Blood Runners

by George S. Mahaffey Jr.

  CHAPTER 10

  She moved briskly on a path stamped by the Guild for the Apes, a protected trail that snaked through a snarl of vegetation that was off-limits to the general populace. It was one of the few nice things afforded the Apes, and Marisol loved its view of the cityscape. She clipped past the outer hub of moldering apartment buildings, beside a rusted sign for South Ashland Avenue, and toward a crude suspension bridge that spanned the river. She moved across the bridge and eyed a few acres of land in the middle of it; what was once a park was now choked with weeds and sunbleached signs that spoke of the history in the times of the machines.

  She walked down sidewalks, past gawkers who gave her a wide berth when they spotted her Sigil, and beside great farms that had been built upon cubes of asphalt and concrete. Continuing on, she dodged sinkholes and marveled at the streets and byways and alleys, now broken up and invaded by thick grass and natural vegetation, having returned to the Earth much faster than anyone would’ve imagined. She shimmied up a decaying telephone pole and glanced at the Great Lakes that glimmered like a mirage out in the distance. She stopped and gaped into the taped windows of stores that once sold household goods and liquor and tickets for games of chance. She moved aside a piece of detached plywood and eased through a gap and into a store she’d secretly visited many times before.

  Marisol waited for her eyes to adjust to the gloom inside what had once been a store for young women just like her. Lots of water-damaged but still flashy signage with impossibly-perky thin girls, most holding up phones or throwing their heads back in laughter, wearing tights and jackets and silly boots made from animal skin from a country thousands of miles away that were the de facto dress code for those aged nineteen through thirty-four back before. Marisol made sure there was no one in sight or within earshot and then she went shopping, sorting through her tiny honeypot of trinkets and bygones.

  She scooped up a ratty dress that lay in the ash of the busted building and held it up below her neck in front of what was left of a shattered mirror. Her head flopped to the side, she mustered a smile, imagining some beat-heavy music playing, and for an instant she was just like any other girl her age, trying on clothes for events that no longer mattered.

  Marisol stared up at the signs of models and mimicked their poses and pouty looks, holding up a blouse, a sweater, a shiny little jacket that had the name of some long dead designer filigreed across the back in cheesy sequins. She caught sight of a pair of speakers for music lying under an overturned endcap display and danced a slight dance to a tune only she could hear, until a crashing sound out somewhere behind the building abruptly ended her daydreams and forced her to draw her pistol and snap the safety off.

  Marisol moved through the building shell to a rear metal door that was pocked and warped. Using the barrel of the pistol, she pushed the door open and saw two figures in the alley across the way. Elias was there, stooped over the teen boy who lay in an expanding pool of red. She saw the teen boy’s spasm and then she watched Elias take the phone and the key from him and vanish behind a wall as Cozzard and Lout appeared and searched the boy and then pumped silenced rounds into him.

  She’d seen so much killing that she didn’t react even as the door blew in on her and the sound forced Cozzard to look her way as she stealthed back inside the building and melted out onto the street. In a flash, she was running full-speed away from the building, replaying the image of Elias as he snuck off away from the dead boy.

  CHAPTER 11

  Longman received news of the boy’s death as he stalked the outer edge of his office like a lion at the zoo. His inner sanctum was hacked into the middle of what had been a skyscraper in the old days. The 12th"floor in a twenty-five-floor building. It was hidden deep inside the offices of the Codex Guild, the management concern that, for all intents and purposes, ran New Chicago like Capone and his brow-beaters ran Old Chicago in the days before.

  In movies and books, the future had always been bright and shiny and sterile with impossibly handsome boys and girls running around with magical powers and silly names. In reality, the candles had been blown out on Chicago long before Longman arrived, the skin of the city shriveled and pocked. It was an ugly, horrid place ("Calcutta on a lake," Longman had called it), filled largely with two kinds of people: hunters and prey.

  Shortly after he and his army arrived, Longman planted a flag and rebaptized the city and chose the heartiest amongst his crew to take charge of any endeavors that might resurrect commerce. But the small groups of survivors who’d been in the city before Longman appeared — the "seething rabble," as Longman called them — they were happy living by themselves in some of the tallest buildings downtown, the ones that occupied the high ground in the city and afforded those inside unparalleled views of the Great Lakes and the fledgling wall and all the lands that lay beyond.

  Longman was initially patient with the small sect. He recognized that he had the watches and the time, but soon realized if he were unable to work it out, he’d have to sure as shit act it out. After all, he thought to himself, violent change was the essence of human history. When negotiation and bargaining ultimately bore no fruit, when Longman was unable to make medicine with the thorn in his side, he held a secret meeting filled with his most loyal cohorts and then sent a host of menacing men out one night, armed with blades and cutting devices and small explosive devices.

  They darkened their solar lanterns and doused their pine-knot torches and under cover of a torrential downpour, they blew up two of the buildings, and stormed the final, tallest one. The two sides battled to the death in the high rise, and by daybreak Longman and his people were moving across blood-soaked floors and readying for rebuilding. The bodies of those they’d dispatched in the "death-hour" (the young, the old, even the sucking babies) were walled up inside the building and it was made punishable by execution to even whisper about the letting. Longman ordered that a few sickly animals be slaughtered and roasted and then feasted on by all his subjects in a grand rally one night. It was here that he proclaimed the year was Zero. He called an end to the violence and chose the ancient guilds of Europe as a model for his new Eden and bestowed titles on those who’d done his killing for him. They would operate community branches of the umbrella Codex Guild.

  They partitioned the city into Zones and made certain portions off-limits, setting aside one section of cityscape for punishment and another for the "Crazies," those citizens who, without proper psychotropic medication and cerebral conditioning, were unable to function (and after life as they’d known it had ended, their numbers were legion).

  Rather than put them all down as many called for, Longman chose, in his eyes, a more benevolent path (spurred by the memory of his mother, who’d struggled for years with mental health issues) , and cordoned off a sliver of cityland with tall fencing and left them there to fend for themselves in what became Zone 3.

  Zones 1 and 2 were for set aside for living and working, while Zone 4 was readied for storage and supplies. Zone 5 was initially proposed as a place to deal with the perpetrators of crime, and initially it was. But as with any fledgling enterprise, the burdens of crime and punishment began to overwhelm the Guild, which was without proper law enforcement or lawyers (whom Longman, via one of his first edicts, banned along with politicians and priests, for he despised ideology and those who incessantly clucked their tongues above all other things). Upon reading a book about the Great Plagues in the days of old, Longman proposed a system be created to quickly and efficiently deal with right and wrong. He had heard tales during his military years of a similar system being used in the Middle East, one that was premised on blood money. He called it Absolution, a mash-up of the old and new. No appeals. No second opinions. No bullshit. Certainty. Closure. What people were crying out for. That was five years ago.

  In the days since, the city’s population steadily increased. Over a thousand people currently worked and lived and huddled together in the building that housed the Codex Guild. The Codex Building h
ad been crudely connected to other nearby structures with metal and other materials to form walkways and flaccid catwalks and ladders that allowed those inside to never touch the ground below unless they so chose. The edifice was akin to a misshapen middle finger of steel and cement to all those on the streets below. Like something out of the mind of a great architect gone made.

  The roofs of the buildings had been shorn off and lengthened and fortified with massive rain barrels and then filled with soil and seeds to form gardens and hydroponic plants that fed all who lived inside. Snipers guarded everything, watching down over the hi-rise dwellers with sniper rifles and NODs (night-observation devices) that permitted them to see in the dark. They sat in blinds built into the base of the thicket of wind turbines and solar panels that spasmed half a day’s worth of electricity to those who lived inside.

  Longman had personally overseen the construction of his own dwelling. One quick look at his space revealed that impenetrability had conquered aesthetics. He made sure to place his living quarters inside walls built of steel and brick strong enough to withstand a round from any weapon and able to hold back a small army, which would buy him enough time to slip out through one of the numerous hidden passages that lined the walls and corridors of the great halls of the Guild like termite runs inside an old piece of festering wood.

  Outside, in the halls and corridors, his men stood forty strong at all times. Not used-up mongrels like Cozzard and Lout, who were Longman’s street brawlers (his Brownshirts), but former professional soldiers who knew what it meant to take a bullet and carry out orders. None were what were called "tier-one operators" in the old world; rather, they were general-purpose soldiers.

  Longman was well aware of the omerta possessed by spec-ops soldiers, how unlikely it was they would fall under his spell or do his bidding. He knew that those highly prized soldiers had been some of the very last to fall, protecting the gates of Washington, D.C., for those ungrateful windbags who gave fork-tongued speeches on that accursed hill. Honorable men and women gave their lives for politicians on both sides of the aisle who’d never once had the brass or common decency to don a uniform or carry a gun. He kept a mental log of these soldiers, and any he encountered from well-recognized elements (SEALs, Delta Force, etc.) he poisoned or put down with much cunning and effort. The soldiers that did remain, the forty strong, were more than adequate and formed Longman’s last line of defense. His own private squad of hired killers. They were excellent for a final stand, but for pedestrian matters, street killings and night shankings and the like, he relied on the brawlers.

  Cozzard and Lout shared images on a handheld device of the teen boy’s dead body. They also handed Longman the boy’s identification, which showed he came from a family of some repute. Longman pursed his lips and gnashed his teeth and stared out a window that allowed a beautiful view of the Great Lakes.

  "Did anyone see either of you chase the boy?" he asked his two enforcers. Both men traded looks and then shook their heads.

  "You’re certain?" They nodded.

  "He’s just some fodder, boss," Cozzard muttered.

  "You think I don’t know that? I know exactly who he is and what stock he comes from. He’s an agitator, comes from a long line of them."

  "The Clement Guild," Lout noted sourly.

  Longman nodded. "I’ve had trouble with his old man and mother for the better part of three seasons. Silently chastising me, complaining about the runs, the operations, everything," he continued while waving a hand.

  "Nothin’ that a few grains of good ole black powder can’t cure, eh? We should get rid of all of ’em," Cozzard said. "Kill ’em all and line their fields with saltpeter."

  Longman considered this and then shook his head. "I appreciate your enthusiasm, but we’re not there yet. We need to take care of this in the old manner. Call Hendrix and the Brahmin, have the investigators do what they do and get another hunt together."

  "Absolution?"

  Longman nodded, dead-eyed his goons, and said, "Make sure O’Shea gets an extra allocation this time. The family’s going to want a spectacle. Their only son and all. Make sure the best runner and the best hunter face off. We need legitimacy for this one. We need to put this thing to rest and then worry about the consequences of the fire."

  Cozzard and Lout nodded and pivoted to leave, when Longman whispered, "What happened to his camera?"

  The two men froze and slowly turned.

  "Sir?" they both said.

  "He had something with him, you idiots. A camera, something that he was recording things with."

  "We didn’t find nothing’ on ’im, sir," Lout muttered. "I swear to Christ there weren’t nothing."

  Longman’s face fell and then he waved them off and turned back to the window, his mind racing, seeded with thoughts of vast conspiracies being plotted against him.

  CHAPTER 12

  Elias slid the cellphone and key into a pocket on the inside of his Nomex jacket as he neared the outskirts of the Pits. He knew that the phone and key would be immediately confiscated as contraband and that he might be soundly beaten, or, at a minimum, his privileges to venture beyond the confines of the Pits revoked. The exterior Sentries recognized him, but failed to notice the thin smears of blood on his dark clothing and nodded as he slipped inside and beelined it to his sleeping quarters, where he immediately doffed his blood-speckled clothes and hid them under his sleeping mattress that lay on the floor.

  He thought about sharing his treasure with Erik, but had learned over the years that trust was a luxury that rarely could be afforded. Plus he didn’t want to risk getting Erik involved to the extent there was any blowback for possessing the device if it was found on him.

  He waited for his roommates to shower and then fumbled with the cellphone. It had been several years since he’d seen such a device and this one differed markedly from those. He pressed various buttons until he heard the click and whir of internal machinery and then a glow overtook the face as it powered up. He stared at the screen and the tiny icons embedded therein. He remembered mention of something called "apps" in the days before the world fell and he touched that initial screen as a sub-window propagated out. There were dozens of files saved inside the sub-window. Elias touched the first one, and after a few seconds, images played with sound as Elias scrambled to mute the device (which he did), gazing upon the video as if it were a thing of unparalleled beauty.

  The video showed various shots of Longman and the men Elias had seen back in the alley, Cozzard and Lout, mingling with dozens of people who emerged from hand-me-down cars and trucks and other machinery that belched diesel exhaust. Everyone was being ushered up into the building as the images abruptly cut to some junction later on the same day. The images showed smoke billowing from the building, the audible sound of screams and shrieks, and then Longman, Cozzard, and Lout emerged and pointed as the video ended.

  He trawled to another file and pressed it and up emerged images shot at a distance showing Longman overseeing a firing squad, men with guns mowing down people standing at the base of a white wall. Blood spattered the wall and Elias reacted and closed this file and opened another. More videos, more images of death and devastation, all of them involving Longman in some form or fashion. Direct evidence of his misdeeds.

  Elias looked to see if anyone was coming, then turned back and opened a final folder, which showed an image of a huge field out in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of the field was what looked like a colossal sinkhole, a pit that was filled with what looked like a million bleached tree branches. The angle jumped, the person recording the images obviously spooked and on the run, as the image abruptly cut to the dead boy staring at the screen (directly at Elias) and whispering. Elias ticked up the volume and heard the boy say, "There’s a way out. I found it. A path out beneath the wall and to the lands that lie beyond. There’s nothing to fear if you know where to look. Everything they tell us is a lie."

  A sound caused Elias to shove the phone down his leg as
he wheeled to see his roommates jabbering, preparing to enter the quarters as he turned off the phone and drop it into a pocket. He wondered what the boy meant, and what the key was for, and why the man who’d led the city out of its darkest days was involved in so much bloodshed.

  CHAPTER 13

  Marisol was late from her run and it was only the intercession of Farrow that saved her from the wrath of Teddy Brusker, one of the brooding commandants who ran the barracks and reported directly to Longman.

  "What the hell, girl?!" Farrow kept saying as he took her aside. "What the hell?!"

  "I’m sorry," was all she could offer in return.

  "Care to tell me what were you doing out there?"

  She dipped her head and then tossed Farrow a quick look. "There were so many things to see. I was down past the river and I – I lost track of time… lost my way."

  Farrow shook his head, smirked, "I don’t buy that. Not for one minute. You can’t lose your way. It’s genetically impossible. You’re like a bloodhound for Crissakes."

  She bit her lip and said, "What’s a bloodhound?"

  Farrow hesitated at this, then mussed her hair, his anger melting away as he slapped her shoulder. Sometimes he forgot, but she was still only a young girl after all.

  "Never mind," he said, and then, "What’s out there is gone now anyway. It’s in the past. Forget about it. It’s the way it was. The only thing that matters is the right here and now. The way it is."

  He took a few steps away and then she said, "Why?" and he paused and turned, for this was the first time Marisol had ever asked him why. "Why is it that way? Why do we have to forget about the way it was?"