The 1000 Souls (Book 2): Generation Apocalypse

by Michael Andre McPherson

  Tevy looked above the windows and struggled to remember the blue and gold ceiling of the church, so intricate and so brilliant the first night he was here, when the church was packed with refugees. A gray film of soot from years of candles now coated the ceiling, dulling the colors and the paintings, although the sacred heart with the sword through it, Tevy’s favorite, was still clearly visible.

  Helen genuflected in front of the altar, and Tevy did as well, crossing himself automatically as he rose, but a gesture of Helen’s reminded him that he had nearly forgotten the new motion he was supposed to do after crossing himself: the Sign of the Mountain. Touch three fingers to one’s left shoulder, forehead, and right shoulder. This was the bishop’s decree last fall on the seventh anniversary of the Battle of the Mountain, that everyone should thank God for the victory over the anti-Christ, Vlad.

  They crossed the altar and passed the tabernacle, genuflecting again, on their way into the rectory, heading up for the bishops’ council chamber, but they never reached their destination. Shouts stopped them in the paneled corridor, dulled at first by the deep carpet until a door halfway along opened and Joyce burst out of a room closely followed by Jeff and Kayla.

  Bobs’ voice chased her. “You can’t just turn those buses around and leave.”

  She rushed out of the room, her hair cropped even shorter and a large revolver strapped to her hip. It suddenly occurred to Tevy that Kayla and Bobs were close in age, and he had to rethink what he thought about both women. Did this make Kayla seem older or Bobs seem younger?

  Joyce turned in fury. “Just watch me. I didn’t come down here to stay anyway. We came down to fight just for the summer season because that little shit convinced me it was the right thing to do.” She was now extending a finger to point her accusation at Tevy. “Before winter me and my Raiders will be going back to St. John’s come hell or high water, but while we’re here we fight together and we live together or we’re on the way right now.”

  Jeff stepped between the two women before Bobs could retort, his FN slung over his shoulder, his camouflage vest open in the Chicago heat.

  “Listen, Bobs,” he said. “There’s plenty of houses we can convert to a blockhouse for the raiders. The rest of the St. John’s people, the immigrants, they’re going to want to mingle anyway. A lot of them are looking for wives, so you can billet them wherever you want. But the Raiders, we’ve fought together and lived together since the end. You don’t split us up.”

  Bobs put her hands on her hips and turned her attention on Jeff. “You won’t have time to do that before sunset, so where do you suggest I put you?”

  The bishop, in a simple black cassock, strode out of the conference room and stopped in the middle of the corridor. “They can sleep in the church tonight, of course. That way they’ll all be together.”

  Bobs looked ready to fight, but the bishop shook his head in a way that Tevy recognized: no argument. She shrugged instead. “Whatever. Thanks for coming out.”

  Joyce and Jeff left without further word, and Helen hurried after them. Kayla followed them too, but Joyce stopped her, whispering something in her ear and looking back at Tevy before she turned away. Kayla looked after her, tapping her foot a few times before she made up her mind and walked in Tevy’s direction, clearly wanting to talk to him, perhaps about his liar comment, but before she could, Bobs turned her attention on him.

  “Good work,” she said. “I want to hear all about it. Everything. But right now I need you to load up and go out fast before sunset.”

  Bad news and worse. He glanced at Kayla, wishing she weren’t hanging so close. Somehow he didn’t want to tell Bobs that Bertrand Allan was undead and a ripper with Kayla listening. He debated pushing for a private meeting, but he knew that look in Bobs’ eyes: she was in a big hurry and had no time for him.

  The worse news was that he had hoped for an evening with the older Brat Pack kids, but after days on and off a bus, perhaps a chance to move and maybe have some adventure would be a good thing. “Where am I going?”

  “The Erics.” Bobs glared at Bishop Alvarez, and Tevy interpreted the look as warning to the cleric that on this point she would accept no argument.

  The bishop heaved a sigh and crossed his arms in judgment. “I don’t like aligning ourselves with these heretics.”

  “I don’t have a fucking choice, and I’m sure as hell not going to talk about it now. This is tactical. This is my decision.” She turned back to Tevy. “I want you to head over to the Erics. Don’t worry, I told them by radio that you’d be coming, so they won’t shoot from their walls if you get there after dark. Your job is to do the same thing you did at St. John’s: convince Mabruke that it’s in his best interest to join us.”

  Tevy fought to keep the amazement off his face. “They’ll never convert to Catholicism. They’re heretics.”

  “This isn’t about converting anymore.” She shot a withering look at Bishop Alvarez, who sighed again and turned his back to swish off to his study at the end of the corridor. Bobs turned back to Tevy. “Like I said, they don’t have to frigging convert, but when the offensive comes, we’ve all gotta be working as one army. The rippers will be, believe me.”

  “Should I set up a meeting between you and Mabruke?”

  “I’m not going over there and he’s not coming over here, so no.” Bobs crossed her arms under her small breasts. “You haven’t been back long enough to hear the rumors, I guess. Tevy, the rippers could be coming tonight. There’s been a lot of movement down there, and some bastard traitors have been raiding up north of the Loop yesterday and today, grabbing people and taking them as sacrifices back to the rippers. I don’t have time now, but you need to move hard and fast before sunset to the Wright Sanctuary and get Mabruke onside and handing out the ammo to his people. By midnight.”

  “What if he won’t listen to me?”

  “Just be yourself, Tevy.” She leaned in close, dropping her voice to make it difficult for Kayla to hear. “You’re my secret weapon. You remind people of the man who saved my life.”

  Tevy knew not to ask who that was, because while they had learned in Sunday School in detail about all the other heroes of the Battle of the Mountain, Bobs had kept her own history out of the lesson plan.

  “Okay. I’m on it,” he said.

  Bobs nodded. “I knew you would be. Don’t travel alone this time though. Take a couple of the Brat Pack with you. You pick ’em, but only the fast ones, the ones who can run or ride. Emile’s got word to give you all the ammo you want.” She held up one finger. “Don’t let me down.”

  “I never do.”

  Twelve - Nine Miles

  The carpeting of the corridor didn’t hide the hurried footfalls behind Tevy. Kayla spoke before he could ask why she was following him.

  “I want to go with you,” she said as she drew alongside, matching his hurried pace.

  Tevy looked over to see if she was kidding. With her vest open to reveal her sweat-stained tank-top, she looked younger, closer to his age. Could he really be so attracted to an older woman, one in her mid-twenties?

  “Why the hell?” He led the way into the church, stopping to genuflect at the tabernacle, an action she mimicked in a hurried fashion. She got the Sign of the Mountain backwards, and her attempts to fix the gesture made it look more like a circle.

  “Because I’ve just spent a week on a bus and I need to get out,” Kayla said, continuing to chase him as he rose and hurried off the altar.

  There was something else, some other reason. Tevy couldn’t put his finger on it, but he was sure she hadn’t told him the whole truth. And she looked very excited, ecstatic. Maybe she had a thing for him? Maybe she wanted to be around him. But Tevy quashed that hope by remembering Joyce whispering in Kayla’s ear. And there was that lie about the girl, Margaret. Whose daughter was that really?

  Tevy glanced up at the angle of the sun through the stained-glass windows before he headed for the stairs to the basement. “We’ve got nine mil
es to go in about an hour and a half. It’ll be running the whole time. You any good at running?”

  “I’m good.”

  He led her down to the common room and was delighted to find Elliot and Amanda chatting on the couch. They looked cozy, and Tevy had to repress a surge of jealousy, reminding himself that it was a sin.

  “Perfect,” he said. “I’m going on a run for Bobs. Looking for two volunteers.”

  Elliot practically leapt off the couch. “Finally, some action. I don’t think the general likes me very much, because she’s given me shit all to do since you left. Whoops!” he covered his mouth and feigned horror. “I used one of the words.”

  “I’m fast.” Amanda stood and met Tevy’s eyes with her own, a challenge. “But why don’t we take the bikes? Elliot and I’ve got a new shortcut out of the cantonment.”

  Tevy wondered what else she and Elliot had been up to while he’d been up north. He pushed that thought down as unproductive. Stay with mission. “Let’s go load up, then. Emile’s supposed to give us whatever we want.”

  “Wow!” said Elliot. “We are fucked.” Again he held his hand over his mouth in mock horror. “Dear, dear me,” he said in a good imitation of Helen. “Who is that foul-mouthed boy?”

  “Don’t mind him,” Tevy said to Kayla. “He always jokes before a raid. Let’s go.”

  He led them through the opening in the office dividers and into the boys’ dorm, almost every square foot of space taken up by cots or beds, all crammed together to allow for the maximum number of children. Beyond that a set of stairs ran down to the boiler room, now useless since the natural-gas-fired boiler had no source of fuel. Emile still talked about converting it to coal and rigging the boiler to generate electricity, too, so that the pump motors for the heating system could work. It took Tevy a few years of listening to Emile’s drunken dreams before he understood that it was never going to happen. Emile didn’t have the knowledge or the coal to make it happen.

  But the old boiler room did make a great armory and gun shop, one Elliot vowed to take over when Emile got too old to keep it going. Tevy whistled as he hurried down the metal-grate stairs into the bowels of the boiler room. One barred window, high up on the wall even though it was below grade outside, filtered light into the room. Down at a desk in the corner, Emile sat cleaning a handgun with a dark rag. But that wasn’t what had caught Tevy by surprise.

  “When did all this get here?’ he asked Elliot. Stacks of wooden and metal boxes filled every available space around the boiler until the furnace itself was lost to sight. Tevy only knew it was there from memory. Guns lined the wall above Emile’s desk and more ran along the stone wall under the stairs.

  “Just in time.” Emile looked up from his work and gave a rosy-cheeked smile, one that would have fit Santa if he had a black beard and you caught him drunk in his basement off-season. “I heard you was back.”

  Tevy stood in the only open space in the basement, near Emile’s old desk, and turned in a circle with his arms out, waving at the ammunition. “So the colonel finally came through.”

  Emile stood and gave Tevy a back-pounding drunken hug, almost unbalancing them both before he pulled back to study him, one hand still on Tevy’s shoulder, Emile’s hooch breath soaking the air around them. “I think you’ve grown. In just a couple of weeks, I think you’ve grown.”

  “Sorry to rush,” Tevy said. “But we’re on a run and Bobs said we could load up.”

  Emile waved an expansive arm at the shelving near his desk. “For once I can say take whatever you want. I got word this afternoon.” The shelves held row after row of plastic bins, all neatly labeled with black marker on white tape: 9mm, .38, etc. Tevy hurried to the 9mm bin and started stuffing boxes of cartridges into the pockets of his vest. The others crowded around too, grabbing and clutching as if they were a pack of wolves fighting over a corpse. Tevy switched to the 12-gauge bin to load up for his Winchester.

  “You kids want a drink before you head out?” Emile held up an old wine bottle, but the fumes were his hooch.

  Elliot looked to Tevy hopefully. “It might steady our shot,” he said.

  “Maybe,” said Tevy, “but we’re not going to the target range. I need you clear-headed.”

  Elliot started reaching for the bottle anyway, but Emile pulled it back. “Tevy’s right and he’s your captain.”

  “And he’s no fun.”

  “Thanks, Emile. I got lots to tell you when I get back.” Tevy led the way up the stairs and out the side door to the street. They had only just started for the field when a dark-haired man walking along the wall of the church caught Tevy’s attention. It was Radu, the Romanian who ended up stuck at St. John’s at the end, the guy who fought so well beside he and Kayla that first night on the road.

  “Hey, Rad!” Tevy called. “Up for some fun?”

  Radu didn’t take a second to decide. “Yes,” he said. “This would be very good. It’s already quite boring here, and I’m very tired of the sitting.”

  Elliot cast a suspicious glare. “He sounds like Vlad.”

  “Well he’s not,” Tevy said, before Elliot could put Radu on trial. “And you’re just going to have to trust me that he’s good.”

  “Okay, if you say so.” Elliot pointed to Radu’s sidearm and the M16 slung over his shoulder. “At least he’s packing big time. Come on, this way.”

  Elliot led the way across the field, the remains of some of the bulldozed houses still evident amongst the weeds: concrete blocks, cement floors, and occasionally gaping basements only half-filled with bricks and smashed two-by-fours. Just after Tevy’s arrival at the church after his parents’ murder, he watched the destruction of the houses on the closest streets, creating a clear field of fire for defenders of St. Mike’s and putting a dangerous obstacle course with little cover as a barrier to rippers.

  The Brat Pack, of course, knew a hundred safe routes through this mess of wonton destruction, and on the far side, dozens of bikes—many rusting but some cleaned and greased—waited in a line.

  “Which one should I take?” asked Kayla.

  Tevy looked up from picking his own ride to make sure she wasn’t joking. “Take any bike. We got hundreds all round the hood. Just make sure it’s a good one, not rusty and all.” He stood up his favorite, a mountain bike with shocks, still gleaming red with only the chrome rusted. It reminded him of the bike he had asked his parents for his tenth birthday, the last year of normal life for him, the bike they had promised to get him when he was a bit older and taller.

  He let Elliot and Amanda lead the way, chasing after them, fighting to focus on the ground and not Amanda’s buttocks. Tevy suddenly wondered if Kayla was looking at his backside, a disquieting sensation. Did she like what she saw? Did she care? Why should it matter, since she was so much older? But it did.

  Elliot led them to a pile of debris that had been shoved up against the houses of the Meyer Court. The doors, bricks, couches, and wood frames were all that was left of the houses between Cleveland and Meyer, the first block west of St Mike’s. The bulldozed homes now filled Meyer, effectively blocking any wheeled approach or exit—unless you were riding a mountain bike and really knew your way.

  A pair of boards, heavy two-by-eights, formed a ramp going ten feet up the side of the pile. Tevy wondered why he hadn’t known about this route, until he noticed the cross boards underneath holding the pair of boards together. Elliot and Amanda must’ve recently constructed this ramp. From a distance it just looked like one more chunk of detritus.

  Tevy had to work hard to peddle the bike up the ramp, and it wasn’t until Amanda plunged sharply out of view that he had any idea what to expect. The far side of the pile had a metal garage door on the downhill side, leaning onto the roof of a house that once fronted on Meyer before the pile took up the street. Tevy’s bike slipped sideways on the slick metal before the tires caught purchase on the asphalt shingles. These roofs were long slopes, and Elliot and Amanda had already rushed down, turning onto a
garage roof. Tevy turned just in time to see Elliot bounce down onto the roof of a van and from there to the roof of a car parked against it as if it had just been t-boned. From the hood of the car to the ground was an easy jump.

  “Look out! Look out!” Kayla’s shout from behind prompted Tevy to let go of the brake. She had crested the top of barrier and was on her way down the garage door, and Tevy was stopped at the bottom. Radu was right behind her, looking wide-eyed and sweating.

  Tevy surged down the roof, banking sharply on the garage and taking the impact as he hit first the roof of the van, with the satisfying sound of crunching steel, and then the roof of the car. His heart pounded and he grinned at his fear. One bad turn now and he’d splatter on the pavement. Instead he hit the ground and skidded to a stop by Elliot and Amanda, giving them each high fives.

  “That was fantastic,” Tevy shouted, turning to watch first Kayla and then Radu complete the descent with a little less style and a lot more hesitation.

  Kayla looked furious. “You people are crazy. One mistake and the mission would have to be scrubbed while we scraped someone’s brains off the pavement.”

  Elliot shrugged at Tevy, his meaning clear: you invited them, you explain.

  Tevy nodded. “Let’s roll.”

  A metal gate hung open, and the laneway it provided between the townhouses was their route to the next street over, where Elliot turned right to peddle fast for Eugene Street. It was at the intersection that Tevy pointed east and shouted over his shoulder to Kayla, “That’s why.”

  Hundreds of people pushed through the narrow opening in the stone wall that blocked Eugene, a flow of humanity that was going in one direction: into the cantonment of St. Mike’s, where the high school and the block houses would be refuges against the night and the rippers. Tevy hoped it would be obvious to Kayla that trying to push out through the gate against that mob would have resulted in bruises and lost time, assuming they got out at all before dark.