Chapter 6 EARTH ON THE BRINK

It was a Clement day at an open park near a fire hydrant, five minutes drive away from the seat of power in Tektona Grandis, the administrative capital of Earth. A man is being welcomed by some boisterous kids and a group of adults, comprising of three women and an elderly man, with the elderly man talking to the woman in his entourage pointing at the man being welcomed, saying: "behold the hand made of God,"  turning everyone's attention on him. The man was promptly whisked away by the group of adults to another part of the town in a Ford T model car together with the children.

On the other side, people throng the city from all walks of life; some from the villages and others from the township in their thousands, gaily dressed. Children playing among themselves and admiring each other's dresses. Down the lane, there was a traditional paying of homage to a Red Indian chief with his crown of Warbonnet amid pomp and fanfare. The free-flowing traffic on a four-lane was at once taken over by rage. The impatient drivers hoot indiscriminately. In a flash, a fleeing man whose identity was scrambled under a mask took advantage of the peaceful gathering and unleashed terror on the city. People were shot at indiscriminately with pump action guns emitting deep pulverizing sound: kak, kak, kak, in quick succession.

Somewhere else in the city, another militia group sprayed commercial trucks with a rain of bullets, living an indelible scar on their frameworks with drips of thick red blood trickling out from lifeless bodies of men and beasts. The same was replicated on a truck conveying thousands of litres of gasoline. In a twinkle of the eye, a whole district was torched by the escalating fires. Everyone left their merchandise and took to their heels only to be turned back on the sighting of a mob strapped with heavy pounds of explosives to their bosom, spreading into the unsuspecting crowds in a government building and the city's electricity supply facility and the next thing one could hear was an ear-splitting sound from detonating bombs, causing dizzying tremor in the core of the Earth, vapourising everything within its reach.

The fallout of the operation was sickening. Sirens from ambulances blare unending towards the multiple scenes of the blasts; shouting and crying could also be heard from its victims. Sheep bleats continuously, dogs howled wildly and chickens cackled from different neighbourhoods as a way of registering their dismay at the dastardly acts committed by men of the underworld for disturbing their peace.

Another group of militia with an extra dose of training in guerilla warfare led by Mishkagham Vwangshak and Ras-Alkamei are currently pushing harder around the government residential area and the situation there is better left untold.

The kidnapped were jammed in a coal-powered locomotive with sixteen coaches and rattled with them away along some of the planet's most dangerous terrains to the cusp of a forest called Falgore and from there, they embarked on another long trek into a valley hidden in a thick coniferous forest, sprawling from one wilderness to another. In this valley, there is a concentration camp dimly lighted with hurricane lamps for fear of attracting attention.

Surrounding the camp was a perimeter fence, backed- up with highly motivated men that provided round the clock surveillance, not to guard the inmates from escape but against savages that roam beyond it unrestrained. Here, the blinds of delusion were pulled back from the eye of the bunch of the Suzerian influential citizens, including their families and too business magnates of repute and they began to see the level of insanity their souls are about to be introduced to. They were stripped of their designer clothes in exchange for sack clothes which sparked a serious brawl as expected but the peppery militia wasted no time to remind them that they hold court in the forest of Falgore and that anything less than loyalty is a contempt of court and will only include severe punishment. They were also advised to ditch their celebrity statutes and embrace their present predicament because there will be no one in Falgore to celebrate them.

Their pieces of jewellery and other valuables, including their shoes were seized and issued with sandals fabricated from dead tires and we're shackled: neck, hands and feet, linking one prisoner with the other in a group of five and arraigned before Cecil the wild cat, a total of four thousand and forty-four Suzerian tribesmen.

Cecil the wild cat, who stands in for his master, Mishkagham Vwangshak, rides the high horse to the podium and began to rant dirt on his heartbroken audience saying: "on a day like this sixty years ago, the Kloribathan tribes were stripped of their God-given honour and clothes with a desecrated one humankind is yet to witness until now.

To my Kloribathan natives among you, no stranger breaks into their host's strong room without the consent of an insider. The Suzerians scarcely mingles with the Kloribathan tribesmen due to the fierce nature of their ways but some of our standing here before me pulled off strings of surprises by selling our secrets to the Suzerian strong men, paving the way for a ram battering of our people.

They barter the Kloribathan prisoners of war in exchange for tasteless inexpensive liquid such as rum, clothes and other useless articles. Some of them were taken to their territory to be sold as property; they were considered merchandise and were sold at the market with other goods and services to work on rice fields, tobacco and gold mines…Ouch, my heart bleeds!" Cecil weeps touchingly before the Suzerians.

"Down with you, Cecil, you will surely regret this," said someone among the crowd.

"Who said that? Indicate yourself by raising your hand or regret your action." Said, Cecil. All the captured overwhelmingly raised their hands. With a wave of his hand, Cecil flings their hands into the garbage and continued… "That was the extent the Suzerian has bastardised the sacredness of the Kloribathan tribe. Curry your heads in shame, traitors. Woe unto they that delivered us into the hands of the wicked tribe at a takeaway price for their selfish gains.

The plunderers, without thinking of its long term consequences, plummeted the Kloribathans into the abyss of the worse human degradation and slept with their two eyes closed. Alas, nemesis has caught up with you!"

"Brave worthy Kloribathans, to whom the Suzerians has dealt a political rough hand in the past and still feels its rippling effects today, Mishkagham Vwangshak, whom I, Cecil the wild cat stand-in for, announce to you with a heart weighed with joy, that the end of your malaise has come." There was wild jubilation across the gathering of militia.

"To my guests, welcome to a destination of no return. This is your new home till the end of time. Dim any hope of returning to your loved ones left behind. Your generation and its successors will be visited with gruesome retribution of the existing world's deadliest sorrowful mysteries. Many of you will die. You must not try to escape, if you do, you will be retrieved and be put to death."

The stench of treachery pervades the air; some collapsed while others wept bitterly in the presence of heavily armed militia, bestowed with the maximum authority to terminate life.

A man of aristocratic descent defiantly struck Cecil with deadly words saying: "I think you are completely deranged. If you were an animal, you would have been a hypocritical Skunk because everything about you stinks." His words stung one of the armed laymen badly even without understanding the meaning of his words,  "definitely," he said, "what that man said sounded provocative; none of the militia will advise anyone of you again to mind their tongues. The next minute, the aristocrat dropped down, dead, from a close-range shot on his head, sending a panic wave across the gathering.

At the end of his speech, the captured Suzerians were exposed to hard labour. They stumped and clear virgin fields to farm what they must eat, with rest, with a meagre ration of a meal. A hungry and worn out Sloane went to a wild grapevine and picked one off the tree and bit it hungrily. The next minute, she got her lips drilled and clipped with a lock.

If there was anything that kills faster than the guns and the zing of arrows is an array of man-eating beasts. Farming sessions always provide a buffet like no other for them to come around and fetch and drag their kill into the forest the inner recess of the forest. The Suzerians we're horrified and tired of seeing their loved ones being killed and dragged into the forest. One afternoon, a man named Borax, with a bulky frame, seized a nagging hyena by the throat and wrenched life out of the wretch. Impressed by this feat, the militia allows him to roast his kill and feast on it with his fellow prisoners. From thence, Borax is heard by them and was put under close watch.

Oca, a Red Indian native on a routine patrol on a horseback caught sight of a beautiful woman, her name was Olivia, the wife of Borax and wanted to get down with her. To demonstrate to Borax that he is as lame as the hyena he killed,  Oca tore her gown into shreds from her behind and sodomize her before the watchful eyes of her husband and children. Borax could not withstand the excessive culture of the wickedness of their captors. He charged in his direction and overpowered him. Borax pinned him down and stabbed him multiple times all over his body with his knife until he bleeds to death.

Now that Borax is armed with Oca's knife and his revolver, he searched his pockets and uprooted a bunch of keys and at once, went footloose, he gunned for the armoury. "Don't forget to gun down that grizzly Aztek warrior with bow and arrows covered with the darkness of tyranny," said his wife in a 'sotto voxel. Others agreed with her on that one. They believed that if the Aztek. Was taken out of the picture, it will be a cakewalk to freedom for them. This plan has been in the works within the inmates for some time now but was not opportune to test run its effectiveness until now.

To steal into the Aztek quarters housing the armoury, Borax must hurdle past a cluster of them on a watchtower, roasting potatoes and fish in a Bourne fire which is a suicide he wasn't willing to take. If caught, he is qualified to death by hanging.

Using the keys in his custody, Borax went back and unlocked three other dungeons, freeing three other ambitious prisoners and used them as a distraction to get to the weaponry. They threw large pieces of irons into an electric fence that produces sparks, which temporarily diverted the attention of the guards on duty but gave Borax the leeway to get to his destination. But unfortunately, that moves raised suspicion among the Aztek. "Oca?" They said, but no one answered. "it is thirty minutes since Oca left for a routine check and he isn't back yet, go and find him. The two people sent to trail Oca came back with a riderless horse and the slain corpse of Oca concealed in a latrine. "His killers are on the run; they are armed with Oca's gun and knife," they said, "it would be more fatal if we go after them. Let's sound the alarm and release our furry friends." Said, Cecil. Without feet dragging, the alarm went off and guards were ordered indoors and the doors shut behind them.

An underground dungeon was flung open, letting out two of the fiercest living cats of this time, the Tamil Tigers. They took reigns of the guard on the facility, with the militia standing on the watchtower, watching how the pow on patrol will take on their prey. Two out of the three were soon sniffed out and torn apart into pieces. Borax was spotted trying to break into the arms deport and was shot with a tranquillizer, sooner, he lay there, motionless. In a brief execution ceremony, a red hot iron rod, straight from the furnace was trusted into his annals till it busted out from his skull. This was done at the full glare of others to serve as a deterrent to any one of the prisoners nursing the idea of escape to desist from it.

Henceforth, Cecil, the acting commander in chief of the concentration camp insisted that patrols must move around in the company of three to nip at its bud the possibilities of such occurrences in the future.