Chain Gang All Stars

All the Angola-Hammond Chain rode together in the van. It was all of them and then it was Jerry. And of course, the closed-circuit cameras perched in the four corners of the van’s rear holding unit, which gave Jerry a good view of the Links at all times. While they sped away from Vroom Vroom, toward their next stop, Jerry made it a point to look, through his analog rearview and the series of screens embedded in the console, at his cargo of supervillains/heroes. He made a point of really watching them as they sat in silence. There they were, all eight of them, bound by their magnetic locks. In that moment, he guessed, he was their leader. The van was silent except for his whistling. He figured they probably liked to hear something from somebody, stuck in silence as they were.

Jerry considered himself an additional member of this bandit group, and in some ways, yes, he was definitely their leader. What else would you call the man driving the van—well, sitting in the driver’s seat of the van as the hand of automation pulled them steadily down the highway toward the drop-off point? Jerry watched the console screens as he reclined in his chair. His promotion to assistant producer and head of inter-circuit transport of the Angola-Hammond Link System had been one of the few definitive wins in his life. And one of the perks was he got his own special episode of LinkLyfe that no one else would ever get to see. LinkLyfe: The Van. Maybe he would pitch it one of these days to the higher-ups.

Because no one but Jerry knew that after a brutal victory Staxxx wept silently on Thurwar’s shoulder. It was Thurwar and always Thurwar whom Staxxx sought out in these moments. And no one else knew how Thurwar would gently massage Staxxx’s scalp as the tears wet her sweatshirt. Though today Thurwar seemed to be staring into herself. Her arms were wrapped around Staxxx, but limply, as if she were surprised to be holding this woman whom she’d held so many times before.

So much happened there as they waited to be deposited at their next March location. A silent opera just for him. No one else knew how Gunny Puddles, that balding sicko, glared, jaw clenched, on the bench seat closest to the door for the duration of every van ride. Nobody saw Sai Eye Aye, the Thurwar-wannabe-turned-badass-in-their-own-right, as they tried to make the other Links laugh. If the laugh lasted more than half a second, Jerry would hear their screams as their wrists shocked electricity through them. If any of them got shocked the game would end for a while, then start again a few miles later. And there was Randy Mac, who tried his best to seem nonchalant, easygoing even. He tried especially hard to make it seem like he didn’t care that it was Thurwar whom Staxxx chose for comfort and not him. Mac hid his jealousy by having Rock, Paper, Scissors tournaments with Rico Muerte or Sai or Ice. But Jerry could see from his screens how Randy peeked across at Staxxx even as he showed an open palm against Ice Ice the Elephant, the Samoan bruiser, who flashed a massive fist. And of course, the entire van felt the absence of Sunset Harkless, the only one of them Jerry had really, truly known…a little.

Randy Mac raised his two hands in victory. He clasped and shook them above his head. That Randy Mac, Jerry thought. What a sad man he is beneath it all. Jerry sighed as he reclined into his seat. Unrequited love. In this, Jerry and Randy were brothers of a kind. At least Staxxx lay with Randy sometimes. Randy was lucky for that. Jerry could only dream of being so lucky.

The A-Hamm Links knew Jerry well, though he’d hardly spoken a word to them. For the last year, he’d done most of their transports, dropped them off at fields in the middle of nowhere like he might drop stepchildren off at school. He was usually kind enough to share in their silence. In the entertainment business this time was called “being on ice.” The idea was to keep the Links from speaking when the cameras weren’t watching; if not they risked the juicy morsels’ being spilled before the world could receive them. The van was one of the only places where a Chain could be together and not be directly monitored, outside of, of course, Jerry’s watchful eye. There were the BlackOut Nights too, but those were unpredictable and rare.

If they hadn’t been physiologically forced into silence, Jerry would have talked to them about his own life. Maybe the van, the show forming in his head, could be a talk show. He’d talk to them about his ex-wife, Meghan, and his kid, Kyle. But would talking about his family be like waving steak in front of hungry dogs? And to be honest, it had been months since he’d seen either his ex or his kid. He obviously couldn’t talk to them about his job, and of course that was all he ever really wanted to talk about. He couldn’t talk about his personal relationship with the late Sunset, which even his bosses knew nothing about. If they had, he certainly wouldn’t have been given this new position, which was actually assistant assistant producer and co-head of inter-circuit transport of the Angola-Hammond Link System.

His new friends—all his old friends had chosen Meghan over him—loved to hear about his position as assistant assistant producer and co-head of inter-circuit transport of the Angola-Hammond Link System. And he’d actually reconnected with his niece over it too—or was she his ex-niece? She’d never liked him before. She’d even told him so on more than one occasion. But he’d called to check up on her after the divorce anyway, to tell her that he hoped they’d stay in touch.

Mari was one of those kids—well, she wasn’t a kid anymore—but she was the kind of person who didn’t like anything. She hated the government, hated most food that wasn’t prepared in some kind of shrine of peace and happiness, hated most people on TV because they weren’t doing enough about this or that. She was a tough one, always had been, and considering she didn’t have her father in her life, that seemed fair. She’d been thrown some tough cards and now she played every hand the same: critically, without trust. But despite all her self-righteous protesting, she’d actually looked excited when he’d mentioned his promotion. At first, she’d said she didn’t believe him, didn’t believe that he got to travel with Sunset, that he got to talk to, and sort of know, her dad. Then she’d asked him, timidly at first, then more insistently, to tell her about her father. What was he like up close? How did he seem in person? And Jerry told her the truth: The guy was always smiling. You wouldn’t believe he’d done the things he’d done. He was always the first one on the van and the last one off. When he wasn’t silenced he’d ask Jerry about his day, the both of them pretending their former partners weren’t sisters.

Mari would listen, silent, on the holophone. Once Jerry had told her, “He’s a much better man than he was when he went in. The program has some merit in—” but she’d hung up on him before he could finish.

Jerry had felt guilty that she’d reached out to him after her father had been murdered before he could get in touch with her. He’d told her the truth, he didn’t know what had happened. And because he didn’t know what else to say—he couldn’t say “He was a good man”—he’d just started talking about the show, letting slip some rule changes he’d discovered in an email he’d accidently been cc’d on. It wasn’t until she’d said bye and ended the call that he’d realized that he’d divulged confidential information. He sent her a message asking her never to mention it. She replied, For sure.

Both his ex-niece and his ex-sister-in-law had made clear long before he’d had this job that they did not vibe with Chain-Gang. But hard action-sports were how he supported himself and his family. And though it was not his place to have a feeling about whether or not the lives of the Links were fair, or to make judgments on the ways these criminals were serving the community via entertainment, he made it a point not to watch the show at home. It could be pretty grim.

And yet, somehow, because he was an assistant assistant producer and co-head of inter-circuit transport of the Angola-Hammond Link System and managing officer of human activity and security, entrusted with the responsibility of making sure that the Angola-Hammond Chain got where they needed to go, he cared for the convicts. They were the most popular Chain of all time, many of them celebrities in their own right. And in those moments on the road when no one was watching, he was their leader, kind of.

Jerry felt a fatherly flavor of affection for them. When he’d return for the Links after the BattleGround, or pick them up from a Hub City stop, or drop them off for the March, he’d do his head count and he’d feel a small pinch of shame if even one of them was missing. Whether it’d been on the BattleGround or some internal A-Hamm conflict, it made it hard to look any of them in the eye. Just a few days before, when Thurwar had stepped into the van followed by Staxxx and the entire Chain was seated and there was no sign of Sunset, he’d almost cried right then and there. As he drove the Sunset-less A-Hamm he felt desperately that he wanted to be a part of his actual child’s life again. Sunset’s child would never see him again, but Jerry and Kyle didn’t have to be that way. Except Meghan was still making it hard and Kyle was suffering. For now, Jerry pretended there were a bunch of Kyles riding in the back.

A black-and-white puff jumped into the road, many yards off. More than enough time for it to get outta there. The truck didn’t slow and the puff did not move. A skunk? A skunk. Standing in the road like a martyr. Jerry leaned forward but touched nothing. The van charged on its wheels. There was no reason not to speed through these empty hills. Except now. The thing sat there, looking at Jerry as though it had been waiting for them and was relieved to see they had finally arrived. Jerry peered out through the windshield, watched the steering wheel ebbing one way and then the other, correcting and remaining constant in an autonomous calm.

“Bitch,” Jerry said, grabbing the wheel and pushing down on the brakes as he honked the horn. They slowed, harshly enough that he felt his body creep forward. Beneath them he could hear the sounds of weapons scraping against the van’s undercarriage. But it was the horn, it seemed, that did it. Made the thing almost leap into the air before scampering off to the other side of the road, beneath a guardrail and into long grass.

Jerry looked into the rearview. He met eyes with Randy Mac, who stared back, hungry and tired. Randy Mac smiled and held his arms up, showing Jerry his palms, the blue glow at his wrists. Then he lifted what remained of his middle fingers—his left middle finger, and ring finger for that matter, had been partially removed some months prior—and flipped Jerry one full bird and the nub of another.

Really, it was a thankless job.

Jerry stopped whistling. They rode in complete silence, it seemed, for the last several miles until, from his reclined position, he felt the car slow and stop.

—

“Good luck, huh?” Jerry said loudly enough so that the Links could hear him, even though they were still locked inside. He’d parked on an empty road. Jerry opened up the van’s undercarriage and pulled out a long black metal rod that spread out into an almost perfect flat disk at its top before pointing back into a cone at the head. Jerry pulled the black screen from his pocket and pressed its face. The ArcTech Anchor, which had been sleeping below them on the drive as it always was, became erect, then rose, suspended in the air, and waited there. Jerry pulled the small armory of equipment from beneath the van and set it down on the ground for each of them to grab. He laid down the hammer, trying not to hurt his back as he did so, plus the scythe, several knives, a trident, a golf club, and the rest of the destructive freight, dropped them onto the brittle grass at the road’s edge.

Then he opened up the back of the truck so that the Links could get out, and sprinted back to his front seat and locked the door while they shuffled outside. All their wrists flashed a warning of blinking red as their cuffs synced to the Anchor. The same red flashed on the edges of the five-foot-long metallic ringleader, like a miniature Space Needle, like a floating black body.

As they settled into their open containment, they looked at the nothing all around them, at one another. Thurwar closed the van’s doors. They’d been dropped on the outskirts of a long-dead farm. No cars passed as they waited and the only lights to be seen came from the waning glow of the sky and its astral bodies and the convicts’ wrists. Five of them had seen the BattleGround that day: Thurwar, Staxxx, Randy Mac, Ice Ice the Elephant, and a man called Bad Water. Each had won their bout, keeping the A-Hamm Chain at eight Links strong.

They hadn’t been out for even a minute before the van they’d arrived in began to pull away. And they stood in the small sliver of unseen and unsilenced time together. Thurwar, Staxxx, Randy Mac, Sai Eye Aye, Ice Ice the Elephant, Gunny Puddles, Bad Water, and Rico Muerte: the Angola-Hammond Chain.

“Nice to see everybody,” Staxxx said, smiling widely. The corner of a white patch peeked up from the hem of her shirt. Beneath it her latest X tattoo, which she’d received from her post-fight tattooist, was healing on her skin. Tattoos had become such an ingrained post-match tradition that they were offered, free of Blood Points, in every arena.

A chime like tin falling against concrete sounded. Their wrists eased to orange. Staxxx picked up her scythe as Thurwar went for the hammer. Once Staxxx had her scythe, she seemed to brighten, as if a piece of her had been painfully removed and only now was she whole again. Scythe in hand, Staxxx rushed toward Thurwar and gathered her in her arms. She kissed her on top of the head and squeezed her midsection. Thurwar looked at Randy Mac, who smiled out the side of his mouth as Staxxx squeezed and quickly hugged her back before pushing her away. Sai Eye Aye approached Thurwar and pulled her in for a deep hug.

Thurwar breathed in this short window before the HMCs were deployed and the show began. This was what they did, and it was not lost on her that this was different from what other Chains did. When they got out of the van they re-greeted one another. That was a habit that she and Sun had instilled in the group. She felt she should say that whoever killed Sunset should come forward and at least explain why. She wanted to reestablish the hierarchy that even when Sun was around had started with her. She wanted to know who had killed her friend.

“Blood Mama,” Sai Eye said through a sparsely toothed grin. A rock to the jaw had rid them of two upper premolars and a lower canine. Their skin was sandy and clear and their head was as bald as Thurwar’s. “That was an interesting evening,” Sai finished. “You’re the Grand, carry it well. We’re with you till High Freedom.” Sai smiled the way a real comrade did.

After the silent ride, speech felt like water in a dry mouth. “Hey,” Thurwar replied. “Yeah. You did well.”

Thurwar and Staxxx both acknowledged Ice Ice the Elephant by touching his shoulder. He nodded in response. He was a few inches shorter than Thurwar, though he probably doubled her weight, with his arms, legs, and torso all thick as tree trunks.

“Well fought,” Ice said.

“Ditto,” Staxxx said. Then she continued. “Which one of you wants another good squeeze before we start rolling?” Staxxx asked. Her eyes stopped at Randy Mac. “I think I see somebody who does right here.”

“It depends on where you’re squeezing,” Mac said. Staxxx approached him.

Feed will begin in sixty-five seconds, said the airy, light voice of the Anchor. It sounded human, yet it was distinctly soulless, its only concern directing their action.

A panel in the Anchor’s head slid open and three HMC orbs floated out.

“I know you need this. I bet you were worried about me, you big pussybear.” Staxxx was careful hugging Randy, so as not to decapitate him with her scythe. He took it warmly. Melted into her. Everyone watched them closely. It was hard to do what Staxxx did. To allow herself to be a relief to others in a sport designed very specifically for them never to relieve anyone of anything.

Gunny Puddles spit on the ground.

“I need a little of that too,” said Sai Eye Aye.

“I’ll take some, matter of fact,” Rico Muerte added.

Feed will begin in thirty seconds. Report to line.

“All right, this is gonna have to be a double team,” Staxxx said with an evil laugh.

Sai shrugged and Staxxx wrapped them up in her left arm as Rico Muerte stepped forward and let her pull him into her with her right. “Don’t be shy, y’all. It’s been a long day.”

For the last couple of months this had been Staxxx’s procedure. The touch of another human was like love on the skin. Sunset had encouraged Staxxx when she’d made a tradition out of starting each March with some love. In a way he had mentored Staxxx into the star she’d become.

Holoview initiating.

It was over. They separated, pulled apart by the force of their master, the Anchor; they stood in a line, shoulder to shoulder, some three feet apart. The three HMCs floated and rested at Rico Muerte’s feet. He was already posed, crouched with his six-iron club on the ground as though he were assessing the lay on a tricky green. The HMCs flew and circled around him.

The most popular hard action-sports program in North America had begun.