Reckoning.2015.010.21

by Michaelbrent Collings

  Which means Mo and Amulek are going with us.

  Even more than the loss of the bunker, he had worried about losing the Māoris. The quick-to-smile hunter, his stolid and steadfast grandson. Both of them like rocks in a storm – near-immovable and always able to be counted on as anchor points.

  They're coming with us.

  Thank you, God. Thank you.

  (fate)

  Before they could shoulder their packs, Buck pointed out what had to come next: "So… who's gonna check what's up there?"

  Aaron took a few steps toward the hall that led out of the infirmary, but before he got far, Amulek slipped past him and was out of the room. Nothing but a machete on his hip and his ever-present bow slung over his shoulder – though Christopher suspected he would grab a fistful of arrows from the weapons cache hidden in the wet room.

  Aaron stared at the teen as he went. "He serious?"

  "Deadly," said Christopher. "And I mean that in every sense of the word."

  Everyone waited. Moments stretched into minutes. Minutes into what seemed an eternity.

  A sound made them all jump. It was Lizzy. She shifted slightly on the floor. They stared at her, and Christopher wondered if they were all thinking the same thing he was – waiting for her to wake up or start talking in that weird voice she had spoken in before, or maybe just explode.

  She did none of those things. Just turned over and snored. Maggie gathered the child into her arms. Christopher took the opportunity to put the cell remote into one of Hope's pockets. At least that way it would be guaranteed to stay close to one of them.

  His fingers cramped after he let go of the remote. He hadn't realized how tightly he had been holding it.

  A sound floated in from the wet room. Everyone tensed. Waited.

  Amulek returned. Like Christopher and Mo, who had fought off the last onslaught of zombies in the bunker, he was covered in ichor – but some of it seemed a bit… newer.

  The teen made a series of quick hand signs. Mo nodded. "He apologizes for taking so long. He wanted to make sure it would be safe to leave."

  "Sure," muttered Buck. "Tell him we accept his apology."

  "He can hear, moron," said Christopher.

  "Who you calling moron, moron?"

  Amulek gestured with an arrow – sure enough, he'd picked up some more of them – and Buck and Christopher quieted.

  But, surprisingly, the teen was grinning.

  They all shouldered their bags. Buck and Maggie each picked up a child.

  "Wait," said Christopher. "Don't move."

  He pulled off his belt, then threaded it through the right shoulder strap of Maggie's pack and the left shoulder strap of Buck's. "This'll keep you guys close enough that you'll both be in range of the jammer." He clapped Buck on the shoulder. "The four-legged-zombie-frequency-jamming-race. A new game for the whole family, and you get to be the beta tester, Clucky!"

  Buck growled. "Stop. Calling. Me. That."

  "Sorry. I'll stick with the Māori term." He looked at Mo. "What was it?"

  Mo grinned. "Takatāpui."

  "Right. Poopy it is."

  He jumped out of range of Buck's grasping fingers.

  The group moved to the wet room, where Christopher and Amulek quickly rinsed off some of the ichor that splattered their arms, necks, and faces. After that, Amulek carefully cleaned Mo's skin. Mo grimaced occasionally, but was mostly impassive.

  Christopher had to respect him. Again. More. How the guy could even be moving was a miracle. Christopher would have been in a coma by now. And crying. And sucking his thumb.

  After cleaning off, they restocked their weapons. The weapons cache was hidden under one of the toilets, and though Aaron seemed to take the location itself in stride, his eyes bulged when he saw its contents. Even after using several of the weapons with all the corresponding ammo to repel – or try to repel – the zombie attack – there was still a lot of firepower left.

  Aaron tucked two handguns into the waist of his pants, then took a long gun with a scope.

  Theresa took two handguns as well, along with a shotgun.

  Christopher took a shotgun, a single revolver. Maggie and Buck only had room for a single handgun since they were holding the little girls.

  Amulek took a handgun. And held onto his arrows. He had never used a quiver, simply holding the arrows in the same hand that nocked and drew the arrows – firing one and then swinging the next into place in a single, terrifyingly fast motion.

  Mo took nothing. He couldn't. He never would again. And Christopher thought he looked sad as the others chose their weapons. Then he turned around, his back to the group. Christopher thought he was hiding grief for a moment, then Amulek attached a smaller pack to the hunter's go-bag and stuffed it full of ammo. Even with no hands, the Māori would make himself useful.

  They left the bunker. It was still completely dark outside. The black of a place where night not only ruled, it held sway with a completeness unknown on the earth for a hundred years and more. The only lights came from the stars and moon.

  Christopher thought he saw something glow to the north, but it was dim. Could have been his imagination. Probably was. Power was gone. Lights were gone.

  All was dark now. Everywhere.

  Nearby something twitched in the mounds of asparagus that hid the bunker entrance. And now Christopher understood what Amulek had meant by "making sure it would be safe to leave." A zombie head lay on the ground, pinned to the dirt by an arrow. The rest of the creature lay in more than a dozen pieces, still moving but scattered more or less harmlessly in a circle about twenty feet across. The pieces had all started to secrete the yellow, waxy substance that somehow healed the zombies. But even healed, there was only so much a six-inch piece of forearm could do.

  "Nice," said Aaron. He nodded at Amulek. Amulek didn't nod back. Simply accepting the compliment as his due.

  They trekked over the mounds, across the field. Not the direction they had come – away from the canal that had brought them here in the first place.

  Maggie whispered something.

  "Ken."

  39

  Christopher stopped. He looked around. There was nothing. Just fields to the north, the dark curves of mountains barely visible in the distance. To the south: the canal. More fields, a black strip that he knew was a forested area. No zombies, other than Humpty Dumpty nearby.

  "What are we gonna do about Ken?" he said loudly.

  The others all lurched to a halt as well. Literally, in the case of Buck, who nearly pitched over as Maggie stopped mid-step, forcing him to either stop or drag her over flat on her face.

  "He's still out there," said Christopher. "We can't just –"

  "Stop," said Aaron. His face was hard. Nearly ugly. Not the face of a bad man, but the face of a man willing to do whatever was necessary to save the rest of humanity. "This is one conversation we aren't going to have. Not ever, and especially not out in the open." He looked at Maggie. "I'm sorry, but we can't just wait here."

  Christopher expected Maggie to protest. Instead, she nodded. "I know." And then she surprised him again, because the reason she gave was none he would have come up with in a million years. "Besides," she said simply, and looked south, toward the forest, "wherever we go, he'll find us."

  40

  A chill swept over Christopher when she said those words. He wondered how much of that came from Maggie the person… and how much of it came from whatever she had become under the influence of the tiny queens within her children.

  Were her words a promise… or a threat?

  Either way, the group resumed walking without a word. After a few minutes, Theresa said, "Didn't you say that Crow City was north of us?"

  "Indeed, e hine," said Mo.

  "Why are we going south then?"

  "Because our ride is south." Then he nodded. "Ah, there she is," he said.

  And there "she" was indeed. A dumpy, trashed tractor with a flatbed trailer, both of which looked like t
hey were held together primarily by rust and whatever prayers the last mechanic who had worked on it might have uttered.

  After Buck settled down from his first round of complaining, he said, "I thought you said we were going to travel in style."

  Mo shook his head, then laughed. Loud. The sound seemed out of place in the night. Christopher had to quell an urge to tell him to quiet down. Even without use of his hands, he suspected the old hunter could take him down in a no holds barred match.

  Mo's laugh died away, drifted to peace in the night. He squinted at Buck. "What use would it be to have a secret bunker with an obviously expensive vehicle just outside it?" he said. "Would you prefer that I have hidden myself with a Porsche 911 Turbo sitting outside the door?" He laughed again. "That would not have looked out of place at all." The grin drew away from his face, though not far. "The octopus changes her colors, does she not? And so must we, in this time of tempest."

  Buck grumbled. Christopher couldn't make out any words, but he got the sense that the Māori's ancestry was being called into question.

  "Amulek will drive," said Mo.

  "I think it'd be better if I do," said Aaron.

  "No," said Mo. "He knows where to go."

  "So do I."

  "No," said Mo. Even in the dark, his eyes sparkled. "I very much think that you do not, my friend."

  41

  Amulek, Maggie, and Mo rode in the cab. Buck, predictably, complained about that. But only long enough for Christopher to point out that there wasn't room there for him, Mo, and Amulek – the latter two of whom had to be there, given Mo's injuries and the fact that Amulek obviously knew the way to where they were going.

  "So unless you want to go all 'me servant, you queen' again, you might want to keep everyone in a close little family," said Christopher.

  More grumbling. Which was strangely comforting: the only time Buck didn't complain was when he was in thrall to what Christopher now thought of exclusively as the queens. So it was worth it to endure a little griping to avoid that.

  Buck and Maggie clambered awkwardly onto the trailer, helped there by Christopher and Theresa. He touched the redhead's hand at one point, and smiled at her. She snorted.

  "Really?" she said. "Is that what you're thinking about? Now?"

  He looked hurt – covering up the pain he actually felt to a surprising degree with a caricature of itself. "But… but… what if it's just us?" She stared at him blankly. "What if we have to repopulate the species?" he clarified.

  She punched him. Not hard. But in the nose. It hurt.

  A lot.

  He smiled anyway. Some girls, he knew, flirted with sideways glances and half-lidded eyes. Some had never grown up beyond the point where they kicked sand at the little boy they liked in kindergarten, then ran away. He suspected Theresa was the latter type.

  Regardless, he'd choose to believe that was the case. It was easier on his ego.

  The truck rumbled to a start. Surprisingly, it didn't sound like rusty gears gargling broken nails and shattered glass. Rather, it thrummed with power barely contained: a well-maintained motor hidden in the rust-bucket shell.

  The truck started moving. Picking its way through the asparagus field, then onto a small path. It moved north.

  "Where the hell – I mean, heck," said Buck, looking at Maggie, "are we going?"

  "Don't know." Christopher pretended nonchalance, though at this point he was burning with curiosity. Where were they headed? If Crow City was north, and they needed to pass through the town to get to Highway 20-26, why the detour?

  They passed out of the asparagus field. Through several others, passing at a steady clip that wasn't particularly fast, but fast enough that everything close by blurred in the night.

  Maggie sat silently in the dark. She had one arm wrapped around Lizzy's form, one hand reaching out to touch Hope's arm.

  Theresa's cradled her gun in her lap. Constantly scanning the area around for threats. Buck was on edge, too. No one knew where they were headed, no one knew what the future held.

  Maybe that's what the Change really did. Not that it stole our security – just that it stripped away the illusion that there ever was such a thing.

  Maybe.

  The truck bounced to a halt beside a small barn. The truck doors opened and Mo and Amulek got out, followed a moment later by Aaron. Mo and Amulek strode purposefully toward the barn, while Aaron stood still and looked nonplused.

  "We stopping to get horses?" said Buck. His voice was low, but it carried in the night.

  Mo laughed. "Yes, e kare."

  He went to the barn door. Christopher expected him to unlock the huge padlock there, but the hunter ignored it completely. Instead he nodded at Amulek, who went to the side of the door and slipped open a hidden panel. The teen put his hand against something. There was a green glow.

  The doors opened. They didn't split in two and swing outward like barn doors were supposed to. Instead, they rolled up, like….

  Buck stood up on the trailer. "Well, that's better," he said.

  Mo laughed. "Did I not tell you we would travel in style?"

  42

  The barn didn't hold horses or farm equipment. No bales of hay, no bags of seed. Instead, there was an epoxy-sealed floor so white it was nearly its own light source in the night. The walls held racks of tools – not pitchforks or spades, but ratchet sets, pneumatic screwdrivers, gauges.

  It wasn't a barn.

  It was a garage.

  And like all true garages, it held cars.

  Mo waited for Buck and Maggie to climb down off the flatbed, aided once again by Theresa and Christopher. His hand touched hers again, but he was still so stunned by what he saw that he barely even noticed, and didn't say anything at all.

  Once, when Christopher was young and simply "Christopher Elgin," instead of "Governor Elgin's son," he actually had what he thought of as A Real Christmas. No photo ops, no dinners that were ostensibly in celebration of the season but whose true purpose was a mix of back-channel deals and fundraising. Just family and fun, tinsel and tree.

  And presents.

  He got what he wanted – handheld game system – and the feeling he got when he tore open the wrapper, saw the box with the logo he'd hoped to see for the last six months… it was nirvana.

  He imagined his face had looked then how Buck's face probably looked now.

  "Ford Super Duty," said Buck, pointing at a huge truck hunkered far to the right of the garage – which, Christopher realized, much be hooked up to the same solar cells and generators that kept power running to the bunker.

  "Yes," said Mo. "It is slow, but able to haul much. Normally four-hundred-forty horsepower, over eight hundred pound-feet of torque, though I have arranged for adjustments that significantly increase both."

  Buck moved to the next two. "Jeep Wrangler Rubicon, Hard Rock Edition," he said. "Land Rover Range Rover Defender."

  "Both good, solid all-terrain vehicles. Well-rounded, for a variety of uses."

  "Ford Raptor – that's a damn fast truck," said Buck.

  "Yes," said Mo. "I put her here in case I needed to carry freight and might go off-road, but still wished to move in a hurry."

  Buck looked at the next one – a car, this time. It had curved lines that were vaguely reminiscent of a high-end Corvette, but much larger wheels that indicated an ability to go off road with ease. The big man whistled. "Local Motors?"

  Mo nodded. "The Rally Fighter. You know your cars, e kare."

  "That thing's around a hundred grand."

  "Just so. None of these were inexpensive, but I thought it best to have options in case I needed to travel quickly – or, in the case of the Super Duty – to take many supplies somewhere over difficult terrain. And I also thought it important to have more than one in case I had company on any journeys I might take." He gestured at the group. "It seems I was right, was I not?"

  Christopher whistled. "Mo, remind me to put you on my 'Friends Forever' list."


  Mo nodded. He looked strangely serious. "I will do that, e kare."

  "Which one are we taking?" said Buck. His eyes gleamed. Christopher could already hear him making the case for driving the rally car.

  "None of these," said Mo. He nodded to Amulek.

  The teen moved around to the far side of the barn – a long stretch of empty wood siding, unbroken by windows or doors. And that was when Christopher realized that there was something wrong about the interior of the garage. A nagging sensation that had tugged at him since Amulek opened the door. It hadn't registered consciously until now, but as Amulek walked to the right of the garage, he realized what it was:

  The garage is too small for the barn.

  As big as it was, the open space only took up part of the barn. The barn was bigger than the garage – there was wasted space somehow.

  Amulek slid back another hidden panel – the mirror of the one that had granted them entrance to the garage. Placed his hand on an something. There was another glow.

  The unbroken side of the barn split. Slid upward.

  Lights flickered on.

  Buck gasped. "What… what in the name of all that's holy is that?"

  43

  Amulek didn't wait for anything, but went to the main garage and began moving large red canisters – spare ten-gallon gas tanks – into the back of the thing that had been hidden in the secret room beside the garage.

  Aaron was the one who answered Buck's question.

  "That's a Marauder, isn't it?"

  Mo nodded. His eyes were nearly the match of Buck's, both of the big men all but clapping and jumping around. "I call her Sunshine."

  The thing was… Christopher searched for an appropriate word and all he came up with was monstrous. It looked vaguely like a Hummer in shape, but in scope and presence it bore the same relation to a Hummer that an F14 did to a narcoleptic chicken.

  The thing in the hidden garage stood easily ten feet tall. The hood – itself about the height of the roof of most cars – had vent slits that made it look powerful, angry. The headlights were covered by steel cages. Windows were small, probably reinforced somehow. A tow cable with a red hook jutted out of the front, and the right side had an extra tire attached. The whole thing was painted black, which made it look even more dark and dangerous.