The Dystopiaville Omnibus: A Dystopian Sci-Fi Horror Collection Page 4
He hammered his fists off the wall. Hoping it was the right wall.
“HEY! Get me out of here!”
He pressed his ear against the metal partition and tried to shut Megadeth out, just for a second. Nothing. No voices, no activity, no sign of life up front. What the hell? The screws should have been out by now, unlocking the van and explaining to Morgan what the hell happened. And Morgan would give them hell for this, the bastards.
“Oh shit.”
What if they were dead?
Morgan shivered at the thought. What chance did he have then? None whatsoever. He was locked in the back of a prison on wheels, which had just crashed in the middle of nowhere. His wrists were locked in cuffs. And even if he wasn’t the steel doors at the side and back were sealed.
“LET ME OUT!”
What sort of death would take him out here? How long before the music stopped and the silence crept inside?
Morgan banged his fists off the wall for a full minute. Then he collapsed onto his back, in a state of hyperventilation.
He clawed at thin air, trying to think of something else. Anything else except the small space he was trapped in. Anything else except the silence.
SMALL space.
SILENCE.
“Get a fucking grip man.”
How long before anyone would notice the missing transport vehicle? And would those bumbling idiots up in the Northern or down in the City Prison consider the possibility that one of their dipshit drivers would take a detour, away from the small towns and into the quiet lands, hoping to shave off an hour en route to the M2?
He’d kill that driver if ever he got the chance. Fucking kill him man.
Morgan lay on the floor, rattling his chains along to Slayer’s ‘Angel of Death’. Think about the music. Sweet music. Better than oxygen.
Sooner or later the power will shut off.
And then…?
“Don’t think about it.”
Morgan closed his eyes and concentrated on his breathing. Just like he’d done as a boy in the cupboard under the stairs.
He did this for a minute. Felt a little better. Then Morgan heard something.
A noise.
Outside.
He jumped back to his feet. With his hands outstretched, he tried to gauge his surroundings. Morgan was pretty sure that the van had tipped over onto its side because the bench he’d been sitting on was now part of the floor. He had to make sure he didn’t trip over it and knock himself out.
Once again he pressed his ear to the side.
A man was groaning. It sounded like a starving animal on the brink of death. The noise moved – it travelled slowly from the cab, along the side of the Sprinter and towards the back door.
“Morgan!” a man’s voice yelled. “You alright?”
There was a loud bang at the back.
“HERE!”
To hell with tripping over the bench. Morgan bounded through the dark towards the back door and when he found it, he punched and kicked at that steel barrier with all his strength.
“Open the door!” he screamed over the music.
There was a pause. Morgan began to wonder if he’d imagined the man’s voice. It was possible. People imagined all kinds of crazy things when they were desperate enough. Had he just conjured up some bizarre human oasis?
“Five minutes in,” he said. “Five minutes in and I’m losing it already.”
There was a scratching at the door. It was followed by the sound of someone wrestling with the bolts.
“Yes!” Morgan howled, hitting the van again. “Open up man.”
There was a shrill creak as someone pulled one of the two back doors open. A flood of daylight rushed in.
Morgan shielded his eyes with his hand. He peered through the gaps in his fingers and saw the blurry outline of a guard’s head standing outside. The man’s name was Thompson. He was about sixty with a thick, grey moustache and tanned, leathery skin.
There was a nasty, diagonal-shaped wound above his right eye.
Thompson’s eyes were foggy. He had to crouch down slightly to look through the doorway because the van had indeed tipped onto its side.
“You alright Morgan?”
Morgan shook his head. “I’m pretty fucking far from alright Thompson. What the fuck just happened man? Where’s the driver? He almost killed me for God’s sake.”
Thompson eyes glazed over further. He stood up and staggered backwards, pulled by an invisible force.
“Stay inside the van Morgan. I’m going to…call for…help.”
“Like hell,” Morgan said. “I’m not staying in here. You bastards aren’t locking me up again, no fucking way Thompson.”
Thompson came forward and grabbed a hold of the door. The guard wobbled on his feet, using the van to keep him upright.
“Oh God,” he groaned.
“What the fuck?” Morgan said. “Are you okay man?”
Thompson began to close the door over.
“Wait,” Morgan cried out. His eyes bulged with panic. “You can’t do that. You can’t just lock me up in here again. Where’s the driver? Where is he?”
“I need to call for help,” Thompson said. “I…”
“I’m alive!” Morgan said, pleading with the man. “I’m handcuffed. Let me at least sit on the side of the road for God’s sake. What’s going to happen?”
Thompson shook his head.
“No.”
“Fuck you Thompson!”
Morgan charged at the injured screw. He sure as hell didn’t call for an internal discussion about the pros and cons first. He just did it.
Thompson’s eyes popped at the prisoner’s sudden attack. He reached for the gun in the holster strapped to his waist. But Thompson’s head was fuzzy and his fat fingers grasped at thin air.
Morgan tackled Thompson like a rugby player. They both went crashing backwards, falling, rolling over the road like tumbleweeds in the wind. Morgan was back up first. Before the dazed guard could respond, Morgan was on top of him, clubbing Thompson on the head with both fists, which he brought down like the hammer of Thor.
The guard’s lights went out.
Morgan, breathing heavy, climbed off him. After a minute he sat down on the road and took stock of the situation.
The Sprinter had skidded to a stop beside a shallow, muddy ditch at the side of the road. It was far from the Himalayan-esque drop that Morgan had envisioned during the crash.
Confronted with the reality, he shook his head.
“Stupid fucking idiots.”
They’d turned over on a sharp bend. Ahead of Morgan, the road curled southward like a giant asphalt snake. Jagged, angry-looking hedges lined both sides of the narrow road. Elsewhere, steep, rugged hills and empty farmland dominated the landscape.
Quiet lands.
Oh dear God.
Morgan stood up, his bones cracking in protest. He walked towards the Sprinter cabin to take a look inside. The driver’s side of the van was pinned tight against the road so he couldn’t enter from that angle. The door to the passenger’s side meanwhile, was pointing towards the sky. It looked like the wounded van was reaching for something.
Morgan climbed up onto passenger’s side. He felt a sharp twinge in his side.
“Easy,” he said, putting a hand on the wound.
The Schedule was still playing inside the cabin. Scrambling over to the open doorway, Morgan poked his head through the gap.
“Oh man,” Morgan said.
The driver’s battered skull was pressed up tight against the steering wheel. His body was hunched over, the eyes wide open, staring at Morgan but seeing nothing.
A trickle of blood ran down his chin.
Morgan didn’t know the man’s name. Looked like a regular fella, fifty-something, probably had wife, kids and a mortgage.
“Speed kills man,” Morgan said, shaking his head. “Why do so many people insist on finding out the hard way?” He caught a whiff of alcohol in the cab, vodka maybe, alth
ough he couldn’t see a bottle lying around anywhere obvious.
Morgan jumped back down onto the road, wincing at the pain in his left knee.
He’d walk it off, no problem. No big deal, no pasa nada.
Moving as quickly as he could, he went back to Thompson who was still lying flat out on the road. Morgan leaned over the guard, his head bopping in time to Motorhead’s ‘Killed by Death’.
He picked up the set of keys that Thompson had dropped. Morgan sang the lyrics out loud while he hunted for the one he needed to open the double lock on the cuffs. When he found what he needed he sat down on the road, trying to fit the key into the miniscule lock.
On several occasions he stopped in order to check if anyone was coming. Of course there wasn’t. This was deep in devil country. The quiet lands. Might as well be waiting for a bus on Mars.
He put the key in the lock. A second later the cuffs fell off his wrists.
Morgan howled with laughter as he removed Thompson’s Glock from the holster. He tucked it into the waist of his black jeans and stood up. Drink in that freedom, he thought to himself. Taste it, taste it good.
Thompson was still breathing, unlike the dead drunk driver up front.
He grabbed the screw by the legs and dragged him into the back of the van. The thought of cuffing Thompson came and went quickly. Carter Morgan wasn’t as sadistic as the bastards in the prison system.
He stepped back outside and bolted the door shut.
“Enjoy the music Thompson.”
Morgan gave the van a pat and hurried away, sticking to the middle of the road. He walked in the direction he hoped was south. Occasionally he broke into a light run, ignoring the pain in his knee. After a while however, the pain was impossible to ignore and when that happened he’d lapse back into a brisk walk.
Something wasn’t right.
Morgan felt lightheaded and lethargic. It was a weird sensation, like getting a hangover without the fun of being drunk first. Morgan tried to pinpoint the problem and when he finally nailed it, the realisation forced him to stop dead on the road.
The music was gone.
Now he was running loose in the quiet lands. The quiet lands for God’s sake.
This was the beginning of the silence sickness.
Morgan clamped his hands over his ears. What the hell was he doing? Here he was, a thirsty man fleeing the oasis, crossing the desert without water.
The silence would kill him. Before it killed him it would drive him mad.
He staggered down the long, winding road. This sickness was moving fast. The scenery was already getting blurry at the edges and it never seemed to change. Same fucking thing, over and over again. Narrow roads. Scant hedges, old walls and a sprawling green desert that stretched on for miles.
Morgan hurried forward, his hands outstretched like he was walking through the dark.
“Please. No.”
He tried to bat the silence away like it was an angry bird swooping down from above. Morgan swatted at the sky with both hands.
He yelled it at it to go away.
“I’m going to make it. I’m going to find a town, a nice town with speakers, and when I get there I’m going to find something to wear. Clothes, nice clothes. Something comfortable. Gotta cover up this prison shirt for a start haven’t I? Then I’m going to find a pub – find a pub with loud music and the Schedule and normal things – oh God how long before the sickness gets worse man? How long before I can’t even walk? How long before I start talking to myself?”
He buried his face in his hands.
“Oh fuck.”
This was an evil place.
Not a single squawking bird could be heard. Even the wind was silent as it drifted over the monotonous landscape.
In a daze, Morgan wandered off the road. Maybe the silence wasn’t so bad over there in all that overgrown grassy shit. He climbed over a short wall and found himself walking thought a field, then hiking slowly up a short hill, one of hundreds of ugly green bumps that littered this place. Morgan reached the peak of the hill and without pausing, descended into yet another empty field.
The silence went with him.
Morgan’s feet thundered off the soft earth. He began to scratch at an itch he couldn’t locate. Whatever it was, it felt like there were millions of bugs crawling on his skin.
He began to lose track of time altogether. Morgan walked through hills and fields, hills and fields, and more of the same. He was lost, completely and utterly lost and at the mercy of fate. His boots sank deep into the soil and it felt like something was tasting him.
Where the hell was he? Was he going around in endless circles?
Eventually Morgan jumped a wooden fence and landed on a strip of road. Jesus, the thing was littered with potholes. What a shitty place. But this road, as neglected as it was – it had to lead to somewhere. Somewhere he could get his head right. Somewhere he could juice up.
Morgan started walking. Maybe a car would come along? But what if it didn’t? What would happen if he got stuck out here after dark? Trapped in the quiet lands during the witching hours. That was an unpleasant thought. Alone. If things were bad now, what sort of filthy silence visited here at night?
He stopped in the middle of the road. He rubbed his eyes.
“YES, YES, YES.”
He saw it – the tip of a white house poking out from behind a cluster of birch trees. Surely, it had to be real. A real house with a gabled roof – a symbol of civilisation in the barren wilderness.
Morgan rubbed his eyes. When he opened them again the house was still there, about half a mile further down the road.
He began to run. As he did so, the silence snapped at Morgan’s mind like a rabid, foaming-mouthed dog. It was alive. The silence could feel its prey slipping out of its grasp.
“Fuck you!” Morgan howled, sprinting at full speed.
He began to laugh. It was going to be alright. He was going to make it.
Eventually the road delivered him to the base of a long dirt track. This track was the beginning of a driveway, which looped around in a semi-circle and led up to the white building.
It looked like an old farmhouse.
Morgan took several deep breaths.
“Thank you thank you thank you.”
He started up the driveway, wiping Thompson’s blood off his hands as best he could. Each step was a colossal effort. How long had he been out there, wandering the quiet lands? It felt like days. It was probably less than half an hour.
Morgan pulled down the collar of his cotton shirt, trying to make himself look presentable. This didn’t have to be ugly, not if these people played nice.
Then he stopped.
There was someone in the garden.
A girl.
Chapter 4
Morgan dropped to a half-squat, his back facing the bedraggled hedge.
The blonde-haired girl was standing beside the front door. She couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen although from what Morgan saw on TV it was hard to tell these days. Some thirteen-year-olds looked twenty-five once the lipstick was on.
Morgan checked to see if there was anyone else in the garden. No one, just the girl.
He scratched the stubble on his chin.
Kids, damn it. He’d been hoping to avoid that one.
“Screw it,” he whispered.
Morgan couldn’t squat any longer; his knee was killing him. He straightened up and walked towards the house, keeping his eyes on the girl.
She was an odd duck. As Morgan approached, she was staring up at the sky with a look of intense focus in her eyes. Morgan stole a glance at the heavens, wondering what was going on up there. He saw nothing but a sky full of cotton ball clouds.
“Hi,” Morgan said.
The girl didn’t jump at the sound of his voice. She didn’t look frightened either.
“Hello.”
Morgan smiled even though the inside of his head felt like a train wreck. “It’s so quiet around here.
”
“It’s good isn’t it?” the girl said. “We like it that way.”
“We?”
“My family and me.”
“Oh yeah,” Morgan said. “What…you’re serious? You like it around here? Wait a minute, are you guys by any chance…?”
“What?”
Morgan hesitated. “Silence huggers?”
The girl’s eyes dulled. “Some people call us that I suppose. We prefer the term ‘silence seekers’ though. It’s less derogatory.”
“Less derogo-what?”
The girl ignored the question.
“Marjory Baker used to refer to herself simply as a ‘seeker’, and that’s how I like to think of myself too. I’m a seeker. Seeker with a capital ‘S’.”
“Uhh, right.”
Morgan felt as if someone had just belted him on the solar plexus. Silence huggers? What sort of insane bad luck was this? In his mind the prison van was crashing all over again, skidding back and forth across country bumpkin roads, only this time it went straight over a cliff.
He wiped the sweat off his brow.
At least the SUV looked good. Tinted windows, nice touch.
“Are you meant to be here today?” the girl said. “Or are you lost?”
“I’m lost,” Morgan said. “Look it don’t I? Thought I’d drive up to the legendary quiet lands and take a look around before it’s all gone. Car slid into a ditch on the way home. I went walking, looking for help and well…guess I’m not used to these narrow little country roads you know? To tell you the truth, I’m not much of a silence person. I didn’t realise how powerful it was up here. My phone got busted up in the crash so after I left the car I got a little…”
“Sick?” she asked.
Morgan saw no sympathy in the girl’s eyes.
“Dizzy. Disorientated. Yeah I guess you could call it sick.”
“I’m sorry.”
Morgan took a step closer to the house. What’s your name?”
“Ellie. Ellie Ward.”
“Ellie Ward? That’s a good name.”
The girl seemed unmoved by the compliment. “I think so too.”
“So can you help me out Ellie?” Morgan asked.
“How?”
Morgan tried to smile but it was damn hard work.
“I can’t afford to get the silence sickness. You got a phone I could borrow?” Morgan said. “Or something like that? A set of cans? By cans I mean headphones of course. Listen Ellie, I wouldn’t ask unless it was an emergency and whatever you can give I’ll get it all back to you. That’s a promise.”