After The Apocalypse (Book 6): Resolution

by Hately, Warren

  Carlotta clambered over the pair throughout, clutching at the silenced Magnus as if to haul her fallen lover aside – and Lucas knew better than to let her.

  Tom’s voice rang out again, far from any use to Luke. The boy whimpered. Panic made its demands on him, and Lucas bravely fought it off.

  His aching hand held onto the dead Magnus like some kind of shield, the Fury’s intestines caught around itself like torn plastic wrap, and Lucas kicked feebly from underneath to hold Carlotta back. She dropped on top of them instead, fingers sinking into the meat of Lucas’ shoulder strong enough to crush bone, it seemed, as she snarled and leaked foulness from her bloodied mouth and Lucas screamed like never before.

  The boy’s strength started to fail, and he let go of Magnus to clutch weakly at Carlotta slithering atop him like a demented Medusa come bloodily from some old film. Her fanged face strained to push slowly and inevitably down towards his, and at the last moment, Lucas turned his face aside, sniveling, his arms giving out with the knife in his fist stuck, buried somewhere inside Carlotta’s ribs.

  The two adult bodies atop him crushed down with murderous weight.

  Lucas collapsed. Carlotta immediately wrenched her head aside to shove past Luke’s barred forearm and into his throat just as an iron rod burst out from her eye.

  The snarling Council woman froze suspended an inch above Lucas with gore trickling onto his face from her parted lips, and then the dead woman seemed to levitate, swaying up and back and halfway rising into the air away from him to reveal a flame-haired older woman standing over them, straining at the other end of the iron rod piercing through the back of the Fury’s skull.

  She hefted dead Carlotta aside and let go of the weapon which clattered hard off one of the unopened toolboxes and the dead Fury finally lay still.

  *

  “I’M MOIRA BLAZE,” the woman said as Lucas stared around and then slowly back at her, agog, still far too deep in the abyss of terror to think about his piss-stained jeans or the smell of his bowels along with everything else rancid in the air.

  The woman showed a tired fragility as well as strength. She hauled the rope ladder to the window’s edge matter-of-factly, then tossed it out. It was only seconds before Luke’s distraught father scrambled over the metal awning and into the room with his eyes also frantic even as they took in Lucas alive and well despite the appalling scene. Tom fell to his knees beside Lucas and checked the gory boy over once before then grabbing Lucas into his arms.

  Astonishing them all, Lucas took several long, steadying breaths and eased upright, gingerly feeling the small of his back where the metal case hit him – or he, it – during the brutal scuffle. Nerves still sent his eyes checking for reassurance both Furies were truly dead.

  Tom cussed, locating the deep gouge in his son’s thigh.

  “Jesus Christ,” Tom said. “We’ve got to get you clean.”

  He instantly looked to the woman. Moira stood near the spilled tripod where she retrieved the hunting rifle and checked the weapon over, then nodded tersely, leaned it against the wall, and slowly sat on the window ledge as if it were she who’d only narrowly survived.

  Stunned that he still lived, Lucas watched his father scan the room to process the story it told. A freshly crestfallen expression turned him haggard.

  “What the hell happened here?” he asked.

  “Denny Greerson came, with some men,” Moira told them. “And then Ernie Wilhelm.”

  “Wilhelm.”

  The flat voice confirmed everything. Tom’s head spun.

  “I got into the roof space, when they came,” Moira said. “Didn’t understand who they were, why they would even come here. Magnus thought they were looters . . . Honestly, Tom, he told me to hide. He –”

  “You don’t have to apologize for living.”

  “Then why does it feel that way?”

  “Wilhelm came because of . . . Carlotta?”

  Lucas didn’t understand any of it. Although it pained him, he used the wall and the coat racks to get upright and his father only watched, as shocked and seemingly confused as his son.

  “I don’t fucking get it,” Tom said.

  “He was a vengeful man,” Moira said. “Petty. But I didn’t know he had this in him.”

  “This isn’t all of it.”

  “We think he took my sister,” Lucas told her.

  Moira’s eyes widened. It wasn’t a reassuring look.

  Tom reoriented on Lucas with a fierce, exhausted yet defiant expression.

  “I’m telling you, Lucas, I’ll hack my fucking way through the whole Enclave, friend and foe alike, to get your sister back,” he said.

  “People are going to die for this,” Tom added. “And then we will get free.”

  Lucas sank back to the floor.

  Everything was too far gone for him to ask if that were a promise.

  Chapter 4

  THE UTILITY PARKED hard when it finally came to the end of the long drive and Lilianna couldn’t do anything to stop herself slamming against the inside of the tray. The hands behind her back had gone numb during the past hour and her gag was chokingly dry. She twisted violently, disabled by ankle ropes too, and threw her elbows around without care until she could see Aurora.

  The other girl stared back at her in mute terror. She was dirty, but showed no injuries – unlike Lila, with a fresh gash at her temple courtesy of Greerson’s man Yusuf responding to Lilianna’s unabated distress at seeing her boyfriend butchered into chunks.

  The carnage persisted in her thoughts amid all the other turbulence, as well as the inevitable survivor’s guilt made even worse for all the heartbreak of her sundered dalliance with Beau and knowing she’d somehow abandoned him without ever realizing it. Or that’s how it felt. But the very real fear of the present moment, and yet another serving of guilt for dragging Aurora into this madness with her, left Lilianna unable to express any of it – and not just because of the knotted rag stuffed deep into her mouth making it an effort just to breathe, her pulse hammering amid the unexpected tranquil sunrise foreshadowing yet more misery by day’s end.

  A man wearing a face scarf unbolted the back of the tray, an Ak47 over one shoulder. The black guy Yusuf came around the other side and helped lower it and at once reached in to snag Aurora by one ankle and drag her out. The guy with the scarf wore it as if ashamed at his associations, standing back and holding the wood-stocked rifle relaxed as he somehow smoked a cigarette. A bigger, pudgy man with a broken face joined in the work. He caught Lilianna’s twisting feet and grunted as he pulled her from the back. Lila caught a whiff of the man’s rank body odor, the disconcerting apron he wore, and the staved-in-yet-healed horror of his upper jaw – and then she dropped like a dead weight to the hard dirt.

  It was only daybreak. Birds twittered in the branches of nearby trees left lonely and skeletal amid reams of rank, overgrown grass and weeds surrounding a concrete-walled office, an adjacent rusty, low-roofed shed, and the dilapidated sign for the old dog kennels. Rusted four-wheel drives and disassembled motorcycles rotted in situ in the yard, with the overgrowth claiming a chain-link fence which sagged around the compound, a few more trees and the bare dirt driveway veering off in two directions into the uncertainty beyond the crest.

  The big man picked Lilianna up by her bonds, swinging her to catch her feet with the other hand with ease, thereafter carting her like baggage down through the wide-open gates. She tried to get a look back to Aurora whose shrieks were insufficient for her gag. But the big man with the demented eyes shook Lila hard enough to rattle her teeth as he carried her down the path to the front of the main building. Men’s subdued laughter reached her, throwing off her expectations even as her heart beat ever faster.

  Old concrete pavers descended to the well-trampled yard. The word HASTUR was scrawled across the front of the sunken main office and the leaking paint had dried like blood even though it was black. Four men loitered at the door to the old office, and to Lilianna’s right
, a tall picket fence framed the abandoned kennels – little more than an enclosure built atop rank concrete, sheltered by interlocking tin sheets overhead long since demoralized by rust. Straw and mud were trampled along two concrete walkways, but despite an orange globe burning somewhere inside, internal walls and more wire mesh obscured the specifics. An agricultural smell pervaded everything – and beneath it all the smell of her own fear.

  The brutal man lowered Lilianna to the ground and dragged Aurora in beside her. Yusuf and the scar-faced man worked to loosen the women’s ankle ropes while the four strangers watched. They wore an assortment of camouflage and outdoor gear and had guns as well as knives and other weapons on their belts. Lilianna sobbed.

  “You didn’t tell us you were restocking so soon,” one of them said.

  He was a skinny man. Anxiousness erased his limited good looks. Dark haired and sallow, not a second went by that he didn’t check the eye contact of his comrades, two of whom seemed intent on ignoring it. One was a big dangerous hulk, heavily bearded and with a watchful look that made Lilianna want to look elsewhere. The other was a nondescript character actor born to play the role of a convicted felon. His lustful gaze caused Lilianna’s hackles to rise. The fourth of Greerson’s men wore Kevlar like he lived in it, thick orange hair and darker beard merged long ago.

  “You’ve only just come back in and you’re wantin’ to go out again?” the last one said to the speaker. “You’re greedy, Sandler.”

  “Greedy?” the skinny man said and raised an eyebrow. “It’s only natural, Chesterton. Can you blame me?”

  The dark-toned redhead looked to Yusuf and his big companion.

  “Take them through.”

  The scarfed man stood outside the kennels as back-up. Bleak and lethargic fear washed through Lila as Yusuf moved to obey. His damaged comrade watched as Yusuf stepped between the two women with a slaver’s grin. He already wore his beard like a Somali warlord and Lila’s eyes narrowed into fierce points taking in the thick gold ring she wanted to tear from his ear the moment she had a chance.

  “Calm down, ladies,” Yusuf said. “You bruise too easy. Like ripe fruit.”

  He made like he needed to pat them down. The other men chuckled, watching openly as he groped each of the two women in turn. Their hilarity spiked as the corrupted trooper clowned around. He turned Lilianna onto her back, squeezing her breasts as she hissed threats through the gag robbing her of anything but unladylike grunts, and Yusuf paused and raised an eyebrow at her thoughtfully, like a stage comedian unhappy with the front row.

  “You serious, little girl?” he said. “Quit your squawking.”

  “Little girl’s got a lot to say,” the biggest of Sandler’s trio said.

  “Easy, Zardoz,” Sandler said.

  “You don’t ‘easy’ me,” the brute replied. He motioned to Lilianna even though she’d immediately shut up. “Let her have her say.”

  “No.”

  The conversation stilled as all eyes turned to Chesterton now casually armed once again with his AR15 against one shoulder.

  “Chester –”

  “Shut up,” the burnished man said. “You guys came here for a taste, and you’ve had it. Go wash up or something. The Councilor’s orders are clear. Yusuf and Fuckface are your ride back to the Zone.”

  He spoke with an aura of command. He turned his wrath on Yusuf.

  “And you stop fucking around,” he said. “Get these gals inside so you can get gone.”

  Yusuf’s dark face split into a playful, handsome grin. Lilianna thought of Vegas – just another person not coming to her rescue – and was glad to see the troopers’ squad leader had his men under control, if nothing else.

  “OK, Angus, don’t go makin’ that face,” Yusuf smirked, then lifted a hand overhead to point down at Lilianna as his bigger comrade pulled Lila to her feet. “But I’m drawin’ straws for this one,” he said and grinned at her wickedly.

  Lilianna recoiled. Yusuf blew a kiss like a death threat.

  Chesterton glanced at Lilianna until he had her attention, and took a good long look as he did. Then, straight-faced, he returned to Yusuf with the same unblinking look.

  “Think again,” he said. “This one’s Greerson’s.”

  *

  THEY’D ONLY raked out the animal enclosure to allow another kind of captive. Lilianna was thrown headlong into hers, and Aurora went into the kennel beside it. A sagging wire-mesh screen separated the two women in the wood-and-concrete structure, with more dingy cages across from them and continuing down the twin rheumy halls. The naked orange globe burnt just out in the walkway right outside as if to forbid sleep even for the exhausted.

  And Lilianna was exhausted. But the light of day only cast her and Aurora’s captivity into clearer and clearer and ever more horrifying shades. Left alone for a moment, she grunted her way through the torture of getting her bound hands in front of her, and she loosened and finally pulled her gag down into a crusty dry neckerchief. Then Lila scrambled to the wire she clutched as she looked down on Aurora laid in the shadows, but the girl had just a moment to twist about and share Lilianna’s terror, and then the gate to Aurora’s stall opened again and two fresh guards pulled her out.

  “Hey!” Lila yelled. “What are you doing? Where are you taking her?”

  A third man hesitated near Lilianna’s cage and peered in, smiling like waiting for an invite. The trooper no longer wore his scarf – not needed now, apparently, revealing a disturbingly good-looking man with a horrible leer.

  He started working the bolt on Lila’s cage door. A voice rang out nearby as Aurora was bundled away down the narrow hall by the other newcomers.

  “Leave it, Slinky,” Chesterton called. “How many times I gotta tell you clowns? You can have a shot at her friend with Apache and Warlock.”

  Slinky let his eyes linger on Lilianna, giving up on the gate. Lilianna detested her own stricken terror that left her blinking back mutely as the handsome man winked unhandsomely and withdrew. The horrid orange light threw the shadow puppetry of her friend’s dire struggle across the gloomy walls.

  “Leave her alone!” Lila yelled.

  “You’re not meant to have your gag off,” someone said.

  “Yeah,” one of the other would-be rapists said. “Shut up, little darlin’.”

  Slinky only got to watch, delighted, as his comrades did the dirty work of hauling Aurora to her feet and then propelling her away, deeper into the darkness at the end of the stalls. Lila’s friend kept dropping her dead weight, weakly trying to fight them, but the two new guards were well-fed men of solid build. The first was a man in his fifties looking every part the veteran mercenary with neck tattoos flowing all the way to the sides of his shaven scalp. His offsider was a khaki-clad Native American. The weak light rendered his dark features uncertainly.

  Lilianna didn’t know what else to do and so she started to yell, shrilly, more panicked than she liked to hear. But Chesterton appeared at the door to her cubicle hovel.

  “Miss,” he said quietly. “Shut up. Now.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “You don’t hear me or something?”

  Lila tested the burly man’s tone for leeway. Slowly, carefully, she asked, “What have I ever done to you?”

  “You’re a fucking slow learner, girl.”

  Chesterton grabbed the wire cage and Lilianna shot back against the far wall, but the squad commander made no further move. He slid his gaze over her in a way far too much like appraising livestock, and Lilianna almost felt worse that there was no lust in it.

  “Please,” she said.

  “‘Please’ what? Let you go?” Chesterton sniggered, his ginger complexion burnished by the raw electric light. “He must have a real hard-on for you, Miss. And I’ve only got bad news . . . and I don’t like being the bearer of bad news. So why don’t you get some rest? You’ll need it.”

  “Stop your friends, please.”

  Chesterton looked away then,
snorted like he was bemused when he was clearly troubled and didn’t want to face it. Aurora started screaming from close by and Lilianna shook with violent sympathy.

  The senior trooper was so quiet at first she almost didn’t hear him.

  “They’re going to hunt you, you and your friend, just like the others,” Chesterton said. “You really do need to rest. Sleep. There’s a slight chance for you. You might be the one to get free. To get clear, before they track you down. The way they talk about you, about your old man, maybe Greerson’s even scared. But he wants you. Oh yeah. And Wilhelm’s given license. Hell, we never knew Ernie had all this in him. You’re here, where they sent all the others. So get your rest, Miss. No one’s coming to save you.”

  “Not even you?” Lilianna asked.

  She tried to force the eye contact, dismayed when Chesterton’s only hardened.

  “Nope. Not your dad, either,” he said. “No one’s told you yet, but your old man’s dead already and that brother of yours probably too.”

  He let go the wire and left Lila to her shock.

  By the time the torrent of questions came, Chesterton was gone, and Lila’s yells were lost beneath the sound of Aurora shrieking.

  *

  AURORA COULDN’T SCREAM forever and the men wouldn’t let her. The horrible meaty sounds gave way to sobs and then Aurora’s groans as the men took their turns. The day was well and truly up by then, the sunlight angling in through the high mesh-covered concrete slit windows. The tortured girl was thrown like garbage back into the cell next to Lilianna.

  Lila tried to speak, to offer some kind of help despite their captivity, but the pale-limbed girl lay unconscious. Perhaps it was a mercy. For all of Chesterton’s dire warnings, the idea of sleep was a terrifying fantasy for Lilianna, who crouched in the stinking straw listening to her friend whimper like a beaten animal in semi-consciousness The harshening light revealed everything, and Lilianna was still crouched there, stricken and immobile, when the daylight started fading once more with the sun’s passage overhead.