Six: Meeting with Otis

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Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.

-Charles De Gaulle

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2052 Old Germany

“Where is the child now, Otis?”

“Well, like I said, the Durenbergers found him, although they don’t really have much need of him since he’s not communicating, so they dumped him on some poor schmucks in the city who run a half-way house for kids, the Lebendsgarten home for the orphans. It’s located in the eastern section of the city, outside the conflict zone and behind the Durenberger blockade. Why are you interested in him anyway?”

Mwamba thought on the question for a moment, carefully constructing his answer, knowing full well that Otis was an informant for many beyond the Reckoners, and as such he was always collecting information. Although it may seem innocuous to know a person’s life story, or even hints of it, when you have more enemies than friends, it’s better that nothing is known about your past. The past has a way of reliving itself, of ever seeking to once again burst forth in the present. Mwamba wanted the past to stay there, and thus chose his words carefully.

“Listen, you’re a smart guy, Otis, you put things together in such a way that information goes from irrelevant to pertinent, that’s why you do what you do.” A compliment, good way to start off. Already the fine-tuned radar in Otis’ head was becoming numb with the swelling of pride. “So if you say there’s a connection, even if you can’t explain it yet, then I think it’s worth looking into. Now if there is such a connection, then whoever has been burning these towns could be the very same who kidnapped the Durenberger kids. If so, then by finding out what happened to this kid, I might be able to find out what happened to them, got it?” Otis smiled at the indignant remark, comforting himself instead with the pleasure that it was his suggestion and gut feeling that Silence decided to follow, his. Although he didn’t give two shits about Crimson Reckoning or their weird philosophies, he did know Silence well enough, and knew what a stone-cold killer the man was, and so respect from him was something rarely given, and he took it as the infrequent honor that it was.

“Bludgeon? I think we have what we came for, enjoy the fruits of your labor MacKrouger, we’ll be in touch.”

Although the massive Briton had been casually snoozing while the two men conversed, as soon as Mwamba spoke he silently and deftly opened the door and the duo darted out without another word. Otis pulled the door shut, and saw the two of them disappear into another abandoned building, leaving only a set of footprints behind.

Sitting back again in the plush leather seats of the limo, Otis gruffly whispered to himself, “I hope I never have to tango with those fuckers.”

Five: Welcome to the Jungle

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The worst part a man can suffer is to have insight into much and power over nothing.

-Herodotus

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2033 Congo River Valley

Mwamba wasn’t sure where he was. Fear’s steely talons gripped his adolescent mind as he lay in the sweaty, salty rear of a Jeep, eyes covered, mouth gagged, hands bound. Although he couldn’t be sure, he thought that he was lying next to a corpse. Something wet and warm had soaked his pants; whoever the body had once belonged to had been thrown carelessly into the bed of the truck just as he had been. The only difference between them was that the force of the impact had cracked the other occupant’s skull, thus accounting for the warm sticky stain crawling up the fabric of his pant leg.

The men driving were obviously drunk, the thick smell of cheap whiskey floated on the wafting air as they spoke to each other and haphazardly navigated the vehicle over rough paths. The sound of other vehicles told Mwamba that he was in a convoy of sorts, and he guessed that he had been taken prisoner by them, but the reason that he was kept alive he couldn’t imagine. One of the men belched loudly, the smell mixed with the odor of blood and the thought of being bound and gagged next to the deceased remains of someone he had grown up around made him retch. Unfortunately for Mwamba, the cloth that was tightly wound around his mouth forced him to swallow the vomit. Unpleasant certainly, but a better fate than choking on it and sharing the one-way ticket out of this cursed existence with the traveling companion next to him.

A new stench entered Mwamba’s keen nostrils: the smell of smoke and burning flesh. So too new sounds gradually became discernible over the drumming of the Jeep’s engine, of people talking and shouting. All the voices were male that he could make out, and all had the malevolent edge shared by his own drunken captors. Suddenly the vehicle came to a halt, having driven over a more substantial bump and sliding slightly as though across a muddy slick. One of the men cursed.

“Fuck man, did you run over that goat?”

“Ehh, whatever, tell Briggs to get over here and get it cooking so the meat doesn’t go foul, I’ll deal with booking the new… arrivals.”

“Right, fuck you, mate. I go and clean up your road kill why you go collect the bounty? Fuck off!”

“Oh well, Briggs will just have to figure it out after we share the bounty on these two!” The Jeep lurched forward again at the hands of the drunken compatriots, and drove on for another few hundred feet through the stifling air of the camp, thick with pungent and questionable odors.

Cloth doors slapped shut, and the rear gate was lowered with a tangible thud. The body next to Mwamba began to be shaken by one of the men. “Get up you little piece of shit, get up now…” He must have found the pool of blood that had been silently spreading across Mwamba’s pant leg. “Oh wonderful, you killed the bloody little bastard! Hey, Edjemba, I’m talking to you, you prick! You killed this one, you drunken fool!” A barely audible fuck off sounded from a few feet away over the sound of public urination.

“Great, and what about you, you still all in one piece?” Rough calloused hands seized Mwamba and forced him to sit up. Seeing that he was still conscious and otherwise unharmed, the man untied the binds around his ankles and scooped him out of the Jeep, setting him on his feet. “That blood ain’t yours, is it?” A poor attempt at a joke.

Silence.

“Oh, right, bit hard to speak when you’re mouth is all done up, eh bru?” The cold steel of a knife slid across Mwamba’s cheek, causing hairs to rise all over his body. He wanted to scream, but then with a forcible flick the knife cut the gag off his face and it fell to the ground. “There, you ain’t hurt are you?” The man’s coarse hands once again gripped the boy’s face roughly as he appropriated the youth more carefully. Mwamba recoiled at the touch, and the vile sensation that it brought with it.

Not knowing what to say, feeling suddenly all of the rage that he didn’t know how to express, Mwamba fumbled as sounds without words trickled from his mouth.

“Mumble mumble, yes or no, you little shit, are you hurt?” The savage man’s accent hinted at a South African origin, although nothing was certain, since most of the African borders had all but dissolved after the Fall.

“No.”

“See, much better, now let’s go and have the old man take a look at you, bru.” Releasing his face at last, the man’s fingers instead pressed themselves beneath Mwamba’s right armpit as he was forcibly guided forward, still blinded by the cloth stretched over his eyes.

“Umm… sir? Could you take my blindfold off, it’s hard to walk with it on,” Mwamba hated being civil with the beast of a man, but knew that he was in a position of submission at the moment, and instinctually felt that if he could lull his captors into a sense of complacency he would have a better chance of escaping. Of course, where would he even escape to? Somehow it still didn’t feel real; the image of his grandmother’s dying eyes haunted him and reminded him that everything he had ever known was dead and gone, destroyed in a single bloody afternoon.

An alcoholic grunt was the only response, as the hardened fingers of a hand scraped across Mwamba’s face, taking the blindfold with it.

Blinking as the hot African sun blinded his youthful eyes, gradually the world came into focus. In the heart of the jungle, a rough camp had been erected. Scanning around himself as he was again marched forward, Mwamba guessed that there were maybe twenty buildings in the camp proper, thick acrid smoke rising from a few of them. The smells were atrocious, blood mixed with sweat, decaying flesh mixed with fresh mud from a recent shower. Mwamba barely kept himself from retching again.

“Come on asshole, let’s go get whatever we get for this one, since you killed the other one!” The second captor finished relieving himself and came to join the pair as they neared one of the larger buildings, or shacks more appropriately. Combinations of sheets of rusty metal, warped wood, baling wire, duct tape, and other such ingredients were thrown together with the expertise of a hyperactive child building a playhouse, twisted into frankensteinian creations that assaulted the senses, and did little more than ward off the basic elements. The house that they were walking toward seemed to be the only one of the camp that looked well built, and very likely predated the creation of the camp itself. Although its construction heralded a plantation from over a century before, the elements had helped it to decay over the decades, and so it had been patched in much the same method as the rest of the housing had been built. The door was a prime example of this sort of primitive architecture, a thick metal sheet that had been reinforced and hung on impromptu hinges. It groaned painfully as the man guiding Mwamba opened it.

“We’ve got another one for you, old man!” The smell inside the house was atrocious, a combination of formaldehyde and mildew, turning Mwamba’s stomach yet again. The room into which the party entered was likely once the parlor of the historical plantation house, although water spots spread like a Rorschach across the sagging ceiling, a reminder that the elements had not been kind. The furniture was grotesque, for just as the house it had once been elegant and regal, yet years of disrepair had left the fine fabrics stained and riddled with mildew, the hand-crafted wood eaten by insects and warped with water damage. The other man, who had been called Edjembe, staggered over to one of the chairs and plopped down in it, apparently uncaring about the cesspool of mold and moisture that let out a sickly groan induced by his weight.

“You in here, old man?” The hardened voice echoed through the house with a slight timbre of uncertainty. Something in the tone of the man’s voice made Mwamba detect a strain of fear embedded deep within the apparent bravado. “We… we don’t have all day, old man!”

Silence.

Slowly at first, footsteps began to echo in the rotted floorboards, and at one end of the long room a door opened, apparently an entrance to a basement or cellar, as the current of air that flowed out of the passage was thick with the deep musk of the earth. An ancient figure was born from the doorway, and the very sight of him made Mwamba recoil as a subconscious terror assaulted the foundations of his soul.

Human beings have an innate sense of danger, a deep instinctual response buried beneath millions of years of evolution, a reminder of the times when humanity as a species slept beneath the stars and actively competed with other animals for existence. It is precisely this instinctual core that becomes excited when walking through the forest the sound of a rattlesnake erupts from beneath a nearby rock, or when lying in bed reading a book a scorpion begins to crawl along the baseboard, or when at night the very wind itself seems to carry deep in its somber voice a warning of dangers lurking in the darkness…

The physical presence of the man was slight at best; his aged back was bent over and twisted like a misshapen root. Although the man was obviously African by his features, his skin was as white as ash. Mwamba was unsure whether it was a skin disorder or simply a lack of sunlight that had created such a startling blend of color and feature, but the combination was unnerving at best. Something just wasn’t right about the elderly man, something unnatural that made Mwamba want to turn and flee from the room in terror. Meanwhile, the man holding him tightened his grip unconsciously, a sign that he too didn’t feel right in the presence of the ancient fellow.

“Oh, and what have we here my loyal soldiers?” Nails scratching across chalkboards, Styrofoam pieces rubbing together, felines caterwauling in the night, all of these things seemed somehow more peaceful than the timbre of the man’s voice. Wrecked by unknown decades, there was a vicious edge in the voice that seemed to perfectly match the grotesque visage the man presented. “Oh, you have brought me a good one today, Jorge, yes you have!” The drunken man smiled uneasily, but seemed impatient to leave all the same.

“Yeah, well, how much is he worth?”

“How easily you insult our guest! He is not simply cattle to be bartered, Jorge, how unfair you are to him!” Slithering across the floor like a snake, the old man did not seem troubled by decayed joints as Mwamba’s grandmother had been… had been, past tense, she was dead now, lying in a pool of her own blood where Mwamba had left her. The apparent ease of motion only contributed to the fleeting suspicion of the supernatural that the man aroused in everyone who laid eyes upon him.

The false humility and manners that the old man poured upon Mwamba only made the scene even more difficult to assimilate, and added to the unnerving surrealism that seemed to permeate the very air. Coming ever closer, the slender figure stopped short and raised a twisted hand to the boy’s face. “Mmm, you have very fine features boy, you should be proud of the inheritance that you were given. Here, stand up straight now, let me get a look at you.” Jorge’s iron grip tugged harshly at Mwamba’s slender arm and he straightened his back. The eyes of the old man slid up and down Mwamba’s figure like the groping hands of a pedophile, every glance made the boy shiver, every stare made his blood run icy in his veins. There was an odd desire, something more insidious and darker than mere sexual drive that shone behind his withered ashen eyes.

“Jorge, for once you haven’t… fucked up. This is a fine specimen, he will make a wonderful addition. I will give you a full half kilo for this boy.” At once both Jorge and Edjembe seemed to perk up and life flowed into them. “Here, let me write you a ticket for him.” Once again slithering across the floor in a single continuous motion, the old man came to rest upon a warped old wooden desk chair at a roll-top desk that had long ceased to be able to roll, and instead was frozen in a partially open yawn, its contents haphazardly shoved therein. The twisted old man spoke as he scribbled something on an official looking light green pad reminiscent of a receipt booklet, “is he the only one, I thought you had two with you this time?” The two men froze, looking at each other with a quizzical stare of ‘how did he know…’ but neither deigned to speak a word of it aloud lest their conspiracy be detected by the withered figure across the room.

Finally, fearing the silence itself might become noticeable, Jorge spoke, “yeah boss, we did get another one, the only two in the village that we could find… but donkey brains over there was too plastered and the kid’s head got cracked.”

Silence.

“I didn’t mean to, really, I just set him down… but the damn little thing was so brittle, like a tea pot he was!” The old man stopped for a moment and glared out of the corner of only one of his glassy eyes, Mwamba could swear that the pupil was a slit, and while the glance lasted only a second or two, it was plenty long enough to make the temperature in the room palpably drop.

Before either of the men could speak again, the old man seemed to shrug off the issue and scribbled something else on the paper.

“You two are lucky that I am a benevolent god, especially you Edjembe,” although there was a note of sarcasm, Mwamba was not sure whether the man truly believed his own words, “I have added another three grams to your pay quota for the… body.” Jorge breathed a sigh of relief and Edjembe swallowed a golf ball at last. The latter of the two suddenly jumped up so as to retrieve the body of the deceased child in question. Mwamba began to wonder who it was… who it was that he had lain prostrate next to while the last pulses of life soaked into his pant leg? The answer returned born on a pair of burly black arms moments later.

“Lokomo…” the name slipped across his lips before he could stop it from leaking out. It was the body of his closest friend in the village, hair matted with blood, eyes still covered by a scarf, mouth gagged open and stuffed with a ball of cloth, hands and feet bound tightly with nylon cording, just as he had been. Yet the already stiff joints and ashy skin were obvious signs of the boy’s violent demise. The divine coin had been flipped, and now Mwamba stood with a single tear collecting at the corner of his eye, while his best friend’s limp body was handled like so much freight by uncaring hands. Mwamba wondered for a moment whether he was better off being alive, or if his friend had gotten the better deal by dying so quickly that he was spared the knowledge of the fate of the village.

As thoughts swirled in his adolescent mind, Mwamba began to notice that the old man was studying him as a scientist might study a rat in a maze, wondering what’s going on in its insignificant little brain. Mwamba resolved himself that he wouldn’t give him the pleasure. He wouldn’t cry, wouldn’t show emotion, he wouldn’t let the old man feed on his pain and suffering. Slowly, he raised his hand and wiped the solitary tear from his duct before it could be shed. He would give nothing.

Mwamba stared back at the twisted figure and gave him only silence.

Four: Echoes of the Past

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What really raises one's indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.

–Friedrich Nietzsche

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2052 Old Germany

The glossy photograph displayed the scene in grisly detail. Mwamba clutched it, piercing it with his dark amber eyes. The remains of a small town lay frozen in the frame, the charred rubble of buildings still smoldering from the fires that had consumed them. The photograph focused on a pile of bodies heaped beneath the barren limbs of an ancient and twisted looking oak tree. Yet the bodies were no longer whole, and instead lay in a shocking array of dismemberment, cleaved apart by some unseen terror; in fact there didn’t seem to be a single corpse that was not defiled or mutilated in some manner. Arms were disconnected from torsos, heads from necks, feet from legs. It would have proven too much for most people, but of course, Mwamba was not most people.

“Where is this?”

“Was.” McKrougar’s stolid and matter-of-fact tone gave nothing, and the bloody reality of the past tense hung in the air for a harsh moment. “It was a rural farming community between Wittenberg and Dannenberg, Northwest of Berlin, a fairly new township that had been set up since the German Syndicates had affected peace. Their main agricultural product was wheat and barley. There were over fifty families living there, right around three hundred people in sum.”

“How many survived?”

Otis paused for a moment; a look crossed his face as he balanced figures in his head and decided whether he should privilege Mwamba with such information. “One. A small boy, we guess he’s about fourteen or so.”

“You guess?”

“That’s right, the Durenbergers were the ones who found him, he was hiding in a pantry closet in one of the houses that had burned down, but the fire hadn’t totally consumed the house and he had survived, somehow. We guess his age because whoever attacked his village cut his tongue out, and he doesn’t seem able to write or communicate otherwise. As you can imagine, he’s pretty messed up.”

“Yeah, I can imagine.”

Three: Raid in the Congo

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2033 Congo River Valley

“Mwamba! Mwamba, come here child!”

The young boy, about eleven years old, barely prepubescent, ran into the room from outside, with a look of concern on his youthful face. Sweat glistened on his brow, and his deep ochre skin was covered in a thin layer of red soil, a sign that he had been tending the garden. Already he had begun to grow into a strong man, and his body was rapidly developing a taut musculature tempered by the physical demands of the agrarian life they both shared.

“Here, Mwamba, ‘elp me get dat pot down off de wall there, son.” The elderly woman couldn’t have stood more than five feet tall, her ancient back twisted and sculpted by years of labor. Despite her physical failings, her deep chestnut eyes sparkled with wisdom hidden beneath a veneer of pretend senility, and the thick lines of silver that penetrated her braids were markers of the vast wisdom concealed behind those eyes.

In spite of his young age, the boy Mwamba was already a head taller than his grandmother, who had taken him in when he was only an infant. His parents were likely dead, victims of a political coup in a long-forgotten election. But his grandmother had suddenly appeared, as though in a dream, taking him up in her arms and bringing him back to her village, deep in the jungle. Mwamba had been too young to remember anything, and relied on his grandmother for even the slight information he had.

“T’ank you, child, you a good boy,” she settled onto a sun baked wicker stool next to a fire pit in the earthen floor. Coals burned slow and hot in the pit, and she accepted the pot from Mwamba’s slight hands and placed it securely in the center of the coals. First she poured some water into the pot from a ceramic pitcher the same color as the soil that colored the youth’s skin, and procuring a small woven bag from her hip, she began to place bits of herbs and plants into the pan, stirring it slowly as she did so. “Come here, child, time fo’ your lesson today.”

Mwamba sat cross legged on the other side of the steaming pot from his grandmother. Closing her woven bag, she reached into a carved wooden chest resting under a small portcullis in the earthen wall that allowed a stream of amber colored light to enter the room. Next, she withdrew a small metal cylinder that looked as if it had originally been an aluminum cigar tube, the markings having been rubbed away long ago. Once again she spoke as she unscrewed the lid and very carefully pulled out a small violet colored flower. “Dis a powerful herb, Mwamba!” He nodded dutifully, “you remember what I told you?”

“Yes, grandmother. Power is raw, it is unrefined, it must be crafted.”

“Good, and why do we pray to de ancestors?”

“Because they help us talk to the gods, and through their petitions we can learn how to talk to the gods ourselves so that one day we too can guide our descendents as we have been guided.”

“Yes, Mwamba; and you must remember dat dis power being raw make it so dat we got more responsibility dan t’ose who ‘ave no power, mmm?”

“Yes grandmother.”

“Good boy. Dis herb ‘ere ‘ave to be crafted den, it all depend on what you mix it with, ‘ow you cook it, and what you do wit’ it. Dem gods given it to us, but we ‘ave to decide what to do wit’ it.”

“So what are you making today, grandmother?”

“Dis for Arkunja’s wife, Maylou, she ‘aving dem bad birthin’ pains and needs be able to relax ‘erself so that ‘er baby can come out okay.” Mwamba gradually became aware of a woman’s deep grunts and punctuated cries in the distance, a sound he had been largely unaware of until he turned his mind towards it.

The old woman crushed the tiny flower between the tips of her fingers, which released a pungent odor that whispered into the air for a brief moment, and softly recited an incantation in an almost-forgotten tongue. Mwamba watched carefully, silently mouthing the ancient words along with her, as she mixed just the right amount of ingredients in the water and then, taking a cloth for her hand, took the handle of the old cast iron pot and lifted it up out of the coals.

“T’ere, we be done now, time for making de baby come.” Signaling Mwamba to come with her, the elderly woman stood up with some arthritic hesitation and walked to the door.

She froze.

Mwamba sensed the tension, something was wrong, he could feel it suddenly, like a splitting axe rending the back of his skull. Creation groaned in agony and the sudden rush of uncontrollable pain nearly sent him to his knees.

Something was wrong.

Time began to slow. Too much information flooded into his youthful mind all at once, overloading his senses and drawing him into the nightmarish scene of which he was about to become a part.

The pot slipped from his grandmother’s cracked fingers, spilling its precious medicine and slinging it across the room.

Mwamba blinked.

Something warm and slightly metallic sprayed across his face. His dry, cracked lips screamed as the liquid assaulted their sun-baked surface.

Blood.

The sound of the gunshot hadn’t registered at first, neither had the sight of his grandmother falling to her knees, an exit wound appearing out of her back, the source of the spray of liquid. None of it had registered until the taste of the blood had touched his lips. Finally finding the strength to move, Mwamba rushed across the small room to help her. The harsh light blinded him for a moment, and finally his eyes adjusted and the grisly scene was drawn for him in perfect detail: his fellow villagers were fleeing in all directions only to be mercilessly gunned down in the street. A line of Jeeps had entered by the southern path bearing a band of ruthless conquerors, armed with automatic rifles and a lust for violence. Their guns barked out death everyway they turned, all the while screaming in sadistic glee at the carnage they produced.

Mwamba barely caught his grandmother in his young arms as she fell. The moment seemed to hang there forever, and while his mind raced for some answer, some reaction to the situation, he was met only with the steady image of her eyes penetrating his soul as the last bit of life that was behind them screamed out with every fiber of her existence, yet as the life leaked out of her she was only able to whisper her final words into his adolescent ear, “Run… Mwamba… run…”

Two: Red Thursday

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Red Thursday had been hard for everyone, everywhere. Ivory towers no longer protected anyone from the harsh realities of limited resources, greed, pollution, of evil in the world. The towers had fallen, but everywhere they fell they crushed those living beneath them. It was no different in Africa, and as the Western powers fell, one by one, they left complete autonomy to many who had never been given that privilege, since it had been forcibly taken from ancestors long dead.

The peoples who populated the regions around the Congo River had long understood the harsh realities of the world. They had been enslaved, decimated, butchered, raped, and mutilated by their white oppressors from the North, and all of it in the name of their supposed enrichment. Projects like the Congo Free State, set up by King Leopold the Second of Belgium, are always masked as humanitarian projects. Bringing the ‘light’ of white civilization to the ‘heathen’ blacks, the political smoke screen succeeded in allowing his armies and slave drivers to ravage the forests and enslave the peoples who had inhabited the region for millennia, working them literally to death on massive rubber plantations. Before the “Free State” came to an end, half of the population was dead.

Some things can be forgotten.

Some things can not.

Even though everyone who could even remember that period was long dead, it was still there. The history books may have been burned, the stories may have been murdered and stricken from the record, but it was still there. A kernel of it lived in every descendent of the once proud Upemba race, a people that had once been strong and wealthy. That is, until the Europeans arrived and took it all away from them.

History can be rewritten, but it will still have happened.

Nothing can change that.

Man may have forgotten, but God never forgets.

One: Reckoners meet with McKrougar

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2052 Old Germany

The air was heavy with frost, it had been a hard winter, and the sting of it still resisted the warmth of the sun. Wayland cursed beneath his breath, something thick with Cockney and unintelligible, although obviously offensive despite. Mwamba seemed less offended by the cold, his black skin frozen beneath a thin layer of rime, making him appear a corpse. Corpses… Mwamba knew that this entire city was strewn with the fresh dead, covered by layers of ice and snow, waiting to be thawed out in spring. Although his body was deadly still, his eyes belied the fact that he was tense and ready to spring into action. Wayland cursed again, his gravelly voice further exacerbated by the cold air scorching his lungs.

“Fuck ne-ah, what’re we doing ‘ere anyway? Bloody fucking cold it is, fucking ‘ell.” Despite the fact that Wayland towered over Mwamba by a good seven inches, he danced like a schoolboy trying to keep warm, breathing heavily into his thick, cupped hands and rubbing himself.

“Shh, quiet yourself… just shh…” Mwamba crept forward, moving like a shadow, and peered out onto the street below the abandoned apartment building they waited in. Wayland wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for. He was just there as backup and really didn’t give a shit; he was cold.

“’Ell man, I’m gonna get me a fuckin’ fire started here, colder than a bloody witch’s tit innit.” Just as he was about to pick up a piece of debris to make a burn pile, Mwamba came to life.

“Here they are, come on!” A skeletal black limousine crushed ice beneath its snow tires and carefully crawled along, meandering around wrecked cars and piles of debris from the abandoned buildings lining the street. The vehicle itself was an absurdity in a place like this, the ultimate symbol of wealth and privilege among death and decay. Wayland trailed a measured distance as Mwamba ran down the stairs and to the doorway, where he stopped short, able to peer out while being himself totally concealed by a late afternoon shadow cast across the frame of the door. “That must be our man. Come on.”

Wayland deftly tracked behind as Mwamba darted out into the street towards the limo, and as he neared a door clicked open. The two men deftly and silently jumped into the open portal without the vehicle ever slowing down.

“I see you brought muscle this time, Silence. Poor taste if I do say so myself.” The voice in the shadows belonged to a Mr. Otis McKrougar, American born African, with a bit of urban southern edge to his voice, hardened by years of use and abuse. “Come on, Otis, you know Bludgeon, he’s cool. And you know better than that, I don’t need ‘muscle’ anyhow. So you mind getting to the fucking point, my friend? Time is precious these days.” The apparent insult had fallen on uncaring ears, as Wayland was contenting himself with rubbing his hands in the warm blast of air coming from the vehicle’s vents.

“Agreed. You know you are going to need to tell Abidan that my rates are going up if he keeps sending me on these shit-ass assignments.” Uneasy silence rippled through the air, only punctuated by Wayland’s deep breaths into his cupped hands. “I’m lucky I’m still alive, by the way, thanks for asking, you asshole, but I got what you need either way. Here’s the lowdown, it would seem that somebody, and I’m not totally sure who is at the top of this yet, wants the Syndicates to fight. Although motive is still speculative at this point, it would seem logical that either one of the smaller Syndicates or else one of the bigger competitors wants the giants to fight so that they can come in and pick up the pieces. Easy enough, right?

“Well, not exactly, although I can’t put my finger on it yet, there seems to be something much, much bigger going on here. I’ve been getting reports from a few of the rural villages of massacres, and not by Syndicate militia either, that’s what gives me the chills. You know those border towns, usually they go on pretty much left alone since basically all they have to offer is agricultural goods, and agriculture is basically useless if you kill the farmers, so most of the Syndicates protect them as an asset, or at the very least leave them be.

“The really squirrelly thing is that whoever has been doing it has taken a lesson from Attila the Hun, because they don’t just kill the people, they burn everything, even the harvested crops. That’s the sick part, why would anybody want to destroy food? It just doesn’t make sense, sure there have been plenty of instances of these villages getting raided for food and whatnot, but usually the raiders just take the food and leave, maybe rape and plunder a little, but leave everything basically intact, because if you destroy it all then there won’t be anything to raid when you come back. Hell, even some of the Syndicates started off doing… never mind, I know you’re in a hurry, Silence, so I’ll get to the point.”

“Appreciated.”

“Anyway, here’s the file on the Durenberger kids, what little I’ve been able to nail down so far. Most of it is hearsay and gossip, so I’ve coded it according to reliability, because you never know if one of those wild rumors might end up actually being true, and I figured you guys could use whatever I could come up with at this point.” Wayland sat back finally, apparently thawed out from the hard German winter, and instead put his mind to enjoying the plush leather seats of the limo. Mwamba took the manila folder from Otis and began to flip through it. There were approximately fifty pages therein, some of them full gloss photographs, and a few had official looking seals, probably pulled from old abandoned government vaults of some sort or other. No one ever asked Otis how he came by his information, all that mattered was he did and that he demanded payment for such a service. He was not one of them; he was only a necessary ally.

“Wayland, provide this man with his well-earned payment, please.”

Reaching deep within his green wool army jacket, the giant Brit pulled out a small case, large enough to hold about three golf balls and covered in brushed chrome. Otis carefully took the package from the hulking man with one hand and dialed a series of numbers into a keypad at his hip with his other, causing a safe to open beneath his seat. Without ever looking at the contents, he placed it in the center of the hidden safe and closed the door again.

“How come you don’t wanna look at it, love? Ern’t you ‘fraid it ain’t cushty?”

“No, my brawny friend, you have more need of me than I do of you. That allows me a special privilege in that I need not look at a single payment, because your leader knows full well that a single maligned attempt to cheat me would place your entire organization on the wrong side of the tracks, yes?” The implication that Otis was superior to Wayland seemed suddenly to ignite something within him.

“Hey, tear in a bucket, mate. I could snap your neck like a twig, sorted?” No sooner had Wayland spoken, the muzzle of a silenced pistol poked out through a small previously unnoticed hole in the tinted partition glass that separated the driver compartment.

“Eh ya’ geeza, I’m just sayin’ hypothetical like, no disrespect intended ya’ wankah.” The pistol barrel didn’t move.

“Yes, well, now that it has been demonstrated that you both could be shot in but a moment’s notice, can we fucking continue?” Wayland backed down with a scruffy sigh and continued to satisfy himself with his own comfort, although beneath his casual exterior steely muscles were silently tensed, posed to strike with deadly force if needed.

Otis smiled, his cracked and weathered lips were purple with age and hardship; his face was twisted into a grinning caricature of what was probably once a noble visage that had been wrecked with age. The scars tracing his cheeks bulged with the grin, making the expression appear even more nightmarish. But, of course, Mwamba was no stranger to living nightmares, and the freakish expression that Otis exhibited did little to melt Mwamba’s icy reserve.

“Tell me more about these village massacres…”

Intro

Here is the opening scene of the book. I had a different one in my first edit, but felt that this was more shocking and sets the tone of the overall work better. Also, there aren't actually chapters per say, rather shifts in time period and/or perspective, so sometimes there is a time change and in others the focus just changes between characters. As such, each post will be until another change occurs. Thanks again for looking! Also, in an effort to create some semblance of income from my writing I have added the adsense feature on my blog, so clicking on ads when you visit is a way for you to support my writing in an economic fashion without actually having to buy anything. Thanks! -Adam

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BOOK 1 – SILENCE

Broadcasts, electronic frequencies, lifeless images sent out into the cosmos. The screens cast a chilling glow on the darkened room, silent images of death, horrors reminding the viewer of the utter degradation of humanity. In the darkness, one such screen flickered to life, and the silent observer raises the volume. A lone woman fills the majority of the image, one hand holding her earpiece whilst speaking as even toned as she could into the microphone she clutched desperately, her only ward from the horrors that her nervousness belied but the camera did not show. Behind her a bare concrete wall, a bunker perhaps, was visible. Although the microphone successfully concentrated her voice, the harsh popping in the background static implied gunfire.

“Bonjour, this is Georgette Armantté broadcasting live from Hamburg, Old Germany. War has come finally to this city, as rival Syndicates Schweitzer and Durenberger have entered into open conflict precipitated by this morning’s kidnappings. The peace affected three years ago at the Bremen Conference was shattered as fighting erupted across Hamburg, the principle city on the border between the Syndicates’ respective territories. As we have reported, there have been numerous reports over the past few months of increased conflict in this area even before the Durenberger children’s disappearances, as relations between the rival states have been steadily diminishing, culminating in this bloody day.” The image flickered slightly as a cloud of cement dust shook loose from the ceiling. For a moment Georgette’s frail figure disappeared from the view of the camera, but after the dust settled she returned, shaken, but unharmed.

“As you can see the punctuated attacks over the past months have only been setting the stage for the open battle that is currently raging above. My crew and I are stationed in the center of the city, in a secure bunker. From the reports that we have received, it would seem that the conventionally superior Durenberger forces had successes in the morning, but as they swept through the city with their legendary armor division, the Iron Fist, they were gradually pushed to a standstill by the hit-and-run tactics of Schweitzer’s death’s hand corps. Although successfully occupying the core of the city, the line of battle has not been pushed any further, as the unconventional tactics have made continued occupation costly to the Durenberger militia.

“If you are a resident of Hamburg, it is highly advised that you leave the city immediately and seek refuge in the surrounding suburbs, which have largely been untouched by the fighting as of yet. Both sides have set up evacuee camps and are offering protection to fleeing civilians. Again, if you are a resident of urban Hamburg, it is imperative that you evacuate immediately. The Durenberger forces have been ordered to shoot on sight, in an effort to combat the Schweitzer death squads who are difficult to identify due to their lack of military uniforms and use of stealth tactics. Furthermore, if you do come across either force, do not resist, as the leadership among both parties has issued warnings stating that unarmed civilians who actively give themselves over will be afforded every leniency, but despite this, the best plan would still be to evacuate immediately and steer clear of any fighting.

“Little is known about the situation with the Durenberger children, which stands as the central impetus to open war. From what we have been able to gather, early this morning all three children, despite living in three separate homes in central Berlin, were found missing and in each bed a death’s hand knife, the symbol of the Schweitzer militia, was stuck into the pillows. Although denying anything to do with the disappearances, Lord Wilhelm has proven uncooperative in the situation and completely unwilling to allow Durenberger forces to occupy his territory in an effort to find the children. Of course, the Durenbergers decided that this lack of cooperation is tantamount to guilt, but it is just as likely that Schweitzer was reluctant to let his borders be compromised because he likely interprets the kidnapping as a ploy to invoke moral outrage at his organization and build support for invasion of his lands, which comprise the majority of the Denmark peninsula.”

The image flickered again as more dust and debris shook loose from the ceiling, but this time something was different. The reporter looked away from the camera, somewhere behind and to the side of it. Beads of sweat rolled down her face, and yet petrified she still clutched to the microphone as if it could save her from the impending doom she felt so acutely. Faintly the sounds of metal forcing itself against metal grew more distinct in the background, and a moment later the image flashed completely white, and then was filled with smoke. Coughing into the microphone, the reporter strained to see what was coming into the room.

“Please, I’m non-partisan, a… a… member of the press. I have a right to be here.” Shakily she dropped the microphone and reached into a worn olive green satchel at her side. Pulling out a bundle of papers, “Please, look, I have papers, I have clearance from both Syndicates, I work for UBS-12 in Paris…” Her pleas must have fell on uncaring ears, as her thin figure began to be pulled by invisible strings as bullets riddled her body. Dancing backwards until she was finally pressed against the wall, the popping sounds continued as the rain of bullets continued to tear her apart. At last the slaughter was complete, and suddenly she stopped jerking as though her invisible strings had been severed. Instead she slowly slid down to the floor, leaving a long arc of blood on the concrete wall. The camera was kicked and fell to the floor in a crash, the image hesitating only a moment longer before returning to a shot of a pair of wide-eyed reporters filled with horror behind their desk in the safety of a studio.

The image went dark. The silent figure brooded a moment in the darkness, and finally spoke. “Silence, Bludgeon, report.” The searing hiss of static and then faint electronic voices acknowledged the call.

Prologue

This Blog will be a series of postings of installments of my novel that I recently completed the second draft of, Silence: Crimson Reckoning Book One. I have been having serious trouble finding serious interest from the literary world, as it is a time consuming business of searching through the lists of agents looking for anyone that's not 1) a shark, 2) too busy, 3) accepting queries, 4) interested in the slightest. Thus, I am going to keep working on my various writing projects, and in the mean time will try and learn a little something about how to pitch myself to agents. Anyway, here is the first installment, the prologue. I hope you enjoy, and please, any response would be really appreciated, critical or otherwise. Thanks!!!

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PROLOGUE

The room is dark, musty with the taint of blood. One figure sits, bleeding; one stands, hands cupped to ward off any intrusive draft. The lighter clicks the flame to life, feeding the hand-rolled tobacco of a slim cigarillo until a red eye glows in the blackness. Footsteps follow the ghastly glow as it hovers across the room, leaving a trail of sweet acrid smoke behind. Flickering to life, an old mechanic’s light draws the scene in bitter detail: a pool of blood has formed beneath the sitting man, tied as he is to a sun scorched office chair that appears as though it were rescued from a municipal dump. A butcher’s stainless steel table extends immediately to his right, although age and wear have brought stain even to it.

Eyes begin to adjust to the harsh cone of light, and we see the man with the smoke at last, his bald head reflecting the glare of the lamp obscenely. His face draws deep shadows in the valleys of the various pock marks and appears withered so that the flesh hangs paradoxically stretched across a canvas too small and yet limp and seemingly lifeless, as though the clammy flesh of a cadaver. Across his head he wears a pair of surgical goggles, deeply tarnished with the unwashed remains of dried blood. Taking a deep drag from his cigarillo, he smiles, pondering something for a moment before donning a surgical jacket too stained to be considered white any longer, and a pair of yellow rubber gloves, standing out as they are by their bright color and new appearance.

Pulling the cigarillo from his lips, he speaks.

“Sorry that took so long Bob. May I call you Bob?”

Silence.

“Well, Bob, like I was saying, I hate that it took so long for me to get back to you, but you see I had to calm my compatriots down. You know, Bob, if it weren’t for me they might have already killed you, and we can’t have that, now can we?”

Silence.

“But, all is well for the moment, and I was happily able to retrieve my instruments from upstairs, and a couple of treats as well.”

Slinging it from his shoulder, the bald man sets an aged and cracked black leather physician’s bag on the table, and reaching into it begins to lay out the contents on the metal surface, naming each in turn.

“Let’s see what we have here, scalpel, metal file, hammer, oh where are they? Ah, yes, the treats.” Removing a small grey box from the bag, the man very carefully clicks it open and examines its bounty.

A antiquated looking metal syringe flashes in the light and the first signs of life begin to seep into the man bound and gagged in the chair. His muffled cries are barely audible, his straining futile against the duct tape binding him to his seat.

“Yes, like I said, the treats. Well, here’s the first,” taking another hypodermic from the small box, “and here’s the second.” Swiveling the bloody man around so that he can see the table directly, he holds up both vials explaining each in turn. “The first is a treat for me, really. You see, I have one very simple question for you, which I will tell you in just a moment. If you answer correctly then I won’t get the pleasure of using this on you, although I will be rewarded by the excellence that is truth.

“However, if you choose to either A, lie to me, or B, I don’t know, decide to be all big and brave or some such nonsense, and tell me to ‘fuck off’ or something equally pseudo-heroic, then I will have the great pleasure of using this on you.

“Do you want to know what it is, Bob? No? Well, if you have ever had any oral surgery, you will likely recall that you are given the choice of a local anesthetic or laughing gas, right? Well, imagine for a moment if instead of an analgesic you were injected with a special drug that rather than numbing those nerves in your mouth and face it enhanced them, accentuating rather than diminishing the excruciating pain.

“Have you ever taken ecstasy Bob? No? Well, essentially drugs like X enhance your pleasure receptors so that pretty much everything seems pleasurable, like someone touching your face or watching pretty lights… it’s why so many of those clubs are filled with brain-dead zombies that just sit around stroking each others arms and so forth.” The ember on the end of the cigarillo had gone out and he quietly flicked the ashes off and tucked it behind an ear.

“So, Bob, imagine a similar drug, except instead of making the pleasure bits of your brain dance, it makes your pain receptors go all haywire, firing at the slightest sensation. Imagine then a precise cut along a nerve, something very touchy, like a tooth’s root, or, my favorite toy,” stroking the metal file with the edge of a pinky finger. “Yes, this isn’t a usual tool of the dentist trade, I must admit. But for my purposes it works brilliantly, you see, because it’s the introduction, the prologue to the symphony of agony. After injecting you I’m going to carefully file away at those teeth, exposing very gradually and painfully the nerve bundles beneath all those layers of enamel and protective sheathing. I’m sure that would hurt in any event, but add in my chemical blend and you’ve got yourself a real party going on in your mouth!

“You know, Bob, there are all sorts of schools of torture out there, and they’ve got some great stuff. In many ways, torture is such an unrefined art form, discouraged as it is by humanity’s sense of morality, but if affected properly the torturer becomes an artist of the highest ilk. For instance, I’ve heard that if properly executed, a person can pound the sole of your foot until you die from the pain, honest to god! It has something to do with all the nerve endings in your feet, funny stuff, huh? Especially considering that those nerve clumps are the stubs that we walk around on all day!

“But seriously, Bob, you know why I like dentistry so much? No, no, not because my dad was one or that’s what I wanted to be when I was a kid; no, I like fucking up teeth because it gives you access to the most active and immediate nerves in the body. Essentially they’re hard-wired directly into a person’s brain. Sure, you can cut off toes, pound on gonads, or shove bamboo under finger nails, but you want to know what really makes that brain scream in agony? Teeth.

“Did you know that the ancient Egyptians were the first recorded culture to figure out dentistry? No, no, for real! You see, everything they ate had little bits of sand in it, on account of them living in a huge desert, and after years and years of munching sandy bread there wasn’t much left of those teeth, so they pretty much had to figure out what to do about it, not much choice really…

“But I digress. In all seriousness, Bob, if you don’t tell me what I want to know then we are going to have a real pickle on our hands. See, I know those big bullies up there beat you up pretty severely, even knocked a couple of teeth loose in the process I imagine. So you’re probably thinking, hell, this isn’t that bad, right? Wrong. This nerve cocktail, as I like to call it, will only start by letting you know how bad your mouth already hurts, you know why? See, right now you have already been subjected to a large amount of pain, especially since they beat you to a pulp and I’m sure cracked not a few of those ribs in that chest of yours. Well, when all that was happening, your body began to release endorphins to numb the pain and keep your brain on edge; its nature’s way of giving you every opportunity to get your ass out of trouble when you get hurt. A wonderful little defense mechanism, no?

“Well, that’s what makes my cocktail so magnificent. In short order it not only blocks those happy head chemicals, it replaces them with its own wonderful blend of something that will reverse the effects. In fact, if I hadn’t worked so long on the combination to make it ju-u-u-st right, I might be disappointed because you could go into shock, pass out, and maybe even die because of the overload, and we can’t let that happen, can we, Bob?

“So, the final ingredient in this triune devil is a chemical agent that will accelerate your heart while at the same time keeping you conscious, essentially a nice perversion of adrenaline. You will have no choice but to remain conscious, terribly conscious, and aware of every sensation over your entire body. Minutes will seem like hours, and each moment you are alive will seem like a lifetime in the darkest pits of Hell. Thus, I can assure you that you will be here for every second of the excruciating pain and misery that will soon follow.” Calculatingly slow, the Surgeon places the syringe on the table with a precise yet almost gentle touch.

“Now, if you decide to cooperate, god forbid, and tell me what I need to know, then you can have the prize behind needle number two: a quick and painless death. Instead of unbearable agony, you will be rewarded for your patience and good nature with a compound not unlike the one that robbed the world of Socrates. This herbal and chemical blend will overcome your senses with a pleasure as intense as a thousand orgasms and as sweet as a field of flowers. You will float off into a bliss that few can imagine, and death will take you with all the force of a drowsy kitten.

“You know, Bob, in my travels I came across a peculiar notion of the significance of death. I can’t rightly say whether I agree with it or not, but it is beautiful in its simplicity either way. Have you ever had a computer seize up on you, Bob? I’m sure you have, haven’t we all? Well, you know how the last thing on the screen is often what is displayed there, frozen in time, at least until you pull the plug? Well, imagine as you die whatever frame of mind you were in at the time you are blessed, or cursed, with for all eternity, as if your life froze and the last moment that you experienced never ends. I know, I know Bob, it’s some jagged edge stuff to think about. Well, let us then postulate that this is, in fact, the reality of the situation. It makes the issue of how one dies a bit more imperative doesn’t it?

“In fact, certain ancient peoples were more concerned with how a person died than when or where, or even what kind of a person he or she had been before that moment? Take the Vikings for example, their heaven, Valhalla, is filled with the finest of warriors, and they are allowed to fight and wage war endlessly, which was, oddly enough, a reward in their culture. Of course, only those who fell in active battle were allowed such a privilege, and conversely the worst punishment, afforded to those who fell ill and died in their sleep or the like, were instead cursed to an un-life of eternal boredom. By this quizzical set of spiritual standards, a man who lived a basically cowardly life could be rewarded if he but fell in an act of true combat, while a heroic fighter could still be damned to an eternity filled with long yawns if he were to die of old age.

“Let us return to our current predicament then, and make our context the issue at stake in the here and now. Imagine the quality of eternity you will be afforded at the hands of either door number one or number two… Do you want to spend the rest of your immortality feeling the razor edge of the worst kinds of pain ever experienced by a human being, or do you want to have it filled with hard-ons and sweet delights?

“Well, Bob, the choice is yours, so as soon as I take this gag from your mouth I will give you a single chance to tell me what I need to know. You now have complete understanding of the gravity of your decision, and thus I leave it to you to make as an informed agent.”

With a single swift motion, the Surgeon takes up the scalpel from the table and clips the leather band holding a rubber ball in the man’s mouth, and it falls discarded to the floor.

“So Bob, we come to it at last… where are the other hostages?”

Spitting up blood mixed with bits of broken teeth, words sound from his broken lips in response, “I don’t know, and even if I did I wouldn’t tell you, you fucking weird shit.”

Shaking his head, “Tsk, tsk, tsk, Bob. Language now young man. Well, let’s see, unfortunately you have fallen into the utter fallacy of the ‘even if I did’ line, how cliché of you, Bob. I must say I expected more from you. However, that means that of the two of us, I will get the pleasure, in this case by ripping out the information that you obviously know from you, one tooth at a time. Sadly, I can’t say that this will hurt me more than it will you, but at least know in your last moments, Bob, that I gave you every chance and warning to make this right, and it was in the end your own decision that brought us to this conclusion.”