One Hundred Years: Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Cuts from a Thousand Razors

Five years ago...
July 15th, 2115 

Helen smiled and watched the guards moving around. They were much larger than her, men all of them. The guards wore Kevlar and machine made blue cloth badges with white snow flakes in the center on their shoulders. The guards wore a plexi-glass face shield that distorted their faces. The guards were imposing and well equipped with modern gear.

They normally scared Helen, but today the guards looked scared. The guards were walking quickly and looking everywhere. A wild cat in the bushes would make half of the guards whirl around in alarm when it pounced on a bird or a squirrel. Earlier that day, one guard had fired his shotgun into the bushes on reflex when the man heard a shuffling. The noise had been made by a chickadee that had miraculously survived the buckshot.

Yesterday morning the guards had found the Trojan horse. Yesterday morning the guards had discovered that three of the prison’s five grain silos were contaminated with the gasoline from two of the prison’s four fuel storage tanks. Yesterday afternoon the guards had discovered that roughly a third of the prison camp’s convoy vehicles had their gas tanks filled with cement powder from the construction shed. Yesterday afternoon a guard had died when he opened the door to that construction shed and triggered a crossbow trap that punctured his Kevlar and collapsed his lung.

That was yesterday.

It was noon now and the workers were eating the meager potato soup that they were allotted. The guards were barely even watching them. All the Winter Wolves were watching the woods around the camp. In one day, Helen had watched her captors fall apart in the face of an enemy who had not engaged the guards in a single battle.

She had heard rumors that something had happened in the guard’s barracks last night, but the guards were not talking about any nighttime event. Helen knew better, because some of the prisoners who woke early had heard cries of alarm from the barracks near dawn.

Helen had a counted, and all the guards were present today. She wondered what had happened in the barracks.

Abruptly Helen heard a whistle and then a thunking noise and turned in time to see a single guard fall over with a war arrow through his throat. Most of the guards scrambled around the fallen man trying to administer first aid. Several guards charged into the woods in the area that the arrow must have been fired from. The woods swallowed them up.

Helen heard a second whistle and thunk, and turned her head towards the prisoners in time to see an arrow quivering in the handle of a shovel that had been shoved into the ground when her clansmen broke for lunch. The arrow had knocked the shovel over, but remained firmly stuck into the wood of the handle. This arrow could not have been fired from the same point as the first. There was more than one attacker, Helen realized. Then Helen saw that there was a cylinder attached just behind the arrowhead- and that the cylinder contained a rolled piece of paper.

Helen scrambled from here hiding place. The guards wouldn’t even go near the construction shed after one of their number died there. She ran to the prisoners as Brennan Wallace was reading the arrow’s note.

“Tell Simpson that he’s next.” Brennan read aloud. Several people made noises that ranged from surprise to admiration. Simpson was one of the more violent guards, smaller and meaner and more likely to rape the female prisoners- none of the clan liked him.

The guards were still busy with their injured comrade.

Helen’s Uncle Asher spoke up, “We should tell the guards about this.”

“They may hurt us for bearing bad news.” Brennan said.

“They will hurt us if they find out we didn’t.” Asher said.

“If we tell them, the Simpson might have a chance.”

“And if we tell them and Simpson is killed anyway, it will rattle them beyond all measure.”

“Don’t you think Simpson will try to defend himself?”

“I think he’ll try,” Asher snatched the note from Brennan’s hand and then hefted the shovel- arrow still in it. “I’m not asking your permission young man. I am telling you for your education.”

Asher turned and walked to the guards, stopping about two meters back and calling out to them. When a few looked up, Asher simply hefted the shovel and note together silently. Sergeant Aspen, a weathered man in his fifties stood up and walked over. He took both items and nodded slightly to Asher.

Aspen was a strong man with a mind that reminded somebody of a large truck with a wide turning radius. Aspen’s mind got the job done, but tended to drive over the garden and other people’s toes in order to do so. He scanned the note briefly and turned and bellowed for Simpson. Simpson approached and Helen strained to hear Aspen’s conversation level statement.

“They want you next kid. Get a buddy and get your head straight. You ain’t sharp enough alone.”

Helen could have peed herself laughing as Simpson’s knees literally shuddered. She held her amusement in as Simpson immediately looked furiously at the prisoners as though they were the cause of his problem.

Simpson was looking at Helen. He didn’t look happy. Helen shuddered. Now she was scared again.

* * *

Dolf stood quietly in the doorway of the administration building, watching the guards moving with distaste. The guards were scared- one day and they were scared. His brothers were not incompetent, although Dolf was beginning to think that his guards were. This did not make Dolf happy.



The teams had been sweeping the woods for nearly three hours, and had found nothing. Dolf had somebody else in the woods as well. Nugget was looking for tracks. None of Dolf's team or any of the guards could track like Nugget. Nugget had orders not to pursue the targets, just as the guards did. Nugget's job today was to look for patterns, hides and caches that his brothers might use. Unlike the guards, Nugget was under orders to maintain radio silence unless he needed back up- the was Nugget's standard method of operation.

"Grazhny eegra," Dolf said to himself, which meant 'dirty game' in the Nadsat slang of the novel "A Clockwork Orange."

Widow placed an arm around Dolf's shoulder. Dolf hadn't been aware that she was behind him and managed not to flinch. She didn't say anything, she simply spooned against him as he stood.

"My bratties are clever," Dolf said quietly, "They've spooked our chasso boys in less that thirty-six hours. Our six are good obviously, but the chasso babies are creeching at shadows."

Widow ran a glove clad index finger along Dolf's chin.

"If Nugget finds anything useful, You and Pillbug will join him in flushing them out. Force them into a fighting retreat towards the open camp. I want them loveted between our best and all of our chasso boys. We'll end this eegra with a britva at their throat."

Widow's hand stopped moving, "Pillbug baddiwad bolnoy"

Dolf's voice hardened, "Cheena, I don't care how sick you think he is. I don't keep you around to think. I keep you around for the old in-out-in-out, and because the way you shive people gives me a pan-handle. So don't think- just do those things that make me real happy. You pony what I'm saying?"

Widow's hand dropped away and she didn't speak.

Dolf didn't turn around as he continued speaking, "Tell you that you pony or I'll give you to Ogre."

Widow shuddered backwards.

"Pony," she said quietly.

"Dolf, We've found the guards who went after the targets." Ogre's voice crackled from Dolf's head set.

"Are the gloopy chasso babies alive or dead?"

"The guards are dead. And they are stripped clean, clothes and gear."

"The sodding sods are going to dress like us and shive us while we're blind."

"That would be obvious, but then why allow us to find the naked bodies? It makes that conclusion obvious."

"They're trying to trick us with a baddiwad eegra. Like their horse trick. Use the obvious trick as a distraction. Did Nugget find the bodies or was it the chasso?"

"The guards found the bodies."

"Charlie Cal!" It meant 'priest excrement', and was a curse of Dolf's, "Now the chasso babies will be even more spooked. Even a gloopy chasso will be able to count one and one and get two. They'll know what those missing uniforms mean."

"Agreed. Dolf I think that I should explain our suspicions about your brother's plans. It may be the only way to counter their fear."

"Ogre, If we tell the chasso that we know my bratties are bluffing us, then they won't bluff us. If we don't tell the chasso, then my bratties get another victory against chasso morale. What we need is not a lecture. What we need is one of the targets being sodded by spear in the center of camp."

"We do need them dead on a pike, but we don't have that option. Do I have your permission to give the guards our conclusions?"

"You do what you think will prod the best results from our chasso babies."

"I will Dolf."