The Complete Deadland Saga

by Rachel Aukes

  “Thank God,” I said, which brought on a coughing fit.

  Clutch headed straight for the engines. He tripped over a cable and fell down, so he pulled himself over to the control box. With my help, he got back to his feet. Using my weight to support him, he flipped a switch. Nothing happened. He frowned and then struggled to the next motor. Again, nothing happened. He stood there while I watched, feeling incredibly helpless. He was right. I knew nothing about engines and generators and mechanical things. After a long moment, he spoke. “Wes must’ve turned off the fuel line.”

  “I looked around the room. Where is it?”

  “It’s got to be in here somewhere. It should have a gas marking or warning on it.”

  I propped Clutch against an engine while I retrieved his crutches. Then I began my search. With only a flashlight, it was a tedious search. I tripped a couple times over the cables Wes has strewn across the floors.

  “I see it,” Clutch said.

  I hurried over.

  Clutch pointed. “It’s too tight with my crutches.”

  I looked down the narrow walkway between two engines and saw a triangular “Warning: Extremely Flammable” sticker. “I’ll get it.” I had to walk sideways. It must’ve been a tight fit for Wes, but it was pretty easy for me. I knelt at the sticker. Below it was a round metal crank that looked like it rotated rather than a switch that flipped on and off. I tried to twist it counterclockwise, but it didn’t budge. “Jesus, Wes,” I muttered, and put all my strength into it.

  Slowly, the crank moved an inch before it picked up speed and twisted a full rotation. I leaned back. “Try it now.”

  I heard an engine start up. “We’re good!” Clutch yelled out.

  Clutch had the engines running by the time I reached him, and had moved to a box of switches that Wes had built to run all the generators. While each of the generators had its own gas tank, Wes has talked about how he had everything set up to run directly off the towboat’s gas tank to save someone having to constantly refill the generators.

  As the generators started, the noise in the metal room became deafening, and I winced. Clutch rewet his scarf. He held the bottle to me, and I took a long drink before soaking my thin bandana.

  “Ready?” He yelled. “We have to close the bay doors now!”

  I could barely hear him but nodded. “Okay!”

  He grabbed my hand and put it on his belt. “Don’t let go!”

  After taking a couple deep breaths, he opened the door, and we headed back into the smoky mechanical bowels of the towboat.

  The smoke had faded some—probably due to my propping the door open rather than any fires being put out—making the return trip not quite as terrifying as our first time through. My throat was raw, worse than any sore throat I’d ever had before. The smoke was acid to my already stinging eyes. I closed them and held onto Clutch’s belt loops as he clumsily took the steps as quickly as he could.

  I had to steady him several times when he lost his footing or didn’t get the crutches leveled right on a step. I grabbed my bag, and we burst through the crew quarters and shower room. Finally, when we climbed the stairs and reached the last door, Clutch threw it open, and we tumbled inside the galley. I kicked the door shut, and we both lay there, gasping slightly better air. Who knew how badly the boat or its barges had already burned. Worse, who knew how many zeds the smoke would draw to our location.

  “Are you okay?”

  I looked up to see Benji standing over us, Frost’s Great Dane at his side. Diesel was as tall as the short boy and just as lovable.

  “Benji.” I propped myself up on an elbow. “What are you doing here? You should be in the barge.” The words came out rough, like I was a lifelong smoker.

  “Grampa told me to stay in here. He heard the engines start and said he was going to close the big doors.” He pointed up, referring to the bridge.

  “Good,” Clutch said and then coughed.

  Outside I could hear shouting. I rubbed my eyes with my bandana and climbed to my feet. Through the windows I could see people running across the deck. Several were pulling a large water hose. “I guess I’d better get out there and help.”

  As I kneeled to help Clutch, the door leading to the deck opened. Three men entered, with their pistols raised. In the middle stood Sorenson.

  I froze. Neither Clutch nor I could draw our weapon in time, and with Benji and Diesel in the way, I’d never get a clean shot, anyway. Benji didn’t move. Instead, he just stood there between us and them. He was likely frozen with fear, but it didn’t matter. He was going to get himself killed.

  I reached out to pull the boy behind me.

  “Don’t move,” Sorenson ordered. “And get down on the floor now.”

  I stopped mid-reach. I could hear Clutch’s breaths next to me but was afraid to make eye contact with him. Don’t be a hero, I mentally said to Clutch. I sat back on my heels, waiting for, hell, I had no idea what I was waiting for.

  Benji cocked his head. “Are you here to help us?”

  Sorenson frowned while he scrutinized Benji. He waved with his pistol. “Move to the side, kid. We need to get upstairs.”

  Benji didn’t move. Diesel’s shoulders bunched aggressively and his hackles rose as he stood next to his small master. A deep growl came from his throat and his teeth were bared.

  Sorenson was trying to get upstairs? Why? To get to the bullhorn? To open the bay doors again? I glanced at Clutch, but he had on his poker face. I stayed silent, not willing to take the risk of pissing off Sorenson even more.

  Benji patted the dog before looking up at Sorenson. “Are you going to use that gun? Because I don’t like guns. They’re loud. My mom shot a gun by my ear once. It hurt for a long time.”

  “Only if I have to, kid,” Sorenson replied. “Now, get out of my way. I’m in a bit of a hurry and don’t want to hurt you. I need to unhook those barges from this boat.”

  “Why?” Benji asked.

  “Because some of those barges belong to me,” he said.

  “Why?” the boy asked again.

  “Listen, kid. They just do. I need what’s on them. Enough.”

  Benji crossed his arms over his chest. “No.” he said sharply. “You look angry. People do bad things when they’re angry.”

  Sorenson could’ve shoved the boy out of his way. Instead, he took a deep breath and his expression softened. “They hurt my daughter.”

  “My mom got hurt once.”

  “It’s tough out there, kid. So you see, I have no choice. I need what’s on those barges.”

  Benji shook his head. “Grampa says that people always have choices.”

  “Well, your gramps is wrong.”

  “Nuh uh.” Benji shook his head even harder. “He’s never wrong. He’s really smart. He’s been around a really long time. He’s old. Like you.”

  Sorenson smirked and one eye narrowed. “Yes, I’ve been around and seen plenty. I’ve got to say, I liked the way things used to be a whole lot better than they are now.”

  “I did, too,” Benji said. “I liked school. I had a lot of friends.”

  Sorenson’s lips tightened. After a moment, he held up the hand not holding a pistol. “We’re leaving.”

  “What?” the man at his side asked. “But the barges—”

  “We’ve done enough for one day.” Sorenson cut him off with a hard glare. “Everyone’s had enough hurt for a lifetime. We’re heading back to the Lady.”

  The man who had spoken seemed pissed, while the other looked relieved.

  As they backed up to the door, Benji waved. “Bye. Be careful out there.”

  Sorenson gave Clutch and me one final glance before he turned to leave, like he’d just remembered we were still there.

  “Game over, asshole,” Jase said from the doorway, his rifle leveled dead-to-rights on Sorenson.

  His men jerked around. “You move, I shoot,” Frost said as he squeezed inside.

  Clutch yanked up his rifle, and I went for
my sidearm.

  “We were just leaving,” Sorenson said slowly.

  “Not now, you aren’t,” Jase replied much more quickly. “Drop your guns.”

  Sorenson eyed Benji and then spun his pistol and handed it over to Jase. The other two men dropped theirs.

  “Benji, are you okay?” Frost asked, cranking his head just enough to see his grandson while keeping his rifle aimed at Sorenson’s pals.

  “Grampa!” Benji said. He tapped his leg. “C’mon, Diesel!”

  The Great Dane’s growling dissipated and he trotted alongside the happy-go-lucky boy to the older man, both oblivious to the showdown of firepower under way. Sorenson watched as the pair bounded past him.

  “Did they hurt you, son?” Frost asked, tugging Benji against him.

  “I’m fine, Grampa,” he giggled. “No one hurt me.” He pointed to Sorenson. “He’s just sad because his daughter was hurt, that’s all. He wasn’t going to hurt me.”

  I took a big breath and leaned into Clutch, who was breathing just as heavily. He knew as well as I did that the only reason we were still alive was because of a boy. A boy with Down Syndrome just proved that a little bit of kindness was sometimes more powerful than all the brute force and guns in the world.

  SLOTH

  The Fourth Deadly Sin

  Chapter XVII

  We held Tack’s funeral the following morning.

  Griz had used his Ranger skills and somehow managed to climb onto the riverboat and cut down Tack’s body sometime during the attack without getting caught. Tack had been executed—shot in the head. That he hadn’t been beaten was little consolation to any of us.

  Deb refused to leave Tack after he was brought on board. When I stopped by to offer my condolences while she was preparing his body, she seemed oblivious, completely lost in her own world. By morning, she’d regained her composure and now stood strong, her blotchy cheeks and swollen red eyes the only outward signs of her mourning.

  Even Manny and his people joined all of Camp Fox on the towboat’s deck, just off the back, where the water was deepest. Frost and Wes had spent the night building a heavy casket out of wood leftover from pallets and various metal parts found on the barges so that Tack would find permanent peace at the bottom of the river.

  Griz led the service. He and Tack had been best friends, and Griz had to stop several times during his speech to take a deep breath before continuing. After he recited a prayer, he asked everyone to share a story.

  No one spoke. Then, after a long minute, Tyler stepped up and told everyone about Tack, the skinny new recruit on his team who wasn’t expected to make it a week. He ended by finally sharing Tack’s real name. Corporal Theodore Nugent. Yeah, the poor guy was seriously named after a rock star. No wonder he’d always gone by his nickname. We all laughed. Even Deb cracked a smile, though it was still a sad expression.

  After Tyler, the stories came easily. Some were short like Frost’s straightforward proclamation, “I’d have been proud to call him my son.” Others, like Benji’s, took fifteen minutes or more. For his story, the young boy went into detail about how Tack had shown up with a foam football for his birthday. Benji went so far as to run back to the barge, with Diesel at his heels, to reclaim the purple ball so we could all see the special present.

  Jase talked of the time Tack had gotten him drunk for the first time in his life, and they’d tried to catch a possum with their bare hands. Jase showed us the scar on his hand that I’d always thought bore a striking resemblance to sharp teeth marks.

  Clutch and I talked about the time the three of us ran through Chow Town and, by some miracle, managed not to become dinner for five thousand or so zeds.

  The service lasted for hours, and we took snack breaks. Everyone was there except for the scouts on duty, but Tyler had instituted one-hour rotations to ensure everyone had a chance to say good-bye while remaining on full alert for herds and the Lady Amore.

  We cried and we laughed as we celebrated Tack’s life. When everyone had finished, Griz turned to Deb. She was the only one who had known Tack well and hadn’t spoken yet. “Would you like to say anything?” he asked softly.

  She looked across the faces and then touched Tack’s casket. “I’m carrying his baby.”

  A lengthy pause followed. There was nothing that could be said after that. Finally, eight volunteers slid the weighted casket onto a makeshift ramp of two-by-fours. “Lord, grant Tack peace,” Griz said before shoving the casket off.

  We all watched from the edge of the deck as the casket splashed into the water. It floated for only a second before it descended into the darkness. Bubbles came to the surface, the final glimpse we had of Tack, aka Ted Nugent, a Corporal in the United States National Guard.

  I looked up at the zeds surrounding the Aurora. There were only a few dozen, having been drawn in by the dark smoke. A few tried to walk through the water and were carried away by the current. Most had a basic sense of preservation and simply stood on the bridge over the river, swaying from side to side as they watched. The herds weren’t here yet. Kurt’s last scouting run put them out several days. The closest herd had stopped at a large river town, buying us time. If we didn’t clear the zeds now watching the camp, they’d surely draw the attention of a herd.

  But that wasn’t our biggest problem.

  The Lady Amore sat in the water about a mile south of us, an ominous reminder that we had her beloved captain locked up below decks. The riverboat hadn’t shown any aggression since the attack. It simply waited, likely for its missing captain.

  “All right,” Tyler said. “We’ve got a lot of cleanup to do. Unless you’ve volunteered for a cleanup job, everyone stays in barge Number One until the zeds move on. Got it?”

  People complained and dragged their feet as they headed back toward the barges.

  “We’re not doing this for fun,” Tyler yelled out. “We’re doing this to save lives.”

  His words cooled down the grumbling a bit, but people still weren’t thrilled about being cooped up in a dusty, steel barge.

  The Aurora was in rough shape. The deck of the boat, with its heavily shellacked wood, was charred in several places. Only one flare had burned through the deck and into the equipment room, which accounted for most of the smoke we’d come across yesterday.

  The deck had been repaired, but barge Four, which had taken the brunt of the damage, was a different story. A flare had landed on hay bales, which had lit a fire. Our livestock had been decimated. No animals survived. Most of the animals had died from smoke inhalation, and the cooks were working non-stop to save what meat they could.

  Still, we’d been counting on eggs for our breakfasts. Several cattle and hogs had been pregnant, and all of them died in the fire. Finding livestock after the outbreak was tough. It had taken us over six months to pull together the thirty head and several dozen chickens. To replenish our stock would take a miracle. It would take a bigger miracle to hunt and fish enough meat until we could rebuild our livestock.

  At least no one had died from the black fumes, although Clutch and I had both suffered from killer headaches all night. We’d gone through a pot of coffee this morning, and it had only taken the edge off our throbbing headaches.

  I pulled myself to my feet. “Want to go bug Jase with me before we join the cleanup crews?” I asked Clutch.

  He gave a crooked grin. “Hell, yes.”

  I wheeled him toward the galley, giving him a twirl when we reached the door. He pulled himself up on his crutches, and we headed inside and went below decks. When we reached the equipment room, Clutch called out before he walked through the door. “Hey, Jase, coming in.”

  Jase waved at us, without taking his rifle off his prisoners. “Hey guys!” He was currently on guard watch over the three prisoners from the Lady Amore. The temporary brig was in the towboat’s equipment room and was in no way set up to hold prisoners. It wasn’t the ideal location, but we figured it would be more difficult to escape than from any barge near civv
ies. Rather than bars, the prisoners were all handcuffed to chains that had been wrapped around thick pipes. It had a medieval feel to it, but we had to make do with what we had.

  Clutch stepped unsteadily down the few steps, using his crutches and upper body strength for support. Since his back injury, his upper body was stronger than it’d ever been to make up for the lack of strength in his legs. He’d also lost weight, making the contrast in muscles all the more obvious. I liked the look of his biceps. His tattoos wrapped around his arms in a sensual way. But his legs were too thin from lack of use, and I worried about how long it would take for him to rebuild muscle.

  Jase stood and offered the box he’d been sitting on to Clutch. “How’d the rest of the funeral go?” he asked.

  “It was nice,” Clutch said as he took a seat.

  “Griz did a really good job. The stories were great,” I added. We’d worked alongside Tack for several months. When I’d heard the stories from the other residents, I’d realized just how many lives the man who’d rarely spoken had touched. He had truly been an example of actions speaking louder than words. I hated that one more good person had been unfairly stolen from the world.

  I turned to Sorenson, who sat on the floor, his wrists cuffed in front of him. His two men sat next to him, one on each side. Their chains were long enough to allow some mobility so that they could reach the single bucket that served as their toilet.

  They all watched us. Sorenson with a blank look, the man to his right glowered with disdain, and the man to his left simply looked exhausted. My jaw tightened, and I crossed my arms over my chest. “You killed a good man. A man who would never hurt an innocent.”

  Sorenson blinked a couple times, but his gaze didn’t connect with mine. It was distant, dull. “I lost my daughter yesterday.”

  “There’s no one left alive who hasn’t lost someone they love,” I said.