Blood Runners: Box Set

by George S. Mahaffey Jr.

  Moses nodded. “Course givin’ him that box is like givin’ a pyro a book of matches.”

  Moses took several steps toward Jessup to reinforce the point.

  “Mister,” he said, “pardon my French, but I don’t know who you are or where you came from. If you’re like most, you’ve seen some hairy shit. But the man inside that wall? Longman J. Heller. Different kind of animal altogether. He’s a man of the world, the flesh, and the devil as they say, and not necessarily in that order. You don’t know who you’re messin’ with.”

  Marisol and Elias watched Jessup take it all in, then he, Terry, Bennie and Jon stepped aside, out of earshot to confer. Moses used the opportunity to plop down next to Elias.

  “Here I was hopin’ you’d gotten the hell out of this place,” Moses said, offering Elias a cagey smile.

  “We tried.”

  “They shot me,” Marisol added.

  She pointed to the place where she’d been shot, and Moses nodded and head-gestured back toward the other men.

  “How you start runnin’ with them?”

  “They saved me,” Marisol answered. “The lady, one of the ones who’s gone, she cut the bullet out and stitched me up.”

  Moses chewed on his lips and eased his head back and sighed as Elias and Marisol glanced over.

  “My turn,” Elias whispered to Moses. “What were you doing out there?”

  “When you and the missus bolted,” Moses said while flicking a look at Marisol, “The man was none too pleased, and so he came lookin’ for any and all that might be connected. I was given a choice. Look for that metal case or take a siesta in Casa deLongman. Guess which one I chose?”

  Elias nodded as Marisol offered, “I thought once we left it would all be over.”

  Moses snickered at this. “I got a bad feelin’ that we’re all gonna end up right back where all of this started,” he said.

  On the other side of the boat, the men discussed several potential courses of action, Terry and Jessup butting heads about what to do. Jessup talked a lot about how stupid it would be to start a fight without any clear idea about how to end it. Any way forward, he said, had to be concise with a deliberate end in sight.

  “Sure, yeah,” Terry said, “we can give the sonofabitch the codes, but if you give him that there’s no telling what he’ll do.”

  “We don’t even know who the man is or whether those codes even work,” Jon said.

  Jessup nodded, “We’re taking it on faith that this Longman’s as bad as they say.”

  Terry pointed to the blood on the deck of the boat. “God Almighty, if you gotta even ask that—”

  “Who’s to say he was behind it?”

  “Are you kidding me?” Terry responded, dumbfounded.

  He spun and pointed at Elias, Marisol, and Moses. “Get a good glimpse,” he continued, “because I don’t know about you, but they don’t exactly look like they’re trying to pull the wool over our eyes. They’ve seen what that man can do, and they’re saying he’s behind the whole thing.”

  Elias, Marisol, and Moses nodded vigorously.

  Jessup stared at his boots. “So we’ll give him the briefcase, whatever the hell he wants.”

  “And risk the lives of Liza and Ava in the process?” Terry whispered.

  “What other choice do we have?” Jessup snarled. “This is the only way that makes sense. We do a trade and end it.”

  “And if the tide gets high?” Bennie asked. “If there’s as many of them inside the wall as they say, and the trade don’t go the way we want it to go, we’re gonna be outnumbered and outgunned.”

  “We should get the weapons,” Jon added. “We should go back and get the weapons just in case we need them.”

  In support of this, Terry and the others laid all the weapons they had on the boat’s deck. There wasn’t much and their ammunition was perilously low. Jessup mentioned that Site 181 was closer, but after questioning Moses, determined that it didn’t contain the kind of weapons they’d need.

  Jessup realized he was in the minority, and so he looked over at Elias and the others. “What about them?”

  Terry waved at Elias. “They got mad skills, J. I mean we both saw what they did back there. They might be young, but we need ‘em. I say they come with us.”

  64

  Longman’s men paraded Liza and Ava down through New Chicago, which Liza could see was now condensed to several hundred acres held together by a fretwork of dusty paths and beaten trails between lanes of concrete and asphalt and fire-gutted alleys. At the edges of the arteries followed black-smeared SUVs with jacked up suspensions and armored plate hanging from the sides below roughly-mounted machine-guns and hand-built cannons. Liza remembered from college an essay Kipling had written about old Chicago once where he remarked that having ventured into the White City, he urgently desired never to see it again. It was, he wrote, a place that was inhabited by far too many savages.

  She looked around and wondered what Kipling would think now. A good chunk of the population was visible, packs of grime-splotched men, women, and children, some holding tools, others lugging bindles and heavy rucksacks. A few of them grinned mouths of rustic teeth and offered up derisory hoots and hollers. She remembered reading books back in an English lit class in college, and they looked like something out of a Steinbeck book.

  Liza strained her head and caught sight of a dirty verge, and remembered reading about the times in Europe when the black plague was at its height and the stink in London reached such heights that the city’s holy men proclaimed it offended the nostrils of the Almighty. It was that bad here. She pinched her nose and turned and spied structures in the distance. The tops of the once mighty skyscrapers, and the Codex Building which loomed over everything, hidden behind rows of cement “dragon teeth” to prevent car bombs from getting close enough to cause damage.

  She angled her face toward Ava and one of the thugs who’d kidnapped them who was out of her line of sight (perhaps the brute with the strange mask), placed an elbow on the middle of her back and pressed her spine, nudging her forward. Tears guttered down Ava’s cheeks and she moaned as Liza grabbed her wrist and they continued on in silence, communicating through glances and the raising of an eyebrow here, or a scrunch of the nose there. In another time a practitioner of the mental arts would’ve diagnosed Ava as suffering from PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. But surely that diagnosis could attach to anyone who’d lived through the years after it all went bad.

  The crowd surged up ahead and the pair stopped as a tall man moved at the front of it, parting the gawkers like Moses with the Red Sea. Longman appeared and stopped and stared, a faint smile curling up at the corners of his mouth. Liza immediately thought of one of those fraudulent holy men who’d killed so many people in the years leading up to First Light.

  The maniac in Texas who burned his fortress down, the lunatic from an earlier time in that Third World pest-hole who’d helped poison so many of his followers with barrels of sweet juice. She didn’t know his name, but she assumed the tall man standing before her, the one with the eyes of a mesmerist given a wide berth by all those around him, was in charge.

  “Welcome to New Chicago,” Longman said, smiling broadly.

  “We didn’t come by choice,” said Liza.

  “And yet here you are in a new place, presented with new challenges. You two are strangers just as we all were, when first we came here. You may not think it now, but being an outsider is often a blessing, for with trials and tribulations come powerful opportunities.”

  Longman knew what he was saying was complete and utter bullshit, but the people surrounding him lapped it up. He raised his hands and smiled, and they cheered. Then he turned back to the woman. He was well-pleased with them. They were trampled and rumpled, faces and bodies lathered in shock sweat, but the two were lookers, especially the older one who would’ve stood out even in the times before.

  He’d been briefed before on the outcome of the expedition by Cozzard and th
e others. He’d been told what the women looked like and how the mission had gone, though he’d yet to hear back from Hendrix and O’Shea and was worried that something had gone very wrong out in the grasslands. Still, he had these two comely women from the boat, and that was something. Mating stock perhaps, bargaining chips at the very least for whomever it was that piloted the boat. The same ones who’d had the stones to venture out beyond the wall and thumb their noses at him. He conjured up a smile and whistled insouciantly to his men who dragged the two ladies toward the Codex Building that stood in the distance like a massive palisade.

  65

  At the same time, what passed for lunch was being served in the 8th Floor prison. Farrow and Locks watched the chutes open in the ceiling. Rotting food poured forth, and then the fights began.

  Farrow turned away in disgust. “Somebody needs to fire the chef.”

  “They mix it up on purpose. Decent food blended with trash. The guards seem to get off on forcing us to eat the stuff, just to tell which is which.”

  Farrow dropped to his haunches and plucked up an old apple. It was rotten and he tossed it away. A few of the other prisoners stared at the pair in disdain, muttering that they’d be doing the same or worse in another day or two.

  “I’m thinking they don’t care too much for me,” Farrow said of the other prisoners.

  Locks nodded. “One or two of them might recognize you. They talk and by later tonight there’ll be more. I mean the Apes have quite a reputation around town.”

  “I was just doing my job.”

  “Bashing in heads and shaking people down was part of your job?”

  Farrow’s eyes narrowed. “I never did any of that.”

  “Then you’re the only one.”

  Farrow shook his head. “There was another one who was straight. A girl, but she’s gone now.”

  They shared a look, and then Locks leaned forward and whispered. “I’d like to show you something.”

  While the other prisoners continued feeding, Farrow followed after Locks who slipped toward the back of the space. Here were the older prisoners, the downtrodden, the sick, the dying. Locks and Farrow edged past the men and women who barely seemed to notice them as they slurped at their gruel.

  Farrow could feel the pulse of the crowd as he and Locks crouched and scampered and clambered through the nooks and crevices at the very rear of the prison. It was here, in a tiny alcove beyond where two sickly men and a woman lay on beds of urine-soaked cardboard, that something could be seen. Evidence that pieces of the prison itself, walls of metal and sheathing, had been slowly disassembled. It was clear that, in a section of grating, a man or two could easily slip inside and into the interior walls of the building. Moreover, the bodies of the sick blocked the spot almost entirely from view. It was nearly perfect. The stench and overall look of the place was so terrible that nobody in their right mind would ever venture this way. And unless you were looking for it, you’d never see the potential way out.

  Farrow fought off a smile and moved until he was within an inch of Locks who held his look, angling his head toward the sections of grating.

  “I’ve got a plan,” Locks whispered. “But it’s foolhardy and will likely lead to our deaths.”

  Farrow processed this and then smiled. “When do we start?”

  “When the sun goes down, we go out,” Locks replied.

  66

  A stiff breeze brought the sailboat close enough to shore that Elias, Marisol, Jessup, and the others could drop down from its sides and wade forward.

  Elias and Marisol hauled the gear onto dry land as Jessup stayed in the water, hip-deep, placing a call on his battered sat-phone. Reception was incredibly spotty at best, but Jessup reached the man he needed to reach and asked for back-up. He argued with whoever was on the other end of the line and then killed the call and slid the phone into a pocket. There wasn’t enough time to wait, but still he wanted some others to know what was going on, just in case they needed to modify their exit strategy or in the event that they never returned home.

  At the edge of the surf they loaded weapons, including their blow torches and Kevlar masks and a battery charger that Terry lugged on a metal cord. They studied the digital map on the cellphone and Jessup discussed his views on the way forward. They would head, once again, across the grasslands and hit the vault and gather up everything they needed, and then they’d march to the goddamn wall. The big man said they’d then advance to the very edge of the wall and proffer a trade to Longman and his boys and, if that didn’t work, they would force their way in. As for what would happen next, Jessup said, “When I meet this Longman I’ll do like I always do. I’ll be nice,” he continued, “until it’s time to not be nice.”

  They moved out in a ragged column of twos, cognizant of the setting sun overhead. They had four hours at most to complete their mission. Elias watched them head out and paid particular attention to Jessup. He could see that there was no fear in him. He was dead straight and powerful in action and words. A true warrior. A human raptor. He demanded respect, and Elias was willing to give it to him and follow his lead. For the time being.

  67

  “Leave her alone! You already murdered her sister, you bastard!” Liza screamed, swinging at one of Longman’s men as he shoved Ava forward. The man laughed and stepped toward Liza, who was shielding Ava when a whistle sounded and the man caught sight of Cozzard who was shaking his head.

  “Let her be,” Cozzard said, and the man reluctantly complied, backing off, giving Liza some room as she helped Ava to her feet. She kept an arm under Ava, who was on the verge of fainting as they entered what was once the foyer of the Codex Building. The inside looked industrial, lots of heavy metal and wire lashed over walls and points of entry and concrete blast walls that were pockmarked from battles in the past. If this was decoration, Liza thought, it was done in memory or anticipation of conflict.

  They toiled forward, past guards and packs of men and women who scurried about, tending to business, doing Longman’s bidding Liza guessed. Over in one corner was a raised platform where a large machine-gun was fixed to a tripod, greeting anyone unlucky enough to enter. They tramped up a staircase, and swept past cavernous halls, office spaces, corridors, gyms, storage, kitchens, sleeping quarters. There were hundreds of people working and milling about as if the building was some kind of self-contained, vertical city.

  They were guided over cold metal floors and through rooms that dovetailed into others until they arrived at an elevator manned by a heavyset, pugnacious man who jiggered a switch and up they went.

  Liza and Ava lost track of the floors, but at some point the elevator door opened and they were herded down a hall, where Longman greeted them. He flipped a wrist and motioned for them to follow into an interior room with a few chairs and an oval-shaped table upon which sat a fine collection of bowls and saucers holding various fruits and nuts and slices of cured meats.

  Liza and Ava sat and inhaled the aroma, tortured by their own hunger and thirst. Liza didn’t want to partake of what lay before them, didn’t want to give the man standing over her one ounce of pleasure, but Ava was slipping. They both needed something to eat. Liza caught a glance and a nod from Longman, and she and Ava helped themselves to everything on the table.

  Longman watched them eat. He reveled in their despair. He took great pleasure in people like them for he loved to question the uninitiated, the unscrubbed, the unprepared. Just like he’d done back in the years when he was a practitioner of the law. These two in front of him had not been coached in any way, and it was a beautiful thing. They hadn’t been taught to lie or deceive and so he knew he’d most likely be able to extract good and valuable information from them. He just hoped he wouldn’t have to take anything from them before they told true.

  When they were finished with the food, Longman gave them a few moments of silence and then he pulled up a chair and sat down a few inches away from Liza. He smelled of herbs and other musky scents that Liza couldn
’t place.

  “Do you need anything else?” he asked. “More food? Water? Something to ease your stomach?”

  Liza shook her head, clenching her fists, wanted to strike Longman for all that his men had done.

  “Where do you come from?”

  “Outside your wall.”

  “I gathered that,” Longman responded. “How far beyond the wall?”

  “Why does that matter?”

  Longman opened his mouth and Liza watched his teeth saw together. The sight of it brought back a factoid from nursing school. The human brain has millions of feet of wiring and billions of cells. Lots of places for a fuse to blow. The man next to her was certainly evidence of this. She’d been around people like him back in the hospitals and wards of old. Something deep inside this man had flipped, the certainty of that making the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. He had the eyes and effect of a zealot and this so frightened Liza that she shot a hand out and placed it on Ava’s thigh which was quivering like Jello in an earthquake.

  “It’s always a matter of import when we find people spying around our little settlement,” Longman said.

  “We weren’t spying. You should know that. You sent your men out and they killed … they killed my friends!”

  “There are several women who’ll be mourning tonight because of what you and your friends did from what I hear,” Longman replied, referencing his men who’d died attacking the boat.

  “Your men fired first.”

  “The fog of war,” Longman answered, waving his hands, “very disconcerting, very confusing, leads to mistakes, blunders. I’ve seen it myself, first-hand. My men didn’t mean to spill blood. They were asked only to look for someone and bring them back.”

  Instantly Liza knew who Longman was talking about, but she didn’t respond, didn’t react or betray any awareness of what he was saying. She wouldn’t rat out Marisol and Elias.