The Zona Read online

  Lead dragged himself into a crouch. The leader of the gray men gave a primal cry and struck Lead across the cheek with his stone. Lead’s mouth filled with shards of broken molars. He flew back in a full circle. Lead pushed himself up into a crawl. Blood from his face dripped into the dirt, fragments of teeth slopped from his open mouth.

  The leader of the gray men struck Lead’s head. Lead’s scalp split open and sprayed blood on the attacker. Lead rolled back to the earth, both hands holding his head.

  “You are a sinner!” The grey man yelled and kicked Lead’s ribs. “You are weak!”

  The gray man kicked Lead in the chest. The impact ruptured scar tissue over Lead’s heart. Lead put his hand over the bleeding fissure and felt a sharp edge.

  “You can’t save these worms!”

  The gray man kicked Lead in the back. Lead pulled the tip of Aaron Century’s knife from his chest and looked at it dumbly. The gray man cocked his foot to kick Lead in the back again when Lead rolled and wrapped himself around the gray man’s leg.

  “You can’t beg your…” the gray man started to say but was interrupted by his own animal shrieks.

  Lead dragged the tip of the knife through the tendon behind the gray man’s ankle.

  The gray man released another warbling shriek and fell to his knees. Lead pushed the knife tip into the gray man’s left eye. The grey man dropped his rock and clasped the ruptured cavity. Lead pushed himself back to his knees. He picked up the grey man’s killing stone and brought it down over the leader’s forehead. Both Lead and the gray man collapsed with the force of the blow. Lead got back to his knees and struck the gray man until his screaming stopped.

  Lead crawled to the gray man he’d punched in the throat. The man was on his hands and knees, struggling to find his wind. The gray man looked pleadingly at Lead. Lead felt no emotions. His body ached and moved with the strength of adrenaline and nothing else. He brought the killing stone down on back of the gray man’s head and again on his jagged spine. Lead turned to look for man he’d struck with the plank. A tranquilizer dart pierced his left shoulder.

  Lead woke in a bed, clothed in white linen. He was in a medical tent with rows of beds like his but empty. A door flap whipped in the breeze; canvas walls glowed with sunlight and breathed with wind. Lead tried to sit up, but his hands and feet were tied to the bed with thick leather straps. He looked up at the clicking of solitary steps. A beautiful Mary dressed in white robes approached him. A red cross crowned her white paper cap.

  “How are you this morning?” She asked in genuine kindness.

  Lead was unaccustomed to speaking with women, especially attractive ones. He remained silent.

  “Be at peace,” she said. “I have bound your wounds and said a prayer on your behalf.”

  She reached out and stroked his forehead.

  “You have a strong will to live. You will keep living as God wills it.”

  Lead looked into her blue eyes. She was beautiful in a way he had never seen. She was middle-aged, maybe seven years older than him, but not damaged by the sun. She was dark-skinned, with dark hair, but her eyes were bright and shone brilliant through the darkness of her features. He tried to speak but his throat caught. He tried again.

  “What is your name?”

  “Beatrice, you may call me Beatrice,” she said. Beatrice reached down and felt his wrist. She looked up and counted silently with moving lips.

  “You’ll be fine, Goodman. Just keep living and breathing.”

  Beatrice checked Lead’s bandages.

  Lead’s chest stirred, he wasn’t sure what to say when Beatrice finished and started to leave.

  “Come to see me again, soon, please.” Lead said.

  Beatrice responded with a smile.

  Lead woke to Beatrice looking down at him again.

  “You need to eat now, Goodman,” she said.

  The tent was saturated with the aroma of roasted beef and vegetables. Lead’s mouth salivated uncontrollably.

  “Here, just one bite at a time,” she said, lifting a spoon to Lead’s mouth.

  Lead tried to open his mouth, but the movement erupted pain. His tongue traced the empty gums along the right side of his jaw. His entire mouth swelled and throbbed.

  “Please,” Lead whispered. “My teeth…”

  Beatrice dipped the spoon into the bowl. She gently pushed broth past Lead’s lips. His stomach twisted and fought the strange food. His eyes watered. He suppressed a retch, partly to keep the food and partly to not embarrass Beatrice. Beatrice rubbed the stitched seam where Lead’s forehead had been sewn together.

  “You poor Goodman,” she said

  Lead woke in the night air. A stoic man in white robes was undoing Lead’s restraints. The man lifted Lead out of the cot and onto his feet. He presented Lead with a waste bucket and watched him empty his bladder. Lead looked around the empty tent. The white-robed man gripped Lead’s arm and led him to a different bed.

  “Why are you feeding me?” Lead asked on his third day in the medical tent.

  Beatrice smiled at him. She put the spoon of warm stew back in the bowl.

  “So you won’t die,” she said cheerfully. “You are my charge and I’m to take care of you.”

  “Am I to be released?” Lead asked.

  “I don’t know,” Beatrice replied. “I don’t think so. You come from the traitors. I don’t know of any traitors who’ve ascended to freedom.”

  She spooned more stew into his mouth.

  “It’s all fine. Your body can be purged here and ascend to Heaven in spirit.”

  Lead chewed the food with left side of his mouth. The stew was the best he’d eaten since joining the Church.

  “Why are you here? This seems no place for a Mary.”

  “Ah, Mary I am not, Goodman. My husband resides in the hereafter awaiting my return.”

  Beatrice spooned more stew into Lead’s mouth.

  “I am a Goodwife and will be until I too pass on.”

  Lead woke to black-robed guards unbuckling his restraints. They held his shoulders and guided his feet to the floor.

  “Come, Goodman. You’ve another day in court,” one of the guards said.

  Lead recognized the scarred face guard from his first day in Purgatory.

  “You need to stand for your charges.”

  The guards held Lead in the same courtroom with the same judge.

  “Do you know why you’re here?” The judge asked.

  “Am I to be released?” Lead asked.

  The judge smiled and covered a stifled laugh.

  “Released? What have you possibly done to be released? You are a traitor. You were assigned to serve your penance in the Traitor’s Pit, the Ninth Ring. You were in for less than five days when you slew two men in wrath. You caved in their skulls front of the eyes of watching guards, in the open, with no mercy or remorse.”

  The judge held forth the tip of Aaron Century’s knife; it glistened in the judge’s candlelight.

  “You smuggled a weapon into the Pit and used it in the assistance of murder.”

  “They were cannibals!” Lead said defiantly. “I fought them to save myself and the others!”

  “They were eaters of the dead. They slew no man. They consumed that which was already passed,” the judge said.

  “I witnessed them slay a goodman in their house. They crushed him with a rock.” Lead said. “They were murderers and deserved to die. I fought them in the defense of myself and the others.”

  “And yet no guard corroborates your story. Oh, so now the guards, men in the holy charge of witnessing the actions of the Pit, hold false? Is that it? All holy men are liars but you, a slaughterer of men?”

  The judge flung the knife tip across the courtroom.

  “All men in the Pit deserve to die, but they die by the Lord’s hand, not yours. You are a murderer, a slayer of men, a sinner. You’ve indulged yourself in the gluttony of sin and violence and as such you will be treated as a glutton.”
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  The judge struck the podium with his fist.

  “You are to spend five days in the Hall the Gluttons, after which you will be returned to the Pit of Traitors. May God have mercy on your soul!”

  The guards dragged Lead out the courtroom and across the Purgatory grounds. They waded through long grasses which rolled like the ocean in wind to a portable near the back of the complex.

  “Hold,” said a guard.

  The men paused in the field. The guards affixed cloth masks to their faces. The masks wafted scents of cinnamon and clove. Lead struggled against their iron grips.

  “What are the masks for? What is the Hall?”

  “Strip down,” a guard commanded, his voice was muffled by the mask.

  The guard leveled a .45 caliber pistol at Lead.

  “I’ll have your silence, goodman, unless you want me to hit that fragile face of yours.”

  Lead stopped struggling.

  “I realize you have questions, but the answer is in the doing and there’s no getting out of this. Strip down.”

  “What?”

  “Strip down goodman, no prisoner enters the Hall clothed.”

  Lead looked at the two guards. He stripped off his hospital gown and stood naked in the sun.

  The guard motioned forward with his pistol and the party continued. The men walked past trailers and buildings with latched doors and blackened windows. The wind carried moans and screams and the clack and whir of old machinery still in use. The party walked past the edge of the Pit and Lead wondered if the emaciated man was still alive. The wind shifted and Lead smelled something new, a putrid, human waste, like the smell of a cesspool.

  “That’s ours.” The guard pointed his pistol at a single-story log cabin. The party walked up a short stair case to an ornate door. The door was oiled redwood carved to show a hailstorm raining down upon men chained like dogs; the men wallowing in garbage.

  “Had that door made special. In we go then,” the guard said, leading the party through the door.

  Inside were raw wood floors and four white doors, set against badly carpentered walls. The air hung thick and impenetrable with the scent of human waste, Lead’s stomach clenched and heaved. His vision wavered and he fell against the scarred guard.

  “Don’t let any of your wounds touch the ground,” the scarred guard whispered as he pulled Lead to his feet.

  “If your wounds touch the filth in this hall, you will surely die of infection before your sentence is complete.”

  One of the guards opened an interior door. The stench doubled in potency. An orchestral chorus of buzzing flies emitted from the room. The armed guard placed a chair and rope behind Lead.

  “Sit down,” the guard commanded.

  “No, please,” Lead pleaded.

  Lead’s stomach unclenched and he vomited on his feet. The stink permeated all; it layered on Lead’s skin and coated his tongue. The armed guard pushed Lead into the chair.

  “It’ll be alright,” said the scarred guard. “Survivors of this hall speak of getting used to the smell. Just don’t let your chair tip over. The corpses we do find tend to be laid out in the muck.”

  The scarred guard coiled the rope around Lead’s body, feet, and wrists. Two guards lifted Lead and the chair through the open doorway. The floor of the room was an ankle-deep swamp of human waste. Countless flies covered all things wet and gave the room a disorienting illusion of motion. Lead vomited again, this time down his chin and chest. The room was small; the only light beamed down from a window in the ceiling. The guards set Lead against the wall furthest from the door. Lead’s feet dipped into the slime. His placement disturbed flies which clouded up like thunderheads.

  “Don’t leave me here!” Lead yelled in fear. “Please, take me back to the tent, or the Pit, anywhere!”

  “Tis good for your spirit, goodman. We’ll come back for you in five days time,” the scarred guard said.

  Both guards shut the door. Lead whipped his head from left to right and shook his body. He tried get away from the ubiquitous stench. He tried to give the flies no territory to claim. But the smell was overwhelming and the flies were legion and panic blacked his vision and rationality.

  “Noooooo!” Lead yelled at the closed door. “Let me out, let me out, let me out!”

  Lead bucked his chair against the wall. The floor creaked and groaned through the muck.

  “Nooooooo!” Lead yelled.

  He struck his head against the wall. The stitches across his forehead broke loose. Blood ran down his face.

  “Noooooo!” Lead yelled and struck his head again.

  The door opened. A masked guard walked in. Lead tried to open his eyes, but could only squint against a mask of flies. His head throbbed with the beat of his heart.

  “Let me out,” Lead said, holding himself against animal panic.

  The guard looked up at Lead and then walked back into the hallway. Lead whispered a prayer under his breath but stopped when the guard reentered with a waste bucket.

  “Sorry, I didn’t know you were in here. I got to keep these fresh,” the guard said. His voice betrayed him for a simpleton.

  The guard heaved the bucket of piss and excrement onto the floor, disturbing the flies. He went back to the hall and retrieved another full bucket.

  “Please let me out,” Lead said. “I’ve learned. I’m better now, please release me.”

  “That’s not up to me,” the guard said and dumped the bucket onto the floor. “That’s for judges and God to decide.”

  The guard brought in another bucket.

  “You be good and they’ll let you go. Just be good.”

  The guard heaved his last bucket into the room and closed the door.

  “No, come back!” Lead yelled. He jerked his body and struck the back wall.

  “Come back, let me out!” Lead’s voice was ravaged from yelling and panic and the soiled air.

  Lead roared and struck the wall again with his head. He levered his toes against the floor and rocked the chair back and forth. The flies and horror stench erased all vestiges of a rational man. Lead’s entire being converged on motion, escape, freeing itself from that which was unendurable.

  The floor creaked under the rocking chair. Floorboards saturated with years of urine and feces warped and cracked. Lead whipped around, throwing off flies and making the chair dance three-legged. A crash broke through the cacophony of buzzing. The boards under his feet cracked and fell into gaping blackness. Lead and his chair were swallowed into the hole.

  Lead dropped into the crawlspace beneath the cabin. He landed in mud fed from the old drippings of the Hall of Gluttons. He squirmed in retreat through the muck. He flexed his body against the chair, which groaned and cracked against his straining muscles. Lead flexed his body again. The chair back snapped and Lead’s ropes loosened. Lead pulled himself from the mess of knots. He crawled through filth, head pounding. In his hand he kept a chair leg, still connected to the chunk of seat; a weapon.

  Lead pulled himself out from under the Hall of Gluttons and stood. His naked body was coated with human waste. His toes clenched the long crab grass under his feet; before him stood the razor wire fence separating Purgatory from the Zona. Lead bit his tongue against the urge to yell out in joy. He fought the urge to scratch the filth covered skin from his body. Lead gripped the chair leg and pegged his way up the fence. His toes found purchase in the chain-links. The higher he rose the less he smelled the hall, the less he smelled his own body, the fresher and tastier the air became. From the distance alarms sounded and men shouted. Air horns pierced the early evening landscape and the voices of men were soon accompanied by the yowling of hounds.

  Lead focused on the fence. Slowly he ascended, driving the chair leg into the higher and higher links. Lead lifted himself up to the bushel of razor wire. In some other world rifles fired and bullets severed links near his hand. Lead balanced himself and shoved the chair leg against the razor wire. A space grew between links and the deadly bushe
l. A bullet cut the edge of Lead’s ear. He squeezed through the new space and tumbled to the earth.

  Lead was embraced by loose sand. A bullet kicked up the grit next to his face. In some far off place Lead knew that his ribs and back and legs hurt, but his body was numb. He rose to his feet and loosed a wild scream at Purgatory. Lead turned and ran into the desert. He was outside, he was free.

  XII. The Pima desert is a land of sand storms and rare sanctuary

  Lead ran barefoot against the backdrop of a burnt orange and bruised sunset. Rifle shots peppered the sand and dogs barked with men, and all of it focused and pursued Lead; it all belonged to a world Lead was no longer a part of. He had detached, dissociated. He felt no pain, or rather, that which created pain inside him had broken. He looked at the brilliant setting sun and bolted south, towards Tucson, towards New Pueblo, towards the grave of his friend, Terence Wood.

  Lead’s bare feet carried him over sand and rock and brush. From the southern horizon loomed an enormous sandstorm, charging up from the Pima. In the far distance, black-robed guards poured out of Purgatory gates astride horses. Lead ran with strides like leaps. He tilted his head and bounded through the storm wall and into the blinding miasma of howling wind and earth.

  The interior of the storm was otherworldly; an alien atmosphere populated by tornado worms and air that could only be ingested through gritted teeth. At the storm’s edge, horses whinnied and bucked and threw their riders, for sometimes animals show wisdom beyond the want of man. Black robes whipped like bats wings and guards struggled to control their beasts, to find fellow guards, to flee the storm before they were consumed like the escaped sinner had been. The storm swelled and reached across the desert into Purgatory. It scoured the structures and swept sand into the pit of men more dead than alive. The residents of Purgatory, freemen or not, fled for cover and more than one contemplated mans’ futility in the face of nature and the unquenchable wrath of God.