Lead woke as his body was untied from the Crusader’s horse.
“We’re here,” Eliphaz announced as he dropped Lead’s inert body on the ground.
The sun’s radiance burned Lead’s morning eyes. His vision cleared and revealed the entrance to Purgatory. A chain link fence, standing over twenty feet and crowned with razor wire circled the entire complex. Trailers and portables speckled the sandy grounds and acted as the secondary standing structures. Towards the front of the grounds, a courthouse stood as the primary building. In front of Lead stood a gate, above which a scratch-iron sign proclaimed:
“Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter!”
Beyond the gate and the courthouse and the portables and trailers was nothing but desert, as imposing and restrictive as the prison fence and razor wire. Lead had been here before. He had delivered bound marks to this very gate. The same dead smell of rot touched his nostrils.
Eliphaz pulled a bell cord and waited for guards. Two eventually arrived, shuffling their feet in a combination of formality and haste.
“I’m Crusader Eliphaz, I deliver on to you the Goodman Leonard Marchez, of Flagstaff,” Eliphaz boomed for all to hear.
He held up the cross tattoo on his forearm, the sign of the Crusader, for inspection and then handed folded papers and Lead’s knife to the inspecting guard.
“Let the magistrate know, Goodman Lead resisted apprehension and should be shown no mercy or absolution. So says I.”
The inspecting guard, having been satisfied, nodded and pocketed the knife and papers. The guards lifted Lead by his bound arms and carried him through the gate. Having delivered their captive, Eliphaz and the young Crusader abruptly left, waiting neither for reward nor praise for their capture.
“Where are we going?” Lead whispered.
The guards did not respond. They were cloaked in black robes cinched with belts, the uniform of Purgatory guards. The guard to Lead’s left was marred with a scar running from forehead to neck.
“What’s inside?” Lead whispered.
He had heard rumors, but no one in the Church spoke specifically of what happened in Purgatory. Law forbade it.
“You’ll find out soon enough, sinner,” the scarred guard answered. “Make no stir or trouble. You’ll know the insides of this place soon enough.”
The guards carried Lead through an arch and into the courthouse of Purgatory. They traveled through an enormous hallway of stucco walls, worn and smoothed by time and bodies. At the end of the hall, a long white table stood in front of a towering ivory podium. All was colored white or gray. The black-robed guards stood in stark contrast. Guards busily shuffled through doors and passages, but none looked to Lead as he was dragged to the table and made to sit and wait.
Eventually a judge in billowing red robes appeared behind the podium. The judge looked older than any living creature Lead had ever seen. His skin was yellowed and crinkled like parchment. His fingers protruded from hanging sleeves like tree branches. What hair he had stood as tufts of cotton on his scalp. When the judge spoke, all guards stopped and stood in silence.
“Stand, sinner. Stand to hear the words and judgment of this court,” the judge rasped.
Lead was propped up and held by the guards. He was barely strong enough to stand on his own. His mind filled with fear.
The judge unraveled a scroll with his spindly fingers. He held the scroll at arms length and squinted at the print. He raised a finger and a guard brought a lit candle to the podium. The judge’s cracked lips silently worked themselves up and down as he read each line to himself. Eventually he looked up at Lead.
“You are hereby accused of the crimes of treachery and heresy. You have gone against the Church and our Lord in failing to complete your duties as a designated Preacher of the Church. Your charge is exacerbated by the fact that upon the commission of your sin you chose to flee the divine judgment and wisdom of the Church. Do you have anything to say in your defense?”
Lead scanned the judge’s face. He tried to think of a defense, he tried to think of precedent or Church wisdom to act as mitigation for his crimes. He wanted to find saving words but could not think past the pain in his body, the hunger in his belly, the dryness of a mouth which had received little water in many days.
“Your Holiness,” he started and then paused, looking for more words. “I’ve committed sin against the Church. I did not shoot the mark Terence Wood.”
Lead tried to gain his feet. It felt important to stand straight. He looked into the judge’s eyes.
“I did not shoot the mark, I had him under the choice, but he refused the rope. I could not make myself shoot him.”
The judge looked back at his scroll. He jabbed it with his finger.
“It says here, Goodman, that you slew twelve marks under Church command. What made this one different?”
“I don’t know, your Holiness. I lost the killer inside me. I couldn’t put a bullet to him.”
The judge leaned back in his chair; he drew forth a scrap of paper and read out loud.
“Crusader Eliphaz supplemental report: Mark Leonard Marchez passed through a village of nomad heathens on the outskirts of Havasu Perish. One heathen was slain by two gunshot wounds from mark Lead’s .38 caliber pistol. Two more nomads sustained injury by blunt force, possibly the mark’s pistol or a club, or a rock.”
The judge held the scrap of paper to the candle flame. It blackened and curled and turned to ash on his podium. It caught and burned to nothing. The judge stared through Lead. He spoke slowly, letting each articulated word echo in the courtroom.
“You are a hypocrite, Marchez. You claim the Lord stayed your hand from committing violence and yet you commit violence against heathens outside of Havasu a day later. What say you?”
Lead forced himself to stand straight.
“I admit I fired upon the heathens. They attacked me, I defended myself.”
“Terence Wood attacked the Church. He stopped apprehending marks. He stopped purging sin from our precious society, even worse; he let the sinners roam free in hiding. The fabric of our society is based on civil rules, Mr. Marchez. That which undermines our rules undermines our society. Terence Wood was a harbinger of chaos and his sins were unforgivable. Sin hurts society, sin hurts the Church, and as such, sin hurts you, mark. Sin brought our society to despair. Sin destroyed the first world nations, and it is sin that you were charged to fight.”
The judge drew forth another scrap of paper.
“Crusader Eliphaz supplemental report: Upon apprehension Goodman Terence Wood refused the rope and was brought under the blanket. In the ensuing combat Crusader Jerrod Black was shot and killed. I was wounded when the mark Leonard Marchez stabbed me through the left forearm with a knife.”
The judge held up the knife, the blade was still stained with Eliphaz’s dried blood. He put the knife down and held the Crusader’s report to the flame. Ashes scattered across the podium and drifted to the courtroom floor. One of the guards collected the ashes in his hands and laid them on the table in front of Lead.
“You are not an innocent, Marchez. You make claim to losing the killer inside; your very words of defense. And yet you stab a Crusader in the course of his work. Not only have you broken your accord with the Church, Mr. Marchez, you act as an enemy combatant of the Church. You sir, are treacherous.”
The judge raised his hands and the guards tightened their grip on Lead. One put his hand on the back of Lead’s neck while the other kicked out his left knee. Lead sprawled onto the table. The scarred guard twisted Lead’s head around so he faced the dome ceiling of the courthouse. Another guard pressed his jaw muscles until his mouth puckered open, and a metal pipe was forced past his teeth and into his throat. Lead tried to yell out but his words were muffled by the gagging pipe.
“You were a trusted Preacher of the Church, and you became an enemy of the Church, a lover of sin and treachery. You are a traitor against God and country and there can be no worse crime.” The guard with the pile of ashes approached Lead. He held the ashes above the pipe.
“For the foulest of crimes you are to be banished to the foulest of places. You are to consume the ashes of your sins. Eat your sins and pray that they will sustain you, for you are going to the Pit of Traitors. There you will be given no sustenance save the Earth’s clean water. Let your sin fill your belly, for the Church has no will to.”
The judge raised his hand and the guard poured the ashes into the pipe. Lead’s throat was instantly coated, his body tried to cough, but the gagging pipe and ashes blocked his air. Lead convulsed and lights flashed before his eyes when he was suddenly released by the guards. Lead pulled the pipe out and coughed a wet black mess on the courtroom floor. The judge sneered in disgust.
“Remove this creature from my sight.”
As Lead was being dragged away, a guard leaned in and whispered.
“Listen mark, you’re going to be rolled into the Pit. Stays in the Pit are short but few survive. You will be given no food. If you partake of the flesh of man, you know, eat people, you will never be removed. If you take in no sustenance but water, you will be absolved and survive your trial.” The guard smiled and nodded encouragingly. “Pray God be with you and cure you of your sin.”
The guard stripped the remains of Lead’s trench coat and tied a length of cloth over his eyes. Another guard pulled Lead’s arms back and tied him to a long plank. He was lifted and taken out of the courthouse. In the distance men whispered, desert birds chirped, the wind stirred grit.
“Good luck, sinner,” the guard said.
Lead’s binds were cut and his body thrown end over end. He tumbled over loose dirt and gravel for short seconds that stretched long in his fear and panic.
Lead impacted solid dirt and immediately tore off the blindfold. The sun stung his eyes; his lungs breathed air thick with human stink. The Pit was massive, perhaps twenty yards across. At the end farthest from Lead stood a shack cobbled from planks and rope bindings. The Pit squirmed with life. Innumerable emaciated men crawled on hands and legs to find shade against the sun’s blaze. What showed of their skin, what wasn’t caked in dirt and blood, was burnt and bubbled.
The Pit’s shack was its only structure. Three men stood in front of it. Their bellies were pouched in malnourished distension and their skin was a dark shade of gray, but aside from Lead they were the only men in the Pit with the strength to remain on their feet.
“Oy, give us your wood, new man,” shouted one of the gray men.
They approached Lead together, slowly, like predators accustomed to overwhelming prey. They ignored the moans of the emaciated men they stepped on or over.
Lead searched the ground for the plank he’d been thrown in with. Behind him, one of the emaciated men had wrapped his body around it and gripped it like a serpent. Lead tried to reclaim the plank, but could not pull it loose. In frustration, Lead stepped on the starving man’s hip to wrench the board free. He turned to the gray men, clutching the plank in both hands like a sword.
“Come on, lovely,” the gray man said. “Give us your wood.”
A gray man charged Lead with hands raised like claws. Lead sidestepped the man and swung the board into the back of his skull. The gray man collapsed, the emaciated men around him crawled away like frightened sloths.
“Right, tough one we have,” said one of the standing gray men.
“You like to fight, we like to fight too,” said the other gray man.
They moved to circle the ex-Preacher. Lead leapt back and pressed spine against the Pit’s edge. He held the board high over his head, ready to strike.
“Leave me be,” Lead said. “Let me serve my time to release and I will leave you be.”
The gray men paused just out of striking range.
“You are to learn,” said a gray man.
“That no time here is served out. The Pit consumes all who enter. No man leaves,” said the other.
The gray men retreated, pulling their unconscious compatriot back into the shack. Lead slumped against the dirt and watched them. One of the emaciated men touched his leg. Lead raised the plank above his head.
“Hold, new man,” the emaciated man pleaded with hands raised. “Please let me sit near you,” he whimpered.
Lead looked the man over. He was ageless in that he might be old or very old. Sun blisters and filth masked the man’s features, creating a creature both disgusting and pitiable.
“Sit where you are and talk if you will, I just want to serve my time,” Lead replied.
The creature crawled closer to Lead.
“There’s no serving here, sir. The cannibals did not lie to you. I’ve never seen a man leave this Pit, nor has anyone I’ve spoken to,” the man whispered.
“Cannibals?”
“True, they that possess the shack do consume men’s flesh. They have been here the longest for they do not starve. They will consume us all eventually.”
The emaciated man rolled until he faced the shack.
“They hide their deeds from the light, but all know; those who are captured and brought in are consumed.”
He turned to Lead. Pleading eyes peered through scars and seams.
“They whisper that my time has come. I’ve been with out food for ten days and have no strength to stand or fight. Please help me.”
Lead looked into the man’s eyes. He looked across the Pit at the other pathetic creatures, at men rendered into worms by need and lack of sustenance.
“What was your sin?” Lead asked.
“I am a traitor to the Church, same as all in the Pit. I assisted a couple of Marys in escaping Globe Parish. They were young and scared and were to be married to men of ill and violent temperament. I guided them to the New Mexico border. I was declared a traitor to the Church for this action. I was captured and bound outside of Globe. I do not regret what I done; but I don’t want to die like an animal.”
The emaciated man looked again to the shack.
“I need to sleep. I’ve been vigilant for days against the gray men. When I awaken, you must get sleep. I promise to keep watch over you and cry out if they stir.”
Lead nodded in agreement. The emaciated man crawled up against the dirt wall. Lead rubbed moist dirt onto his skin to try to ward off the sun. Both stared at the plank shack.
“I was a Preacher. I’m not anymore,” Lead whispered after the emaciated man had risen.
“One of the grays was a Preacher, too,” whispered the emaciated man. “So I heard.”
Lead woke to hoarse screams. His stomach was caved and empty. His skin was hot from the relentless sun.
“Say nothing, do nothing,” the emaciated man hissed.
Across the Pit, the gray men lifted a skeletal man by his arms and legs. He did not struggle, only let out a hoarse scream against the attackers. The gray men dragged the skeletal man into their shack. The creatures of the Pit squirmed to clear a path. Lead tightened the grip on his plank and stood up.
“Don’t!” The emaciated man said. He clutched Lead’s ankle but his grip was a weak reflection of his dying vitality. Lead pushed has hand down with the plank.
“I have to,” Lead said.
He walked away from the emaciated man’s whimpered protests. The skeletal man’s screams radiated from the shack. Lead walked slowly, imagining where the gray men would be in the shack. He wanted to form an attack plan, but found it almost impossible to think past the hunger in his stomach and the fear of the impending fight. The screams were suddenly cut off by a wet slap. Lead ran to the entrance.
Inside the shack two of the grey men held the skeletal man down while the third struck his face with a fist-sized rock. The rock was painted in blood. The skeletal man’s face was caved and not recognizable as human. The floor of the shack was strewn with the fleshless bones of men. The gray men looked at Lead.
“What do you want to do here, new man?” Asked the gray man holding the rock. “Care for a bite? The meat is terrible raw, but we have much.”
“You can’t eat that man,” Lead said, holding the plank in a fighter’s stance.
“He’s not a man,” The gray man said and stomped on the skeletal man’s face with a loud crunch. The man’s body shook with convulsions and just as suddenly stopped.
“He’s sin. I feed off sin. You feed off of sin, that’s our punishment.”
The gray man stepped over the corpse, the other two stood. Lead backed away from the entrance. Panic gripped his chest in a thousand cold needles; his breaths came out as shallow gasps. He backtracked slowly to the center of the Pit, plank raised over his head.
The gray men stood at the entrance of the shack.
“If you’re not a sin eater, you’re not allowed in our house,” the lead gray man said. “Only survivors are allowed in this house. You’re not one of us. Me and mine will feed on you soon enough.”
The gray men backed into shadows of the shack.
Tears streaked the dirt on Lead’s face. He relived the scene in his mind, replayed the foot snuffing the starving man’s life, imagined himself crushing the gray men’s heads; doing anything but retreating in fear and panic.
Lead yelled out in frustration. He screamed and shook his board at the shack, like an animal. Inside the gray men laughed and the Pit was soon filled with the wet sounds of tearing and gnashing.
“You will kill no one else!” Lead shouted at the shack. “Every man here is under my protection and the Lord’s protection and you shall eat no one else!”
There was a pause in the wet sounds. The leader of the gray men appeared at the entrance.
“You do that. Protect these men. We’ll just wait for you to wither and weaken and we will take what is ours.”
The gray man stepped back into the shadows. The sound of men eating man again filled the air.
“Get up! Get up!” The emaciated man croaked as he tugged on Lead’s arm.
Lead sprang awake, the plank in both hands. His eyes cleared in time spot the gray men approaching from across the pit.
“Aw,” the leader of the gray men said. “You have an alarm. How very cleaver, we’ll come back later.”
The gray men backed into the darkness of their shack. Lead looked around himself. He was surrounded by creatures of the Pit. Innumerable men, all on or near the verge of death, surrounded Lead with their bodies. Lead’s stomach clenched, the creatures reeked of sweat and decay and their proximity made Lead woozy. His last meal was days away. At mid afternoon, the guards had lowered water buckets into the Pit, but the liquid did nothing to dissuade his hunger. The plank shook in Lead’s hands.
“I feel weak,” Lead told the emaciated man. “Please tell me there’s something hidden away to eat, some bread or meat. I’ll protect you, but I need food.”
“We have nothing, though God has cursed me with dreams of banquets and rivers of liquor, I truly have nothing,” the emaciated man said. “Please hold strong, Preacher. I’ve been here so many days, maybe they’ll let me out. They have to release someone; otherwise what would be the point? Why punish for sin without a possible redemption?”
The emaciated man raised his hand to the waxing moonlight. His fingers were twigs, his arms were sticks and skin and veins. He wept shamelessly.
“Why punish me just to have me die? It does not make sense.”
Lead put his hand on the emaciated man’s shoulder. The man’s skin was loose and knurled like burlap.
“I don’t know why. I’ll protect you.” The words gave Lead strength though they felt like a lie. How could Lead protect any of them with the fading strength in his arms? How long did he have before the gray men came and consumed him like the rest of their cattle?
Two days passed with no stirring from the gray men’s shack. They remained in their protective hovel, gnawing on bones and letting time do work they wouldn’t have to.
The hunger in Lead’s body grew and whittled away at his reason. The afternoons were spent burning in the sunlight, staring at the shack that neither stirred nor gave noise. One of the creatures near Lead died; none of the creatures took action to move the body. All waited.
On the fourth day the gray men came out. Lead was still awake from the night before. Black-robed guards had descended in the night and removed the dead creature. Lead rose to his feet but was met with the muzzle of a rifle. He’d stood awake since.
Lead’s legs shook, he hefted the plank but its weight was almost unmanageable, like it was dipped in gold. It swayed with a life of its own.
The gray men were still, without hunger. They watched Lead stand on unsteady legs and swing an unsteady board.
“What say you, holy man? Do you have strength to protect yourself?”
The leader of the gray men strode forward with a fist-sized rock in his hand.
“Can you lift that wood to save yourself?” He asked.
Lead took a deep breath. He lifted the plank with both hands and held it in a fighter’s stance. His arms shook, but the plank finally stood steady. The hunger dimmed his fear.
“If you want me, come to me then,” Lead said.
The gray men separated and approached from three sides. The leader held his arms and rock outstretched to the sky. He twirled his wrists and the two others ran for Lead from the left and right. Lead closed his eyes and swung with his shoulders and back. The plank missed the first gray man, who ducked, but struck the second soundly across the ear and temple, snapping the plank into two pieces. The struck man dropped to the ground clutching his head. His ear had tripled in size from rushing blood under the skin. The second man tackled Lead to the ground. Instinctively, Lead’s hand went to his chest, for the Van Cleef that was not there. The gray man gripped Lead’s neck in both hands and squeezed his throat.
Bursts of light danced across Lead’s vision. The gray man’s eyes were wide and crazed with excitement. Spittle hung from his white lips. Lead’s vision tunneled with dark edges. Time slowed. He saw flecks of brown in the grey man’s teeth; the yellow coating of his eyes. Lead balled the fist near his chest and rabbit punched the gray man in his Adam’s apple. The hands on Lead’s neck tightened and then suddenly slipped off as the gray man sputtered and rolled.
Lead dragged himself into a crouch. The leader of the gray men gave a primal cry and struck Lead across the cheek with his stone. Lead’s mouth filled with shards of broken molars. He flew back in a full circle. Lead pushed himself up into a crawl. Blood from his face dripped into the dirt, fragments of teeth slopped from his open mouth.
The leader of the gray men struck Lead’s head. Lead’s scalp split open and sprayed blood on the attacker. Lead rolled back to the earth, both hands holding his head.
“You are a sinner!” The grey man yelled and kicked Lead’s ribs. “You are weak!”
The gray man kicked Lead in the chest. The impact ruptured scar tissue over Lead’s heart. Lead put his hand over the bleeding fissure and felt a sharp edge.
“You can’t save these worms!”
The gray man kicked Lead in the back. Lead pulled the tip of Aaron Century’s knife from his chest and looked at it dumbly. The gray man cocked his foot to kick Lead in the back again when Lead rolled and wrapped himself around the gray man’s leg.
“You can’t beg your…” the gray man started to say but was interrupted by his own animal shrieks.
Lead dragged the tip of the knife through the tendon behind the gray man’s ankle.
The gray man released another warbling shriek and fell to his knees. Lead pushed the knife tip into the gray man’s left eye. The grey man dropped his rock and clasped the ruptured cavity. Lead pushed himself back to his knees. He picked up the grey man’s killing stone and brought it down over the leader’s forehead. Both Lead and the gray man collapsed with the force of the blow. Lead got back to his knees and struck the gray man until his screaming stopped.
Lead crawled to the gray man he’d punched in the throat. The man was on his hands and knees, struggling to find his wind. The gray man looked pleadingly at Lead. Lead felt no emotions. His body ached and moved with the strength of adrenaline and nothing else. He brought the killing stone down on back of the gray man’s head and again on his jagged spine. Lead turned to look for man he’d struck with the plank. A tranquilizer dart pierced his left shoulder.
Lead woke in a bed, clothed in white linen. He was in a medical tent with rows of beds like his but empty. A door flap whipped in the breeze; canvas walls glowed with sunlight and breathed with wind. Lead tried to sit up, but his hands and feet were tied to the bed with thick leather straps. He looked up at the clicking of solitary steps. A beautiful Mary dressed in white robes approached him. A red cross crowned her white paper cap.
“How are you this morning?” She asked in genuine kindness.
Lead was unaccustomed to speaking with women, especially attractive ones. He remained silent.
“Be at peace,” she said. “I have bound your wounds and said a prayer on your behalf.”
She reached out and stroked his forehead.
“You have a strong will to live. You will keep living as God wills it.”
Lead looked into her blue eyes. She was beautiful in a way he had never seen. She was middle-aged, maybe seven years older than him, but not damaged by the sun. She was dark-skinned, with dark hair, but her eyes were bright and shone brilliant through the darkness of her features. He tried to speak but his throat caught. He tried again.
“What is your name?”
“Beatrice, you may call me Beatrice,” she said. Beatrice reached down and felt his wrist. She looked up and counted silently with moving lips.
“You’ll be fine, Goodman. Just keep living and breathing.”
Beatrice checked Lead’s bandages.
Lead’s chest stirred, he wasn’t sure what to say when Beatrice finished and started to leave.
“Come to see me again, soon, please.” Lead said.
Beatrice responded with a smile.
Lead woke to Beatrice looking down at him again.
“You need to eat now, Goodman,” she said.
The tent was saturated with the aroma of roasted beef and vegetables. Lead’s mouth salivated uncontrollably.
“Here, just one bite at a time,” she said, lifting a spoon to Lead’s mouth.
Lead tried to open his mouth, but the movement erupted pain. His tongue traced the empty gums along the right side of his jaw. His entire mouth swelled and throbbed.
“Please,” Lead whispered. “My teeth…”
Beatrice dipped the spoon into the bowl. She gently pushed broth past Lead’s lips. His stomach twisted and fought the strange food. His eyes watered. He suppressed a retch, partly to keep the food and partly to not embarrass Beatrice. Beatrice rubbed the stitched seam where Lead’s forehead had been sewn together.
“You poor Goodman,” she said
Lead woke in the night air. A stoic man in white robes was undoing Lead’s restraints. The man lifted Lead out of the cot and onto his feet. He presented Lead with a waste bucket and watched him empty his bladder. Lead looked around the empty tent. The white-robed man gripped Lead’s arm and led him to a different bed.
“Why are you feeding me?” Lead asked on his third day in the medical tent.
Beatrice smiled at him. She put the spoon of warm stew back in the bowl.
“So you won’t die,” she said cheerfully. “You are my charge and I’m to take care of you.”
“Am I to be released?” Lead asked.
“I don’t know,” Beatrice replied. “I don’t think so. You come from the traitors. I don’t know of any traitors who’ve ascended to freedom.”
She spooned more stew into his mouth.
“It’s all fine. Your body can be purged here and ascend to Heaven in spirit.”
Lead chewed the food with left side of his mouth. The stew was the best he’d eaten since joining the Church.
“Why are you here? This seems no place for a Mary.”
“Ah, Mary I am not, Goodman. My husband resides in the hereafter awaiting my return.”
Beatrice spooned more stew into Lead’s mouth.
“I am a Goodwife and will be until I too pass on.”
Lead woke to black-robed guards unbuckling his restraints. They held his shoulders and guided his feet to the floor.
“Come, Goodman. You’ve another day in court,” one of the guards said.
Lead recognized the scarred face guard from his first day in Purgatory.
“You need to stand for your charges.”
The guards held Lead in the same courtroom with the same judge.
“Do you know why you’re here?” The judge asked.
“Am I to be released?” Lead asked.
The judge smiled and covered a stifled laugh.
“Released? What have you possibly done to be released? You are a traitor. You were assigned to serve your penance in the Traitor’s Pit, the Ninth Ring. You were in for less than five days when you slew two men in wrath. You caved in their skulls front of the eyes of watching guards, in the open, with no mercy or remorse.”
The judge held forth the tip of Aaron Century’s knife; it glistened in the judge’s candlelight.
“You smuggled a weapon into the Pit and used it in the assistance of murder.”
“They were cannibals!” Lead said defiantly. “I fought them to save myself and the others!”
“They were eaters of the dead. They slew no man. They consumed that which was already passed,” the judge said.
“I witnessed them slay a goodman in their house. They crushed him with a rock.” Lead said. “They were murderers and deserved to die. I fought them in the defense of myself and the others.”
“And yet no guard corroborates your story. Oh, so now the guards, men in the holy charge of witnessing the actions of the Pit, hold false? Is that it? All holy men are liars but you, a slaughterer of men?”
The judge flung the knife tip across the courtroom.
“All men in the Pit deserve to die, but they die by the Lord’s hand, not yours. You are a murderer, a slayer of men, a sinner. You’ve indulged yourself in the gluttony of sin and violence and as such you will be treated as a glutton.”
The judge struck the podium with his fist.
“You are to spend five days in the Hall the Gluttons, after which you will be returned to the Pit of Traitors. May God have mercy on your soul!”
The guards dragged Lead out the courtroom and across the Purgatory grounds. They waded through long grasses which rolled like the ocean in wind to a portable near the back of the complex.
“Hold,” said a guard.
The men paused in the field. The guards affixed cloth masks to their faces. The masks wafted scents of cinnamon and clove. Lead struggled against their iron grips.
“What are the masks for? What is the Hall?”
“Strip down,” a guard commanded, his voice was muffled by the mask.
The guard leveled a .45 caliber pistol at Lead.
“I’ll have your silence, goodman, unless you want me to hit that fragile face of yours.”
Lead stopped struggling.
“I realize you have questions, but the answer is in the doing and there’s no getting out of this. Strip down.”
“What?”
“Strip down goodman, no prisoner enters the Hall clothed.”
Lead looked at the two guards. He stripped off his hospital gown and stood naked in the sun.
The guard motioned forward with his pistol and the party continued. The men walked past trailers and buildings with latched doors and blackened windows. The wind carried moans and screams and the clack and whir of old machinery still in use. The party walked past the edge of the Pit and Lead wondered if the emaciated man was still alive. The wind shifted and Lead smelled something new, a putrid, human waste, like the smell of a cesspool.
“That’s ours.” The guard pointed his pistol at a single-story log cabin. The party walked up a short stair case to an ornate door. The door was oiled redwood carved to show a hailstorm raining down upon men chained like dogs; the men wallowing in garbage.
“Had that door made special. In we go then,” the guard said, leading the party through the door.
Inside were raw wood floors and four white doors, set against badly carpentered walls. The air hung thick and impenetrable with the scent of human waste, Lead’s stomach clenched and heaved. His vision wavered and he fell against the scarred guard.
“Don’t let any of your wounds touch the ground,” the scarred guard whispered as he pulled Lead to his feet.
“If your wounds touch the filth in this hall, you will surely die of infection before your sentence is complete.”
One of the guards opened an interior door. The stench doubled in potency. An orchestral chorus of buzzing flies emitted from the room. The armed guard placed a chair and rope behind Lead.
“Sit down,” the guard commanded.
“No, please,” Lead pleaded.
Lead’s stomach unclenched and he vomited on his feet. The stink permeated all; it layered on Lead’s skin and coated his tongue. The armed guard pushed Lead into the chair.
“It’ll be alright,” said the scarred guard. “Survivors of this hall speak of getting used to the smell. Just don’t let your chair tip over. The corpses we do find tend to be laid out in the muck.”
The scarred guard coiled the rope around Lead’s body, feet, and wrists. Two guards lifted Lead and the chair through the open doorway. The floor of the room was an ankle-deep swamp of human waste. Countless flies covered all things wet and gave the room a disorienting illusion of motion. Lead vomited again, this time down his chin and chest. The room was small; the only light beamed down from a window in the ceiling. The guards set Lead against the wall furthest from the door. Lead’s feet dipped into the slime. His placement disturbed flies which clouded up like thunderheads.
“Don’t leave me here!” Lead yelled in fear. “Please, take me back to the tent, or the Pit, anywhere!”
“Tis good for your spirit, goodman. We’ll come back for you in five days time,” the scarred guard said.
Both guards shut the door. Lead whipped his head from left to right and shook his body. He tried get away from the ubiquitous stench. He tried to give the flies no territory to claim. But the smell was overwhelming and the flies were legion and panic blacked his vision and rationality.
“Noooooo!” Lead yelled at the closed door. “Let me out, let me out, let me out!”
Lead bucked his chair against the wall. The floor creaked and groaned through the muck.
“Nooooooo!” Lead yelled.
He struck his head against the wall. The stitches across his forehead broke loose. Blood ran down his face.
“Noooooo!” Lead yelled and struck his head again.
The door opened. A masked guard walked in. Lead tried to open his eyes, but could only squint against a mask of flies. His head throbbed with the beat of his heart.
“Let me out,” Lead said, holding himself against animal panic.
The guard looked up at Lead and then walked back into the hallway. Lead whispered a prayer under his breath but stopped when the guard reentered with a waste bucket.
“Sorry, I didn’t know you were in here. I got to keep these fresh,” the guard said. His voice betrayed him for a simpleton.
The guard heaved the bucket of piss and excrement onto the floor, disturbing the flies. He went back to the hall and retrieved another full bucket.
“Please let me out,” Lead said. “I’ve learned. I’m better now, please release me.”
“That’s not up to me,” the guard said and dumped the bucket onto the floor. “That’s for judges and God to decide.”
The guard brought in another bucket.
“You be good and they’ll let you go. Just be good.”
The guard heaved his last bucket into the room and closed the door.
“No, come back!” Lead yelled. He jerked his body and struck the back wall.
“Come back, let me out!” Lead’s voice was ravaged from yelling and panic and the soiled air.
Lead roared and struck the wall again with his head. He levered his toes against the floor and rocked the chair back and forth. The flies and horror stench erased all vestiges of a rational man. Lead’s entire being converged on motion, escape, freeing itself from that which was unendurable.
The floor creaked under the rocking chair. Floorboards saturated with years of urine and feces warped and cracked. Lead whipped around, throwing off flies and making the chair dance three-legged. A crash broke through the cacophony of buzzing. The boards under his feet cracked and fell into gaping blackness. Lead and his chair were swallowed into the hole.
Lead dropped into the crawlspace beneath the cabin. He landed in mud fed from the old drippings of the Hall of Gluttons. He squirmed in retreat through the muck. He flexed his body against the chair, which groaned and cracked against his straining muscles. Lead flexed his body again. The chair back snapped and Lead’s ropes loosened. Lead pulled himself from the mess of knots. He crawled through filth, head pounding. In his hand he kept a chair leg, still connected to the chunk of seat; a weapon.
Lead pulled himself out from under the Hall of Gluttons and stood. His naked body was coated with human waste. His toes clenched the long crab grass under his feet; before him stood the razor wire fence separating Purgatory from the Zona. Lead bit his tongue against the urge to yell out in joy. He fought the urge to scratch the filth covered skin from his body. Lead gripped the chair leg and pegged his way up the fence. His toes found purchase in the chain-links. The higher he rose the less he smelled the hall, the less he smelled his own body, the fresher and tastier the air became. From the distance alarms sounded and men shouted. Air horns pierced the early evening landscape and the voices of men were soon accompanied by the yowling of hounds.
Lead focused on the fence. Slowly he ascended, driving the chair leg into the higher and higher links. Lead lifted himself up to the bushel of razor wire. In some other world rifles fired and bullets severed links near his hand. Lead balanced himself and shoved the chair leg against the razor wire. A space grew between links and the deadly bushel. A bullet cut the edge of Lead’s ear. He squeezed through the new space and tumbled to the earth.
Lead was embraced by loose sand. A bullet kicked up the grit next to his face. In some far off place Lead knew that his ribs and back and legs hurt, but his body was numb. He rose to his feet and loosed a wild scream at Purgatory. Lead turned and ran into the desert. He was outside, he was free.