Inside the restaurant, a palpable sense of having passed into a fantastical dreamland state immediately overtook them. Except for the fact that everyone in the restaurant was heavily armed, and looked as if they hadn’t showered in months, the restaurant itself seemed to be completely unfazed by the drama that was going on in the rest of the world. Candles and lanterns lighted the place, and the delectable smells of Italian cuisine wafted outward from the kitchen. Waiters and waitresses, dressed in aprons, swirled in and through the crowds with trays of drinks (with ice!) and plates heaped with delicious dishes. Luscious green salads, lasagna, spaghetti with meatballs, chicken alfredo, and other sumptuous delicacies steamed past Ace, Peter, and Elsie as they stood and watched with their mouths open and watering.
A maître d’ of sorts met them after a moment and showed them to a table covered in a red tablecloth with white cloth napkins. He took their drink orders and smiled when they all ordered Cokes with ice. Before he could walk away, Peter stopped him and asked him what form of money the establishment accepted for the meals.
“Silver coins are preferred, sir,” the man replied. “We also take gold or anything else of value, but if it isn’t gold or silver coin, you’ll need to talk to the owner before you order. I’ll get your Cokes though. Should I send the owner over?”
“Yes, sir. Please do,” Peter said, nodding his head.
When the maître d’ walked away, Ace looked at Peter and smiled again. This was the sniper’s third smile in a single day, a new record. “If I’m dreaming, donot wake me up!” Ace said. He ran his hands through his hair and felt the rough callouses of his palm scratch the leathery shell of his face.
“I get your point, Ace, but you aren’t dreaming.”
Peter looked at Elsie; her eyes were bright as the waitress returned with their cokes and sat the small platter down on the table, methodically moving each coke from the platter to the table. The ice clinked in the glasses as the drinks settled, and the gas bubbles fizzled in response. Peter looked at the coke, and then at Ace, and continued, “… unless, that is, we’re all sharing the same dream.”
“Oh my goodness,” Elsie exclaimed. “Cokes, with ice? Parmesan chicken with wine sauce? Where in the world are we?”
“Apparently, the owner here has worked out some kind of deal with the two opposing armies, and I’ll wager he’s being supplied by the Amish somehow, probably via a whole system of underground traders. Commerce is the only creature that will outlive cockroaches and will still be thriving at the end of the world.”
“Apparently!” Elsie said.
A tall, dark man with slicked-back hair approached the table and nodded to everyone before speaking. “Paul tells me you might need to work out payment?”
“Yes, sir,” Peter replied, looking the man in the eye. “We have gold, and quite a bit of it, but it’s not in coin.”
“Almost never is,” the tall man replied. “What else have you got?”
“That we’re willing to part with? Not much else.”
“What else you gonna need?”
“Alcohol, if you got it. No dangerous, homemade white lightning or watered down swill, but Vodka or Scotch if it’s available. Still in the bottle. Preferably with the original seals intact.”
The man laughed. “You don’t ask for much, do you? You do know that the world ended, and no one is importing Stolichnaya or Glenfiddich anymore?”
“We could also use vitamins if you have any, a sharpening stone, gun oil, and a gun cleaning kit if you think you might give up any of those items.”
“Vitamins? You’re on your own on that one. The rest of that I can do.”
“Okay, so how does this work?” Peter asked.
“Let me see the gold.”
Peter pulled out a small nylon ammo bag and unsnapped the top, opening it so the restaurateur could look inside. Ace made a show of moving his right hand into his lap, showing the business owner that he had a pistol and that he was willing to use it. Ace still had the Glock strapped to his leg, but he’d picked up a .357 revolver that he really liked, and he especially liked the impact it had on anyone who might be considering something evil. The tall man saw the motion and just smiled. He wasn’t worried in the slightest.
“Okay,” the tall man said, after looking through the gold in the bag, “Here is the way this works. No one else is taking gold that isn’t coinage right now. At least no one that actually has anything that you might want to buy. I’ll take this bulk gold off your hands and replace it with gold or silver coin—your choice. I take a ten-percent handling fee off the top, and the exchange rate is posted above the bar. If you know gold and silver, you’ll be able to tell if the stuff I’m giving you is good or mixed with junk metals. I don’t debase the coinage. It’s not good for business. I’ll tell you plainly that I’d be dead and gone if I was scamming people. I surely wouldn’t let strangers,” he pointed at Ace, “like your friend here, hold guns on me while I conned them,if that is what I was doing.”
“So you just take the gold? How does this happen? I mean, logistically how does this happen?” It was Elsie who asked this obvious question. She looked at Peter, “He could just walk away with our gold, right?”
The tall man looked at Peter and then at Elsie as if to reassure her. He then motioned to Peter. “You come with me. Bring the gold. My son Charlie there will come and sit here with your silent, but deadly friend.” He motioned to a boy in the corner.
“How do we know he’s your kid?” This time it was Ace. Again, the question was obvious. The father looked again at Elsie as if the answer was, too.
She looked at the boy, how he sat with his arms crossed and how there was an unspoken argument about this little charade that the father and son had been having. She thought of raising her own son. Then the idea hit her.
“You use your son as collateral?” Elsie asked with shock evident on her face.
“I find it engenders trust. If I try to cheat you or run off with your gold, kill Charlie. He’s my only child, though, so be sure. Don’t make a mistake.” He let that thought settle and then continued. “I’m not trying to cheat anyone here. I’m doing business, and I’m getting rich. I’m getting rich precisely because I don’t cheat people. I provide a valuable service.”
Peter had heard enough. He pushed back his chair and lumbered to his feet. “Okay, let’s do this.”
“Easy there,” the tall man said, putting both hands up in front of him. Peter sat back down. “I’ll send the waiter over with Charlie. Order your food first. Then, after you’ve ordered, come up to the bar with your bag and we’ll finish our transaction. If all goes well, your meal is on me. I’m not getting rich on the food and drinks. They merely add atmosphere to this, shall we say, mutually beneficial transaction.”
Peter nodded his thanks to the tall man. He leaned his back into the backrest and felt the strain of the muscles relax into the luxurious comfort of something as simple as… a chair. A few minutes later, a waiter came over. He was followed by a curly-headed boy who was obviously, by all rules of narrative logic, named Charlie.
****
Charlie looked to be about ten years old, and now he didn’t seem to be bothered at all that he was being used to expedite a monetary transaction.
The waiter smiled at the three diners and held his pencil and note pad up in front of him. “My name is Paul, and I’m going to be your waiter today. May I take your orders?”
Charlie pulled up a chair next to Ace and plopped down in it demonstrably. “My name is Charlie, and I’m going to be your hostage today!”
“I see you’ve done this before,” Peter said to Charlie while shaking his head.
“Only about a billion times a day,” Charlie said and folded his feet up underneath him on the chair.
“So it usually turns out alright?” Peter asked Charlie.
“Usually. But don’t try any funny business, mister. My Dad has seen it all.”
“I’ll bet he has.”
“Yo
ur order?” the waiter repeated with an insistent smile.
Peter ordered the chicken fettuccine alfredo with mushrooms and a garden salad. Ace ordered spaghetti with meatballs and an extra order of garlic bread. Elsie ordered lasagna with a salad and a piece of apple pie. The waiter wrote it all down, nodded his head at everyone at the table, and then disappeared into the kitchen with the order.
Peter got up from the table and took the bag of gold up to the bar. The entire transaction took place out in the open, and there was no attempt to hide what was going on, nor was there any sense that the transaction was out of the ordinary. The tall man went painstakingly through the bag. He carefully examined and tested each item, weighing it before telling Peter what he thought of it, it’s eventual meltdown weight, and what he could give Peter for it as part of a wholesale transaction. When he’d gone through the whole bag of gold items, he turned to Peter and asked him how he would like his payment.
“How do you suggest?” Peter asked.
“The gold I can give you in coin, buttons, or bars of different sizes. You’ve quite a bit of value here, so I recommend that you get half of the value in silver coinage, though. Pre-1965 dimes and quarters. That’s what people want now. Then get the other half any way you want. Fact is, not many people out there are able to take or exchange large pieces of gold. You did well to find me. Everyone doing business takes silver, and most people around here take .22 shells or buttons of real copper. Some people take metal wire, spools of thread, or straight nails for small items.”
“I’ll take it like you recommend,” Peter said, nodding his head. “Half in silver coinage, and the other half in gold coins of a quarter ounce or less.”
“Okay, it’s a done deal then.” The tall man went through the process of counting out the silver coins, and then the gold. When Peter nodded his approval, the man put the coins into two separate small pouches made from some kind of leather or skins, and then handed them over to Peter.
“Wait right here,” the tall man said to Peter. “I’ll get your other items.”
When the man returned, he placed a small plastic bottle of gun oil, and a cheap gun cleaning kit on the bar. Then he reached under the bar and pulled out a ceramic coffee mug and two bottles of cheap vodka. “I already charged you for these, so they’re yours.”
“What’s with the coffee mug?” Peter asked.
“You said you wanted a sharpening stone.”
Lightning fast, the tall man flipped the mug over while simultaneously, with his right hand, reaching into a sheath hidden beneath a white cloth he wore around his waist like a sash or cummerbund. He’d just started to withdraw a hunting knife, when—out of nowhere—Ace was almost magically standing next to the restaurant owner with the revolver pointed to the man’s head.
How Ace had moved so quickly across the restaurant with no one noticing him, Peter could not say. Instantly, though, there were a dozen other guns from all around the restaurant pointing at Ace and Peter.
The restaurant owner, for his part, cut his eyes towards Ace and smiled.
“Everyone calm down!” he said, as he slowly pulled a hunting knife from the sheath.
Ace cocked the pistol, showing no emotion or fear on his face.
“I said, calm down,” the man said.
He moved slowly and dragged the knife blade at an angle across the rough bottom edge of the coffee mug several times, turning the blade to do the same on the other side, showing Peter, without words, that this was an adequate way to sharpen a blade. He nodded his head slowly at Peter, and then returned the knife to the sheath. Ace de-cocked, and then holstered his pistol. He turned and walked back over to the table as if nothing had happened. Slowly, the other guns in the room all returned to rest as well, and the noise in the place returned to its previous level. The restaurateur smiled and then put out his hands as if to ask “is there anything else I can do for you?”
Peter looked at the tall man and thanked him, but before the man could leave, Peter asked him another question.
“How do I know that you don’t have hired bandits out there who will rob us now that they know we’re carrying gold and silver?”
The tall man smiled again, but it wasn’t a chilling or malevolent smile. The brief standoff hadn’t shaken him a bit. It was a knowing smile, as if he’d heard it all before and now he was just going through the motions of his day like he always did.
“You don’t. However, I will tell you this, if you get down the road and you conclude that I’ve cheated you in any way, feel free to come here and kill us all.”
“You seem quite confident that no one is actually going to do that,” Peter said.
“I’m a realist,” the tall man said.
Peter picked up the things he’d bought, and with full hands, he nodded his thanks to the man.
“By the way,” the man said, “my name is Nick. I don’t have time or the inclination to worry any more. The bombs cured me of my idealism.”
“I was going to ask you that,” Peter said. “Why is this place so special? Why isn’t it bombed out or burned like most of the rest of the buildings in town? Why aren’tyou being robbed when it’s obvious there is so much evil going on around here and in the rest of the world?”
“Well, sir—” Nick said.
“Peter,” Peter said.
“Well, Peter, those are a lot of good questions. We aren’t robbed here because I pay a lot for security; and I have more security than the average person would be likely to detect without looking for it and knowing what to look for. We aren’t bombed out and burned because I’ve made agreements with both sides in this current conflict, and they studiously avoid damaging my business. In exchange, I handle moving a lot of their plunder—for a fee of course. Morally, it might seem questionable. Practically, I do a lot of good for everyone involved, and I don’t harm anyone. Currently this little town is in the hands of the FMA, and to be honest I prefer it that way, but if things turn around again, the town will change hands and we’ll be under the control of the MNG. Granted, things are worse under the MNG, and fewer travelers like you are willing to pass through town when the MNG is in charge, but either way, my business goes on. So, whether the MNG or the FMA are in power, I will simply attempt to be my own man until someone runs out of money. Like I said, I’m not getting rich by selling food.”
“It seems dangerous to count on the caprices of war,” Peter said.
“Damned foolish. But you’ve been out there. What else should I do? Count on its niceties? Go hole up in a bunker somewhere?”
“I understand,” Peter answered. And he really did.
CHAPTER 43
It had been dark for hours. Cole was standing in the back of the meal line waiting to get supper when his new work friend Robert walked up behind him and grabbed a tray from the pile.
Robert snorted. “These trays can hardly be called clean,” he said aloud.
Cole looked over at Robert, then at his tray, and scraped some dried material of indeterminate origin from it. He shrugged at Robert, then shuffled his feet as he waited. Supper would undoubtedly be some disgusting and watered-down stew comprised of grains and other floating unknowables. Still, if you didn’t eat, you didn’t live very long. Cole and Robert waited patiently, feeling the gnawing in their bellies and wondering what their evening’s allotment of calories would consist of.
Robert leaned over to Cole and whispered into his ear, “My friend, you told me to find out whatever I can about your sister Natasha, right?”
“Yes. Yes I did.”
“Well, I have some bad news for you, Cole. My brother told me something about that power hungry sleazebag named Mike Baker, the guy you verbally grappled with in the yard today, you know him… kind of personally, right?”
Mikail. Cole winced. “I know him very well. Why? What’s going on?”
“I thought it seemed like maybe you two had a past,” Robert said. “Anyway, the word is that Mike has been protecting your sister since she’s been
in the camp. No one’s allowed to touch her or do her any harm.”
“Yes,” Cole said, biting his lip and nodding almost imperceptibly. “I figured as much. Mike’s a complete reprobate, but he does seem to have a kind of nostalgia for his home town people. Weird, I suppose.” Cole pulled off his glasses with one hand and blew on the lenses one at a time before returning them to his face. “It’s a mystery to me why he’s protecting her, because he’s forced her to work as a dragger. It seems like cutting off one’s nose—or simply waiting till it falls off on its own accord—just to spite one’s face. Everyone says that being a dragger is a death sentence, but, so far, thank God, her sentence seems to remain an open question.”
“I don’t know,” Robert said, wiping his face with his sleeve. “I can’t say what he’s doing or why.” He looked around and then spoke again in a whisper. “I just know that my brother heard that Mike was going to have your sister brought to his office tonight. Apparently, he plans on having her for himself.”
Cole turned and stared into Robert’s eyes. He did not blink, and his countenance did not change. He refused to allow his face to betray the anger and fear that flared up inside of him. His throat constricted, forcing him to swallow hard before pushing out his words.
“You heard this from your brother?”
“Yeah. Not half an hour ago.”
“And who is your brother?” Cole asked.
“He’s a picker. He’s gotten in with some of the guards. That’s how he found out. They were talking about how beautiful your sister is, and one of the guards wondered aloud why someone hadn’t already claimed her. Most of the women have been claimed by someone or another—by a guard, or by a prisoner with power in the camp. Another guard told my brother the scoop. The word is that she belongs to Mike, and no one better touch her but him.”
Cole shook his head. His heart pounded and he was enraged, but he kept his emotions in check. Time to think and act, not react. He flexed his shoulders, trying his best not to show too much emotion. His thoughts, though, were rampaging. What is this world where humans are traded like fish and treated like dogs? He could not abide such a world. He thought of the world of his youth. What would Volkhov say of this practice, this trading of people like animals? Cole already knew the answer. Volkhov had sounded the alarms. Old Lev knew what men, deprived of their artificial world of laws and social structures, would turn into, and here was the evidence.
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