Tom forced as much hardness as he could into his stare, willing full disclosure from the other man while mindful the clock was ticking against them with the others idling nearby.
“We need more intel,” MacLaren said. “Maybe we can track them to their base.”
He started for the others and Tom grabbed his arm, knowing the crew members were watching. For all they knew, it was a lovers’ tiff.
“Are you good to do this?”
“Of course.”
MacLaren shrugged him off, hurrying across clapping his hands together with a rousing grin. But he didn’t leave Tom behind. The ex-commando looked back until Tom gave another sigh and walked across to join the others gearing up for the overland trek.
*
HEADED NORTH ON foot from the agri-hub, knowing the unforecasted recon mission would mean a night out in the open and without returning for his children settled over Tom like an unwanted coat. The twelve of them took a dirt road through the ripening farmland, and it wasn’t long before the arable land they’d reclaimed from the surrounding fields came to an end, showing the scars of its past use adjoining vast industrial lots hemmed in further ahead by more satellite suburbs of outer Columbus. Hollister and the sharp-featured woman from the newcomers called Pamela led the patrol, and by silent agreement, the commandos – involuntary ones, in Tom’s case – advanced in a sparse formation with plenty of chance to find cover and back each other up if any Furies appeared.
Tom kept his eyes peeled on the uninteresting terrain off the interstate. They entered the back streets of a subdivision and moved past the occasional wreck as MacLaren slowly picked his way through the other crew until he reached Tom’s side again.
“Guilty conscience?” Tom greeted him.
“Pretty much.”
“I should’ve knocked you on your ass,” Tom said.
“You could’ve tried.”
Tom’s glare locked on the other man and any efforts at mirth died.
“You could’ve stayed at the agri-hub.”
“What,” Tom said with a sneer. “The hero of the Raptor crash?”
He exhaled through his nose and turned as they started passing through the remains of a scorched convoy of military wrecks and dozens of corpses buried by time and dust along the sidewalks of the otherwise ordinary suburban street. It opened ahead to a dead intersection and a box truck on its side. A feral dog loped across their path, sniffed the air once and moved on with a look of derision.
“We’re overnighting it?” Tom asked.
“We’ve got provisions for three days.”
“Three days?”
Tom thought of Dkembe left as the reigning adult with his children and just as quickly recognized his own bias, Lilianna at least too old and open to the world now for him to keep her boxed into childhood. He could only hope they’d be OK, but it didn’t sit well with him – at all.
“Tell me what you know,” Tom said. “You want me to watch your back, give me all of it.”
“The two northern checkpoints have reported seven incidents between them in the past nine days,” MacLaren said.
“And what’s Ortega really said?”
Dan eyed Tom sideways as they moved through the intersection. Timms and Milwaukee ahead provided a rear guard near the overturned truck. The avenue gave clear line of sight through a brief urban center of burnt-out and looted stores. The residential patch was only a few more blocks before a defunct railway and broken fencing yielded onto more unused lots and a sandy embankment climbing to another motorway.
“I’m being straight with you,” MacLaren said. “We just need to scout the area and gather direct intel.”
“What do we know from the checkpoints?”
“Whoever the Raiders are, they don’t come closer than fifteen clicks to the checkpoints,” MacLaren said. “No eyewitness has reported more than six men. We think they might have transport. Two gunfights so far, three reported dead. None of theirs. Motives are unclear because pilgrims who didn’t fight were robbed, but not hurt. And then they tie them up, leaving them for the dead. So. . . .”
“What about the kickback from Wilhelm and others for not running this past them?”
“We took this to the City and they haven’t done squat. Someone needs to shut these guys down before any more people get killed.
“They’re well armed,” MacLaren continued. “Seemingly well provisioned, too, living off the stragglers headed here. Checkpoints had only two pilgrims come through in the past three days. If this keeps up, they’ll scare off everyone making for Columbus from the north.”
“Maybe it’s nothing to do with the Raiders,” Tom said.
He wondered if resentment made him argumentative.
“Do we even know if we’re dealing with one group of bandits or are there more of them out there?” Tom said. “The checkpoints can’t last forever. How do you know you’re not just getting fewer survivors making the trek?”
“You sound like Wilhelm,” MacLaren said.
“Are you sure he’s wrong?” Tom replied. “Yeah, I know. I didn’t expect to be defending him either, but those checkpoints can’t last forever. If rations are under threat like you say, and it’s true the Administration’s cut down allocations, maybe all the efforts going into the checkpoints could be put to better use.”
Something in the rebuttal sterned MacLaren’s demeanor. He nodded back towards Brix in the posse behind them.
“There’s a couple of guns left,” MacLaren said and motioned to Tom’s longbow. “You should upgrade.”
Tom unhitched his bow and tossed the stave into the air to catch with a practiced move.
“What, a traditional Welsh longbow not good enough for you?”
“It was me who took the headshot last time, remember?”
“Sniper.”
MacLaren gestured at the bow.
“I’m just wondering if it’s enough if we take on heavy fire.”
“How about let’s not take on heavy fire?” Tom replied. “Fucking hell, Dan. Did I mention I have kids?”
“Yeah yeah,” Dan replied. “You’re so hetero.”
“They’re important to me.”
“Everyone was important to someone once.”
“Wrong answer.”
Tom made a fist and moved to stow the longbow. Instead, MacLaren held his hand out in request. Tom paused a long moment, then let him take the weapon.
“What’s the story with you and the bow then?” he asked. “You said you grew up with them?”
“My father was a history professor,” Tom said. “He had a place I inherited in Tennessee. We used to go there hunting.”
“With bows?”
“Yeah,” Tom said. “We weren’t that good. It wasn’t important. My dad wasn’t into sport hunting. He did it for the history. The Welsh archers were an area of . . . expertise.”
MacLaren raised an eyebrow.
“Welsh and English archers with yew bows revolutionized warfare during their time.”
Tom delivered the line with a characteristic shrug, nothing in his tone to let on how his father’s passion for some things spurred his own. The longbow was the closest link he had to honor his father’s legacy, even if things hadn’t ended well between them.
“My dad did the research,” Tom said. “Learnt how the Welsh trained their archers from a young age, taught them to use their bodies, not just the strength, trained them up on bows to scale and increased the draw weight over time.”
“He did that with you?”
“My sister and me,” Tom said and for some reason allowed a chuckle. “We were his own little history experiment.”
“I didn’t have anything cool like that with my dad,” MacLaren said. “What about your mom?”
Tom slowly shook his head, fallen into a reverie as they trudged that was mostly just reluctance to say more, though he did.
“My dad raised us on his own. There was unfinished business between me and him, too, don’t worry about
that. He was up north when things went south. Somehow I managed to do exactly what he did though . . . took up with the wrong woman and got left to raise my children on my own, just like he did.”
“Freudian, huh?”
Tom eyed MacLaren, a rueful smirk not quite concealing how the truce between them came with grave misgivings.
*
THE BAKING DAY started to cool late afternoon as MacLaren and Pamela led them ever north. Suburbia lay behind them, the land giving way – or more accurately, taking over – after they passed through the township of Sunbury. They were far from the Foragers’ orange tags now. The outer rural properties were swamped by five years of untethered growth and the weeds grew high in summer, choking the trekkers’ small talk as they kept alert for potential Fury attacks that never came.
Instead, a man in a stained checkered shirt stepped out from some bushes not far from a lone country garage, itself festooned with weeds and vines. The straggler was weak with heat and dehydration, and if he only stood at their approach, it didn’t last long. He dropped into a dejected slump as Pamela and Hollister took up sentry positions and others in the troupe bounded off in different directions to make sure the crossroads was secure.
They left the task of approaching the survivor to MacLaren, and by default, Tom, who shrugged off their military wiles to shadow the unit leader to where the skinny, graying man weakly held one hand out, not far from becoming one of the living dead himself.
“Water, please.”
MacLaren passed him a canister and told him to take it slow, more to preserve their own supply than any direct concern for the pilgrim’s health.
“Are you from the City?” the man asked.
“I’m MacLaren, this is Tom Vanicek,” MacLaren said. “You?”
“Leon Henderson.”
“Traveling on your own, Leon?” Tom asked.
The man took another drink and then another, sighing and relaxing slightly. MacLaren moved so his shadow threw itself over the man to offer some relief from the sun.
“We got waylaid,” the survivor said. “Damned thing. They took my Margie and the other girl too, damn it. She just up and went with them.”
“Where was this?”
Henderson pointed off in the direction beyond some nearby homes little more than dingy brown rooftops peeking out above the head-high summer grass weeding into flower.
“Can you tell us what happened?” Tom asked.
“How many were there?” MacLaren added.
“Hard to tell,” Henderson said and panted slightly, having trouble making his eyes focus.
“Take another drink,” Tom said.
Henderson nodded and MacLaren set down his pack to fish out some dried fruit, while Cyril jogged over and tapped his shoulder to say the area was secure.
“Let’s get out of this heat.”
*
THEY CARTED THEIR things into the nearby timber garage. The pumps outside were vandalized beyond repair and someone had sprayed graffiti all over the storefront glass before someone else shattered every pane. The troopers trudged over a clinking carpet of shards while spare members of the squad turned the place over looking for anything of interest.
Henderson sat on a raised swivel stool, slightly more functional with a small meal and some water inside him.
“It was me and Margie, my lady, and the girl who tagged along outside of Akron.”
“Margie was your woman, or there were three women?” MacLaren asked.
“I called her my wife,” Henderson said weakly. “And then she just up and left me like that. Two years we were together.”
“Hold on,” Tom said. “I thought you said the Raiders abducted her?”
“May as well have did,” Henderson replied.
Tom and MacLaren swapped looks while Brix and Hollister stood by. Whether they were taking a break or stopping for the night, the other eight squad members set about making the building secure now they’d established the place was picked clean.
“Just tell us what happened,” MacLaren said to the miserable-looking man.
“We were making the trek to the City,” Leon said. “It’s real, right?”
“You already asked us that,” Tom said. “Yes. Go on.”
“We left some people up at Lake Erie to come here,” he said. “Sick of scratching in the mud trying to live, you know? Margie came with me. We shacked up when her father died. She’s younger’n me, by a bit.”
“The Raiders, man.”
“Just stepped out onto the roadway behind some big rotting hay bales,” Henderson said. “They were just waiting for us. Watched us, I dunno how long. I didn’t realize it.”
“And?”
“Fella was smilin’,” Henderson said bitterly. “I’ll never forget that. A real cowboy. He had a rifle and came out all casual like we weren’t much of a catch. There were others behind us. Maybe a dozen? I dunno. But here’s the thing.”
The survivor clutched the air like he wanted to strangle the unfairness of it, drawing Tom and MacLaren into his misery.
“They think they’re such gentlemen,” he said. “Smirkin’, smilin’ bastards. The one with the rifle hauled us up short and introduced himself to the women and then three of his men came out and started fighting.”
“Fighting?”
“With who?” MacLaren added.
“Each other,” Leon said. “I thought they were foolin’ with me, tryin’ to make me look small. They told Margie and Kate they wanted to take ‘em with ‘em as their women and they got to choose who they wanted out of the three of ‘em fightin’ there like fools, like they were tryin’ to win their honor or somethin’.”
MacLaren was speechless. Tom asked the obvious.
“What’d the women do?”
Leon started to cry, miserableness plunging to new depths of gloom as he pawed away splashing tears.
“Kate didn’t even pause to think about it,” he said. “Her, we didn’t really know her, just met up goin’ the same way. But Margie, she took one look at me. I’ll never forget it. Told me ‘sorry’ and went over to one of them before Katie even choosed. The bastard was ten years younger than her!”
“Now the age difference’s an issue,” Tom said and gave a weak laugh.
It wasn’t a professional demeanor, but he didn’t have as much sympathy as he might. Instead, he excused himself from his ongoing half-crouch and moved to the front of the room away from the others to stare out through the broken windows on the sunset gathering over the gas station. It was only a few minutes before MacLaren joined him with the hawk-faced Pamela some kind of lieutenant.
“What do you think?” Dan asked him.
Tom acknowledged the older woman with a curt nod.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “They don’t exactly sound like some of the . . . others we know running wild out there.”
“What do you mean?” Pamela asked.
“Well, I don’t know about you two,” Tom replied. “There’s living people gone full cannibal out there. All sorts of weird shit. You’ve seen those dudes dressed like Klansmen in the City, right?”
“The Ascending,” MacLaren said.
“Apocalypse cultists, all sorts of crazies in the world,” Tom said. “The women weren’t abducted. They got made an offer.”
“An offer they couldn’t refuse,” Pamela said.
“Not sure it sounds like that.”
Pamela was used to people melting under her electric blue glare, but the moment Tom felt the temptation to weaken, he drew a slow, almost imperceptibly deep breath and toughed it out without too much teeth gritting.
“They’re still a danger,” MacLaren said. “Took everything this guy had and left him to die in the wild. That’s wrong. That’s not what the City’s about.”
He said it with the force of a directive and Tom let himself acquiesce without further comeback as he pondered the ramifications of what he’d said.
“We should camp here and get an early rest,” Pamela
said.
“Agreed,” MacLaren replied. “We’ll bed down early with two scouts in two shifts. Set an alarm for 4am. Should give us plenty of zees. When we head out while the sun’s still down, I’ll break out the comms gear to make sure we can go full stealth mode from here on in.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Pamela said.
She flicked her gaze to Tom as if to judge his agreement and then obviously thought better of it. She moved away to communicate the instructions to the others, leaving the two men together.
“You still want to go after them?”
“It needs to be done,” MacLaren replied. “Chief’s orders.”
Tom nodded, letting him off the hook – and with the other man’s silent thanks. MacLaren left him as if in guard at the front of the station as the others started work on making their sleeping quarters as secure as they could.
*
THEY TOOK OVER the garage for their lodgings since the rest of the building was indefensible. The waves of past looting had caused less damage in the workshop itself, and apart from the hulk of a ‘58 Buick still on the rack, there was plenty of room for the rest of them and only one door to secure. Most of the tools were gathering dust on the floor and someone had spray-painted one massive word, “HASTUR”, across the back of the external garage doors, built like the front of a timber boathouse with a sturdy length of oak barring them shut.
As night came on, they heated k-rations on gas stoves and kept their electric lanterns low. After eating and feeding Mr Henderson too, Timms and Brix took it on themselves to circle the building outside keeping a lookout, and MacLaren quietly encouraged the rest of them to get whatever shuteye they could. He settled in beside Tom with a jackal’s grin, ignoring his own directive as he unpacked a portable chess set with a stage magician’s flourish.
“What do you say?”
“It’s been a while.”
But not as long as MacLaren might think. Chess was a regular fixture of his life with Lilianna and Luke, even during the past year. He eyed the small plastic pieces under the winking light and studied MacLaren in turn as he fussed with the fold-out board maintaining his stark grin. Not a single misgiving had retreated in Tom’s head, but he felt an inconsistent fondness for the other man – and he did enjoy a good game of chess.
After The Apocalypse Season 1 Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 38
