Hammerhand didn't like it, but he settled slowly onto his knees and put his hands behind his head before the order to do it was shouted into his face with a gun barrel pointed between his eyes.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
The day went about as well as Hammerhand had expected it to. The tense atmosphere among the prisoners remained. None of them appeared overly trusting of the others and they moved in well-coordinated groups that assiduously avoided one another. If one group came too close, they tended to fling insults but they never allowed it to reach actual violence at any time.
He assumed it was because they knew it would result in the yard being invaded again.
Otherwise, the prisoners were mostly left to themselves, although some of them were led out and put to work in some of the fields nearby, likely to grow food or clean drainage pipes. From what he could see, it was usually anything that would allow them to work with minimal supervision, as it seemed the prison was mostly self-sustaining. It made sense since he doubted they would all be held and maintained as a drain on resources that brought no benefit to the rest of the city.
For the moment, though, he wasn't given any work, which forced him to stay in the yard with a handful of others.
Despite his irritation at the forced inaction, he didn't particularly mind. He didn't want to work for the people who had incarcerated him and being out in the open, more or less, was something of a relief compared to however much time he had spent in the dark little cell. It was good to be able to stretch his legs, at least.
The lamps at the top of the cavern moved in a way that mimicked the sun's trajectory outside and drew across from what looked like east to west. He was interested to see the whole process play out. From the fact that they had them at all, he could tell FEMA City was unlike any other bunker he had seen. Maybe there were more of them out there.
The size of the city itself certainly played to the concept that there were too many people to feed from what they could grow. The other bunkers were rigidly contained and controlled and the population was strictly monitored for that very reason. Maybe they had decided to lift those restrictions.
When the replica suns reached the top of the cavern and hung directly overhead, the steel gate opened once more. A group of prisoners pushed a large wheeled table carrying a huge steel pot with a steaming liquid inside, likely the same kind of stew he had seen in every other bunker. Beside it was a stack of the protein patties and what looked like loaves of bread sliced for the prisoners who pushed forward to eat.
It seemed as though the people in FEMA City ate better than most of the other bunkers, most probably the benefit of their raids on the surrounding countryside for provisions whenever they needed it.
Hammerhand joined the others and collected his food on a tray. He wasn’t surprised that it smelled much better than anything he had eaten in any of the bunkers he had visited in the past.
The table he had chosen appeared to be avoided by the other prisoners, some of whom elected to eat standing up rather than sit beside him.
Once again, he didn't particularly mind being left on his own. He wasn't really in the mood to interact. People who wanted him to talk usually waited for orders or something like that, and he couldn't help but think that he needed time to get back into that frame of mind.
Besides, he had a feeling that if he attracted too much notice to himself, people he didn't want to watch him would, in turn, pay more attention to him.
He wanted to be alone for the moment. It had been a long, horrifyingly bad few days. Hell, weeks, he supposed. Ever since they had abandoned their search for Citta Del Mar and decided to help the people of Auburn, things had gone from bad to worse. Every decision he had made for the Knights had ended with them in deeper shit than before.
"Are you all right?"
Hammerhand looked up and realized that he had been in something of a reverie. He turned, a little surprised that someone had joined him at the table. It took a moment for him to recognize the smaller man he had saved from being beaten by Scar.
Well, saved from a worse beating than he would have otherwise received. There were still bruises across his cheek and his left eye was a little swollen and darkening quickly.
"Yeah, I'm fine," he muttered. "Why do you ask?"
"Because you've sat here without touching your food and I'm fairly sure you've bent your spoon out of shape. The guards don't like that."
He looked down and sure enough, the metal spoon in his hand was bent into a ninety-degree angle. Quickly, he reversed the damage. "Huh. Right you are. I guess I must have been lost in thought."
"Well, you'll want to eat that food. If the guards see anyone wasting it, they take it out on the rest of us. Sometimes, they don't feed us for a couple of days."
He nodded and began to half-heartedly eat the mostly cooled stew. "Thanks for the tip."
"Given that you saved me from almost certain death, it's the least I could do. Hammerhand, right? I'm Luther17. You're one of the fighters they brought in, right? The ones they caught in the tunnels trying to attack the city?"
The Knights’ leader narrowed his eyes at the man. "You sure know a lot about what happens around here."
Luther17 smirked. "That's me. I get my ass beat and I know things I shouldn't."
"Is that why you ended up here?"
"Well, that had less to do with my knowing things and more about me spreading them among the general populace.
