Nicola Lombardi - The Tank

Giovanni did so, then let it fall.

“ Good. Proceed! ”

With a noise similar to the explosion of a mortar the megaphone was turned off and the helicopter tilted sidewards before leaving for the Center, on the other side of the Tank.

Giovanni turned around towards the corpse-stinking shadows and, walking like a robot, reached the elevator. He felt empty. Every bit of energy, every ember of that beastly fury energizing him until few minutes before had cooled down, dying in a diffused malaise. He would take some pills. Then he would cry. He needed to. Later. He had orders.

He pulled the chair away, letting the invisible ray of the photocell reach his destination, and watched the doors close. A few seconds later the elevator was called downstairs. He stepped backwards and leant against the wall, waiting.

Lots of people went upstairs several times.

Giovanni saw them, talked to the, listened to what they wanted to say or ask him… always walking with the utmost attention on the edge of the cliff. He was physically exhausted, and more than once he felt like could see himself talking and moving from one place to the other, as if he was but a spectator of that sad play.

He was questioned for about half and hour by lieutenant Raggi (the same soldier superintending the Cleansings, and whose name he had learnt only then), to write as many details as possible in the report. He talked without omitting anything, save for what had happened only in his mind.

Trying to make the most of that exceptional circumstance, so favorable to talking, he tried asking: “Have there been many dead? In our ranks, I mean…”

The officer looked at him from above the frame of the spectacles he had worn for writing. “No, Corte. Not many.”

“Somebody I knew?”

Raggi, sitting at kitchen table with a big memo book, kept on writing, and didn’t look up. But he answered. “Probably. Escort Guards.”

Giovanni looked down at his knuckles. He knew there was no way he could get to know the names and surnames, at least not in that moment. But he surely would sooner or later. There was another question he wanted to ask. “And… general Stevanich?”

Raggi mumbled something unintelligible with a sigh that could be a sign of impatience. Then – maybe because of what Giovanni had done to defend the Tank, decisively slowing down the revolutionaries’ assault – he decided to grant him at least a half-answer. “He wasn’t here. He is out for institutional business. But he knows everything. And I think he will have more than one reason to be unhappy.” Giovanni kept staring at him, hoping to receive more information. But the lieutenant cut him with a “you will know everything in due time, Corte.”

Three men he had never seen before, wearing blue jumpsuits with red tetragrams on their chests, checked the state of the security door. Giovanni watched them, despite the smell of burnt flesh permeating the Ring, and felt compelled to describe then the dynamic of what happened; they didn’t look really interested, though. They unscrewed the deformed lock and took it of the door using hammers and pliers. They took some measures, talked among themselves, then left.

Doctor Nicastro came too, giving him a physical and asking him with fake ease some questions aimed to asses whether that experience had damaged his mental balance. Giovanni answered with extreme calm, trying to sound reassuring. And in all frankness, now that he had time to put the events in order following the logic of a report and put it into words – he was sure to be emotionally stable. Of course he couldn’t evaluate himself: if his psyche was somehow distorted, so were his judgement.

A madman can’t know he is, right?

The visit ended with handshake. The doctor smiled, but Giovanni couldn’t understand if he was truly satisfied or if he just wanted to appease and calm him. He decided it didn’t matter. He was very grateful for the box of sleep pills he left on the table with calculated nonchalance.

Once alone Giovanni took a warm shower (there had to be a leak somewhere as pressure was much lower than usual). There was no chance he would eat. He felt like there was rock where his stomach should have been. He opened the fridge and grabbed a half-empty can of orange juice. Then he opened the little box Nicastro had given him and wasn’t surprised to find a single laminated blister from which most of the pills and been removed. Almost all of them. Out of eight, only one was left. Logical. Such drugs had to be given with extreme parsimony.

“There’s no such thing as too much caution, eh doctor?”

He pressed with his thumb to pierce the thin layer of aluminum foil and observe the yellow sphere that had fallen on the palm of his hand; he then literally threw it in his throat, than drank as many sips of orange juice as needed to empty the can.

He slowly sunk into darkness, escorted by terrible thoughts made lights as feathers by the chemicals in his brain. The smell of death came in from the violated Escape and crept like a phantom along the Ring. Even in the apartment, even in his bedroom…

He thought about the sentinels who had been assigned to extra guard turns at the bottom of the ladder until the door would be replaced. They probably wore masks in order to not get intoxicated.

He turned on one side, dreaming of lying on a mass of bodies, half soft and half sharp from the bony asperities. He thought about the man he had shot ( I killed him! ), a man who believed in his ideals so much he exposed himself so much. He didn’t see his face, but he looked young…

It was the first time he had ever killed anyone ( Are you sure? But how many have you killed pressing a simple button? ) No, no… the convicts he had unloaded had already been killed by a sentence of the NMO. He was just the executor, he didn’t have homicidal tendencies… he… he didn’t…

The pillow smelled horribly of the burning bodies’ stink and the thoughts dripping from his head. He fell asleep and an acid spurt of what he had drunk came out of his mouth.

There were no deliveries the following day, of course.

Giovanni could only imagine that the unforeseen assault to the Center also entailed the escape of all the convicts waiting to be Eliminated, included those whose Unloading was scheduled for that afternoon. He had no doubt they would be back.

The Well was on as usual, while the Postman wasn’t. The fax was inactive, too. Probably the office department had been destroyed and they would probably need a few days to restore all the Camp’s function. After all, he was asked to wait, too. He would receive directions at the right time, depending on how events unfolded. So had Lieutenant Raggi told him the evening before while bidding him farewell: “Keep doing your job, Corte. We’ll let you know.”

Yeah. We’ll let you know… as if it was an audition for the cast of some movie or play.

The excavator and the bulldozer arrived at 8:00 A.M..

Giovanni watched them work for a while, sitting on the Escape’s landing with a napkin on his mouth and nose. He couldn’t understand hear what the soldiers and workers were shouting, but the purpose of the whole operation was clear. A heavy claw dug a deep and wide pit twenty meters away from the tank and after that the other machine began its work. At that point Giovanni got up and went back to his apartment. He knew that in an hour’s time there would be no trace of the ash and coal colored corpses, just long, dark trails ending in a heap of dirt.