After The Apocalypse (Book 6): Resolution

by Hately, Warren

  “Come on, damn it,” Dkembe called.

  Erak moved past. “No time.”

  Another of the hooded girls broke free of the pack and tore the headgear from her face out of sheer practicality, sorrowful eyes masking resentment at the other women in the cult’s harem.

  “Don’t go!”

  It was an older woman. Now she pulled down her mask just enough to show desperate fear framed by dusty brown plaits. “The Anointed –”

  A pair of hooded guards stepped into the dining room behind them and lifted guns.

  Erak only had time to shoot the first of them, near point-blank range as the guard entered the doorway. The hooded man’s brains spattered the man behind him with sufficient force that Dkembe had the slightest chance for action. A stranger to himself, he gave another savage roar and his ax stroke came down into the side of the second man’s hooded jaw, deflected hard off the bone, and sank into the base where the man’s shoulder joined the neck. A student of such a recent atrocity, Dkembe then yanked the weapon free before it could settle – and the unnerving impact caused the Ascended to stagger, his M4 still coming up, and then Erak stepped in close with the Colt mere inches from the man’s head he then fired into with a face twisted in savage glee.

  The chamber clicked empty.

  The wounded Ascended twisted in his own fall to grab Gonzales by the gun barrel he then used to haul himself upright despite the grievous wound, his strength far exceeding Erak’s own, and causing the skinnier man to tumble into his attacker and embrace the man’s gushing neck wound.

  The reddened pair fell heavily together onto the floor and the M4 emptied one round into the low ceiling as Erak dropped the dead pistol and switched hands with the knife again before viciously stabbing down four or five times into the side of the man’s half-askew hood.

  “Erak!”

  Dkembe had to yell over the women shrieking in their cell.

  “We have to go!” the skinny blonde captive added.

  She grabbed Dkembe’s numb hand to drag him further down the long corridor. Erak took in all the handholding as he got upright. He unclipped the guard’s rifle, sparing Dkembe his shocked outrage as Dkembe himself stumbled on as if in shock with the girl taking the lead.

  *

  THEY BURST OUT the door into naked daylight like they were breaking through ice. A scouring wind and the harsh light and the walls no longer closing in around them gave the moment a weird serenity, though that would be short-lived too.

  Stumbling to get his footing, Dkembe looked mutely at the chalk-white hand clutching his own, the prosaic beauty of its owner, the tang of effluent and bleach and something even nastier filling his nose, the cawing of scavenger birds overhead and the cries and jeers and honking horns of nearby trucks as he and the girl ran like rabbits up a short brick staircase that took them along the far rear side of the Ascended compound.

  The steps led to a path alongside the back of the last Ascended building. Dkembe remembered the gate the workers used before and the woman with the toolbox. The dark shadows cast by its neighbor – a four-floor industrial building with a solid brick curtain wall – strangled all light beneath its dominion.

  When a rear door opened ahead, Dkembe wasn’t even surprised. The man wore no Ascended gear, but the shotgun was familiar. Dkembe’s own.

  The man spotted them and stepped back into cover of the doorway twenty feet ahead.

  “Stop!” Dkembe yelled.

  He pulled back hard on the girl’s wrist and then tore his hand free, changing hands with the ax as Erak piled in behind them checking on all the angles with the M4 before scuttling up against the grimy brick wall to get the best line of fire – and just in time, too, as the worker with the shotgun jumped back out, seeking a few Brownie points from his employers perhaps, and instead taking a focused burst of 5.56mm rounds in the face and throat.

  The slain man flailed back and then fell to his ass like someone pulled the rug beneath him, brain and hair particles a gelid mass staining the doorframe above what used to be his head. Dkembe had just a moment to stare in astonishment at his companion. Erak met his look and dropped it just as quickly.

  Dkembe pulled the second 40mm grenade from his pocket.

  “Quickly,” he said.

  Erak was forced on point, and checked several times that Dkembe and the girl were definitely following before he committed to their last mad advance down the path between the two buildings to where the low wire gate looked back out onto the rear loading area and open gate, blocked now by the front end of an old farm truck. The truck doors flew open as if to worsen the escape, just like the two gruff-looking motherfuckers who skipped out carrying guns.

  “Dkembe?”

  “Hold still.”

  He smacked the grenade against the brick wall and went to throw it, then realized the ignition hadn’t sparked. He repeated the move with similar results, and then the sheer panic at continuing to smash long-unused military ordnance against a wall overcame him, and he gave a scream and dared try it one last time, then hurling the grenade towards the truck regardless of whether it hissed or not.

  The grenade struck the truck’s bulbar and went off.

  The brief flash told nothing of the carnage. Its dry bang sent the truck’s hood flying and shrapnel took out the windows, peppered the open doors with ragged holes, and saw both the gunmen stagger away and then fall down. The older of the two writhed in agony on the filthy bricks as blood pumped from dozens of small wounds. His offsider lay completely still where he’d fallen, his back shredded and dark and wet.

  Dkembe led Erak and the girl straight for the gate, but only halfway across the yard, their eyes switched to rising screams coming beyond the top of the warehouse ramp. Dkembe’s look of disbelief betrayed him as a half-dozen men and women poured from the shed. Several of the now-unmasked concubines, the woman with the toolkit, one last Ascended henchman – and the Apex raced after them as well.

  “Run!”

  Dkembe’s trio moved to the cover of the blast-damaged truck he now dearly wished they could drive to freedom. More self-hatred poured in atop his resurgent panic. But Gonzales stopped at the truck’s burning front panel and callously turned the M4 into their pursuers, and Dkembe – a dispenser of wrongdoings himself, today – stared, somehow astonished, waiting for his friend to call a warning as the inevitable laying down of gunfire occurred.

  The stolen M4 clattered more mechanically than old movies ever showed, and the deadly rounds cut down one of the women and the toolkit lady.

  And that was it for their ammunition.

  “Fuck!” Erak bawled.

  “Run!”

  Dkembe and the girl-whose-name-he-still-didn’t-know yelled as one.

  All three fled as the unperturbed pack of surviving cultists chased them out into the street and running on madly down behind them through the first intersection. Gonzales hurled the useless rifle. The Apex lagged behind the others, and the hooded guard stumbled a misstep, but otherwise all ran close on their tails.

  The wind-battered street before them was void of life and working vehicles.

  Dkembe and the girl ran side by side. He had one of his moments again, running through treacle while contemplating the enormity of what he only now considered – had maybe planned for all along, in case things came to this point – and the utter misery of knowing he had such betrayal in him.

  The four cultists ran with such rage, it was like they were trapped within an apocryphal vision – a living nightmare writ real by the apocalypse which conjured forth madness. They pursued the escapees doggedly, relentless, crossing one shanty block and then the next. A woman hurled a glass bottle and it exploded like a grenade to the Ascended girl’s flank. She veered into Dkembe who only guided her along to avoid the collision, panting and out of breath and astonished at himself that someone who had a habit of running all his life wasn’t better at it.

  He took an even deeper breath as they crossed the next intersection and ran right, d
arting between two ancient trucks angled to create a chokepoint. The cultists kept on their tail undeterred. Desperation and pointless questions tumbled through Dkembe’s head.

  He turned side-on as he ran, hitching his pace as if to check on his friend, refusing to meet Erak’s eyes as he slowed and instead hacked with the fire ax one-handed into Erak’s knee.

  A shriek of mixed fear, shock, pain and outrage tore from Erak’s mouth like the blood from his ruined leg. He staggered and fell flat to the road surface and lay there looking at Dkembe in utter astonishment as Dkembe kept running with the slave girl just ahead.

  Dkembe closed his eyes trying to fight off the image burning into his mind, checking the path ahead was clear before his eyes were then dragged backward one last time at Erak, knowing fully well the sight would destroy him even though he’d wrought it himself.

  Their four pursuers fell upon his injured friend just as Dkembe’d hoped they would, satisfying their thirst for vengeance by bludgeoning their quarry to death while Dkembe did what he’d known he’d do since the first day he and Erak met.

  He ran.

  Chapter 6

  VEGAS SAT WITH shaking legs, marveling at the luxury of a working toilet compared to the sheer barbarity of the night, his friend’s drying blood flecked across his bare shins, clinging to the hairs, the smell something that wouldn’t wash off any time soon. When he flushed, Vegas stood watching the turds go down as if remembering the sight for the last time. People had come so far back from the edge of ruin to reclaim some of their lost world’s civility, and now that lay in ruins just like Jay’s corpse in the room next door.

  Vegas walked back into that room which still reeked with slaughter and men’s sweat. Figures creeping around in the living room caught fright at his re-entry. The mother and father and their kid from next door and then another woman quit back out of the apartment through the broken exit. Vegas watched the scavengers go with nothing more than an inflamed breath, staring blunt daggers as he eyed the kicked-in door and knew crossing to shut it meant taking in the whole awful thing all over again.

  But there was no doing it otherwise.

  He went and got dressed in cargo pants and his thermal underwear top before returning to the living room to scan the broken doorway as a distraction one last time, taking a prolonged reprieve before he inhaled deeply to steel himself to take in the sorry sight of OK Jay laying twisted and nearly cut into pieces by the departed Tom Vanicek’s sword.

  “A fuckin’ sword,” Vegas muttered to himself like it were a prayer to Tom’s victim. Then Vegas knelt with mixed tenderness and caution, one hand hovering like a faith healer over his dead, slightly younger compadre. Jay’s face was split from one of Vanicek’s terrible sword strikes. Askew in their face, Jay’s brown eyes still managed to convey the raw and convoluted emotions of his final moment of death now as tangled as his guts slid out the broad rents in the dead young man’s chest.

  “A fuckin’ sword,” Vegas said again. “Aw brother, you deserved better’n that. Fuck.”

  Jay was a littler shorter than him, and not as brawny, but his corpse still dominated the room. An unconscionable amount of blood had come from the man. The rug was ruined, the exposed boards stained – lucky if the mess didn’t leak into the apartment below.

  The sickening thought turned Vegas’ gaze in avoidance to the front door once again, but this time he found Latisha there.

  “Hey,” she said somberly.

  Latisha remained in the doorway, an unwitting shadowy medusa with her complicated coiled locks unleashed for the nighttime so savagely interrupted. Her round face stayed fixed on his to avoid the grisly details spread out on the carpet, and she wore that look with the appropriate sorrow even though she’d never liked Jay much.

  “Is that OK Jay?”

  Vegas stood.

  “Yeah.”

  He cast a final look at his murdered friend, then unceremoniously hauled the blanket from the settee and threw it over the mound he’d become. The corpse relaxed wetly under the weight. Vegas clenched his vomit response and looked further down, disturbed, to see his toes inching into the bloody muck.

  “Fuck,” he said again.

  “Hey baby,” Latisha said and eased closer. “I’m sorry for your loss, OK?”

  “No need to pretend for me,” Vegas told her.

  “Nigga was weak,” Latisha said with a shrug and put her hand against his chest. “Not like you, baby.”

  She kissed him, though he took it on his cheek, unable to dismiss a sense of repulsion any better than he could find its source. There was a lot more to the mood in him than just the slaughter of his friend – and no disrespect to Jay intended by that. Vegas pictured the flushing turds again, and gently moved Latisha aside with strong hands on her hips.

  “You gonna clean up?” she asked.

  “Clean up? No,” he answered. “I’m moving out.”

  “Movin’ out?”

  “Yep.”

  Latisha’s outrage softened only a little out of consideration for the setting. His booty call’s self-interest was as clear as the stark evidence that none of them were safe.

  Vegas didn’t want to look at all the things in his apartment he now either had to relocate or abandon – the cumulative effort of two years, fighting so hard to believe the City’s fairytale.

  He motioned to the corpse on the floor.

  “Have a look around you, Tisha,” he said. “You think OK jus’ had a bad fall?”

  “What happened?” she asked in a careful voice. Then, as was her habit, she filled the space for any answer with more words of her own. “I mean, we all heard it. God damn, that fella was yellin’ like it was the end of the goddamn world, you know?”

  “Tom Vanicek.”

  “That fella from the newspaper?”

  Vegas snorted. Sensed his own jealousy there.

  “That’s the one,” he said.

  “Where on earth you gonna go?” Latisha asked. “The warehouse?”’

  He nodded.

  “The plan was always to fortify the building and then get the housin’ arrangements better’n just campin’ out on the floor,” he said. “Have to ramp the timetable up a bit.”

  “You think it’s that bad?”

  Vegas found it hard to restrain his harsh look.

  “You serious?” he asked her. “Motherfucker just walked in here and cut Jay to shreds.”

  “Sorry,” Tisha said. “I just ain’t ever seen you scared before.”

  She couldn’t help herself the tiniest sniffle. Vegas’ eyes hardened. It was the wrong time for his fuckbuddy to shit-test him – and it confirmed everything about the woman he already knew.

  “What about me?” Latisha asked, coy, almost playful, ignoring his look. “I like that sweet time with you, my man –”

  “We’re neighbors, Tisha,” he said and cut all eye contact. “I told you that.”

  “Yeah, you tol’ me that,” she answered, indignant. “That mean you gonna leave me here when you’s afraid there’s a fuckin’ ax murderer on the loose?”

  “You wanna move too?”

  Latisha softened, looking like she expected a marriage proposal. Batting her lashes, she smiled slowly, lowering her eyes down the full length of him standing with arms folded across his broad chest.

  “Only if you want me there, Vegas baby.”

  The apartment door creaked inwards, aborting the need for any real answer. Vegas grabbed the interruption with both hands, rounding on the doorway with an irate look. A skinny-figured old white man clutched his frizzy beard and bobbed his head in apology.

  “Sorry t’interrupt you, boss,” the retiree said and winced a smile and bobbed his head some more.

  “Pedro,” Vegas said in a dull tone. “What you want?”

  “Everythin’ OK?”

  “What’s up with you motherfuckers an’ your stupid questions?”

  Vegas growled and eased up on the imposing glare. His eyes instead found the carpet again, J
ay’s blood slowly spotting through the blanket covering him.

  “No,” Vegas said at last. “Things are certainly not OK.”

  Latisha cleared her throat, thinking better of words. The old man’s fevered eyes flicked between them and the atrocity on the floor.

  “That your friend?”

  “Yep.”

  “Dead?”

  “Yep.”

  “You put him down?”

  “Didn’t have to,” Vegas said.

  “You want help with clean up?”

  Vegas stared at Old Pedro a moment, eyes on the speculative tongue betraying its owner beneath a white-whiskered lip.

  “I’m not stayin’,” Vegas said slowly.

  “Got somewhere to go?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Takin’ your friend?”

  Pedro didn’t mean Latisha and she knew it. Latisha made a sickened face, flicked her eyes to Vegas and then made an “I’ll call you” gesture which these days somehow still meant something. Then she squeezed past Pedro and into the hall leaving the implicit stink of the old man’s question hanging in the air like a fart.

  Vegas returned sorrowful eyes to the blanketed shape and couldn’t strain them for irony.

  “Takin’ him to the Ascended?” he asked, dulled.

  “Ahm sorry, man,” Old Pedro said. “Don’t wanna eat people myself, but folks’ll have him.”

  “If they even know,” Vegas said.

  “Or care.”

  Vegas met the old man’s eyes then, but only to nod tersely as he escaped to his bedroom unable to outpace the awful clamor of his heart.

  *

  BY THE TIME he had his clothes packed, there wasn’t much room left in the single backpack. He re-entered the living room and ignored Pedro and an associate who quietly left the apartment for decency’s sake, wasting no time plotting the logistics of whatever foul bargain they were cooking up – metaphorically, if not literally – all the same.

  Vegas adjusted the Glock tucked into his waistband so he could crouch and examine the small bookcase, sighing quietly to himself as he farewelled a few other old friends. He limited himself to five of his favorites, which made the first few choices easy: Osho’s book on Tao, Ecce Homo and Homo Deus. He selected The Marrow of Tradition even though he almost knew the book from heart, and he added Mules and Men for the link to his people’s lost past, if nothing else. The weather-beaten copy of Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected beckoned as a sentimental favorite, not for the stories – as inventive as they were and however much they’d appealed to his love of thinking outside the box – but because it was Dorothea who’d given it to him.