Across from Tom and the children, Ms Stacey gave a country wave and hauled a pack onto one shoulder and swept past, the first to the doors on the other side as if the others were waiting for instructions. Gwen tugged the door open and jumped the big step down to the wooden platform, the planks tattooed with the marks of old signage turned into a giant jigsaw puzzle recycled into architectural use.
Tom grabbed Lilianna as she set to follow.
“Hey, slow down,” he said. “We stick together, OK?”
Their disembarkation came with more of the disorienting social niceties the train journey threw up, forcing Tom and the other survivors back into roles long given up as they tried to exercise a modicum of courtesy on their exit. The sounds outside rang like a medieval marketplace complete with someone striking a hammer on iron. The old man with the dog hung back, another older couple not so much, eager as the teenager at Tom’s side to get out and see what waited.
Lila strained under the growing pressure of Tom’s hand on her shoulder as he and his children stepped clear. Lucas cautiously eyed Tom’s grip, somehow following it to the movement of his father’s eyes focused on Walter and his family of survivors hauling their remaining gear from the train further along amid the confusion of milling troops and other City personnel coming back to base from their allotted shifts. The train emitted a shrill hissing noise and Lila covered her ears, checking back on her dad and finding him already under her brother’s study.
“Dad, tell me what’s going on,” she whispered.
“Nothing to worry about.”
“Dad.”
Tom might’ve said more, not willful in his deliberateness. Instead, a rich voice brought a momentary hush to their corner of the platform.
“Form into groups, people,” a tall black man called, big hands formed into a bullhorn. “Reds, yellows, greens. Blues. Any whites today? Each of you find your people. If you’re Blue, you’re with me.”
The man named Williams towered over everyone, well chosen for his role herding the Vaniceks and others on the platform into one rough group of blue tags while paying no attention to any of them. Voice like a triton, Williams shouted instructions to other evacuees, leaving Tom conscious of Walter’s blue-tagged gang once again on an incoming vector.
“OK, people,” Williams said as he turned back to them. “I want you to follow the path through the Enclave. There’s a final inspection point, and then you’re in for a treat. We’ve got ethanol trucks to give you a lift to where you’ll be bunking, alright? Housing recovered fresh by our people last week.”
He motioned, tall enough that it was over their heads.
“We’re on foot from here, clear?” he said. “Do not fall behind or you risk being shot. Seriously. Now follow me.”
“We heard you have the trams up and running again in Columbus,” someone called out.
“Incorrect, ma’am.”
The question triggered a flurry of others, but Tom’s voice rang over them all.
“You’re putting us all in the same building?”
Williams stopped even though he’d barely started, flashing the exasperation to prove it.
“Once you’re settled, you can make your own damn arrangements,” he said. “Don’t pull that face, mister. We can only guarantee sanctuary within the safe zone, so you gotta work with us, cool?”
“I’m not bunking with them.”
Tom motioned at Walter, careless in his honesty and more confirmed for it.
Walter’s son jostled forward. His father restrained the boy.
“Oh God damn it, what is it with you people?” Williams growled.
The tone made it clear he didn’t want an answer.
“You must have somewhere else,” Tom said to him.
Williams focused the type of attention on Tom most people would prefer to avoid.
“What’s your name, son?”
“I’m not your son,” Tom said. “My name’s Vanicek.”
“This guy thinks he’s too good for us!” Walter called out. “Screw him. And his kids.”
“You’d like that.”
Tom’s deathly low voice was still loud enough to carry.
Now Walter did come forward, but his son was quicker.
How the boy hid the knife was anyone’s guess, but Vanicek almost expected it. He twisted away, batting one palm at the boy’s wrist. The short curved blade went to one side.
Maybe the kid was about to try again. But Tom lost sight as Walter piled into him instead, both of them going down on the platform and not seeing Williams step in to bring a nightstick down on the teenage boy’s arm with a crack like a rifle-shot.
The boy’s scream distracted his father long enough for Tom to get one forearm free, pushing the wiry RV driver off him with a hand to the chin.
“All of you step back!” Williams yelled.
Two sentries were on them at once, stalking in at a tactical crouch with raised M16s. The crowd around the fracas surged to safety and compliance as Williams called for the newcomers to stand down. The two armed sentries echoed his cry.
Tom pushed himself clear of Walter and raised his hands, the sleeve of his hunter’s anorak flapping torn open to the elbow.
“You tore my fucking jacket,” Tom glowered.
“Stand back away from each other.”
The huge Williams stepped over Walter’s kid kneeling on the ground clutching his arm and trying not to shit, mucus streaming from his nose like a lariat, blood in it, though he never took a second blow. Walter gingerly backed away, thrown by his own kid’s dumb move, vulpine eyes trying to track the angles in a moment’s sensory overload.
“Stand the hell back,” the closest paramilitary said.
Orange paint stained the wrist and sleeve of what looked like an air force pilot’s coveralls, secured with a ballistic vest, Marines helmet, and improvised legwear. The white surgical mask on his face rendered him even more sinister. His comrade circled the pack, fully declared with his gun trained on the newcomers, the innocent and suspicious alike.
Tom slowly knelt for safety’s sake. One of the RV troupe’s women was allowed to help the boy. Walter receded to his people, dagger’s gaze flitting back to Vanicek, angry, but otherwise unguessable. Lila knelt beside her father as if offering herself as a human shield, but white-faced Lucas caught Tom’s narrowed headshake and stood back beside a one-armed woman and the doctor from the checkpoint who stepped into their group with her baggage still over her arm, her body cocked to counteract the strain.
“I’m Dr Iwa Swarovsky. I was just on the train. I processed these men.”
“Sorrel Williams, Department of Public Safety,” the tall official said. “These men, either of ‘em cause trouble at your checkpoint?”
“No,” she said.
They watched one of the sentries collect the embalming knife. They shared a look with Williams and then appraised the mood.
“Pull a knife on someone in the City and we shoot you,” the sentry said.
“This is why newbies can’t have nice things,” Williams added.
“And this is why we tag you,” Dr Swarovsky said and her good eye settled on Tom.
Walter quit his surly glances with a haste to appease their minders so obvious that it carried little weight. Tom just tried to breathe. He stood again. He and Lila held hands, and Lucas rushed to join them, safer to share their doom than risk abandonment.
“What seems to be the problem, Mr Vanicek?” the doctor asked.
“This man threatened my children before we reached the checkpoint,” Tom said. “I don’t trust him, and I’m not putting my family in danger. How’d you even let these people in here?”
“They passed the test same as you did, Mr Vanicek.”
“With two questions?”
“And a disease check.”
Tom eyeballed her a moment.
“Dr Swarovsky?” He waited until she nodded, then said, “Asking people if they’ve done anything wrong’s not a very effective met
hod for screening out trouble.”
“It’s a big city,” she said. “And it’s not like before. We’re not here to hold anyone’s hand, Mr Vanicek. How did he threaten your children?”
Tom exhaled with reluctance, aborting a quick look at Lilianna.
“He offered to trade so he and his son could have sex with my daughter.”
“And did you?”
“What do you think?”
Tom’s aggression was plain enough, but no one resented him for it. Swarovsky only shrugged, and that was fair too. Life outside of sanctuary for more than four years threw all the old expectations into the trash.
“Mr Williams,” Swarovsky said. “There’s an apartment in my building vacant after the last tenants died. Murder-suicide.”
“Nice,” Williams said. “When’d that happen.”
“Saturday.”
“My day off.”
Maybe the doctor mistook him for making small talk. Her baleful scar gave her a villainous authority at odds with intentions to the contrary.
“What do you think, Mr Williams?” she asked. “It’s a practical solution.”
“You’re taking them off my hands?” he said. “Fine.”
Dr Swarovsky swiveled on her boot heel back to Tom.
“You three are with me.”
At once she turned again and started off along the crowded platform.
*
THE OTHER GROUPS were herded onto Army trucks waiting for them just outside the packed enclosure created by the City trying to build its own jerry-rigged terminal for the commuters in and out of the settlement. The shed-like structures left much of the old carpark as open space, though a collusion of stalls and internal cattle gates gave it a market feel, except it was designed for people, and only a few of the small booths were manned. Doctor Swarovsky swiped a care pack for each of them: literally a plastic-wrapped bundle, a pair of blankets, and a small blue-jacketed ration book. Swarovsky then stood with them while Tom had the booklet validated at the first in a series of long tables along the path to the exit. Something about the good doctor’s impatience turned the experience into an express lane as one of the women behind the desks stabbed fingernails at an old pocket calculator, pencils and rubber stamps to allot credits for the children as well. The booklet’s many still-empty pages left Tom with as much unease as anything so far.
“Thank you for stepping in back there,” Lila said to the doctor.
“It’s nothing.”
“Someone died in this apartment?”
“A husband and wife couple,” the doctor calmly said. “What the infomercial doesn’t mention is the homicide rate, and the lack of reporting of violent crimes. Sexual crimes. You’ll need to watch yourself.”
Swarovsky’s face lifted to include Tom as he rejoined them, able to hear the whole thing.
“And your children.”
Tom simply nodded in the affirmative. Lila glanced on, teeth on her lip, only fretful about what was said because of her father’s lack of answer.
“They won’t clear us until the final paperwork,” Tom said.
Swarovsky looked at the two women, then around until she spotted two familiar figures lugging plastic crates full of clipboards towards them.
“Eager to get going somewhere?” Archie called.
There wasn’t much luster to the greeting. Rose pushed past them with an irritated look on her flushed face, not well suited to anything close to heavy labor. Tom quickly scanned the woman up and down, registering just how long it’d been since he saw a person carrying extra weight. It didn’t help her with her duties. Rose slammed her crate down on an adjacent table and looked like she was headed straight for a bathroom break.
“They’re with me,” Dr Swarovsky said. “Pull his file. What did you recommend for job assignment?”
“Taking a personal interest, Eva?” Archie said like he was crooning.
“Foragers,” Rose said to the doctor, both women ignoring the other man.
“What was your occupation, Mr Vanicek?” Swarovsky asked.
“He put ‘outdoorsman’.”
“Something like that,” Tom agreed.
Swarovsky studied him afresh. Something about the focus of her one good, nearly black surviving eye suggested the injury only doubled her powers. She adopted a doubtful look and accepted the clipboard Rose produced.
“Archie, take over,” the other woman said and bailed on them.
Rose headed along the enclosure’s back fence. Late daylight slid through the gap between the partition wall and where the roofing gave out. Behind Tom and the children, an armed woman wearing overalls and motorcycle boots led the first trio of white-tagged survivors out of the chaos of the arrival area. Tom recognized the man with the dog. He no longer had a dog, seeming to check around anxiously as if looking for it, hanging back and holding up his group – much to his handler’s irritation.
Archie and the doctor finished a quick consult which ended with a signature and a torn slip the other man thrust into Vanicek’s palm.
“Report to Inventory tomorrow morning for assignment details,” he said.
“What time?”
“You have an alarm clock or something, Vanicek?” Archie asked. “First thing in the a.m.. You can get a wristwatch on The Mile if you’ve got anything to trade. We run on synchronized time around here.”
The silver-haired man gave a dismissive wave with the clipboard and moved to meet the next group. Swarovsky retrieved her luggage from the ground.
“Like my daughter said, we owe you,” Tom said to her. “You didn’t have to wait around for us.”
“I have a good feeling about you, Mr Vanicek.”
It was nice of her to say, but she delivered the line deadpan, as if it might not have the best connotations after all. Lilianna struggled to meet Swarovsky’s medusa’s gaze, and Luke was still too young to appreciate the wounded doctor’s eye didn’t lessen her once-perhaps implausible beauty – nor the effect it had on their father, rediscovering he was still a man of flesh and blood after all and not entirely pleased about it.
Tom had his own troubles returning the eye contact, a boldness there almost unreadable through the layers of indirect guardedness so many trauma survivors shared. Almost five years of apocalypse held an angle-grinder to human emotions, damaging whatever hadn’t already been worn down to nothing.
“This way,” Swarovsky said.
The other color-tagged groups were still emerging from the cattle yard gates near the platform as the doctor led Tom and his kids past the last control point and the four sentries lagging near an unchained gateway framed in sunlight. A tinny strain of commercial hip hop whistled from a portable stereo nearby like steam from a kettle. The sheer normality of music only added to the sense of entering a circus big top, which didn’t make sense anyway because instead, they walked outside and into the light.
*
“COME THIS WAY,” the doctor called as she led them through the gates. “We’ll catch a ride.”
Tom, Lila and Luke followed with their heads craning every which way. Three open-topped military trucks with drivers idled in what was once a sedate internal brick-paved plaza. A huge, multi-winged building crowded over the square, but rows of outdoor marquees, a prefabricated shed, twenty-or-more personnel, and a line of portable latrines marred its nineteenth-century grandeur. Tom felt like a stranger to the open sky, checking the increasing cloud cover as he also scanned the upper floors of the main building. A solitary woman at an open window blew steam from a mug as a man appeared, kissing her neck from behind. The intimacy of the scene almost startled Tom. Yet there was plenty else demanding his attention. The sheer psychic proximity of so many people – knowing fifty thousand fellow survivors waited outside the immediate compound – twisted with discomfort in his guts.
A few diligent Citizens working unknown duties moved past them and into the tents. Swarovsky checked for impeding traffic and led them to the first truck.
“Hop aboard.�
��
She stood and watched as Tom made sure Lilianna and her brother climbed up safely. He tossed his own pack up and eyed the doctor’s satchel.
“Need a hand?”
“Sure,” she said. “Pass it up to me.”
With her coat removed, the doctor wore acrylic track pants and trainers. She climbed into the back of the truck with ease and swiveled around to take her bag, at the same time effortlessly releasing her long black hair as well as the closest thing to a smile Vanicek had yet seen as she reached back down to him and took her pack, smiling secretively once more, and then making way for Tom to join them.
“We’re going to be neighbors?” Lila asked.
“Yes,” the doctor said. “Yes we are.”
*
THE TRUCK GOT moving once it had a dozen passengers. They ran on strict ethanol rations, but the City Council wasn’t keen to leave newcomers stranded. As they passed through another checkpoint leaving well-structured twenty-foot steel barricades behind, Tom wondered if the Enclave’s residents wanted new arrivals gone for other reasons too.
Crops and an infant orchard greeted them along the river bank. The skinny length of public foreshore, already neglected before the Emergency, now housed several rough-made sheds. A crew of motley-dressed workers finishing for the day passed around a new-looking tractor which glinted under the latening sun.
Their truck veered right, up an exit ramp, and towards another pair of rust-spotted, but gigantic gates built into the overpass and fronted by a nest of sandbags manned by another cadre of guards.
The barricades of the arrival compound behind them, once through into the first streets of the recovered Brewery District of Columbus, the real City began.
Whittier Street was now a rats’ nest of hastily-built dwellings and permanent encampments. Barely visible behind a screening wall of parked buses and RV homes, an elaborate crush of giant emergency relief tents had taken on an air of semi-permanence – so much so, their sun-bleached roofs were crusted with sediment like some testament to the origins as well as the longevity of the City’s recovery effort.
After The Apocalypse Season 1 Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 5
