Black Adder

BLACK ADDER’S RACE

By Bob Blackman

I know now that what we had previously called 1763 (a tiny, generic, class two planetoid just one day’s journey from the Alorian worm hole) is a lithium mining, slave colony run by Black Adder and a dozen cutthroats whose primary goal seems to be to emulate and exceed Adder’s sadistic lifestyle. This I learned the hard way, when our five man geographical survey ship was ambushed, as we attempted to land near the only settlement we could find. Only Jackson and I survived, and many were the nights I’d wished we hadn’t.

“It’s race time,” Adder announced. “Which of you losers want to win your freedom?” Every year Adder would enlist volunteers by offering freedom to the person who could complete his deadly obstacle course in the shortest period of time. There was no reason to believe anyone was ever freed, except that the winner never returned to the mines. They might have been released, but it’s just as likely that Adder skinned them alive for the sheer joy of hearing them scream. It didn’t matter, nothing could be worse than another year in the mines.

The race from Cordano to Draco on Black Adder’s vile rock is the most dangerous known to man. Thirty-five desperate men had started the trek fourteen days ago. Even before we reached the
cables, we had stumbled past what was left of twenty-one dismembered souls, so we were down to fourteen, maybe less. I wasn’t front-runner in all this but I kept track. If truth be told, I was probably dead last, but that was okay. Let the fools rush
headlong into hell, I’ll learn from their mistakes. You only get one mistake in this race, because any miscalculation means you’re dead.

Jackson and I had separated from the main group early on the first day, just before we reached the Black Meadows, a ten-mile wasteland of asphalt-like paths across a tar-like quicksand. “Stay on the path and freedom awaits,” the sign read, but the path was barely discernable to the eye. The fact that Black Adder, said we’d have no trouble coming this way did nothing to make me feel good about this first obstacle. Everyone knew he standing on the ridge somewhere with a telescope, watching to see who would sink
first and hoping the vultures would get the poor soul before death did.

We had just come out of a rocky canyon, so while everyone else proceeded, we backtracked. We removed our trousers, tied knots in the legs and filled them with as many rocks and pebbles as we
could carry. Four hours later we began our trek across the meadow, tossing rocks before us, and stepping only where the rocks bounced when they hit the surface. Two miles out, we passed
Grissom, chest deep in tar, a vulture perched on each outstretched arm while a dozen more soared above challenging them for pecking rights. We passed another body, at the seven mile point. He was lying face down and his body was unrecognizable. By nightfall we were through the first obstacle, and our odds were now 33 to 1 against winning the final race down Abbey Road, and gaining our freedom.

The next morning we drank lustily from the half empty, black water tank. There were two tanks of colored water, a black one and a red one, placed in pairs every ten or twelve miles along the course. One in each pair was poisoned, another of Black Adder’s sick jokes. There were no bodies nearby so whoever took the first drink must have chosen correctly. The advantage of being last was you knew never to drink from the least used tank. So far we’ve found nine bodies lying near twelve sets of tanks. No one would confute the fact that good luck was scarce among Adder’s slaves.

On our fourteenth day out we caught up with what was left of the lead group, seven prisoners, each trying to compute how best to cross a hundred foot wide chasm above a river of boiling
brimstone that flowed through the abyss some five hundred feet below. Marley said that three had already made the attempt but only two had made it. By Marley’s count we were down to the final eleven survivors. Two inch steel cables were strung across the canyon at fifty-foot intervals going down the canyon toward the brimstone river. Because the canyon was “V” shaped, the further
down you climbed, the shorter distance you had to cross, but for every fifty feet down, the temperature rose about thirteen degrees. The bottom cable was only ten feet across but according to Adder’s sign, it was 220 degrees down there as opposed to 85 degrees at the top. I felt confident I had enough upper body
strength to pull myself hand-over-hand about seventy feet but it was around 125 degrees at the 70 feet across level, so I was torn between 80 feet at 112 degrees or 90 feet at 99 degrees. We
were used to working ten-hour days in 100 and even 105 degree weather but I feared 112 degrees would sap too much energy. Jackson and I both decided to attempt crossing at the four hundred
foot level. Four of the seven ahead of us decided to sit back watch for a bit before making an attempt, and two, the brothers, Tom and Bill Crawley, decided to give up and return the way they came, though I doubted either one will make it back. Tom had pulled, possibly torn, a shoulder muscle and I had no doubt that the rest of his anatomy (as well as his brother’s) would become buzzard food within the next two or three days.

We watched Marley and Grizzley who were ahead of us. Marley made it with ease, which was no surprise, I’d seen him do a hundred-fifty pull-ups without working up a sweat, but Grizzley, who was as big as his name suggests barely managed to hang on the final ten feet. I was next. I wiped the sweat from my hands, eased myself over the side, took a deep breath and started across. I was fifteen feet out before I remembered to breath again. At thirty feet, I was going strong sliding my right hand forward then pulling my left hand toward it. I was forty-five feet out and feeling no pain, but by the time I reached sixty feet, my body weight felt as though it had doubled. At seventy-five feet I needed to rest but knew I didn’t dare. By eighty feet, I felt I had expended every ounce of energy I had. Ten feet, that’s all I needed. I closed my eyes and moved another five feet, opened my eyes and saw the canyon wall almost within reach. I slid my right hand forward, pulled my left hand toward me and searched with my legs for a foothold. I found nothing. Sweat poured from my forehead and
splattered against my chest. I pulled forward another foot and found a foothold. I used it to push upward and was able to rest with my arms and chest on the ledge and my weight on my legs and
feet. I rested for several minutes then pulled myself up and over the ledge.

Jackson started across after me, but I could see before he reached the halfway point that he wasn’t going to make it. He made the mistake of trying to rest, but resting while hanging from a cable is just an illusion. Hanging on just saps your strength and every second wasted resting makes the next movement even harder. I yelled for him to keep moving and he started again but by the time he reached seventy feet his strength was gone. He hung on to the cable unable to move any further. First one hand slipped and then the other and he dropped silently into the fiery abyss. I sat on the edge of the precipice and wept. My only friend in this miserable existence was gone and I blamed myself. I was the one who, bored and searching for any diversion, had insisted we visit this miserable world, just to see what was here.

Then, more positively, I told myself that if I lived through this, I would get Jackson’s name put on something here, some ridge or hill, when the naming commission got around to mapping this god-forsaken never-green desert. If I live through this, I promised
myself, I’ll do it to make sure Jackson’s existence isn’t forgotten. While sitting there, I saw the next two in line, lose their grip and
plunge into the burning inferno. I calculated that there were just seven of us left in the race now, and two of those are still on the other side, trying to gain the nerve to make the crossing.

I knew I should wait no longer, so I started off after Marley. Each obstacle had become progressively more difficult and with only one more before the ever lethal, Abbey Road gantlet, I wondered what new horror lay ahead. In the eight years I’d been on this rock, there had been a race every spring, and no one had ever survived to come in second.

~End