SWNOVELS Chapter CHAPTER EIGHTTEEN
With such a high mortality rate in the Happy World Nightmare arena, it wasn’t hard for Van and his crew to gain positions on scouting teams. They decided to split up and join separate groups, so as to collect the widest scope of information on their Hellish surroundings. After 3 days, it was time to meet up and share their findings. Once everyone but the sentries had gone to sleep, the trio crept from their bunks and made their way to the meeting spot, at the derelict play park, towards the back of the makeshift fort.
The park was riddled with thick vines that had long ago died and turned black. A menagerie of plastic animals wearing saddles, with springs connecting them to the ground, had been crushed beneath the wild, scorched plant life. It was a haunting sight. Swing sets and roundabouts littered the landscape. The rancid air was still and a smoky haze hung thick all around. It was never truly night in the arena, the burning sky never changed. The survivors had chosen a rudimentary time to rest during every 33 hour cycle. It was a 12 hour downtime. The trio had chosen to meet during this time as it meant only a few, so called, night guards would be awake and they still weren’t sure they could trust anyone with their plan to fly the coup.
Yukimi made her way through the park. She passed a stagnant pond and made her way toward the giant, geodesic climbing frame. The structure was constructed from metal, but it had long since been covered with vines and large weeds, completely engulfing the interior in darkness. She circled around it until she found an opening, which had been cut into the thick foliage.
Clambering inside, she found that Van was already there. He had set up a lamp on top of a pile of crates in the centre of the dome. The light was dim, casting only a small area of light around him. As she approached, Van spotted her. He nodded to the recent arrival.
“Alright there, Yukes?” He asked.
“I am well. And never refer to me as ‘Yukes’ again or I will tear off your reproductive organs.”
“Received and understood,” replied Van, shielding his genitals with his hands. “Hey, I don’t suppose you saw the accidental serial killer on your way in?”
“If you are referring to Dallas-“
“If the boot fits,” smiled Van.
“-Then the answer is ‘no’. He knows the meeting place and, despite my initial estimations, he is capable of telling the time,” answered Yukimi.
“Well,” replied Van, “I guess we should wait, I mean, he’s escaping too, after all.”
“Very well,” replied Yukimi, as if she were permitting patience, though clearly uncomfortable with the informality of the proposal.
It took Dallas another 37 minutes to arrive. Van and Yukimi had spent the time between making half-hearted small talk about the food rations that were scavenged by the scouting groups. It felt awkward, they had never just chatted until now. When Dallas finally graced them with his presence, they were both too relieved by his long-awaited arrival to express the contempt they felt for his poor time keeping.
“Alright?” he said, grinning. He was met with a round of sighs. Van needed an answer;
“Ok then,” he said, “Why are you here over half an hour late?”
“Oh, yeah. Ok, so I have a surprise, but it’s a good one.”
“Don’t tell me, you tried to distract the guards and inadvertently killed all of the inhabitants of the fort?” Asked Yukimi, fearing that this would be the answer.
“Better!” announced Dallas excitedly, “guess who else wants to escape?”
He turned to his right, as a figure entered the pool of light. It was Harmony.
“The fuck?!” exclaimed Van. But before Dallas could explain himself, Yukimi had the smug bitch by the throat. She stared Dallas in the eye.
“How sure are you that you can trust her?”
“Holy shit, Yukes, let her go, she can’t breathe!” pleaded Dallas.
“How sure are you that you can trust her?” Repeated Yukimi, in a calm tone.
“Fuck! Like, 80%?! I don’t know! Just let her go! She wants off this crazy planet as much as we do!”
“How do you know this?” Harmony’s face was now purple. Her attempts to free herself from the Skolarean-hybrid’s vice like grip was only serving to use up energy.
“She told me when we were-“ Dallas broke off and went silent. He looked down at Harmony, who was rapidly losing consciousness. “When we were in bed.”
Yukimi released her grip on the girl’s throat. She fell to the floor panting and choking. Dallas looked at his comrades, who were now glaring at him.
“Ok, so while I’m coming clean, I did drug a couple of the guards, but it was nothing that could kill them.”
“Dude!” exclaimed Van, “The fuck are you doing? I totally called ‘dibs’ on her.”
“No you didn’t!” spat back Dallas.
“I did.”
“Oh yeah, when?”
“When we were signing up for jobs.”
“Bull-shit”
“I did!”
“Fuck you!”
“FUCK YOU!”
“ENOUGH!” said Yukimi, “Dallas, indulging your base instincts had better have been a fruitful endeavour.”
“It was,” said Dallas, helping the dizzy Harmony to her feet, “She’s been here for two years and knows the place like the back of her hand. Also; we banged like jack-rabbits… It was pretty great.”
“How is it that she doesn’t agree with the other slaves, that we shouldn’t try to escape?” probed Yukimi.
“Because she isn’t a slave. Her and her family came here to protest the park and she got transported here as punishment.”
It seemed that Yukimi had managed to choke the shit-eating grin off of Harmony’s face. This was something she took no small amount of pleasure in. The girl stood straight, still catching her breath, she said; “I desperately wish to leave this place,” her voice was little more than a rasp, “When you all showed up, I was certain that you could help me get free of this Hell hole.”
“She knows about all the Nightmares in the arena. Plus, she can organise the job rota, so the four of us can go out alone.”
Dallas studied Yukimi’s face as he said this, praying that she wouldn’t just return to choking the life out of his first living squeeze in years. Yukimi shook her head.
“She is your responsibility,” she told him. She turned to the stack of crates and retrieved the map from her pocket. “Ok, we have only a couple of weeks before POP begin distributing their new poison and the Universe believes everything they tell them. I have filled in the map with details on the terrain and Nightmares that I have encountered but I need you to fill in the blanks.”
The other three walked over and circled the map. Yukimi had scribbled little notes over a large portion of the map, but the areas around the supposed weapons cache and escape point remained as they had when she first got it. They studied the map.
“I was here yesterday,” said Van, pointing to an area called ‘Walt’s Wonders’, “The whole area is patrolled by six foot, deformed rats in red shorts. It’s a real freak show and the guys I was with were afraid to go in too deep, so I don’t know much.”
“We call them ‘Micks’,” wheezed Harmony, “they’re flesh-eating scavengers. They like to play with their food too.” Yukimi made a note with charcoal on the map.
“My guys took me around here,” said Dallas, roughly circling an area of map with his finger. “The Nightmare is like three bears all smooshed together. They like boiling, the survivors they catch, alive in porridge as fucked up as that is.”
“The Goldilocks,” hissed Harmony, “confusing it is the best way to escape it.”
“How about killing them?” asked Yukimi.
“Kill them?” Harmony looked shocked at the mere suggestion of this, “You can’t kill them. They’re monsters with the bones of robots and the minds of sadistic beasts. They do not die!”
“Then what about the sniper the old man informed us of?” asked Yukimi, “Is he not believed dead?”
Harmony paused, “He was talking about Rip Van Winkle, the Bullet Wolf.” She leaned over and placed her palm over the weapon’s cache. She lowered her head. Her voice came out as a whisper, “We believe the owners took it out of the arena, it killed so many so fast. There were nine of us from the church, when I first arrived. I am the only one who he didn’t kill. The Bullet Wolf took them all. Its rifle rounds always found their target, but it was a quick death and not what the gamblers wanted to see. The only way to stay alive for a long time, is to be too dull to bet on, or too interesting to die. You’re odds are calculated by how many people want to see your death, but no one knows their odds until it’s too late.”
Van seemed to get excited at this, “Oh shit, I nearly forgot. So my CID hasn’t worked since we lost D00D and the Bessie, but check this out.” He raised his left arm and brandished the graphene gauntlet around his forearm. “So, the other night, it came back on. There must be a public network here, because it does this.”
He pressed his finger to the surface of the transparent interface and it came to life with a purple glow.
Wrapped around his arm, was a looping list of names with bookmaker’s odds after them. Some names had red strikes through them, denoting the recently fallen survivors. “There’s also this.” He pressed a tab and the image changed to a map with green dots all over it. The map appeared to cover around a 500 metre radius of their location. The green dots corresponded with the guards they knew were near and there were four closely grouped ones in the centre. “Fucking awesome, right?”
Harmony squealed, “You are the ones who will save me! I knew it. Oh, praise the Lord.”
Yukimi rolled her eyes, “If you wish to accompany us, we need more information first. For instance, what lies across this area here?” she gestured to the area between Rip Van Winkle’s territory and the mystery escape point. The young girl thought for a moment.
“This area here,” she said indicating the nearer half of the path, “is called ‘Lewisville’, it is where the March Hare lives.”
“Let me guess,” said Van, “He pumps his victims full of acidic tea, or some shit?”
“No,” replied Harmony, “he rapes them to death.”
“Really wish I didn’t know that.”
“However,” Harmony continued, “You can enter the sewer system here and come up on the other side. As for the cluster of Nightmares at the end here, we never venture close enough to find anything out. Every time someone gets close they don’t come back. They say a dragon was placed there.”
“Sounds to me like the most logical place to secure something you don’t want your entertainment finding out about,” said Yukimi.
“Agreed,” said Van, “so, what we ought to do is; spend the next few hours resting up then, come morning, Cuntzilla here does her thing with the work schedule and we get the fuck out of dodge. That sound good?”
Before they could respond, a blood curdling sound came from the direction of the food court. Van and Yukimi turned to Dallas. “Now, I know what you’re thinking,” he began.
“Oh my GOD! The guards have been poisoned!” Came a scream from outside.
“And there may be some merit to it,” Dallas finished.
“Seriously?” asked Van rhetorically, “Every Fucking time.” The sound of terrified voices began to grow. “Hey, Harmony, is there a back door to this mad-house?”
“Follow me,” she said and they took off through the hole in the dome.
Harmony led them to the far end of the park, where the makeshift wall of the fort cut into it. Van glanced at his arm map, a large group of green dots was headed their way. They hurried along the perimeter with Harmony leading the way. She darted onwards, skipping over vines and debris until she reached a gap in the wall. It was no more than a foot wide, she squeezed herself through. Her escorts followed her and sprinted away from the monolithic shelter, as angry voices echoed behind them.
They took cover in a building around half a kilometre from the fort and propped a table over the open doorway. Van looked at his arm again. The green dots were spread out all around them. The group sat in silence as they watched the dots go past. When the last dot had reached the edge of the map, Yukimi retrieved the paper one from her pocket. She laid it out on the floor and shone her torch onto it. After scanning the map, she made some quick hand gestures that looked like military commands. Van and Dallas looked at each other, then to Harmony, then back to Yukimi;
“Yeah. We don’t know what all of this means,” said Van, making mocking gestures of his own.
Yukimi groaned. “I said; ‘we will move slowly toward the lazy river and follow it down silently until we can break across the sleepy city to the Twilight Clock tower where the guns are supposed to be’. It’s not that hard.”
The Lazy River wasn’t nearly as tranquil as its name would imply. In keeping with the rest of the arena, it was like something from a waking nightmare. The shore line was awash with blood-soaked sands and body parts. Something was clearly living in the water, but it never came up for long enough for them to get a good view.
The stench of raw sewerage polluted the air and made an already terrible outing even worse. Harmony told them that the Lazy River surrounded the entire arena. It was most likely put there as a way to divide up the other arenas that covered the planet. From what she had learned, Harmony was able to find out that the planet, though owned by the Happy World company, was in fact not even in the same star system as the planet they’d been sent from. Harmony herself had been protesting at Happy World 294. The OEO, it seemed, were sending there unwanted guests and slaves here from all over the Universe. The profit from the gambling industry it produced was staggering.
It took almost 2 hours to reach the outskirts of the Sleepy City. The buildings had been built to look like they had faces with closed eyes. The street signs and lamp posts were all warped to give the effect that, they too, were slumbering. Even the overhead traffic lights had drooping eye lids.
As they got closer to the centre, the buildings grew more dilapidated, the faces now looked as if they had been subjected to plastic surgery that had gone tragically wrong. A foreboding stillness filled this place. Even the erratic wind was hushed to a whisper. Not even nature had penetrated the concrete jungle. The thick, charred vines were absent, only dust, debris and the occasional massive blood stain.
Harmony clung to Dallas’ arm as they made their way to the humungous clock tower, which loomed over the roof tops. She had been very reluctant to come here, given her fallen flock’s experiences in this particular territory. She knew all too well that the Bullet Wolf had once favoured the clock tower for his fatal frolics. He used to collect the heads of his victims, and put them on spikes to decorate the streets. Harmony didn’t fancy seeing any familiar faces, luckily the only ‘head ornaments’ they’d seen displayed thus far, had been little more than skulls with the idea of flesh draped around them. Rip Van Winkle hadn’t put up any new decorations in a long time, hopefully this was due to more than just a lack of visitors.
They reached the foot of the tower. It was in its own square, where flowerbeds had once bloomed. The scorched earth that covered the area now, was flat and lifeless. They approached the entrance to the tower and found themselves stood before a large, crooked tomb stone. It was a solid block of granite with deep layer of dust clinging to every surface. Van walked over and wiped the front. As the dirt fell away, writing was revealed on its face, it read simply;
R.I.P.
Van
Winkle
A sigh of relief washed over the group. This had been the first piece of good news they had had in a long time. Harmony loosened her gasp on Dallas’ arm and walked toward the large wooden door at the base of the tower. The tombstone’s inscription had breathed fresh confidence into her stride. She pushed it open and they all filed inside.
The tower’s interior was much more stripped down than its thematic exterior. The walls were made of wooden beams that held the rendered outside in place. Boarded window slats spilled an ominous red light into the vacant shaft that was the tower. An old, wooden staircase wrapped around the walls and out of sight. There were no other doors, they would have to risk the rotting steps, if they were to find the still hypothetical armaments.
“You wanna take the first step there, hero?” Van asked, turning to Dallas. He stepped forward and lightly pressed the lowest step. It creaked and groaned under his weight. He pushed on slowly. After three steps, he turned to the others.
“You comin’ then?”
They ascended the staircase gently, being careful to not occupy the same step as another member of the party. Their pace slowed as they reached the upper echelons of the decrepit stairway. Dallas had been keeping Harmony calm by teaching her the origins of belly button fluff, reciting word for word exactly what Yukimi had told him only a few days before. She seemed oddly enthused by the whole thing.
The stairs led up through the ceiling and into the clock room. Huge clock faces covered the four walls, large cogs and other mechanical components erupted from the hanging mechanism in the centre of the room. The panes of the glass clock faces had been smashed through, most likely to aid the Bullet Wolf in his marksmanship. A boardwalk stretched from wall to wall above their heads.
They fanned out in different directions and began searching for the mystery weapon stockpile. The floor in the clock room was much sturdier then the staircase that led up to it. It was still wooden, but it had aged much better. There were many large boxes scattered around. They were covered with dust sheets that had more than earned their namesake, having remained untouched for an indeterminate, but unmistakably long amount of time. Most of the boxes were just filled with Happy World promotional flyers and leaflets. Van was nearly to the far corner of the room, when a blood curdling scream cut the through quiet stillness like a hot urine stream through a heap of virgin snow.
He bolted through the labyrinth of boxes and found Dallas with a shaking Harmony in his arms. He looked at Van, then motioned with his head to an area behind a tower of boxes behind him.
Van advanced past the entwined couple and into the nook. Yukimi was there, hunched over a body. It was around seven feet tall and covered in matted, grey fur. The corpse was wearing a plaid hunting jacket and hat, but no other clothing. Blood stains had dried around its half-rotten snout. A large implement protruding from the body answered the question of what had happened to Rip Van Winkle; someone had pushed a 17th Century musket through his chest, pinning him to the floor.
Van could see why Harmony had screamed, the look of frozen terror on the fallen wolf’s face was enough to make anyone scream. The musket was rusted and wouldn’t be worth bringing along. Yukimi seemed engrossed with a tuft of fur from the dead monstrosity’s pelt. She twisted and twirled it in her fingers, examining it from every angle. Suddenly, she threw it to one side and stood up. Composing herself, she turned her attention to the idling Van.
“He was just like me,” she uttered softly.
“What are you talking about?” asked Van perplexed.
“The technology that was used to create this monster, it’s the same as the way in which I was created. The technology is Skolarean.”
Van paused digesting what Yukimi had just said. Apparently the insidious Commander Zeffross had more of a hand in the OEO’s affairs than just hiding their dirty laundry. The maniacal bastard had also given them the means by which to create the Nightmares, and the experiments that had gone according to plan of course. He had not only condemned them to the Hell they now found themselves in, he was its architect.
Van had never had such an overwhelming urge to stamp on someone’s face until now. He was about to start fantasising about how he’d like to kick Zeffross in the head so hard that his eyes would pop out so he could piss in the empty sockets, but then the look on Yukimi’s face told him that he should probably see how she felt about this new revelation. She looked sad. He put his hand on her shoulder;
“How are you feeling?” He asked.
“I’m fine,” she lied, “It’s just-“
“What?”
“I just- Am I any better than this murderous beast?” she asked, looking into his eyes.
Van could see that the wrong answer could send her into a fit of tears. “The only thing that the two of you have in common,” he said holding both of her shoulders, “is the affiliation you have with Commander Cock-snot. The sheer fact that you have a mind to contemplate this kind of existential mess, is just one of a million things that sets you apart from these fucked up things. You aren’t some single-minded killing machine that lives purely for the entertainment of rich pricks with more money than brains. You have one of the greatest driving forces of any life form in the Universe, you’re curious.”
She half sobbed and half tittered at that last part, “What’s so great about curiosity?” she asked, wiping away an errant tear.
“Are you kidding?” exclaimed Van, “curiosity is what leads a species from writing with their own shit, to unlocking the mysteries of the Universe. Curiosity is the thing that makes life worth living, it’s how we know we’re truly alive. Because we were curious as to what it means to be alive. Yukimi, you are more ‘alive’ than most people could ever hope to be, especially those who take their natural birth for granted. If anything, you should pity these things, because they will never know what it is like to be like you.”
She smiled, “thank you,” she said, “I really appreciate that.”
“You’re welcome.” Van was a little bit proud of himself for pulling such a supportive speech out of his arse.
They left the body and returned to Harmony and Dallas who had finally finished cradling each other. Harmony was now standing with her arms crossed and Dallas was doing his best to pry open a large wooden crate. Yukimi walked over to him and wrenched open the lid with one fluid motion. Dallas turned to Harmony and tried to imply that he had loosened it up, but it only elicited eye rolling from the others.
They all looked into the crate and found that it was filled with, what appeared to be, some kind of flags. They looked odd though; the thin flag poles were attached to a black handle, with a button on the index finger groove. The flag itself was blank and thin, running the length of the pole, all the way to the grip. It looked like a squared-off machete, only with a fabric blade. Van took one out and pressed the tip of the pole to his palm. It pushed in. Unless there plan was to make the Nightmares laugh themselves to death these mystery devices would be no use to them. Then he pressed the button.
When Van pressed the small, pimple-like switch, the handle vibrated and the flag went rigid. The fabric blade now looked like the Universe’s longest straight razor. He waved it around a little, and then slashed through a nearby box. There was no drag as the textile machete carved clean through the box and its contents. It was like cutting fog. He pressed the button again and the flag knife returned to its prior, inoffensive state.
“Nice,” Van said, smiling and nodding at the device in his hand.
“Ok,” said Yukimi, reaching into the box, “this is a good start. Grab what you can use and we’ll search the rest of the crates that look like this. If we’re lucky-“ she broke off.
“Yukimi?” Van said, looking at her.
“Shh!”
There was a faint breathing sound coming from somewhere behind them. They each grabbed two flag knives and filed towards Rip Van Winkle’s body. Or, at least, where it had previously been. All they found now was a large blood stain and a hole that, until recently, had housed a 17th Century Musket.
“You’re fucking kidding, right?” moaned Dallas.
There was a dull bang from somewhere above the pendulous clock mechanism suspended in the middle of the room. Harmony began to shake and emitted a squeal from somewhere deep in her throat. All the blood had drained from her face. Her eyes were welling up with tears of sheer terror. The faint sound of a gun being loaded came from overhead. Then, before anyone could stop her, Harmony started to run.
She took off like a bat out of Hell, screaming like a banshee getting fisted with a knuckle duster made of jagged, salted glass. A gunshot echoed from the roof just before a bullet tore her left calf to shreds. She fell to the floor, screaming in agony. A howl came from overhead followed by the sound of something jumping around. The trio darted toward Harmony, Dallas swooping her into his arms as they sprinted, full tilt, for the staircase. There was a roar behind them and Van turned to see a huge, anthropomorphic wolf, in hunting gear charging after them, bloody drool flowing from his jaws. They flew down the stairs, the monstrous hunter hot on their heels; “WAIT! I WON’T EAT YOUR HEADS!” he barked.
“THAT’S NOT MUCH OF AN INCENTIVE!” Van shouted back.
The brittle stairs were beginning to crumble under the stress of the chase. They were managing to handle the four, half-starved humanoids, but the weight of a 7 foot tall, recently resurrected wolf monster was pushing them beyond their breaking point. The steps finally gave way and began to fall away like dominoes behind them. Rip Van Winkle crashed through the rotten wood and plummeted to the hard ground far, far below.
The danger wasn’t over yet though, the collapse continued. The group were losing ground fast and they still had another hundred feet to go. The floor was falling away beneath them as they dashed down the stairs. Dallas was struggling to stay ahead of the last ‘domino step’; his grip on Harmony was also failing. Ten feet from the ground, they ran out of luck. And fell into a heap of sore limbs and broken wood.
Yukimi, who had somehow landed gracefully, looked across the room and saw the Bullet Wolf. He was riddled with wooden spikes, pinning him to the ground and puncturing most of his body. She could see that, despite having a large plank bisecting his head, his eyes were still moving. This thing wouldn’t die and Yukimi knew that if something wouldn’t die, the only option that was left was to permanently immobilise it. If the other Nightmares were this resilient, the fight to escape would be harder than she had anticipated.