He smiled some more, trying to breathe into it, inhabit it, like he’d seen Tom do. If someone that aggressive and hard-headed could fake his way through geniality, Dkembe figured he could do the same. But he was no Tom Vanicek and he knew it – and maybe he was glad. Dkembe’s grin faltered, waiting for Martin’s brooding response.
“Let’s discuss, then.”
He motioned and turned for Dkembe to follow him up one of the nearest mud-filthy ramps. The metal roof of the slaughtering sheds took away the daylight, but only for a moment. Dkembe followed Martin moving almost wearily up into one of the first sheds, the far side open to the pens themselves where squeals and grunts tumbled out amid curses from several other nearby workers. Dkembe spotted his friend OK Jay in among the enclosures with two others manhandling a full-grown elk already with its antlers sawn down to bleeding stumps. All OK did was throw Dkembe a wink before turning back to the task in front of him for the morning.
Martin led Dkembe into the big covered shed. Coldness threw its shawl across him, and now Dkembe truly shivered, his breath coming in thick wisps like his ghost wanted out.
“Fu-u-uck,” he muttered. “It’s getting cold.”
“It’s just the shed,” Martin said.
He stopped and turned and Dkembe halted before him.
“The cold is good,” Martin added. “It is a gift. For the meat.”
“Yeah, OK,” Dkembe said. He licked his lips. “You from Ohio? Snow season’s a while off still, yeah?”
“Winter in less than ten weeks,” Martin said.
He grotesquely licked along the underside of his black moustache and Dkembe froze his reaction.
“But the world has grown colder,” the stranger said.
Dkembe remained on pause, startled as Martin’s dark face split into a wide grin.
“Maybe we fixed global warming?”
Dkembe stammered, nodded, remembering to give a chuckle only at the last moment.
“You got to think,” he agreed, “with all the breakdown of th’ world’s . . . the world’s industry, emissions gonna be like –”
Martin snorted. Dkembe shut his mouth at once.
“We can process ten of your cattle per day,” the older man said. “We’ll take our share of the deal first.”
“Hold on,” Dkembe said. “If we get a hundred cattle, which we’re hoping to, at least, that means on day one, you’d be taking just your own cut. That’s an extra day we need feed for all the rest of the . . . herd.”
“A hundred cattle is ten days, no longer,” the slaughter house boss replied and shrugged. “They don’t need feeding.”
“OK Jay said we should slaughter them in peak condition.”
Martin sniffed. “When you control your own slaughter house, yes,” he said.
“Can’t you . . . process more than ten per day?”
“Of course,” Martin replied. “The killing is easy. But the meat has to be butchered, treated, and preserved, with no refrigeration. And then the . . . Ascended have their requirements too.”
“What do you mean . . . ‘requirements’?”
“That’s business for the Ascended.”
Dkembe frowned at him. “I thought you were. . . ?”
“No,” Martin said.
He studied Dkembe’s subdued astonishment a moment and his expression softened like it had when he grinned before, very little real humor in it despite all the telltales – his crinkled eyes, healthy white teeth gleaming in his beard, an intake of breath expanding his stocky, barrel chest. Martin thrust one thumb through the armpit of the leather vest worn atop all his other dark clothing.
“I’m not Ascended, no matter what I might wish,” he said. “The Apex and the Committed, they can have no hand in earthly affairs. The rest of us are Hands. We do the Ascended’s will, and take on those sins, as their vessels, so they don’t have to.”
And Martin smiled broadly once more, and Dkembe tried not to flinch at the profound madness in the other man’s eyes.
*
MARTIN FINALLY WHITTLED their agreement down to an understanding his people would take two cattle for their own each day until paid out in full, but the deal wasn’t through any bargaining genius Dkembe could claim. Martin made the concession as if in the spirit of their friendship, but through it all, Dkembe remained on alert fearing he might be the next one into the slaughtering shed. They talked specifics, and Martin led Dkembe into one of the final sheds and a through wall of plastic strips beyond which Jay and his two colleagues wrestled the elk. Jay hand-signaled for Dkembe’s attention, moving past to quickly whisper that he’d meet outside the compound later, once his chores were done.
Martin nodded as if with contentment as Jay and the other workers hauled the squirming elk beyond the next plastic curtain and out of sight.
“I thought you were going to show me the whole process?” Dkembe asked.
“That’s as far as you’re able to go.”
Martin turned as if to study the younger man.
“Come with me, if you would truly know more.”
He motioned ahead as Dkembe glanced back at the muck-spattered plastic strips and his vanished friend.
“Well, yes,” he said.
“Good.”
Martin guided him through another doorway, wooden boards set in muck that stank like effluent as they crossed the short divide between one shed and the last of the wooden buildings in the compound. The door eased shut of its own accord behind them and blocked out the daylight, leaving nothing but a tar-stained kind of dirty luminance strained through thick, tea-colored drapes covering a row of windows which ended in a narrow turn of the corridor to a wood-paneled room in darkness but for a single electric lamp.
An Ascended lackey stood before the room’s only other doorway, leaning his weight on an old fire ax. Martin gestured like he might snap his fingers instead.
“Fetch one of the Anointed,” he said to the man.
The white-hooded figure bowed his head, and disappeared through the guarded door. Martin wheeled about to interrupt Dkembe’s study of a crucifix with the desiccated remains of a wizened man nailed to its timber planks.
Martin spoke as if without noticing the crucified mummy watching from the wall.
“You, too, are a Hand, Dkembe, whether you know it yet or not,” he said.
“I don’t understand what that means.”
“In your work with Tom Vanicek, you do the Will of the Apex, and the Almighty.”
“You . . . think?”
“The Lord is hungry, Dkembe,” Martin said and motioned like a priest. “Why else plant a garden, and tend to sheep? Has the Great Annihilation taught you nothing except that truth?”
Dkembe faltered, out of his depth. Martin’s face slowly becalmed.
“But you could be so much more.”
Dkembe felt a watery seasickness pass through him, overcome by the desire he fought to shit his pants and make a run for it right then and there. Yet Martin offered a soothing benediction with one raised hand as if telepathic.
“Don’t be afraid, Dkembe,” he said. “There’s nothing to harm you in this, only riches.”
They heard trudging feet behind them in the corridor already traversed and then the same white-robed guardian or perhaps an identical one of the half-dozen in the compound entered pushing a thin, half-naked girl before him.
She was the same of the young women he’d seen before, barely covered by a shameful strip of narrow white cotton open at the sides and belted at the waist with a rope of hair the same color as the torrent of dishwater blondeness falling from beneath her medieval white conical mask. The skinny girl stumbled into the chamber and at once hung her head, inching towards a safe corner, but Martin clasped a big hand onto the girl’s shoulder and turned her towards Dkembe. Face on, Martin lifted the flap of the girl’s headwear to reveal her pale beauty marred by a perpetually terrified yet also downtrodden expression. The young woman’s glassy blue eyes met his, tired and bruised, and Dkembe wasn’t ready fo
r their magnetic hold.
“You are already the Hand of the Apex in truth, Dkembe,” he said. “But we would prefer you our Hand among your own men. Join us.”
The girl was just another piece of livestock as Martin’s thick gloved fingers pulled aside her revealing robe, batting away hands as she sought to cover herself. She spluttered, but said nothing as Martin’s fingers trailed down her narrow torso and then one entered her.
The foreman focused on the girl a moment, not noticing her lock-eyed exchange with Dkembe, nor that she mouthed, “Please help me” as she swallowed tears.
Martin flicked his dark gaze back to him and Dkembe snapped out of his trance.
“Join we who Sin so the Committed remain pure until the Final Days still to come.”
Dkembe clutched his throat and nodded, unable to return his look.
“Let me . . . think about it, yeah?”
“Some Sins are for a higher purpose,” Martin said.
“I . . . think I understand.”
Martin sniggered. “No, you don’t,” he said. “Maybe soon, though.”
He left off his violation and released his hold on the girl’s mask. The molested captive dropped her face, muted even as she shook with suffering.
*
JAY CAME AT from the compound a fast walk, carrying an oddly gleeful look as well as a blood-soaked bundle wrapped in an old tracksuit jacket – purloined meat the fringe benefits of the day job. Dkembe pushed off from the wall against which he’d loitered for the twenty minutes his friend’s “see you in five minutes” took.
“Finally,” he muttered, though with a shy grin. “What you got there?”
“Prime cut.”
Dkembe knew it already, which didn’t explain why his expression only then faltered as he thought again about the ghastly abattoir and the cold reality of his friend’s work. The day’s concluded business now felt more like a narrow escape from the insane cultists running the place. For Dkembe, the silent, ongoing connotations of Tom’s grisly violence remained so intangible that he wondered if it was just him imagining it, since everyone else – in the slaughter house, the City, the whole fucking world now – were surprisingly cool with the murder that remained senseless no matter how Tom Vanicek might spin it.
“Hey yo,” Jay said and elbowed him. “Free meat, man.”
“Yeah,” Dkembe said. “And what kind of meat?”
“You askin’?”
“Sound like I’m askin’?”
OK Jay chortled, elbowing Dkembe again as they took the next turn.
“Relax, man,” he said as they walked. “Nothing worse than genuine, one hundred per cent mountain lion. You cool with that?”
“Yeah man, I’m cool,” Dkembe said. “Where we headed?”
“Come back and kick at my place,” Jay told him. “I’ll give you a cut. We’ll have a drink, yeah? Jay’s workin’ day’s done.”
“It’s midday.”
“Start fuckin’ early, workin’ for those crazy motherfuckers.”
“I don’t know how you do it.”
“Try not to think about it,” Jay said seriously.
A small crowd of pedestrians almost split them, and Dkembe hurried around to keep pace with his friend, startled eyes falling on a grubby-faced girl holding up a tattered doll to the other passers-by. He looked away in case she turned to him, and in the beggar’s place came an image of the captive Ascended girl staring back at him.
Dkembe didn’t notice the hand he put across his heart.
“Serious, OK,” he said to his friend. “How you know you even gonna finish a day’s work, trapped in there with them? I seen all those fuckin’ shoes, man.”
“Settle, ‘kembi, yeah?”
“Settle?”
It wasn’t his style to swear much. Dkembe swallowed the retort instead. A sullen, furious expression gave him a stranger’s face. OK Jay glanced at him askance and blew his cheeks out.
“Don’t know if you noticed, friend,” the other young man said quietly. “Price on human life’s pretty low these days.”
“The world’s. . . .”
“Yes?”
“I dunno, man.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Jay said.
*
THE APOSTLE VEGAS wasn’t home. Dkembe breathed an unnoticed sigh of relief, sinking into one of the armchairs as his friend hauled the bloody animal haunch into the kitchen and hacked off a goodly portion, wrapping it again in the blood-stained hoodie. Discarded clothes from the ruins of civilization were a lot more numerous than cleans plastics these days. Jay left the offered portion sitting in the sink and muttered something about cooking his share soon to avoid it turning bad.
He returned to the sitting room with two glass jars of hooch.
Dkembe took the drink and lifted it in a silent acknowledgement, as he always did, to his dead friend Shirts. It was a stark lesson in not drinking to excess, and not one Dkembe aimed to learn firsthand. He sipped the acidic, peach-flavored moonshine as daintily as a hot coffee.
Jay settled cross-legged on the floor and started working his boots off.
“They tried to recruit me, yo,” Dkembe confessed quietly.
Jay’s brows only shifted in a knowing laugh.
“Course they did.”
“They . . . offered me the girl.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know,” Dkembe answered. “Young. Pretty.”
The remark sent Jay off in a full titter, streetwise drawl all over the place.
“Aw, man, you’re struck by that pussy.”
“She’s a fuckin’ captive, OK?”
Jay quieted, but not without another grin.
“Say it however you want, man,” he said. “You got someone?”
“No.”
“Other than that white boy and his kids, I mean.”
“I know what you mean.”
Dkembe strained the image of Erak Gonzales from his thoughts and the effort showed. Jay raised an eyebrow, humor gone now, and took a long pull of his drink that couldn’t help end with a grimace.
“Fuckin’ A,” he muttered.
“Did they . . . offer that to you, too?”
“Shit, ‘kembi, you wanna know if I’m one of the Hands?”
Jay sniggered and shrugged as he eased back onto his elbows on the rug.
“How you gonna refuse that an’ live?”
“So you. . . ?”
“Ah, it’s all about the pussy, still –”
“Don’t call it that, yo.”
“‘kembi man, seriously, you got to tighten the fuck up, yo.”
Their eyes locked. Jay’s were dead serious.
“There ain’t no pussy worth dyin’ for,” he said. “They offer? You decline. They real cool about it. You might even get a prime set o’ ribs, do a little job for them from time to time. But don’t you get in the middle of one of their gangbangs, cool? Serious, man.”
Jay eyed him until assured of his friend’s understanding.
“If you saw how they slaughtered their animals, not even your pecker could get hard, walkin’ into the middle of that.”
Dkembe blanched. The girl’s pale, narrow, crestfallen image appeared again, those eyes, pleading and incredible, and he blinked almost like he had to force it all away. Yes, there was arousal there, he knew – but it was hard to find it within the greater oceanic sense of loss. He swallowed with difficulty, tight-throated with sympathy, and forced down another shot of the burning liquid like it was medicine.
“So you’re one of their slaves?” Dkembe said flat-voiced.
“I’m a slave to no one,” Jay growled. “Nigga, you should know that.”
“What jobs they got for you then?”
“Nothin’ worth mentionin’.”
“No?”
It looked as if Jay reconsidered, but his energy wasn’t for explaining himself.
“You might look a slave,” OK said. “You can think on that.” He thumped his chest as he sa
t up. “But what’s you on the inside, aiight? You got to feel a slave, to be a slave. You’ve got to enslave yourself. I ain’t doin’ that. I’m in there, workin’ for OK Jay, yeah? Should be same for you. I’m not into everythin’ Vegas says and I’m glad he ain’t here to pick me up on it all now, but he’s right about one thing – we gotta stay brothers, ‘kembi. What’s that Vanicek doin’ for you?”
“Food and board . . . and safety,” Dkembe said as if testing whether it were even true. “Tom was good to me when others weren’t, man. It could’ve gone a lot worse. I owe him that.”
“Debt’s paid by now, for sure?”
“I don’t . . . I don’t know about that.”
“I’m not the Ascended’s slave,” OK said to him. “What about you an’ him?”
Dkembe felt the flush in his face and he gritted his teeth together. Jay just watched, seed planted, subtly easing back to reduce the tension between them. He took another drink and Dkembe followed suit, at which point the other young man jumped up, took both jars, and returned them to the kitchen to refill. His voice carried easily even though he pitched it low to avoid prying neighbors.
“There’s a way forward here, for me an’ you,” he said.
Dkembe waited until he came back, accepting the drink.
“What’s that?”
“Seems like you an’ me are the ones integral to this whole . . . cattle dealio, yeah?”
“And the Ascended, and the Confederates, and the City Council, and –”
“Either end of the supply chain, we can’t control that,” Jay agreed. He waited for dramatic emphasis before adding, “But we can cut out the middle man.”
“Tom?”
“Why not?” Jay said. “I know this dude who runs these street kids, yo –”
“The Urchins?”
“Yeah,” Jay said. “His name’s Locke.”
Dkembe stood in muted alarm.
“No, man,” he said firmly. “Like I told you, Tom’s been good to me. He’s got a family, you understand that?”
Jay also stood. He raised his hands and smiled.
“No problem, brother,” he said. “Settle. Chillax, yeah?”
Dkembe exhaled heavily, the taste in his mouth more discontent than OK’s paint stripper.
After The Apocalypse (Book 5): Retribution Page 21
