Subterranean Tunnel, Red Zone 7
[25/5/2056]
Peter's stomach growled.
This wasn't an irregular occurrence, and he was doing his best to ignore the sensation and file it at the bottom of the long list of complaints his body was raising.
A scratch on his forearm was growing itchy and swollen. Peter assumed he must have nicked himself while scrambling over the rusted car hulks. He shuddered to think what might be working its way into his bloodstream in this filthy, abandoned labyrinth
The smuggler's stash had contained protein bars and water which Peter was grateful for. Unfortunately, he'd eaten the lot as soon as he came across it, famished as he was from an unknown amount of time in custody. Not long after, he was kicking himself for not thinking to ration it out.
He didn't know how many days he'd been walking for, or how many more were ahead of him. The old underground highway was nondescript, uniformly covered with concrete dust, and not designed to be travelled by foot. One stretch of tunnel was barely distinguishable from the next, and without a compass, map, or any means of navigation, he could only hope that he wasn't going in circles.
The sound of his footsteps slapping on the asphalt echoed endlessly off the cold tunnel walls. That and the dripping of water from drains formed a constant accompaniment to his endless trek. Peter had tuned out the noise, as much as he could, so when he heard a hushed voice from the tunnel wall, he assumed it was an auditory hallucination at first. He put it out of mind, but the voice continued.
Peter came to an abrupt halt. Had the ZoneSec agents followed him into the tunnels? He pressed his ear against the musty concrete wall. There was definitely a faint noise coming from the other side! At least two people seemed to be conversing. He could just make out a handful of words.
"...should be here…"
"...not the point… can't wait…"
"...more patrols than usual…"
Peter's heart leapt. They didn't sound like ZoneSec agents; more likely it was someone else on the run. He looked around at the dim tunnel for a crosscut that led in that direction. Ahead was nothing but another stretch of anonymous concrete. He doubled back, and found what he was looking for - a stained hatch recessed into the wall.
A faded yellow decal marked it as the hatch to a service tunnel. The hinges were severely rusted, and Peter struggled to pry it away from the wall. The hatch shrieked as it jerked open. The cacophony echoed through the tunnels. Peter shook the rust and paint flakes off his hands, and stepped through the open hatch, and came face to face with the barrel of a rifle.
The man holding it was clad in filthy rags. His long, yellowed fingernails were caked with dirt. His eyes were bloodshot, and their sockets were riddled with the weeping sores typical of a chronic Eye Candy user. A wiry, unkempt beard hid the lower half of his face.
"The fuck you want?" he snarled.
Peter back-pedalled, stumbling blindly backwards until he collided with a car chassis.
"I'm just looking for a safe place to hide!" he stammered out.
"Look somewhere else," the man replied, brandishing the beaten old rifle to reinforce the point.
"Please-" Peter began to plead. The junkie drew back the bolt of the gun.
"Who's there, Syd?" a man Peter couldn't see asked.
"Some Blue Zone prick," Syd growled. The other man who had been speaking stepped out of the shadowed doorway. He was tall, lanky, and just as poorly groomed, though didn't look to be as strung out. His eyes narrowed as soon as he saw Peter.
"You look familiar," he said.
Peter couldn't imagine any less likely acquaintances for himself than these two. "That doesn't seem right," he replied tentatively.
"Hmm," the second man frowned, evidently deep in thought. He retrieved a tablet from somewhere within his rags and brandished it at the interloper. An ID headshot of Peter was prominently displayed on the device, alongside tables of personal data.
"Where the fuck is Cisco?"
"Who?" Peter was at a loss.
"Cisco; the coyote. Looks like he had an appointment with you days ago. What did you do with him?"
"Nothing! I swear! I was meant to meet with him, but there was an ambush. ZoneSec got us. I escaped into the tunnels."
"So what, you turned him in for a juicy pardon?" the man bellowed. His lanky frame seemed to grow, filling the narrow tunnel entrance.
Peter had had enough of being the target of accusations. All his rage over the indignities and injustices of the past few days came boiling to the surface. "No, he's fucking dead! If I had a pardon, would I still be trudging through these manky tunnels?" he barked out, more aggressively than he'd intended. Syd jabbed out with the barrel of the rifle, and he backed down.
The other man took a moment to weigh this up. After a nerve-wracking moment, he nodded, and gently pushed the rifle out of the way.
"I guess not." The man's posture relaxed a little. Peter let himself breathe. The last vestiges of the adrenaline rush faded into a tingling in his extremities.
"What, you're just gonna let him go?" Syd muttered out of the corner of his mouth. "Al, this fucker-"
"Doesn't matter," Al responded under his breath. "Might be telling the truth, might not. Either way, we gotta pack up and move camp before this place is crawling." The man slipped back into the tunnel. Syd withdrew too, after one last bloodshot glare at Peter.
Peter hung back. Following two armed and unhinged strangers into the unknown was foolhardy, even by the standards of his new reality. Then again, his only other option was to return to aimlessly wandering the highway. He was starving, his feet were starting to ache. This course of action at least had the likelihood of a more immediate outcome, he reasoned, as he stepped through the hatch.
He emerged from the service tunnel, into a wide open cistern of some sort. At the centre was a catchment pool, half-full with stagnant green sludge.
All around the cistern, people were breaking down their simple shanties. A few had already donned backpacks and were shimmying down rope ladders into dark culverts. No-one paid any mind to Peter as he stumbled around.
A steady trickle of rainwater was falling from a grate in the ceiling. Faint daylight shone through the portal. As Peter edged along the ledge around the room's perimeter, he caught a glimpse of the sky. It was tinted a sickly green.
Peter spotted the tall man, Al, again on the other side of the cistern, and pushed through the crowd to reach him.
"Where's Manny?" he called out.
"Who the fuck's that?" The man didn't turn around, just continued rolling up a threadbare sleeping bag.
"My– I'm meant to be meeting him here," Peter replied. "The coyote, uh… Cisco, was meant to bring him through the Wall."
Al finally glanced back at him. There was something like pity on his dirt-streaked face.
"Don't know any Manny's. If he ain't here, he ain't here."
"But Cisco said–"
"Yeah, he'll say just about anything for cash. Now get outta here; GDI will be crawling over this place before long."
"I swear, I didn't say anything-"
"I'm not talking about ZoneSec. Have you seen the sky? There's some serious shit going down out there, and I don't want to be anywhere nearby when the hammer falls. If you had any sense you'd do the same."
Peter shook his head. "No, I just got here! I've gotta find my husband."
"Well, you can say hi to the jackboots when they get here, then. I'm sure they'll be real friendly," Al sneered.
Peter cursed and turned away from the man. He scanned the crowd of unwashed squatters for a familiar face, but none of them would even make eye contact with him. He realised he must look like yet another desperate refugee, as helpless as the rest of them. His dress shoes had come apart, and his socks were damp with sweat and mud.
Fighting back the tears of helplessness that were welling up, he gripped the smuggler's backpack tighter, and followed the flow of people down the dark culvert and into the unknown.
—
Pacific Coast, Red Zone 7
[3/6/2056]
The ancient docks were devoid of ships. The cranes that had once lifted thousands of tons of cargo through the port sat abandoned and rusted. The harbour facilities had been torn down by the dual ravages of time and necessity. Thousands of shanties filled the space between the great concrete arms of the jetties. The ramshackle structures flowed over the docks like part of the landscape; a town that had been grown, rather than built.
Peter's reverie was broken when a man stumbled into him. He resumed his plodding along the rough path, pushed along by the flow of humanity.
They walked through a muddy rut between two beached ships, less a road and more a coincidence of the dual tides of people and water. Brown muck splashed up over his shoes, staining the cuffs of his khakis. A few scrawny kids had rushed ahead of the pack, kicking up sprays of mud. They ran into the first shack they found, little more than a metal cube. A sheet of corrugated iron was shoved into the door frame.
"Do you know which ones are meant for us?" Peter asked the man who'd run into him. The man just scoffed, and kept walking. Peter paused at the doorway of the next hut he passed. A pair of gleaming green eyes stared at him from the shadowed interior. He scurried away.
Most of the huts seemed to already be occupied, and those that weren't were quickly snapped up by the few refugees that had any physical strength left after their ordeal. Peter went door to door, looking for any vacancy, but was rebuffed at each. Disheartened, he rejoined the steady flow of people milling through the camp.
The trickle of refugees wound its way to the edge of the beach. With all other shelter denied to them, they hunkered down under a piece of the concrete jetty that had broken away. No one spoke a word.
A GDI Orca transport screamed overhead. Half the refugees cowered instinctively at the sound. A stream of objects shot out of the back, and a few began to wail in terror. They wouldn't bomb a refugee camp, would they? Peter thought as panic flooded his system. The objects sprouted great white blooms of fabric, and the shouts of fear petered out, as confusion crept in. It took a while for the realisation to sink in; they were crates, descending under parachutes.
A different sort of panic came over the crowd then. People shoved and kicked to find a place close to where the crates seemed to be dropping. One emaciated-looking man left his tearful family to join the fray. Peter didn't bother to stand, fearful of a repeat of the shelter situation. He was soon proven right.
As soon as the first crate landed, a handful of well-muscled young men strode down the hill, clutching improvised weapons. Most of the brawlers fell back at their approach, and those that didn't soon met the business end of a metal pipe.
When they had taken their fill from the polyhedral crate, they retreated, administering casual beatings to any of the fallen who still fancied their chances. The scrum resumed, all the more frantic for the scarcity of supplies. Peter leaned his head back against the concrete and cradled his aching stomach.
—
When the sun touched the horizon, there was a brief flurry of activity. The dying light cast a fierce glow over the camp and its sundry inhabitants. For a moment, it beautified everyone it touched. The old looked calm and dignified, the starving serene. The golden glow brought a little beauty back into the world.
Then the burning orb sank below the horizon, and the cold began to set in. A baby began to wail. Peter hugged his knees and tried to rub some warmth into his extremities.
Mercifully, one of the more capable among the crowd was able to conjure a small fire in a rusty barrel. Offerings of scrap paper, ruined clothes and other junk were made to it, and soon a fierce blaze was crackling. Peter muscled in as close to it as he was able, but quickly found himself edged out.
He found a piece of driftwood protruding from the damp sand that was able to support his weight, and perched on it, resigning himself to another night of cold and hunger.
The wood shifted as another person dropped their weight onto it. It was an older man, with a scraggly, grey beard. He held out a canteen to Peter, who took it and gratefully chugged the lukewarm, slightly brackish water within.
"Thank you," he said, gracelessly wiping excess water from his face. The elderly man chuckled as Peter handed the depleted vessel back.
"To each according to their need," he intoned sombrely. "And you seem very needy indeed. What do you know of the Brotherhood, child?"
Peter jerked with alarm, but tried not to blow his cover. "I, uh, haven't heard much about it." The Preacher seemed to think this was a fairly unlikely answer, but was too polite to challenge him, and merely nodded.
"Us preachers don't get around as much as we used to, I suppose. The fall of the highway system really put paid to that. I did a lot of travelling in the 20s, spreading the word. I was a real road warrior!" He laughed, and Peter joined with a weak chuckle. The man might be a religious fanatic, but he had genuine charm at least.
"The Brotherhood does its best work in low places such as these. Our home is wherever the weak and destitute can be found." Peter was feeling both of those things at the moment, but wasn't sure how willing he was to indulge the man's fanaticism. Maybe another night with an empty stomach would sway him.
"Well I'm, uh, grateful," Peter replied awkwardly. The Preacher's smile faded somewhat, but he politely excused himself, and skulked around the camp looking for more potential converts.
As the sun's dwindling glow sank further below the horizon, a cold breeze blew in across the water. Peter shivered, hugging his knees as he stared into the fire in a futile attempt to stay warm. He looked on jealously as a stewpot was placed over the fire, and a medley of crustaceans was poured into it. His stomach ached with a deep hunger he'd never felt before. Say what you would about the awful dreck people on Basic Income survived on, it sure beat starving.
One man sat some distance away from the fire, hunched over and huddled under a bundle of weatherbeaten rags. He looked up as a family passed him by, and Peter caught a flash of green in his eyes. The mother hugged her child closer and quickened her gait. The father hung back, fixing the man with a pitying stare.
The mutant rose slowly, edging towards the stewpot. In an instant, a rabble had risen up, forming a human wall between him and sustenance. He hung his head and returned, downtrodden, to his perch. The leader of the mob spat at his retreating back.
"How you treat the least of these shall be visited upon you ten fold."
Peter spun to face the source of the proclamation.
An imposing brute of a man was standing just outside the ring of firelight. Peter hadn't noticed him until he spoke, and the man himself seemed surprised that he had even said anything out loud. Peter could see the glint of his teeth in the darkness as he spoke. His head was recently shaved, with silver stubble barely sprouting through, and the wiry beginnings of a beard showing on his square chin. A blanket was wrapped, cloak-like, around his broad shoulders.
He was no refugee. The rest of the people in the camp were haggard, wasting away; this man had the strong frame and muscular bulk that showed he'd grown up well-nourished.
The man made eye contact with Peter, who shivered involuntarily. The power of the man's gaze had an intensity to it that discomforted him deeply. He said nothing, but Peter could feel the implied threat in his dark eyes, and backed away. Once he returned to his spot beside the fire, he hazarded another glance. The man was still watching him.
"You shouldn't go messing with him," a woman across the fire muttered to Peter. He looked at her quizzically, and she leaned in closer.
"He's been hanging around the camps for months, taking samples from people… blood and stuff. If he takes a liking to them, they disappear forever. I heard some of the old folks saying he's old-school Nod; a proper fanatic, not just some warlord type. Best stay clear."
"Thanks, I will," he promised, while already planning to do the opposite.
"And another thing," the woman continued. "You need to get yourself some Yellow Zone income support."
"Sorry?"
The woman slapped an antique revolver holstered on her thigh. "Get strapped."
Peter nodded his thanks, and drew back from the fire.
Old school Nod. Despite the bleakness of his situation, Peter felt a ray of hope. A faithful of the Brotherhood, operating out of the refugee camps in the borderzone? This had to be the lead that ZoneSec were hunting for. If he could deliver him to the authorities, he might just be able to earn amnesty for himself. Peter fell asleep that night feeling a sense of control over his circumstances for the first time in weeks.
—
His second day in the camp dispelled some of that confidence. The hunger pangs were replaced by blinding headaches, and a nausea that twisted his bowels into knots.
Desperate for water, he searched out the Preacher again, but couldn't find the old man anywhere on the crowded docks. Eventually, he settled for lapping from a pool of condensation on the topside of a sheet of rusted metal.
He spent the remainder of the day waist deep in the water, gripped by a bout of horrid diarrhoea. Eventually, the increasingly frigid temperature of the water forced him back onto land, where he curled up in a futile attempt to stay warm. His slacks were soaked through however, and he slept fitfully, racked by bone-deep shivers.
—
On the third day, the silhouette of a ship was glimpsed on the horizon. People cheered enthusiastically at its appearance, but it sailed past without slowing, cutting a perfect line between the sea and sky.
A second ship passed by not long after. At first, there was no response from the bereft crowd on the beach, but when the ship began to grow larger, people stirred again. A few desperate souls even waded out into the water, trying to reach it.
Soon the ship was close enough to make out the peeling orange paint on its hull and the rusted cargo containers on its deck. It laid anchor not far out from the breakers. A handful of motorised dinghies were lowered into the water, and set out for land. Their arrival was cheered by the gathering crowd, until a handful of armed militiamen in mismatched fatigues stepped out onto the beach.
They started picking out people from the crowd - the young, the fit, or those loaded up with their meagre possessions - and shepherding them onto the boats. Some were reluctant to step into a dinghy, but most went eagerly, hopeful for a hot meal and a soft bed.
The grizzled old preacher stepped out of the crowd, and, with his back to the militia, began to loudly proclaim his objections. "These are not men of God! They offer you no salvation. Wait for a ship from the Brotherhood, my children!"
The preacher's passionate speech was met with a rifle butt to the head. The old man sprawled on the ground, spitting out teeth. The eager crowds that had clammered around the newcomers at first began to disperse.
"The Brotherhood is dead. And so are you, if you don't shut it," the man wielding the rifle said.
The majority of the dinghies were full by this point. The teams of armed people returned to the shore, casting their eyes over the crowds once more. They settled in front of the silver-haired black man, fixing him with appraising stares.
"He's old, what's the use?" one of them said dismissively.
"Yeah, but look at him! Built like an ox."
"Yeah, alright, we'll take him," the other replied. "You, get in the boat," he instructed. The older man raised his chin proudly, saying nothing, but followed the instructions. Satisfied with their human cargo, the men returned to the dinghy and prepared to set out. Those who hadn't been picked rushed forward, some with babies in tow, trying to wrestle their way onto the boat.
Shit. Peter's ticket back home was getting away from him. He needed to act now, or else he was gonna lose his chance.
"Hey, what about me!" he called after them.
"Scrawny runt," one of the pirates scoffed at him. The others chuckled. Peter knew he must present a pathetic figure at this point. His clothes were stained, hanging off his narrow frame, and his normally clean-shaven face had grown into a patchy tangle of black and grey bristles.
"Please," he sobbed. It sounded pathetic, even in his own ears. The men looked at him with disgust, and turned their backs.
In desperation, Peter flung himself at one of the men, and latched onto his neck, punching at every inch of the man he could reach. A rifle butt to the stomach ended his ill-planned attack, and sent him sprawling onto the wet sand. He looked up, straight into the barrel of the gun.
"Want me to waste him?" the man Peter had attacked asked through a bloody nose, gasping and furious.
"Nah, he's not worth the bullet," the apparent leader of the group said. The man holding the rifle looked mutinous. For a terrifying moment Peter was sure he was about to be executed anyway, but the man simply lowered his weapon, spat out a wad of blood onto the sand, and turned his back.
The men pushed off with their dinghies, and set out for the container ship. The broad-shouldered silhouette of Peter's lifeline was visible, even as the boats faded into the ocean mist. Without thinking, he ran after the boats, stumbling over the wet sand. His headlong dash quickly turned into a clumsy stomp through the frigid water. The waves tugged at his legs greedily. In his emaciated state, each step was a gargantuan struggle.
It was only when the water was up to his chest that he stopped to consider how foolhardy this all was. He hazarded a glance back at the beach. A few people had followed his lead, and were splashing into the surf, while their peers shook their heads in amazement and scorn.
I've come too far to stop now, he thought, and pushed himself into an asymmetrical breaststroke.
Before he was out of sight of land, the initial burst of adrenaline wore off, and Peter began to flounder. The waves crashed over his head, pushing him under the frigid water for several terrifying moments at a time. His lungs burned with the exertion, while his limbs began to go numb from the cold.
What little remained of his strength was quickly being sapped by the ceaseless battering of the waves. Peter found himself being tossed about like a piece of driftwood, unable to keep his course. He lost sight of the ship behind grey walls of water.
A sudden swell lifted him, and threw him bodily against the hull of the vessel. His skin was scraped raw by the thick layer of barnacles. He scrabbled for a handhold, but only succeeded in slicing his palms open. Another wave rose up, dragging him away from the ship once more. The cycle repeated, with Peter growing steadily weaker and bloodied.
Something rattled along the rusted hull beside him, and he grabbed onto it without hesitation. It was slimy and slick, but he was able to feel the thick links of a chain beneath whatever marine scum was coating it. Peter clung to it with the last of his waning strength, and let the anchor draw him out of the water as it was retracted.
Peter numbly grasped the gunwale of the ship with cold and insensate fingers as it came into reach. He tried to pull himself over it, but it took all his strength just to keep from falling. Lank strands of hair hung across his eyes, obscuring his view. He was dimly aware of footsteps clanging on the metal deck, growing louder as they approached.
"Holy shit, Boss, it's the guy from the beach!" a rough voice called out.
"Fuck, he's got balls," another voice replied. "He'll be good for sport, if nothing else. Throw him in the hold."
A pair of hands seized Peter's forearms, and heaved him aboard the ship. He was hauled to his feet, and marched across the wind-lashed deck, before being tossed into the open entrance of a shipping container. His arms folded as they hit the deck, and his face slammed against the metal. The door creaked shut behind him, followed by the clang of heavy bolts being drawn into place, locking him in the near-total darkness of the crate.
A weak chemical lamp in one corner provided some meagre illumination. The deck creaked as someone crept closer to him.
"That was foolish," spoke a deep voice from the gloom.
"Maybe," Peter replied through a mouth full of blood. "But it got me on the boat."
The man shook his head. Silver stubble glinted in the low light. "This is not the place for you. I have a purpose out here. You, on the other hand… only death and misery awaits you here."
"I've been through worse to get here," Peter replied.
The man let out a sound that was nearly a laugh, though whether of amazement or scorn Peter couldn't be sure.
"Who are you to willingly court such suffering?"
"I'm Peter Gale," he said, feeling a little foolish as he extended a hand in greeting.
"Aaron Kingsley," the other man replied, and took Peter's cold, pale hand in a strong, bear-like grip.