Thank for your compliments, guys. I prefer this one to Chapter Two, I think it works better and sets up the following couple of chapters very nicely.
And Dave, don't fear, there is definitely a proper plot with all the essentials being set up.
C h a p t e r T h r e e
Visits in the Night
Miserable was just about the most fitting word to describe the zulag. The bedrooms were dire, with their decrepit age-old furniture, but the corridors were dreadful. As soon as you left a bedroom, you were enveloped in blackness. Nobody really had any idea of what a corridor looked like, the lights from the rooms are weak, and never, ever, lit up anything past the small door frames.
The guards knew what they looked like. They did, after all, have night vision equipment. I’ve always assumed, as I stumble down it in the evenings and mornings, that it must be very similar to the rooms: pipes and shafts jutting everywhere, perhaps the odd closed-up natural well that nobody could use or open, and covered in just about every type of article that could constitute as “dirt.”
We move down the corridor tepidly, for fear that one of the guards will come back to this floor. As Tom slowly moves ahead of me, I now notice that the slight outline of his form seems to be limping. He obviously still hasn’t fully recovered from his most recent screw up.
After just a couple of minutes of silent walking, through which all we hear are the light voices of workers in their rooms, hurriedly silencing as we near and go past their respective doors, we finally get the correct door.
Well, in the darkness, we guess it’s the right door, but there’s really nothing to distinguish it so.
A small square of faint light becomes visible in the middle of the door. It was the right room. They had evidently heard the footsteps coming.
We linger for a few more seconds, and then hear the strained voice of one who has done this too many times. ‘Yes?’
‘We need to see Hop,’ replies Tom.
‘We have something important to show him.’ I add, but I already know it is useless.
The voice behind the door disappears as abruptly as it began, and the square of light is immediately covered over.
‘Told you.’
We drudge quietly back to our room, where Ian’s absence becomes even more obvious.
‘Where
is he?’ I ask again.
‘No idea.’ Says Tom, evidently resigning himself to his weariness, and the fact that Ian would turn up when he wanted to. He doesn’t bother to change his dirty toga-like rag as he squashes into bed, and I do similarly, shoving the gun under the frame.
The next few days pass without much event. Ian remains absent, and Tom is being extra careful with his work. We discuss what has happened to Ian each and every night, but Tom seems to think that Ian is just gone, and he won’t turn up at all. Our minds are too preoccupied with labour and Ian to be concerned with the gun, and it remains hidden under my bed, ever oily.
Possibly just four days later, and again in the depths of night, but towards the beginning of our “sleep break”, Ian unexpectedly appears in our door frame.
I stare. Tom stares. Our conversation had just moved to the gun, and we had quietened ourselves when we heard the running footsteps.
Ian is a state. His head is newly bald, and he is completely naked. He appears in the doorway with wild eyes, redder than ever, and his body is dirtier than ever. His hand hasn’t been treated, by the look of it: it’s swollen and without bandage.
Tom stands slowly, but remains gaping. I have no idea what to do. What happened to him?
Ian doesn’t speak, or do anything. He just seems to be staring at the corner of the room, unfocused and is shaking uncontrollably.
Finally, he opens his mouth, but still looks at neither Tom nor me. I realise it is probably the security camera he is trying to see, and I begin to stand alongside Tom.
‘You--‘ he gasps, but says no more. In the corridor we hear the signature throaty noises, and before us Ian crumples against the doorframe.
I register this image a good many seconds before I ever register the loud echoing sounds of too many gun shots, or the mechanical legs being put back into action.
I notice I am sitting on the bed, and the guard that killed Ian is standing in the doorway. Where’s Ian gone? The guard must have pulled him into the black corridor.
‘Get a door,’ is all the guard says, in its creepy sub-mechanical voice.
I think I hear Tom whimper. I notice he is also now sitting on his bed.
I stare at the guard, utter shock and revulsion etched into my mind. Why, why, why, why did he shoot Ian? Where had Ian been? What the hell has just happened?
Why isn’t the slig moving?
‘Get a door,’ it repeated, as I realise my breathing has become short and quick. Why am I out of breath?
I reach down, and feel the hidden gun. Arms numb, yet aching, and straining under the weight, I pull the gun over the bed. The slig isn’t even looking at me. What is it looking at? The visor-like screen on the front of its mask was impossible to decipher, but I guessed it was looking at Tom. Tom was completely white and some of his bandage has come loose.
He lets out a kind of croak through which I guess he is trying to speak.
I have no idea what I am doing, but I shakily pull and keep hold of the trigger. Immediately, a thousand holes appear from floor to ceiling. The recoil had caused the gun to hit just about everything on
that side of the room, and yet again, I see the image before I hear the sounds.
The slig is crumpled on the floor. The echo of my gunshots resounds jarringly, and then Tom’s voice.
‘No, no, no, no,’ he murmurs, ‘you can’t do that. No, no, no, no.’
His face is in his hands and I drop the cold object. It clatters still noisily to the floor.