The champagne and beer were going to Jules’s head. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast, save for the couple of fishcakes she inhaled just now. It’d been a bitch of a day, after a shitty week back in Sydney. And she was worried about the Rhino.
‘But you’re not telling me anything I don’t already know about this bastard,’ she said, speaking to all three. ‘I knew he was a thug as soon as I met him back in Acapulco. That’s why we didn’t let them on the boat. Jesus Christ, you remember that scene in the bar when we were looking for passengers, Shah, before Miguel beat him down … The guy wasn’t even on board and he was already trying to take over! And hey, I know he’s got connections. They’ve been trying to bloody kill me for months. And now they’re after you.’ She tipped the neck of her beer bottle Shah’s way before going on.
‘What I still don’t know is what we can do about it. Killing his hired help doesn’t seem to discourage him. And I don’t think we have the option of wandering into Seattle to deal with him directly. We are not at sea anymore, nor is this New York. So yeah, you’re right, I can’t just stick a shotgun up his jacksy and let him have a couple of barrels of change-your-fucking-mind-Princess. I mean, Jesus, if he’s hanging around with government types, you’d probably get popped by the Secret Service for even looking sideways at him. They’re a lot more trigger-happy than they used to be.’
Shah and his lawyer looked to Pappas for an answer. The big Aussie folded his arms, creating the impression of a human bulwark of even greater mass and solidity than the steel bench around which they were gathered.
‘First thing is, we need to lay our hands on the blokes they’re using locally. Those two no-hopers they sent around to have a crack at you, Shah, are gone. But whoever went after your mate Rhino, Julianne, will still be hanging around. The guys’ll have to go back at Rhino if he lives. But as long as he’s on that American ship, he’s probably fine. When they move him back on shore into a civilian facility, then they’ll have another go. In the meantime, they’ve got two other options - assuming they picked up the contract on you and Shah. And even if they didn’t, someone has.’
He finished his beer and placed it down in front of him.
‘Shah’s got a couple of dozen heavily armed ruffians looking after him and his family. We lay down some defence in depth around him, and getting at him will be as difficult as you trying to walk into Cesky’s office.’
All three men were now looking at her.
‘But you’re a different matter, Julianne. As far as they know, you’ve only got two friends in this town, and they’ve already taken down one of them. If we can put a little distance between you and Shah, put you out on the range, so to speak, they will come after you. And as long as you refrain from blowing their heads off, we should be able to tackle one of these cheeky fuckers and have a quiet word. Then, if we can start to trace the connection back to Cesky, we’ll be in a much better position to turn it back on him. But we’re going to need to grab whoever he sends after you.’
Jules cocked one eyebrow at him. ‘Presumably before he puts a bullet in the back of my neck.’
Pappas smiled. ‘Well yeah, that goes without saying.’
31
TEMPLE, TEXAS ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISION
‘I’m sorry, I can’t get you any closer to the Federal Center,’ said Cindy French. ‘But it’s not too far up that a-ways.’
They were both standing beside Mary Lou, underneath the chrome Aphrodite hood ornament, stamping their feet and moving around to maintain some body warmth. Cindy pointed down an avenue running east. Dawn was probably three-quarters of an hour away, but already the sky in that direction was noticeably lighter. In a few minutes, Sofia knew, she would be able to make out a band of pale pink behind the skyline of the dead city. It was still cold outside, but merely a notch or two above freezing as opposed to the Siberian misery they’d left behind to the north. The snow petered out altogether a few hours after they’d crossed the Texas-Oklahoma border, and the convoy finally split back in Waco, with the drivers saying their goodbyes and wishing Sofia the best before peeling off towards their respective destinations.
‘I have my street map,’ she said, patting the folded-up sheet of paper in her back pocket. ‘I won’t get lost.’
‘You hurry straight on down there,’ Cindy told her, ‘and you’ll be fine. You don’t need to worry about bandits or low-life of any kind in Temple. There’s only a couple of hundred people living here, if that, and they’re all feds. Army maintains a small force down here - the real army, by the way, not those TDF misanthropes. They keep the place well policed. Matter of fact, you’ll probably run into one of their patrols on your way over to Main Street. Just tell them you’re waiting for the shuttle bus to the Hood, and that you’re going over to see Father Michael at the chapel. Tell them you have family business, but don’t tarry over there any longer than you have to. And don’t wander around on your own more than is absolutely necessary, got it, hon?’
Sofia nodded and hoisted her small backpack to settle it more comfortably on one shoulder. ‘Thank you, Cindy,’ she said, smiling with real warmth.
The trucker reached out and hugged her. Sofia allowed herself to relax into the hug, returning it in kind. She knew she wouldn’t have made it this far without the help of this kindly woman. It was a shame she’d had to mislead her the whole way, but having done so made it easier to soften their passing with one last lie.
‘I shall write to you in Seattle when I have my sister home,’ she said.
And then, not wanting to prolong the farewell any further, she thanked her again before turning her back on the study in blue that was Cindy French, tossing a wave back over her shoulder, and striding away in the direction of the federal government outpost. She didn’t look back, even though it seemed like a long time before the Kenworth went into gear and pulled away, gradually building up speed as it disappeared down I-35. The deep growl of the massive eighteen-wheel semitrailer was audible for another minute or so afterwards.
Temple was not a ghost town, but apart from the federales stationed here because of the Mandate, there was no other activity to be seen. The avenue down which she walked was clear of the sort of wreckage or debris that inevitably choked the streets of any settlement larger than a hamlet or small village. But Sofia could see that many of the side streets were still impassable, with great piles of burnt-out automobiles and, in one instance, a twin-bladed military helicopter. Here and there, she passed the shells of buildings that had gone up in flames after the Disappearance. Sometimes whole blocks lay in ruins. But for some reason, Temple had been spared the heavy-handed destruction that had fallen on so many larger towns and cities. She had no idea why, and did not much care. She supposed that the authorities in Seattle had chosen this place for the outpost because its centre needed relatively little cleaning up before they could move people in; and because Temple was convenient to Blackstone’s headquarters, but still far enough away from him that it didn’t feel as though his boot was on your neck.
Wary of being spotted by one of the patrols Cindy had mentioned, Sofia ducked into the next side street she passed. It appeared as though an old school bus had collided with a refrigerated truck when the drivers and all the children had Disappeared. She felt sad about the kids and hoped they’d been unaware of the horror that fell upon then. Not like her brother and sisters. The intersection was completely blocked by the wreckage, which snaked away down the street in a concertina of mangled steel and rusted flame-ravaged car bodies. Weeds and thigh-high grass, course and wiry, choked the pavement and covered most of the road surface. The ruins of small commercial buildings she’d passed near the junction with the highway now gave way to a more suburban setting. The small houses and bungalows, many of them with broken windows and slumping roofs, looked as though no human being had set foot in them for many years.
Her flesh crawled as she carefully picked her way through the thick carpet of vegetation. The ghosts did not bother her as they had her father, but there woul
d be snakes. And possibly packs of feral animals. The army patrols probably shot any they came across, and laid bait for the others, but still, with no way of defending herself, the teenager felt terribly vulnerable. That was why she had to push on. She stopped when she reached a bare concrete patch of driveway in front of a large church. The area was big enough that it hadn’t been colonised by the vegetation like elsewhere.
Checking the old pre-Wave street map of Temple she had picked up in Ardmore, Sofia located herself near the intersection of Avenue L and South 49th Street. She frowned, not really sure of her bearings. It was always like this in the ghost towns - so easy to get turned around and lose your sense of direction. At least it wasn’t dark now.
Sofia planted her feet as though she meant to take root in the concrete. She held the map in both hands, angling it so as to catch the faint grey light leaking into the day. After a short while looking from the map, to the crossroads, to the steeply pitched roof of the Heights Baptist Church, she was reasonably sure she needed to backtrack two or three blocks, west and south. She really could’ve used a machete, and resolved to get one as soon as possible. There had been a rack full of them in the federal depot at Ardmore, but she’d had no plausible story to explain why a fifteen-year-old girl might need one in Fort Hood.
At least this car park beside the church was relatively open ground. She jogged across it, her progress slowed as she hit the next avenue and another catastrophic confusion of decaying wreckage. The vehicles were piled up so badly here that she wondered whether the federales had used this particular road as a dumping ground. The obstruction forced her another block south, where she got lost for a couple of minutes before backtracking along George Drive and up into West Avenue North. There, she found what she was looking for: the store-front of JM Firearms.
It was obvious this had been a small, single-operator gunsmithing business, and not the sort of big-box artillery warehouse to attract the attention of looters or the authorities. Papa had taught her to seek these places out while they’d been running north to escape the road agents. At establishments like this, inventories often remained completely intact, and weapons and ammunition were almost always stored properly. And she was more likely to find the singular sort of item she needed in a small, bespoke gunsmithing house than at some haunted Walmart store.
*
The .357 Magnum was identical to the handgun she’d trained with back in KC, save for the burnished redwood inlay of the pistol grip. Sofia spent so many hours on the government firing range with that weapon, that to hold one again felt as though she’d just rediscovered a part of herself that had gone missing. She would’ve been so much more comfortable on the drive down from Kansas City if she’d had her own pistol. Like all the truckers, Cindy French kept a shotgun in the cabin of her rig, and it had been reassuring to look up and see the weapon there as they rolled through the American wastelands. But it was not the same as having your own piece. On the trail north, she had never been more than a step away from a firearm, even when bathing with the other women.
She took her time, sitting at the kitchen table of this downtown apartment on South Main Street, radio on softly in the background, while she stripped the protective coating from the revolver, fresh from its packaging. One of the great benefits of a revolver was that it was a relatively easy weapon to maintain. She found the familiar movement and rhythm soothing. Concentrating on this task, which felt as natural to her as breathing, she could lose herself, forgetting for just a short time all that had happened to those she loved.
The apartment was a few blocks away from the Federal Center, but even with the windows closed against the chill of the morning, she could hear some light traffic noise drifting across the rooftops. The streets immediately below her were gridlocked with car wrecks, so there was no chance of a patrol driving by. Even so, she wouldn’t be staying here long. When night fell she would move again. Somewhere a little further away from what few inhabitants there were here. She’d heard voices and the crunch of boots on broken glass at one point, sending her flying off into the bedroom, there to keep a silent vigil in the gloom until they had passed.
It had been a nerve-racking experience getting here after the gunsmith’s, but she certainly hadn’t wanted to stay in that part of town. It was very close to the interstate, but removed enough from the Federal Center that she’d worried about falling outside the protective envelope offered by their presence. Even in KC, people clustered around the heart of the city and the relatively crowded resettlement areas; it was not unknown for small raiding parties to prey on homesteads located further out. All of Sofia’s previous experience in Texas led her to imagine that it would be much worse this time, seeing as she couldn’t even trust the authorities to look after her. The federales would return her to a foster home or possibly some form of ‘protective’ detention, if they found her.
And if she ran into troopers from Blackstone’s TDF - what then?
She swore under her breath as she cleaned out the barrel of the handgun.
A song that she liked came on, and she turned up the volume on her little transistor radio, just a notch. A risk, but worth it. It was an English band. She wasn’t sure of the name, but the tune was very danceable, and it had been all over the pop stations right before she’d left home.
The table blurred in front of her eyes, and the Magnum became a silvery waterfall as tears filled her eyes. She carefully rested the pistol on the white cotton pillowcase on which she’d been cleaning it, and pushed her chair away from the table. The apartment was small, and the bedroom only a few steps away, but she found she was hurrying to throw herself onto the mattress.
Her grief had been coming like this, rolling over her in unexpected waves, ever since she’d parted company with Cindy. There was no mystery to it. Sofia had been forced to maintain an iron grip on her feelings while in the company of the other woman. Cindy’s maternal instincts were obviously aroused by her plight, no matter how fictional it might’ve been, and Sofia didn’t want her deciding that she was too much of a basket case to be left on her own. But now that she was on her own, she was free to give vent to the agonies of her soul.
The bedclothes were dishevelled and the pillow still wet from the floods of tears she had poured into it less than an hour ago. As wretched and powerless as she felt, however, as tormented by her lot as she may have been, there remained a cold, disconnected part of her mind that all but told her to get on with the business of grieving for her lost father, to get it out of the way, so that it would not interfere with what she had to do to avenge him. The callous tenor of that voice at the back of her mind did nothing to attenuate the torrent of grief pouring out of the girl. She was forced into smothering herself, so fiercely did she jam her face into the pillow to prevent the sound of her moaning cries escaping the apartment.
Alone.
She was alone in the world. Everybody she had ever loved had been taken from her. Not by the cosmic dice roll of something like the Disappearance, which would have been bad enough. No, she had lost everyone and everything to the evil of one man’s ambitions. She’d watched her beloved father hollowed out by his impotence, by his complete inability to do anything about what had happened to their family. It was almost as though having delivered her to Kansas City, he had suffered a moral collapse, and could find within himself none of the resources needed to turn around and do what he’d promised to do on the day those road agents attacked the homestead. Instead, he had tried to content himself with the idea that the federales could be trusted to bring the killers to justice, and that his responsibilities had contracted to the altogether more humble end of seeing that she, Sofia, made it to school every day, passed her exams, and didn’t get into any sort of trouble so trifling it was barely worthy of the word.
Oh, Papa …
Her feelings about her father roared and rushed around her like the swift and deadly waters of the flash flood that had destroyed their party and the Mormons’ cattle in northern Texas. Sh
e felt torn one way and then the other, as likely to be dashed on the submerged rocks of her anger with him as she was to be lifted up and thrown free of danger by all that he had done for her.
She wasn’t sure how long she lay on the bed, curled into a foetal ball, racked by violent sorrow. She checked her watch and found it was well after one o’clock when this particular episode of unrestrained anguish finally abated. Fifteen minutes may have passed, perhaps as much as an hour. Undeniably though, she felt much better for having allowed it to run its course. Almost rested, in fact.
Sofia dried her eyes and rubbed her face with the sleeve of her hooded sweatshirt. She took in a deep breath, held it, before letting it go slowly, like an athlete recovering from a hard race. She shivered once, and then it was all over. She was able to return to cleaning her pistol. She methodically worked through the remainder of the process with the Magnum, before putting it aside to study the other weapons she had taken from JM Firearms.
The machete was not primarily a weapon. She had grabbed it to cut a path through the thickets of scrub and wild grass that strangled most of the city. But in a pinch the honed edge could be useful against man or beast. She gave the blade a polish, but nothing more. She was not an obsessive. For Sofia, guns and knives were simply tools. Having grown up on a farm, she’d been taught to think of them that way, and nothing had changed her opinion in the intervening years. Not even the hard necessity of having had to kill men with a firearm. They remained tools; implements for taking life.
Because she wasn’t obsessed with guns, there was much about the other weapon in front of her that she didn’t know - its name for instance. She was sure that something as particular as this would’ve had a special name. She recognised the gun, an assault rifle, as a variation of the kind she had seen some road agents and individual bandits carry at various times. An AK-47, they were known as, although this one looked like a much nastier and improved version of the old wood-and-stamped-metal machine gun preferred by peasant armies the world over. It may have come from China or somewhere in Eastern Europe, perhaps even Pakistan before the recent war there. She neither knew nor cared. What had drawn her to this weapon the moment she saw it was its reputation for reliable lethality.
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