Escape From Asylonia, page 19
part #1 of The New War Series
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Noah despaired. ‘If you went through the confidential files kid, you’d have seen that the damn UEF sent me here. Why didn’t they do something?’
The faint sound of a jetcar coming into land somewhere in the distance penetrated the silence that fell among them as David considered the question.
‘My best guess is they didn’t make any record of it, Sir. It would be bad enough if the Temüjin hacked the confidential files and found all the other stuff that was in there, but if they got wind that you’d come here, you and the whole friggin’ planet would be vulnerable. Probably did it to protect you, fat lot of good it did. I reckon they did try to come rescue you too, General. Tried, couldn’t get past that killer electrical storm, and gave it up as a bad job.’
‘Assholes,’ Noah grunted.
The human committee was interrupted by the grey thing beneath them.
'Look, guys. I'm sorry, I was just followin' orders ya know? Please let me go now, yeah? I’ll keep quiet, I promise I will.’
'Not until you tell us where we can find the men who hired you,' Sol told him.
'Honestly brother, I ain't got a clue. The boss coulda told ya, but it don’t look like he’ll be waking up anytime soon.’
All eyes turned to Bulldog Jack. A stream of blood trickled from the back of his head.
‘All I know,’ added Jack’s henchman, ‘Is that we were supposed to capture him and wait until somebody came to collect him.’
Sol nodded.
'Alright, guess we can kill him now, Brah.'
‘Please, no,’ the thug whimpered.
David shook his head stubbornly.
'I can't.'
'Sure you can, I just saw you in action, brah.’
'No. I mean, I won't.'
'What the hell, Davey?'
Noah peered through his hands and breathed the tears up into his mouth.
'He’s unarmed,' he whispered as the last of his cries subsided.
'Right,' nodded David.
The thug breathed a sigh of relief.
'Fine,’ said Sol.
The wrestler wrapped his fingers around the back of the thug’s head and drove it into a heavy fist.
XLVIII.
Night gradually encroached on the dishevelled old town like the crest of the sordid hangover that washed through Noah's veins.
He still had not fully comprehended the situation facing him, nor did he feel entirely comfortable with the arrival of The Wrestler, The Kid, and The Doctor into his isolated existence. There was something in particular about Rochelle that troubled him greatly, as though she were part of some important memory long since destroyed in a maelstrom of whiskey and gin. Yet even her sudden appearance in his life had not disturbed him quite as much as the message she and her friend had brought with them. The Temüjin Empire was still at large, waging a New War against The United Earth. Nor had the intrusion of his new companions disturbed him anywhere near as much as the realisation that they would get in the way of the one drink he needed so badly to sedate him.
Trailing behind them, Noah picked up his pace and lit another cigarette. Like them or not -and he was still not sure which- he needed Rochelle, Sol, and David, especially David. Something in the kid's eyes roused in Noah the idea that they needed one another, that David would do just about anything to protect him, and that the fate of something bigger than either of them, than all of them, depended on it.
At any rate, Noah felt certain that he would not be able to throw Temüjin-shaped target from his back without these new allies.
Maybe once upon a time, yes. Maybe then, at the height of The Final War, when kicking Temüjin ass in the name of ending The War to End All Wars had been his whole raison d'être, then he could have gone after them. He could bring the fight to his predators, taking them down with several carefully-placed bullets and the occasional back-handed fist to the face, but that was then. Now, as his lungs raged with fire and his bones ached from the earlier beating at the hands of Bulldog’s gang, and as the first effects of dehydration placed their deathgrip on his skull, he knew he was licked. Taking on the Temüjin might have been possible at one stage, but not when an even greater enemy had such a powerful hold on him. The Disease engulfed him. Already, the withdrawal had begun to throttle him. The demon he had kept sedated with poison now surfaced within Noah’s inner-madness, screaming to him in the throes of her miserable thirst.
He hurried to catch up with the others, almost fell under the weight of a dizzy spell, and righted himself before they noticed.
The kid, David, had told him that Earth needed The General. Beneath the languishing pain and psychotic torment, Noah wanted to give them whatever he could. Emerging from a series of flashbacks, each depicting gunfire, blood, exploding spaceships, and death, he clenched his fists. He had done too much already, given as much as he thought he had to give in ensuring the end of The Final War. If the Temüjin wanted to start The New War, he would give them whatever he had left and see to it that peace finally prevailed.
Yet as he staggered on through the darkened streets, he was struck by the feeling that, in his present form, Noah Fallon was no use to United Earth. To help, he would need to sober up. To sober up, he would need his medicine, and to get his medicine, he would need the three humans racing in front of him.
If they could just keep him alive long enough, he could find that one last drink. He knew they would try to stop him. He also knew that they could not possibly know how much he needed it. One more drink, any drink he could find, would soothe the scratching of his veins and the aching of his bones. Drink enough, and it would put him to sleep so that he could wake up in the morning ready to battle through the horrors of drying out. Looking on at David, Rochelle, and Sol as Phil’s Fuel and Diner came into sight, he swore that, this time, he would sober up for keeps. He owed them that much at least.
XLIX.
Noah was so wrapped up in his own thoughts, and in trying to regain some control over his limbs as they shook beneath the onslaught of insanity, that he scarcely noticed where he was walking and tripped over his own feet.
David and Sol reached their arms out to catch him. They tucked their heads beneath his arms and carried him forward as Rochelle lead the way, slowly and quietly, towards the forecourt of Phil’s. Finally, David voiced his torment.
'What happened, General?’ he asked, summoning the courage to get the critical question off his mind, and out of his mouth. ‘This isn't you at all, man. Not the General Fallon I know.'
'Know me?’ moaned The General. ‘Listen kid, I appreciate you and spandex boy coming out here to save my ass, really I do, but don’t go around thinking you know me, OK? Hell, I don’t even know myself half the time.’
He buried his head and allowed the two of them to aid him along, his feet scraping the ground. 'You know what you know about me? Argh...’
His blood boiled and parched the walls of his veins. The sensation of knives, driving into his temples, took hold. His throat dried. His voice came croaking through his lips in a deep, slow, rough sound that tickled at his throat as he spoke.
‘You know what you know about me? What they...ugh...what they told you...argh. They told you about brave General Fallon, didn’t they, kid? They told you about how your General destroyed enemy bases, and probably about how he leapt from a smoking jetcraft, and still took out two Temüjin ships whilst hanging from his parachute with a dislocated hip. They told you how I held that damn trench knife at Masa Niro’s throat until that scumsuck agreed to surrender and withdraw his troops.’
As with Rochelle earlier, David saw life breathing into Noah, and thought that his hero had never really been able to get all of this off his chest. Noah spat on the ground and continued.
‘That wasn’t the whole story, kid. They didn’t tell you that deep in here,’ he smacked his belly with his palm and regretted it at once. ‘Argh...deep in here,’ he coughed. ‘Deep in here, I felt anything but brave, I felt Goddamn scared. I felt sick, watching my buddies, my brothers, men I had fought alongside, getting blown to pieces. Even in the war, even in that bloody war, when everyone was kissing my ass, I felt scared and I felt sick, and I felt ashamed for feeling that way.
‘I tell you what else they never told you, kid. They never told you that whatever I did out there, it was only a distraction from the battle I was fighting up here.’
He tapped his finger at the point where the imaginary knife penetrated his skull and regretted that, too.
‘Yeah I managed to get sober, and yeah, once I did, I gave the damn Earth Force everything I had to get rid of those filthy frog beasts, but they never told you that when I was charging into battle against the Temüjin, I was only running away from this Goddamn brain of mine.
‘You think that shit goes away? Not a damn chance, kid. The drink, that’s only a symptom of all the bullshit that goes on in my head. You know what it’s like to go to bed every night and have the same nightmare, to see the men you loved getting blown out of the Goddamn sky by those swine, and to have no escape from it?’
‘Well, actually..’ David began, but was cut off by Noah.
‘This is who I am, kid. A man can pretend that how he feels and how he presents himself to the world are the same damn thing for a while, pal, but if he isn’t being honest, that conscience thing is gonna catch up with him and kick his ass for being such a damn liar.
‘You know why I went back on the bottle? Because I had no friggin’ reason not to. I wouldn’t have been able to do what I did in the war if I hadn’t overcome this damn Madness of mine first. After that, hell, I had a chance to enjoy my sobriety. We had a whole new life ahead of us, all of us. There was supposed to be peace, and good times, and I knew damn well I could only enjoy that if I stayed sober. Back home, kid, back home I had a reason to stay sober. Back home was my reason to stay sober. Take that away from me and what do I have kid? I got stuck on this wasteland of a planet and I had nowhere to run, so I picked that poison up and got busy doing to myself what those Temüjin assholes could never do to me, and will never do to me.’
Sol and David looked at each other, then at Noah, then at their feet.
David wanted to speak but found no words to sum up the feeling of his heart dropping heavily into his stomach. He looked at Noah again. Through the General’s glazed, bloodshot eyes, David saw that Noah had lost everything but hope. Noah sighed and squeezed David’s shoulder in compassion.
‘Look kid, you came here to rescue The General and take him home to help in this New War thing. You’re not gonna do that.’
David looked down again, defeated.
‘What you’ve done is rescue plain, old Noah Fallon, the drunk,’ Noah told him. ‘I want to fight this New War too, OK? I want to, and I will, but there’s something bigger I gotta fight first. Look, you can’t bring The General back, kid. Only I can do that.’
L.
David patted Noah on the back. He was about to speak, to tell him he understood, when he was distracted by Rochelle. The waves of her hair crashed against her shoulders as she ran onto the forecourt of Phil’s Fuel and Diner. A dreadful moan rumbled from her lips.
'What's the matter, Doc?' asked Sol.
Rochelle buried her face in the palm of one hand and pushed the other towards the display of dancing flames where the Delphi had once stood.
David offloaded his share of Noah’s weight onto Sol, then edged toward Rochelle.
'I can’t believe it,' she sobbed.
David wrapped his arm lightly around her waist.
'Don't worry,’ he said, masking his nerves with an air of assured confidence, ‘We’ll get out of here.’
'But all my supplies, we need those.’
‘What about the syringes in your pocket?’
‘That’s the HIV cure, remember David? I’m not letting that out of my sight, even still it’s not going to help us now. All my notes were on that memory stick I dropped back on the Skyway, so that’s gone too, but at least I’ve got the cure.
‘But I needed the rest of the stuff, David. You're hurt, Sol's hurt, and I fear Noah is in much more trouble than even he realises right now. Oh, God!'
Her body fell into David's and he held her close against his chest, one hand resting on the small of her back, the other playing lazily with her hair, scooping it up and letting it sift between his fingers like sand.
‘Everything’s gonna be OK.'
He forced the words from his lips, not entirely with conviction, but at least confident enough subdue the hysterical doctor.
Moments later, Sol approached, a groggy Noah hanging from his shoulders.
David looked beyond them, into the shaded side-street that cut into the row of shops and bars opposite Phil’s. Holding Rochelle against him, he turned to Sol.
'See that passenger coach over there?'
'Yeah brah, why?'
'Reckon you could smash the window through?'
‘Does the sexiest guy alive look pretty good in red spandex?’
'Huh?'
Rochelle looked up at Sol.
'Oh God, we're screwed!' She wept.
Sol glared at the sobbing woman, almost offended, then offloaded the General back on to David and turned toward the street.
David held onto Rochelle with one arm and held Noah up with the other, watching as Sol drove a clobbering fist into the window of a silver and white passenger coach. He succeeded only in causing more damage to his hand than the window.
Masking embarrassment with frustration, the giant man launched his fist forward a second time, beaming proudly as the window shattered into tiny fragments of reinforced glass.
A piercing shrill, the terrible scream of the coach's alarm, bled into the air. Sol forced his hand through the broken window and grappled with the lock.
David patted Rochelle on the back, urging her to run for the coach. Sol helped her inside, where she commandeered the pilot's seat and beckoned the three men forward.
David struggled across the park with the limp body of Noah barely hanging from his shoulders. In the hurry to reach the coach, Noah fell from David and took a nose dive into a waiting puddle strewn with litter.
'Come on, brah. Hurry!' Sol ordered.
A second siren filled the air, the callus cry of a police jetcar approaching from close by.
LI.
David helped Noah into the jetcoach and dove in after him.
The police jetcar darted into view from above a tall building and sped towards them. Sol leapt into the coach and bolted the door. Rochelle pushed and pulled at the yoke, stamped and stomped at pedals, and prodded and poked at a panel of buttons. The coach stood static.
'The bloody thing won't budge!' she yelled over the screaming sirens.
'Well you’d better do something quick, Doctor Lovely,’ snapped Sol. ‘Those cops are coming right on us!' snapped Sol.
'Here, let me try,' David barked over the top of them.
As the first volley of thunder from a policeman's gun stung the surface of the coach, David freed Ganesha from his pocket and played with her controls, pressing her against the biometric ignition of the jetcoach. At once the machine purred to life. Her underbelly growled. Her sides bubbled beneath showers of bullets. Rochelle took the coach into the air.
The police gave chase, breathing down fire. Every bullet caused the coach to careen off course. Every lurch aggrieved Noah’s guts until he threw up in the galley.
'How the hell did I get mixed up with you people?' asked Sol, as he took Noah by the scruff of his jacket and conveyed him to the relative safety of the backseat.
'No idea, but looks like you're stuck with us for now, brah,' smirked David. 'Rochelle, take her onto the Skyway please.'
'Not for much longer I won't be. Not when these cops catch up with us, brah. I'll be rotting in some jail cell like the rest of you. Damn, the way my day’s been going today, they’ll probably throw me in solitary just for kicks.’
Rochelle ignored Sol. She stared wide-eyed at David.
'But the Skyway will slow us down,' she begged.
'Yeah, and it'll also slow them down too. I dunno how you guys do things on this planet, but back home cops still don't fire bullets when there's a bunch of civilians around. Please, Rochelle? The Skyway?'
Rochelle gave in to the request, accelerating into a steep, wide curve, before ascending higher and cutting onto the frenzied traffic of the Skyway. Across the backseat, Noah lost greater portions of his guts.
All manner of jetcars, ships and jetcycles dashed around and beneath them. The shooting subsided, though the cops pursued them with no less conviction.
Rochelle careered along the Skyway with all the recklessness of an erratic drunk driver. Despite such appearance, she knew what she was doing. At least, she hoped David knew what he was doing, as he barked orders at her from behind the pilot's seat.
Together, they led the cops into the second-row, centre lane of the Skyway, wedging themselves between a clamour of freight-ships, and trapping the cop car several vehicles behind. Then, they descended beneath the gust of traffic and onto the lower outside lane.
'Alright, Rochelle. Off the Skyway, now!'
'But dude, we just got on here!' yelled Sol.
'Listen to the...' Noah began.
He was interrupted by another wave of vomit spewing from his lips and splattering against the coach window. Sol turned away from Noah and held his hand over his nose.
'Damn dude,’ he recoiled. ‘Is there anything left inside you?'
Noah's face flushed red and then pale green, his lips stiffened and his cheeks swelled.
'On second thought, don't answer that. I mean it though Davey, we just got on this thing. You said it yourself brah, they can't do jack up here. What the hell we wanna turn off for?'
