Escape From Asylonia, page 11
part #1 of The New War Series
There was something about her appearance, like a goddess of fire and whiskey, that stirred moments of desire in a body rendered numb by the onslaught of alcohol. It was these moments that distracted him from the fact that The Goddess was not human. For one thing, there was the way the blades of her fingers tapered into the same finely-cut points as the fangs behind her plump, orchid lips, unlike anything he had seen on any human. For quite another, she was too beautiful a creature to be born of Earth. She barely ever spoke to him, but Noah was sure that he needed her. The knowledge that he was able to look at her and feel something good was enough to keep a distant flicker of hope alight in his belly. He cursed himself as he doused that same flame with yet more booze.
He felt eyes on the back of his neck, but, in the throes of his own insanity, could not be sure whether it was simply a sense of familiar paranoia, or whether the gang of thugs shooting bourbon in a nearby booth really were staring at him. Without once turning to face them, he could tell from the thunderous storm of four distinct grunts and guffaws that they were a quartet, all slapping cards against the metal table, and occasionally ordering The Goddess to replenish their liquor supply.
Noah recognized one of the voices. He did not know the thug's name, nor anything about him at all for that matter, but having passed him coming in and out of The Riptide on half a dozen occasions, he could at least recognise him by sound and odour alone.
The owner of the voice always appeared to Noah as though he had fallen from whatever planet he came from, and landed in the heart of a Wild West which only existed in the movies. He wore a long, musty trenchcoat which reeked of oil and gunpowder, and dark, tattered jeans that shot down his enormous thighs towards the spurs of his boots. Noah had taken to amusing himself by creating a host of western-themed monikers for the brute. His current favourite was Bulldog Jack, after the way creature’s stale, slate-coloured flesh flopped over both sides of a pudgy face, embedded with beady eyes and a dumb grin.
Bulldog’s thickset chest was the size and shape of a shield of armour Noah had once seen a medieval knight use in a different movie altogether. It threatened to burst through the layers of his clothing: a grubby shirt, a faded, suede waistcoat, and a frayed, red bandana draped around his throat.
The hairs on the back of Noah's spine pounced to attention, rocked by the vibrations of a large, collective belly laugh coming from Bulldog and his pack. Discreetly, he slid his fingers into the inside pocket of his leather jacket, felt his way against the severed hand of Enosh, and fished for a knot of Asylonian dollars. He had learned quickly, and he had learned the hard way, that the appearance of a drunken bum, dripping in the repellent stench of failure and liquor, was no protection at all if some lowlife thought he had money they could steal from him, and Noah did have money. Due to some insane inflation and economic politics he could never hope to understand, one United Earth Dollar converted into roughly one hundred Asylonian dollars, and with prices so pathetically low on The New World - a whole bottle of whiskey cost him no more than five Asylonian Dollars - money had been something he had never had to worry too much about.
Thrusting a crumpled mess of cash at The Goddess, Noah slurred.
'Let's go again.'
The Goddess rolled her eyes, breathing through the nub of flesh that made for her nose as she took an unlabeled bottle and set it before him. The paranoia crawled further into him. A deathly hush had fallen about the room, pricking his skin, turning it into gooseflesh. Feeling the glare of a thousand eyes upon him, he poured another glass of oblivion and shot it down fast.
The Madness ripened with each splash of hot poison. They were watching him. He had to get out of there. Even the sullen, seductive presence of The Goddess was not enough to make him stay. He had to find some other place, some quiet corner of some quiet bar in some quiet, dark part of the city.
Shakily, Noah started to climb from his stool. His legs bent uncontrollably and his arms reeled. Dignity deserted him. With a wail and a holler, the great, celebrated war hero General Noah Fallon fell on his ass.
The pain of the silence stung greater than the pain of the fall, though the heaviest blow of all came in the form of shrieking laughter. He looked to The Goddess. She rolled her eyes away from his and went about idly polishing the beer pumps. His cheeks, already flush with the crimson glow of alcohol, became a darker, and yet more vivid shade of red, as though his veins had burst apart, spilling blood and shame across his face. Crawling painfully to his feet, Noah ground his teeth, trapping a scream in his throat as new agony tore into his damaged hip. He was certain now more than ever that his paranoia was justified. Bulldog’s pack were looking at him. Not only looking, but howling in delight at his misery.
Clumsily swiping the bottle of booze from the bar, Noah stumbled and swayed. His legs crisscrossed over one another, shunting him sideways, impeding his attempt to move forward,
out through the back door of The Riptide and into the humid, swollen air of the alleyway. A sour, mouldy smell stole his breath and made his eyes water. His nostrils itched. A fly pestered, trying to infiltrate his skull through any available orifice. Noah swatted about him until at last it left him alone.
He took the whiskey bottle from inside his jacket and drank. His free hand rummaged through the pocket of his jeans for a cigarette. Over the snapping of his lighter, Noah heard the knock of footsteps, each one increasing in volume as it came closer. He regarded each one as the slow, tenacious approach of paranoia, as the return of a madness he could do nothing to contain.
In the comfort of his long-since-abandoned support group back on Earth, he had spoken openly of how the worst things that ever happened to him did so only inside his own head. They had told him he possessed something called a ‘racing brain,’ and that it was perfectly natural, especially for people like him. Noah was not so sure. He recalled the burden of taking any benign situation, real or imaginary, and, with a swift splash of poison and enough time left alone with his thoughts, turning it into all manner of horrors, each one spinning rapidly out of the grip of sanity, until they became vivid memories of events as real to him as the scars on his battle-worn body.
Since the last days of The Final War, Noah could no longer claim that to be the case. The death, the bloodshed, and the violence he had witnessed, and suffered first-hand in battle, had all rivalled the most distressing images of his insanity. Not that his afflicted imagination ever gave up in its attempt to triumph over the horrors of reality. It made him see things, like the shadows that crept up around him. It made him hear things, like the pounding of lead-footed steps drawing closer. It made him feel things too, like the way his heart accelerated until it came in one prolonged beat, whacking against his chest.
Even if he was imagining it all, the fear which bubbled in his heart felt as real as anything he had experienced. He sucked a cigarette down to the core in a few drags, and drank the whiskey bottle dry in a couple of large gulps. He rushed through the muggy air until the lightning struck the back of his knees and took him to the ground. Crushed with pain and panic, Noah slithered sluggishly on his belly and crawled into the path of a swinging cowboy boot. A shallow scream burst from his lungs as Bulldog Jack and his thugs swooped upon him, like the alley flies that circled nearby bags of rotting garbage. The booming echoes of their laughter stabbed at his ears. The stench of oil and tobacco besieged his bloody nose. The cold crash of metal bars against his body drew screams from his dry throat, and sent him into a momentary blackout
XXIV.
When consciousness resurfaced, Noah flopped helplessly onto his back to face his assailants. The lust for violence, shining in the blacks of their tiny eyes, filled him with a thirst for battle he had long assumed satisfied. He screamed again, no longer afraid, but angry, lashing out at tree-trunk limbs with his aching legs, and using tired arms to fish for a weapon.
The fear fell away through open lips. United Earth warrior General Noah Fallon bellowed a slurred, weary battle cry.
‘Come on then, scumbags. Let’s see what ya got.’
Drawing the Colt M1911 pistol awkwardly from his side, The General waved it uncontrollably at Bulldog’s knee and fired. The bullet missed, tore through a trash can and died. Bulldog kicked the weapon from Noah’s grip, but Noah only used this to his advantage, taking his opponent’s boot in his arms, hugging it to his chest and kicking out at the remaining foot, sending Bulldog Jack crashing to the ground beside him.
‘You goddamn son of a whore,’ yelled the thug, the dull, lingering drawl of his voice in keeping with his appearance. ‘I’ll tear your damn throat out!’
Noah grimaced, clenched his trembling hand into a fist and threw it behind him, into the skull of his attacker.
‘You wouldn’t be the first to try it, scumsuck,’ he replied, as his knuckles drove through rubbery, grey flesh, and grazed over the bone.
‘But I’ll be the first to succeed,’ Bulldog groaned, retaliating with a fist of his own.
Crawling to his hands and knees, Noah absorbed the assault with his kidneys, groaning at the deep, sickening pain coursing through him. A second thug charged. General Noah Fallon tackled him around the knees. The beast struck the ground with a thud. Noah scaled the prone creature as if he were a mountain, hooking his hands around the tips of his boots and pulling himself up, over the shins, the thighs, the waist, until he sat across the chest with two bruised knees tucked into the thug’s armpits. A detoxifying charge of adrenaline rushed through him. He grabbed his prey by the scruff of the neck, and drove his jaw into a crashing forearm. He cocked his arm back to repeat the strike, but found his fist trapped in the hand of Thug Number Three. There was a low, deep crunch, the sound of knuckles being crushed in the attacker’s powerful grip. A spike of heat slashed downwards from wrist to shoulder. He launched a second fist behind him, but that was caught too. The thug pushed his boot into the back of Noah’s neck, and kicked him to the ground.
Bulldog and his pack surrounded Noah, their howling laughter an orchestra of malice. Through his tear-drenched eyes, the scuffed soles of their boots appeared to wobble and wave. Dizziness, nausea, and the lingering effects of whiskey all added to the hallucination, as though each slow-moving foot were reflected in a funhouse mirror. Each one slammed into his face, his chest, his thighs, stomping any sense of unreality out of him, and replacing it with an all-too-real mess of throbbing blows and stabbing strikes.
His defence of flailing limbs and verbal threats was thwarted by the sheer frenzy of their attack. They pounced upon him like starved beasts tearing meat from a corpse, raining down with blow after boot, pounding their knuckles into Noah’s ribs, driving the toes of their boots into his throat, and grinding their heels against a broken nose leaking with blood.
Two of the thugs grabbed Noah by his ankles, parting his legs as their colleagues took several steps back and charged, swinging their boots into his groin like professional footballers striking for goal.
Blood curdled in Noah’s throat as he screamed through bruised lips. Raped by self-loathing, he curled into a foetal position, and was punished more by his own weakness than by their beating.
He retreated behind closed eyes, but their faces leapt upon him, leering closer, so that he could smell the venom drooling from their fangs, and the feel bloodlust, smoldering passionately in their eyes. He bawled at the snapping of ribs, yelled at the thumping of his kidneys to mush, and shuddered at the approach of fresh footsteps.
The crazed laughter in his ears gave way to pained grunts and frightened groans, a symphony of agony, accentuated by the cadence of fists against flesh, and skulls cracking against the ground.
After several moments of digesting this new carnage, Noah realised that the throbbing pain of his body came from injuries already inflicted. The storm of fists and feet had abated.
The inside of his throat stung with the taste of iron. He sucked back the blood with a half-swallow, and spat it back out. Fleeing footsteps faded in his ears. Tentatively, he opened his eyes to see the giant looking down, offering a hand.
XXV.
'God damn, they really did a number on you, huh buddy?'
The deep, Samoan voice boomed from a colossal figure whose every inch of bronze flesh was packed with muscle.
Noah said nothing. His watery eyes moved from the man's white sneakers, up along the blue jeans covering rock solid thighs, and on to the snug, white tank top imprinted with the ridges of a hardened abs. Beneath this top, they spied the concrete slabs of the man’s chest, each decorated in a vast tribal tattoo which ran up over broad shoulders, and down the throbbing bicep of his left arm. Noah's eyes moved further, across the man's wide neck, and studied the trim black hairs of a goatee beard, carved neatly in a kite shape around his full lips. Finally, his eyes met The Giant’s, two deep pools of fire flaring brilliantly through polished oak. Still, Noah said nothing.
'Here, let me help you up,' the man smiled with a flash of brilliant white teeth.
Noah flopped his crushed hand into the man’s sturdy grip, and was helped to his feet. Hunched over and coughing violently, he spread an arm out across The Giant’s enormous shoulder, a half-hearted attempt to prevent himself from keeling over completely. The man stepped forward to better support Noah, holding him by the elbow with one hand, and resting the other gently on Noah’s shoulder.
With every inch of him hurting, Noah’s eyes met the confident gaze of the stranger’s. Each studied the other in an oddly comfortable silence, their faces strained, as though they had once been familiar, yet could no longer match a memory to a face.
Finally, the man removed his hand from Noah’s aching shoulder and offered it in salutation.
'The name’s Sol,' he said.
Noah slipped his quivering fingers into the man's grasp, and spoke.
'They call me Noah.'
The words seemed to come from somewhere outside of him. Neither slurred nor aggressive, Noah barely recognised them as his own.
'Thank you, Sol. I... I owe you one, pal. Can I buy you a drink or something?'
'It's all good, brah,’ grinned Sol. ‘I have a show to do.’
He released Noah’s hand from his. Noah nodded, relieved. As much as he felt compelled to repay the man, doing so with his time and company was not what he really wanted. Isolation was what he wanted now. Isolation and oblivion.
‘No worries,’ he said, still nodding.
‘Anyway, brah, looks like you’ve had your fill and then some for one day. Hell, you look like you could use a hot bath and some heavy Zs, am I right?’
'You're right,' Noah lied.
The two men looked back into one another's eyes, each making a final effort to place the other within the story of their lives. Both admitted defeat with a respectful nod, made their excuses, then turned and walked in opposite directions. Noah took barely two steps before he was called back by Sol.
‘Hey, yo,’ cried the giant.
Noah turned back. He saw Sol pick up the Colt and throw it. Noah cupped his hands and thrust them forward to catch it like a baseball. The gun landed in his palms like a ball of fire and he immediately dropped it. Crouching low, almost falling, he gathered the weapon in his shaking fingers and tucked it into his jacket. He did not see Sol shake his head and walk away.
XXVI.
For the first time in a very long time, Noah longed for the isolation he usually loathed.
On any given day, his routine had him seeking out sordid places where the presence of other drinkers, even those who ignored him, created the illusion of company. Alone in a crowded room of loners, he felt less like an outcast on a planet teeming with countless creatures, none of whom he could relate to.
Yet now even those places had proved unwelcoming, and the isolation he had sought to escape from offered his only refuge.
Lighting a crumpled cigarette, Noah confirmed the plan to himself. He would cut into Churchill Avenue, where jet cars swarmed the skies and Rommanine gypsy traders hogged the streets, flogging everything from clothes and food to hologram batteries, videobooks, and all manner of luxuries and necessities in between.
He would head past the relentless clatter of videoboards, all begging him to buy show tickets, take out insurance policies, or have his jet car waxed. Then ,he would turn into the filthy, fetid hole known as CJ’s Bar, and order two of the biggest bottles of whiskey they were prepared to sell him. The grog acquired, he could slurp one en route to Manor SL69, and finish the other in Enosh Lavia’s apartment until blackout brought relief.
Sol's face stamped its image on his brain. Noah came to believe that he did not actually recognise him at all as a character from the story of his past. He reasoned that what he actually saw in The Giant, was the first human being he had encountered in as many months as he could care to remember. He was familiar with Sol not as an individual, but as a representative of the human collective, a reminder that his species still existed, and still looked out for one another.
It was an explanation which failed to quell his curiosity. Sol's face lingered in Noah’s thoughts, urging him to dig further.
'You know me, you drunken fool. You’ve seen my face before, heard my voice before. Think, think where. Get your beat up, old ass home and think where the hell you’ve seen me, brah.’
The voice became louder. Noah was relieved to hear it coming from somewhere other than the depths of his own lunacy.
'And tonight, Cannonball Caine, when you step into the ring with the World Heavyweight Champion, you’re gonna wish your daddy never got that twinkle in his eye the night he met your big, fat momma. You’re gonna wish you never even heard of The Mighty Sol, and you’re damn sure gonna wish you never signed up to meet me one on one in the ring. Tonight, Cannonball Caine, the champ’ is gonna introduce you to a little thing called PAIN!’
