Blood Runners: Box Set

by George S. Mahaffey Jr.

  “I was giving a speech the third year of our struggle,” he said. “There were thousands of people all around, arms outstretched, beseeching me to make things right. And what could I offer them? Little beyond words. But I gave that to them along with the only real thing I possessed. My word. My bond. My oath that I would stop the chaos and usher in a new way of governing. That I would be their voice.”

  “Your word is meaningless,” she blurted out.

  Whatever levity was in Longman’s face fell away.

  “Everyone knows what you are,” continued Marisol.

  “And what might that be?”

  “A killer, a murderer." She kicked and spat at Longman, managing to plant a wad of spittle on his cheek. Longman blinked, but didn’t wipe the glob away, he just let it ooze down over his chin.

  “That says more about you than me,” he offered.

  “You killed my father and brother!”

  “And how would you know that?”

  “I was there. I saw them march out with the rest of your men,” Marisol said.

  Longman leaned his head back, scrolling down through a kaleidoscope of faces and images and names of those he’d either personally crossed over or had murdered at his request. He thought back on a song he enjoyed before it all ended. The lyrics mentioned faces fading as the years went by.

  “Everything that happened before this time is a blur,” he said.

  “Not for me.”

  He assessed her with a tilt of his head. “I guess it never is for the alleged victim, is it?”

  “There’s nothing ‘alleged’ about it.”

  “Nothing’s proven without evidence, girl.”

  Her eyes drifted to her wrist and Longman saw the loops of rusted metal. The ones she’d pried off the dead bodies of her father and brother. There was faint recognition in his eyes as Marisol surreptitiously moved her head, fighting to work free from the vice.

  “I gave these to them when they went with you,” Marisol said. “And then I found their bodies out beyond the grasslands. Thousand of bodies down in the killing pit. People you murdered.”

  “When one person dies, it’s a tragedy. When a thousand die, it’s just a statistic.”

  “More words. I know what you did. You ordered them to be put down. You’re nothing but a goddamn killer.”

  Longman smiled.

  “Did you know I was an attorney once? I actually helped mold and interpret the laws. Can you believe that?”

  “I don’t give a damn,” she replied, spitting again.

  He ignored this. “I had a case once. One of the few times I represented a plaintiff, a person that sued another person. My client was the proverbial little old lady. She’d been done wrong by her lawyer. An act of negligence, legal malpractice. Millions in damages. I actually won the case on summary judgment, a motion, and then the appeals started. You see the other side was represented by an insurance company and they had deep pockets and this went on for years and years,” Longman said, gesticulating wildly, barely able to contain his rage.

  “My clients didn’t have the money to continue to litigate and I did what I could pro bono-wise, but the judges wouldn’t rule, for years they wouldn’t rule! And you know what happened? My client died. She slipped into the void before there was any kind of real resolution.”

  He turned and his face flushed and Marisol continued to waggle her head. She could feel whatever was holding the vice in place starting to give.

  Longman faced her. “Don’t you see that’s why I’ve done what I’ve done? Can’t you see that? I set up our system. I created this place because people need something to count on. They need finality. They need closure!”

  “Everything you’ve built is a lie.”

  He leaned in close to her.

  “The days of uncertainty are over, Marisol. This city runs on my word and what I’ve created and what you and your friend, the Runner Elias uncovered, threatens all of that.”

  “You’re insane,” she growled.

  He smiled and she pulled loose from the grip of the vice and head-butted him violently, her head smashing into the area between Longman’s mouth and nose.

  The pain pulsed through Longman’s temple like a shotgun blast. He bit through his tongue and felt dizzy for a moment, but that wasn’t what bothered him the most. It was that the girl, the bitch, was laughing at him.

  Marisol couldn’t control herself. The sight of Longman, the bogeyman of her nightmares, gulping for air like a drowning man, blood streaming from his split lip brought forth gales of laughter. There were tears in her eyes as he realized that no matter what he did to her, she no longer feared him.

  The sound of footfalls echoed and Cozzard and Lout appeared with several more of Longman’s muscle.

  “Christ,” Cozzard shouted upon seeing Longman. He removed a knife from a side-sheath.

  Longman wiped the blood from his mouth and signaled for Cozzard to draw near. “Cut her bindings.”

  “Sir?”

  “Cut her fucking bindings off!” Longman thundered.

  Cozzard did and Marisol immediately swung at Longman who ducked the punch and grabbed Marisol in his powerful arms.

  Marisol looked into his eyes and saw death looking back. It was almost as if there was another man on the other side of Longman’s face staring out.

  She felt like she was being held up by God, Longman’s grip was so strong. She couldn’t move her arms or legs, the pressure around her midsection was so great. All she could do was stare into his bottomless eyes and smell his breath which reeked of rotten meat and fire.

  And then Longman eased her back and carried her out of the room. In seconds, they were on the move, passing through doors and down staircases and across catwalks to the 9th floor.

  Pressurized doors opened and men and women shouted in the distance, at least one klaxon sounded, and then they came to a stop.

  Marisol followed Longman’s gaze to a naked sheet of metal at the end of a deserted hallway. Longman hitched her up and carried her on, kicking open the sheet of metal to reveal a passageway of some kind that dropped straight down into nothing.

  There was a blast of air and Marisol could see only blackness on the other side of the passageway. She didn’t know it, but this was one of the entrances to the terrible place that was called “Hush.” The silent room where opponents of the regime were isolated and left to fend for themselves.

  Longman turned Marisol around until her face was mere inches from hers.

  “When next we meet, it will likely be on the other side, Marisol.”

  “Go to hell!”

  “I plan to,” Longman said. “And you’ll be coming with me along with everyone else in this goddamn city. You see, I’ve got the weapon now. I’ve got the warhead and codes, and soon will come a great cleansing. Too bad you won’t be around for it.”

  She spit in his face again and he laughed. He wouldn’t do like he’d done with the others. He wouldn’t have Marisol’s tongue taken. She could keep the damn thing. She’d need it to scream when she saw what was waiting for her.

  Longman snickered. “If you see a woman named Sara down there, Marisol, you tell her I said hello.”

  Before Marisol could respond, Longman flung her into the opening. Her hands went out and she felt the heavy thud of Longman’s boot as he kicked her down into the blackness.

  Marisol fell forward and crashed against metal sheathing which felt as slippery as ice. Her momentum carried her forward sliding her straight down into the gloom, slipping past as if on some slip-and-slide ride to hell.

  She careened down the gloomy chute, metal walls racing by in a dizzy blur. The chute swung left, then right, before dropping straight down. Marisol could see the end of the chute coming up fast as she went airborne, sailing through the air, darkness devouring everything.

  She fell straight down for several terrible moments, the murk rushing past at an incredible rate and then there was the flash of something down below and she could see
the end of the chute as—

  WHAM!

  Marisol was spit off the end and fell through the air for several seconds before slamming into something bulky and hard. She tried to raise her head, but slipped into unconsciousness.

  111

  Farrow shadowed Locks, standing aside the SUV as one of the partisans finished stripping and twisting wires below the steering column. The man, a former mechanic, managed to bring the SUV to life until the machine’s throaty engine was rumbling and ready to be driven.

  Farrow turned from the SUV and began to pace.

  “I don’t understand why we have to go now,” said Locks.

  “Because Longman’s got the girl that’s why. If we wait there’s no telling what he might do to her.”

  “She’s just one person, Farrow.”

  Farrow’s gaze swung to Locks. “She’s more than that to me.”

  Locks placed his hand on Farrow’s shoulder. “Let it go,” said Locks.

  “I did that once and I won’t do it again.”

  “God will keep watch over her.”

  Farrow barked out a nasty laugh. “God ain’t been heard from for two-thousand years. He’s long gone. Dead.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “Take a look around, Locks. This place is hell and there is nobody, no higher power, that can help us.”

  Locks pursed his lips. “I don’t believe that.”

  “So prove to me that I’m wrong,” said Farrow, incredulous.

  “I can’t,” said Locks.

  “Guys like you never can. And then you say well that’s the point, that’s faith, believing in the invisible which is just about the biggest crock of shit there is.”

  Anger flashed in Locks’s eyes.

  “Think about that statement,” said Locks. “A God who’d let me prove his existence. What kind of God would that be?”

  “I don’t know,” Farrow replied, pissed, kicking at the ground.

  “That wouldn’t be a God at all, Farrow. That would be an idol.”

  Farrow took this in. He wasn’t expecting the response and didn’t have a ready retort. All he could muster was, “Where the hell do you get this shit from, Locks?”

  “It’s just common sense, brother. The spirit lays things on my heart.”

  “What’s the spirit saying now?”

  Locks smiled. “That there is no greater love than to lay down your life for another, especially your friends.”

  Locks held out a hand. “If you say it’s time to go, Farrow, time to go and save your friend, then we go. I’m with you all the way.”

  Moments later, decisions had been made. Holes had been cut in the fencing around Zone 3, giving the crazies marooned inside time to slip out. Farrow argued against this, but most of the others believed this would cause additional chaos that would benefit the uprising. Then, the small army of partisans, with Farrow at its head, advanced across Zone 2, driving down the swell of land and across the moonscape of pitted blacktop. They kept to the thickets of undergrowth as much as they could, but soon the Codex Building was visible.

  The partisan driving the SUV stopped in the shadow of a building shell, idling the machine as Farrow, Locks, and the other men and women gathered around. Locks opened the door on the SUV and climbed into the machine and strapped himself in.

  “Last chance, Locks,” said Farrow. “You don’t have to do this. We can find another way.”

  Locks held his gaze. “There was a Godly man long ago who said that you ignore evil at your peril. To fail to confront it, Farrow, means you’ve become an accomplice to it. I kinda figure this is my calling,” Locks said with a grim smile.

  “Okay,” Farrow said, thumping a hand against the side of the SUV. “Set yourself and get fierce. We’ll strike on my call.”

  Farrow turned and that’s when he heard it. The thump of a silenced pistol followed by the whine of the bullet. He actually heard the report before the bullet hit him and tore through his shoulder.

  112

  Blood running from his split lip, Longman marched down through the halls of the Codex Building, clanker box in hand. He entered his safe-room, his Sterncastle, waved off his bodyguards and sat in his favorite chair.

  He placed the clanker box on the table and gazed upon it like a penitent staring at a piece of the true cross. He could barely believe his good fortune and then he realized it had been Providence. The entire time, some invisible hand, whether a force for good or evil, had been manipulating events. It was fate that he’d come upon Moses’s son, Malik, and been able to use him as leverage to gain the secret that held the codes. Longman ran his hand over the dented steel case, over the duel locks that centered the object. He had no key and no codes for the locks, but believed that mattered very little. He reached into a drawer fixed to the table and withdrew a knife, working the blade into the locks, hoping and praying that they might spring open.

  When this failed, Longman grabbed his special handgun, his LeMat combination pistol and twenty-gauge shotgun from an adjacent drawer, and fitted metal-jacketed bullets into it.

  Standing, Longman withdrew and then fired a shot from his gun that whipsawed the clanker box, blowing off its top.

  Startled by the shots, his guards screamed and pounded at the door, wondering whether everything was okay.

  Longman ignored them.

  He could barely hear their pleas he was so focused on the box.

  Inching forward, he thrust his fingers into the opening he’d created and pulled out a thick envelope stamped “SIOP ESI” that he knew from his days manning drones meant “Single Integrated Operational Plan—Extra Sensitive Information.”

  He slid the knife under the edge of the envelope, popping it open.

  Inside the envelope was a laminated card with a series of numbers and letters.

  What some used to call “The Biscuit.”

  The nuclear codes!

  He held up the card in a trembling hand and closed his eyes, praying to the gods of death and devastation. He prayed for their wisdom, that he might do right by them when it came time to detonate the warhead. He pocketed a handful of ammunition, clutching his LeMat pistol in one hand and the laminated card in the other and then he exited the Sterncastle to greet Cozzard.

  “Go and round the men up,” Longman said with a smile. “Bring them all in so we can enjoy one final moment.”

  “Is it about to begin, sir?” asked Cozzard.

  Longman nodded and smiled.

  “Yes. Tell them the time of our salvation is nearly at hand.”

  113

  Moses sensed something was in the air as he crept down through the inner zones of New Chicago. Few people were in the streets and those that were, mostly Longman’s muscle, whispered amongst themselves and pointed back in the direction of the Codex Building.

  “We going to be okay?” asked Malik.

  “We’re gonna be platinum,” Moses said.

  He took Malik’s hand and pulled him around the corner of a building right into the face of one of Longman’s men. A grubby young punk, a white kid barely out of his teens, holding an old revolver whose handle was wrapped with electrical tape.

  The kid looked just as surprised to see Moses as they were to see him. The kid paused, fingering his gun, appearing to recognize Moses.

  “Hey – wait - I – I know you,” the kid said under his breath.

  Moses summoned up a smile. “I’m sorry to say it, friend, but I’ve never seen you before.”

  The kid looked from Moses to Malik, to the rucksack looped over Moses’s shoulder. “Drop your sack.”

  “Look, friend—”

  “I ain’t your friend,” hissed the kid. “Drop the goddamn sack ya black bastard.”

  Moses nodded and gingerly slipped the rucksack off and dropped it to the ground. The kid kept his gun on Moses and Malik while kneeling and hunting through the sack. His eyes went wide at the sight of the tin-punched box, which spilled open to reveal the silver bars. The kid’s gaze left Moses
for a moment just as Malik brought his gun around.

  “NO!” screamed Moses.

  Malik flinched and Moses knocked the gun away from Malik’s hand. The kid watched the gun fall as Moses reacted, bringing his own gun around. Rather than shoot the kid, Moses thumped him good across the nose with the butt of his gun.

  The kid’s eyes rolled back and he collapsed to his side, unconscious.

  “Why did you do that?!” Malik shouted. “I could’ve put him down!”

  Moses reached down and grabbed the gun he’d knocked from Malik’s hand and pocketed it.

  “That’s the reason I did what I did,” Moses said, some heat in his voice. “Once you pull the trigger on another person nothing is ever the same again, boy.”

  “Then why the hell did you let me have it in the first place?”

  “Don’t curse at me.”

  “Answer the question, Moses.”

  Moses knew the reason he’d done what he’d done. He knew that as a result of the perpetual trauma in New Chicago he’d been conditioned to err on the side of violence. That is, his first reaction, as it was to almost every situation, was to prepare to do harm to the next guy before it was done to him. There was a part of him that realized the necessity of doing this, and another part, the older part, which recognized just how absurd it was to hand a gun to a child.

  “I messed up,” is all Moses said in response. “I should’ve never given you that gun.”

  “I’ve seen worse done before,” said Malik.

  “There’s a difference between seeing and doing,” Moses replied.

  “How we gonna get out of here, Moses, without doing something bad?” Malik asked, shifting his weight to the heels of his feet like his mother used to do.

  “What’d I tell you about calling me Moses?”

  Malik just stared at him.

  “You let me worry about what we gotta do, hear?” Moses replied.

  Malik nodded and Moses took his hand, maneuvering away from downtown New Chicago, heading toward the section of wall that was nearest the coast.