After The Apocalypse (Book 6): Resolution

by Hately, Warren

  In just a matter of seconds, the sentry hauled the door firmly shut, and Tom helped Lucas shut the wire door behind it. The Furies tore the fire door away at once, pressing forward with rapacious snarls. Tom and then Lucas put their shoulders against the wire door to hold it in place and the trooper worked the sturdy combination padlock back into position.

  The Furies clawed and tongued the wire mesh. Tom stepped back and ignored the slavering undead, sword in hand still, eyes fell and meaningful at the breathless trooper with his Mp5 strapped across his back.

  “You’re not the Councilor,” the man gasped. “Thought you was him.”

  “Nope,” Tom said.

  Sunlight trickled down a single corridor from the ruined delicatessen and its exit onto the next street, one block outside the official sanctuary zone. Tom sensed the guard calculating his chances of escape. Tom instead lowered the sword and held it two-handed, threateningly, though the expression on his face was enough.

  “You took my daughter,” he said. “I’m here to take her back.”

  “You’re Tom Vanicek, aren’t you?”

  The trooper wasn’t really asking a question, but the speculation never really left his bearded face. A single hand rose unconsciously to stroke his beard whiskers, but Tom lifted the longsword’s tip and that was the end of that.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Why you wanna know that?” the trooper replied, afeared. “I got no issue with you.”

  “Then where’s my daughter?”

  The trooper stared back at Tom, panicked without ceasing his shrewd look. Anger bubbled and Tom stepped closer, the sword by his side, his left hand curled into a fist.

  “You tell me something I want to know now, motherfucker, or I’m killing you where you stand.”

  The trooper lifted his hands in surrender and backed away as much as he dared. The dozen Furies snarled and frothed and puked grime in desperation for the feed they imagined for themselves just a few feet away, curtailed by the locked wire security door. Tom’s hostage glanced from him to them and paled even further, fussing with the checkered scarf and then using it to mop the sweat breaking out across his face.

  “My name’s Yusuf, man,” he stammered. “We’re cool, honest. I don’t know much about what you’s after, but I’ll tell you anythin’ you wanna fuckin’ know, OK?”

  “Who else is here?” Tom asked.

  Merely asking the question, he was proud to see Lucas snap about and start guarding the corridor through to the storefront like he should’ve done ten seconds earlier.

  “There’s just me an’ one of my homies,” Yusuf said, trying to keep it casual, adding an inauthentic laugh as if it might get him killed. “Honestly, bro, you an’ me are cool, OK? It’s just you and me and your kid here an’ my buddy Fuckface and that’s it, yeah?”

  “Fuckface?”

  “Just a nickname, man.”

  “Where’s my daughter?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about there, man.”

  “Lilianna.”

  “Please, honestly,” Yusuf said. Fear straining his voice made him sound legit. “We’re just the Council man’s drivers, OK?”

  “Dad!”

  Lucas drew Tom’s hard gaze to an approaching figure, the barest glimpse of a hulking man in the brick corridor Tom didn’t have time to study because Yusuf danced back out of immediate sword range with a gleeful, unbecoming smirk.

  “Oh you in for it now,” the trooper snickered.

  Tom’s eyes betrayed a glance towards the shelved longbow, and Yusuf edged towards it with a maniacally playful grin. Tom was close enough to strike if he went for the sub-machinegun still across his back. But the look on Yusuf’s face showed he really thought he was free of danger now – which sent Tom checking back at the corridor. Lucas stood to one side with Kevin’s Glock raised in a TV cop grip, but he kept checking with his dad.

  Frantic curse words tumbled through Tom’s head as he regripped the sword and a brutal-looking trooper came out the narrow corridor as if having to force his way out.

  The man’s mangled face and the “Fuckface” nickname came together in the one instant and Tom recognized the irate drinker he’d bashed at The Dirty Vixen – and his victim did the same. It only fueled the bellowing roar Fuckface gave as he charged the last few steps, and Yusuf, just out of Tom’s reach, gave an acid squeal and yelled, “You’re not gonna see your fuckin’ daughter now, homie. We all had a taste, and she was sweet!”

  Anything else Yusuf might’ve yelled was drowned out as Lucas shot Fuckface dead.

  The boy was smart and his target was big. Hard to miss. But hard to put down, too.

  The Glock clacked with shocking force as Luke shot the newcomer six times.

  The raging Fuckface went from shock to anger to panic and thus into existential woe as each bullet struck him, and then the last bullets confirmed his doom. Fuckface took a single heavy step and then buckled on a bad knee and fell down on top of himself with one hand grasping for the slick-painted bricks. His hand slapped uselessly at the wall several times, and then the huge trooper gargled and collapsed there, staring back at them, blood pooling as he fouled himself, and then his breath came out in a final rattling gasp as he went still.

  Lucas turned the gun towards Yusuf and coldly stared and the guard dropped to his knees, haunted expression switching to Tom as if hoping for a greater chance of mercy there.

  Tom retrieved his bow and hooked it over his shoulder despite the risk to the string’s tension. Fuckface was dead and Luke had the last survivor dead in his sights – and Yusuf’s words still burnt their slow way down to the core of Tom’s heart. Tom bought himself precious moments – moments in which he gave himself a chance for something other than immediate butchery – by crossing to the dead trooper and taking the automatic from his belt.

  He checked the safety and then also aimed the gun.

  “You’re going to tell me everything in a minute or less,” Tom told Yusuf. “You do that, and I might let you live.”

  Yusuf’s black eyes switched between the pair, father and son resolute.

  “You’re just gonna wax me, yeah. . . .”

  “Tell me,” Tom said. “Everything.”

  “You’ll never find her,” Yusuf said. “Not without someone to take you. Wilhelm’s got a place, out in the sticks, yo.”

  He made eye contact without any trouble while lying earlier. Now, Yusuf hung his head, daring not to look in case he caught the moment of his own execution.

  Tom stared at him hard. He tucked the gun into his waistband to reclaim the workmanlike grip on his long-hilted sword.

  “You raped my daughter?”

  “No man, no,” Yusuf said. “I was jus’ . . . messin’ with your head. I thought –”

  “Yeah?”

  The trooper glanced from Tom to his dead comrade and then over to Lucas.

  “Didn’t figure your kid for a stone-cold killer.”

  “Well, you figured wrong,” Tom said.

  He wasn’t happy about it, and when he glanced to Luke, the boy struggled not to beam with pride, which plunged Tom’s spirits lower still. He rounded back to Yusuf.

  “Did you touch my daughter?”

  Yusuf shook his head, worried, a hand raised too, backing away except there was nowhere to go except across towards the low-growling Furies watching now like a pack of vitriolic critics through the wire door.

  “Greerson told us not to touch her,” Yusuf said. “Honestly, man.”

  “Where is she?”

  The trooper’s eyes flicked all around the room, even scoping the passage blocked by his dead friend.

  “There’s a Humvee out front,” he said. “Drive you there.”

  Tom eyed Fuckface, still dead – for now. Lucas held the Glock on Yusuf. The longsword was a sudden liability, and Tom backed clear away until he could sheath it, his eyes never leaving the captive and also never quite losing their murderous intent. It almost pained Tom no
t to kill the bastard, as if Kent’s sword was like one of those in the old dime-store novels, cursed with a dark thirst for life which slowly possessed its wielder too.

  Blood was demanded here, and he and Yusuf both knew it.

  Tom dragged Fuckface free of the corridor and stole the dead man’s spare magazines, then the sheathed knife he stabbed down and left embedded in the side of the man’s skull. Tom took a final look at Yusuf, then motioned to his son as he stepped clear of the steps.

  “After you,” Tom said and drew the Smith & Wesson M&P.

  The narrow corridor led into the store and its empty, dusty white shelves, much of its unlooted contents now littering the floor. A suspiciously clear path ran direct through the junk to one busted-inwards flap of a fire-scorched black security grille drawn down on the shop in the earliest days of five years ago. Slatted daylight revealed the parked Humvee just as Yusuf said – and no one else in sight.

  “What were you doing out here?” Tom asked the man.

  Yusuf kept his hands raised, ready to run for it at the merest chance.

  “Told you, we’re just drivers,” he said.

  “Takes two of you to drive?”

  “We’re still Department of Safety,” Yusuf said.

  “Jesus,” Tom said quietly. “You still dare fucking call yourself that?”

  Yusuf looked suitably abashed as only a man sensing summary execution could. He swallowed with difficulty, hands raised even though it was tiring him, and Tom motioned him through.

  Florid, ancient graffiti extended along the battered street beyond the shopfront. The winds assailed them once again, and Tom turned slitted eyes on the Desert Storm-era Humvee and then back to Yusuf as garbage cartwheeled past them, and Tom forced thoughts of Lilianna into abeyance.

  “Who were you waiting for?” he half-shouted at the hostage.

  Yusuf lowered his hands a fraction and clearly didn’t want to answer until Tom growled and hefted the pistol, but even then, the trooper inched down into himself while shaking his head.

  Tom barked, “Answer the goddamned question!” and uselessly cocked the hammer.

  “Was it Wilhelm?” he yelled. “Were you waiting for him?”

  Yusuf looked away and nodded and looked ready to pee himself. A terrified boy had taken control of his bearded face and Yusuf used one hand to wipe away tears before they formed.

  “We don’t know when he’s comin’, man,” Yusuf said. “Wait all day, sometimes.”

  Tom didn’t believe that for a second. He glanced to Lucas.

  “Keep your gun on him.”

  Then he moved around the Humvee, peering in through the scarred windows as if someone might still be within. An AR15 propped one door open, with a discarded radio handset, still switched on, in the driver’s seat.

  Tom took the walkie-talkie and returned to the guard.

  “Here,” he said and held it out to Yusuf. “Call for him, now.”

  “Nah, man.”

  Yusuf shooed him away as if such a thing were possible. Tom’s eyes flared at the refusal and he thrust the handset out with deliberate force, pushing into Yusuf’s chest. Before the trooper could even think about going for Tom’s gun, Tom drove his knee into the man’s gut.

  The guard went down and lay coughing up drool onto the dusty, cracked pavement. It was a long second before Tom decided against further violence. He gestured impatiently with the radio again.

  “Call him,” he said.

  “I’m not doin’ that, man,” Yusuf said. He kept his face down, eyes anywhere but on Tom. “You gonna shoot me, you gonna shoot me. You wanna find your daughter, you got no one else boy but me.”

  “He’s right, dad.”

  Tom grunted, nothing more than stupid pride making Luke’s words seem like a betrayal. He briefly met Luke’s eyes and nodded.

  “I know.”

  He gave a final look towards the shuttered delicatessen and then the Humvee. He motioned for Lucas to get in the vehicle, he kept his eyes away from the boy to avoid any indirect confession.

  Wilhelm would have to wait for another time.

  Despite his promise to his son, a return to the City now looked inevitable.

  *

  THEY DROVE NORTH along the freeway until some prearranged turn-off, then Yusuf told Tom to take the first of the open roads through the city’s ancient subdivisions. The trooper sat in the shotgun seat with Luke’s gun pressed to the back of his head.

  Tom knew the road to Stratford well by now. Desiccated husks of in-fill housing whittled past them under attack from the gale, the day lengthening, but growing cold and overcast with the view to the north further clouded by dust clouds and what might be rain, far off in the distance.

  The homes of yesteryear were in ruins now. The calm, idyllic streets with wide and easy roadways and their houses set far back were choked with weeds in most directions, except where recent transit kept them clear. Yusuf directed them on a parallel course to another highway headed north. After twenty minutes, they turned west onto buckled hardtop, one side of the road fringed by a city nature reserve now turned halfway Jurassic. Saplings sprouted all along the motorway, cracking the tarmac asunder. Even more trees lined the southern perimeter, and the Humvee rattled past the driveways of numerous abandoned semi-rural homes now recycling back into nature.

  “Right up here,” Yusuf said.

  “Where is this place?”

  “I told you, it’s complicated,” he said. “It’s not like there’s any street names anymore, even if I knew ‘em, you know?”

  They drove like that for another few minutes, threading in and out of side roads, Yusuf twice admitting a mistake so that they had to backtrack. Tom checked the fuel gauge for the umpteenth time and his soul growled, deep in his chest, and he caught a look at Lucas just long enough to catch the boy’s weary expression. The gun trained on the back of Yusuf’s head dipped with Luke’s tiredness.

  “I think it’s a left here,” Yusuf said for all the world like he didn’t have a pistol aimed at him.

  Tom slowed the Humvee, turning just enough to confirm the next road was actually blocked, studded with thickets of young trees growing strong.

  “Oops,” Yusuf said. “My bad.”

  Tom sighed and let the vehicle come to a halt.

  He looked across at Yusuf. “Get out.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “You’re not gonna leave me out here?”

  Tom only stared at him. Dumping Yusuf in the middle of nowhere seemed like a fairytale compared to the look on Tom’s face. Yusuf buckled under the scrutiny, put his hands up, and reluctantly opened his door. Tom joined him clambering from the vehicle and Lucas scuttled out after them with the Glock by his side, reassured by the pistol in his father’s hand.

  “Where are these kennels, Yusuf?”

  “I only been there once,” the trooper said.

  “You’re lying.”

  “You lyin’ to me,” Yusuf said.

  “And you’re deliberately wasting our time.”

  The trooper looked anxious again, and he glanced around as if hoping help might arrive. The bucolic solemnity of the overgrown woodlands undermined that daydream too.

  “Yeah, well. . . .” Yusuf sighed. “The moment I take you there, you gonna kill me, so I’m not in any rush, you know?” Then he added, “Not rushin’ like you, anyway.”

  Yusuf chuckled and met Tom’s look bare-faced.

  That turned out to be a mistake. Tom growled and surged forward and Yusuf was too busy watching Tom’s hands that he took the kick in the balls completely unguarded. The life went out of him. Yusuf buckled, curled up on the muddy roadway, the smell of pine trees and conifers thick as treacle in his nose.

  Tom nudged his son’s shoulder, then pointed once he had Luke’s attention.

  The mounted road sign was battered and worse for wear, but still legible. Among the nearby attractions was Dixie’s Doggie Daycare, at a distance of two miles. />
  Luke gave Tom a startled look.

  “You saw that already?”

  “What I’ve been looking for, the whole time,” Tom said.

  Lucas looked down upon Yusuf at their feet.

  “Then we don’t need him anymore.”

  He lifted the Glock and put a bullet through Yusuf’s back.

  The trooper arched in pain and Tom stood like a statue as his son then shot the bearded man in the head.

  *

  THEY TOOK THE weapons and ammo from the Humvee and left it, doors open, at the crossroads like some kind of marker for Yusuf’s corpse. No word passed between father and son as Tom gave one final glance of confirmation at the faded sign and started through the avenue peopled by fiercely-growing saplings thriving without humankind getting in their way. The overcast day threw a gray pall over pretty much everything, matching Tom’s mood, belied by the stonily neutral look on his face.

  And Lucas marched behind him like the Angel of Death.

  The riot of overgrown nature reserve petered out to their north as they tracked west, the way the sign pointed, and the trees in the roadway thinned out too. The view now included a series of gently serrated crests overcome with wild grass submerging the occasional homestead, rural lot, commercial building or private industry into the one organic blur. Two cars had wrecked at the intersection where a major road cut through, and their blackened, age-tarred husks carried a tang of burnt metal on the wind along with a hint of the nearby Scioto River.

  Further to the west, a side road headed towards a gaunt bridge. When Lucas and his dad reached it, another sign confirmed they were headed the right way. Stalled cars creating a chokepoint on the bridge itself suggested human hands at work. Tom and Lucas shunted down into cover – plenty of wild growth surging up from the direction of the river banks – each armed with an assault rifle as they eyed any chance of movement through the dead cars ahead.

  “Lucas,” Tom said gently.

  “There’s no time, dad.”

  The boy avoided his father’s eyes.