hurled it as hard as she could, the blade singing through the fetid, stinking air until it sank into one of Omega Red's eye sockets with a gristly thunk. The monster roared as one of its hands fumbled for the blade, tearing it free in a shower of ruined eye tissue. The army of Madroxes, seeing their newly-given advantage, decided to press it home as quickly as possible. Twenty of them charged, barrelling into the monster's huge body as hard as they could – but still they only just managed to bring the beast to its knees.
That was enough, though, for one last Madrox to unholster a heavy-calibre sidearm from his belt, shove it into the creature's bloody eye socket, and empty the magazine in one smooth motion. Ordinarily, bullets wouldn't have done much against this creature – Kitty knew that from seeing the news footage of its Soviet-sanctioned massacres – but when they were directed right into its dull brain, they were devastating. The monster swayed for a moment or two, its ruined skull still not registering the fact that it was dead, and then it crashed to the ground, the impact of its body echoing around the chamber for at least five minutes afterwards.
By that time, though, Madrox and Kitty were long gone, leaving the two bodies behind for the rats to chew on. Kitty grimaced as she saw several of them skittering along the tunnel past her boots, as if they smelled the fresh new meat that had been deposited for them, and kicked out at them angrily. "Fucking rats," she muttered, before looking up at Madrox's unusually grim expression and saying "Well, where are we going now? Shouldn't we try and find Logan?"
Madrox shook his head. "Not now, kid. Now, we're gonna go for a drink…"
Kitty was too dumbstruck to do anything but follow Madrox as he walked confidently down the tunnel, towards a spot where thready wisps of light were streaming down through a manhole cover.
*
Logan grunted as the pain began to subside – not by much, but by a little, and for that he would be forever grateful. The physical damage that Bobby Drake and Colonel Braddock had inflicted on him was long since healed, that much was evident, but the psychological damage had been far less quick to disappear. Logan could still feel the mind-witch's spidery touch clawing its way through his mind, destroying whatever it came across in its remorseless search for information. He could still feel her sucking the information she desired from his brain, without his being able to do anything about it. And when she had finished, she had thrown his bleeding, battered body back into this small cell. Flaking brown stains on the floor and walls marked where Logan had lain after the torture session had ended, still smeared with his own blood. The simple, functional clothes he was wearing now were also stiff with his own gore, and he could almost feel his brain sloshing around in his skull like it had been liquidised. He sat up, ignoring the firestorm of pain that that brought, and spat a phlegm-laced wad of spittle into the bucket set in the corner of his cell, hearing it hit the tin bottom with a feeble echoing sound. He figured it had to have been at least two hours since his interrogation, and he wondered how long his accelerated healing was going to take before it fixed everything that had been done to him.
He also wondered how long it would take Elisabeth Braddock to paint the city red with rebel blood, after she used what she had learned earlier. Even from his cell up here in the upper reaches of the tower the Reds had commandeered as a command headquarters, he could still hear the rumbling of the tanks and armoured vehicles as they churned more of the Big Apple's streets into gravel. He didn't know why they were still keeping him alive, but he didn't think it was going to be very enjoyable, whatever it was.
Just then, the door to his cell swung open noiselessly, and stood in front of him was what Logan could only describe as a demon. He wasn't a religious man by any stretch of the imagination, but the creature before him defied description by any other means. Lithe and wiry, with a long pointed tail curving out from behind his inhumanly-flexible frame, and a sulphurous stench clinging to his Red Army uniform and indigo fur, the creature regarded Logan curiously, his featureless yellow eyes taking in every detail of the prisoner before he spoke.
"Guten tag," he said in a heavily-accented voice. "I am Lieutenant Wagner. Please, follow me."
"Why should I, bub?" Logan growled, trying to sound as defiant as he could – which to be frank, wasn't very much. "Why don't you just kill me?" The demon-creature shrugged.
"It is not my place. You are being relocated to a more secure facility, where you will work for the Revolution in a more productive manner," he said. "Colonel Braddock feels that you will be of more use there, and that is why you have not been executed yet." Then the demonic man smiled, making Logan shudder, and unholstered a snub-nosed pistol in order to point it right at his head. "Rest assured, little American, you will not escape back to your rebel friends any time soon…"
*
Kitty tried to hide her disbelief as Madrox led her towards a squat, dingy-looking bar with a flickering neon sign attached to its front, which advertised the fact that there were naked girls inside. Then she decided that hiding it wasn't worth the effort and pulled away from Madrox, folding her arms and standing stock-still. "I don't believe this," she said acidly. "Your leader's being held captive by the Russkies and all you can think to do is go to a titty bar?" She threw her hands up in exasperation. "Fucking East Coasters!" she cried, anger giving her words an ugly edge, like a serrated knife.
In response, Madrox simply turned to face her, and said, in an uncharacteristically cold tone, "I'm only gonna say this once, kid, because I completely suck at getting angry: shut the fuck up, okay? I know what I'm doing." He gestured at the sparking sign with an extended thumb, and said "This is Logan's favourite bar – he comes here for information about the Russkies, as well as to pay for a lap dance now and again. I'm hoping that one of his regular informers is here tonight so I can maybe get us a lead on where he's gone. So just let me do the talking, all right?"
Chastened ever so slightly, Kitty nodded, and let Madrox walk towards and open the door of the bar, letting the unpleasantly humid atmosphere inside waft out for a moment or two. Kitty coughed, but followed Madrox in anyway. The bar was as downmarket inside as it had appeared from the outside, smoky and crowded with drinkers clustered around a dirty bar and whooping lustfully while a naked, green-haired girl, her lithe, supple body decorated with iridescent paints that shimmered in the low light, writhed with practised, detached passion on a raised podium at the other end of the room. Kitty turned her eyes away from the podium and concentrated on following Madrox to the bar, elbowing a patron in the face for touching her on the backside as she did so. His nose broke with a wet crunch, and he screeched with pain and clamped a hand over his face as blood gushed from it. Nobody took any notice as he staggered out of the door – not even the bartender – making Kitty wonder how just often they saw things like that happen.
Madrox pushed his way to the bar and held his hand up, making sure to let the bartender see the ten-rouble bill he had slotted between his index and second fingers. Sure enough, that brought the burly man over extremely quickly, and Madrox used that to his advantage just as quickly. "Hi," he said. "Word has it this place is a good place to get information about the Russkies." He slipped the bill into the other man's hand with subtle ease, and then the bartender gestured subtly over to a table in the corner.
"She'll be with you in a few minutes," he said. "She's gotta finish her dance first."
Kitty blinked, before jerking a thumb at the dancer who was currently wrapping herself energetically around a metal pole, leaving it slick with sweat and paint as she ground her hips against it. "Wait, wait… she's the informer?"
Madrox nodded. "So Logan told me. She hears a lot when the Russkies are through having their fun with her." Kitty shuddered. She knew exactly what Madrox meant, and although she had used sex as a way of getting effective information before as well, she'd only done it relatively rarely. To do it regularly, and to do it by choice, made her wonder how the dancer coped at all. Still, she supposed she would find out soon enough, so she asked the bartender for a glass of Kentucky bourbon (a drink she'd acquired a taste for since it had been outlawed and largely replaced by Siberian vodka) and a handful of whatever food they could offer – which turned out to be elderly, tough pork rinds that Kitty could barely manage to bite through (Kitty's Jewish roots had initially balked at eating food that wasn't kosher, but when the choice had become "eat it or starve", Kitty had decided that Yahweh wouldn't really mind if she ate pork meat after all, and in the end had gained quite a liking for it). Chewing her way through the pork rinds as fast as she could, Kitty sipped her drink while Madrox threw back the beer that he'd ordered in quick gulps. "Nice place, huh?" he said between swallows.
"No," Kitty replied flatly, sipping her bourbon. "It's a fucking dump."
Madrox opened his mouth to refute her claim, and then nodded in defeat. "Yeah, you're absolutely right."
Kitty felt a stab of triumph at that, and fished her cigarettes out of her pocket before lighting one and taking a satisfied drag. Maybe, if she was very lucky, she'd get to finish her smoke this time.
Her hopes for that quickly hit a brick wall, though, as Madrox, suddenly irritable, asked "Do you have to do that right now? It's nasty enough in here already without you adding to it, so could you –" Ignoring his request, Kitty simply exhaled a lungful of smoke directly into Madrox's face, making him cough and splutter momentarily. He shot her an annoyed look and rolled his watering eyes. "I guess not," he said, as Kitty took another deep draw and stretched like a cat, letting her tired muscles free themselves from the knots they'd tied themselves in. She enjoyed the silence as Madrox sat with his arms folded, drinking his beer and trying to ignore her as she smoked. Finally, when she'd stubbed out the butt in the overflowing ashtray on the table, Madrox said "You finished now?"
Kitty laughed. "Yup. First good smoke of the day, too." Then, she noticed the green-haired girl walking over to where they were sitting, and said "You better put your game face on, James – your informer's on her way over."
Madrox turned in his seat so that he could see their visitor, and Kitty would later swear blind that his tongue flopped out of his head when he did so. Clad in a tight-fitting silken replica of a Russian Army uniform that showed off all the right curves, the dancer sashayed towards their table with all the easy grace and poise of someone who knew exactly how to manipulate her audience to her greatest advantage. "Hi there," she said to Madrox, in a honeyed, musical voice that even Kitty had to admit sounded irresistible. "The boss tells me you wanted to see me?" Then, she glanced at Kitty, and continued "If you want me to include her, it'll be twenty roubles an hour more. I don't do couples very often." She smiled salaciously in Kitty's direction, licking her green-painted lips as she did so. "Or do you just want to watch? I'm sure she and I could have lots of fun…"
Madrox swallowed, then shook his head. "Um… I ain't here for that," he said firmly (but with great difficulty too, Kitty noticed). "I… I need some information. About the Russkies." Instantly, the girl's demeanour changed, her expression hardening noticeably, and she sat down and reluctantly folded her hands together on the table's sticky surface.
"You… do know I don't do that for free, don't you?" she said, holding out one manicured hand and rubbing the thumb and index finger together. "I don't exactly do this for my health, buddy." Madrox fished out another tight bundle of notes and tossed them onto the table in front of him. The girl smiled broadly and gathered them up, folding them into a neat wad and sliding them into her costume's breast pocket. "Pleasure doing business with you," she said, winking. "So what did you want to know?"
"A… friend of ours got captured by the Russkies tonight. We need to know where they'd take high-profile prisoners like him, and we need to know quickly."
The girl stroked her chin thoughtfully for a moment or two, before gesturing out of the grimy window behind her. "Depends," she said finally. "If they want to interrogate them, they'll take them to the Empire State Building – plenty of Russkie prisoners go there on a daily basis, and not all of them come back out." She paused, running her hands through her mane of green hair. "On the other hand, if the Ivans just want to work them into an early grave, they'll just take them to the gulag in New Jersey. From what I've heard, that's the most likely place you'll find your… friend." Then the girl paused, smirking. "You know, Jim always told me you were a stupid bastard, Madrox, but I didn't know you were this dumb."
"I… I don't know what you mean," Madrox said, trying desperately to sound as if he was genuinely ignorant of who she was talking about, but the girl looked like she wasn't buying it for an instant.
"Come on, man, don't try and play innocent with me," she said. "I heard enough from one of my dumber Russkie regulars tonight to know that Jim's been captured, and I remembered enough about what Jim's told me about you to put two and two together. Look, honey – I might be a stripper, but I'm not an idiot."
Madrox nodded, resigned to his new circumstances. "Logan told me you were like this," he said, slugging back another mouthful of beer.
The girl laughed, and tweaked Madrox's chin between a forefinger and thumb almost affectionately. "I'll just bet he did – Jim said that was what he liked most about me." Then her expression turned a little more serious, and she continued "If you're going to try to rescue Jim… be careful. The Russkies shipped in a lot of superhuman soldiers from Europe to guard the gulag, and the Empire State is crawling with the bastards, too. One wrong step and they'll barbecue your ass."
"Yeah, we already ran into Omega Red today," Kitty said, finally breaking her silence. "We killed that bastard stone-cold dead, too." The way she was speaking the words went completely against the way she'd felt when the events had actually been occurring, sure, but she figured the dancer didn't need to know that. She made sure to savour the other woman's shocked expression for as long as she could before continuing "We can handle anything the Ivans throw at us – right, Jamie?"
Madrox shrugged. "I wouldn't be so sure of that, kid." Then he turned back towards the dancer and said "You wouldn't happen to know if any other rebel units are close by here, would you?"
The dancer shot him a disbelieving look then, as if she couldn't comprehend what she was hearing. "You tell me, man – you're the one fighting the Ivans, not me." Then she rubbed her brow and sighed. "All right. Last I heard, there were still some rebel divisions reported in Red Hook somewhere, but I don't know if they're still around. That's the best I can do."
"Then it'll have to do," Madrox said, with a lot more determination than Kitty had heard from him in all the time she'd known him. He nodded to Kitty. "Come on, kid. We got a party to organise…"