Flare (30 page)

Zeke could barely hear the words and collapsed to the ground in response. Malphas repeated his order, and Zeke understood, but he didn’t have the energy to move. He tried to get his body in an upright position, but just couldn’t move. His legs were frozen, and his arm felt like it was melting.

“Put his right leg through,” said Malphas to the guards.

The guards dragged his right leg towards the hole and tried to jam it in. His foot was too big for the opening, so they pushed it down until his toes were facing forward in full extension, as if he were preparing to dive into water.

They put his foot in the cloth and then straightened his leg. His foot pushed through, and then his ankle turned upwards as his foot touched air. The men tried to push his leg forward, but he was just too heavy. One got behind his shoulders and pushed, but Zeke was dead weight. The man then propped Zeke’s shoulders up, and the stocky one wedged himself under the small of Zeke’s back, and thrust himself towards the wall. The stocky guard couldn’t get any traction with the first two thrusts, but got movement on the third. Zeke’s body moved closer to the hole, and his left leg hit the wall and then turned outwards. His back scraped on the dusty concrete floor as they pushed him forward.

The guard pushed him again with a fourth thrust, and then a fifth, but on the sixth he reached the limit. Zeke’s thigh was too big for the hole and was now wedged inside it.

Zeke felt agony worse than before. His leg felt as if it were soaked in lava and that tiny ants were devouring the soles of his feet. He spasmed and jerked, but he didn’t yell. He was in too much pain and couldn’t scream even if he had tried.

“Pull him out,” said Malphas.

The guards did as they were told. They each picked up one of his bulky shoulders and pulled backwards. Zeke was writhing in agony and they couldn’t get a firm grip, so they dropped him. The stocky guard straddled Zeke face-to-face, and then punched him. The guard struck him twice more, and soon Zeke could only see stars that floated in front of his eyes. His leg was still on fire, but he could only see stars.

The stocky guard got behind Zeke and propped him up, and then wrapped his arms around Zeke’s chest and tried to lock his hands into one another. The man couldn’t reach all the way around Zeke’s frame, so he put his arms forward and then curled them up before thrusting himself backwards.

The guard made one more pull, but Zeke’s body wouldn’t move. His thigh was wedged into the hole, jammed in and trapped.

The stocky man stood up, pooled his strength and got down again, placing his feet flat on the ground to dig himself in as well as he could. The man counted to three and then dragged Zeke backwards with all his might. This thrust worked, and Zeke’s leg was retracted up to the knee. The two guards then pulled him back, and the rough floor felt like shards of glass digging into his flesh. They pulled him all the way in and then dropped his torso on the floor with a
thud
.

Zeke lay there looking upwards, and felt the scrape as they put another towel on his leg, and then another burlap sack. The pain didn’t subside and pulsed through his limbs as he quivered, staring at the ceiling.

Malphas stood over Zeke, his legs spreading wide to straddle Zeke’s enormous chest. Malphas took his whip and gave it a fresh fold, until the end was as dense as a policeman’s baton.

“Look around you,” said Malphas. “World has changed, and this is your new reality. Next time you think of riling up a bunch of your friends, think about what you’re gonna actually achieve. Even if you would’ve been successful, brought ’em to your side, then what?”

Zeke had no answer and could barely understand the question over the pain coursing through his body.

“Then
nothing
,” said Malphas. “If you free everyone, you’re still in a world that wants to kill you at every sunrise, and one of these days it’s gonna do just that, and then you, your freedom and all your noble intentions are gonna be incinerated.”

Malphas took the butt of his tightly-bound whip and did two practice swings. He then nodded at his two guards, and the stocky guard grabbed the other prisoner and dragged him towards the five holes. The hollow-eyed man yelled and shook, but it was no use. Zeke’s size had given the guards problems, but the captive was just a bag of sinew and bone, and he had virtually no strength in his flaccid body. He barely had enough strength to yell. Malphas knelt down and whispered into Zeke’s ear.

“Do you know what the world is now?” asked Malphas.

Zeke had no answer and trembled weakly as he heard the captive screaming in the background.

“It’s Hell,” said Malphas, “and it’s not gonna change. God created Hell, but once created it was no longer under His purview, because He didn’t want it to be. Now Hell has found its way to the surface, and God has once again left us. There’s no more justice, nobility, or moral choices. There’s nothing left but an unchanging inferno outside, and it’s up to us to change in response, or live as we once did and then die because of it. Think about that while you sleep.”

Malphas stood up and brought the clubbed whip down on Zeke’s temple repeatedly. On the third time Zeke passed out, and the screams of the captive faded into darkness.

/***/

Zeke woke up with a headache and realized he was in a small room, dimly lit by ten candles. He was lying on a table, and he noticed that the room had more of an earthen look to it than the previous hangar. The walls were made of compacted brick, and the door was made of wood and not tin. He got up off his table, which was just a pile of bricks topped with a wood panel. He was only two feet off the ground. He was still mostly naked, clothed only by the bandages around his left arm and right leg, and a dirty burlap cloth wrapped around his middle as a makeshift pair of shorts.

He gathered his energy and stood up. He realized that he was chained to the table’s base with a loose shackle attached to his left leg. The chain was long though, and he wasn’t encumbered. He was dizzy and needed to vomit. He scanned the room and saw an empty bucket in the corner opposite the door. He walked over to the bucket, and it was both clean and empty. He vomited into the bucket and then felt a little better, though he still had a headache.

There was nothing else in the room, and Zeke gathered his wits and realized he needed to get out of there. He seemed to be in a safe place, but he knew unspeakable things were happening elsewhere. He didn’t know what to do, but he couldn’t stay in this place.

He first examined the chain that bound his ankle. The chain was thick and unbreakable, but the bricks that held it weren’t. He could probably bash the base with the chain itself, and it would break. The chain might even come loose if he yanked it hard enough.

The chains wouldn’t be an issue, but would they punish others if he escaped? They had promised him this, and he knew that they would follow through. But who had he saved by following their orders?

Wait.
Just wait until you have a better answer.

He put the chain down and sat on the bed made of wood and brick. He was quite thirsty. They had given him an empty bucket and lit candles, but no water. He’d dealt with thirst before though, and right now it was the least of his problems. Right now, he needed to think.

About an hour later, he saw a figure at the door. It was a woman, and she was almost as naked as he.

/***/

She came up to him slowly, and didn’t smile. She was wearing clothes, just thin brown rags held up by a utility belt around her waist, and the strips of cloth served more to reveal her body than to conceal it. She had closely cropped hair and her face was glowing with youth, and Zeke wondered if she was still a teenager. Her thin, gently curving body had been covered with tattoos, illustrated with snakes and griffins, humans and animals in various states of copulation, strange symbols and fire. There were women weeping tears of blood, laughing centaurs, and flowers that had sharp teeth. There were enough markings on her body to tell a thousand stories, and Zeke knew that she was older than she looked. Her face showed that she was at most twenty, but Zeke knew that this girl had lived enough for a hundred lifetimes, most of them before the flare.

The woman had scars on her body too, and open wounds. The open wounds were covered with the red dust to which he’d become accustomed, and she smelled something like burning leaves.

It’s not quite burning leaves that I’m smelling.
It’s cedar. This girl and all the others smell of cedar.

“My name is Lilith,” she said.

She spoke coarsely, as if someone had taken her young voice and scraped it over burning coals.

“I understand you don’t speak,” she said. “That’s fine. In this world, words are holding less and less value. When God decides to kill us
en masse
, what meaning do words have? When the sun rises over your child trapped outside, what can you say to make him safe? And when you bury him that very evening, what words can others give you to bring him back?”

Zeke had no answer but sat up and nodded to indicate that he understood.

Lilith nodded back and then got close to Zeke and rubbed her soft hands over his body. Though she had Latin words and Druidic symbols stenciled over her fingers, the insides of her hands were cool and soft. Her hands were feminine too, made even smaller by Zeke’s massive chest. Her fingers crawled up his shoulders and she had to spread her arms to accommodate his body, as if she were a child climbing a boulder.

Zeke wondered what she was doing, and what he should do in response. He kept his eyes open and chose not to get lost in the moment. Her cool hands felt soft against his skin, but he had seen too much in the past day to let his guard down. This was no time to lose focus.

“Such black skin, as dark as the night sky,” she said. “I’ve seen dark-skinned people come through here, men and women both, but none as dark as you. Those of your complexion never get a blemish or wrinkle, and if you do get injured you don’t show it. Whether it’s a set of pockmarks from disease, or even a scar from a laceration, your black skin just swallows the mark up and leaves you unblemished and clean.”

Zeke saw that she had a small knife attached to the utility belt around her waist and that the blade was stained red. Zeke noticed that the instrument wasn’t a dagger or a weapon used for attacking others, but instead a small scalpel covered with a bit of blood that Zeke somehow knew to be her own.

She rubbed her hands over Zeke’s back and shoulders, then came to his left hand.

“You’ve not been hurt by disease or scarred by a laceration,” she said. “But what about the sun? Can that hurt you?”

Zeke realized that his left arm and right foot didn’t hurt any more. There was still a dull ache as the exposed skin chafed against the burlap bag that covered it, but he was no longer in agony.

“The sun kills us all, right?” asked Lilith, as if leading Zeke towards a conclusion. “The sun isn’t a virus that leaves pockmarks, and it’s not just a knife piercing your skin. It’s both those things at once, multiplied by a thousand. No one can withstand it, not even you. Am I right?”

Zeke stared at her, but he didn’t know how to answer.

“Let’s find out,” she said.

She took the burlap sack off of Zeke’s left arm and then unwrapped the dry towel. She felt his skin, then touched his face. She came close, so close that he could smell her breath. Her breath wasn’t sweet like he would have suspected, wrapped in cinnamon and cold mint. It smelled like the rest of her, like burning cedar.
My captors all have the same scent,
and though it leads them to depravity, it’s not a foul odor by itself.

“Look,” she said.

Zeke’s arm lay in front of him, clean and unburnt.

“Your arm is just as flawless as the rest of you,” she said.

She knelt down until she reached his right leg, and she glided her arms gently down his body as she did so. She took the sack off his leg and then the towels. His foot and leg were just as immaculate as his hand.

Lilith stood up and got close to Zeke, looking him straight in the eyes even though he was still sitting.

“We’ve heard of you,” she said. “Some call you the
charred one
, and our leader has spoken of your arrival. He knew that you would be here, and we’ve prepared for you accordingly.”

Zeke didn’t like the tone of her voice, nor the flattery she was whispering into his ears. Though she had been nice to him, she was in league with bad men, and he had to break himself out of her spell. He got up and pushed her off and walked to the far wall near his pot of vomit. He looked at her coolly, as if to say that she should no longer approach him.

She didn’t approach him but didn’t shirk away from him either. She was dwarfed by his full height, a pale, short-haired, painted shadow made almost irrelevant by his comparative size, but she didn’t back away from him.

“You’re a strong one,” she said with a smile. “Our leader told us you’d be.”

She took a bit of dust from her inner arm and put it on her tongue.

“This will break you, because it breaks everyone else,” said Lilith. “It breaks everyone by making you not care. It’ll break you in time too,
charred one
; it will show you the truth so brightly that you’ll have no recourse but to follow it.”