Good and Evil : Freeland - Part Two (9781628547375) Page 2

  Sitting up as far as the burning of tensed muscles would allow, Treach reached for his earned neck ring. Too far to grasp, he surrendered after extending the brawny arm only half way. A withering blister of adjoined tissue erupted into puss, and he screamed aloud at the intense pain, “Get me out of here! I can’t stay here trapped in this room! They are going to come find me and kill me!” He reached up to the white overcoat of the doctor and tried to pull him in; grimacing, he choked back the deep pain.

  Dr. Carvinseal pulled the gang luck charm into his clench and placed it atop Treach’s greasy dreadlocks. The burning ceased, and his nerves were retarded by the dignity of endless nobility.

  Lacey knelt at the foot of her lover’s bed. She hadn’t any idea how to comfort Treach. She was slightly deficient in the concept of life and its environs of thought. Her limited knowledge of mortality was shaded by a cluster of gang-related battles; the victor was her only love. Treach loved her as much as he did himself. Dementia was the platter they both ate from; nevertheless, no one else bothered them about their unity. People take less care of those who have to fight through poverty for life. The poor people’s world is a derelict twine unraveled daily in awkward tufts of despondency.

  Mama and Papa Zarnig had been stripped from life as they sat in conversation, speaking of how the world could be changed if only the strength of their impoverished community could override these killers. In the middle of their toy-chest-sized kitchen, they were both struck dead by unguided bullets from a hallway gang fight. Treach bit his tiny hands to hold back a strangled yell as the bath water rippled from his fright. It undulated into light yellow as he muted a helpless wail. He didn’t have any brothers or sisters, though one was on her way. Never having to experience the plethora of evil in life, she was a wounded embryo, soon dead after the gunfight.

  With their death, Treach believed that the answer they had devised would never be explained. To Nostradama with the world! he thought, from that day on.

  Lacey crawled up to Treach’s head and swabbed his lips with the loose fullness of hers as she whispered in his ear, “Listen, baby, you are the strongest, most loving, handsome person I have ever met. You are going to make it through this just fine. I need you to be strong for me. I can’t make it on my own without you. What can I do to make it better?” She kept both arms, along with the rest of her body, out of reach, having been taught well never to cause him any pain. Her leer was controlled by a mysterious balance, allowing her upper torso to bend crooked from the base. Her chest, a carpenter’s dream, was of stubby knotholes, inverted as divots instead of protruding out. At least the one on her back was of fullness, pleasing to Treach during their intimate, moonlit dances. Lacking a belly button, she wasn’t easily aroused when Treach would tickle that barren, lifelessly flat region, but Treach didn’t care. To him, her ecto-utero (outside the uterus) test tube conception had only molded her as a mere societal reject. Nonetheless, she was someone with whom he could share love.

  His thoughts momentarily turned naughty until another sharp pain made him feel as if someone were shoving a knife into his abdomen. He returned, “You can’t do anything else for me, baby. You are already doing it by being here. Actually, I would like a cup full of ice to distract this pain. Go get me some ice chips so I can chew on them.”

  Two male nurses entered the room and broke up their make-out session. Lacey immediately left to get the ice as the nurses walked in, carrying two newly acquired Cryogenics, flat screen, 48 1/8 inch broad view portrait sets. Each room was to be established with these mural plotted, credit card thin screens to replace the old nineteen inch box TV’s currently in the room. The future was rewarding itself with a step toward the next phase of evolution. This richest medical edifice in history granted its reputation the sovereignty over all its competitors. As the flat, Red-Bo screen warmed up, a news broadcast came into focus.

  Several police cars, trucks, and hovercycles were spraying the night with revolutions of their traffic control roof lights. Blue, white, red, and sometimes yellow, flashed sporadically through Leonard’s Park as the cameraman filmed live footage on the dark, dreary night. The re-run had been showing all day long. The barricading row of trees at the back of the screen cast Treach’s insides into a chill and his heart sank. Before his weary eyes was the stark recollection of the night prior. Lacey returned with a bucket of ice chips.

  Still photos emerged, giving credit to all members who had died. The penance was a projection to serve justice upon the surviving gangsters of lesser teams, though they might think that they have upped their chances to reign.

  After each of his “family” had been shown, A. Spade Down’s image lit up the entire oversized screen. As if he were staring down the photo in his high school yearbook, Treach reached split fingers toward the TV. In agony, he pulled back with a clenched fist all of the dignity, pride, and vulnerability he could conjure in an attempt to seal A. Spade’s memory deep within his heart. “Forever will I endure respect for your life, A. Spade, and because a part of you will always be with me, I will never forget my own life, which was restored via your skin transplant. You’s a true killa!” Treach closed his eyes to remember all the good times they fought together.

  The magnified light from the planet’s sun quickly eclipsed to night, and all was quiet in the hospital room. Treach’s eyes flew open in pain as he turned on his side while still asleep. Wanting desperately to shriek, he instead, held his breath as a thunder of carpeted footsteps approached. It sounded like herds of roving Camdium wild beasts, had digressed from their watering hole and were now on their way in seek of a spot to lay down for the night.

  The footsteps got progressively louder.

  A heavy surge of heat pressed Treach deeper into thought. He tried to convince himself that he was not yet awake.

  On the contrary, the coalition of perpetrators settled outside his tightly sealed door, their shadows cast by the ceiling lights in the hallway. Beneath the door’s foundation, he could see red laser beams dancing across the marbled floor. Treach hadn’t the strength to move. Lacey had awakened, and she too reacted with fright.

  As a low, monotone voice called out to her crew, Treach sat idle on his inclined hospital cot. The metal bar sides were erect. Sometimes he would dream that he had rolled out of bed while in slumber and tense from the fright. The sides were simply a

  precaution.

  The red lasers probed the floor in a scattered manner with no clear purpose as to where they had been guided. Suddenly, the midnight disco of choreographed floor lights halted. The voices silenced and anticipation crept into the stillness.

  The door gently eased open as the dark room became briskly cold. A chill crawled earthward in sprawl of its next kill. Both Treach and Lacey stayed low as the poisonous red beams found them. The caustic lasers singed a split in the thin nursing sheets, cracking open the cocoon to reveal double sweating larvae. The metamorphosis on Treach’s part was from humble to timid as a toddler. Lacey, unchanged, stood just as dumb and easily tractable as before.

  The leading lady, wearing a dark uniform, ripped both adolescents from their cover and placed them in silk quiet bags. Two city police personnel cinched the drawstring at the tops of the bags and carried them down the back stairway and into the laundry chute, where the two were heaved outside. Friction lit Treach’s stomach afire along the way. His cry was unheard, the resonance blew stench back into his face.

  A different team of underground government officials tugged the luggage with brute force. Desperately, Treach clenched his teeth to endure the burn and focused his attention on the outer-noises.

  A rumbling muffler, heavier than that of a car, echoed inside the tightly drawn sack. The chime was a deafening hymn that cast the young boy into a light of soaring flight. Next, helicopter blades hummed evenly to invite the duo on an endless night. The voices of the heli-crew were now cheerful and physically inciting.
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br />   Treach managed two fingers through the gap of leaf-ringed fabric and widened it enough to catch a glimpse of his surroundings. On this warm, late summer’s night, the cargo-door was left open to allow in a soothing temperature. In regards to Treach and Lacey, no one thought they could get free, so it wasn’t taken into consideration to blind their view of external surroundings. Treach easily recognized their mistake but kept it a secret. He wasn’t going to lend a word of his findings.

  A row of daylight-bright spotlights, nine altogether, were spread out along the entire floor of the Xerophyte “Dry Oven” Desert. Enhancing the bronze lad’s visual intake, he too encoded the escape with confidence that he would someday flee. The data now locked in, he sank back to the floor to self-administer care to his aching front of pseudo-skin, a mid-life circumcision from a different human being.

  Lacey had been kicking to free herself from the suffocating pitch-black silk bag. Finally tiring, she faded into sleep and pushed herself out the doorway of the cargo compartment. Merely an accident, she suddenly awoke and screamed as gravity secluded her forever into the night. Treach heard the fading scream, clogged quickly by loud propellers, as he frantically thought to join her in death. A momentary procrastination kept him clinging through the silky receptacle to a safety harness as the helicopter turned on its side to view the catastrophe. The pilot radioed in the disturbance and was instructed to continue his trek. If he were to disobey, he would have joined her in the bleak darkness.

  Chapter 2

  Death in the

  Xerophyte Desert

  The helicopter finally reached the quietly nestled establishment of DSOH, landed, and spit out its inner cargo. Now free from the stuffy garbage bag, Treach stood tall to stretch in the awe of moonlight. Appearing smaller, yet variably wide to the sight, the treatment reformatory glowed incandescent lavender to the beams of planet Trendago’s nearest lunar source. A brave, flaming orange turned bright the entire desert.

  The blades shut down, and the tornado ceased its spiral. Having been bathed in a shower of sand, Treach’s clothes were removed as the white suit was a guise to cover his denudation. The ground temperature of the desert was 115 degrees. Next, the yellow suits emerged. Their skin-tight apparel had mysteriously altered to an exquisite shade of gray, the moon color mixing with it in transformation.

  “Welcome back. Do you realize why you are being re-incarcerated?” Abner stepped forward to narrate Treach’s sentence.

  “No, sucka. You the judge to declare my probation?”

  “No, Mr. Bienemy. Please step inside; we have your treatment documents lined out in wait for your temporary stay here at Dry Sea Octofuture Health.” The techs would always sneak in that word: temporary.

  “What did you call me? My name is Treach Zarnig.”

  “Whatever you say, young man.” Abner tried his best not to rile the boy any more than was necessary.

  “I am a Shagranian adoptee from Rumor Mill, and I ain’t goin’ back in there.” Treach looked around for the row of spotlights.

  “Then, I will say,” another yellow suit spoke up, “you won’t make it very far. We have desert retrievers positioned in all directions. Consequence and Repercussion are those two carnivorous canines over there on top of the shock-zone wall. They have been trained to pursue any violators who attempt to flee. You’d be lucky if they brought you back in one piece.”

  Both of the shorthaired, no-eared, bulging-headed, dirt-red, dog-looking creatures perched enormously on the wall. Even in a sit, they were twice the size of an average human being. Their ivory white teeth were shining avidly in a tight, pulled back growl. The second set displayed a more faded, bloodstained white with razor sharp tips positioned awkwardly in a slant behind the first row. Treach looked the other way as another conversation counteracted his mental ploy.

  “And, to the right, there is a wide range of open dry land. We like to call it the Gravesand. Several escapees have made the attempt, but they never succeeded to make it out alive. Does the name Lacey ring a bell? It seems the sweltering sun has a mind of its own when hatred desires to return to the streets. We have records of the deceased inside, if you’ll just come in and have a look-see.”

  Each sourly-aged consultant turned and commenced progress back inside. At this moment, Treach decided to make his move. With gang-related tactics, he thought quickly during each action.

  First, the pilot had looked away for a split second and was flabbergasted when he found himself tucked neatly in the bag left on the ground. Treach swiftly pulled the drawstring shut. The pilot’s shout was stifled after being thrown back in his face. Now on a run, Treach departed in a straight line away from the helicopter, shouting, “Catch me, if you can!” at the top of his lungs. The yellows turned to observe, but he was well out of sight.

  “Devour, Consequence! Devour, Repercussion!” The two dogs stood five feet off the ground, stretching twelve feet from head to tail. On a ground-thumping sprint, their two hind legs repetitiously played tag with the front, and they were soon on a high-speed chase.

  In a momentary silence, all staff stood still, mouths fully agape. All were in awe. The black sack rumbled repeatedly in all directions. The pilot’s anger was being expelled. One thing Treach had neglected: he still had on the aviator’s helmet.

  Treach stopped to turn and admire from three hundred feet of flat, lifeless desert away. His goal accomplished, the fireworks carried him back to the acceptable nights with a second family on the streets. Back in the day, this was the game he loved to play. Too bad the past was only yesterday.

  On one side, then the other, an electric wave of energy shot violently in aim of condemning the person who tampered with the pilot. No such luck, his head bulged out in an explosion, then imploded into a liquid trickle of blood belaying the bottom of the sack. In turn, the entire metal aircraft vaporized into a halo-storm of fiery light where all pieces pushed outward beyond the bubbly edifice. Each magistrate was scalded by shrapnel, and the wave sucked back in from where it had originated. As if a crowd of mechanical butterflies were being swooped into a tight, mesh net, the fluttering rain of burning objects relayed to the nucleus its desert-scan.

  As for Consequence and Repercussion, the two overgrown demi-dogs, they evaporated, a yelping duo, having been released of their frightening scowls. Asking for forgiveness in their helpless stage of pre-death, they melted to the ground as bones, just like those they had previously terminated. Nearly cremated, the flaky skeletons drifted aimlessly as a calm wind swept the catastrophe away as if it never happened. In the dying light of burning remains, Treach hollered across the sandy plains, “A. Spade Treach, redemption in the sand. Long live the Mocey Heights Ravens.” With one hand open, revealing his secretly-kept necklace, and one hand closed across his heart, he knelt down upon one knee and cried out in victory, until the least burned of technicians neared to drag the boy, stomach first, back to headquarters. Only Treach’s own anguish could deter the demise of his struggle. The escape was not yet enabled.

  Treach’s face of stoic rock showed little remorse toward another murder, let alone the torment he had been raked through on his return. This time, more by accident, he took credit in the death to hide it beneath a secretive war battle belt.

  Having straight white hair, cut short for duty, Harlo Rule always had a serious gaze about his appearance. Never being the technician to talk much in-group, he would sit quietly toward the back of each therapy quarter. Tall and solid, he didn’t appear to be the joking type. The yellow stretch-suit he wore gave birth to that knowledge.

  A side door to the building opened, and a monster came out. Harlo called off the last quickly approaching Legro guard-dog by whistling a squealing pitch. The beast stopped, sat at attention, and looked with a straight, stiff neck, then whimpered to a low bend in wait of its next kill. It looked like two Great Danes put together with swollen Rottweiler necks on pit-bull sh
oulders.

  Fallen by his own strenuous ploy, Treach skidded across the still searing crust of terribly dry and crumbly desert sand. The overseer in grasp continued, without care, to the young murderer’s victimization. The nine enclosing ground lights emitted a fine sheen of radiance as the environment was now visible all around.

  A thick of Madarian red rocks were passed as two Serpentine Dragons emerged from a cleavage and hissed an evil whine. Their two legs perched them skyward and gave emphasis to their broad shoulder blades. The rest of their multicolored scales shifted out of sync to display a flapping of their anger. Shuffling faster, Harlo paced into a gait and was soon on a swift sprint. Serpentine Dragons were to the desert as an electric poison-bearing, bottom-laying ball-fish was to the far away, warm Turquoise Sea. One encounter would be the coupe de grâce for any living being.

  The welcoming tunnel was entered. Harlo, Treach, and eight other collapsed denizens of DSOH fell to the floor after the heavy micro-steel door sealed shut. Their wounds, dripping into a collective lagoon, were freeze-dried by power gash sealers. Antibiotics were outlawed seven years prior. A new, accepted pact, not law, had been negotiated, signed, and voted upon by Trendago’s remaining people. As well, the boast of a nation, joined into unity, and the planet progressed as a whole. A combination of young and old wrapped tightly in trust. This segregated sphere, from that of a peaceful Earth, was accepted as a ball of unbreakable twine. For those cast from the real world, this parallel clone was a new beginning.