Wasteland Wonderland - Part 1 Read Online Free Page A

offended.
    “You took your time getting here,” he
says.
    “I didn’t realize I was on a schedule.”
    “Who else did you talk to?” he asks, getting
straight down to business. “Where have you been? And where did you
get that gun?”
    “This is my gun. I’ve always had this. Had it
since I was a pup.”
    “We know who is packing. We track those kinds
of weapons. And you, you have never owned such a fine piece of
hardware.”
    “How could you possibly track something like
this?”
    He doesn’t answer me. He doesn’t want to give
away information that he’s not supposed to. But what he doesn’t
realize is that while he’s bragging about his fancy gun and his
people’s abilities to track weapons and keep tabs, he’s giving away
good solid intel.
    Giving it away for free.
    Which means… he’s either dumber than he
looks, or he doesn’t care what he tells me because he’s about to
put two bullets in my chest and one in my skull.
    “You killed Enforcers,” he says. “Good men.
Good citizens of Wonderland. They were my friends. Usually the
punishment is Exile. But not in this case.”
    “I’m sorry about that. Really, I am. But you
people gave me no choice. And what the hell were you people even
doing there? Why the frame? Why the set up? What did you want with
the girl?”
    “You don’t get to ask the questions.”
    “I’m a dead man,” I say, trying to reason
with him. “You can tell me. You can tell me everything because I
won’t tell anyone when I’m dead. And right now, there’s no one else
around. It’s just you and me and whatever is lurking in these dark
tunnels.”
    “I’m just following orders.”
    “That’s a lie.”
    I shift my eyes to the dark. Off in the
distance, I picture something there, something big. And I say, “We
think they’re mutants. From the radiation. From all those fucking
bombs they dropped during the Great Wars.”
    “You’re not going to scare me.”
    “It’s funny, isn’t it? We were fighting wars
over land and food and water. And all the while we were dropping
nukes. We were destroying the very things we were fighting over. We
were sealing our fate. Or at the very least, we were speeding it
up.”
    “The Great Wars led to the Truce, which led
to the building of the Arks. The wars were a necessary evil.”
    “Is that what they teach you in Wonderland?
Is that what they tell you?”
    He slowly reaches for his fancy gun. Rapid
fire. Large mag. Silenced barrel. This guy is carrying around a
fortune. A treasure. And he doesn’t even realize. I see him flick
the safety off…
    He is sick of talking.
    “There is no escape,” he says. “My partner is
waiting in the bar. You are trapped.”
    I smile. “That’s funny, because the way I see
it, you’re trapped down here with me.”
    He looks at me like I’m crazy. He looks at me
and he can’t figure out why I’m smiling.
    He shifts his weight, stepping back. He
swallows hard. It’s right about now that he is starting to feel
extremely uneasy. I tend to have that effect on people.
    “You hear that?” I ask.
    Again, I look off into the dark. I picture
the monstrosities, the twisted abominations. I picture creatures
from the depths of the Wasteland.
    He doesn’t buy my bluff.
    But then all of a sudden there is a noise. A
loud thump. An even louder roar. A roar . Maybe there really
is something coming this way.
    The Enforcer turns and he raises his weapon.
He’s expecting a monster, something from his imagination, from his
nightmares. He’s heard the stories. Of course he has. And even
though he hides his fear well, I know he is scared.
    But there’s nothing there, nothing but the
monsters of his mind.
    The barricades do their job this time.
    Anyway, while the Enforcer is distracted, I
move behind him with my knife in hand. I put him in a choke hold.
My forearm and bicep lock around his neck. He automatically stands
up, he automatically struggles, arching his back. I slide the knife
into his spine.