“Hey,” Tom said gently to the newcomer. “Any lowdown on anyone trading stashed supplies?”
The other survivor checked them over a moment before he relaxed.
“It’s slim pickings,” he said. “I saw that lady that sells those jams and chutneys, but everyone’s bunkered down.”
“What are you doing out?”
The man rubbed his stubbled chin, maybe not feeling the need to explain.
“Just seeing what’s out,” he replied. “Try my hand at a little salvage, but I ain’t seen much.”
“Same.”
Tom nodded to the guy, dismissing him if he wanted – and he did. The stranger tipped an imaginary hat to them and moved on.
Karla joined them in his wake.
“Any bright ideas?”
“It’s quiet out,” Attila said.
“People are licking their wounds,” Karla said. “But it doesn’t seem too bad to me.”
“Sure,” Tom said. “You’re toting a machine-gun. A lot of people aren’t as confident, if they run into one of those things.”
Again he motioned back the way they’d been. And the way they’d be going again soon if they didn’t think of something.
Tom glanced around as if to confirm there really wasn’t much prospect of a worthwhile trade. A few actual sheets of brown newspaper blew past them like tumbleweeds as the wind raised up again and they felt the first drops of rain from a sky turned the color of an old rusty drum. Copper-colored clouds resembled crusted wounds, just yearning to shower pus down on them. And the taste-smell of burning tin and sheet metal came again on the breeze.
“There’s a place nearby I think we should check,” he said.
“They have food?” Attila asked.
“I don’t know,” Tom told him. “But they have booze.”
“You’ve got me then,” Karla said. “Let’s get out of this rain before it really shits.”
Tom couldn’t disagree.
*
IT WAS ONLY five minutes on foot to the Dirty Vixen, but they were met by its silent, armored front door. Like everywhere else in the streets radiating out from The Mile, it was quiet except where it wasn’t. Twice they passed heated arguments away behind closed doors, then another patrol of six troopers away ahead of them.
Tom checked over the front door, the metal-plated window frames where glass had been in gentler times. The sound of soft music played inside. Tom rattled a fist on the metal sheeting, waited, then repeated the move while Karla and Attila watched with caution.
“Who’s there?” Magnus called out.
“It’s Tom Vanicek,” Tom yelled back though not knowing which way to look. “I’m with friends. We’re heavily armed. No threat to you.”
They waited a short while, taken by surprise when a rope ladder fell between them. Magnus peered out from above the Vixen’s metal awning.
“You’ll have to climb up, but you’re welcome.”
“OK,” Tom said as much to himself. “Let’s go.”
Once on top, the corrugated canopy formed a platform for a stepladder to a window on the squat building’s second floor. The carpentry showed the emergency entrance as an established security feature – “zombie-proofing” as Luke and Lila called it – and the room Magnus invited them into, via an unshuttered window, had a utilitarian feel vouched for by a row of coats on hooks atop wooden benches, stacks of shoes, a gun rack, and a stack of metal toolkits, as well as a shelf bearing assorted handyman’s oddments, and beside that a tripod-mounted military-grade rifle with scope overlooking the exit in pride of place.
“Welcome,” Magnus said. “You’re making house calls?”
“Just a few of us from my household,” Tom said. He paused as Karla and then Attila clambered in. “These are my friends.” And he introduced them. Handshakes were exchanged. Magnus couldn’t stop his eyes continually tracking over the guns they wore. Tom held up his hands. “Just being paranoid, OK?”
“A little paranoia never killed anybody, right?” Magnus smiled bleakly.
But Tom had no idea whether the ex-philosopher was facetious or not, or maybe just overthinking the remark as usual. He nodded tightly and feigned a smile.
The light wasn’t good. Maybe that’s why it took him that long to see the Vixen’s proprietor looked pretty banged up. One of his eyes had swollen shut and gone purple.
“You OK?” Tom asked him and motioned to the wound.
Magnus looked more embarrassed than anything. He waved Tom away.
“I had a little run-in with Councilor Wilhelm,” he said.
“You what?”
Tom didn’t need the statement repeated. He raised an eyebrow in speculation, but Magnus only chuckled mirthlessly, bashed as well as bashful, and motioned them to follow.
“You’ll understand why in a moment or two,” he said.
The wood-floored corridor of the living quarters had an old internal staircase they descended into the back quarters of the tavern itself. A common room adjoined a deathly quiet kitchen. Soft jazz played beyond, the shutdown public bar visible through the kitchen and with all its lights off peopled with ghosts.
Carlotta Deschain sat at the round table in the common room smoking a cigarette, but she stood, smoothing down her black military fatigues self-consciously, thus drawing Tom’s attention from a taller slender woman with lush dark hair piled high in a scarf. She stood too, her hand not the baseball bat beside her chair.
“You can relax,” Magnus told them. “Tom’s a friend.”
Magnus made further introductions, Carlotta stiff as she shook hands. The second woman was Moira Blaze, whom Tom vaguely remembered from the night everything went to hell. Ms Blaze fronted the microphone at the Council meeting representing the City’s Deep Ecologists, thought beyond that, Tom didn’t know much about her or them – perhaps because they weren’t intent on getting everyone else killed.
“What happened here?” Tom asked. “Ernest hit you?”
It was hard to keep all the extra punctuation from his voice. Magnus ran out of strength fast, trying to keep up the nonchalant façade, and a look between him and the dark-skinned ex-Councilor Deschain told the story quicker anyway. Magnus followed it by crossing the room to join her side, taking her hand as he did it.
“Ernest found out about Carlotta and me,” he said.
Carlotta tutted. “It’s ‘Carlotta and I’,” she said.
“No, it’s not,” Tom muttered absent-mindedly, though he didn’t explain himself, too focused on the fresh-minted couple’s revelation instead. “I didn’t see you, after the . . . Council meeting,” he said to Carlotta.
“No.”
She dropped her eyes. Magnus stepped into the gap. He offered Tom another, more formal handshake.
“Carlotta told me you led her out of there,” he said. “I can’t thank you enough, Tom.”
“Sure,” Tom replied. And he grinned as their grip released. “How long have you two been going on?”
It was the happy couple’s second round of awkward looks.
“I was going to tell him,” Carlotta said. “But I . . . the last blow-up happened, and then I quit. And then Ernest and I were over, by then, anyway, so. . . .”
“So . . . for quite a while, then?”
“Yeah,” Carlotta said.
“He has a right to be angry,” Magnus said.
“That’s good of you,” Tom said.
He shared his smirk with Attila, expecting some agreement, and not prepared for the Hungarian’s look of fathomless confusion that Wilhelm’s head wasn’t on a pike already. Tom shrugged.
“You’re a lover, not a fighter, right?” he said to Magnus and winked.
“Something like that, my friend.”
Tom blew out his cheeks. He nodded courteously to the other woman, Moira Blaze’s eyes upon him, and Magnus took a chair, with enough for everyone. Karla noisily set down her weapons, while Attila confirmed there were no Fury attacks in the past few hours nearby.
; “No,” Magnus said. “How is it out there?”
“Quiet.”
“‘Too quiet’?”
“No, just actually pretty quiet,” Tom said. He looked at his companions to see if they shared his view as he added, “Hard not to think traders will start coming back out of their shells soon. We’re hardly alone in running short of provisions. That’s what brings us out here. How are you doing?”
“We’re just riding out the apocalypse-within-the-apocalypse, my friends.”
Magnus stood again, playing the good host despite his black eye.
“What can I get everyone to drink?” he asked. “Moira here’s another refugee like me, barely escaped that goddamned Council meeting by the skin of our teeth.”
“By the seat of my pants, in my case,” Moira said. “Literally.”
She plucked at the layers of fabric she’d fashioned into a thick winter sarong.
“I’ll have another glass of what you amusingly called the ‘house wine’,” she said to Magnus.
“At least the words were amusing, if the wine was not,” he answered back.
They drank for a while – though Tom declined – and made small talk as rainfall intensified on the roof overhead. But the Vixen couldn’t offer much in the way of solid replenishment for Tom’s family and friends, and the enthusiasm for retelling the story of their respective escapes from the City meeting slaughterhouse had faded like the passing days. A distant chatter of gunfire sounded somewhere far away, and after that, nothing.
And then the rain stopped.
Carlotta stood and picked up a shoulder bag from beneath the table, shooting her lover a dour look. Magnus grew similarly chastened, sober as he joined her and they briefly held hands.
“It seems quiet out there,” she said to him. “I’ll be back soon with the rest of my things.”
“I just wish you’d ride this out,” her lover said.
Tom and the others shuffled, unable to offer much in the way of privacy. Moira Blaze offered Tom her namesake smile and he lowered his eyes as if turned submissive. Tom bit his lip instead, deflecting the woman’s interest, thoughts with Iwa Swarovsky out there somewhere as he glanced back to the star-crossed lovers as they broke apart.
“After yesterday, I want to be free from there,” Carlotta said. Then to Tom: “OK if I tag along with you partway?”
“Sure,” he said. “I don’t really know what we’re going to do about our Rations, though.”
“Have you stopped past Trader Moe’s?”
Again Tom was uncertain whether the ex-philosopher joked. Magnus’ smile brightened as he explained.
“There was a Trader Moe’s on East Frankford Street,” he said. “Suffice to say, it has a new life now, and the guys over there are a pretty tough crowd. But they know us. They’ll always trade for a few guns.”
Magnus motioned to Tom’s gear. Carlotta spoke up.
“I can show you the way,” she said. “I’ll head straight for the Bastion from there.”
Tom noted her use of Wilhelm’s preferred word and Carlotta shrugged.
“OK, then,” Tom said, and to Magnus: “We’ll head off then, if you’re OK?”
“Sure,” he answered. “Look after her.”
Tom smiled as if to decline the responsibility, but nodded sagely nonetheless, knowing himself well enough that he wouldn’t leave the hapless ex-Councilor to fend completely for herself, if the Fates required it of him – or at least that’s what he believed.
Moira stepped closer to Tom as Attila and Karla reclaimed their gear.
“Heading off, Tom?”
“Yes,” he said, and followed with, “Pleasure to meet you,” with zero expression to make clear it was a rote phrase – manners and nothing else. Moira’s eyes crinkled a moment, as if romancing Tom was actually the last thing on her mind. And perhaps it was.
“You’re a hardy man, Tom Vanicek,” she said in a tone Tom knew well from his reporter’s life – on the receiving end of pitches he didn’t want to hear.
“There’s fewer and fewer such hardy people in this world,” Ms Blaze said. “You must’ve questioned the City mission? That hellhole we escaped, and almost didn’t – that seems the only stark warning I need. If we hadn’t run out behind the Furies and out the back, even more lives would’ve been lost, Tom. Including more of my people. We aim to move out of the sanctuary zone, Tom. You’d be an asset, if you wanted to bring your family.”
“I appreciate the offer,” he said because he did. Everyone was mercenary these days, and no one more so than him, so he couldn’t hold it against the woman. But he added, “Winter’s coming on, and the chaos we just had, that’s as good a reason to bunker down, ride the cold season out. It’s not when I’d be wanting to start out fresh, no matter how much you might have me right, talking about this shitty situation we’re in.”
Magnus nodded from the sidelines, as did Karla and Attila.
“Where will you go?” he asked her.
“The City suspended the agri-hub,” she said. “We’d be welcome out there.”
“That’s a drive, though,” Tom said. “I’ve been there. It’s a trek. And you’d be surrendering your lifeline to City ethanol.”
Moira only tsk-ed.
“I think it’s about time we accept the age of the motor car has come to its end, Tom,” she said. “And with it, a lot of other things. We have to face reality.”
And Tom could only nod his head at that.
*
THEY WERE LED back across The Mile and then a few blocks south. Carlotta clutched a Glock by her side, but none of them had a reason to gear up as they traversed the shanty-cluttered streets. More people moved around, now the rain had stopped, though the sun seemed to struggle on its way to midday. The winds swirling around them remained fierce, and Karla bitched about the cold, wondering what the apocalypse was like in California. Tom smirked and kept his wits about him and they continued along a row of mangled corrugated fencing boarding up the old neighborhood supermarket now more armored than a battleship.
The store’s new tenants had fixed a cattle run of metal stakes corralling visitors towards a single-door entry canopied with metal sheets, the door itself welded with more metal than anywhere else. Someone had cut out an observation slit with an angle-grinder. Rheumy light from inside vanished as a man’s face appeared to stare out of them unmoved.
Tom had the lead with Carlotta beside him, but she was no help. It was his trade, after all. The man beyond the grate was a thickset American-Italian with a buzz cut and layers of winter clothing over his body armor. The business end of a Remington shotgun popped up at one edge of the slit and Tom cleared his throat.
“You guys are trading?” he asked.
“Depends what you’re after,” the man answered. “And what you got.”
“Couple of spare firearms here,” Tom said. “I’m after meat and fresh food.”
“Unclip the guns and hold ‘em up.”
Tom plucked the magazine from his Mp5 and Karla did the same, but the man behind the window only grunted amusement. The shotgun barrel disappeared, then he motioned to Tom.
“Show me the Ak.”
Resigned dissatisfaction arose in him as Tom unclipped the curved ammo and winced to unwind the leather strap over one shoulder as he held the rifle out level. The trader nodded his approval and hit the bolts, the door levering inwards to reveal a second well-fed man in a woolen cap ready to lift an old-fashioned Browning automatic rifle and wipe them out.
Tom flinched, but no fatal rain of heavy gunfire came. The mob boss with the shotgun accepted the Ak47, dismissing Attila and Karla with a look.
“Just you,” he said to Tom. “And her. Hello, Miss Deschain.”
“Hi Mikey,” she said. “This is Tom Vanicek. Tom? Mikey, Hermano.”
It was the occasion for exchanged nods rather than handshakes. Hermano in the beanie took a strong interest in the Russian gun and demanded the remaining ammo as well. Then they unbolted another loc
ked door to reveal a big storage room. The shelves weren’t exactly crammed, but the view revealed drums, boxes and cans of bulk goods. There was no chiller, so the sides of beef and dog carcass were wrapped in wet hessian and hung from hooks across the back of the room in a disturbing callback for Tom to the Ascended’s slaughterhouse. Tom had a brief flash of Walter, gasping in his shocked death pains, and reflected just as quickly on Hermano keeping a safe distance from any easy grab at his enormous rifle.
The sound of rain returned distantly through the roof and Tom thought of his companions left out in it.
“We have meat,” Mikey said to him disinterestedly. He sniffled, casual now he was just a storekeeper allowing Tom to trail him into the storage room. “Not much else you’d call fresh, though. Everyone’s scared and stayin’ indoors. What you want for the Ak? We’ll give you one of those dogs and your pick of the staples.”
It wasn’t easy, but Tom negotiated for one of the beef sides instead, as well as a jar of coffee, ten jars of pickled vegetables, five of chutney, a sack of black-market corn, and four canisters of baby formula. The traders had a collective hard-on for the Ak47, which tipped discussions in Tom’s favor in the end. He shuffled back out onto the street with his arms full, yet lighter without the familiar weight of the rifle across his back.
Attila and Karla studied him, pictures of misery themselves in the scattered rain.
“Let’s go home,” he said.
Carlotta at his elbow handed over the tins of infant formula without comment. Tom glanced aside and nodded.
“Via dropping you closer to the Enclave,” he said.
It wasn’t too many blocks to go out of their way, and the choked streets remained as quiet as they were filthy. No random outbreaks disturbed their watchful progress towards the Bastion’s guarded front gates.
“Here’s far enough,” the ex-Councilor said and laid a hand on Tom’s forearm.
“Sure?”
After The Apocalypse (Book 5): Retribution Page 12
