Moral Zero (32 page)

He fucked her like he might kill her, and
in those moments he felt so alive that he could have sworn that he was not a human being at all, that he was just some wild animal and nothing more.

WASTELAND

Johnny Black stomped down the slope, dragging the corpse behind him. The sandblasted rocks skittered away from his boot as if they were terrified of his presence. He made his way to the small olive-skinned kid standing outside the shack, his shadow stuck out like a blackened ghost. Johnny laid up the blood-spattered body over a boulder and kneeled down to it, his eyes focused on the kid.

With diligent care, his steely gaze never leaving the child, Johnny held up a dead arm and serrated through it with his knife. The work took a few minutes for the blade dulled on the bone, but eventually tendons snap
ped and gristle came shorn away, and the knife came out into the clean air on the other side.

The child had barely blinked.

What’s your name kid? Johnny said, wiping the bloody metal on the corpse’s shirt.

Dunno.

Do you think I’m a bad person?

Dunno.

Do you know what morality is?

Yes.

Do you know what law is?

No.

I just cut off a man’s arm. Johnny lifted up the arm of the corpse to prove his point. The red weeds slopped out the cut and trailed like snakes. Johnny gave it a shake and the snakes slicked and shook.

I know. You want my mother?

Why would I want your mother? Johnny tickled the red fronds with the point of his knife, and then finally, sighing, laid the arm across the top of the body and tucked away his blade.

She’s in there.  T
he olive-skinned child pointed to the shack thirty feet away.

Do you
want to see your mother raped? Johnny stood up and lifted his hat a notch, eyeing the shack like an eagle.

Alr
eady. Three times in last year.

Fuck.
By who?

One by woman. One by man. She cut off cock. One by four men, frie
nds of last man. Held me there.

Johnny exhaled.
I take it all these cunts are alive and kicking still?

Yes.

Why did they do it?

Because they can.

Johnny shifted his weight about. The olive child kept affixing him with that dead stare.

I’ll go see your mother then,
he said at last. The sun was cutting through the air like hot knives and leathering his skin like a prune.

You gonna rape her?

Johnny looked back down at the little olive boy with eyes like a rattlesnake, and knew he was going to grow up to kill.

Ye
ah, I am. I’ll be back in a bit.

You gonna ta
ke me?

Johnny ran his hand over his face and squinted into the sun until his eyes stung. He put his hand on the child’s shoulder
without looking at him. You stay here.

He strode off as if it was purposeful, but he was unabl
e to keep a grip on any thought. His mind seemed to be emptying itself with every step. Images of the kid forced to watch his mother get gangfucked dashed through his mind at a gallop, dumped on his brain then thrown off to the trash. Back it comes. Throw it away. Back it comes.

As he entered the shack his vision was hollow and blurred, and he had no thoughts of his own at all.

The shack was one room, just a bench and a bed in the corner for the mother and the child. She was sat on it, her knees hunched up to her chin. She had dirty black hair that straggled down to her waist and her face was bony but not ugly. She looked at him when he came in and then looked straight back at her knees. She started rocking slightly.

Johnny Black came in and sat beside her.

I’m going to rape you, he said softly. She said nothing.

He lent in close to her, so she could smell the stench of death on his breath, and he kissed her lightly on the forehead, and then further kisses down her cheek and onto her neck. He kissed her like he was martyring her, like he was saving her from the world.

His rough, cracked lips found hers and then they were entwined, and he was delivering his kisses on her every spot he could as he took off her rags of clothes. He stripped himself, lost in a sense of vacant passion, fiddling with belt and freeing his erect member, his hands fondling her entrance, running his fingers down the wetness. He buried his face between her legs and ate her until she was crying and pulling him back up. He moved himself into her and his huge shaft clove into her inch by inch, as painlessly as he could manage, tickling her clitoris all the while, keeping her from experiencing any feeling but warmth inside her.

He made love to her as slow as he could manage, slower than he’d ever fucked in his life, feeling it sink in and out, each inch swallowed up by her as if she was letting him in to the core of her soul, and then gradually letting each inch out, releasing it back to him. There was no blood, no screams, but there were tears; they came running down her face and ran down to her groin as he kissed her mouth and neck and breasts over and over, and the tears ran down over her clitoris and coated his shaft and came back inside her body, her emotions driven back into her being.

He told her she was beautiful as he came inside her, and she wept more and he said it more and she shuddered and bucked and climaxed at the same time at him, gripping his shoulders tight with her hands and then they settled in the longest of kisses.

He walked back out of the shack, hat pulled down and head hung low, only to see the kid in his path. He stopped and hooked his thumbs into his belt.

Did you rape her?
the child asked him.

Yes. Do you think I’m a bad person?

Dunno.

Later on, after she’s rested, ask your mother. See if she says if I’ve not hurt her more than any
man or woman ever did or will.

The kid was silent, and
Johnny looked up into the blazing sun without squinting.

Long live Mr White, he murmured to the sky.
Long live Kidd Red. May you one day find peace, if it takes you a thousand lifetimes.

And as the
kid’s eyes hunted him down Johnny Black walked off into the sandswept swirl of dust and devils.

EPILOGUE

FOR THOSE WHO GO DEEPER

GREAT LONDON STATE

The man felt a sense of falling, of losing things, losing everything. He tried to grab hold of them but they span away, and his mind felt like it was breaking up into tiny pieces.

He circled around the pit of unconsciousness for a while, before the pieces slowly stitched themselves back together, to form a new landscape of consciousness. The old mind scattered away, feeling like a half-remembered dream.

The man opened his eyes. Four walls of bare stone. One iron door. A cell. Plugs and trailing wires on the floor.

Jonathan White?
A cold, imperious voice to his side made him cry out like he had been wounded. He shuffled like a frightened animal to the far wall, pulling his rags up in an attempt to hide from the speaker.

Jonathan White?
The man in the stark grey uniform looked at his clipboard, while the man in rags shivered and peeked at him with eyes terrified from confusion.

Yes, it is you. There is often some delay in return to nor
malcy after prolonged exposure.

Jonathan White found his own voice, and it sounded mousey and unlike anything he kne
w. Ex- exposure?

To the
Mark Seventeen.  You’ve just been unplugged. You’ve been hooked up for . . . The uniformed man glanced again at his clipboard, and then to the two men standing just behind him, who wore cruel uniforms of black and navy blue, and had faces hard and rough.

. . .
Three years, four months and six days. It can cause quite a strain on the mind. Many are said to go mad. Is it madness, though? Perhaps it is an unlocking of the real self. I understand, though, that you had prior experience. You were a noder before your arrest. All, of course, ultimately counting against you. You are damaged goods, Mr White.
Severely
so
.

Wh
- what? What is this place? Why am I here? What’s going on?

You’re on death row
, Mr White. The cold-voiced man with the arched eyebrows and the hooked nose and bald, bony head breathed through his nostrils impatiently, as if he had run through similar explanations before.

Inmates get hooked up to
Seventeen during their stay. Primary purpose to keep them docile, with minimum security required. Secondary purpose to monitor them, to analyse their minds. Observing what’s down the rabbit hole, so to speak. The man feigned a bored yawn.

I have been personally following your progress.
You were all over the place, Mr White. It appears there were . . . splits. Cracks. Of course, the strain, but . . . It was most interesting.

What?!

Your experiences must, of course, be monitored carefully. All the simulations must. Do you understand why?

For pleasure. You’re voyeurs,
Jonathan said with sudden realisation.

The
hook-nosed man curled his lip. Wrong. We are not like you, Mr White. We are good people.

Jonathan sa
id nothing, but closed his eyes. He felt so tired, like he had led multiple lifetimes in succession, or at the same time, all without sleep.

The game… He started.

The man snorted. Game? It’s not a
game,
Mr White. It’s the G.L.S. Mark Seventeen Simulation. It is a tool of science. And it is
very
extensive. Layered, even. All the better to deceive the subject. The deeper the rabbit hole goes, you see, the deeper into the mind we travel. One must lose all ties with reality. It’s all very impressive. A great deal of work has gone into it. But of course, the bulk of the work is done by you. Especially you. Your power of invention… Quite mad. Quite mad.

If there is any pleasure in our obser
vations, it is purely academic, the man continued. There is a science to it. They are psychological studies. They allow us to better know the mind of the pervert, and thus the better to catch him. Your – or any other inmate’s – virtual experiences also act as confirmation of your crimes, of your sick mindset and your clear danger to the Great London State. To its integrity and its ethical consciousness. Its very structure. And your mind
was
sick, Mr White, as foul and pestilent and disturbed as I’ve seen in some time. The on-going self-validating results of these studies effectively counter any chance of appeals, although those pathetic timewasters are never taken seriously. Of course, none were waged on your account.

Jonathan White was trying to grasp at what he remembered of the life before, and found a whole mess of chunks was coming
back to him. The city of Rule.

There were others, he whispered.

Of course, said the man. It is a community experience, after all.

Jonathan suddenly started, blurting out.
Where’s Johnny and Kidd?

The bald man stood as stiff as a board, and was so tall he lurched over Jonathan like a statue or a monster. He looked behind him again to the two guards, who stepped forward to stand at his side.

He studied his notes and a smirk stole quickly across his face and then vanished. He scrutinised Jonathan without an ounce of warmth. A vulture at the bedside. 

The kid is safe.
Jonathan is… The man leered. Jonathan is safe. He won’t be harming anyone ever again.

Where are my friends

The man gazed upon him cruelly, the smile still there. You don’t
have
any friends, Jonathan.

Where are they

The man leafed through a few pages. Yes, you did keep rather . . . interesting . . . company, didn’t you? You really didn’t do yourself any favours, Jonathan. But you don’t need to worry about any of that now.

Where

The man glanced back at his notes and smirked. Oh, I’m sure they’re buried somewhere. Probably not deep enough though.

Jonathan felt like crying, but his body didn’
t seem to know how to anymore. Why have you done this? he whimpered.

This is
less than you deserve, Jonathan. But it’s okay. It will all be over soon. At least, it will in this world. You cannot expect God to be so merciful.

What will be over?

Why, life, Jonathan. Life.

             
All life? Jonathan looked up into that terrible face.

             
Why not, Jonathan. Why not.

             
Is there no hope?