After The Apocalypse (Book 6): Resolution

by Hately, Warren

  Lila shrieked like an alarm, bucking and kicking out. Her rubber heel caught Greerson in the face, freeing just an instant for her to scoot into the cavernous, sand-filled back of the tray.

  The Chief’s insults flew thick with spittle as he hauled himself into the tray after her, and Lilianna stood woozily, pain keeping her sharp as she backed away until she crushed up against the banked sands set like stone by the years.

  Greerson slammed into her heavily. The parked truck gave a groan.

  Lila clutched one of Greerson’s wrists and didn’t understand at first as the angle of their confinement started to tip. She stabbed into Greerson’s Kevlar, the point flicking away and almost into his chin, and the Chief threw himself aside.

  The ridgeline beneath the quarry-side of the tip truck collapsed along the edge. Hard-packed dirt and sand cracked apart, gathering pace as gravity took its time to take hold of the enormous weight.

  Lila dropped her knife to throw herself double-handed at the inside lip of the tray.

  Her hands caught the rough edge as the big truck’s slide became inevitable. Luck and desperation drove her scrambling up and onto the far edge, battering her knees as she jumped up and over with all her strength.

  The next moment, the truck slid away behind her as it tipped and crunched down into the collapsing ravine with Denny Greerson still in the back.

  The massive truck hit the hard quarry floor and boomed like a thunderstorm kicking up a huge cloud of gritty dust. Lila’s hand across her face did little to protect her, and she staggered further back before any more of the grassy ridgeline caved in too. Her eyes squeezed shut against the gritty assault, and somewhere below, after several more loud thrumming bangs, the haulage rig settled at the bottom of the fifty-foot slope.

  Dirt hung thick in the air. Lilianna crawled on her knees to the edge of the fresh-made precipice. The dark hulk of the truck on its back appeared in glimpses through the fog of fine debris, and she waited there, determined to see if her pursuer somehow survived.

  The seconds trickled by just like those sands in the hourglass.

  Nothing moved at all – until it did.

  Hardy emerged through the dusty fog to Lila’s right leading the snarling, furiously dead young captive on a leash, the Fury snapping at the madness in the night air. Slinky hobbled along behind with his leg hastily bound and a look of sheer bloody murder on his face.

  *

  AURORA’S VOICE RANG out across the field and Lilianna somehow located her friend standing in the field of waist-high grass almost a quarter mile away beyond the sand mine, across where more trees and the squat shapes of several ordinary houses loomed.

  Lilianna saw her friend, and so did her pursuers.

  Slinky favored his wounded leg, but jostled his skinny companion. Hardy released the choker on their frenzied former hostage who at once whirled around at his handlers. Hardy hit the thing between the eyes with the folding stock of his Mp5 and Slinky pushed the Fury away.

  Ravenous, the scrawny, black-haired figure turned hateful eyes on the seemingly easier prey of Lilianna, who didn’t wait to see what came next.

  “We’re gonna get you now, girl!” Slinky yelled. “You and your girlfriend!”

  Lila couldn’t run. The pain in her ankle and foot were indescribable, and there was no time even to check her injury. She started hopping in Aurora’s direction and spent the next minute hustling determinedly through the clawing grass, stumbling several times in old runnels, ditches, tripping on overgrown irrigation pipes and then almost into the corpse of an ancient well. The back rests of old garden chairs rose out of the grass like gravestones. Aurora ran to join her from the sheltering trees, shivering once again and pale and pallid, nothing on but her sneakers, jeans, and a bra. Lila’s tattered polo shirt hung on with just a shred of decency. She pulled it off as she met Aurora, checking back at the ambling Fury as she tied the body of the shirt across her chest like some barbarian princess.

  “‘Rora. . . .”

  “We’re not giving up yet,” her friend hissed. “There’s a house. Come on.”

  Lila followed with her face aching like she’d been branded. The Fury howled a hundred yards in their wake. The flashlights of the hunters tracked after them.

  “I got Greerson,” Lila panted.

  “Good,” Aurora said. “How many left?”

  “Two, I think . . . plus that other thing.”

  “Poor guy.”

  “I think I shot Apache, earlier,” Lila said. “No sign of Stonefish too.”

  “They used their friend as a . . . a hunting dog?”

  The two women’s muttered chatter cut out as they skirted a low-rise old picket fence, the back yard as overgrown as everything else. Autumn-withered vines crawled through the nets of an ancient, rusted trampoline. Big conifers framed a concrete path sprouting its offspring, and yet more wild, spiked ferns grew in profusion guarding the homestead’s rear door.

  The Fury closed in loud enough behind them that they could hear its redundant, rasping breaths. The two women kept moving in a businesslike way, resisting panic, cautiously checking all around them – Lila, with an awkward limp.

  “They knew about Lowenstein,” Lila said.

  “What?”

  “That was the President, trapped in that shed.”

  “The Fury?” Aurora asked. “Someone killed her?”

  “Who do you think?” Lila replied. “They killed her – then they shut her in.”

  “Why?”

  They reached the back door. The black-haired killer on their tail followed, hanging back as it sniffed out the unfamiliar terrain, scrambled brain cells grasping for strategy.

  Lila’s eyes returned to the water-stained back door.

  “Greerson’s men know the whole countryside around here,” she said. “And they’ve filled it with traps. We have to be careful, still.”

  “Furies?”

  And maybe other things.

  The abandoned house was no true sanctuary – any promise of a reprieve was ruined knowing their pursuers had stripped their territory of all the tools, weapons, food, clothing, or anything else their prey might seize to defend themselves.

  Lila’s hand hovered over the warped door’s handle, ears attuned to their Fury pursuer, still hanging back – almost as if it knew something they didn’t.

  “Fuck,” Lila cursed hard. “Not here.”

  It took an effort to clutch Aurora’s wrist again.

  She dragged the girl with her down the side of the creepy house and headed for the distant road.

  Chapter 5

  THE AIR IN the living room seemed to smoke from Tom’s slaughter. It was just a moment in time. And Dkembe’s bowels watered, hands shaking on the grip of the gun he still somehow held as his eyes flicked nervously around, taking snapshots of the others and where they stood.

  All while he backed towards the door.

  Karla stood there blinking and licking her lips furiously, a woman struggling under battlefield conditions to conjure a workable rationale to explain Tom’s violence. The others watched OK Jay’s hacked-through cadaver, or like Lucas, had eyes locked on Tom himself – and it was the boy Dkembe somehow feared amongst them all as he took the chance he dared not take and opened the apartment door.

  Karla stared at him. Frozen.

  Dkembe at once stepped through into the corridor and hurried away down the hall.

  He tossed terrified looks behind himself while shuffling at pace, passing other ghostly, half-lit doorways, as quiet as he could be with his whimpering gulps for breath as he reached the stairs and still no one appeared in the doorway left ajar in his wake.

  He caught himself stammering needlessly. Incredulity fought against the shock. He abandoned useless words for the sake of stealth and bustled quickly downstairs with the solid weight of the Glock no kind of reassurance at all digging into his waistline. Shocked and startled and afraid campers watched him pass from the false security of their hovels in the foyer. />
  A harsh nocturnal breeze ran shrill across the street outside the fatal tenement. The feeling Dkembe used to get as a young child in the lead-up to Hallowe’en lit within him, and he shivered, fearful of goblins and ghosts of the past and other terrors now far too real.

  It was a long way to skirt any Dominator patrols. By the time He made it a few blocks, Dkembe was a shivering, chattering, snot-nosed mess, mouth constantly agape, like ready to explode in outrage at any moment, yet trapped in silence like he was only an old film playing, one more flickering light or apparition within the clusterfucked City and its numerous shelters and enclosures, forever-parked vehicles, handmade barricades and repurposed trucks no more than shells for the sake of the people living in them. The two- and three-story structures of the City’s firmament were partly obscured by the shanty town, and not helped by impoverished moonlight. Dkembe fought against the wind blowing its shrill flotsam of particles which stung his eyes. The brick buildings blocked the benighted skyline like monuments of the old world, and the profusion of pathetic hovels and blockaded precincts were a ghost town ready to be made real for what, to him, now seemed a doomed populace.

  He thought of Erak at home. Home.

  And then he thought of the girl.

  Tom said he’d flee the City, but Dkembe didn’t know whether Tom’s departure would lift that curse or be a part of it. Vanicek’s seemingly constant, flagrant explosions of violence were a brutal metaphor for the whole place.

  Vegas and everything he’d said and all the stupid Black Panther kindship underlying it came into his thoughts only to be banished just as quickly by the knowledge he’d deserted that man too.

  But Dkembe set his shoulder to that. Guilt he could live with – as long as he lived.

  His eyes checked every hidey hole and ambush spot he passed as he clenched his jaw for survival. There were people he could help, and those beyond his help, too. Sometimes, in the past, that’d meant everyone. And he’d lived. His betrayal of Jay wasn’t his first, and it sure as fuck didn’t feel like the last. He’d grown inured to the taste of it, no longer registering how he had to swallow back the bile as his face took on an angry, pent-up mien that foreshadowed whatever passed in Dkembe for determination. Determination for now, anyway.

  Determination until he had to run again.

  Self-loathing alone got him through the journey back to Ortega’s old grow house. Despite the risk, all was quiet as he slipped in through the gate and caught movement at once as Gonzales stepped out of the inky dark in the undercover area.

  “‘kembi,” he said and moved forward, almost hesitant. Fear came off him like a rank body odor. Dkembe stopped him coming any closer with a gesture.

  “We’ve got to talk,” he whispered. “And quickly. Upstairs.”

  *

  THERE WASN’T MUCH to pack in their bedroom, but Dkembe got to it anyway, hurrying to gather his stuff before Erak even followed him through. The candlelight silvered Gonzales’ complexion and his dark hair hung around his sharp, concerned face like wavy daggers, dark eyes held in perpetual squints.

  “What happened?” he asked in the hushed tone required. “What are you doing?”

  “Who else is here?” Dkembe asked instead.

  Erak blinked. “The girl, the one who survived . . . She’s hiding in the cupboard and won’t come out.”

  “Anyone?”

  “No,” Erak said. He glanced down, mindful as Dkembe continued stuffing clothes into his knapsack. “Just the children and . . . the woman. No one had silenced them, so I. . . .”

  “Tom Vanicek’s off the hook,” Dkembe said bluntly. “He’s jumped the shark, man. We have to flip.”

  “Flip?”

  “Get the fuck out of here.”

  “But where would we go?”

  “Right now, man, seriously . . . You gotta believe me, we just need to be anywhere else but here. Right now, Erak. C’mon, let’s go.”

  Dkembe motioned an efficient mime of Gonzales following suit. Nonetheless, the almost emaciated man let his eyes fall again to the lamp-lit floor.

  “Erak,” Dkembe said.

  “I don’t. . . .”

  “Now’s not the time,” Dkembe said. “We need to pack and leave.”

  “And go where?” Erak asked again. “It’s blowing a gale outside. We’re safe here.”

  “We. Are. Not. Safe. Not here.”

  Dkembe’s look was all it took, but the words helped. Something dawned for his companion and Gonzales fell into a stammering mess trying to pack his own meager things in record time. He continued shooting Dkembe worried looks as he hurried around the bedchamber.

  “What did he do?”

  “He killed my friend,” Dkembe said.

  Erak looked around to confirm just how pitifully little they had.

  “It’s the middle of the night,” he said lowly. “Dkembe, what are we going to do?”

  “It’ll be morning soon.”

  “And?”

  “I have somewhere I think we can go,” Dkembe said. “People.”

  “People? What people?”

  “We have to go,” Dkembe said and then braced himself to add, “And there’s someone else, too.”

  Erak’s expression froze.

  “What do you mean ‘there’s someone else’?”

  “Not like that,” Dkembe snapped. “Someone else needs help too.”

  “It’s that Ascended girl.”

  Dkembe’s reaction proved the truth of it, too astonished at Erak’s intuition to restrain the look of surprise he tried to reel in as quickly as he could, losing the eye contact battle with Gonzales who turned away and for a moment looked about to take a foolhardy kick at the burning candle. An image of Dkembe’s murdered friend leapt into place instead – Jay telling him “We gotta stay brothers, ‘kembi” – which throttled anything else likely to come out of his mouth to placate his bedmate.

  Beneath it all thrummed the urgency of their departure.

  “Erak, we can talk it out, but not right now.”

  Gonzales didn’t say anything, nor did he turn.

  “Erak, please, man,” Dkembe said. Don’t make me leave you here.

  Gonzales finally met his eyes. He didn’t flatter himself, pouting like a sullen child. The look he offered instead filled Dkembe with repulsion – and at his own reaction too. But he blanked that expression as well as he could too.

  “We’re headed into a wild time,” he said simply. “There’s no City any more, not for reals. It’s us against them again. You understan’ me, man?”

  Erak said nothing even though somehow he did. Dkembe nodded.

  “And there’s good people,” he said. “People who’re sufferin’, they need help too. Here, just before it all hits the fan, yo . . . now’s the chance to act before it’s all too late . . . for all of us.”

  Erak slowly sniffled, eyes flicking to his backpack, a grimy towel and pair of jeans hanging out.

  “You’ve been thinking about this,” he said. “So don’t tell me you don’t have a plan.”

  Dkembe didn’t want to lie, even if it was another surprise to realize Erak was right about that too.

  He knew the Ascended fort inside and out – and they started work just before dawn.

  *

  HE AND ERAK piled into their warmest clothes and took the bags with them from the house and didn’t stop to take anything until they reached the side area with its depleted gun lockers.

  Dkembe handed Erak the Glock and the spare half-empty magazine for it. The pump-action 12 gauge was left when Tom’s hunting party kitted up earlier, and the rounds for the grenade rifle glinted in the half-light with temptation.

  The plan that Dkembe hadn’t known he had continued falling into place, and amid the chilling rush of it all was a quiet, demented thrill, too. Here he was, leading the charge. Here he was, calling the shots. Here he was –

  Getting free of Tom Vanicek.

  Spooked, Dkembe grabbed two of the 40mm grenades and stuf
fed them into the pocket of his pants he now saw were streaked with dried blood. Again he thought of Jay – and Vegas – and hated himself for how quickly – now his plans were in action – those thoughts twisted treacherously serpentine back to the girl the Ascended called one of their “Anointed”.

  Jay’s gentle taunts echoed in Dkembe’s memories as well.

  Erak moved the gate and the squeak broke Dkembe’s attention so that now he turned from the dream vision of the Ascended girl and into Erak’s gaunt silhouette across from him, gilded by the sickly moonlight.

  “We should just go,” Gonzales said. “Please, Dkembe. It’s just us. Forget anyone else.”

  A smile crossed Dkembe’s face that Erak didn’t know well enough to know was fake.

  “You were keen enough to come with me last time, remember?”

  Erak’s features crumpled.

  “Alright.”

  *

  MORE TIME PASSED than Dkembe wanted as he hurried them on an unerring course towards the Ascended’s precinct. A pinkish dawn congealed into sky the color of tin foil, but with none of its luster. The charnel block around the fence-enclosed compound was a void for signs of life, the muddy trampled intersection showing nothing but a few parked pick-ups clustered further along the side entrance towards which Dkembe strode, more confident than he felt. Erak trailed behind like a recalcitrant churchgoer and Dkembe had the dark thought, He’ll fit right in.

  He gave the surrounding blocks one more scan on their final approach. A two-story brick tenement set a fair distance back across the opposite city block had a banner hanging from the top windows marked by a curiously indistinct symbol, the wind gotten to it so the declaration hung twisted, plastered across the weather-beaten bricks like a tongue. That same breeze picked up even more strongly as Dkembe hit the far sidewalk, carefully pointing the loaded shotgun at the ground, the pavers cracked and broken and muddy.

  A lone Ascended guard stood anonymous in his white Klansman garb. The cotton tabard left the man’s arms bare. Sparse gray hairs covered well-fed flesh. Motorcycle gloves up to the elbows added to his post-apocalyptic effect, as did the M4 strapped across his back and the machete dangling from its strap around one black wrist. Bloodshot eyes behind the mask slits watched Dkembe and offered nothing in the way of greeting.