Interest (19 page)

35

That night, a bunch of the adults in Len’s section arranged a meeting in one of the tents. There were easily two hundred people packed into the tent. Len took note of the folks he met. Artists, engineers, business owners, college professors, each one with an X on their neck and wrist. None had the S tattoos he’d heard about on the train. Len wondered how civilization outside the camp could continue once humanity’s entire thinking population had been sent to the slaughterhouse.

“Folks,” said an African American man in a suit, “my name’s Abe. I called this meeting because I do believe they intend to kill us all.”

“Maybe they’re just keeping us out of danger,” said a nervous woman. Her face indicated that she didn’t even believe her own statement. Everyone looked at her like she was an idiot.

“Well, what should we do about it?” someone yelled from the back.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Abe. “Clearly, we need an escape plan.”

“How are we going to escape?” asked Len. “We’re at least five miles from the outside fence. And beyond that there’s nothing but open prairie. The nearest town is fifty miles away. There’s a reason they picked this place.”

“Would you rather die escaping, or die at the hand of those monsters?” Abe asked calmly.

“Abe, we just got here,” Len said. “Let’s try to get our bearings before planning an escape.”

“We don’t have time to wait!” exclaimed a skinny, nerdy-looking man.

“How do you know?” asked Abe.

“Do you see that huge building in the distance?” the nerdy guy asked everyone. The crowd nodded. “I worked for the engineering firm that designed it. That’s a state-of-the-art plasma gasification reactor. Only when we were designing it, they told us it was a top-secret defense project for turning trash into electricity.”

“So we’re the trash?” someone asked.

“How long do we have?” asked Abe.

“If I remember the implementation timeline correctly, it was scheduled to be put online in two weeks.”

The agitated crowd all began speaking at the same time.

“Quiet!”
roared a large man in the back. “One at a time or we’ll never figure this out!”

“I have an idea,” said the engineer. Everyone turned to look at him. “This facility seems to have an awful lot of paved roads, which means there has to be a system to collect and divert storm water so the place doesn’t flood. In fact, I see storm drains in the road on the other side of the barbed wire. I would imagine that there’s a storm water collection system with enormous pipes underground.”

“You imagine?”

“Yes. I don’t know. We didn’t design that part. We only designed the reactor. Maybe if we found a way to dig down to the storm water pipes, we could escape.”

“Then what? We’re fifty miles from the nearest town,” said an equally nerdy-looking Asian woman.

“Unless someone has a better idea, it’s a risk we might have to take,” said the reactor engineer.

“OK, so what could we use as digging implements?”

Len was starting to feel ill again from the lack of nicotine and alcohol. He couldn’t stand listening to them anymore; it felt like his head was being rubbed against a cheese grater. As they continued to talk, he got up and left the meeting.

36

The subcamp had sinks they could drink water from, but the Dranthyx provided very little in the way of food, only one or two meals per day. The guards opened the subcamp gates at noon each day to drop off an enormous pile of MREs, dehydrated meals in bags designed for the military. The prisoners were ordered to put all their trash into a large bin near the entrance. One hour after mealtime, a huge truck would back up to the closed gate and extend a robotic vacuum-like implement over the fence and into the bin. The truck would suck up all the trash and grind it into bits.

It didn’t take the Xreths long to figure out that the Dranthyx didn’t do trash inventory, and that they could use the little tins inside the MREs to dig. The construction of the tunnel was kept profoundly secret. The idea, of course, was to dig down toward the storm drain that they could see in the road on the other side of the barbed wire.

Over the next few days, the prisoners in Len’s section worked around the clock on the tunnel. Tinful by tinful, flushing the dirt down the toilets so the Dranthyx wouldn’t see it. The entrance to the tunnel was hidden from view underneath some of the cots, and they made sure that people were always pretending to sleep over the entrance. Len got stuck working the night shift on the tunnel, which sucked because they didn’t have any electric lights. He had to dig in the dark in an enclosed space.
This isn’t an escape plan,
he thought to himself,
it’s an Edgar Allen Poe story.
Nonetheless, the work kept his mind off the unpleasant detoxification symptoms he was experiencing. Bit by bit, he’d put his dirt into a bucket, then tug on the string so the person up top would pull the full bucket up. All of this had to be done completely naked so that the Dranthyx wouldn’t be alerted by dirt stains on clothing. Then, once his shift was over, Len took a shower, put his old clothes back on, and tried to sleep.

On the fifth day, whispers went around that they’d managed to hit a large, corrugated aluminum storm drain pipe. The pipe was easily five feet in diameter, big enough for them to walk through. Once they found a way to pierce the pipe’s thick aluminum quietly, they’d be in business.

That night, after a lot of low-key celebrating, Len volunteered to sleep on top of the tunnel entrance in case the Dranthyx came to inspect.

While everyone slept, Len snuck into the hole. The tunnel was shored up by cots and other scavenged material, a half-assed masterpiece. Doing his best in the dark, using makeshift ropes from tied-together shreds of cot canvas, Len secured the ropes to a few key struts that he knew were holding the tunnel roof in place. Then, once he’d crawled back out, he yanked hard on the struts until he felt them come loose. For a sweaty minute or two, nothing happened. Then, a great rumbling as the ground subsided inside the tent where everyone was sleeping.

“What was that?” someone asked in the dark.

“I don’t know!” Len said, feigning surprise, “but I just fell into the hole!” He needed an excuse as to why he was covered in dirt despite the tunnel being finished twelve hours earlier.

Several other people came to see what was going on, tripping in the dark on the depression the collapsed tunnel had left behind at the surface.

“Fuck!” someone whispered. “I think the tunnel collapsed!”

37

Early the next morning, the subcamp gate opened and a cadre of Dranthyx came in, led by one in a bespoke sharkskin suit. Without even asking anyone, the one in the suit walked right up to Len as if he already knew where to find him. It grabbed Len’s arm, scanned the encoded tattoo, and read the result on the screen.

“I understand you are Leonard Savitz,” the creature said.

“Who’s asking?”

“My name is Jacob Endicott. You killed my older brother.”

“Oh, right,” Len said, shooting a keep-quiet glance at Natalia. The video camera in the jail cell had been off at the time. Len might as well take the blame. “I did kill him. Your brother was an asshole.”

Jacob put his tentacle around Len’s back and yanked him in close so Len could see his eye slits dilating and smell his disgusting ocean breath.

“Come with me,” the creature said in a low voice.

“What if I don’t?”

“Then I’ll just vaporize you right here in front of your daughter.”

Len frowned and didn’t say anything further, which Jacob took as acquiescence. He chuckled and then yelled something in Dranthyx to the others. The black billboards along the streets outside the fence suddenly came alive with test patterns, like televisions.

Len, Octavia, and Natalia were led to a central part of the camp, near the building with the smokestacks. There an area awaited them that looked like a makeshift gladiatorial arena. Aluminum bleachers and stadium lights surrounded a cage made of chain-link fence and a concrete pad. There was a small stage next to the cage with a microphone.

The bleachers were filled with his fellow prisoners, people who looked scared and run-down and who had probably been forced to sit there. Jacob ordered Natalia and Octavia to sit on the bleachers with the others.

Jacob pushed Len into the cage and shut the gate behind him. Then from the other end of the arena came another Dranthyx leading a man on a leash. The man was none other than General Jefferson. Len’s heart started to pound as he suddenly understood the situation. The other Dranthyx opened the gate and entered with Jefferson still on his leash.

“You fucking turncoat!” Jefferson yelled upon seeing Len. “Where’s your goddamn loyalty? Not to the human race, apparently! You happy we’re all here in this death camp? They’re going to murder every last man, woman, and child, and the blood is on your hands! Neith could have saved us!”

“Fuck you, Jefferson,” Len retorted. “How does it feel to have no control?”

Jefferson’s face turned red and he tried to lunge at Len, but the Dranthyx’s leash held him back.

“You’ll rot in hell, you piece of shit!” Jefferson screamed.

Jacob Endicott seemed pleased with the tension as he took to the stage.

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen!” he announced smarmily into the microphone. “A warm welcome to those of you here in the stands or in your subcamps.”

Len looked over to see a Dranthyx operating a TV camera. Above the cage, he saw his own face on a Jumbotron.

“In case you weren’t anticipating having entertainment in our little camp, you will be pleasantly surprised to find that isn’t the case. In fact, televised gladiatorial combat will be a daily feature. We have a treat for you today, because our first match will be something extra special. We have arranged, for your viewing pleasure and ours, mortal combat between the two reasons this camp exists.”

Len felt like a Volkswagen was sitting on his chest.

“In this corner, at six-two and 220 pounds, the terrorist who once fancied himself president, Orville Jefferson! Orville comes to us from the dung heap known as Arkansas. If he hadn’t challenged our authority, you wouldn’t be here today.”

Blank stares from the tired, hungry crowd.

“In this corner, at six-one and a scrawny 170 pounds, the so-called journalist known as Leonard Savitz! Thanks to Leonard selling out Orville’s rebellion and telling us about Neith, the architect of the rebellion and the only hope you people had, we will continue controlling the human race for the rest of time!” Pleased with himself, Jacob gave a bubbling, metallic guffaw.

Again, silence from the stands. Had the crowd been Saskels or Tchogols, they’d have been hooting and hollering for blood. But these were Xreths. They understood they were in a bad situation in which they would all be put to death, and they got no enjoyment from watching some stupid fight between two people they couldn’t care less about. They had been told to sit there and witness the fight because it would add humiliation to death.

Len looked over Jefferson, who was staring Len down to psych him out. Jefferson pulled his shirt off. Despite being in his fifties, he was a slab of solid muscle. He looked like he could dead-lift an SUV. By comparison, Len was mostly skin and bones. “Shit,” Len said under his breath. He was in no shape to fight a man of Jefferson’s vigor. His last judo practice had been over fifteen years ago, and he’d been doing nothing but drinking and smoking since then.

Jefferson had his fists up and was bouncing side to side, as a boxer does. His nose looked like it had been broken at least once before. Yet he had no cauliflower ears. Len surmised that the majority of Jefferson’s martial arts training had been in stand-up work and that Jefferson would be weak on the ground. Judo was primarily a grappling art, like wresting. Len had spent hundreds of hours practicing groundwork in Japan, and he was hoping that Jefferson hadn’t. Good, Len thought. Now he had a strategy: get Jefferson to the ground and try to remember techniques he’d last used a decade and a half ago.

A bell rang. Cute. The Dranthyx took the leash off Jefferson, who yelled, “You’re gonna die, traitor!”

Len felt a surge of fear as Jefferson came toward him. He recalled his old judo sensei’s constant advice: “Don’t panic. Relax. Control your breathing. Fear will tire you out before the fight does.”
He’s a boxer,
Len thought.
Clinch him up. Take him to the ground.

Easier said than done. Len had an awful lot of judo experience but absolutely no training on how to throw punches or how to bob and weave. Jefferson came out like a raging bull, and with one lightning-fast, inescapable blow, he knocked Len to the cement floor. Len’s head was fuzzy with white lights, but he wasn’t out yet.

Sensei, on top of him, using his weight to squeeze the air out of Len’s lungs: “Does this hurt? Good! Learn to enjoy it. Don’t even think about tapping out. Never quit just because you’re uncomfortable. Fight hard when you’re winning, fight hard when you’re losing. Continue fighting through the pain until an opportunity opens up.”

Jefferson hunched over Len, ready to finish the fight, but as he bent over, Len quickly grabbed his arm, put his foot up into Jefferson’s pelvis, and did a throw known as the
tomoe nage
. Jefferson flipped over Len’s prone body and landed squarely on his back on the hard concrete, dazed.

Sensei, watching Len practice throws: “What are you waiting for? Why did you stop? Never stop to admire your work! Keep moving! Finish the fight!”

Without hesitation, while Jefferson was struggling to catch his breath, Len rolled over top of him and, while still holding the arm he’d used to do the throw, swung his body around, threw his leg over Jefferson’s face, and arm-barred his opponent. Raising his hips to put extreme pressure on the joint, Len heard a loud snap as Jefferson’s elbow joint hyperextended and broke. The crowd made a noise of surprise and disgust.

Something martial arts teachers usually forgot to explain: an arm bar would end a sporting match, but it might not end a real fight. In a situation of true mortal peril, a determined opponent wouldn’t be deterred by a broken arm. Instead, he would become enraged and try even harder to murder you. In an instant, Len realized his tactical error. Jefferson’s arm, now broken and no longer susceptible to the immobilizing trap of Len’s joint lock, had a new freedom of movement that allowed him to escape Len’s hold. He turned violently into Len, and with his unbroken arm, he punched Len in the chest so hard he cracked one of his ribs.

Jefferson then got to his knees and lunged at Len, who, unable to breathe from the punch, could do nothing but roll out of the way. Jefferson got up again, this time to his feet, while Len scrambled to do the same. Jefferson ran headfirst into Len’s midsection while grabbing both of Len’s legs to take him to the ground. On the way down, Len caught Jefferson in a guillotine choke, a nasty move he’d practiced hundreds of times while in Japan. Len pulled hard on Jefferson’s neck, digging his forearm bones into Jefferson’s carotid, while locking his legs up around Jefferson’s torso. Jefferson was as strong as a bear, and holding him in that position while he thrashed about took every bit of strength Len had. With his good arm, Jefferson punched Len repeatedly in the side, where his rib was broken, to get Len to loosen the chokehold.

Sensei, demonstrating how to maintain a controlling position while Len struggled to get free: “You see? Never, never give up a dominant position! If you think it’s too tough to stay on top, then tell me, would you rather try to fight from the bottom?”

The pain of Jefferson punching him in the broken rib was nearly enough to make Len pass out, but somehow he didn’t. Instead it was Jefferson who lost consciousness first after several seconds of restricted blood flow from Len’s chokehold.

Temporarily passing out because of the restricted blood flow from a chokehold was considered subclinical if the hold was released quickly. Lots of people were put into sleeper holds and recovered in seconds with no ill effects. Blood flowed back into the brain, and consciousness returned like nothing happened. However, if the hold was held, brain damage would occur in about thirty seconds. Longer than that and death became inevitable. Had it been one of his old judo classes, Len would have let go immediately to prevent injury. But this wasn’t some class. This was a death contest with the fucker who had kidnapped his daughter.

Len considered letting go of Jefferson’s neck before cerebral anoxia set in. He now had two bad decisions under his belt: killing the Iraqi boy, and letting the IRS agent live. Two major fuckups, the first because he let rage take the wheel, and the second because he let compassion get the better of him. Now Len had to pick which mistake to make next, because whatever he did, it would be the wrong decision. He thought it over for a bit, then held the choke until Jefferson’s face turned blue and his heart stopped beating. Once Len was sure Jefferson was dead, he let go and passed out himself from exhaustion and the pain in his side.