Flare (43 page)

/***/

They walked downstairs through darkness, and on the first floor Barabbas turned a corner and entered a long hallway. He eventually reached a set of double doors that had a dead man hanging from them in a cross position just like the man Zeke had seen previously, but this man had been crucified and then left to hang upside down. Barabbas took the man down and laid him on the floor like a sleeping child, and then unlocked the double doors with a key in his pocket. The doors swung open to reveal another set of double doors, only these were less thick and had reinforced glass windows on them. Zeke peered in to see a surprisingly well-lit gymnasium. There was a basketball court with large covered windows high on the ceiling, and they let just enough light in to cast a solid glow that illuminated the entire room without causing any harm. Zeke looked down and saw that the fox had followed them down, and she too was now waiting for the final set of doors to open.

The gymnasium was filled with children, and they were playing. Most of the kids were dressed in filthy clothes, but they didn’t have the abject look of the dockyards’ prisoners. They clearly needed many basic provisions, but they weren’t starving. Zeke could hear them giggling as they played.

“They haven’t seen me,” said Barabbas. “I give them food during the day, and at night I climb up into the gym’s rafters to yell instructions, to give them some sort of guidance. I fixed the plumbing so the water stays running, and they stay clean enough to avoid disease. I know this can’t go on forever, but so far they’ve survived, and they haven’t seen my face once.”

Zeke counted thirty children but something told him that there were many more. They had made this place their home and were darting in and out of the back rooms, laughing, screaming and playing tag.

“This is the resource Legion was after,” said Barabbas. “He sent us to get these kids for his dockyards. He wants to cut their foreheads and blow Golgotha’s Breath into their blood. He has soldiers now, but disloyal ones at best, ones that will abandon him as soon as his drugs and nighttime games run out. A warlord needs to keep expanding to satisfy a restive army, but not if his army is truly loyal, the kind of loyalty you can only get from the young and malleable. Zeke wants these children for himself, to become part of his country, to become part of his history. If he gets them he’ll feed them his lies, and these young minds will turn his words into truth. His false bible will become a
real
history through them, and not just the fleeting truth of a drug-addled head. He’ll teach it to these children and they’ll believe it, and they’ll make it a
real
truth that lasts forever. Do you realize the consequences if this happens?”

Zeke nodded that he understood the consequences completely. He thought of Lilith, the victim turned into a perpetrator. Zeke knew that these children were completely innocent, and that with Legion’s molding they could fall further than she into sin.
These children play gently now,
but they all have the potential to turn into Liliths and Scoxes, every last one of them.

“Legion hasn’t gotten to these kids yet, though,” said Barabbas. “No one has, not even me. They haven’t seen the bodies I placed on their doors, and they don’t know who I am other than a fleeting voice. My past is too stained for me to play any real part in their lives other than sitting at the unseen periphery, and doing the things that need to be done to keep them unsullied.”

Barabbas then gave Zeke a look of resignation, one not tinged with defeat, but rather
acceptance
.

“My absence should go beyond staying away from these children,” he said. “I gotta stay away from everyone else too, because I’m too dirty to play a remembered role in the world’s future. For humanity to recover from this, the sun must first burn the sinners like myself until we’re dust, and then throw us onto the ash heap of the nameless and forgotten. Do you understand me?”

Zeke didn’t agree with Barabbas, not in the slightest, but he understood what the man was trying to say.

“Even though my part in this world is unseen and will go unremembered, I do have a part to play before I die,” said Barabbas. “I know Legion will send more to find these children, and given enough time he’ll succeed. I need to go back to the dockyards and dissolve his empire from within. I’ll play out my role as the dirty assassin and kill Legion’s troops while they sleep.”

Zeke thought about this, and then shook his head
no
. Barabbas was taken aback by Zeke’s reaction.

“You understand the importance of these children, right?”

Zeke nodded
yes
.

“But you don’t agree with my plan?”

Zeke shook his head
no.

Barabbas looked puzzled and started to smile as he recognized what Zeke was trying to say. Barabbas excused himself and walked out of the room. He returned after ten minutes, with a clear and determined look on his face. It seemed to Zeke as if Barabbas had been crying, but his tears were now dried, and his face held only resolve.

“I assume Legion called you
the charred one
, the one that will lead us to redemption,” said Barabbas. “Did he claim this?”

Zeke nodded, and Barabbas mulled this over.

“Legion’s intentions hold only lies, but perhaps this moniker holds some truth,” said Barabbas. “The prisoners also spoke of
the charred one
, but their version of the burnt savior was to end Legion’s bloodshed, and he was to do this through peace. Just peace. Perhaps it
is
you that will lead us to redemption, one that shuns violence, even if that violence prevents other violence.”

Barabbas looked at the fox, who was now grooming herself.

“Funny,” said Barabbas. “Here I am ashamed of my own past, and I ask you to come help me kill more people. Maybe we shouldn’t fix everything this way.”

Barabbas took some time to think.

“It’s hard to do this without brute force,” said Barabbas. “But I understand what you’re hoping to achieve, even if you don’t yet understand it yourself. You don’t speak, but you’re somehow telling me why you were put on this earth, and you’re telling me not with words, but with your presence alone.

“So here’s what I hope to achieve, with your help. I hope to end Legion’s reign at the dockyards, but I’ll do it without
purposeful
bloodshed. You and I will loose the prisoners while the guards sleep, but we’ll not kill the guards, nor will we punish them once the tables have turned. We’ll not hurt the living, but we’ll bring our wrath to the dockyards’ infrastructure so that it never snares an innocent soul again. Is this fair?”

Zeke nodded.

“Then it’s a plan,” said Barabbas. “In return for my service, will you take these children as your own, and ensure that they grow up ignorant of everything you and I have seen?”

Zeke nodded.

“All right,” said Barabbas. “I’ll make sure the children have enough to sustain them for some time, and then you and I will return to Legion’s fortress.”

Zeke liked the plan, and nodded.

“I understand your message of peace, and I hope my actions in the next few days will wash away my past sin, if only partly,” said Barabbas. “But conquering the dockyards won’t be easy, and though we may come in as lambs, Legion’s boats are filled with wolves. Once we open the first door, their depravity will be loosed, and this will require us to descend into their muck. We’ll not bring death, but we
will
wade deeply within it, and we may come back with blood on our hands.”

Zeke considered this, and then shook his head.

No.
We’ll not come back with blood on our hands, because so much blood has already been spilt that the world can’t take a drop more.

“All right,” said Barabbas, seeming to understand Zeke’s thoughts. “No blood, but the responsibility to make sure that happens is on
you
. I’m gonna tear the roof off of this place, and I can’t worry about whether a guard happens to be under it when I do. You understand where I’m coming from?”

Zeke nodded that he did.

“You may be an agent of peace, but I am not,” said Barabbas. “My role is to ensure that a week from now the dockyards will be broken in two, and Legion’s empire will be no more.”

/***/

They returned to the dockyards three days later, but stayed hidden in an alcove four miles away.

“We’ve got the element of surprise on our hands, and we can probably use it a few times,” said Barabbas. “We’ll stay at the edges, pick off things one at a time, you know.”

Zeke gave Barabbas a concerned look, and Barabbas asked him yes-or-no questions until he figured out that Zeke wanted to rescue Courtney from Legion’s tanker.

“If she’s on the ship we’ll get her, but we gotta stay on the edges first, and do what we need to do out here first,” said Barabbas. “Once we go in, they’re gonna know we’re there, you understand?”

Zeke nodded that he did.

“Do you
really
get what I’m trying to say?”

Zeke didn’t quite get what Barabbas meant by that.

“They’re gonna
know we’re there
, because I’m gonna cleanse the place,” said Barabbas. “I’m gonna bring chaos, and they’re gonna sound the alarm, so you’d best find your friend and get out quick, before things really go down.”

Zeke nodded in understanding.

“I mean it,” said Barabbas, pointing at Legion’s ship on the moonlit horizon. “I’m gonna sink that tanker, just me, you better understand that now.”

Zeke looked at Legion’s ship, sitting ominously in the harbor like a dormant volcano. Zeke wondered how a single man could break something that large, but Barabbas seemed certain that he could.

“Get your friend outta there when the time comes, because that ship’s going down,” said Barabbas. “But first we gotta starve this place of its decadence, you catch my drift?”

Zeke nodded that he did.

We’re going to take the EverRed away.
I don’t know what this man’s plan is, but that’s what we’re going to do. I can see it in his eyes.

/***/

Barabbas knew the location of the main drug warehouse, and they found it had been left unguarded. Barabbas explained that the drug grew so quickly that the captors took it for granted, so they often left it unwatched.

Zeke and Barabbas snuck in through a window, and the stench was so oppressive that both men gagged. Barabbas started to vomit and then turned his retching into a harsh laugh. He held his nose with one hand while pointing at the room full of barrels with the other.

“The fungus grows in shit, and they make their own supply,” he said. “You don’t have to be a poet to draw a few choice metaphors about this society’s cultural foundation.”

They grabbed two metal rods lying on the floor and crawled up to the rafters to put holes in the skylight. Zeke started by smashing the upper windows open, but Barabbas held him back.

“You might be the charred one, the one who’ll eventually unite the world,” said Barabbas. “But now you’re just a lowly saboteur like me. Smash a window and they’ll notice. Make little
pokes
like I do and we’ll bring enough light to wipe out the reserves, and they won’t even catch on that we were here to do it.”

Zeke followed Barabbas through the upper rafters and poked small holes in the windows, three in all. Barabbas was quite skilled at his sabotage, and together they broke the windows in discreet but thorough ways. Zeke knew these holes wouldn’t be discovered for some time, and once discovered, wouldn’t be able to be fixed.

/***/

They closed up their hidden alcove, and the fox was nowhere to be seen. Zeke was glad for it, too.

Foxes are supposed to be cunning, but she’s not supposed to help me here.
I don’t know what her role is, but she’s not come to help me destroy anything, not even the things that warrant destruction.

“EverRed grows real fast, and real easy,” said Barabbas. “But the users need a constant supply, so in a few days the captors are gonna start fearing death again, and they’re gonna start questioning their place in this world. If we stay patient, we’ll have a much easier fight on our hands.”

Barabbas pointed at the vessel on the coast, still visible through the rocks.

“That place’ll be a fight though, because they got their own drugs in there,” said Barabbas. “Everyone who lives on Legion’s tanker shits in a bucket and turns it into their own private garden.”

/***/

They waited three days for the EverRed to leave their enemies’ systems, and then decided to free those who had been held captive. They parked the truck at a closer alcove, snuck into the hangar quietly and entered.

Zeke looked at the cage in the center of the room and saw the same hollow-eyed men that had been there when he was prisoner.

They’re different people than the ones that shared my cell, of course,
but they’re the same. These are just different bodies, made identical by shared suffering.

Zeke got the attention of the closest prisoner, and the man smiled faintly when he saw him. The prisoner pointed to the far wall, and Zeke saw a key draped on the outer wall of one of the guard’s shelters.