After The Apocalypse Season 1 Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Hately, Warren

  Tom blinked at that, turned away from Earle and already standing out in the sunshine trying not to show the ache of his fresh injuries, nor draw attention to his slinged arm.

  “Do I look in any state for that?”

  “It suits them, anyway,” Earle said as if he’d heard nothing. “They’re more than happy to do anything they can to keep me quiet. This isn’t a democracy, Tom.”

  For his part, Tom only squinted, depleted, nonplussed about the newspaper man’s occasional mood swings involving the City Council, which seemed to leave him irate – irate, and perhaps more than a little paranoid.

  “Democracy might be a little too much to hope for,” Tom said.

  “We can’t give up on democracy, Tom,” Earle replied as if he expected Tom to feel chastened. “When we turn our backs on democracy, we surrender to the savagery of these times. We can have a resurrection. Not a revolution. A reconstruction. Do you understand?”

  Tom left Earle to his pontifications and cut across The Mile until he came to Montgomery Stewart’s radio shack. The old man was in a sour mood, treating Tom like a former shoplifter, but Monty was still keen for the trade when Tom fished out a new-looking combat knife from his backpack along with four D-type batteries. In exchange, he claimed a set of two-way radios he’d spied on his previous visit and completely forgot about – until he found himself unexpectedly miles from the City and with no way to contact his children.

  Tom was determined that was never happening again.

  There was a sense of commotion on The Mile he’d noted already – milling people casting their eyes around, furtive glances, traders gossiping with hands over their mouths, the trooper patrols even more hard-eyed than normal. Ahead of him as he left Monty’s shack, Tom spied a mob of people blocking view of where a quartet of Department of Safety troopers zip-tied a pair of grimy young white men in sweat-soaked coveralls. The troopers hauled the pair to their feet in apparent arrest, another guard covering the others with a raised Ak-47 which seemed a touch extreme until the rising noise of a motorcycle sent people running in all directions.

  Tom was too sore and absorbed in his new acquisition to realize how quickly things were about to go to shit.

  The motorbike appeared from nowhere with a passenger on the pillion, pulling up with relative skill as the helmeted man on back sprayed bullets into the troopers from an antique-looking Uzi machine pistol.

  The extended burst hit two of the Safety officers and they fell back, one of them into the arms of a stout female bystander who also took a round in the chest, another clipping the side of her head. The fleeing crowds erupted into shrieks and cries and Tom startled hustling left, seeking cover along with a flood of migrants as the motorbike revved again and the back tire tore up the mud-encrusted street. One of the two arrested men ran past Tom with his arms behind his back, but Tom huddled into cover as well as he could with his breath coming in pained gasps crushed between several other onlookers thrust once again into survival mode despite the promises of City life.

  For Tom, at least, hiding was the first instinct when it was too intense to render the whole battlefield in one look. He was torn between self-preservation and what might be most useful in such a crisis, but it was far too hectic to easily make sense and he had an empty tank when it came to more heroics. The fleeing captive disappeared into a rush of people surging away down the next side street, and the troopers still on their feet were likewise torn between tending to their comrades and pouring fire into the pair on the bike as it fishtailed away through crowds running the other way. The lone female trooper in the quartet growled aloud and lifted her rifle at the motorcycle duo, but held off, too many Citizens in the way.

  One of the assassin’s bullets had taken the remaining prisoner through the calf, and with his hands still painfully behind his back, the young man inched away from the dead or dying troopers beside him as if they might spring back into life any second. The turning always came within minutes. The dead rose right after the moment of death only in Tom’s nightmares.

  Yet onlookers’ lack of haste in dispatching the slain always shocked him, and now that’s what spurred Tom out of his burrow, creeping forward along with just a handful of other Citizens advancing on the ambush site with cautious glances all around. One of the two gunshot troopers gave a violent retch and sat up, blood dribbling from his mouth, a hand over the bullet wound at the seam of his Kevlar vest. More bullets had struck his comrade in his armored chest, but then tracked up to his throat where there was no protection.

  Angered, the woman in their company fired a burst from her weapon into the air.

  “God damn it!”

  The remaining unwounded trooper and an onlooker with some kind of paramedic skill tended the surviving man, though his injuries looked grave. Tom scanned down at the innocent woman killed for simply standing in the background and then at the other Citizens creeping closer again – but not too close.

  “Someone needs to silence the dead,” Tom found himself saying.

  The woman sentry shot him a hostile look, but her colleague, a neatly-bearded Hispanic guy, only dismissed Tom’s concerns with more urgent matters on his hands.

  “Be my guest.”

  “Why the hell were they shooting at you?”

  Two more troopers ran into the scene with their guns raised, scanning all around before one of them stowed his firearm and pulled a first-aid kit from his pack, joining the relief effort as Tom’s eyes again fell to the dead bystander. The female trooper moved closer, superfluous to the triage on the hard-packed mud of the street.

  “The Brotherhood,” the woman said.

  “What?”

  “Burroughs’ men,” she explained. “They’re pissed he’s under house arrest, but I didn’t think they’d resort to this. Fucking assholes. Call themselves ‘master men’, but they’re just little boys with guns. Don’t they understand we’re trying to remake the fucking world here?”

  Tom admired the principle beneath her cussword-laden speech, but the ardent glaze of the trooper’s eyes was a little too hypnotized for Tom’s liking.

  “They haven’t released Burroughs yet?”

  Tom blinked and stared around at the aftermath of the powder keg already lit.

  Another bystander dragged himself out from behind the wooden crates of a vendor’s stall, hit by a stray round that took him through the upper thigh.

  “I need some help here!” the man called out.

  The trooper gave Tom a hooded look and went to the man. Tom fell in behind her, averting his stare from the glassy eyes of the dead woman and the sentry beside her leaving him so oddly disturbed. Among the people still emerging from hiding, Ivan of the Red Armbands already clutched a cargo of coiled ropes in both arms, wide-eyed and strangely thoughtful at the unexpected mayhem.

  Tom halted the female trooper as gently as his injured left arm allowed.

  “Excuse me,” he said to her. “They’re still holding Burroughs?”

  “Of course,” the woman replied. “His men are behind Angel Mendina’s death. Murder. And trying to rob the Armory. We should be rounding the rest of them up. Everyone knows they’re all Foragers.”

  “Not everyone in the Foragers are . . . Where are they holding him?”

  The woman scoffed any reply and knelt beside the latest injured man, being as helpful as she could, rapidly peeling away his tattered dungarees to reveal the blood oozing from the bullet wound. The trooper expertly squeezed the meat of the man’s thigh, causing him to gasp and groan and lie back, elbows on the ground, hissing at the pain. Then she stood.

  “You’re lucky,” she told the man, then averted her eyes back to Tom.

  “Department of Safety’s in charge of internments.”

  Tom nodded, changing the subject now he had a picture of the building in his head. Still unsure about what he was thinking, he motioned to the dead trooper nearby.

  “I’m not going to disrespect your colleague,” he said. “But someone has to take t
he mercy kill.”

  The woman nodded and drew her knife and Tom left her to it.

  He cast a final glance back over the carnage, scanned the nearest onlookers for anyone he knew, then headed back through them, walking like a hunchback still, headed in the opposite direction from home.

  *

  THE STURDY WOMAN at the counter looked like she could out-lift Tom on a good day. Her raucous blonde curls were pulled into a no-nonsense bun and the sigil of an inverted triangle beneath one cold blue eye told him she was anything but amused.

  “We don’t do visitors, pal,” she said. “And you don’t have any business asking anyway.”

  “Two of your people were just gunned down on The Mile,” Tom said. “Unless you’ve got something solid on Burroughs, you need to release him. This is stupid.”

  “You still didn’t explain what your interest in this is.”

  It was a good question. Tom didn’t have an adequate answer except that it all somehow revolved around the swirling dread he felt at the looming journey back to Freestone and his Confederates. Tom couldn’t explain that, and it’d sound like nonsense to the stern jailer anyway. And he also couldn’t draw any logical direct link between the two. The City’s palpable instability was more than just residents “on edge” at the ongoing violence.

  “Call me a concerned Citizen.”

  The woman nodded, deigned to blink. Perhaps she softened.

  “None of us want to be under threat of gunfire in the City,” she said. “Why do you think we control the ammunition supply?”

  “Where’s Ortega?”

  “I’m hardly gonna know that – or tell you if I knew.”

  “OK,” Tom said. “Look, can you get Ortega?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t even know Burroughs,” Tom said.

  “Then what the fuck are you doing here?”

  The woman was on point with the questions today. Tom slapped his hand down on the counter, but it was only in resigned defeat. If both his arms were working, he imagined tiredly levering himself upright again. Instead, straightening felt like squatting to lift the weight of the world.

  “OK, fuck,” he confessed. “This is a mistake. Put that on record at least, that I tried to tell you guys.”

  “Asshole.”

  “Thanks,” Tom said. “I don’t want to see anyone else killed either.”

  He pulled his uncomfortable jacket free of his sling and left the building.

  *

  AN AFTERNOON SLEEP helped, Tom only waking at the opening of the front door. Lila crept in, face pleasantly composed with the look of a young woman at least momentarily content. Wincing at the mistake of his own stretching yawn, Tom sat up on the sofa and checked on his right arm still snug in its sling. Even thinking about test-rolling his shoulder was a further mistake he still felt compelled to make. Lilianna sat carefully beside him, expression swiftly morphing into concern Tom at once tried to dispel, gently patting her jeans-clad thigh.

  “New clothes?”

  “The Enclave,” she said.

  “How did it go?”

  “How did you go?” Lila asked instead.

  “What do you mean?”

  He laughed, shot through with a momentary quasi-guilt about his night with Iwa Swarovsky.

  “Without me, I mean,” his daughter said and beamed. “Miss me?”

  “We managed,” Tom said. “What about you?”

  “It was weird,” she said and dropped her eyes a moment. “Good weird, though. I just couldn’t sleep. Do you know what a ‘dormitory’ is?”

  “Yep?”

  “I didn’t know women could snore like you.”

  “I don’t snore.”

  Lilianna exhaled, his response obviously no longer funny.

  “Do you need anything?”

  “No,” Tom said. “I need to go out later.”

  “OK, good,” Lila said. “I’m having any early night. Glad I don’t have to go out among the Meat again.”

  “‘Meat’?”

  Lilianna laughed dismissively.

  “Sorry,” she said. “That’s the Enclave nickname for regular Citizens.”

  “What are ‘regular Citizens’?”

  “Dad, please.”

  “Seems like an important question.”

  “Yeah, I know I shouldn’t call them that,” she said. “It’s just a joke.”

  “Why do they call them Meat?”

  “Because they tend to end up that way.”

  “OK,” Tom said. “Glad to know it’s not because they’re eating them.”

  Lilianna’s eyes flew wide open, reacting in horror until she belatedly realized it was another of her father’s attempts at humor.

  “People talk about the Enclave like it’s a kingdom unto itself,” he said.

  “Yeah, well it sort of is.”

  Lilianna stood and raised her hand, modeling her bare wrist for Tom to see.

  “Notice anything different?”

  “No jewelry,” Tom said. “Cool. I told you, you wouldn’t have to wait long.”

  “I saw Gwen Stacey,” Lila replied. “Remember her? She said I can get my bow back tomorrow, though it has to stay in the Enclave. I don’t mind.”

  “I take it you’ll be going back.”

  Lilianna nodded.

  “Daytimes for now, OK?”

  “Sure.”

  His daughter shrugged, knowing better than to make a big deal of it and have Tom dig in his heels. With a grunt of effort, he too arose from the sofa and slowly moved his left arm high enough to scratch the back of his head.

  “I’m sick of living with lice,” he said aloud.

  “Blame Lucas, not me,” she said. “I keep my hair clean. You guys should try it.”

  Tom followed her into the kitchen and watched as she ran the tap.

  “How was Beau?”

  “I didn’t even see him,” she said stiffly. “He’s probably avoiding me.”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  “Dad.”

  “Are you in some kind of rush with this guy?”

  Lilianna scanned him up and down in a blatant effort to get a read on what he was really saying. She registered it with a magnificent pout and Tom had to stifle his smirk.

  “Give yourself some time, hun.”

  “Yeah yeah,” Lilianna replied. “Easy for you to say.”

  It was an odd moment for Tom at least, as he mulled a potential confession about staying most of the night in the apartment downstairs, but just as quickly he pushed such thoughts away.

  “I’m glad you’re OK to stay here still,” he said. “I have to make that trip, in the morning.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Yep.”

  “Back to those people who almost killed you?”

  “At least this time I’ll be driving.”

  “It’s not funny, dad,” Lila complained. “Did anyone at the City agree to this?”

  “You’re not going to tell your pals at the Enclave about it, are you, babe?”

  “Dad.”

  “That’s one of the things I’ll find out tonight.”

  “One of the things. . . ?”

  “I spoke with Delroy Earle today,” Tom said and felt like a bastard at this fresh admission, a sacrifice to the appearance of at least sharing some of his secrets with his own kids.

  “I told him about the George Washington thing.”

  “I bet he freaked,” Lila said. “Have you thought much about that stuff?”

  “Plenty,” he said. “What about you?”

  But Lilianna only nodded thoughtfully, struggling to put anything into words. Then the door cracked open and in walked Lucas and Dkembe, the boy opening the door to help make way for their housemate whose arms were filled with a huge bulging hessian sack.

  And another young figure stepped in cautiously behind them.

  *

  “DAD, THIS IS Kevin,” Lucas said with an effort to get past his own reluctance, teeth nibbling at
his bottom lip. The boy beside him stepped out of Dkembe’s shadow revealed as a spindly, malnourished-looking kid perhaps a couple of years Luke’s junior. It was hard to tell. Standing beside his friend, Lucas looked a picture of health by comparison. Kevin’s old eyes flicked rapidfire around the room, scoping the angles looking ferrety beneath a long-since grown-out fringe.

  “Kevin?” Tom replied and made a careful, but deliberate show of surprise – and also that it wasn’t a big deal. “Hey Kevin, how’s things? I’m Tom.”

  This was another of those dislocated moments where the skills of a lifetime ago suddenly thrust back into play, and Tom scanned the young boy just as swiftly as Kevin did in return. In a past life, and in the final year before the apocalypse, he’d seen plenty of teenage boys who had Kevin’s look. And some of them were dangerous, and also to themselves.

  The boy’s eyes darted back around the room as if checking for the chance of an ambush before he chanced a single step forward. His right hand twitched, but nothing more – like he knew the social niceties of the situation, but gave up at the risk of it all a fair while ago. Tom held his left hand out regardless and simply stood there, comfortable holding it out like an idiot, something like letting a strange dog sniff his hand to know it was safe to do so. Kevin slowly returned the handshake, wanting it over quick. It was like he could see the boy snuffing out any prospect of hope in his brown eyes out of sheer habit.

  “It’s OK, Kevin,” Lucas said ultra-quietly.

  “Yep, everything’s cool,” Tom said. “What’s going on?”

  Dkembe absented himself to his bedroom and Lucas knew the question was directed at him.

  “There’s a. . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “Um.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I said Kevin could come stay with us.”

  Lucas blurted it out, took an admirably deep breath, and steeled himself for whatever the consequence, but Tom gave little away. He cast a look back at Kevin, deliberately understated, then retreated into the kitchen with the boys watching him. Tom fixed three glasses of water and pulled out a forth chipped mug for Dkembe.

  “Something happened at classes, dad,” Lucas said.