Red Denver: A Prelude to REHO (The Hegemon Wars)
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Authors: D. L. Denham
Red Denver
A Post Apocalyptic Short Story
Also by D. L. Denham
REHO
The Hegemon Wars
Book One
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Red Denver
The Hegemon Wars
Prelude to REHO
D. L. Denham
Edited by Susan Hughes
Cover Art
By D. L. Denham
Red Denver: A Post Apocalyptic Short Story
6x9 Print edition: ISBN 9781500126308
5x8 Print edition ISBN 9781500593759
E-book edition: ASIN: B00IBO1DBC
Published by BlackHats Publishing
Second Edition: July 2014
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business, establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 2014 by D. L. Denham
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Author Photograph by Michael Tortorich
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Contents
Red Denver
Six Weeks Prior to REHO
Red Denver, Red Hall holding cell
A shrill scream
woke Reho from a deep sleep during his last hours in Red Denver. The sound had reoccurred several times since arriving at Red Hall. It came from outside the building and filled his head with memories of that mangled wolf dying out in the Blastlands. Reho had stopped its deathly howl and screams. Now they had returned.
Reho looked down at his Analysis Interface Monitor, AIM. The multileveled Red Hall had already been mapped.
Level two contained the holding cells where he waited, imprisoned for killing one of Soapy’s goons. Above him, the top level housed administration, where the judge would determine his fate. Below was the processing level where both he and the goon’s body had been brought in and registered. The enforcers had taken and tagged his personal items. The other guy was tagged and destined for the crematory across the street.
The high-pitched sound returned.
Across the gloomy, dimly-lit hall, Reho watched the other occupant stir in his cell. They had only spoken once. He’d referred to himself simply as an old man and had been silent since their last conversation. He’d warned Reho not to eat the food, perhaps the best advice he knew to give. He’d then returned to his strange exercises, a ritual that Reho found fascinating.
Reho watched as the old man stood erect. Through the darkness, he could see his slow-motion movements as his left leg rose with practiced precision, and his arms waved through the air. He had seen fighters exercise before but never like this. Quick and hard had always been the focus of those fighters. He displayed a strength and single-mindedness unlike anything Reho had witnessed before. Reho rose from the tattered mattress on the floor and walked to the cell door. The bars were OldWorld: iron spaced eight inches apart. The rust from the cell door stained his hands, a guilty sentence already delivered before the judge had even spoken. Reho watched him and thought back to his instructor in Virginia Bloc. As a boy, he had exercised only when he was forced to do so. The need for practice never seemed necessary.
Growing up, he’d always been the quickest and strongest, always been the victor. This gift was double-sided. Whether it was racing OldWorld vehicles at the gasolines or fighting some knock-down-drag-outs, Reho consistently won. But there was also a down side, the inevitable bad karma. The end result this time found Reho here—in a dank, dark holding cell in Red Denver.
It was the gasolines that had driven him from his home community of Virginia Bloc 4E. Being unbeatable meant making points, but with that came making enemies, too. The OldWorld vehicles used in the gasoline races were a part of him. The power roaring under their hoods gave him a rush he could find nowhere else, producing an intoxicating chemical that became deadly to anyone challenging Reho. Nothing in the Blastlands or in Usona could rival that feeling. But his unrivaled victories came at a great cost. Six years ago it had cost him his home community. Today, Soapy and his men thought it should cost him his life. But Reho had no intention of dying—not today. He’d gone along with the arrest and would deal with whatever the judge decided. He would do what he was meant to do: win.
He ran through the facts in his mind. All of this was because of Soapy, one of Red Denver’s crime bosses. Everyone knew he managed the gambling and controlled the bets for the gasolines, a business that earned many high-ranking community officials a slew of points. He had spent the past year winning every race, turning the gasolines into a one-man show and making him a sure bet. For the past five races, all bets were placed on Reho, bringing an end to Soapy’s gambling in Red Denver. Soapy had done what any efficient crime boss would do: he’d sent his best henchmen to visit Reho.
The enforcers had charged him with the murder of one of Soapy’s employees, a courier sent to deliver Reho an important message. The message contained an invitation to a private gasoline race for some high paying community members out in the Red Basin.
There was no such invitation delivered, but the enforcers had found a letter in the dead henchmen’s pocket.
If the blasted goon couldn’t kill me, the least he could do was frame me.
The judge would never hear the truth of what had happened.
***
“You Reho?” the goon asked, approaching Reho in an alley a block away from the market. It was mid-January, and the cold froze his words in the air as Reho turned. The goon took out what looked like a homemade cigar and flicked his lighter. Heavy pillows of smoke clouded his face.
Reho had sensed he was being followed since he left the Southside Tenements. He did not recognize the man, but knew he would be working for Soapy. Until Reho had started racing, no one cared about another foreigner in Red Denver. Now everyone either cheered or cursed his name. Being undefeated had made him enemies. It was only a matter of time before someone made a move on him. And now here he stood, looking into the beady black eyes of the goon Soapy thought could handle his “Reho problem.”
“What does Soapy want?” he answered the goon’s question with one of his own. The icy weather pricked his skin as he warily removed his hands from his jacket pockets.
“You’ve really messed things up. You’ve screwed with the gasolines. A lot of people are pissed.” The goon shifted his weight. Reho knew what to expect.
“I race. I’ve been lucky enough to win,” he replied.
“Everyone loses sometimes.”
Reho waited. Every fight should begin defensively—the one thing he had learned in his youth.
The aggressor’s eyes turned to ice as he dropped his cigar and released a metal blade into the air.
Reho dodged the assault, rolled sideways, and quickly unsheathed his knife. He paused as the goon launched his body toward him. His attacker held a shockblade. Reho had seen one of these before. They cut into the skin, blasting 50,000 volts of electricity into the body.
Reho avoided the thug’s first few attempts without attacking. A blue current danced on the blade’s metal surface. He watched the blade and its possessor’s eyes. His attacker breathed heavily, and he knew the goon would soon rush him carelessly as his mind panicked. He hadn’t expected Reho to give him this much trouble.
The shockblade once again cut the air, this time close to Reho’s face, the current stinging his cheek and leaving it blistered.
Reho waited for one more assault before he took control.
With the shockblade aimed at his chest, he planted his knife into the goon’s left thigh. The man quickly pulled back, Reho’s knife still in his leg. Reho closed in and grabbed his attacker’s arm, raising the shockblade high into the air. In one swift move, the goon fell back, his right arm snapping across Reho’s knee. A dreadful, childish scream flooded the alley. Reho knew spectators would soon arrive to see what was going on.
As he removed his knife from the goon’s thigh, another bloodcurdling wail filled the alley.
“Tell Soapy to find a new business,” he said, standing over the suffering hit man. A maniacal laugh replaced his screams.
“You don’t understand Soapy. You never did. Soapy sent me to kill you. I can’t go back if you’re not dead.” With his good arm, he pulled a pistol from behind his back.
Three shots sounded, each wild, as Reho buried his knife deep into the goon’s skull. The crack echoed off the buildings nearby, and a thin fog formed as body heat now seeped from the exposed arm and shattered skull.
Reho looked ahead. A crowd was forming.
It hadn’t taken long for Red Denver’s enforcers to find him in the market, purchasing food and charcoal.
Now, Reho sat. Soapy had charged him with killing one of his employees, supposedly an innocent man sent to deliver an invitation to a private race. The enforcers claimed to have found the invitation in the victim’s pocket but not the shockblade. He knew it would be pointless to argue against this setup. He would wait for the sentencing and then make his plans.
***
Reho studied Red Hall on his AIM. The enforcers on the processing level had unsuccessfully attempted to disable the device. Implanted deep into his arm and powered from converted energy in his own body, the device could only be removed surgically.
Reho watched as the old man slowly lowered his body into another carefully practiced position. They were alone in the holding cells, enveloped in an eerie silence occasionally punctuated by an anguished, beastly cry.
He froze in another strange pose and spoke for the second time since Reho arrived.
“You are strong, but your mind is not calm,” the old man stated.
Reho still stood at the bars. His eyes searched for the old man’s gaze. He wasn’t sure, but he thought the prisoner’s eyes were closed, his body as motionless as a statue.
“What are you doing?” Reho asked.
Apparently, the other prisoner had said all he intended to, so Reho pulled his hands away from the bars and turned toward his abandoned mattress.
“Control is stronger than muscle. Where I come from, we don’t learn to kill. We learn to control our situations,” the old man said, his accent prompting Reho to wonder where he was from.
“Neither of us is from Red Denver. We’re foreigners. Where are you from? And if you haven’t killed, then why are you in here?” Reho asked.
“I am here not because I have killed. I am here because of what I have seen.”
“And what is that?” Reho asked, returning to the iron bars. The other occupant’s eyes were now open and fixed on Reho. He held his gaze, but his body slowly lowered on one foot as the other stretched forward.
He avoided telling me where he is from.
“That Red Denver has resurrected the demons of the OldWorld.”
“Demons?”
“They are only death. And meant not for this world. Red Denver doesn’t flow red with the blood of men but glows green from the veins of the OldWorld.”
“What does it mean?” Reho asked, wondering if the old man was crazy.
“The Blasts destroyed our world. It is as true in my community as it was in yours. What kind of power could have done that?” He paused before continuing. “The same power that still kills in the Blastlands. Radiation. Its source still exists. And it’s here in Red Denver.”
Reho listened and watched. The old man was now parallel to the floor in a pose Reho thought impossible. Control.
The source exists in Red Denver?
Before Reho could put his thoughts together to ask the prisoner to explain himself, the iron elevator door slid open. Three enforcers approached the old man’s cell.
Reho watched as they unlocked the cell and bound his hands and feet, running a chain through both bonds that allowed one enforcer to easily control his movements. They took him without a word.
Reho returned to his bed, still wondering where the old man was from, and what would come next.
***
Reho heard the elevator groan to a stop. He stood and waited at his cell’s door. The rust had not rubbed off of his hands. The other prisoner had been gone for at least three hours. Reho did not expect to see him again—at least not in Red Denver.
They chained him as they had the old man. He knew things would go quickly. Any plan to escape would have to wait until after the judge was through with him.
The elevator shook as it ascended to the third level. He had switched his AIM to standby mode, hoping it wouldn’t be mentioned before the judge. If he were placed in a work camp, there would be talk of having it removed. He wasn’t sure if he could escape before they went through with the surgical procedure. It had been painful enough to have it implanted; he would kill everyone in the building before letting them come close enough to take it out.
The elevator door opened.
The third level contained no interior walls. He had never seen anything like it. The floor was buried beneath thick crimson rugs embellished with elaborate gold designs that mirrored the heavy brocaded curtains hanging throughout. Columns and statues scattered the room, and expensive-looking paintings and gilded mirrors filled every available inch of wall space. A large throne, to which everything in the room seemed to gravitate, sat empty. A dozen people sat behind monitors that looked familiar to Reho. He’d seen similar ones before, smashed in buildings out in the Blastlands. These monitors, connected to OldWorld computers, actually worked.
He watched as a door across the room opened wide. He recognized the judge, clothed in a red and black robe as bulky and thick as the furs he’d seen in communities near the Great Lakes. He held a black book in one hand and a red gavel in the other. Following him was Soapy. Their eyes met across the room. Reho knew that whatever sentence the judge delivered today had been decided beforehand behind closed doors.
The enforcer who held his chains pushed him forward.
He shuffled toward a long, wooden table and halted before a man dressed in strange OldWorld clothing who was seated there. Soapy sat at another table to his left, talking with a man dressed in the same strange clothes. Their suits seemed more like brightly colored costumes—complete with bows around their necks—then formal court attire.
The man at Reho’s table spoke.
“I am Traylor. I will be representing you before the judge. I feel confident we can get this reduced to a minimum sentence of labor. Do you have any questions?”