FALSE HOPE

Entry #3

Belongs to : Alex “Sesh” Horváth

Role : Ex-Smuggler

[[ His stoic episode seemed to be at its end. He was starting to panic; realisation was probably setting in for him, too.
“We really shouldn’t have done it… Not the way we did, at least…” he says, fiddling with his dog tag.
“I wonder why they didn’t confiscate that thing when they locked us up,” I say, pointing at the necklace.
“Are you even hearing me, man?! I’ve been stressing my ass off for an hour, thinking about ways for us to get out of this shit, and you are just… there, dissociating.”

As I hear those words, I look away, my eyes searching for something to distract the mind.
“What are we going to do now?” he continues. “Where do we go? Fuck. At least they’re not looking for us — or it doesn’t seem like they are… but we can’t just go back and walk into the place like nothing ever fucking happened…”
“No shit,” I say through my teeth. Then, in a softer tone… “Yeah, we’re screwed, but we’re going to figure it out. We just need to go south… we’ll find someone, somewhere. We’ll make it work. I know that.”
“Make what work?! What the hell can we make work at this point, Se—” I raise my hand.
“Be quiet,” I whisper, scanning the perimeter outside through the cracks in the boarded window.
“What? Someone out there?!”

Rook gets up to look, too. With a quick glance, I see the moonlight hitting the lumps in his beat-up face and his jittery eyes, searching.
“I didn’t see anyone, but we can never be too sure. I thought I heard rustling, but it’s probably just a Growler scavenging… Still, we need to be quiet. We don’t want to get the attention of anything that could be out there,” I say, letting go of the window sill and sliding down with my back to the wall.

Rook is still crouching, looking.
“Listen,” I continue. “It’s not pretty. We don’t have too many options, so we can’t be picky. Like I said, we go south…”
“What’s with you and the fucking south?!” He joins me on the floor. “You keep talking about it like it’s our salvation, some sort of guarantee that we’re not going to die fifteen minutes after leaving this place.”
“The book, Rook.”
“Ah, the book,” he adds, with a dry, sarcastic tone.

When we were locked up, I got a little lucky. My cell was right next to the jailer’s quarters, and so I always tried to make small talk across the hall. Through the open door I could see that he had piles of books surrounding his desk to the point where they almost looked like sandbags, fortifying his position in the eventuality of uncultured waves of enemies.

My attempts to shoot the shit with the man never really paid off, until the day I jokingly asked to borrow some of those books before I met my end. With how well-behaved I was, even despite my serious conviction, the guy wasn’t reluctant for one second. In fact, he seemed very eager to share the knowledge — even if it was with a code-red prisoner like myself.

He did look twice at the title of every book before handing it to me, though. Probably to make sure his “Escape Artists” antique piece didn’t slip through. That’s when he handed me Modern Topography – Hidden Valleys of the New Age. I read all kinds of priceless information — common threats, possible coordinates to uncharted towns, and ways to safely navigate Evergreen paths — routes where the woods rarely changed, connecting important locations in this part of the Holt.

In any case, Rook was not as lucky. His cell was deeper into the jail, where screams echoed but were never heard. I understand his attitude.
“There’s tons of uncharted stuff down south, scattered around the eastern Evergreen, Rook. Towns that should be out there but were never put on the map. We’ll take shelter in one of those for a few weeks, then continue moving.”
“To where? This is what I’m not getting — where can we go? We’re not Guides, Sesh! We have no idea how to move around. In all my life I was only part of, what — three or four batches? You did more, but not nearly enough. Fuck those books, we’re going to die out there—”
“The same way we’re going to die in here,” I interrupt him. “Mauled, starving, or whichever way those assholes are planning to deal with us—”

As I was finishing my sentence, the board above Rook’s head bursts into a rain of splinters, and for a brief moment, time stops, burning a grotesque image into my memory. I can still see it… the red mist suspended mid-air, originating from Rook’s head. Him instinctively closing his eyes, not knowing he would never get to open them ever again.
Fuck.

My ears are ringing and my body is shaking uncontrollably, but with every passing millisecond I can feel time picking the pace back up. All that pain, shock, and terror ending in the lifeless thud of Rook’s body hitting the floor — and I run. Once again, adrenaline floods my veins, throwing me up on my feet and helping me forget about all the pain my body is still very much subject to. Doors are a no-go, so while clenching my fists and burrowing my chin into my chest, I leap through the glass of an old, half-broken window on the opposite side of where we were attacked.
I land on my side. The impact takes the wind out of me and, for just a second, I feel like giving up. It almost doesn’t make sense to run. It seems as though the Holtists will inevitably find me anywhere I run to, any nook I crawl and bleed into. The dirt feels cold and it seems right in the sickest of ways — like the depressing bog of a grave I deserve for all of my past sins… Once more, adrenaline forgets to factor my feelings into the equation and somehow, I manage to get back up and sprint as fast as every fiber of my broken body allows me to.

I don’t think they knew I was there — they thought there was only one… It seems like they only realized we were both hiding in the house when they heard me break through that window… Thinking back on it now, sneaking out of a door doesn’t seem like it would have been that bad of an idea, but dead folk don’t feel regret — and I definitely want to regret all of this later.
I run.
You might be wondering what happened, why they were so pissed with us. I wish Rook could tell you about it, but I guess it’s up to me now.

It was just another routine “delivery”…

“Rook,” I whispered aggressively. “Rook!”
“WHAT?” he responded quietly from behind the boxes he was using as cover, shaking his hands in front of his face, irritated.
“Cross over from that side.”
“…What?”

I signaled the plan with my hands, pointing at a huge pipe that was a few meters behind him and was wrapping over to where I was. He gave me a thumbs up and disappeared behind the boxes once again. A few moments later, he met me at my hiding spot. In his hands, a metal container glowing faintly at both ends with a calming amber light.

We were working together. We had been living with the Holtists for almost two years at that point, trying to fit in with their weird ways, but hardly succeeding. Our plan was to go north, but we ended up stranded at their gates. Guides rarely took folk with them on their northern trips, and even if you were lucky enough to get into a batch, it was crazy expensive. So… we needed serious Scrap if we wanted to continue towards Norway. People talked about Oslo as the place of “The Great Rebirth.” The trees there were starting to die out for some unknown reason, and they could apparently rebuild old-school settlements with almost no risk of breaches long-term. It could all be fairy tales and bedtime stories, and the only ones who knew the truth but never spoke of it were the few Guides who would frequently go up there — we simply had to see for ourselves. We needed some false hope, and what else was there to provide us with that?

We started working odd jobs, and time was passing quicker than we ever would have expected. Locals were beginning to grow fond of us, I think. They were strange folk, regardless. Completely obsessed with the looming trees of the Holt and their hazardous sap. The sap is holy to these people, calling it “God Blood.” It doesn’t only refer to the acidic bubbling pools at the base of the trees, though. These pools release gases in the form of sap clouds, which eventually turn into acidic “sapped rain.” Many died horrible deaths messing around with the amber-colored substance, but eventually they found ways to process it so that these fearless lunatics even got to ingest it in small doses.

Stories about the first generations of priests talk about how they used sap to prove if they were worthy of worshiping the “Tall Gods”. Also, it was obviously psychedelic, and a pretty strong one at that.
Whoever survived the sap micro-dosing would go on to be respected members of their manic cult. As you might imagine, they would also get to procreate way easier, eventually leading to newer generations slowly developing somewhat of a slight, makeshift immunity to the hardcore effects of sap.

We quickly found out how sought-after this altered sap is outside of their gates. Shadier guides would pay us a pretty penny whenever we could provide them with a canister or two. One thing led to another and we were doing it full-time. Lots of Scrap for what seemed to be easy, yet risky work. If we got caught smuggling out the sacred God Blood, we were looking at very serious consequences: either a slow and excruciating public execution by sap bath, or life in the decrepit, torturous Holtist jail… But with how well we had done up to that point, we were stupidly confident any of that would never happen. Plus, there was no way we could get enough Scrap to continue our trip north doing anything else… It was our only option.

Now, you might be asking how we even got our hands on the sap to begin with… Well, as a show of gratitude and unending loyalty to their sick gods, the Holtists erected an enormous sap reservoir at the edges of each of their big cities. This thing had to continuously be maintained by experienced welders, so that the precious sap wouldn’t seep out. Long story short, we knew a welder who loved to capitalize on the occasional leak.

“Come on, let’s move,” I told Rook.
“We’ve got way too many canisters on us this time, man. I swear these guys have a sixth sense for this thing, it’s only a matter of time until somebody sniffs us out,” he replies.
“Don’t be so dramatic, it’s been two years and nobody batted an eye. It’s easy work, we just stay low and—” I suddenly stopped talking and we both froze, petrified at the nauseating sound of the church bells reverberating through the streets. They rung at night.
“Oh my god, I damn near shit my pants. I never got used to these freaks and their fucking church bells… Can’t wait for us to finally get the hell out of this place, and for good,” Rook whispered while peeking from the top of our cover. “Clear.”
“They’re not all bad…” I said, moving with him.
“I’m sure you’ll find yourself a nice, glowing Holtist lady to take with you on the road,” he chuckled.
He was being an asshole, but I laughed too.

We were near the gates, almost at the spot where we were supposed to drop the goods. The night was calm and the moon was glowing through the canopy above. As usual, two guards were patrolling nearby, but it was dark enough so that we didn’t have to worry about them. We had done this a million times before, after all. As we were nearing the much-anticipated ending of our secret night stroll, the clank of one of Rook’s canisters hitting the metal fence had the both of us clenching our teeth in anticipation.

“FUCK!”

The padding tied around the container wasn’t properly secured and, a few moments earlier, it had moved out of place, exposing the brassy corners of the box. Immediately, two blinding spots of light hit our faces and we knew we were done. Neither of us tried to run. We knew they would shoot. We just stood there, thinking of what this could have been but, now, definitely never will be. Screams and threats were flooding our ears while other lights in the distance were sharply turning in our direction. Adjusting to the light, we both just silently stared at each other. We knew our plans of getting out of that shithole were over. We didn’t have to say it.

Ever since the moment we were captured, Rook had it bad in jail…disproportionately bad. He was initially in my cell, but they moved him not long after our incarceration. Right before he was taken, he threw his lucky dog tag in my lap… He probably thought it was all over.
Rook was regularly beaten up and interrogated, but nothing he said was ever enough for the blood-crazed fanatics. They would bring him over and drop him in front of my cell. I would scream at them to talk to me, that I knew more than he did, but to no avail. They knew he was the head of the “operation.” Once they began using untreated sap on his skin, he started giving them all of the names and details. I know he was telling the truth down there in the cellars, but the guide he was accusing was too faithful of a “friend” to the Holtists for them to believe it — so they continued… for days.

One day, I could hear Rook’s grunts as the guard was dragging him towards my cell.
“Last day on earth, scum,” the deformed guard said right before throwing my friend to the ground.
Because of sap overuse, some of the Holtists’ skin would often twist in place, forming disgusting patterns. At times, you could even see small black dots on their backs that would eventually turn into bloody saplings growing out of their tissue, much like the infected animals.
“I’ll go get the others. You keep an eye on them, watcher,” the guard toward the jail keep. The man nodded indifferently, murmuring the sentence he was reading louder, as to cover the other man’s voice.

Despite me trying to subtly engage with him, Rook seemed unconscious… The jail keep even got up from his chair and looked over his piles of books to check if anything fishy was going on, but quickly sat back down and resumed reading once he saw that my partner barely had the strength to breathe.
Then, surprisingly, Rook raised his head from the cold floor and, with a rabid look, he gestured for me to get the attention of the man reading a few meters away from us.
Looking around frantically, I saw them — three books on the corner of my bed. Without any hesitation, I yelled out to the jail keep and started ripping page after page, putting the paper in my mouth and spitting it out, behaving like I had just completely lost it. It was all it took for him to jolt out from his study and rush to my damp cell, where, like an animal in a cage, he tried to reach through the bars to grab me and stop me from my manic episode.

In the meantime, a shadow had risen behind the unsuspecting warden. With a powerful hit to the back of his head, the overweight man flopped to the ground like he was never meant to be standing upright in the first place. Rook took the jailer’s key ring, freed me, and we made way to the top of the building.

“You had it pretty cozy in there,” he says, not looking at me.
I say nothing.

Once on the roof, we locked the door behind us and snuck around looking for a path to the top of the exterior fence. Only then, after scaling the rusty wall of the cursed fortress, did all the bells in the city start to ring, one after another.
The long drop was the least of our worries…

I’ll get us up there, one way or another. I promise. Burn this letter. I am coming home.

Sesh ]]

I look at the stranger handing me a bloody dog tag and a letter. He looks downtrodden. I would ask, but I don’t want to hear another sob story about how he lost his wife, brother, or childhood friend. Not today, at least.
“Would that be all, sir?” I ask. “Are there no other items that you might want delivered? We have a discount for lightweight package—”
“No, thank you. For now, that will be all.”

He interrupts me, turns around throwing up his hood, and leaves.
Just another stray in the Holt.


End of Entry #3.