by Ben Tripp
By morning, Topper had gotten himself beaten to the ground in an altercation with the bald mercenary, whose name was Estevez. Estevez had an illegible tattoo up under his right ear, and another of a teardrop under his left eye. Topper couldn’t properly fight back, because he was the one without a gun—and if he won the fight, he might still get shot. So he ended up humiliated and bleeding, curled in a ball on the floor of Hangar 2.
The two zombies that had been hanging around outside the fence had started lying on the ground for hours at a time, as if sleeping, until one of the living came close. The next time the zombies stood up, there was a Hawkstone man with a machine gun on the other side of the mesh. All the survivors rushed outside at the sound of gunfire. There wasn’t much to see. Just another couple of corpses now. Murdo selected a work party and sent them out to bury the bodies. He didn’t allow them a firearm in case there were more of the undead around. “Plenty of rocks out there,” he said. “Brain ’em.”
Maria was relieved of radio duty. That job fell to one of the paramilitary men, called Flamingo by the others; his face was pink, prematurely creased, and spattered with cancerous-looking freckles. The mercenaries weren’t inaccurate with nicknames: in addition to his complexion, Flamingo had enormous arms and skinny legs. There were two other members of the Hawkstone team, for a total of nine: black-haired, blue-eyed Ace, whose face was so immobile it appeared he suffered some kind of paralysis, and Molini. Molini had a single eyebrow identical to his mustache; these features bracketed a nose like an axe blade.
Murdo mostly ignored his civilian charges, preferring to order his men around. Amy thought that was a bad way to do things. It wasn’t Danny’s approach, that was for sure. But now that the zombies were buried, everybody was idle, sitting around in the rec room or the dormitories, talking in quiet voices. This irritated Molini and Boudreau, the guards at the door—they were sure the conversation was about them. In fact, people were primarily talking about what they would do after things settled down. Outside, the torn-up dirt where Topper and Ernie had undertaken the plumbing project remained as it was. There would be no further improvements. Topper’s right eye had puffed shut and his lower lip had split open like a grape; as a result of the fight, he and Ernie were currently confined to the rec room, where they glowered in the corner.
Amy did what she could to defuse the situation through Murdo, catching him as he passed through the terminal.
“Hi,” she began, wishing she had a better arsenal of conversation starters. “We should talk.”
“Yeah?” Murdo said. He had a way of getting about five inches too close when he spoke to people. It made him look even shorter.
“See, we haven’t been here all that long ourselves. And we’ve been through a lot the last few days. I’m sure you guys have, too. The thing is, we need to all remember we’re in this together, you know?”
“So true,” Murdo said. Amy was encouraged.
“Because right now there aren’t any police or the normal army…the regular army, you know what I mean, the official one…and there’s a lot of looting and stuff. But we’re not the ones doing it. We’re actually a pretty low-key bunch of people. Right? I mean we are, right?”
“Like newborn lambs. Are we having a chat, or are you going somewhere with this?”
Amy took a long breath. Here goes. “I’m saying what I think we’d all prefer is if you could quit guarding us like we were some kind of prisoners, okay? Let us do what we were doing before. There’s no point to all this Stalag 13 bull-pucky. I fixed up your buddy’s leg, I helped you out, and you are way not helping us back.”
Murdo nodded, an expression of great thoughtfulness on his squat face.
“You’ve got a good point there. We come barging in like we own the place, we post guards, and we take immediate, violent action against anybody that resists. That’s what you’re talking about, am I right?”
“I’m so glad you understand,” Amy said, letting the breath go.
Murdo reached up and placed one of his thick hands against the base of Amy’s neck. Her “space violated” alarms went off, but she tried not to cringe. He was cooperating, after all. She didn’t want to offend him.
“You’re a reasonable woman, so I’ll explain the situation and I’m sure you’ll be with me all the way,” Murdo began. “This entire nation was placed under martial law during the first ten hours of this crisis, you know that? No? It was. Coast to coast. You know what that means?” Murdo didn’t wait for an answer. Veins were rising in his neck and his face was turning red. “We’re the law. We’re the Army, the Navy, and the FBI.”
Amy tried to speak, but Murdo’s hand tightened on her neck and he winched his face to within inches of hers, his voice rising: “Our job is to maintain order, you understand? Not, I repeat not to babysit a bunch of fucking helpless fucks like you people. You got some kind of idea we’re not hardcore, is that what you’re saying? You think we’re not killers?” He threw Amy away from him.
She stumbled backward into a table and gripped the edge of it with both hands and he closed in on her, raging: “You don’t know shit. We’re the baddest of the bad. Stone cold. So you back the fuck off, you keep the rest of these fucking shitstains organized, and once we regain contact with command, you’re free to go wherever the fuck you want to go. You can have cake and ice cream, I don’t give a shit. Meanwhile the best thing you can do is keep your fucking people under control. I don’t want my boys to mistake anybody for a zero.”
Without waiting for a response, Murdo turned and strode away. The interview hadn’t gone as well as Amy hoped it would.
By late afternoon the Hawkstone men were sick of patrolling the fence. Some of them argued with Murdo, out on the runway at a good distance from the terminal. But their voices bounced off the sheet-metal hangar walls and straight into the rec room, where the survivors listened in miserable silence through the open windows.
Murdo was barely in control of his men. That much was obvious. He didn’t keep them occupied enough, except standing around guarding things that didn’t need guards. And they had been on the move for days, so sitting still felt weird to them. Reese and Ace seemed especially antagonistic. Amy caught one of their convocations, a hissed argument just outside the terminal’s front doorway. She could see them through the open rec room window nearest the door, if she pressed up close to the frame. It sounded to Amy like the subject was a recurring theme between them.
“Murdo, gimme a fucking break,” Reese hissed. “They said find a secure location and wait for orders? How could they say that if they didn’t know they were gonna drop out of contact?”
“Maybe they did know,” Murdo replied, almost whining. “I don’t question my orders. Neither should you, Reese.”
“So either they knew they were gonna have a communications blackout, and didn’t tell us, or they didn’t see it coming. Either way, we should get the fuck up there and see what’s happening, not sit here blowing farts with the fucking Partridge Family.”
Reese and Murdo were less than a foot apart, now. Ace stepped back from them and spat on the tarmac by Murdo’s boot.
“Murdo ain’t got the guts to go up there,” Ace said, his voice as expressionless as his features.
Murdo rounded on him and shoved his lumpy face right up under Ace’s nose. “Stand down, boy.”
“Ain’t your boy.”
“We stay right here until word comes down. We don’t know what’s happening with HQ. We weren’t authorized to speculate. Our job is to hurry the fuck up and fucking wait.”
They moved away from the building, and the rest of the conversation wasn’t audible to Amy.
The gunmen had only arrived twenty-four hours earlier, and already things were badly off-track. She didn’t know how to make it better. If Danny had been here, she might have figured out what to do—or they might have shot her by now. But Danny wasn’t here. Amy was responsible. She had to keep the situation under some kind of control. But control had been take
n from her, if she ever had it, and Murdo didn’t seem to be able to handle it himself.
Half an hour later, Murdo strode into the terminal and zeroed in on Amy.
“I want another little meeting with you,” he said.
“I’m right here,” Amy said.
“Alone.”
Amy was intimidated by physical men. She liked Patrick because he was not physical—he lived in his emotions, his thinking. A guy like Topper was different. He frightened Amy. He was big and fierce and expressed himself through his arms—steering, building, dismantling, dominating his environment with massive strength, the brachioradialis muscles thick as rattlesnakes coiled around his forearms. And Murdo’s men had dominated him.
So now Amy was walking behind the hangar with Murdo, a short, solid physical man with cords of anger in his neck. She remembered walking behind the Skyline High football bleachers with Sean Mackey, a brawny kid who looked twenty-five at age sixteen. He was an athlete, a consummate jock. He lured Amy back there, where nobody could see but the trees, and made her do things. His pretext was her superior knowledge of the assigned book in English class; he said he needed help, but he was embarrassed to be seen discussing it in front of anybody. Discussing it with me, anyway, Amy had thought at the time.
It was an inspired strategy on Mackey’s part: Amy’s miserable self-image was certain he had no physical interest in her. She genuinely believed he wanted to pick her brains. So she was flattered, too. What made it even worse was Amy’s realization, in hindsight, that he probably didn’t have any physical interest in her. He was simply taking away power from a brainy chick who threatened his sense of absolute mastery. Once she’d been talked into letting him come in her mouth while he tugged at her small nipples, her power went away. She was no better than the cheerleaders and debutantes who willingly gave themselves to him. Not so smart after all, Amy had chided herself. It still made her face burn to remember the flattering things he’d said back there at the tree line behind the stadium, how he sounded surprised to find her so pretty, how smart was beautiful, can I touch your skin? She never told anybody at the time, not even Danny, although Danny sensed something serious was amiss. Nobody would have asked to touch Danny, back then—she had the worst case of pimples.
Amy never called it rape, what Sean Mackey did, because she’d gone willingly to the slaughter. Not that she found him attractive or interesting or anything, except intimidating. He didn’t force himself upon her. He merely stepped behind her defenses.
This old, sore history was bubbling hot in Amy’s mind as she followed the squat, intent Murdo behind the hangar. He had better not try anything, she thought. He’d better only have something private to say. But this was not a man with private thoughts. Amy wondered if she would scream or fight back until he knifed her or shot her or used his pepper spray on her. Even as she planned her defense, she knew deep inside it was all bullshit. She would do what he wanted, take the abuse rather than risk her life, and tell nobody. No…someday, she would tell Danny.
They were standing in the shadow of the hangar, which reached up onto the flank of the nearest hill past the fence. Copper-colored light glazed the desert and made it look like the work of a metalsmith’s hammer. It was hot and dry but a light breeze signified that the night would be cool. Amy’s arms were knotted across her chest. Murdo leaned against the fence looking out, his weight on one arm. His breathing was thick. Amy felt a chill inside her. If this blustering, dangerous little man decided to do something to her, he would kill her when he was finished. The act itself wouldn’t satisfy. He’d want to erase the evidence, too.
Amy waited. He could do the talking, make the demands. But Amy did not intend to meet him halfway, or most of the way, as she had done long ago. Murdo scrubbed his bristling scalp with his free hand, then spoke without turning to look at Amy.
“Don’t freak out. I ain’t gonna fuck you.”
“What?”
“Said I ain’t gonna fuck you. So quit standing there like I had my cock out.”
“I didn’t think you were. I mean I don’t think you have your thing out, and I don’t think you’re going to do what you just said. No. I mean why would you, right? Actually.” Amy was babbling with relief. She literally stopped her voice by putting her hand over her mouth. Murdo didn’t remark on it. Now Amy recognized what emotion he was radiating. It wasn’t aggression, it was defensiveness. He looked almost beaten.
And in that instant, she discovered this frightened her more than anything.
He locked his fist through the wire of the fence. “What you ain’t got is the big picture of the situation at hand. See, I got that. I’m the type can see a long ways. That’s why I’m in charge. And what I seen is some bullshit of the first water. Me, my boys. Then you and your bunch. That’s the hierarchy. Now you’re in charge of these other people. I want you right where you’re at, so I don’t have to babysit nobody. You babysit, because that’s the hierarchy like I said. But the thing is this.
“My boys are concerned. They seen some action, and they ain’t afraid. So I got ’em this far, and we’re on our way to Potter. But we’re supposed to wait till we get word from the top before we move in on Potter, because that’s where we meet up with a shitload more of our boys and then we form a big ass-kicking unit and we sweep this whole fucking sector of the map so clean you could eat off it.”
Murdo started to pace, slowly, along the fence. Amy couldn’t believe it. He really did want to meet behind the hangar to make a confession. Or he was insane. She didn’t know anything about men, apparently. He was still talking.
“Like I said before, we haven’t heard from nobody top or bottom, because we ain’t got the new radio codes for our digital squawk-boxes. Conventional-band is down. So the boys are thinking. I can’t stop ’em thinking. I gotta keep their minds occupied until time comes we roll out of here, and I gotta defuse the situation.”
“There’s no fuse,” Amy broke in.
“Big boys like these, you got a few big boys yourself, you think they’re not gonna mix it up? Already did, last night. Your boy got his ass whupped, but that ain’t good for nobody’s morale. He’ll want a rematch. Maybe you don’t get it cause you’re not real desirable, but all them boys are fixing to fight. How come? On account of the women.”
“What women?” Amy was incredulous. What the hell was he talking about?
“All them ones in there. You got eighteen twats on you, all told, and near twice that many tits. That little one with the blue hair, Jesus Christ she’s all right. You think those men of yours ain’t done the math? They want to defend their supply. If we’re stuck out here for six months, hell, six weeks, six days, you think there ain’t a problem on the way?”
Amy was speechless. With all this awful stuff going on, this little man thought everybody was going sex-crazy? He was the crazy one. As far as she knew, nobody had even thought about sex since the dead fell down and got back up. It wasn’t what you thought about in situations like this. Maybe it was different when you were shooting a hundred milligrams of epiandrosterone into your ass every day.
“You’re kidding,” she said, when she could find her voice.
“Here’s the deal,” Murdo continued. “I gotta keep my boys happy. They’re not happy now. I can’t keep ’em happy with your boys getting all up in their grilles. Somebody’s got to get out of the way.”
He’s going to kill them, Amy realized. He plans to shoot Troy and Topper and Simon and all the men.
“Now I ain’t gonna shoot them,” Murdo said, and Amy jumped. “I ain’t a mind reader. You’re staring at my gun.” He croaked. It was supposed to be a laugh. “So we agree on all that. Good. Now what to do, right? What to do.” He pretended to think about it. “I know,” he continued, two seconds later. “Here’s what we do. Your guys leave.”
“Our guys leave?”
“Great idea. We won’t stop them. Good luck, godspeed, and we’ll all have a laugh and a few beers after all this shit is over with
.”
“Leave where?”
“Anywhere they want, as long as it’s outside the range of our twenty-millimeter.”
Amy could think of some things to say about Murdo’s twenty-millimeter herself, but her head got crowded. He didn’t just want to get rid of the civilian men because they were a threat. He wanted all the women. Amy’s guts coiled up tight. He was telling her what was going to happen, and he expected her to handle the transition.
To make it easy for him.
Amy thought of the men she’d arrived with. Their party was more women than men, for whatever reason. Troy, Topper, Ernie, and Simon the accountant were the strongest ones. Then there was Patrick, and the college kid named Martin, very skinny; an older bald man whose name Amy didn’t know; a thick, jowly man named Juan who always held his head tilted back as if he were looking for something up in the sky, although his eyes were pointed forward; and another two or three men of modest build. She figured if she couldn’t remember their names, they probably weren’t threatening.
Amy realized Murdo was looking at her, waiting.
“What?” Amy said.
“I’m waiting for you to get on board with this thing.”
“Mister,” Amy said, her voice high and tense, “your idea sucks. You think I’m going to tell my guys to leave so your guys can have your way—”
“Whoa, there,” Murdo said, his palms held upright in front of him. “Nobody’s saying we’re gonna turn this place into our own private whorehouse. We’re saying we gotta separate the competing males before somebody gets hurt.”
“Somebody already did get hurt.”
“I rest my motherfucking case.”
Murdo called everyone to stand out in the parking area, with his men ranged around the perimeter holding their guns like so many jointed plastic action figures. It wasn’t much of a crowd. Amy found herself appraising the women: Who would be the first? She was most worried about Michelle, and after that the college girl, Pfeiffer, Martin’s girlfriend; there was Cammy, the freckled, redheaded African-American woman, too, with the tiny baby that never seemed to cry. She was very pretty and had a kind of innocent surprise on her face that would interest the men. The baby wouldn’t pose much of an obstacle.
