Human Cost

Human Cost

“This is your target.” A man in a mask and hood points at a location on a filthy and torn map. It’s in the middle of a city that’s long been destroyed and abandoned. You try to remember why, vague news reports of protests gone violent is all you can recall.

“This is your target.” He says again, his voice harder.

“Alright.” Your chest tightens before you ask your next question, “Is this all you need me to do? Can I go home after this?”

“That’s not up to me. If you say no, I’ll kill you right now. There are always other prisoners we can send in.”

“Right.” You take the map, rolling it up and putting it into your backpack. Your supplies are slim. A bottle of water, some dried meat–there will be no safe water to drink in the city, and certainly no unspoiled food. You walk over to your motorbike, thankful you were given that. “How do I contact you when the job is done?”

“Here,” he throws a communicator at you. It looks something like the old phones people used to have before cell service and internet were lost on a broad scale. It uses radio signals to send short texts, it will do. “Keep track of your coordinates on the map, send them to me when you finish, I’ll come find you.”

You nod, he continues, “We don’t know what you’ll find there. Place has been abandoned for over a decade, there could be squatters, or underground communities, probably some feral wildlife. You have a gun, don’t let yourself get killed.”

“You didn’t seem concerned about killing me if I said no.”

“I’m not,” he cocks his gun and aims it at you, his expression hidden by his mask, “but I’m tired of losing communicators. They aren’t cheap, I can’t hand them out like candy. Don’t waste our shit.”

You zip up the backpack and sling it on, “Yeah well, I don’t exactly want to die either.”

“So we’re on the same side.” He puts his gun away. You get on the bike and rev the engine to life.

You drive away from the warehouse you were prepped in and down a short highway surrounded by sand dunes. You squint to see through the dust, the sun hot on your face. The destroyed buildings and smell of rot and decay isn’t far. If some fucked up wildlife doesn’t kill you, the smell just might–but you want to live, don’t you?

The gravel turns to cracked and shattered pavement as you pull into the city, the sign that named it is long destroyed and covered in black grime. You drive slowly eyeing everything around you, seeking out any movement in the debris. You stop and pull out your map, marking your coordinates.

As you drive closer to the centre of the city more and more black grime seeps through debris. Is it some kind of ooze? You probably shouldn’t touch it. You get off your bike and approach it, as you get closer, you feel your communicator vibrate. You step away, pulling it from your pocket to make sure it works. It does. But as you step closer again, the screen starts glitching.

You’ll have to get in and out then.

As you continue your ride, you avoid the black substance, even as it seems to seep towards you. The sun is setting. Where the fuck are you going to sleep? An abandoned house will have to do.

You lean your bike outside and step in through the broken door. The whole city is abandoned, as far as you can tell. No fucked up wildlife even. You think you are the only life here, that is, until you see a fly on the wall. A house fly. It buzzes towards you and lands on your gloved hand. It’s almost comforting before you remember how annoying houseflies are. It begins to buzz around your face, crawling around your mask and your ears. It’s what they do, you suppose. Perhaps it is just as surprised to see life here as you are.

The buzzing becomes painful, painfully inside your ear. You try to swat the thing away but it’s crawled inside you. You cuss and struggle but it goes further in. The sensitive flesh of your ear is no protection against it as it chews its way through. You scream, holding your head, your lobsided head, your hearing gone in this side as it chews through your eardrum. You move your hand away and see blood on your glove.

“Get out, get the fuck out!” You cry. But you can’t feel the fly anymore, perhaps only a slight buzz in your head. It’s inside your body, but how, and where, and alive?

There is no sleep for you, only a thunk as you black out and fall to the floor.

The hot sun awaits you in the dawn. You lift your head and see a crimson puddle beside where your deaf ear was. Your head is throbbing, and you feel the dried, scabbed blood down the side of your face. Hunger. You’re so fucking starving. When you get back you’ll demand to see a doctor. You pull the dried meat and water from your backpack, it’s the best breakfast you’ll get in this shithole.

You drive further into the city, near your destination you park your bike and explore on foot. None of the buildings are standing, they’ve collapsed in on themselves. The black ooze is less present this far in, to your relief. Dust dances in the wind as you search for any sort of sign you’ve found what you’re looking for.

There is only one thing. One small thing a few feet in front of you. It seems to be moving. You walk slowly towards it, it’s a maggot. Just a tiny maggot scavenging around for something to eat.

You sneer at the thing, “Disgusting.” You mumble as you stomp on it with your boot. It would only have taken one, but you stomp again, and again, and again.

Suddenly, the buzzing in your head grows stronger. All you can hear is buzzing, the headache drops you to your knees as you vomit up your meager breakfast.

“You are the kind of person to kill a defenseless creature only a fraction of your size?” A voice asks inside your head. Your hands shake, you look around for any sign of movement. When the voice speaks again, your deaf ear explodes with pain. “What divine right do you have to determine the fate of a creature so much weaker than yourself?”

The voice is androgynous, you cannot place any kind of face to it. It sounds human, but somehow distorted.

From the dirt around you, maggots begin to crawl to the surface, poking through various holes in the ground. You try to scramble away but the buzzing blares in your head again, moving would only cause you to black out.

The maggots crawl up your body, your legs, then your chest, then your neck. You try to speak but they slither into your mouth and down your throat. You convulse and gag but they don’t come out. More of them crawl up your nose. For nearly a minute you realise you cannot breathe, you cannot cough. The edges of your vision become dark.

“No. You cannot die just yet. There is use for a creature like you.”

After the voice speaks, the maggots finish crawling inside your body and air returns to your lungs. You feel instant relief, your headache fades and you can stand again. But as you move, you feel the maggots in your body. You look at your arm and see bulges in your skin slithering around. You scream and scratch them away, they disappear and reappear in different spots. With your heart racing, you fall to the ground again, trying to force yourself to gag, crying for the insects to get out of you.

Your vision begins to fade again as you scream to a lifeless city, for all of the no one that will come to your aid. Blood begins to pour from your nose and you hear the voice again, “Why must you be so difficult about this?”

Suddenly, it is as though every nerve in your body is on fire. And then nothing.

You wake to a dark room. You feel your arms tied behind your back in a chair. You grunt and struggle, then you hear footsteps. The clacking of heeled boots enters the room, and in that moment, you have a person to the voice. A tall, thin man with greasy black hair tied into a loose bun. He’s wearing a tattered black cloak, baggy clothes, and a mask that covers the bottom half of his face. The light of the room is dim, but you can see his eyes.

Eyes so black and dark it’s as though they’ve seen the pits of hell.

“Most pawns don’t need quite as much doting as you seem to.” He says as he leans against a wall and stares at you, raising an eyebrow.

“What the fuck is happening?” You ask, still trying to free yourself.

“If you keep struggling, I will force you to be still. It’s so hard to talk to someone who can’t just calm down and focus.” He steps towards you, in his hand he’s holding a single maggot–one that has been squashed and caked in dirt. “They work as a collective, maggots.”

“Why the fuck-”

“Da da da!” He cuts you off, placing a finger on your lips. “You don’t really understand what happened here, do you? You know the city was destroyed, you know it was mostly done by the police but…do you know anything else?” He removes his finger, gesturing for you to speak.

“Not…a lot. It was a decade ago, and I’ve never been here before. There were protests that got violent, that’s most of what I know.”

“The protests were peaceful. They became violent when the police attacked the protestors.” He crouches down, placing the maggot in the corner of the room and covering it with a small cloth. “Before they got violent, the majority of the people here supported the protests and spoke out against the police force presence here. But after those first gunshots, people began selling out their neighbours for a chance to escape.”

“I…see.” You look towards where the maggot was laid to rest. “What does that have to do with your…bugs?”

“My bugs?” He laughs as he pulls down his mask and takes his coat off, hanging it on the wall. “How do you not get it? The maggot you killed, it was harmless, it was there because its friends were right beneath it. It would have gone to them or they would have gone to it. They live as a massive group, they feed as a massive group, because one maggot alone will have a hard time eating enough to survive…but a group? They survive better as a collective.”

You groan, you can feel the insects moving around inside you as he speaks, “What am I supposed to get? I’d like these fucking bugs to get out of me.”

He ignores your attitude, walking towards a small cooler across the room. Out of it he pulls a couple bottles of water and some cans. “You need to eat, you’re eating for a…few hundred.”

“Get them out of me!” You scream. He glares at you and pain overwhelms you. They’re biting you, they can eat your flesh from the inside out.

“That’s a last resort for them. They don’t like living matter.” He responds to your thoughts, you freeze. “The fly.” He walks towards you with the food. “I can talk to you through the fly, and I can hear your thoughts. If you don’t eat, my friends will be forced to make you their food, this should be an easy decision for you.”

Before you can respond, he tears open the can and stabs a knife into the salty pork. “Here comes the airplane.” He laughs as he roughly jabs the food past your lips. It’s hard to protest when you’re so hungry. He hums to himself as he feeds you. This close, you notice that his facial hair grows unevenly, he seems unconcerned with it.

The maggots inside you squirm around with more energy as you swallow the pork. You begin to gag, but the man feeding you clasps his hand over your mouth. “Don’t waste food. Isn’t that why you were convicted anyway? You stole food?” The bile rises in your throat, but he forces you to keep your food down. When your gagging stops, he removes his hand and continues to feed you.

He’s right, you broke into a grocery store past close and stole food for your family. Only, you and the food never made it home. It’s a small crime to commit in these food scarce times. But you know now, it wasn’t about the severity of the crime, it was because they’re using prisoners as cannon fodder.

He nods at you, “So you do understand some things.” He grabs the water and helps you drink. “Do you know what you were sent here to find?”

“No.” You mumble as he pulls away from you. “No, I-I just want to go home, my little sister, my parents I…I just want to make sure they’re okay.”

He shakes his head, laughing dryly. “It’s a weapon. Well, the component of one. When this city fell, they damaged the infrastructure first, starting with power. That black goop around the city? It’ll short out almost any technology that comes near it. From there, the people here lost contact with the outside world. The weapon they need this piece to complete will be used to attack any town or city with too many defectors, too many people who speak out against the government. Do you think your family will be safe if you give it to them?”

“And if I don’t, they’ll just kill me. My goal is to get home, that’s it. Don’t you get that?”

He shakes his head. “This was my home, so maybe I don’t.” His tone is calm, but his eyes hide none of his emotions, including his anger in this moment. Flies buzz towards you, the buzzing in your head is there again. A few more crawl through your deaf ear. The louder, bigger flies with colourful wings land on your arms and bite chunks from your flesh. You cry out helplessly, the only one who can hear you is your tormentor. When you start to sob, he calls the horseflies off.

He cups your chin in his hand and forces you to meet his eyes, you see how deep and purple the bags under them are, you see how bony he is, his black tank top so baggy on him it hides little. He has dark arm and chest hair, and a black binder under his tank top. He drives the heel of his boot into your foot as his dark eyes see into your very thoughts. “I was a child when it happened. My family escaped with me, only they were gunned down before we got away, before we could start a new life. I came back here the moment I was out of foster care, I needed answers. And I found them, piece by piece.” He turns your head towards another wall where he’s tacked news clippings. Nearly the entire wall is covered with the story of the city’s downfall. He turns you back towards him. “I could never talk about home, it was a taboo. The flies on the wall listened to me more than any people did. And you want to what? Take the weapon back to the fuckers who forced you in here, give it to them so that they can make a million more fucked up orphans like me?”

He lets go and walks away from you, the single light in the room illuminated so little, but he could not hide his pained expression. He turns to stare at you, looking at your arms. You feel blood running down them, those flies certainly had a hearty fucking dinner.

“Breakfast.” He laughs. “You were asleep for a while, it’s morning.”

“Who are you? Why don’t you just kill me?”

“My name is Ba’al Zebub, and I need a favour from you.”

You laugh, “Did your mommy pick that name for you?”

“No.” He gives you a wicked grin as he opens the other can of pork. Stabbing the knife into it. “I chose it myself. Unlike you, it seems, I make my own decisions.” He leans against the wall to eat. His salty and musky BO lingers around you, it reminds you of hard alcohol and SPAM, which you realise is probably most of his diet.

The pain from your bites lingers and your body feels heavy, your eyes begin to close against your will. He eyes you knowingly, setting his food down, he approaches you. He grabs your hair, pulling your head up–somehow not as roughly as you expected. “What I need you to do is simple. Take the chip the man who hired you is looking for. It has the schematics of the weapon they want to build, it was designed here and lost to the debris.”

“But you…you don’t want-”

“Shh.” He knows you don’t have the energy left to argue. “I know what I’m doing. All you have to do is play along. Say you found it, complete your mission as he requested. I will follow you out and act when he shows up. He’s my target. I’d say ‘sorry you got caught in the middle’ but nothing is free, especially not liberation.”

Your vision darkens, you feel yourself being untied and led away to a cot. Sleep consumes you.

It takes you and Ba’al a day to make it to the edge of the city. You ride your bike through the quiet, dusty and dead cityscape and he walks–you think. He keeps up with you. You don’t want to question it. There is a lot about him you don’t want to question.

Once at the location you entered the city from, you stare out into the wilderness. You still want to live, but what kind of world would you be living in?

You send your coordinates via the communicator and wait. The sound of sand blowing in the wind is the your last comfort before whatever hell is coming arrives. “This should be painless.” Ba’al says into your head. “Just let me take control when the time comes. You don’t even have to think, we both know you struggle with that anyway.”

After a peaceful silence in a destroyed city, you hear a motorbike approaching. The man who hired you parks it and walks the last few feet towards you. “Hand it over.” He says.

“Can I go home now?” You ask.

He laughs, “I’m shocked you survived. You’re the first who’s found it. You can work for us as an agent, we’ll properly train and outfit you. Or you can go back to prison, I suppose.”

“Wait, no that wasn’t our deal!”

“Our deal was that I wouldn’t shoot your fucking head off. And I didn’t.”

Fury boils in you. You feel the maggots and flies in your body twist and squirm. Your hand grabs your gun, your arm moves against your will.

And you fire.

You blow the man’s head off.

Once Ba’al’s control fades, he walks into the open and grins at you, “This is perfect. I can use what he has on him to lure more of the fuckers out and kill them.”

You look at him, his black eyes gleaming with hope, an expression you’ve never seen in them before. “Can I help you? Please, let me help!” He stares at you, as if analyzing the ingredients on a can of food. You feel the buzzing in your head get louder, so loud you can’t hear your own thoughts.

Then it stops, and he grabs your face, nearly nose to nose with you. “No.” He says, pushing you to the ground, placing a boot to your chest. “No, see the thing is, I don’t trust you. You changed sides when you realised what the winning one would be. People like you are why my home is in fucking debris. You’ll stab me in the back the moment it benefits you.”

“No, please, let me-” You’re cut off by intense pain firing through your body. You raise your hand and see the maggots chewing through your skin. More flies crawl in through your ears, your other eardrum now reduced to insect food. You can’t move, hear or scream. Before you black out, your body becoming little more than compost–you see Ba’al Zebub smiling under the hot sun as he holds the dead man’s communicator. The vengeance he seeks is in his grasp as your life leaves yours.

-fin-