by ML Banner
He knew he was the only one who could save the boy. And he knew that he’d have no peace unless he did. He had to find this kidnapped boy and save him. And after he saved him from Scarface, he’d offer to take the boy with him to Cicada. Then he’d be free again.
Tom rose finally, hoisting his backpack over his shoulder.
He looked once more at the toy soldier and then slipped it into his pocket. It jingled with the other.
He started walking again, trying to think of a tune to whistle or hum, as he had been just before this. But he couldn’t think of even one.
Instead, his mind continued to give him that same vexing image of Drew the moment right after the bullet hit: his eyes begged Tom, “Why did you let this happen to me?”
He wouldn’t let it happen again.
21
Just outside of Warsaw, Missouri
The boy kept humming some annoying tune. And every once in a while, he’d sing a few bars of the melody, always off key.
“Shhhh,” Scarface said, putting a forefinger to his mouth to quiet the boy.
A preliminary check of the warehouse had already been completed. It appeared to be vacant, with no apparent threats to either of them. Regardless, he wanted them to operate as stealthily as possible while they looked over the vast food supply the warehouse contained and took what they needed.
If the GA had moved this far south, he would have had their troops raid this place. There was enough food to feed a small town—or army—for weeks. It looked like one of those large warehouses that supplied small stores in the region.There were pallets of non-refrigerated foodstuffs, along with thousands of non-food items, floor to ceiling—walls upon walls of it. They would load up what they could carry and should be good for the two- to five-day walk back to where the GA should be, based on their slow progression west.
He might still tell the Teacher’s minions about this place, especially if he could find his treasured Dunhill’s. Although they had continued to find supplies of his cigarette brand, he knew this task would get more and more difficult as time passed. They weren’t making any more of them. And it killed him to think that the vast number of surviving knuckle-dragging Americans would smoke his Dunhill’s, because he couldn’t get to them first.
One aisle seemed to harbor unlimited supplies of chips. It wasn’t his food fare, but he knew the boy would eat them and he’d receive a bigger benefit. He used his silver dagger to slice open a box holding hundreds of bags of tortilla chips, snatched one out and handed the bag to the boy, telling him to be quiet and eat while he searched for some more food.
Scarface continued his reconnoiter and mental inventory of the place.
His breath quickened when he found a wall of nothing but cases of cigarettes. His eyes fluttered side to side, up and down, searching for that idolized word. Alas, there were no Dunhill’s. But he did find cases of Parliaments. That would do in a pinch.
He returned to the shrink-wrapped pallet of his fall-back brand and eviscerated the clear plastic skin. A flash of an image slapped at his conscience: the family who had wandered into his camp and told him where to find the traitors and the boy. He had to slice open the bony husband’s guts in front of the wife to convince her to talk.
Scarface pulled a carton out of the gut of the conglomeration of packages of cartons, and their contents poured out onto his feet... Just like the intestines of the bony man.
He shook the image of the bony man from his mind and shoved the pilfered carton of cigarettes into his satchel.
Then he reached down and grabbed one of the individual cigarettes lying on the warehouse’s concrete floor. It was his first fag in a long time. He stuck it in his thin lips, lit it using his gold lighter and sucked in its glorious smoke. His eyes folded back, his lids closed, and he relished the instant buzz. His eyes flicked back open and he shook his head again. This was an unnecessary waste of time. He needed to get moving. He felt the day burning away and wanted to get back on the road. He let the precious stick fall out of his mouth and stomped on it once, hesitated, and then stomped on it again. He didn’t want to burn the place down before he sent the GA to raid it. It was worth saving for the Parliaments alone.
The big negative about the warehouse was the lack of substantial food items, with just one small section of one wall dedicated to canned soups, noodles, and a few dehydrated dishes in a bag. He grabbed a couple of these and a few other snacks and beef jerky. He was slightly off in his assumption. This warehouse wasn’t supplying grocery stores, but some of the millions of mini-markets which spotted the American landscape like a cancerous plague. He chortled at the thought, giving thanks that the sun had pretty much stopped that cancer from growing any further. “It is in remission,” he whispered, breaking into a rare smile. Then he halted like he had turned into an unexpected wall.
Out of a north facing window—one of the many small windows that supplied the warehouse’s only light—he caught a glimpse of a man walking toward the warehouse. Time to go.
“This is all I could find.” Scarface tossed a bag of beef jerky to the boy. “Come, we need to get going.” Scarface didn’t wait to see that the boy followed, and he headed to the back of the warehouse.
“What about my questions?” the boy asked. He ripped open the bag and shoved three big pieces deep inside his mouth.
“Not now; someone is coming our way. We have to leave, now!”
The boy didn’t say anything more and quickly fell behind Scarface, who was already waiting by the door leading to the back.
Scarface turned the knob and slowly opened it a crack. It creaked much too loudly.
He stuck his head out and looked in both directions before slipping outside, pulling the boy with him.
They both shuffled to the building’s edge and held up there. Scarface carefully peeked around the painted concrete surface, toward the road. He didn’t see anyone, but he heard several voices, which sounded near the warehouse’s front entrance.
He turned to the boy and whispered, cupping his hands around his mouth, so that the boy would lean in and only he would hear. “Follow me closely. We’re going to walk along the tree line before we make it back onto the road. Stay low, you got it?”
The boy’s hair flopped up and down.
Scarface turned back, eyed the trees, and rose. He peeked once more around the corner and was shocked to see something in his way. There, standing in front of him, was a huge man in overalls. Scarface reached for his dagger, but Overalls was already swinging a club that caught Scarface on the side of his head. Clunk!
Overalls—his buddies called him Griff—watched the ugly man fall over and then leered at the little boy standing in front of him. Surprisingly, the boy glowered at him without any fear.
“Lookie what I found here, boys.”
22
Dead bodies had been a common sight to Tom in Syria and other similar war-torn countries. Yet it came as a complete shock to see one in America, especially one so rudely displayed on a public road.
At first, it looked just like a man casually sitting on a chair taking in the mid-day sun, only in the center of a highway. The way he was peacefully perched in his chair, Tom would have assumed the man had been lounging on his front porch, leisurely taking in his domain, unaware he was in the middle of a road. But as Tom approached closer, he realized the whole thing was staged, and the man was stone-cold dead.
In Syria, Tom had come across similar purposely placed dead bodies. Each was booby-trapped so that American contractors like Tom would be blown up once the body was disturbed. For this reason alone, bodies lay everywhere in Syria, all left in overt places, until the sun and internal gases swelled their skin like balloons to the point of bursting. This would eventually disrupt the explosives enough that it detonated anyway.
There was no way to tell if this intentionally staged body was in fact booby-trapped, without getting closer. In Syria, he would have never done this, because in addition to the explosive, there was often a snip
er waiting to shoot you if you didn’t take the bait. He didn’t expect either to be a problem, as it just didn’t seem logical. So he assumed there must be another reason for the body’s presence.
Tom continued his approach carefully, with his rifle at the ready, constantly scanning his surroundings to check for snipers—in case his assumption was wrong—or for locations where an armed group could be lying in wait. With a twenty-two rifle and a magazine holding only eight rounds of ammo, he wouldn’t stand much of a chance against a better-armed group waiting to ambush him. Each step closer, the more unsure he was about the body. Something just didn’t add up.
Other than the poor sap in front of him, there didn’t appear to be any movement around the site. There also didn’t appear to be any high points where a sniper could be perched, ready to take a shot. However, there were plenty of trees and other natural cover that could be used to conceal a hiding adversary. His nerves fired a crescendo of warnings to his brain.
He tried to focus on any sounds outside the rapid thump of his heart and the soft scuffle of each footstep. But there were very few: only the occasional wisp of the wind against the crackling tree limbs on either side of the road, and the rare rattle of a locust in the distance.
Finally, as Tom drew to within a few yards of the body, its purpose became obvious. What Tom had thought was the bill of a whitish ball cap, obscuring most of the man’s face, was actually a piece of paper. There was writing on it. Within twenty feet, he could finally make out the block lettering. The message couldn’t have been clearer:
This scrounger chose the wrong territory.
Tom swung around again, his growing paranoia feeding upon itself. Once more his senses told him he was still alone. Then he returned his gaze to the dead man.
He was more of a kid, really: a skinny youngster of maybe twenty, though his skin lacked all youthful perkiness. It had a drum-like tautness, stretched thin to its limits. His mug showed signs of a beating: it was swollen and discolored. The warning message was crudely stapled to his forehead. Besides the sign on his head, most noticeable was that his hands were missing. They were chopped off at the wrist. Odder still was the lack of blood around the young man.
Tom guessed this poor guy must have been looting a store or home further up the highway for food or other supplies, was caught by the local gang that ruled this territory, killed and then deposited here as a sign to someone who might wander down this stretch of road, someone like Tom.
He shook his head in disbelief. How could his country have devolved so far in such a short amount of time? He knew some form of this was going to occur, eventually. He just didn’t think it would happen within the first year. It also seemed strange that it would occur so close to what he guessed he should call his hometown. He rarely spent time in Warsaw, but it was their closest place for supplies. Mimi visited it much more often than him. And although the people were never particularly warm to Tom, it now appeared less welcoming than even he could remember. An apocalypse would do that to a town.
Tom stepped away from the body and gave the whole area a wide berth, just in case he missed something. He also didn’t want to leave evidence of his presence before continuing north on the highway. You never know who might be able to pick up your trail.
Less than a quarter mile later, he was approaching the span of the roadway that crossed what was a moat-like river that surrounded Warsaw. At least it had looked that way when the water flowed plentifully. Now it was mostly dry, but for a couple of muddy areas: a wide span of emptiness, circling the town, like a black funeral wreath.
Tom took a knee on the side of the highway, under a brown canopy of some large scrub, and surveyed the top of the road. It appeared to have an obstruction on it.
He pulled out his monocular, and the obstruction became clear: piles of debris and barbed-wire crowning the mass. It was a barricade. The middle of the obstruction was open and guarded by two men sporting bored faces and military-style rifles.
More than a morbid warning to scroungers, this told Tom that they did not want any visitors.
“Now, where are the boy and Scarface?” Tom whispered to himself. He hadn’t found any other toy soldiers, or other signs of where they went from here, and there really weren’t any other turn-offs. He couldn’t go forward without a confrontation he didn’t want. So he thought he might double back and look for the signs that they left the road. Perhaps they stopped at one of the warehouses behind him, or maybe they too saw the road block and decided to turn away. But where?
Another thought gnawed at Tom.More of a momentary flash, but it was there just the same. He wondered if the boy left the toy soldiers as a trap. But why? And it still wouldn’t tell him where they went.
Almost in answer to his questions, he heard a commotion to his left: fallen tree branches being shattered by heavy feet and boastful chatter coming from behind a nest of trees. Tom slid behind the scrub and then snaked inside its cover on his belly. In a prone position, his rifle now pointed in the direction of the noise, Tom trained his monocular on the area and watched as several men popped out of the trees.
Two were carrying an unconscious or dead man, but their own large frames obscured the man’s identity from Tom. Then he saw the boy step out from the trees, with two more men following behind him. It was definitely the same red-headed boy he’d been following, so the unconscious man must be Scarface. The last man gave the boy a nudge forward, as he seemed to be falling behind the others.
“Get moving, kid, or we’ll knock you out like we did your father,” said the last man, who gave the kid another shove.
“Oh, he’s not my father,” the boy responded. His voice and nonchalant manner was not that of a worried child.
The boy stopped dead when his feet met the asphalt of the highway and stared right in Tom’s direction, almost like the boy knew of Tom’s presence.
Tom felt his heart skip, but then reassured himself that there was no way he could be seen by this kid or anyone. Still, he remained motionless.
“Kid, this is your last warning,” the man spat out.
“Is there a problem?” demanded a gargantuan man, wearing overalls and waving mitts with beefy fingers.
It was Griff, the same sonofabitch who had slept with his wife, the same idiot he threatened in the sleazy bar in town. Tom considered raising the rifle and planting one copper-plated 22 right into the forehead of that SOB right now. But that would have been stupid: if he was lucky, he might get one or maybe even two more of them. But then everyone would have run or dove for cover. Then his position would have been revealed. At least three of them had rifles. And because he didn’t plan for an escape, in no time he’d be surrounded. It’d be over quickly. It was far better to hold on tight to his anger and desire for revenge and focus on his mission.
“No Griff,” the man huffed and shoved the boy a little harder.
“You’ll be sorry you did this,” the boy countered. The boy glared and then cracked a sly smile in Tom’s direction, wholly ignoring the shoving man, who pushed once more, even rougher than before.
The boy started moving again, now looking forward, still smiling. His mouth formed words Tom couldn’t hear. And for just a moment, Tom heard a bar or two of some song. The kid was singing.
Tom watched them march up the highway overpass, through the barrier’s opening, and then disappear over the rise. He backed out of the scrub. Already a plan had started to form.
23
This day was just getting better and better, thought Scarface.
He jostled at the riggings biting into his wrists and knew right away that he wouldn’t be able to free himself without some assistance. No use fighting it. He’d find a way out when the time was right. He cracked his eyes open and saw that he was resting against some rough fencing, which ate into his back. His eyes darted around, checking out his environs, until they found the kid, who was staring right at him.
“They have us tied up. But don’t worry; we’ll have help soon enough
.” The kid’s voice had that annoying high-pitched tenor of a nine-year old, but the resonating maturity of someone thirty years more senior. It would have been easy to discount the kid’s words, as most adults might, but he’d learned quickly that this kid possessed abilities he didn’t quite understand, nor did he want to. This kid was creepy. And to wake up to the kid watching him felt doubly weird.
“What nonsense are you spewing?” Scarface whispered away from the boy, as he continued taking in the area around them. There were three other prisoners like them, also tied up. And it appeared they were being held in an open animal pen, like cattle being processed for slaughter. His eyes came to rest on a guard with a rifle. The man was looking away from them at that moment, but was only a few feet away, inside their paddock, and would probably turn their way at any moment.
Scarface glanced down and looked for his dagger, but it wasn’t sheathed where he normally kept it at his side.
“Do you really think they’d let you keep that?” the boy asked, glaring at him.
Dammit, Scarface thought. It’s like this kid can read my thoughts.
“Not to worry. I don’t know what you’re thinking, at least not entirely.”
Scarface had to fight back a growing sense of panic at their situation, and he never panicked. This child seemed more composed than him right now. “Do you really think your father is going to save you now?” he snapped back. It was Scarface’s sad attempt at inflicting emotional harm upon the kid, because the kid was so affecting him. If his hands were free at this moment, he’d probably pop the kid in the face, even though he had promised the Teacher he’d not let harm come to the boy. He tried to shunt his growing anger and not let this kid get to him. His words and thinking were reactionary and completely uncharacteristic.
“I have faith,” the boy stated, his tone obstinate and resolute.
It was like adding insult to injury. Scarface could never understand why the kid had so much blind faith in the Teacher, just as his followers did. He was further angered that he had allowed them to get caught in the first place. Getting caught called to question Scarface’s own abilities. After all, he was the one sent by the Teacher to find and return the boy. If he couldn’t do this, it would look bad. And it certainly would affect his lifestyle if he returned without the kid.
