“But my legs-”
Rylie lifted his hair off the side of his face, showing me the burn scar that ran from his temple down over his deformed ear, his jawline, his neck. It wasn’t a neat scar, twisted and blistered skin that had healed in discolored patches.
“Wounds heal. The only handicap you have is the one you give yourself.” He dropped his hand, thick dark waves fell forward hiding the mar of his flesh.
I think he told me to think about it as he walked away, I could have just imagined it though. My mind reeling, I watched his heavy boots stroll to the front door and disappear into the daylight. That burn, oh how it must have hurt. With infection being what it was it’s a miracle he came through that alive. We were alike in so many ways, except in many he made me feel like a coward. He had battled through it, I had run from the field. Except in my defense, my pain was buried under my flesh not on it. It was something I felt with every step I took. It was a handicap, it slowed me down. I was a liability if I couldn’t move quickly. I had made the right call.
Or am I just telling myself that? I thought with a frown.
Desperate to occupy my thoughts elsewhere I looked around the room, Dad was still in an animated conversation with an elderly couple, the Grahams were having a smile-filled discussion with a young handholding couple that could only be the newlyweds that just got a housing assignment. I kept my eyes moving away from all that romance. The duo made me miss two people very much, one I would hopefully see later tonight. Shive and Ellis had ghosted from the meeting hall, leaving Richard as the only unoccupied council member at the moment. I thanked my lucky stars, as much as Alex Shive had supposedly felt bad about his prior treatment of me I still didn’t want to talk to him if I didn’t have to. Shive was a giant with a hard face and constitution to match. Known to have fended off the dead using household items during the outbreak, you had to have a certain fear of a guy who wielded a lamp like a sword and made it work. In the prior world he had been a construction foreman or something like that from what I had heard. I wasn’t surprised, it fit his persona to a T. Shive was rough in his voice and blunt with his words. Yet for whatever reason, my Dad liked the guy, despite the fact that they bickered frequently as Shive agreed with whatever Paul Ellis said.
Which tended to be whatever his lordship Jonathan Graham wanted him to say.
Bleck.
Not wasting anytime I beat feet over to where Richard was loitering. When he noted my approach I got a smile out of him, deep wrinkles setting in on both sides of his yellowed grin.
“Hey Richard, do you know where this goes?” I handed him the death report on Lyle. With a frown, he brought the sheet to a few inches in front of his face, squinting at the lines.
“Ah, thanks Liv.” After he scanned it twice, Richard lowered the sheet. “I’ll get this turned in. Graham likes to review these things personally and throw a John Hancock on them.” He lowered his voice, “personally I think it’s more for his own ego than any official capacity.” Stifling a giggle, I nodded.
“Oh speaking of official capacities, your Dad wanted me to get you an office set up and put you to work.”
“Alright. Sounds good to me!” I was desperate for distraction and purpose.
“Come on, let’s head upstairs.” Out of the back of the meeting hall was a set of stairs to the second floor, they were the oversized marble ones you tended to find in government buildings, decorated with handrails on both sides. The walls in the back hallway were covered with paintings from local artists of the town as it had once been. The corner sundry swarming with kids getting ice cream in the summer circa 1950, a couple old buggies in front of a house at the turn of the last century. By the time we reached the top of the stairs my legs were extremely sore. I hated that. Feeling so weak in the knees. I was twenty four, not sixty. Something as simple as a staircase should not be giving me trepidations. I just had to keep telling myself that this pain was temporary, it had only been two months since a serious injury after all. It would go away, I would be okay. I would.
“This is where the real work, the super boring stuff, gets done.” Richard announced, walking down the cheap laminate hallway of uninteresting offices. Each one we passed had a label; Jonathan Graham, Steven Younger, Richard Mineral, Zachary Graham, Paul Ellis, and Alex Shive. The last door on the left sported black tape on the window pane. I could only imagine that it read Albert Tommen under that electrical edit.
“This one is yours. We’ll get you a sign at some point.” I swallowed hard, the thought of sitting in the same room with him and all his stuff was creepy. After all, I was directly tied to his death. When Richard opened the door I expected the room to be overflowing with Doctoral type knickknacks and other crap I didn’t want to see.
Wrong. It had been cleaned out. The rays of light pouring in from the hall illuminated a stuffy windowless room decorated only with a little desk topped with office supplies and a chair.
Richard strode into the space, lighting a few of the candles on the desk from his book of matches.
“I’ve fallen behind on my ag reports, with winter right around the corner this stuff really
needs to be trued up and filed. Projections for next year completed, workers assigned for the spring, the whole nine. I’ve got most of it done, just needs another pair of eyes and my scribbles translated to actual English.”
“I think I should be able to manage that.” I was blessed with my mother’s bubbly oversized handwriting.
“This is your desk.” He pointed to wood table in the small eight by eight space, like it could be anything other than a desk.
“There are some textbooks on the side there to help you brush up as you are new to agriculture.”
“Great. Thanks Richard.”
“No, thank you for helping me with all this.”
With a smile and a wave, he left me to it. The chair squeaked when I pulled it out, but it accepted my weight with surprising comfort. I’m sure this room used to have a computer and a phone in it, now it was just some paper and a pen.
I felt weird sitting in that little room. Being on the wall so long this felt like a cage. A small windowless cage. Sure I had candlelight, but that only made it feel more antiquated. I imagined myself a political prisoner in the sixteen hundreds. No, a princess locked in a cubical.
Oh save me handsome prince from these diabolical paperclips!
Yuck.
I flipped open the book, delighted to find the first chapter was a history of maize. The Native American Indians used to plant corn before we knew what corn was. Flipping the page I found colorful pictures detailing the many uses for corn in the pre-outbreak world. Cereal, oh I remembered the sugary deliciousness, gasoline yep, food, sweeteners the list went on and on. Now it was just food. Food for us and the animals; we ate the kernels, they ate the husks. I had to suffer through till Chapter 3 before anything mentioned planting and how it was done.
Even then most of it was foreign to me; all this talk of cultivation and mulch.
When I got bored of corn, I pushed the green textbook to the side and grabbed the one documenting the fantastic existence of potatoes, learning more about a spud disease called scab then I ever wanted to know.
The longer I sat there, the more I felt a rising panic on what I had signed up for. I wasn’t made to be locked in a box. I didn’t want to sit on my bum all day and stare at numbers and words. It all felt so...old world. If I sat here every day, I’d lose my muscle tone, without my agile reflexes and strength I couldn’t defend myself. If I couldn't’ defend myself...
I looked at the picture in the book in front of me, of the smiling wife cooking while children ran about. That could be me a few years from now; stringy and weak from lack of activity, relying on Cole to defend me and half a dozen children.
You’re not a suit. You’re a soldier.
With Rylie’s words rattling around my brain I shut the book. Surrendering to the urge to get out of the tiny space, I transferred the figures Richard had g
iven me to the two copies requested and dashed out of the room.
Richard’s office was around the corner from my own. Unlike my starkly decorated tiny room, his was overflowing with memorabilia from every pre-outbreak sci fi series you could think of. If definitely felt a lot homier than mine did. Perhaps tomorrow I needed to bring in a fern, throw pillow or something. Hell, even a ‘hang in there kitty’ poster would be better than blank drywall. I wrapped on the door with my knuckles, although it was already open.
More of an announcement than permission.
“Where do I put these?” I held up the pile in my hands, like there was any question as to what the ‘these’ was.
Richard rose from his chair and came over to inspect my work. He took half the stack and gave me the other half.
“First copy is mine, second goes in the Hall of Records is back there.” He pointed toward the end of the hall, passed where the offices were.
“We have a record hall?” I kept the amazement off my face, had we really reverted to paper pushing every detail? I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, with my Dad and Richard on the council we had over fifty years combined experience in government red tape.
“It’s not much, just a ton of filing cabinets with births deaths events and crop information, our desperate attempt to record and document the colony for whatever passes for history in the future. Key is in the lockbox in the hall just outside the door. Combination is 230, remember that.”
“Two thirty got it.”
“If you forget, just think of dentists.”
“Dentists?”
“Tooth Hurty.” He tapped his front teeth, then let out a large barrel chested laugh. Richard’s sense of humor was somewhat eccentric but had to be appreciated. “Now if you excuse me, I need to get these figures to Graham.”
“Why is Graham in charge anyway? Just because the guy used to be the richest man in the southern half of the state doesn’t mean he gets to run the apocalypse.” I knew I probably shouldn’t be saying that out loud, but Richard was trustworthy.
“Hey he wasn’t the first choice.”
“Who was?”
“Steve didn’t tell you?” Richard huffed. “Course he didn’t. Your Dad has this way about him, as you probably know. When the world was in a mess he stepped up, with his military and federal background people gravitated to him as a source of authority. When we first were trying to set up the council, he was the natural chair nomination.” Richard smiled. “Except he refused.”
“Why would he do that?” I had never known my Dad to back away from additional responsibilities. Ever.
“He said you were more important. You were fourteen and frightened, he didn’t want to take all that on and leave you to fend for yourself.” “Bet he regrets it now.” I mumbled.
“I don’t think so. Despite his boorish behavior, your father knows what’s really important. Don’t ever doubt that.” With a goodbye pat the shoulder Richard walked off, disappearing around the corner at the end of the corridor.
Our hall of records appeared to be an auditor's office in its former life, all the furniture had been dragged out and replaced with a multitude of large grey filing cabinets. The key from the little lock box opened the door with a giggle and a twist.
It wasn’t hard to locate where my signed reports should go, after all Agriculture does start with A putting it at the front of the room. The 2022 folder was the last one last in the top drawer, I slipped my papers in and slide the cool metal drawer shut.
Then I turned my attention to the other labels, curious to what was written in this little
room. Supply inventories, council meeting notes the usual drivel occupied the first few cabinets. There was a file labeled events; looking through a few of the folders it appeared to largely contain personal statements from the outbreak. I couldn’t read any of that, it was too heart wrenching. I put those folders back and softly shut the cabinet.
On a whim I searched both the M and P sections for any references to Project Moses. The files we had found in the federal building from the time of the outbreak that had detailed my father's orders to rendezvous here in Junction. There was not a single scrap of paper with that term on it in either cabinet, not that I was surprised. Even after the collapse of society it appeared spooks and feds kept to their training. Whatever information there was probably burned after memorization or was buried ten paces west of a crescent shadow that only appeared at high noon. Something like that.
Looking at the rest of the alphabet the V’s got my eye. There was a vitals section; births, deaths, marriages. No surprise that the deaths folder was the largest. I wondered if... I went to the T’s. Looking for the good doctor.
His file was thicker than others. I pulled it out, finding no documented cause of death on the piece of paper just a date and the word deceased. Beneath it was a report of what had happened prepared on an old fashioned typewriter.
Doctor Albert Tommen was tried in closed doors for unauthorized experimentation on reanimated corpses, collecting test subjects through illegal means, and six counts of murder.
Evidence presented proved without a doubt that the doctor conspired with Antonia of the vampiric house of Lambros on the above mentioned crimes. The council unanimously found Albert Tommen guilty of all charges and subsequently sentenced him to death.
Through special request, Albert Tommen was delivered to Caius to execute his sentence as decreed by the council.
There was a post it note stuck on to the back of the trial paper:
His unfortunate choices have led to the death of virology as we know it. There are no other survivors from the CDC in our region that have been accounted for. From this date on, no further research into the lifespan, extermination or biology of the dead will be commissioned.
I bit my lip at the phrasing. Illegal means indicated the possibility of legal means to obtain bodies. The thought of any authorized research within our walls made my skin crawl.
Surely the council hadn’t been that stupid. After all, Dimitri had indicated it was forbidden.
Dimitri...why again do all roads lead back to flipping Dimitri? With a groan I put the files back and shut the cabinet. I had other things to do besides stand here and brood.
Locking up the records office, I was able to get off the second floor and out of the building without having to exchange words with any of my fellow councilmen. Zack had tried to strike up a conversation with me just off the first floor landing, but I mumbled something about being in a rush and kept on walking.
I was technically in a rush, so it wasn’t a total lie.
The task the council had given me required coordination. One did not just walk up to the vampire’s home and ring the doorbell. You needed an invitation. Failure to have one could likely result in death as they tended to take the private property rule to new levels.
There was only one person in town who took those appointments. The single gateway for coordinating blood duty and all other needs of the vampires. Not even Daddy Graham could get around it. An understood truth in Junction, if you wanted to talk to Caius, you went to Yu Wei.
I didn’t know how she got the job-I never asked-but she held onto it despite the level of concern and xenophobia the rest of the community had projected over the years. No one was outwardly rude or disrespectful to her, on the contrary deep down I think the majority of survivors in our community respected the hell out of her. After all she dealt with the creepy crawlies so they didn’t have to. All of her work was conducted out of an old nail salon on the square, complete with the 1980’s style posters-women with big hair, bright red lipstick and mile long red fingernails-and the turquoise wall border over faded pink walls decorated with too many mirrors. I had been there only once before for orientation after Dimitri had demanded I be placed in his blood service.
He had saved my life, guess he wanted a piece of it in return.
When I pushed open the door to the old shop she did not look happy to see me, looking down over
her reading glasses her brows came together, edge of her lip turned downward. Combined with her dark hair knotted on her head and her reserved clothing, she kind of reminded me of a librarian.
“Back so soon Miss Younger?” She made no move to get up from behind the desk where she was seated, simply turned the page of the book she was reading as though I was about as interesting as a doormat. I wasn’t going to let her make me uncomfortable, I wasn’t. “Afternoon Yu, I need to see Caius.”
“About?”
“Council matters.” That got her to put her book down, her eyes flipped up to me from behind her red reading glasses with newfound curiosity.
“You're not Mr. Graham.”
“Clearly.”
Yu sighed, reaching for a blue covered notebook and a pen.
“And when are you wanting this meeting to occur?” Her voice had flipped from uninterested to professional.
“Tonight.” Her pen stopped moving on the paper, eyes yet again focusing on my face in that disapproving way.
“Miss Younger, Caius prefers advanced notice regarding his affairs. A week's announcement is customary. Now I can schedule you in for next-”
“No!” I immediately felt guilty I had cut her off with a shout, in a calmer tone I continued. “Tonight. It has to be.” This couldn’t wait, what if there was another group shuffling to our doors?
Yu’s frown dipped into a forehead ravine that could compete against the Grand Canyon. We stood there in silence, an incredibly uncomfortable one. I figured most folks who came in here to speak with her were probably overly respectful, if only due to fear of her boss. Leave it to me to go around making bad second impressions. I hadn’t exactly been polite the first time I came here either...
“I will see what I can do.” Her tone was resigned, but she had agreed. The corners of my mouth kicked up slightly but ended in a full on smile.
“Thanks. Thanks a ton, seriously.”
“In the future however,” that sharp impatience returning, “you will give a weeks’ notice for all events.”
The Blood Bargain (Book 2): Breach Page 6
