After The Apocalypse (Book 5): Retribution

by Hately, Warren

  “How we gonna fund Edgelords now?”

  Lucas exhaled.

  “Seriously, Kevin?”

  Maybe it was too dark for his own expression to carry. Luke made another irritable noise, but Kevin didn’t stir.

  “What?”

  The boy calmly placed the knife down and stared right at him.

  “What?” he said again in his usual clipped way.

  “I thought you might need . . . help . . . and I wanted to –”

  Kevin cut him off with a snort.

  “Funny,” he said. “Needed help? Yep.”

  The smaller boy snorted again and angrily snatched up the knife, but for no other purpose than to resume a determined meditation on its dull blade. Lucas forced his own breathing to come easier, then waited it out a little. Finally, he felt compelled himself to speak.

  “You’re hurt, Kevin.”

  “Shut up.” Shuddup.

  “Do you need something. . . ?”

  “Needed you, Lucas.”

  Kevin’s face stayed blank, but he was crying. Luke knew the boy was angry, but worse was his own guilt. He started crying too, which was too much for Kevin. The boy shot up and crossed to the other corner of the room behind the door, forcing Lucas to change position.

  “I know,” Lucas said. “I let you down. Myself too.”

  “So fuckin’ lame,” the other boy snorted.

  Wiping away his tears, it was as if Lucas looked up wearing a different face, slapped by his friend’s venomous tone. He smaller boy continued to stare at him hotly.

  “Always talkin’ you never killed no one,” Kevin said quietly. “Had ya fuckin’ chance, lamer. Talk a lot o’ shit. Full of it. Daddy’s boy.”

  “H-hey, Kevin. . . .”

  Luke stood and wished he hadn’t as Kevin sprang to his feet too. His friend continued to stare at him hard, and Lucas fancied it was more than just telepathy that they were both suddenly conscious the younger boy had accidentally put Lucas between him and his weapons back in the corner with his nest. Kevin wore a cornered rat look for a moment, and Luke was almost tearfully relieved when the boy slapped his arms against the corner walls around him and slumped down hard again to the bare boards and clutched arms around himself.

  “I am really sorry, Kevin,” Lucas said, still standing, and started to cry anew.

  Kevin glanced at him, then away.

  “Do anything for my brother,” he said. “Even kill.”

  “I . . . I’m sorry.”

  Kevin still wouldn’t look back at him, and the boy’s final words felt more frightening than anything else. Lucas stood a long while, hands ineptly at his sides, and then he slowly sat on the floor on the opposite side from the door and folded his arms around himself against the cold – and everything else too.

  Chapter 4

  THREE DAYS AFTER laying low while disaster overtook the City, someone slid a pamphlet beneath the front door. The hastily-produced edition of what they now simply called The Herald was an A5 double fold carefully stapled together by one of the reporters, somehow, in the midst of all the chaos and its aftermath.

  Lefthanders reprisal kills hundreds in Council attack

  by Delroy Earle

  THE City is reeling and the whole Columbus sanctuary zone project in doubt after Lefthanders dissidents launched a harrowing, ungodly attack on Wednesday night’s Council meeting.

  Scores of attendees were killed and dozens more died in the hours after a truckload of Furies was launched into the theater midway through the weekly meeting.

  The full death toll may never be known.

  Citizens in homes around the meeting also perished after Furies overwhelmed Safety forces to escape the meeting.

  A Lefthanders plan to overthrow the Administration was defeated at the recent Battle of St Marys,

  Wednesday night’s atrocity was a calculated revenge attack designed as a distraction to boost provisional leader Madeline Plume from custody.

  The dissidents are suspected of abducting dozens of Citizens in recent weeks.

  Those Citizens were cruelly murdered ahead of Wednesday night in which the Dead were weaponized against innocent civilians.

  Council President Dana Lowenstein survived to tell the Herald the City was on lockdown with basic security the Administration’s “sole priority” right now.

  A full Curfew was now in place and Citizens risked being shot on sight.

  “Citizens must take safety into their own hands at all times until we can issue some sort of ‘all clear’,” Dr Lowenstein said.

  She refused to comment on the security of the sanctuary zone and the Administration’s commitment to the Columbus project.

  Before the massacre, Wednesday’s meeting heard doubts about popular Council elections due to insufficient Rations stocks as winter approaches.

  Councilor Ernest Wilhelm, who also survived, told Citizens those still alive after winter would determine the City project’s future.

  He was unavailable to comment before Herald deadline.

  Many of the City’s community leaders also died during Wednesday’s attack.

  Brotherhood leader Edward Burroughs was murdered in the days prior – now blamed on Lefthanders dissidents.

  But the Herald understands the Brotherhood has since split amid racial tensions, and Brotherhood members no longer support trooper patrols.

  The splintering of City factions, worsened by the security failure, has thrown the City into crisis.

  Dr Lowenstein said trooper patrols were containing Furies loose in the sanctuary zone.

  “We have enough personnel for the job, but it’s going to be slow going,” Dr Lowenstein said.

  “Stay in your homes. Protect your neighbors. Troopers will notify everyone when the Curfew’s lifted.”

  Rations will be distributed once the City is secure, the President said.

  The Herald urges all Citizens to protect themselves, but adhere to the City Rules.

  *

  Tom read the information with skepticism, but struggled also not to admire Delroy Earle’s persistence. Half the ink was blurred and the paper stock watermarked and crap, but Earle and whoever else he had with him after Melina’s departure had got the news out to the people even while the streets remained on lockdown. The other pages broke open the full extent of the City’s discontent. The newspaper editor risked reprisals, if anyone wanted to take issue with his airing of the City factions’ dirty laundry. The tight edition painted a clear, grim picture.

  Within hours of sunrise on that first day after the massacre, eight-strong bricks of Safety personnel had walked each street with guns on the hunt for threats while a woman marching with them read from a sheet of paper through a loudhailer.

  Their message was simple: stay the fuck indoors. It reinforced Tom’s understandable reluctance to go and risk his skin any further, and so the edict calmed the compound’s other residents. Between Karla, Ionia, Gonzales, Dkembe and Attila, they established a watch from the upper floors and one of them in an armchair outside with eyes on the gate. By whatever nefarious means, Ortega had kept the street outside his digs clear of the usual tents and booths cluttered against most other freestanding structures, and the first day after the attack ended as it started: cold beans, hot rice, and Tom ruing the pork deal he’d never finalized.

  And damn it, they’d promised it was pork.

  The kept to themselves boys upstairs, and the second night Lucas stayed in Kevin’s room. And when someone at the Bastion remembered they had a landline number for Ortega’s place, the phone rang to serve summons for any and all Enclave residents to return to base.

  Beau was ready to go in a heartbeat, and Tom wasn’t sad to see it happen. He was more disturbed than he’d ever want to admit at the knowledge his daughter was upstairs, sharing quarters and everything else with the close-lipped, seemingly timid young man. But all the other thoughts that followed only blackened Tom’s mood further – most keenly because he knew this was part of the n
atural order that he despised for making him so powerless.

  He wasn’t ready to let go of his little girl yet, and the rampant, sporadic chaos across the so-called sanctuary zone lent a gravitas that Tom happily seized on. It was so rare for him to issue a flat-out refusal that Lilianna dutifully farewelled her Beau and consented to yet more time passing in familial confinement.

  The Herald report showed life was returning to the sanctuary zone whether anyone was ready for it or not. The household’s food supply was running low – hell, it was never adequate for such an emergency anyway, even if that was all the more reason to be prepared for it. The situation left Tom stewing, still feeling like some Shakespearean reject imagining all the blood on his hands, and for good reason. But he’d traded his soul for his family’s safety long ago.

  *

  NOTHING COULD SPARE Tom ignorance of how Dkembe continually avoided him. Although the least one likely to volunteer for their proposed expedition to The Mile – which neighbors whispered had slowly started operating again the night before – Dkembe looked more likely to tool up and go do that than stay in the same room with Tom longer than a few seconds.

  Tom halted the young man as he took his turn to stand watch over the gate.

  “Hey,” Tom said conversationally. “Dkembe, not so fast, huh? What’s going on?”

  “‘What’s going on’?”

  Dkembe stared at him a moment, then pulled his features into order and straightened.

  “Uh, I dunno,” he replied. “I was wonderin’ . . . wondering . . . you know, what’s next?”

  “Yeah,” Tom agreed. “What do you think about that?”

  “Me?”

  “Man, you gotta stop repeating my words,” Tom said and smiled to show it wasn’t a growl, and thus didn’t do much of a job with either. “I thought we worked through this. You –”

  “Worked through how you just killed that guy?”

  Tom nodded. “And there it is,” he said. “Thanks. That’s the issue, is it? The guy at the abattoir?”

  “It’s not an issue to you?”

  Dkembe’s nostrils flared when he finally worked his way up to speaking his mind, perpetually discomfited by it at the same time. Tom was reminded of a cornered stallion he’d seen once, though maybe it was on TV, eyes rolling as it looked desperately to escape, but couldn’t. Tom raised his hands.

  “Easy, man,” Tom said to him. “You’re allowed to think ill of me. It’s cool.”

  “Nothing’s . . . nothing’s cool.”

  “Agreed.”

  “I thought. . . .” Dkembe started, but for a moment couldn’t finish. “I thought we was workin’ towards the cattle plan. And then, with my friend Jay, but you didn’t want to . . . We went to the . . . the Ascended, and those freaks . . . You seemed pretty cool with that. And I guess they did with you, too. I dunno, I just don’t get it. You not . . . Tom, you not troubled by what you did?”

  “Because I killed that guy?”

  “Like, in . . . in cold blood . . . and just, everyone stood there and it was like, ‘Oh OK,’ we’re just doin’ this . . . this thing now. . . .”

  Tom wasn’t sure if the younger man was going to stop speaking, so he raised his hands again and made a low noise, dropping the expression at once, along with his fingers which now plucked at the thighs of his jeans as he sat in the sentry’s chair. He was glad not to feel more worried about the heated conversation given both of them carried guns. Dkembe’s eyes were all over the place, on anywhere but him, and Tom was strongly reassured by the Ak47 and – despite the dwindling ammo for it – had taken to wearing the damned thing like a fashion accessory to match his latest grim look.

  Dkembe remained immobile halfway to departure. Tom motioned to him.

  “Do you want me to be honest with you?”

  Dkembe looked spooked at the prospect, but he gave an autistic nod.

  “Of course.”

  “Really?” Tom asked him. “I’ve found most my life, people agree to that pretty quickly, and then later have second thoughts.”

  Dkembe didn’t say anything. Tom cleared his throat and went on.

  “I’ve killed a lot of people now,” he said slowly. He nodded. It was an awful truth, though he looked far from apologetic. “If you wonder if I’m cool with that, the answer is that I don’t really know. I’m not sorry for what I did to that guy. I knew him. He’s just another kind of animal. He was a risk to my family. And our business. We’re better off with him dead.”

  Clearly Dkembe didn’t get it yet. He nursed a repulsed expression. Tom growled with quiet frustration even as far more genuine tears started playing down his face.

  “Man, I feel decidedly fuckin’ uncomfortable with it,” Tom said. “OK? That’s the honest truth. I wasn’t ever this way – back in the world, before the Fall. It just . . . happened, and I didn’t see it happening, you know, I just . . . lived through it, one day at a time, and now I’m here, and. . . .”

  “And?”

  Tom finally dropped his own eyes. Clutched his forehead instead.

  “I dunno,” he said tiredly. “I’d do that for you too, Dkembe, if it makes any difference to you. Let’s hope I never have to.”

  Dkembe nodded. “Amen.”

  And the younger man walked away.

  “Hold on,” Tom said to him.

  Dkembe duly halted at the side door leading from the courtyard in through to the kitchen. Tom stood and adopted an unthreatening stance.

  “While we’re having secret men’s business,” he said, “tell what’s the dealio with you an’ Erak.”

  The younger man’s shoulders stiffened, and after a time, he stiffly turned back to face Tom. Dkembe’s face was flushed, black ears burning unseen as he twice dropped and then finally raised his eyes back to the head of their dysfunctional household.

  “Me an’ Erak, we’re just close,” he said. “It’s not a gay thing.”

  “Uh-huh,” Tom said. “Looks pretty gay to me. No judgment. I’ve got bigger worries than that sort of thing, you know?”

  Dkembe’s expression flared desperate, and the young man turned to go once again, but Tom leapt forward and followed and then guided him deeper along the side of the main building by one arm, thrusting him deeper into its illusion of total privacy. Tom still pitched his voice low.

  “Listen, man,” he said. “Do you know what I used to do for a living?”

  “Yeah,” Dkembe said like he wanted none of this. “You was a hotshot TV reporter or somethin’.”

  Tom shook his head. Now wasn’t the time to start asking when the hell Dkembe started speaking like a ghetto hood.

  “I was a reporter, years ago,” Tom said. “But I wasn’t talking about that. Before the Fall, the Emergency, I had a job with a non-Government agency working with teenagers and stuff like that.”

  “You were a youth worker?”

  “Hard to imagine?”

  Tom would’ve been happy at a little joke at his own expense. Certainly, that was preferable to the open-mouthed look of hesitation Dkembe offered. He seemed appalled, maybe imagining Tom-the-knife-murderer working with troubled kids. Tom sighed, and eased off the proximity a little, though he kept his voice low too.

  “Do you know the first thing I’d do when I got a new group of kids?” he asked. “I’m talking two or three of them, sixteen-, seventeen-year-olds.”

  Dkembe shrugged. Waited for some horrible answer.

  “I’d get them drunk.”

  “You what?”

  “Most of these kids had already drunk more in their short lifetimes than you or I ever will,” Tom said to him. “We’d lost that battle, already. Society. These kids were seasoned. Hardened. Like you, in a way. I had to get a couple of drinks into them just to get them to be real fucking people with me. Do you understand?”

  “That you got kids drunk?”

  Tom shrugged, sighed, rolled with it.

  “Well, someone had to model responsible behavior with booze,” he said. “
Not exactly a popular line of thinking in my agency, I’ll admit, but I also didn’t tell them what I was doing. These kids . . . I’m talking, like, three drinks, seriously.”

  “So you loosened them up with alcohol?” Now Dkembe actually did laugh, in a kind of horrified way. “Still doesn’t sound good, Tom.”

  “I know, but I feel that way with you, man,” Tom replied. “You’re so fuckin’ hyper-vigilant I don’t feel like I’m getting through to you sometimes, Dkembe. I don’t give a shit about you and Gonzales. I really don’t. But I want to know there’s no threats in my home, yeah?”

  Tom motioned back towards the gate he was meant to be warding, still within eyesight, and Dkembe’s face transitioned from the obvious threat to the practicalities of what Tom was saying. He slowly bowed his head and nodded.

  “You don’t need to . . . to worry about him.”

  “Good.”

  Dkembe sighed. He stared past Tom’s right shoulder and into some kind of seconds-long daydream. He signaled its end with a fey sniffle, snapping back and nodding once again as if reanimated. Then he met Tom’s eye.

  It took a few more seconds for the words to come. Tom slowly exhaled into the moment.

  “When I was on the road,” Dkembe said slowly. “It was a difficult time. I didn’t have no . . . family, and people . . . people you would meet up with, in the wild. . . .”

  “I get it,” Tom said.

  “I was always . . . I was young, too, man,” he said. “I mean, eighteen years old, you think you not a kid, back with Taco Bell and KFC. They got your back. But then all that goes away. . . .”

  Dkembe’s gaze returned to its previous point behind Tom as he continued.

  “I fell in with some people,” he said. “Needed the numbers, you know, to stay protected. I always needed people. I was the. . . .”