“We were drawn in like amateurs,” Tucker said without the vehemence he obviously felt.
“Stuff like this happen often?”
“It’s dangerous work,” Tucker said. “Not most of the time, but when it is, it is.”
“More guns would help.”
“You might’ve made your case for that today,” Tucker said. “Wilhelm might take this little snapshot back to the Five for reconsideration. They want to keep everyone’s guns locked up tight. A lot of killings in the early days. Last year. Winter, too. Desperate times. Not great to have hungry people with firearms.”
Tom looked back at the unconscious bandit made to sit upright with his arms pinioned, twenty paces away at the farmhouse back door. Hugh issued a curt salute in Tom’s direction as they stood their captive up and moved him away from the others.
“Case in point,” Tom said.
“Maybe.”
“What got you all in there in the first place?”
Tucker gave a tired sigh, though a begrudging twinkle returned to his eye.
“Assholes screwed up,” he said. “Not that we realized it. They left a crate full of tinned coffee under the kitchen sink. Claypool found it and let whoop.”
Tucker eyed Tom with another sincere, but reluctant grin.
“Worth its weight in gold now, that stuff,” he said. “Tobacco we can grow, but coffee was mostly an import business, back in the day.”
“I hear you.”
“Play your cards right and one of them tins might just find its way to you.”
“I thought you said no looting?”
“Sometimes the rules are made to be broken,” Tucker said as if with deeper implications than just a can of coffee. “And to the victors the spoils.”
He saluted as if raising a toast. Tom returned a reluctant smile, not sure about the protocols, the blue tag, anything, and thought briefly of his kids. But watching Jones make the long laborious trek back up the slope clutching his broken arm drew Tom back to the air fighter crash and the laptop he’d hidden – his instincts mysterious even to him, though they fired again now. He pushed off the desire to question Tucker further.
“You gotta give me a minute,” Tom said. “I need to take a shit.”
He peeled off from the conversation and found Hanna waiting patiently to one side holding the red cup filled just for him. Tom shot her a pained look.
“Back in a minute.”
*
CHICAGO MANAGED TO reach the others and Tom paused long enough to avoid him, not keen to get dragged into any fresh discussions as he slipped back down the neglected pasture to the sanctuary of the tree-line under pretense of relieving himself. Once through the trees, he moved as urgently as caution allowed, tiptoeing across the creek into the lee of the downed fighter jet to retrieve the laptop satchel, turning and working out how to stash it at the small of his back under his jacket.
And found Hanna at the edge of the trees watching him.
“Hi, Tom,” she said with her usual awkwardness.
“You’re following me?”
“I thought you might need . . . I have some bath paper, you know, for emergencies.”
“Yeah, well, I can’t go while people are watching me,” he said.
The skinny woman looked even more nondescript in the wool cap she insisted on wearing over her short hair despite the summer heat. Tom felt just as conspicuous in his jacket, but stood saying nothing, an awkward détente, the concealed laptop against his sweating back more like a neon sign over his head, and just as likely spotted by Hanna.
He glanced around as if there might be further business, eyes falling on the dead pilot half fallen from the downed Raptor if not for the cockpit’s restraints. How long he’d been dead was a job for a coroner, but there was no way the Fury or its soiled uniform had lain there more than a few months.
“I better let Tucker know about this,” he said, and started back across the stream towards and past her.
“Tom, wait,” Hanna said.
He paused, but in her agitation, the woman said nothing for a few seconds.
“I could, Tom . . . I would make a good wife.”
“Wife?”
“Really, please,” she said. “Do you have someone? I can cook. I’m resourceful. Really? I would be good to you. Very good.”
Tom shook his head, stirred more than he’d like by the social awkwardness given everything else that’d happened, today and also the past five years.
“I had a wife before,” he snapped. “I’m not in any rush to repeat the experience. Sorry.”
He moved on, but Hanna grabbed his sleeve.
Tom knew it wasn’t fair to get as riled as he was, but she’d mustered a rare courage, driven by desperation that was anything but erotic.
He shook off her hand and trudged away.
“What did you find?” Hanna called out after him. “Did you find something?”
It was the final straw – the woman’s question steeped with some kind of threat he could only intuit rather than prove.
“Stop following people around, huh?” he yelled back at her. “It’s creepy as fuck.”
And he left her there crestfallen, deliberate yet not really planned, and then he continued through the trees and back out into the meadow as Tucker, Claypool and Miranda headed past him to investigate Chicago’s report about the crashed Raptor.
“There’s a jet fighter down there?” Tucker asked as they crossed paths.
Up on the ridge, the troopers guided their captive around the far side of the faded garden shed. Tom only nodded, silenced as a single gunshot echoed across the glen and the last of their ambushers dropped lifeless to the ground with a fatal headshot.
Ernest Eric Wilhelm III stood alone at the top of the slope outside the farm’s untended garden, eyes detached from the execution. He threw a welcoming smile Tom’s way, chipper even as he crossed his arms as if warming himself.
“Find anything good down there?”
There was a moment where Tom considered telling him. Just a moment. Then he pondered what the laptop might reveal
“You heard about the plane? I was looking for somewhere to shit,” he lied. “Fight or flight instinct and all that.”
“I know all about it,” Wilhelm said and held out shaking hands with a tight grin. “I for one am glad as hell you didn’t choose ‘flight’ when you could have, Tom.”
The Councilor’s sincerity was designed to hold him there, and it worked. They stood at the top of the slope, the rundown farmhouse too serene behind them for such a recent crime scene. Wilhelm offered Tom a firm handshake. The embossed seal on the satchel scratched the small of Tom’s back.
“If you run into any trouble in the City, you come and see me,” the Councilor said. “God knows, the Administration needs people like you, Tom. God bless.”
Tom studied him a moment, not able to dodge suspicions even though the other man was trying his best to be sincere. Maybe it was something about his reference to God, or the latest violence, the hidden laptop, maybe even just the watchful eyes of the other crewmembers prompted him to think it might be his last day as a Forager. There had to be a better way than serving as another cog worn down in this new system.
“I’d like to show you my appreciation, if I could?” Wilhelm said.
“What did you have in mind?”
“Dinner?” Wilhelm said and smiled coyly. “After Council on Wednesday night? Come along early and enjoy the show.”
“I have kids.”
“They’re welcome too,” the Councilor said. “And your woman, if you’ve got one.”
“No, it’s just me and my two.”
“Not just you any more, Tom,” Wilhelm said. “You’re part of something bigger now.”
*
HUGH LEFT FITZ with the dead body and tracked on an intercept as Tom and a few of the others made their way back to the truck. The trooper hauled Tom up with a gentle, slightly abashed grin, the fatal AR-15 slung across his b
road back.
“I didn’t get the chance to say my thanks,” the taller man said. “Joining the queue, am I?”
He looked meaningfully past Tom’s shoulder at Wilhelm doing the politician thing among the little people, Hanna among them shooting Tom the briefest of wounded looks.
“He invited me to dinner,” Tom confessed. “Reckon I should expect a mansion?”
Hugh laughed, a touch of embarrassment in him.
“He stole my thunder,” he said. “I was going to offer you the same. I’d be honored for you to bring your family around to eat with mine. Tomorrow night?”
“I wouldn’t want to put you out,” Tom said.
“We work for a living,” he said. “Unlike some.”
He motioned at the Councilor with surprising venom, then smiled again.
“You know where I live,” Hugh said. “Come at sunset.”
Tom nodded OK and might’ve said more, but Hugh was already moving. Behind them, Fitz enlisted help from Graves and Claypool.
Tucker waited for Tom at Hsu’s truck.
“We’re calling it quits for the day,” he said. “Ready for your weekend? You’ve earnt it.”
Tom flashed his left wrist, bare now except for the wristwatch.
“Does this mean I get my weapons back?”
“I’ll square it with you tomorrow, if you like.”
“I was meant to report in with my blue tag, once I got time free.”
“Forget about it.”
“My kids?”
“They’ll earn their freedom too, if they take after you at all.”
Tom took the compliment, but said nothing. Something akin to a guilty conscience crept from the purloined bundle itching at his lower back to his rictus grin as Tucker nudged him, a clandestine look revealing a two-pound can of instant coffee hidden under a flap of canvas.
“Think of it as a bonus,” Tucker said. “Danger money. And remember what I said: worth its weight in gold.”
Tom nodded, conflicted, but appreciative as Tucker patted him on the shoulder once more and Tom climbed up into the truck, soon followed by the other stragglers as he seated himself over the contraband coffee tin and Tucker waved everyone farewell, jogging to the APC. Hsu started the truck and the Foragers drove out of the property and back towards the City.
***
After The Apocalypse
*
Book 2
Reconstruction
by Warren Hately
THE SCREAMS WOKE them like the one six-legged beast come alive from a deep, exhausted sleep, and it was dark in the room still.
Tom had the nonsensical thought, “So much for sleeping in” despite the clamor and someone shouting in the stairwell outside their apartment. If not his thoughts, Tom’s spirit was far away still, dreams or memories or both hearkening to some time that possibly never happened, back in the mountains, the sweeping vista a sanctuary before him, safe, his wife’s touch on his arm and a taste like coffee on his dry tongue. But in the pre-dawn light of the bedroom and with a hammering noise on the front door demanding urgent action, it took him a regrettably long moment to remember where he was – where they all were – his children waking with a start and the yells and a woman shrieking outside all too real and immediate.
The Vaniceks fell over each other, untangling themselves from the two mattresses on the floor, Tom stepping into one boot and squatting and trying to force on the other as his breathing declined anything but a breakneck pace, left hand questing about until he grasped his belt of carpentry tools and drew the tomahawk with a quick snap, standing, still screwing one foot deeper into the work boot while his children stared back wild-eyed as someone outside yelled his name yet again and Tom didn’t know why and therefore whether even to be afraid.
“Dad, what is it?” Lucas whispered hoarsely. “Is it happening again?”
“I don’t know,” Tom said. “Stay here, please.”
“Dad, stay.”
“Please be careful, dad,” Lilianna said over her brother’s cry.
Lilianna knew how this had to go, as flustered as the week before when the threat was inside their new home. Her arms wrapped around her panicked brother from behind as Lila nodded, nothing more to be said as Tom unbolted the bedroom door taking paranoid care heading out into the quiet apartment.
The banging on the front door ceased. Beyond it, a woman howled. Tears of grief. Tom could almost discern the nuances, padding to the front door in his boots and fussing to undo the cable tie improvised around the half-mended door which then jutted open, offering just a narrow window onto the stairwell and a view of several neighbors with their backs to him.
“What is it?” he barked as he joined them.
Before any answer, he saw a flash of movement on the next flight down, one of the dead risen and spackled with blood, a woman he didn’t know and who thankfully wasn’t Iwa Swarovsky pinned by the creature on the upper steps. A lanky boy danced nervously around their struggle, one of the nearby ceramic vases in his hands as a poorly-improvised weapon.
“It was just there,” one of the women neighbors said. “Without warning.”
Three women clutched each other beside Tom, issued from the other apartment on his floor, their names still unknown to him, a toddler bawling at their open door and a hunch-backed older man with a long white beard redeeming himself in terror, acting like he would shield them if the worst came to the worst. Panic lit through them like a brush fire, Tom’s quick scan confirming none were armed. On the landing below, the intruding Fury crouched over the injured woman and then threw itself at Dr Swarovsky’s door. The frightened teenager threw the ceramic urn badly and its detonation echoed like a gun going off.
More residents at ground level yelled up at them.
“Someone’s blocked the front door,” a bearded man shouted.
Tom’s neighbors’ eyes fell on him with naked expectation, and he refastened his grip around the smooth ax handle, the teenage boy retreating halfway up the stairs, the Fury drawn by his movement and dropping from the doctor’s door now stained with bloody hand prints.
The dead man wore a Confederate jacket and dirty work pants. He was missing a shoe. His stained undershirt was ragged with stab wounds, yet life still glowed in its eyes, the Fury freshly reborn, victim’s blood smearing its mouth as whiskered jaws worked soundlessly amid a wheezing intake of breath Tom realized came from the old man and not the Fury as it started up the stairs unevenly, smearing blood along the wall as it came.
“Get back,” Tom said.
His neighbors remained frozen long enough Tom wondered if they thought he was talking to the dead intruder, so he manhandled the closest women out of the way. The teenager slipped past him and Tom had to shrug off the boy’s hands clutching his shoulders like a sofa he could hide behind, the terrifying things on TV sprung to ghoulish life. Tom pushed forward, motivated by the woman left bleeding and savaged on the stairs trying to prop herself upright, hair matted with blood, bites all over her face, flesh missing from her neck.
The Fury on the stairs growled low in its throat as if knowing its work had to be swift if it could kill Tom at all. Glassy brown eyes locked on him as it cleared the last few steps, preparing to rush him, and so Tom took the only move the play allowed. He charged forward himself, left shoulder like a shield against the beast, catching one outstretched hand and swinging with his hand ax for all he was worth.
But the monster scored a lucky break. Its other hand came in at Tom in time to cross the blow. Its forearm broke with an audible snap though it didn’t flinch. Still holding the Fury’s other arm, Tom drove his knee high into the creature’s ribs hard enough to lift it from the ground, untangling his arm, changing angle, chopping again and hitting its shoulder with messy results, driving more unrelenting blows down on the creature until he chopped through its warding arm as well.
The thing thrust snapping jaws at Tom’s face and somehow twisted around with sufficient force that Tom had an awful moment
where the pair of them nearly tumbled down the stairs. Instead, he got his knee into its midriff again, then stepped well enough clear to put his boot into the middle of its chest, pushing as he released his own grip so the Fury staggered, rebounded off the wall, and then Tom forced it over the side of the metal handrail.
The Fury cartwheeled backwards over the drop. More bones broke as it hit the far side of the staircase and tumbled all the way down to Swarovsky’s second floor landing, though the zombie never ceased its mewling growl, something vital in its spine giving way as it came to a rest curled awkwardly on the timeworn linoleum. The injured woman desperately tried to scramble free. Tom descended slowly past her, breathing as well, each footfall heavy, eyes locked on the threat, Iwa’s door opening a crack and then closing just as fast as Tom came over the thing and brought the ax down hard between its hateful glaring eyes.
The silence was almost total.
Tom struck again for good measure. Fresh arterial blood bubbled out of the grisly cleft in its skull, blooming like treacle in a puddle near Swarovsky’s door and showing the Fury hadn’t been dead long, its native blood flow uncongealed.
He let out a tight sigh and tiredly thumped on the door with the bottom of his fist.
“You can come out,” he said. “It’s safe. And you’re needed.”
And he shot a look down at the half-dozen neighbors at the bottom floor just to confirm the immediate threat really had passed.
*
TOM STEPPED BACK from the doctor’s doorway as it opened, unexpectedly warmed by the sight of his neighbor in a gown with her black hair disheveled, the squirming, bleeding woman and the scenes below, and his other, far less fetching neighbors emitting grunts of surprise and confusion demanding Tom’s attention as they worked the front door of the building clear.
“Eva, are you OK?”
“Of course.”
Their unintended rendezvous clearly wasn’t on her mind, but rather the circumstances of it. The doctor cast one look at the bleeding woman, a resident of one of the bottom-floor apartments, and took her black medical bag with her up the stairs towards Tom’s landing. She quickly knelt by the wounded woman’s side, taking the time to slip on surgical gloves before relieving the victim’s grip on her neck wound.
After The Apocalypse Season 1 Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 19
