Positive: A Novel

by David Wellington

  “I’m going to have to get the wheels clear,” Adare announced, and he reached for the handle that would open his door. “Cover me.”

  “What?” I asked, as he popped his door open and jumped out onto the asphalt. Now the motorcycles were circling us, moving constantly around us as the girls rolled down their windows and started firing their pistols at the attackers. It happened so fast I had no time to think about what was happening.

  Adare ran around to the front of the SUV, ignoring the road pirates but at least keeping his head down. One of them came roaring at him, the tails of his suit jacket flying out behind him, his mouth open in a wild whoop. Kylie leaned out her window and fired just once with her pistol, and the motorcycle seemed to collapse underneath its rider, twisting around as its wheels spun crazily in the air. The rider leapt clear and rolled to the road surface, then sprang up, a pistol in his hand.

  Adare was waiting for him. He grabbed the pirate by the horns on his helmet and smashed his face into the hood of the SUV with a clang. The pirate dropped his gun and staggered backward, then fell to his knees. Adare kicked the pistol away and then stomped on the pirate’s neck until he stayed down. Then, as if nothing had happened, he bent again to look under the SUV’s front fender.

  I was so stunned I could only watch—­until a bullet hit the wing mirror only a foot or so from my face. The mirror exploded in a cloud of glass particles that dazzled me, and I ducked again, pulling myself as far under the dashboard as I could manage.

  Behind me I could hear the girls firing their pistols out the windows. The SUV’s cabin was full of the stink of their gunpowder and our collective fear. I forced myself to sit up again, to look out my window, and saw the cyclists were still wheeling around us, taking shots at the SUV when they could, spending most of their time just controlling their bikes. Whenever one of them got too close to Adare, the girls would concentrate all their fire on him. The cyclists seemed to get the message and gave Adare a wide berth. Instead they focused on the rear window of the SUV, which was already shattered by bullets. Addison was back there, barely able to lift her pistol but taking shot after shot at the attackers. I lifted the machine pistol in my hands and looked for someone to shoot, but I couldn’t seem to get a bead on anybody—­they were moving too fast.

  “Stones,” Kylie said, her voice flat, expressionless. “Stones, look out.”

  I blinked my eyes in surprise, then whirled around to look out my window, just as one of the pirates smashed it in with a tire iron. Glass cascaded over me, cubes of bluish ice that slid and bounced across my shirt and my arms. The sleeve of a business suit came through the broken window and wrapped around my neck. I dropped the machine pistol and grabbed at the biker’s arm, trying to get free, but he was incredibly strong and I felt my pulse jumping in my neck, felt like I couldn’t breathe, felt like I was going to be dragged out of the SUV, dragged out on the road and brutalized, murdered—­

  Then the arm went slack and released me. I stared out the window and saw Adare standing there, holding a long piece of wood—­part of the telephone pole that had brought us up short. The biker who had grabbed me tried to hold on to my windowsill, but all his strength was gone. The side of his helmet was dented in, and one of the horns hung loose on a strip of duct tape.

  Adare roared and brought his club down on the man’s back, where his spine met his neck. The man dropped away from my sight. Adare hit him again. And again. Then he tossed the club away from him.

  I sought around me and found the machine pistol and brought it up, looking for someone to shoot, but suddenly there were no targets. I saw a ­couple of motorcycles, but they were racing away from us, headed up the turnpike, headed off into the dusty distance. The road pirates had cut their losses and run.

  It was over, as fast as it had begun.

  CHAPTER 29

  Adare stared at me through my window. Not saying a word. He was breathing heavily, but that might just have been from the effort of tossing the motorcyclists around. Eventually he reached in through my window—­not abruptly, not fast enough to startle me—­and grasped the short barrel of my machine pistol.

  He let go, then stalked away from my window and back to the front of the SUV. He didn’t say a word, but he didn’t need to. The weapon was still cold. I hadn’t fired a single shot in the few seconds of the attack.

  Kylie got out of the SUV and went over to the bodies of the two dead bikers who lay on the asphalt. She rifled through their pockets with a studied efficiency; then she headed toward their fallen bikes. Mary brought her a gas can and a length of plastic hose, and Kylie siphoned whatever fuel was left from the bikes’ tanks. Then the two of them got back in the SUV. Kylie rinsed her mouth out with bottled water and spat voluminously out of her shattered window.

  At the front of the SUV, Adare made some adjustments to the fender and the wheel. I couldn’t see what he was doing. I didn’t move at all, except when Heather reached forward and took the machine pistol out of my hands, so it could be stowed away with the rest of the guns. I felt if I kept perfectly still and didn’t make a sound, I could avoid Adare’s wrath.

  When the repairs were finished, he climbed into the driver’s seat and started the SUV up again and wheeled back onto the turnpike, the front tire rumbling and squealing against the bent fender.

  We left the dead bodies and the two damaged bikes where they’d fallen. It felt wrong, but I don’t know what else we might have done. I knew Adare would never waste time burying ­people who had tried to kill him. Maybe the road pirates came back for their dead comrades, or maybe the zombies got them first. I’ll never know.

  Adare didn’t say a word—­nobody did—­as we limped to Metuchen, to the looter camp there. The SUV made all kinds of alarming noises, but it held together. I wanted desperately during that ride to shake the broken glass out of my clothes, but I didn’t move an inch.

  We reached Metuchen shortly after dark. The snipers on watch laughed and pointed at the damaged SUV, but they let us through. When they realized it was Adare at the wheel, they stopped laughing. “I’d hate to see the other guy,” one of them called out. Adare ignored him.

  Inside the camp a dozen men in rags and oil-­stained coveralls came running up before the SUV had even rolled to a stop. They held wrenches and mallets out like offerings. These mechanics were kin to the “retailers” Adare had disdained back at Linden, men who couldn’t handle going out on the road and thus could make a livelihood only by offering ser­vices to the more adventurous looters. I would have thought, previously, that such ­people would be held in high esteem—­after all, they kept the looters’ cars in good repair, and their skills were always needed. Instead the looters treated them like a second, inferior class, better than slaves but not by much. Adare picked one at random and gave him a full bottle of vodka as a down payment. The man babbled away in gratitude for a while, but Adare glared at him until he said that he would have the repairs done by morning, no problem.

  Adare nodded. We unpacked the SUV; then Adare led us all toward a row of bungalows at the far side of the camp. He found one nobody was using and herded the girls inside, but he held Kylie back. He glanced at me, and I realized I was supposed to know what was going on. As usual, I didn’t.

  “It’s Kylie’s turn tonight,” he said when I didn’t react. “And I’m feeling like it’s going to be a long night. Got it?”

  I did. He was punishing me for being so useless during the fight against the road pirates. Except he was going to take out his frustration on Kylie.

  He took her into an empty room. She didn’t fight him or even look back at me. Soon enough I could hear him grunting. It became unbearable so I walked away. Just like that first night in Linden, I had to move, had to be somewhere else, anywhere else.

  Sadly I had few choices to pick from.

  The Metuchen camp wasn’t as big or as secure as the one at Linden. It had been a city park once
, now surrounded by a wall of corrugated sheet metal. The trees and shrubs were long gone, used up for firewood, and the grass had been trampled down into black mud, but you could still see park benches listing at crazy angles, and the looters used an old tennis court as their party space. Some of them even took turns hitting balls back and forth, using rackets that were missing half their strings.

  There were no refinery tanks to go sit on. No place to sulk in private. I could wander over toward the wall, but I didn’t trust the snipers there to know I wasn’t a zombie. There was nowhere to go and be by myself. So I wandered onto the tennis court, just milling around, hoping someone would ask me to join them.

  It didn’t take long.

  “Stones! It’s Stones, right?” someone asked. He was a tall, skinny man dressed head to toe in tan leather, wearing a pair of mirrored sunglasses even though it was dark. The fire danced on his lenses, and I could see one of them had a long jagged crack in it. “You’re Adare’s boy, aren’tcha? What the hell you doin’ out here?”

  The man’s tone wasn’t unfriendly. “Just couldn’t sleep,” I explained.

  He smiled. “Come sit by the fire. It’s too cold to roam around like that. I’m Andy. Andy Waters, out of Connecticut.”

  “Stamford?” I asked. That was where Kylie came from. Maybe he knew somebody there, somebody who could help her. It was a long shot, but—­

  “New Haven. They got the big college up there, you know? With all the smart guys and their computers trying to figure out how to save the world. I’m not really the college type, so I figured I’d light out for the life of high adventure.”

  I’d never heard of such a place, or any such college. I did see he had a plus sign tattooed on his hand, just like me. I pulled up a car tire and sat down next to him.

  “Here,” he said. He handed me a bottle.

  I’d seen enough liquor over the past few weeks—­I’d looted plenty of it from various houses—­to recognize bourbon when I saw it. I’d never tasted it before, though. I took a big swig and nearly spat it out when it burned my mouth. Somehow I managed to swallow it. “Thanks.”

  “No problem. Hey, you ever get some of that ass, Stones?”

  My eyes went wide. “What?”

  “All that ass you ride around with. You know. Adare’s girls. His harem. They any good? He acts so high and mighty all the time, like he’s teachin’ ’em manners and morals. But everybody knows what he really gets up to. He ever share? He let you have a taste?”

  “No,” I said. I didn’t want to talk about it. “Listen, thanks for the drink. I think maybe I can manage to sleep after all.”

  A hand fell on my shoulder. Someone was standing behind me. I felt fur brush my cheek. “But you just got here.”

  I turned my head and saw Red Kate looming over me. Close enough to kiss me. Or bite my nose off.

  CHAPTER 30

  Remember me?” she said. “Little old me? The one who tried to rescue you up in Fort Lee, when you hid under those cars? The one you cut?”

  “The one who killed the government driver who was supposed to take me away from all this,” I pointed out.

  “That guy had it coming. He called me a bad name, Stones.”

  “Before or after you drove his car off the road?”

  She shrugged. “He knew the rules. I could have left him to burn alive in that car, you know. I could have stood there and listened to him scream.”

  “How merciful of you to end his suffering,” I said.

  I don’t want to give the wrong impression here. I was scared of her. I was terrified. But I had an instinct telling me that showing that would be a mistake.

  She looked down at me, then at Andy Waters, who was sitting back with his legs up by the fire to keep his feet warm. It was a cold night. Without warning she kicked his boot and knocked his feet right into the flames.

  “Jesus!” he shouted, jumping up and away from the fire. “Come on, Kate! Do you know how long it took me to find boots just this color?”

  “I wanted to sit down,” she told him, “and your skinny legs were in the way. Scoot over. Me and my friend Stones want to sit next to each other.”

  He did as he was told, without further protest. Maybe my instinct was wrong.

  For a while she sat and just stared into the fire. It painted her cheeks red and orange but left her eyes hidden in pools of shadow. When she spoke again, she didn’t look at me. “Maybe you think I’m holding a grudge, for when you cut me in Fort Lee. Let me reassure you, then. I’m not.”

  “No?”

  She shook her head. “Life out here is too short for that kind of beef.”

  It was a relief to know she didn’t intend to kill me—­unless of course this was a trick to make me let my guard down. I expected that to be the end of it, but she clearly had more to say. “What we do have time for is gossip. And there’s a lot of talk about you lately.”

  “There is?” I was surprised to hear it.

  “Sure. Well, we don’t see a lot of new ­people around these camps, so every time a guy starts coming up the ranks, we notice. But you—­you’re kind of a mystery. Adare doesn’t take on a lot of boys, you know? And the way he saved you from those soldiers.” She shook her head. “You must be something else. Something worth having. Makes me wish I’d been the one who got you.”

  “You wanted to sell me into slavery.”

  Andy Waters looked up sharply. The looters didn’t like that word—­even if many of them profited from it.

  “Now I’m not so sure I would’ve,” Red Kate said, lifting her shoulders an inch. “Now I’m starting to think—­you hid under that car for a long time. Nearly long enough to make me wonder if you were down there at all.”

  “Not long enough, then.”

  “No. But you had the right idea. The word around the camps says you’re tough but dumb. I don’t know, Stones. I think it might be the other way around. I think you’re soft but smart.”

  She swiveled around to stare into my eyes. It was a challenge. Calling a fellow looter “soft” was a great way to start a fight. I knew better than to take the bait. So I merely broke her gaze.

  Apparently, though, that was what she was looking for. “Yeah,” she said. “I’ve got you pegged.”

  “Is this your way of trying to recruit me for your gang?” I asked softly.

  She laughed. “Hardly. You’re with Adare now, and he’d whip my ass eight different ways if I tried to poach you. Of course, if that ever changes—­if, say, you ever decide maybe you aren’t happy with the way Adare treats your girlfriend . . .”

  “I don’t have a girlfriend,” I said. But I said it too fast, and that made Red Kate smile.

  I couldn’t bear to look at that smile. It was just too knowing.

  “Damn it. You don’t know me,” I told her. “I’m nothing like you. I’m no looter. And I’m definitely no killer!”

  “You got me pegged too, huh?” she said, grinning.

  “You’re a parasite,” I told her. “You feed on the world and give nothing back.”

  Andy Waters actually gasped when I said it. But Red Kate didn’t look offended. Instead, she shook her head and said, “No,” not in outraged denial but as if I’d simply chosen the wrong word. “Not a parasite. A maggot.”

  I drew my head back in surprise and distaste.

  “See, a parasite, that’s something that latches on to a living host, like a flea sucking blood from a dog,” she explained. “A maggot feeds on corpses. Me, Andy here, Adare—­we’re maggots. The world died twenty years ago, Stones. We’re just nibbling on the carcass.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  She lifted her shoulders again, then dropped them after a second. “I can see how a soft kid from New York might think that. At first. But there’s a sort of guy, a sort of person who, once they’ve been out here a while, they
get a taste for it. For the freedom that comes with chaos. You’re a crisis baby, right, Stones? Your parents, they hooked up in some evacuation center. Maybe in an old bomb shelter. You were conceived while the world was dying. One last gasp of lust. I was ten years old when it hit. Old enough to remember what we lost. But you, you were born right along with this world—­it’s yours to inherit. If you want it.”

  “I don’t.” I stood up and edged my way around the fire. “I’m done here. You want to be a maggot, be my guest. The name fits you just fine.” It was a weak response, but it was the best I could think of.

  “Better a maggot than a slave like you are now. Or a whore,” Red Kate said, offhanded. “Like Kylie.”

  I pulled her knife from my belt and stormed back toward her. Andy Waters jumped up with a pistol in his hand, as if he would shoot me to protect her, but Red Kate held up one hand to tell him to stop.

  She knew I wasn’t going to stab her. I held the knife by the blade and offered her the hilt. “You dropped this back in Fort Lee. If I give it back to you, do you promise to just leave me alone from now on?”

  She looked at the knife. The eagle engraved on the blade caught the firelight and seemed to spread its wings.

  “I’ve got another one now,” she said, and drew something from a scabbard at her belt that was more sword than knife. The blade was twelve inches long, and miniature skulls had been welded all around the grip to form a hand guard. She twisted it through the air in a wicked cut, then sheathed it again. “Nice, huh? Took it off some crazy religious guy. Said I had to die for some god called Anubis. Turned out he had things backwards.”

  She flipped the knife around and shoved it back into a sheath at her belt. Then she smiled at me, a lazy, wicked smile that said she wasn’t afraid of me. That I had no traction with her at all. “So you go ahead and hold on to that knife. Maybe you’ll need it someday.”