Lee felt the familiar feeling
come over him again: the raw, shaky panic that rumbled low in his chest and
made his stomach roil. Outside the cell, the caravan was rolling up the gates. Hungry
Jack’s armored trucks, salvaged from a forgotten Loomis motor pool and splashed
with a crude red crown on their bulldog hoods, idled outside the steel rolling
gates. Lee stood and watched out the reinforced chicken wire window as the
black flagship armored truck started forward once the gates had opened,
followed by the next three.
Hungry Jack would eat now, Lee
thought. Then he and his men would summon the women, spread the wealth they had
torn from the dead fists of vagrants, gypsies, tribalists and the homesteaders
that stubbornly attempted to carve a home from the thick jungle that boiled
from the superrich soil. After that, well, Jack would sate his lusts with his
favorite concubines and then call—
There was the sound of a steel
lock sliding back, and the door swung open. Two soldiers stood there, heads
wrapped in the damp white headscarves that kept them cool in the unrelenting
tropical heat. One carried a machete, the other one of the precious shotguns.
“Up, you.” One of them roughly
grabbed Lee by the arm and hauled him to his feet. The one with the shotgun
stayed in the hall. Lee was frog marched out into the dilapidated passageway.
Hot sunlight tore through holes in the plaster walls, throwing shards of light
on the slick, mossy tiles of the ancient mental hospital. Through these holes
creeping vines the thickness of a strong man’s bicep snaked, spreading their
roots on the eternally damp surfaces. Through the holes in the walls Lee could
see the climbing baobabs with dark fortresses of roots, colossal kapoks and
abiu trees with swollen yellow fruits like warning buoys.
The double doors to what had
once been the chief administrator’s personal quarters were thrown open and Lee
was shoved forward onto the moldering carpet. Hungry Jack sat on his makeshift
dais, four of the largest desks in the building had been pushed together in the
cathedral-ceilinged room. Four oriental rugs and a huge papasan chair had been
sat atop this, and behind it all a brightly colored, hand-carved wall of wood
was nailed to the desks, creating a sort of throne. Two of the concubines
lounged at his feet, wearing only long beaded loincloths about their waists.
They gazed at Lee with hooded eyes, slight smiles.
Hungry Jack claimed to be as old
as the Cataclysm. Few believed him, as it would have made him a hundred and
fifty years old, but others claimed the Cataclysm had changed more than the
atmosphere and the soil. He had no memory of the time before the Cataclysm,
Jack claimed. He had been sent to earth as a child of the sun, a god. He had no
name and no occupation, but awoke in a factory of some sort. The story, as he
told it, was of him standing and seeing a sign before him of his name and his
purpose. He had torn down the sign and taken a vehicle, driving until it would
not go any further. He wandered, clutching only his banner and a monkey wrench
until he reached a small tribe wandering the grasslands that were swiftly
turning to jungle. He had taken control, founded his empire in the mental
hospital, and put up his banner, his mantra, in the throne room in which he now
sat.
The banner behind Jack said “Hungry
Jack: Everybody’s happy when it’s Hungry Jack.”
“So this is the assassin.” Jack’s
eyes were devastatingly lifeless, the blue of a strangled man’s face or a vein
under the surface of the skin. His face was dark from the sun, his hair was an
unnatural white that stood up in every direction, a strange disconnect with his
otherwise youthful appearance. His body rippled with muscle, wearing only
military style cargo shorts in camouflage and swimming shoes. Across his chest
was a tattooed jolly roger, and dozens of crosses decorated his arms. Each one
of those stood for a man he had killed. He lounged in the throne, smiling.
