“Feels like a police evidence room in here,” Tom said.
“Here,” Tucker said and put the clipboard into Tom’s chest. “Your eyes gotta be better than mine. Read what the number says.”
“J24.”
Tom watched Tucker for a cautious moment, then joined the older man scanning up and down the aisles for the locker in question. Some of the numerous cages would’ve once housed pets, repurposed now by the City bureaucracy. The high-ceilinged chamber held a wild assortment of secure lockers and bolted shelves, though few were locked. String tags dangled from handles and they had to turn dozens of paper labels by hand until they even found the right section. After that, Tom spotted his family’s gear by sight.
“There.”
The narrow wire compartment held the M14 and the three Vanicek bows, plus their arrows, but with a quick inspection Tom couldn’t see the semi-automatic rifle’s magazine.
“OK,” Tucker said and covered his unease with a smile. “So, there’s a good news-bad news component to this. The paperwork only clears you for one weapon. You need extra permits to get the others out.”
Tom let out a loose, elongated sigh.
“Rules for fucking everything here, huh?”
“You gotta work the system, not hate it,” Tucker said. “That’s all anyone’s doing.”
“I thought we were rebuilding America?”
“Really?”
“Jeez, maybe I’m an optimist after all,” Tom said. “‘Rebuilding America’ sounded good on the welcome video. Where’s my ammo?”
“All ammunition’s subject to Administration seizure.”
“You knew that already?”
“Hey, I promised I’d get you back your gun,” Tucker said and failed not to sound irate. “Signed, sealed, and delivered.”
“But you never promised any bullets.”
“No, I didn’t,” Tucker replied. “Just like you didn’t say anything back when I was talking about our plans for next week.”
The two men eyed each other in the gloomy room, friendship turned to animosity rattlesnake fast. Tom withdrew himself from the exchange to examine his confiscated weaponry, then he retrieved his quiver and the Welsh longbow from the tall rack.
“If there’s no bullets, I’m better with the bow.”
“Foragers get an allocation for firearms, if you prefer the rifle,” Tucker said.
His eyes stayed fixed on Tom, begrudging humor creeping back in.
“You didn’t have any plans to come back to the Foragers next week, did you?”
“I’m sorry, Tucker,” Tom said. “You said it yourself. We’ve got to work the system.”
“Still, you could’ve said something,” the squad leader said. “Let me shoot my mouth off like some old coot.”
“I didn’t want you to change your mind,” Tom said to him. “I’m sorry, man. I want my gear back. All of it. My kids’ bows, too.”
“Well, something’s better than nothing,” Tucker said. “I hope you’re happy.”
He closed the cage door and slid the bolt in place, shook his head once, like a disappointed teacher, then motioned for Tom to follow him back out of the room.
*
THE LONELY WALK back along The Mile felt a lot worse for the residual guilt of parting ways with Tucker, and not at all lessened for the hundreds of other Citizens all around. Despite the hundreds, if not thousands of Citizens with day work, crowds along The Mile never seemed to ease off except after Curfew. Plenty of destitute City folk seemed content to shuffle from one stall to the next, eyes poring over the trinkets of yesteryear and the out-of-reach commodities of today. Tom found a man and his adopted son working electric clippers and submitted himself for a shave, cropping his graying hair close and taking his beard back to stubble. He paid the pair with his watch, frustrated at the lack of anything more immediately convertible, and then walked back to his apartment rubbing his wrist, bare yet again, scoping the numerous booths, vendors and hawkers sometimes indistinguishable from the down-and-outs consoling themselves to their private miseries in the company of The Mile.
Tom couldn’t find any of the items on his secret shopping list and gnawed his knuckles in frustration knowing he had no clear way to pay even if he did. Momentarily, at least, the hopes for his illicit coffee trade faded with a bitter aftertaste not unlike the drink itself – better as a memory than in the reality of the day. He skirted the Night Market, reluctant to taunt himself with options he couldn’t afford, at least until he’d cashed his unbanked ration credits.
After skirting the City’s calamitous-looking main medical center, he found his way to the supplies depot Lila had described, pulling out his booklet and waiting in a queue of more than fifty people shuffling slowly closer to a bank of trestle tables inside the repurposed warehouse. Older men with wheelbarrows stacked supplies on the concrete deck to the rear. A half-dozen women, including one with a walking frame, let Citizens through a barrier to make their trades, stacks of boxes and a few old forklift pallets stocked with limited amounts of plain-wrapped supplies, nothing as exciting as sugar or fresh meat. The most nutritious stuff – including the thin stream of fruits and vegetables the City now produced itself – sat in tall tubs at the back of it all, watched over by an armed guard.
When it finally came Tom’s turn, a woman with a birthmark covering half her face escorted him behind the tables and watched carefully as he shopped. Lilianna had her own booklet now, and Tom and Luke made sure each day’s credit from classes was added to Tom’s double quota from the recent Foragers work. The entire haul netted him two pounds of rice, a half-pound of cornflower, the same of regular wheat, then a half-dozen cans of beans, followed by the same amount of tuna, diced tomato, and creamed corn with their labels so worn it came with the risk of being spoiled. The depot offered a few other novelty supplies – Tom chose a commercial-grade tin of pumpkin soup – but the powdered milk, tinned cocoa and bouillon cubes, along with jars of preserved fruit, olives, pizza sauce, and peanut butter, cost more stamps off the rations book than would feed Tom for a few days, let alone his whole family for the next week. When he asked about spices or even some basic salt, the woman shrugged, self-conscious with her birthmark, and told him to try “fishing on the street”. Then she called the next couple in line and Tom bagged his supplies and made his way back out into the daylight.
It was well and truly time to fix something decent for lunch, though Tom considered fasting until their invite to dinner at Hugh’s place for the sake of added austerity. His stomach didn’t think much of that idea. He walked home ignoring the smell of spiced meat wafting from the Night Market, expecting almost anything when he re-entered his apartment but for his daughter to be home and entertaining a guest.
*
LILIANNA HALTED MID-conversation as Tom entered, mystified, fighting his natural tendency towards alarm to find the front door not just unlocked, but ajar. Carrying his bag of supplies still, he released the bow and quiver from his shoulder and let them slide to the floor. Lilianna’s eyes homed in on the retrieved gear and her lips bowed slightly as they sometimes did when filing a grievance away for later.
The stranger rose from the living room sofa and buttoned up his jacket, nodding politely to Tom and looking to Lilianna to make the introductions instead of delivering the glass of water she’d just poured.
“Cool, dad, you’re here,” Lila said finally and abandoned a quick smile, nerves evident as she set the glasses on the counter and needlessly smoothed down her shirt.
“Nice haircut, by the way,” she said sheepishly. “Overdue.”
“Mr Vanicek, my name’s Delroy Earle,” the black man said.
Earle met Tom halfway and Tom afforded him the courtesy of a handshake without ruling out beating him to death in the next few seconds.
“I hope you’re not alarmed and I’m sorry to surprise you with my visit,” Earle said.
“I invited him, dad,” Lila said. “He runs the Columbus Herald.”
&nb
sp; “The Herald?” Tom said like a drunkard. “You mean the newspaper?”
The Tetris blocks of realization dropped into place and Tom’d barely released the man’s hand before he round his gaze on Lilianna at one and the same time outraged and becalmed.
“Listen, Mr Vanicek,” Earle said. “This is just a neighborly visit. Your daughter mentioned you were a reporter once.”
“And how did she come to mention that?”
The forthright yet obvious question only reinforced what the newspaper editor’d been told, and Earle gave a depreciatory smile, eyes downcast as he deferred to Lila to take it on the chin.
“I stopped by the Herald this morning,” she said.
“You stopped by the Herald this morning,” Tom repeated.
“I thought about what you said, and thought, yeah, I wouldn’t mind a day off work, you know?” Lilianna said and laughed as if hoping her father might join in.
But that clearly wasn’t happening. Tom’s baleful glower traveled like a slow-motion death ray from Lilianna back to the newspaper man.
“I don’t really know why you’d bother coming around just because my daughter said I used to be a reporter,” Tom said. “I’m not a news reporter. We’re working our own angle here. Thanks for stopping by.”
“Your daughter offered me a glass of water,” Earle said. “Damned thirsty weather. Hard to believe we’d all be grudging the heat after freezing our asses off in winter, huh?”
Tom simply kept staring, switching something off inside himself allowing him to hold Earle’s gaze like an unrelenting machine.
“Do you mind if I have a drink of water, Mr Vanicek?”
“You can call me Tom,” Tom said crisply. “Mr Vanicek sounds like you think I’m still interested in talking to you.”
“OK, well, thanks.”
Earle shot Lila a tight smile and accepted the drink during the brief armistice, turning a little theatrical with the old yellowed glass after taking a sip, holding it up to the light as if he might be about to offer a review.
“I heard your name yesterday, actually,” Earle said slowly. “Imagine my surprise when this delightful young woman popped her head in at the Herald today and asked to speak to me.”
Tom forced an exhalation, lowering the intensity on his heat vision a notch and casting one begrudging look across to Lilianna, screwing up his mouth more in chagrined thoughtfulness than blame. For her part, his daughter gave a helpless shrug – as if to say she was helpless to do anything other than what was in her nature.
Earle cleared his throat.
“They say there was an incident yesterday on a Foragers mission and you guys found a jet fighter plane crashed,” he said. “Crashed . . . as in, recently?”
“Dad?”
Lilianna stared back at Tom, now her turn to be aghast – and she took to the part like a natural. Bare fists clenched by her sides at the same time she gave a whimpering sob.
“Dad, is that true?” she asked. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
Tom shook his head, not ignoring his daughter’s obvious distress, but disinclined to be the one doing the explaining with a self-confessed journalist in his living room.
“Lila, I told you I wasn’t interested in the newspaper,” he said.
“I just wanted to find out more,” she replied as she wiped back tears. “Did you think at all maybe I was interested for me, too? I’m your daughter, after all.”
“Interested in the newspaper?”
Tom’s face twisted in such a fierce look of disbelief that even Earle chuckled, unintentionally disarming the moment as if by choosing not to take personal offense.
“I don’t know what your bad experience was in the media, Tom,” Earle said. “If you’re not interested in contributing, that’s totally OK. But you have to tell me about the Raptor.”
“Do I just,” Tom muttered. “Who’s your source?”
“As if I’m telling you that, Tom.”
“It’s Tom now, is it?”
“Well, I haven’t finished my water yet.”
Earle flashed a smile he knew was charming even when it shouldn’t be. Delroy Earle was just enough years older than Tom that he thought it meant something – charming and condescending in the one fell move. Something came loose in Tom’s chest and he drew a deeper breath and hung his head, surrendering to the impetus of this moment in his personal history.
“Let’s sit, then,” Tom said. “I’m beat.”
He lowered his haversack and put the big canned soup on the kitchen bench, drumming the top thoughtfully as he took in Earle’s poorly-concealed smile of conceit. Then, Tom took the second glass and moved to the seat he favored, backlit by the noon glare of the day through the listless curtains and rows of potted plants.
*
EARLE HAD A leather satchel he pulled into his lap and made a show of opening. Inside were a couple of notepads and a bundle of pens bound together with an elastic tie.
“Do you mind if I take notes?”
“I do.”
“Oh . . . really?”
“I’m not interested in talking on the record and I don’t know you at all,” Tom said. “No disrespect. I’m not interested in being your Deep Throat.”
Lila blinked at the reference, but Earle offered a slow understanding nod.
“You worked TV news?”
“I’m not interested in talking about it,” Tom said in an imitation of just moments before.
“Sure, I get it,” Earle said and sighed. “I heard about the Raptor crash and some wild story about a firefight. Said a guy called Vanicek killed six guys.”
“Dad!”
Tom held out a hand – whether for silence, her trust, or something else, it wasn’t clear.
“That’s bullshit,” Tom said.
“Not a lot of help to me off the record,” Earle shrugged. “We’re hoping to get an edition out before tomorrow night’s Council meeting, Tom. You know what deadlines are like.”
Tom realized he’d nodded just a second after Earle caught him at it, alerted to the smug grin stealing its way back across the other man’s swarthy features. Earle scrubbed at his gray-flecked beard in a closeted expression of amusement, his jacket lifting up to inadvertently reveal the nickel-plated handgun discreetly holstered at the back of his hip.
“Got a permit for that, I suppose?” Tom asked.
“The Five know I’m not trigger happy,” Earle replied and motioned to the impressive longbow laying in the hall. “We haven’t rebuilt the world yet, right?”
“The Five?”
“The Council,” Earle said. “Lowenstein, Rhymes, Wilhelm, Deschain, and ‘Shakes’ Ben-Gurion. They call the shots around here. That’s why the Herald has a position demanding free elections.”
“Early days for that, isn’t it?”
“If we’re rebuilding America, democracy seems like a pretty good place to start.”
Tom was silenced by the echo of his own words, said in only half-intended sarcasm just a couple of hours before. The newspaper editor mistook his silence for a chance to return, like a dog to its bone, with more questions about the Raptor.
“There’s a hell of a story I could write here, Tom,” he said. “If you don’t want to be mentioned, that’s your call. I’ll respect that. But I don’t want to write ‘bullshit’ any more’n you want to read it, I assume . . . as an ex-reporter yourself, right?”
Tom’s shrug felt ripe with admission.
“What happened?” Earle asked.
“I stopped working the news way before the world went to hell,” Tom said.
“Papers?”
“Mostly TV.”
“Oh, the big time, huh?”
Earle had a news man’s twinkle in his eye, mocking print’s digital cousin.Tom motioned, again vague as to his meaning and intentions, then let the hand fall heavily in his lap.
“I started out in papers, got a few big stories,” Tom said and eased back a little. “Turned out I was good at it. Ju
mped ship a couple of times. Survived a merger. One of the news channels in Philly straight up offered me a gig.”
“I suppose you weren’t in it for the money though, huh?”
“Something about working newspapers, the idea of getting paid properly seems dirty, I know,” Tom said. “It’s like you’re one of the slimes you report on, getting rich when they don’t deserve it. Hell yes, I did it for the money. And the status.”
Tom shook his head at himself for a moment.
“So you had a good career?”
“They let me go hard and I chased stories I wanted to tell.”
Tom had completely forgotten about Lilianna standing off to one side in the kitchen.
“So what happened?”
“I don’t know anything about you, man.”
“OK,” Earle said and nodded, looking around the room as if looking for his cue where to start. “What do I tell you? I started back in the day a cadetship was four years and they taught you shorthand and didn’t even let you file a story until third year. Worked my way up. Chicago. Skin color was never a problem. Just my hunger. It’s a blood-thirsty industry, I don’t need to tell you that. The best scoop wins front page and the reader doesn’t care whether you’re black, white or purple.”
“So you came from Chicago?”
“Oh hell no,” Earle said and gave a rich snorting laugh. “Right after the dot-com bubble, they made four in every five of us sub-editors redundant for online, back before they realized no one could make any money from digital alone. I retrained as a teacher. Taught writing and civics at night school, too. Ran the high school paper. Just me and the kids.”
Earle lit them with another dark smile and directed himself back to Tom.
“Why’d you quit working as a TV reporter if the work was so good and they paid so well? I’m curious.”
Tom studied him a long moment, deeply tired though it was only the middle of the day.
After The Apocalypse Season 1 Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 22
