The lights overhead flickered like unreliable disco balls, only illuminating small patches of the tunnel for brief moments. Trent and V avoided those spots, sticking close to the right hand wall of the passage, which was cold and slimy to the touch. They were four hundred yards from The Scrapyard proper when the fecund stench arrived in his nose, a heavyweight olfactory fighter that pulled no punches. He held still for a minute, acclimating to the scent quietly, controlling his gag reflex.
When he started moving again, he almost doomed himself right away. He could barely see, but his sliding steps put the tip of his shoe against something solid, and he nearly yelped. Curious, he knelt down, discovering the lacerated body of a bruiser, cut to ribbons by some kind of serrated blade. Its skin was cold to the touch under its striped sweater, the blood already sticky on the concrete. V hadn't been kidding.
Trent carefully edged out around the body, returning to the wall once past. With twenty-five yards remaining to the tunnel, he noticed that arc-sodium light was streaming down up ahead, and that furthermore, the initial entry area to the Scrapyard was an open cul-de-sac with several narrow lanes cut through mounds and hills of refuse.
"It's a killing field," he muttered to himself, keeping still with V beside him. "If someone wanted to, they could be watching that entry for newcomers, waiting to make an ambush."
"This is where your expertise outshines my knowledge of the locals," V said, turning translucent. "Remember, we need to go south as fast as we can, avoid distractions. Keep your eyes sharp, and don't engage in any fights you don't have to."
Trent cocked an eyebrow at V, said nothing. Gun held ready, left hand balled into a fist, he moved forward in a half-crouch. He kept visually sweeping for movement, and thus was able to take aim at the first would-be ambusher, a gangly wasteoid sitting atop one of the garbage mounds, before it even spotted him. Trent took a long breath, held it, let it go in a slow, low exhale. He squeezed the trigger, and the wasteoid's head snapped back, body following right after as it rolled out of sight back over the mound.
That single gunshot had echoed terrifically in the tunnel. Trent dashed ahead, not wanting to see what the sound might have alerted to come sniffing around. When he reached the mound, instead of trying to move into one of the bottleneck paths, he scrambled up the garbage hill, V racing ahead on his left like some bizarre four-legged insect, his elbows and knees contorted out of true.
When he reached the top, Trent stayed pressed low to the hard packed debris, crawling to the far edge of the mound's summit. He looked around, marvelling at the raw volume of junk scattered everywhere. Towers of crushed and maimed old cars and chunks of buildings served as the primary basis for many of the trash walls and hills that turned the Scrapyard into a kind of outdoor labyrinth, supplemented with regular household garbage.
Tall arc-sodium lamp posts had been placed at regular intervals around the district, though from his vantage point he could see a few areas that were blacked out. Those pathways would be double-edged swords if he tried to pass through, as he could use the darkness for stealth, but so too could the locals.
"Can't stay up here long," V cautioned. "Someone else'll be along soon enough to stake out the entrance." He peered down over the side of the mound on the east. "Nobody along this path that I can see. Come on." V slid down out of sight, and Trent swiftly followed.
He winced as his footfalls sent bits of scree and junk sliding down the mound, their passage too loud for his liking. They'd gone twenty yards or so along the wide path they were now on when something came around a bend up ahead. It looked like a twenty-something man in a grimy denim jacket and faded blue jeans, his face covered with a bandana. His arms terminated in silvery 9mm Berreta pistols, which he raised up the moment he spotted Trent.
The detective ducked down into a crouch and raised his shield, presenting as small a target as he could. Four shots rang out, three impacting the shield, the fourth flying wide left. Trent returned fire, two shots to the head. The thug went down, falling back to the littered walkway.
"Blaster," he asked V.
"Yeah. They don't usually come to the Scrapyard's north end. The Pusher knows you're here. We need to be very careful." Trent grunted agreement, and followed after his translucent guide, keeping close to the inside wall of junk as he went into the corner, gun and shield both held out in front of him.
This maneuver saved his life, as the moment he came around, two more blasters fired at him from their positions crouched behind a set of lockers stacked atop one another. Their shots caromed off of his shield, giving him the chance to put three bullets into one's chest before he ducked back around the corner. He kept his back to the trash wall, sweeping around in a wide arc as he came back.
The unwounded blaster took one last shot at him as it ran off, the bullet tearing painfully through the outside of his left calf. "Fucker," he snarled, lifting his leg in involuntary reflex. "Goddamn that hurts!" He crouched down, looking at the wound. It wasn't bad, a glancing shot at worst, but it bled well, tacky, wet warmth swiftly nesting in his shoe. Trent stood up and made his way to the lockers, giving the lane forward and behind a cursory check for more hostiles. Seeing none, he clambered over the fallen blaster, patting his pockets. With guns for hands, he wasn't surprised to come up empty.
What he needed was easily found inside one of the lockers, however, a pair of scissors. Using these, he started cutting a sleeve off of the creature's hoodie. V swept in close. "What're you doing? This is hardly the time to mark your kills."
"Need to bind this," Trent said, ripping the last bit of cloth with a hard jerk. "If these assholes are hunting me, I don't want to be leaving them an easy trail to follow." He looked pointedly at V, mouth a straight line. "This is not a good omen, by the by," he said, cinching the cloth in place and cutting the other shirt sleeve when he was set, stuffing half of it in his back left pocket.
"Okay, follow me," said V. Through twisting, rotting corridors of kitchen garbage bags piled high he led Trent, avoiding a turn off down a darkened passageway and taking a turn into a sliver-thin jut through a hill of old car parts. The path pinched down to the point where Trent would have to crawl through, and he belly-crawled with his gun in hand after V, who put one hand up to stay him on the other side. There was a good six-foot jut for him to stay concealed in, and his guide clearly intended to scout ahead.
V made himself almost completely invisible, creeping out of the jut. Trent remained where he was, gun held ready. V was gone for a couple of minutes, then ducked back in, whispering, "Okay, there's a couple of bruisers and one blaster about five feet into a path on the left when you come out. Then on the right, there's a passage that's blacked out, but it comes out in a wide clearing with a wrecked bus. There's about eight bangers hanging out there."
"What's past those points," Trent asked.
"If I remember correctly, there's a handful of twisting paths beyond the bruisers and blaster, and if you can sneak past the bangers, there's a sizable passageway that leads almost all the way to the south end tunnel. I gotta warn you, though, that stretch will probably fill with wasteoids quickly once you're in it. So, what do you wanna do?"
Trent considered his options for a minute, then offered V a predatory grin.
"I wanna dance."
Finding an empty soda bottle had been easy enough among the refuse, but locating spare duct tape required three passes on his belly in the jut. This gamble would only pay off once, at best, but every little edge was needed. He slowly strapped the bottle to the end of the gun's barrel, keeping it as straight as possible.
The space after the jut was still, blissfully, empty. Ahead, a veritable wall of junk rose up high, two ingresses carved by unknown years of the locals' efforts standing out clear. He just needed a good angle for this to work. Moving right, he discovered that the darkened passage would allow him cover, which was the second point he needed. Almost as a bonus, if anything shot at him there and missed, it would hit the bus where the bangers were dwelling.
He didn't need that to happen, but it would make things run smoother. Creeping back out toward the left pathway, he held his gun with its makeshift, one-shot silencer aimed low. When he got to the curve in the path and spotted the trio of the Pusher's men V had spotted before, he felt a spark of mad glee light inside of him. This was possibly going to end horribly, but these fuckers were out for his blood. Mercy was a notion best left behind.
He took careful aim at the blaster, keeping his eye sighted down the iron, not the bottle. This was a seemingly minor detail, but anyone who'd been a shooter for any length of time would concur that it was not. The slightest shift of a bullet's path spelled the difference between a disabling shot and a complete bogey.
He fired, and the makeshift silencer muffled the shot as intended. Blood and bone burst from the blaster's left knee, and he screamed, reaching out to balance himself on a headless bruiser and look for his assailant. Trent stood in the open for a moment, waggled his gun at them, and tore off back toward the darkened passage. He heard the blaster screaming at his companions to get him, and sure enough, here they came moments later into the darkened bottleneck.
Too easy, he thought, picking them off with four clean shots to each chest. He crouched low, staying close to their end of the passage, his badge held out and ready to raise the shield. He heard the grunts and 'thwop-shhhh, thwop-shhhh' of the blaster limping his way. The creature was making it easy, leading the way with his gun-hands held out in front of him.
Trent waited until the blaster swung its body around to face the passage, then struck fast and hard. Bringing up the shield, he lunged forward with a snarl, thrusting the shield up into its chest and neck, throwing it up and back. It fell down with a grunt, and Trent was immediately on it, swinging the edge of his shield down into its elbows, cutting each arm in half.
The blaster howled like a wounded animal, thrashing around. Trent snatched it by its ropey hair and hooded sweatshirt, hauling it upright and spinning it around. Thusly held, he guided the blaster toward the bangers' little garbage grove, shoving it into the light as hard as he could after taking a few steps in. He quickly backpedaled, watching as three of the phallus-men came snickering out of the bus, their duct tape wrist whips unraveling.
"No," the blaster rasped, facing the bangers. "No, no, nooooo!" He turned to run, face a sheet of stark terror as two of the bangers flailed their tapes out, expertly coiling around his bleeding biceps and hauling him to the ground. Kicking his feet and gibbering, the blaster begged and sobbed as they dragged him to the side of the bus, more of their fellows streaming out, snickering and rubbing their exposed cocks excitedly.
"Time for some sweet ass-candy," one of his captors called out. Trent cringed, sliding out into the opening and moving along the far left wall, skirting the area. He tried not to look at what was going on, but his eyes found their way back as two of the bangers began cutting the blaster's pants off, kicking and slapping it as it tried to wriggle free of them.
He was three-quarters of the way around the area when a blood-curdling scream tore out of the blaster's throat. Trent looked, fighting to keep his gorge down as he saw the first banger ram itself inside of the blaster whose arms he'd cleaved, its fellows laughing and egging him on. Better him than me, Trent thought, slipping into the next pathway with a shudder of revulsion. He could still hear their victim begging for mercy, and now that he was out of their sight, he allowed himself to be sick.
Hunched over, leaning with one hand against a wall of hefty kitchen garbage bags, Trent felt V's hand on his shoulder. "I know," the guide said softly, patting him. "Just try to let it go." Trent wasn't sure if he ever would.
The stretch between the broad path opening and the southern tunnel turned quickly into a firing range as Trent gunned down wasteoids skittering in from all directions. If the gun weren't imbued with whatever strange power that gave it infinite ammunition, he would have been screwed many times over. As it was, by the time he dragged himself into the darkness of the southern tunnel, he had several ragged gashes on his arms, legs and torso and one set of three puncture wounds just above his right hip.
Trent stumbled along, V taking his weight and helping him into a maintenance office through a semi-hidden access door along the wall. The chamber was in total disarray, but looked like it had been used as a temporary dwelling for a while. Trent found a makeshift bedding composed of several sleeping bags and blankets in one corner, revealed by harsh halogen lamps strung up on the wall. He laid down there, groaning as V helped him peel off his bloodied clothes.
A first aid kit kept in one of the office's many cabinets got him cleaned, patched and wrapped, though he had broken out in a fever sweat and tremors from the venom injected into his puncture wounds by a wasteoid. "You're going to trip, hard," V informed him, handing Trent a bottle of water from a mini fridge kept by the desk near the door. "You need to stay hydrated. There's a toilet in that closet and a shower stall," said the enigmatic guide, pointing the way for Trent, whose vision and hearing were beginning to warp. "Stay right here. I'll be back. I'm going to scout ahead."
Trent tried to object, instead giggled like a fiend, and dropped backwards onto the bedding. He managed three long pulls of water before he capped it and started passing out.
Trent slept then, and dreamed of a much nicer place, a place just called The City.