Chapter 5 - Murder Torture Rape…
It Could Happen To You
Ash and Geoff rose from their bunk, dressed, and after visiting the bathroom, reunited and joined the current of children as they flowed to the cafeteria. They entered the door-less cavernous space and found the main line, waiting their turn to pull trays from the stacks and slide them along the rail toward the morning's various foodstuffs. The orphans around them moved at half-speed, making eye-contact with no one.
Someone got in line behind them. Ash heard him laugh, loudly, right in her ear. Then he grabbed her butt, hard, squeezing it.
Ashley spun, confronting the boy.
"Hi. I'm Vic," he said.
Ash punched him in the mouth, hard; rocking his head back, leaving his lips and teeth bloody.
Vic shook his head, furious. He wasn't big or especially tough, but he looked plenty mad and ready to retaliate.
However, someone in the crowd over Ashley’s shoulder distracted him. Two huge guys cut in line ahead of Ash, sliding trays down the rail.
Geoff looked at Ash and scowled. She shook her head, discouraging him before he opened his mouth.
Suddenly Vic wasn't just nervous, he was terrified. He'd forgotten all about Ash and his lip. He spun, ready to flee the cafeteria, but froze when he saw two other kids walking directly toward him.
He turned around again, holding his place in line. They all ignored him, but he was petrified.
Ash and Geoff moved down the line. Ashley watched the other kids moving around the cafeteria, they seemed groggy with that early morning, pre-breakfast lethargy.
She watched a kid walking up the line, moving past everyone. He wore his red sweatshirt with the hood up, partially concealing his face. He was moving fast. He approached Vic and put a hand on his shoulder.
Ash positioned herself to appear as though she weren't watching.
"Lethal, no, I swear, I was coming to see you," Vic said.
The hooded boy whispered into Vic's ear and lightly punched him in the small of the back. Vic appeared to be in agony, gulping air like a fish that found itself removed from water.
The hooded boy, Lethal, moved away, vanishing into the crowded cafeteria.
Ash watched Vic tremble. He leaned against the rail for support.
The two big guys, who'd cut in line ahead of her, left without looking back, crossing through the cafeteria. The guys behind Vic were already gone, their trays abandoned on the rail.
Ash saw a puddle of blood spreading around Vic's shoes.
She backed away, grabbing Geoff and leaving the line as the fatally stabbed boy collapsed to the floor.
No one noticed her stepping away; all they saw was Vic. He reached out for help, from someone, anyone, his eyes saying what his lungs had lost the strength to voice.
Everyone in the room decided they'd had enough and left their trays. In moments, the cafeteria held abandoned breakfasts at every table.
Outside, Ash and Geoff wandered down the seemingly endless playground. The idea of putting food to mouth seemed nauseating in the cold, hard sunlight.
District Thirteen, Angel City Orphanage and Juvenile Detention Facility, was made up of six separate properties, welded, bracketed and fused together. Their anti-gravity disks worked in unison to keep it aloft.
Not all the kids were juvenile delinquents, nor were they all orphans, but of the ten thousand residents, most served some of their time in both camps. Delinquents with parents in good standing never found themselves consigned to Thirteen.
An athletic complex occupied the center position of the district. Shaped like a vertical box kite, the complex featured sprawling athletic fields, over a dozen full size gymnasiums, a massive arena and seven smaller stadiums, along with medical facilities and dormitories for up to four thousand residents.
Almost as large as the athletic facility, was The Bolt, occupying the northeastern half of the district. The Bolt was like Russia to the rest of Europe, big, mean and cold. The juvenile detention section was once a portion of a maximum-security prison; now defunct, it had been cut into pieces and parceled out to charities, like orphanages.
A couple thousand grammar school students occupied the ancient Victorian orphanage on the northernmost side of the facility, where Ashley's prison transport initially landed. Also known as the Double Zero, (for Old Orphanage), it was the only unit in the district built for the express purpose of housing children. Of all the units, it was by far the most frightening and intimidating, as it resembled a massive haunted house.
Running the northeastern edge of the district was a proper school, called The Terminal. Made up of three large rectangular structures; each housing one of the traditional grading groups, i.e. Grammar School, Junior High or High School. It was called the Terminal for the massive bays of free-use terminals on every floor. Vid streams were authorized during off-school hours and the black market economy depended heavily on the legitimate wages earned by the code monkeys: kids working full or part-time writing computer code and streaming it for credits.
Finally, at the northeastern corner, was God's Hotel, a donated resort property housing the toddlers and grammar school students. District maps referred to it as the white block. Each block could be reached by following its stripe on the district signage; every block had its own color.
In the crisp morning air, Ash and Geoff walked with the general flow of children, across the fields toward the terminal education buildings.
As they approached, Ash noticed the kids splitting up. The kids her age headed toward the building on the east side of the complex. Geoff seemed bound for the building on the far west of the structure.
Ash looked over to her brother. "I think 7th grade is down there," she said, pointing in his general direction.
"Figured that out all on your own, did you?" he smiled. Geoff never missed an opportunity to flaunt his superior intellect.
"Funny," she smiled.
Geoff stood, looking at his sister.
"I guess I'll see you after school," she said.
Geoff looked away, not speaking.
Ash hugged him.
He briefly returned the hug but then pulled away.
"See you, Ash." Geoff turned, not wanting his sister to see him cry.
Ash watched him go until he vanished in the sea of kids.
Inside the high school building, Ashley noticed that all the interior doors had been removed. Most rooms were terminal halls, row upon row, back to back, five or six columns deep. Hundreds of kids could fit in each hall. Being kids, most of them goofed off unless a guard stood nearby.
In the presence of the baton-wielding citizens, the orphans remained silent and reserved. Where the guards clustered together, they did their best to stay silent and still.
Ash went up a flight of stairs and slipped into one of the terminal halls. Some of the other orphans noticed her, but pretended not to. She took a seat near the door.
A bigger-than-normal guy, half-sitting half-kneeling on the next chair, talked with someone on the other side of the row. Without even looking at Ash, he reached out and grabbed a hold of her chair, spinning it away from her. "Seat's saved," he said, over his shoulder, between chomps on a mouthful of chewing gum.
Ash didn't let him take the chair. "Not anymore," she said.
He stood up and turned away from his conversation. He was at least a head taller than Ashley and looked significantly stronger. Like sharks having caught the scent of blood, those sensing the oncoming conflict quickly grew quiet.
"Are you gonna hit me over a chair?" Ashley asked.
The silence hung in the air for a moment. He hesitated.
"Don't be a dick," Ashley said, forcing the issue.
A few giggles and snickers slipped out of the kids nearby.
"Yeah, Dick, don't be a dick," someone said.
At this, a dozen students burst into laughter.
"That's like telling a mouse not to eat cheese," a fully bearded teen, with garishly oran
ge-frosted hair, Oddball, said loudly, inciting peals of laughter.
Dick grew beet-red.
"Just don't call him a penis," another kid yelled out.
Even Ashley laughed.
"The best name on the shit ball!"
"Go on, tell her, Slim Jim," someone yelled.
Dick shook with anger.
"Give it to her straight, Johnson."
"You gotta be cocky, Peter!"
"Give her the beef, Slick Rick!"
The taunts came from everywhere. Dick became enraged. He threw a haymaker at Ash and she easily dodged it.
The audience gasped.
Ash stepped back.
Dick followed like a stumbling windmill, his flurry hardly a threat to the experienced girl.
She sidestepped him and let him careen past her.
Dick burst into the hallway and collided with a guard. He hit the citizen in the face and knocked him backward.
The guard touched his mouth; his hand came away wet with blood.
The guard looked at Ash and back at Dick, comprehending what must have been going on. He raised his baton and turned the voltage all the way up. He unmercifully smacked Dick across the face with it, the shock blasting him from his feet.
"Chasing a girl around, huh?" the guard inquired, literally hitting first and asking questions later. He charged up the baton again and gave Dick a shot to the ribs, followed by one to the groin. He continued with a boot to the face, another baton to the head and he was just getting warmed up.
The guard went berserk on Dick, beating him with the baton until he broke almost every bone in the poor kid. Dick began to have trouble breathing and finally the guard stopped, probably no more that a hair's breath from putting the boy into convulsions, a coma, and/or death.
A bell rang. The guard looked up. The room before him was full of staring and speechless children. "Well? Get the fuck to it, bitches!" he shouted. "Unless someone else would like to volunteer?"
They all turned, unfolded the shutters from their monitors, activated their terminals, and buried their faces in the streaming schoolwork.
The guard gave Dick a final kick. Richard groaned but held on. He stayed conscious, his breathing stabilized and convulsions never set in.
"Six weeks and you'll be fine," the guard muttered and wandered off.
No one spoke, looked around, or did anything but schoolwork. Except for Dick, who twitched every now and again.
A few minutes later, a pair of nurses with a collapsible stretcher arrived to load up the wounded boy. The nurses, young women in their early twenties, were both quite pretty, even in medical smocks. Some of the boys turned away from their terminals to watch.
Once the nurses wheeled Richard away, the kids looked over to Ash.
Big Chris broke the silence. "Hey, new girl…"
Ash ignored him.
Chris spun his mounted chair around. Everything about him was thick and heavy, from his feet to his dark black hair. "Hey, Hot Stuff," Chris called out.
Some of the kids laughed.
Ash turned to face him.
The room went quiet.
Chris stood, crossed the aisle and offered his hand. "Big Chris."
"Ashley," she replied.
Ash shook Chris's hand, but didn't stand up.
"Why was he so mad?" she asked.
"His name's Richard Peter Johnson," Chris explained.
"No, not him. The guard. Why did he go nuts like that?"
"They're all like that," a lanky black kid with a massive afro, Jones, answered. "All them citizens, they’re all alike. I'm gonna kill every fucking one of 'em, if I ever get the chance."
"Hear, hear, my man," said the bearded Oddball. "Hear, hear.”
Lunchtime in the cafeteria, Ashley sat with a tray of unappealing food. Across the table and halfway down from her, sat a few other girls. One of them looked up at Ashley but before the girls could acknowledge each other, her friends drew her attention away. Ash heard them call her Sky and watched as she tucked her long beautiful brown hair behind an ear. She looked like any of the other girls who'd attended Rivendell. But Ashley wasn't at Rivendell anymore.
Ash thought about the morning so far. After self-study, the high school students had two ninety-minute classes called practicals, first, science then English. Every other day they would switch between these two and mathematics and history. Practicals were taught by actual instructors, with assistants, but they weren't teachers like Ashley was accustomed to. They seemed more like tour guides, uninterested in whether the students were paying attention or not.
Ash looked up, distracted from her thoughts by a knot of quick moving boys that entered the cafeteria. Carver, Otai, Mike, and Bobby stepped through the doors and double-checked their objectives. They acted with decisive swiftness. They hadn't come for the food.
"Don't screw this up," Carver, said to the younger kids behind him. Philip Carver wasn't especially tall or otherwise intimidating, but what he lacked in stature, he made up for in mean-spirited aggression. The soul patch on his chin seemed to identify him as his own evil twin.
Bobby glanced over to Mike as they split off to handle their individual duties. Mike and Bobby, apprenticing to Carver, were a few years younger.
They each approached one of the standing guards. Bobby, a tall lanky kid, slipped the guard something and a moment later, the guard left. Across the room, Mike stood in the other guard's place, that uniformed young man was also on his way out. In a few moments, and the room contained only children.
Walking next to Carver was his right hand man, Otai. He too sported what little facial hair he could, across the top of his lip, with a little patch on his chin.
The Devils proclaimed to be an equal opportunity gang, culturally diverse and not segregated along color lines. Carver, an indifferent American mutt, might have been welcome in almost any of the six major gangs. He considered himself a player and he made money.
Otai, of Asian descent, could have gone with the Yellow Jackets. They offered recruitment opportunities with the Triad, should he survive till eighteen and make his escape. However, the Devils held a substantial amount of territory in Angel City, and on the district, they ruled.
Carver and Otai walked directly to the other side of Ashley's table. Carver smacked the girl Ash had earlier made eye contact with, Sky.
"Hey, Bitch!" Carver said.
The girl next to Sky, Shelly, turned toward Carver, but Otai grabbed her head and pushed her face down into her food. "Mind your business, sloot!" he said, smearing Shelly's face in her tray, getting food everywhere.
Carver tried to jerk Sky up by the shoulders, attempting to pull her from her seat. "Come on, get the hell up!"
Sky struggled to stay put.
"Tai, this bitch ain't up and walking in five, I want you to break Shelly's nose for her. Hear me? Five... Four... "
Otai pushed hard on Shelly's face. She cried out in pain. Otai leaned over her. "Hear that Shelly? I'm going to break your beak!" he taunted.
Sky struggled to get out of her seat, but Carver tried to hold her down and kept counting. "Three... Two... "
Sky twisted away from Carver and out of her seat. She stood in the aisle looking at them. "What the hell is your problem, asshole?!" she yelled.
"You're my problem!" Carver shouted back. "Fucking get outside, bitch!!" Carver shoved her toward the door.
Otai roughly kissed Shelly's face, put his tongue in her ear and pumped his hips against her back. "Thanks baby, you were great," he whispered.
Before he stepped away, he slapped Shelly's head, bouncing it off the table.
She sat up, crying, her nose and mouth bloody.
Otai followed Carver out of the cafeteria.
Ahead of them, Mike opened the door. Carver shoved Sky through and out onto the playground. Otai glared back at the lunchroom then exited, followed by Mike and Bobby.
Shelly ran to the bathroom, blood streaming from her face.
Ash stood up fro
m the table. A bunch of kids watched her walk directly toward the door.
No one made a sound.
The boys had deliberately chosen a door that opened onto a forested part of the facility. Ash could hear them ahead of her, but she couldn't see them yet. She followed.
In a small clearing, Carver confronted Sky. "So, what the hell, Sky? What are you gonna do about my 2 hunny?"
"Look, Carver! That is not my fault!"
"I fronted you two bills, Sky! That's a lot of yardage by any stretch. I fronted you!"
"Oh, Bullshit! I never came to you with my hand out. You forced this on me! I never wanted any of this."
"What? You think I set you up! You're saying I set you up? You fucking BITCH!!" Carver violently slapped Sky across the mouth, knocking her back a couple steps.
Sky looked up at him, her mouth bloody.
"Yeah? What you got to say now, bitch?!" Carver taunted the defenseless girl.
"Screw you!" Sky yelled.
Carver stepped forward and delivered an overhand punch to Sky's nose, knocking her from her feet. "Fine by me. You still got assets I can repossess. I'm gonna shift-6 in your guts, slut."
Carver started to unbuckle his pants. "One way or another, I'm getting my monies' worth."
Ashley moved in a wide circle around the drama, not drawing the attention of Otai, Mike or Bobby. She could see Carver and Sky now.
Sky squirmed backwards, away from Carver.
He jumped on her, pinned her to the ground and ripped at her top.
Sky fought back and he punched her in the face, repeatedly.
Dazed and beaten, she was soon incapable of resisting.
Carver ripped Sky's shirt open and started to undo her pants.
Ash stepped into view from behind the brush on the other side of the clearing.
Kneeling over Sky, Carver faced Ash, his friends arrayed behind him. "Oh, hey sexy!" he said, sitting on Sky's hips, "Wanna join the party? We're just getting started."
Ash walked toward Carver, stopping just a step away.
"How's about I tear up your asshole, just as soon as I'm done with this bitch? How's that sound?" Carver laughed.
Ash stepped forward with a mighty kick, connecting with Carver's chin. The kick snapped his head all the way around on his shoulders.
Carver fell backwards off Sky.
He landed on his back, his face twisted down into the grassy dirt.
Carver's friends stared at the body, its head one-hundred-eighty degrees wrong.
They looked up at Ash.
"Is he dead?" Bobby asked.
"I'm out." Mike turned and walked from the scene.
Bobby hesitated for a split second, but followed.
Otai looked at Bobby and Mike, who left him to make his own choice, but quickly. He could face Ash and Sky, but they would inevitably be caught with Carver.
"Another time, then, bitches!" Otai said to the girls, abandoning his dead or dying friend.
"Is he really dead?" Sky asked.
Ash knelt next to Carver. "It looks like he's breathing, maybe."
Ashley picked up Sky's shirt and handed it to her. "Let's get out of here," she said, pulling the battered girl to her feet.
The shirt was still wearable, albeit ripped and stretched out of shape. Sky pulled it back on.
As they left the clearing Carver made a hideous croaking sound. The further away they got, the louder his guttural cry became. His death rattle, if indeed it was, pursued them under the overcast sky.
Soon Carver’s terrible cries could be heard all the way across the playground. Before long, a couple of the social workers, compelled to investigate, discovered and rushed the injured teen to the closest medical ward.
In a nearby girl's bathroom, Ash and Sky stood in front of a mirror, checking out the damage Carver had done to her face.
The room stunk of disinfectant and wet cement.
"Why did you help me?" Sky asked.
"I dunno," Ash answered.
"Well, I don't mean to sound ungrateful. Thank you, but now we're both in real trouble."
"I've been in trouble before," Ash answered.
"Not like this." Sky held a wet paper towel to the bridge of her nose.
"I couldn't just let him rape you," Ash countered.
"He's a Devil. They're the toughest gang in the district." Her right eye seemed to swell and grow more purple with each passing moment. "I'm glad you helped me though. Really, thank you."
"You're welcome," Ash replied.
"You're new, aren't you?" Sky asked.
"It's my first day," Ash nodded.
Sky looked at Ashley in the mirror. "Then you're not protected?"
"What do you mean?" Ashley asked.
"Everyone pays protection to one of the gangs. It's like insurance. A lot of kids here are with the Fist. Some are Martians."
"Martians?"
"Red Stripe," Sky answered. "A lot of gangs pick names based on their color. Yellow stripe is the Yellow Jackets, mostly Asian, all dressed like Jun Fan disciples.
“Some gangs don't care what race you are, like the Dragons or the Devils. The Devils are the worst; they pretty much run everything."
A bell rang, indicating the end of their lunch hour. Sky jumped at the opportunity to change the subject. "Afternoon practicals are more fun than the morning classes. First it's art or music and then gym. Today is art class. I like music days better. I play piano."
"That's so cool," Ash said. "I can't play any instruments."
"I'll teach you, if you want," Sky offered.
Ashley smiled and nodded as they left the washroom.