Blackjack Wayward

Chapter Ten

My legs were failing me, but at least I was alive. The employees of Utopia weren’t so lucky. The halls were littered with corpses bearing blackened marks in their chests and horrible, cavernous wounds, as if a small grenade had exploded inside their bodies. Others were mangled beyond recognition, their body parts strewn about like rag dolls. The only way I could distinguish between them was by clothing: the blue-gray of the guard jumpers, the white lab coats of the sci-lab guys, the red-orange vests of the technical staff. With each step I had to avoid dismembered staff, moving on ground that was three inches deep in blood and viscera.

Zundergrub butchered these people to get to me, and now I ran for my life, trampling over their remains, slipping in their pooled blood. Surrounded by so much death, I couldn’t help but weep silently, knowing there wasn’t anything I could do. Nothing except run and live, and perhaps one day find the man who had caused this and make him pay.

I tried shaking off the dark pall that had come over me, using a railing to lean on and move past the carnage. I took as many random turns as I could, confident that in all the blood and gore, I wasn’t leaving a noticeable trail. I wanted to stop and cry; luckily I didn’t have anything left to vomit. I pressed on down the hall under flickering lights, hoping the distance I was creating wasn’t an illusion. This wasn’t a time to mourn, or to feel sorry for myself. I had to move. If Zundergrub found me, I was dead.

A thought was creeping in the back of my mind that I couldn’t ignore. Could I still be in the prison? Was this another dream, to throw me off, to send me on another mission and keep my mind active? My shaking legs felt real, and the wobbly give of my tendons and ligaments, made me feel they’d been unused for a long time as I lay in that gelatin bed. The cold, bloody floor beneath my feet and the tight grip of my fists on the metallic railing also felt genuine, but my head was a foggy haze and I couldn’t be certain of anything.

I heard a woman whimpering and a man’s loud grunting down an adjacent hallway and I shook my head, trying to make sure that my ears weren’t playing tricks on me. I abandoned the railing and shuffled down the hallway to follow the sound. Maybe someone was there that could help. Then again, Zundergrub could be waiting for me with his contingent of followers.

As I moved farther down the hall, I saw an open cell like the one that had housed me, with a costumed man bent over a young woman. He was facing away from me, fumbling with his trousers and she lay motionless at his feet.

Without even realizing it, I straightened up, ignored the numerous complaints from my muscles and tendons, and strode toward the man.

“F*ck, f*ck, f*ck,” he mumbled, dropping his pants and falling to his knees beside his prey. He turned her over and ripped off her bloomers, revealing her pale, white buttocks. He rubbed himself to get aroused, grasping her crotch with his free hand.

As I came to the big window that overlooked the hallway, I caught a glimpse of the woman. She was still alive, but sporting a brutal wound to her face that had broken her nose and swollen her left eye shut. A trickle of blood dripped from her damaged nose and mouth, and her one good eye bounced around the room. She was in shock, almost paralyzed.

I threw the door open, slamming the glass frame against the wall behind me, smashing it to fragments.

“Get the f*ck off her,” I said, but my cottony mouth wasn’t cooperating, so it was more a series of confused vowels than any threat.

He turned to me and I instantly recognized him as the villain Dreadmaster. He was one, maybe two generations ahead of me, probably in his late fifties, with a bulging midsection and gray hair jutting out the sides of his black mask. His power was energy emission, which he could focus and fire into beams or use as timed grenades, which explained the corpses I had seen on the way here.

Zundergrub had recruited the mad and deranged for his plan, not caring who else was hurt, or died, and let them loose on the facility. Now dozens, maybe hundreds, were dead, and the day was young.

Dreadmaster was surprised that anyone would challenge a costume during the wave of madness that was sweeping the prison, and seeing me looking worse for wear, dressed in a robe that looked more like a miniskirt, his mouth curled into a cruel sneer. He was older and far removed from his heydays, but Dreadmaster wasn’t out of practice. Summoning his power, he swung his arm out at me and raw energy slammed me back into the glass wall. I smashed through, crashing into the hallway wall amid a cloud of shattered crystal. He stood and lifted his drawers, surrounding himself with more of the powerful stuff he had used to kill so many.

I grabbed a handful of glass, still reeling from the blow, and threw it at his face. He recoiled, unhurt, but that gave me time to get up and hurl myself at him, tackling him to the ground by the midsection.

It was a great idea, but a weak gesture. Old as he was, Dreadmaster managed to twist his body as we fell so that I was on the bottom. He charged his fists with energy and swung away, my hands feebly trying to block his blows. Punch after punch made it through my pathetic guard and slammed into my face. I gave up trying to defend myself and reached out, leaning forward to get a hold of him, but his charged punches pummeled me, my head slamming onto the floor. I could feel the concrete cracking beneath me and see the relish in his eyes. Emboldened by my failed resistance, he opened up on me, unleashing his full psychotic fury

Out of desperation, I slipped my hand up to his waist and grabbed flesh, feeling some of his stomach flab between my fingers. I squeezed my hand closed and a splash of blood sprayed across my wrist; his eyes widened in horror, mouth hung open in silent agony. He recoiled violently, arching his back away from me and looking down at his damaged midsection. Realizing that I had just ripped a handful of stomach off his body, and the full pain of the injury setting in, he doubled over, howling. He buried his head and chest on my shoulders, trying to peel himself from my grasp. I lifted him by the midsection, my other hand grabbing his chest, my fingers clawing around his soft pectorals to find a good hold. I pressed him off me and threw him out of the room. He hit the wall with a wet thud, his momentum enough to dent the metal and slid to the ground in a boneless heap.

I crawled over to the woman, who was in a shock-like delirium. She wore the same white robe I did, ripped apart by Dreadmaster to reveal her buttocks and small breasts. Her face was spider-webbed by bloody black hair, and her breathing was heavy, fighting a clump of hair matted to her mouth. Her pale skin was covered with tattoos, with a striking tiger in bright orange and black on her left thigh, a green dragon coiled around her right leg, and a large crimson rose at her right biceps. There were others, too, as if each section of her body carried some sort of adornment.

“You ok?” I asked, clearing her face of the blood-matted hair. Underneath it all, she was a pretty woman, but it would take a long time and a lot of surgery to fix her broken face.

She stirred, pushing me off with a weak hand. I let her shove me away, tried to give her some space, but her hand fell to her side, her eyes fluttering and she just shook her head.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” I said, though I had no idea who she was or why she was here. I just couldn’t leave her to Zundergrub’s mob, or for Dreadmaster to finish if he came to.

I stood and looked around the room, which was much like mine. The only thing I saw that could cover her was Dread’s cape, which he had discarded to rape her. I covered her with it and lifted her off the ground. She was like a feather in my arms. I half-expected her to fight me, thinking I was her attacker, but she surprised me, digging her head into my shoulder like a sleepy child.

“You’re going to be ok,” I said, noticing that the cotton-mouth was starting to fade, and I was sounding more and more like myself.

I left the room, passing a groaning Dreadmaster, thinking I should finish him while I had the chance, but there was no time to waste. I left him, shambling down a dim-lit hallway with renewed purpose, looking for the way out.

At some point, the lights went out and someone started screaming from the direction I had come. It was terrible, like someone dying from a slow, agonizing pain. I could only think that Zundergrub had found Dreadmaster, unleashed his fury at the psychotic villain for diverging from the doctor’s plan.

I hurried, my body functions returning with each second, whether from use or from desperation, but running through the endless hallways of Utopia I realized I was totally lost. I tried to think, but images of the tiny corridors on Drovani’s flagship kept trying to interpose themselves with the larger, more modern ones within Utopia. I found myself unconsciously ducking to fit under a low ceiling that wasn’t there. Frustrated, I stopped and looked around. I was pretty sure I hadn’t circled back around myself, but my eyes were the one part of my body that weren’t cooperating. I had passed several cells, including one that had a patient inside, the machinery tending his autonomic needs while his mind wandered through whatever dreams they had planned for him.

I stopped to watch the man, maybe for longer than I should have. He was lit only by the readouts of the computer consoles that surrounded him, lying nude on the gelatin cradle as I had until just moments ago. His body twitched here and there as it tried to respond to the stimuli the machines presented him. His eyes opened several times, darting to and fro, but he saw only what they wanted him to, and he eventually closed them and settled.

That’s what I must have looked like, but how long had I been here? There were no clocks or calendars; in fact, nothing adorned the cell. Even the computer screen were reading out plain lines and graphs without any numeric identification. I shuddered at the time wasted, time Zundergrub had used to set plans in motion and amass an army of villains, while I lay there, fed the necessary nutrients through a nose tube, catheters removing impurities while the gel-bed formed a comfortable resting place. It was reminiscent of a return to the placenta.

The woman stirred, her good eye flashing open and closed, and her right arm pushed against me. This wasn’t a good place to stand still, down a long empty hallway. It’s not like infra-goggles were all that expensive or hard to find, and anyone wearing them would see me easily.

But she was coming to, and I didn’t want her to panic or scream and draw Zundergrub and his boys to us. I knew they had to be close. There was a stairwell nearby, so I made my way to the door and gently leaned against the armbar to open it.

The only light was from the blinking emergency sign a floor above us, and while it was bright, little illumination reached us.

“Hey,” I said, sitting her down against the wall. She moved gingerly, her whole body in pain, and each gesture was slow going.

“Qui êtes vous?” she whispered. She had to repeat twice before I could hear.

“Sorry, lady. I don’t speak French.”

She was delirious. Her one good eye wasn’t focusing, shifting from thing to thing, almost independent of her will. Her head bowed, and she almost lost consciousness, but her body shook, jolting her.

“I said, ‘who are you?’” she said with a heavy accent.

“My name is Dale,” I told her, not wanting to share more.

“Laisse-moi tranquille,” she said, reverting to French in what was barely a whisper.

“Who are you?” I asked, but her head lolled forward and I had to catch her. She pushed me away, showing she was more aware than I realized. She recoiled from me, but bumped her head on the wall.

“S’en aller,” she hissed, as a tear streamed down her face. “Allez vous faire foutre connard.”

I couldn’t understand it, not just from a lack of familiarity with the language; she spoke so fast, so softly, that even a French person would have been at a loss.

“Lady–”

“Seulement violer mois à cette époque-là,” she snapped, suddenly angry, even managing the strength to hurl a spray of bloody spittle in my direction.

“I don’t understand,” I managed.

“F*ck then go,” she said, garbling the English language, and added; “Font le et vont!” as she opened the top of her ripped gown to reveal one of her breasts. Her soft skin was red from Dreadmaster’s rough manipulation, but she was beautiful despite her condition. I could feel her eyes watching me as I got a good look at her body.

“Qui êtes vous?” she asked, jutting her pointed chin at me, demanding. “Qui?”

I put my hand on her ripped top, and gently closed it.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said.

“Se que, vous non trouver le en haut?” she laughed, dribbling blood from her nose and wiping it.

I shook my head and moved away from her, sitting on the stairwell. The sound of the screaming had faded, but someone above us was firing a machine gun.

“Stuck with crazy French bitch on one hand, and a crazy Indian who wants to kill me on the other,” I mumbled, rubbing my eyes. “I could use a beer.”

“Beer,” she said. “Hmmm.”

“You understand that, huh?”

The woman tried to smile, but the gesture caused her too much pain.

“So, you got a name?”

She regarded me with caution.

“Hey, I saved your life from that a*shole back there.”

Shaking her head, she said, “Merde, je sais vous maintenant.”

“I know you can understand me,” I said, but she just shrugged. “If you know beer, you know what I’m saying. Besides, I thought you people all knew, like, twenty languages.”

“Vous êtes une stupide peu être de service à,” she scoffed, then added in broken English; “You have cigarette?”

I motioned to the ragged, sweaty robe, indicating the lack of pockets, shrugging.

“Je te tuerais pour une cigarette, Blackjack.”

My name. She knew it, and based on how nonchalantly she said it, she was unafraid of me.

“You know who I am,” I said. “You know my name?”

She tried to smile.

“Je vous baise à deux reprises, crétin stupide.”

Cretin meant the same thing in both languages, and it wasn’t hard to infer what “crétin stupide” meant. But I had no time to waste with this woman. She was in as much danger as I was, maybe more, but if she was going to start insulting me and turning away my help, then to hell with her.

I stood and moved to the door, sliding it open and daring a look down the hall.

“I’d love to stay and chat, angel,” I said, starting to move out of the stairwell, “but there’s a guy out there that wants to kill me and–”

I paused then, again wracked with guilt at the many dead in this place. They would blame me for it, unjustly tacking on to all the shit they had on me, real or imagined.

It was then, I think, that I realized that I could try to fight back. To help Razor and take a shot at stopping Zundergrub and his crew of psychos, before they hurt anyone else. My body was already better, and if they took me out in the process then perhaps that wasn’t such a bad way to go. Better than going back to the mind-prison; better than a lie.

“Ce qui est faux?” she asked, trying to come to her knees, but her frail form wasn’t up to it. I guess getting electrocuted and then punched in the face had its benefits. Compared to her, with my wobbly legs and perpetual disorientation, I felt like a million bucks.

“Just stay here,” I said, trying to take control of the situation. “There’s a guy out there, a guy who wants to kill me. He’s a bad man. Bad as they come.”

She chortled, wincing from the pain.

“I know you can understand me, ok?” I said. “Anyway, I’m going to try and stop him and the guys he’s with. When I’m done, I’ll come here and get you some help.”

“He kill you,” she said, breaking it up as if in three separate sentences, pointing at me with the last word.

“I have to try,” I said.

She shook her head.

“Why die?”

“I can stop him.”

The woman leaned her head back against the wall in frustration.

“Why die?” she repeated, frustrated she didn’t know more English. “Why die?”

“He’s a bad man,” I said, not sure how to respond. “If I can kill him before his people get to me, then maybe ... he tried kill everyone on the planet once.”

She nodded, saying only one word; “Hashima.”

“You know about that?”

“Pas étonnant que votre rêves étaient comme des contes de fées,” she mumbled, then said to me, “You are Boy Scout?”

I just shook my head.

“Get away. Live. F*ck this.”

“I can’t get away. I don’t even know where I am. Besides, I just told you there’s a guy here trying to kill me.”

“Mon Dieu, vous êtes comme un enfant sans défense,” she said to herself. “I get us,” she motioned to both of us, “away. To the safe ... merde comment voulez-vous dire....”

“You can get us out of here?”

“Oui! I get us out of here.”

“How?”

I felt a dark specter cast its pall over her, a wave of anger directed at me, at the hint of questioning her, that made me shiver.

“Je devrais vous laisser ici,” she said slowly, her voice dripping with venom. “Peut-être vous sera celui qui se lève le cul.”

“I said how,” I snarled, crossing the distance to her, and roughly picking her up off the floor by her shoulders.

She smiled, her head not completely stable, lolling back as I lifted her.

“This, I like,” she said, her hand touching my chest. “Do this, then go.” The woman reached down, grabbing at my genitals, but I squeezed her shoulders, just hard enough to make her reconsider.

“Je vais couper votre bite,” she snapped, trying to bite me.

“We don’t have time for this, woman!” I said. “If you can get us out of here, say so now. If not, then to hell with you.”

Her face softened, her lips almost forming a smile. She brought her hand up, slowly at first so I wouldn’t hurt her shoulders, then to my face, caressing my cheek. Her good eye danced over my features, her lip twitching with approval.

“You are–” she started, pausing as her thumb touched my lips. I jerked a little, feeling her touch on the parched, broken skin of my lips, expecting her to attack me by surprise, but she shook her head and finished, “–so handsome.”

She smiled as much as her injury would allow, the pain of the gesture making her chuckle.

“Un homme magnifique,” she said, and I sort of understood her for the first time.

“Take me to....” she started, struggling with the words. “Le bureau de l’étage ... uhmm ... office.”

“What office?”

She pointed up.

“Up?”

“Yes,” she said. “Office up, yes.”

I moved back, away from her but still holding on to her frail form. She shrugged, as if the moment had passed, the opportunity gone.

“Ok,” I said. “I’m guess going to have to carry you up there.”

She understood and opened her arms. I was gentle, using my left arm to lift her just above her knees and my right to cradle her softly. She had little control of her neck and shoulders, but with difficulty, she brought her head up to face me and touched my chest.

“Dale.”

I nodded.

She touched her chest, and said; “Claire,” then rested in my arms as I carried her up the stairs.