Neil McMahon - Revolution No.9

“Freeboot says you can go back inside,” he said sullenly.

Monks’s eyes teared up with pleasure when he stumbled into the firelit warmth of the lodge. But when he walked into Mandrake’s bedroom, he saw that the shackles with the cable attached were lying on the floor.

“Put ’em on,” Sidewinder ordered. His raingear was dripping puddles onto the floor, and his face radiated his rage and resentment.

Monks sat, pulled off his boots, and snapped the iron rings around his own ankles.

“Freeboot’s got some business to take care of,” Sidewinder said. “He told me to tell you the kid better be better when he gets back.” He turned on his bootheel, in pseudo-military style, and stalked out.

Mandrake was in bed, lying on his tummy. He didn’t open his eyes or respond when Monks turned him over. His forehead was hot. Whatever complication was at work was advancing. Monks helplessly moistened the inside of the child’s mouth. Dehydration was quickly entering into the mix-while sheets of rain pounded down on the metal roof.

Sidewinder hadn’t said how long it would be until Freeboot came back, but this much was certain: the kid was not going to be better.

Monks sat down and painfully unstuck his pant legs from the crusted blood on his shins, then pulled them up to his knees. By now the lacerations were surrounded by long purple bruises, and swollen into knobs. He explored them with his fingers, grimacing fiercely. At least they weren’t the kinds of wounds that were likely to get infected, and any bone chips would eventually heal themselves. It just hurt like hell.

A couple of minutes later, he heard the lodge’s door open and close. Quiet footsteps hurried across the floor toward him.

Marguerite stepped hesitantly into the bedroom. She looked concerned, even frightened. Her eyes widened at the sight of his legs.

“I heard what happened,” she said. “I got Freeboot to let you back in.”

Wearily, Monks nodded thanks.

She stepped to the curtain, to leave, he thought. Instead, she looked around the outer room, then came back in and knelt beside his chair.

“I’ll help you get away,” she whispered. “I know how. You have to take me, too.”

He stared at her in numb amazement. For the first time, she seemed really to be looking at him. Her dark eyes were clear, free of the spaced-out affect he had grown used to.

But wariness followed instantly. He had not forgotten that she was the one who had set him up in the first place.

“Is this another one of Freeboot’s tests?” he said.

“No.” She looked puzzled. “Freeboot’s gone, he’ll be gone all night. So will most of the others.”

That jibed with what Sidewinder had said.

“How did he catch me?” Monks asked, probing to find out if there was a hidden camera that might be watching them right now.

“Coil told him.”

The news came like another ugly bucket of sludge, thrown on top of all the rest. But it had the ring of truth.

“What changed your mind?” Monks said.

As she hesitated, guilt, shame, and the admission of her own stupidity passed across her eyes.

“I didn’t want to believe you,” she said. “That Mandrake’s going to die. But I’ve been watching him, while you were…gone. He seems like he’s almost dead now.”

Monks kept staring hard at her, trying to believe her.

Her gaze faltered. “I understand why you don’t trust me,” she said.

“Bring me a gun, and I’ll start.”

“I can’t get a gun. But Hammerhead’s standing guard. He volunteered, because of me.”

“And?”

“You could take his gun,” she said.

“Just walk up and ask him for it?”

“I could-you know, get him thinking about something else,” she said, with her eyes still lowered. “You’d have to hit him, or something.”

Sure, nothing to it, Monks thought. “With what?”

“There’s pipe wrenches in the toolshed.” She held out her hands about three feet apart. Monks was distantly surprised that she even knew what pipe wrenches were. But that was probably as good a weapon as anything short of a firearm. A knife or garrote was too risky against a man as strong and well trained as Hammerhead.

A hard blast across the back of the head, while not exactly honorable, might do it.

“What about this?” he said, reaching down to rattle his shackles.

“There’s bolt cutters, too.”

“Can you get other gear? Flashlight, matches, compass? Some food, warm coats. A rucksack, to carry Mandrake.”

“I’ll try,” she said. She reached into a pocket of her jeans and pressed something into his hand. It felt smooth and cold like a pebble. “This will jack you up.” She rose and slipped out.

Monks opened his hand and looked at what she’d given him-a small glass makeup jar with a screw-on lid. It was full of finely ground white powder.

His first impulse was to throw it out. But he hesitated. Meth seemed to be the key to the violent, psychotic edge that the maquis had, and that might be a big help right now.

He opened the jar and and tapped some of the powder out onto the dresser top-about half the amount he had seen Freeboot use. He didn’t have a knife to inhale it with, but he knew that it could be done through a narrow paper tube, and he fashioned one from a page he tore out of one of the Heavy Metal magazines.

He snorted hard with each nostril. It shot in like a hot sharp wire thrusting up behind his eyes and into his brain. The burn worsened instantly, becoming almost intolerable, bringing him to panic that he had done himself serious harm. But then it gradually calmed, leaving a metallic-tinged residue-and a bristling, fiercely euphoric energy.

Monks paced the small room, allowing the ache in his shins and the clank of his chains to steadily heighten his fury, like the drumbeats of a primitive tribe in a war dance-tangible reminders of his own helplessness, of the child who was slipping away from him, of his terror that this was another trap that was going to bring him only a brutal, agonized death.

Very soon, his hands were flexing in anticipation of that pipe wrench.

Marguerite came back twenty minutes later, carrying a big laundry basket covered with a dripping poncho. Monks pulled the poncho off. On top were neatly folded pajamas for Mandrake. But they hid a warm hooded snowsuit underneath, and a nylon rucksack big enough to carry him. Then came a large polyfil jacket with a water-resistant shell, the kind that the men wore around camp. Wrapped up in it were a folding pocket knife, a heavy-duty flashlight, matches, and a Ziploc bag stuffed with bread, cheese, cold cuts, and candy bars. There was no compass, but this was a hell of a good start on getting out of here and staying alive.

At the bottom, his groping hand touched metal. A pair of bolt cutters and a pipe wrench about thirty inches long were nestled in the laundry like snakes in a brushpile.

“Hammerhead just called in his security check-in,” Marguerite whispered urgently. “We’ve got an hour before they’ll miss him. He’s waiting for me, over at the bathhouse. Give me a couple of minutes.”

“Whoa, wait,” Monks said. “You have to keep him outside. I need a clear shot at him.”

She bit her lip nervously. Then she brightened.

“I’ll tell him I want to do it in the rain.”

Monks was impressed. That was thinking on your feet.

“Get up against a wall,” he said. “That’ll keep his back turned.”

“Don’t worry, he won’t be thinking about anything but me.” She left again, looking scared but determined.

Monks got out the bolt cutters and snipped the chains from his ankles. His feet once again were free. He put the snowsuit on Mandrake, then slit the rucksack to allow for his legs and eased him into it. This was going to be a lot easier to carry than the clumsy sling.