Reapers (Breakers, Book 4)

by Edward W. Robertson

  His partner leaned in. "Could be those uptown shitheads, man."

  "Zip it," the first soldier said. He scrunched up his face as if enduring great pain. "I take you seriously, ma'am. Seriously enough that, even though we're not really closed for tourist season but because we got a lot of people in here who seem bent on shooting each other, I doubt that information is going to turn you away. Am I right?"

  "Utterly," Ellie said.

  "Here's what I'm going to do for you. I'm going to take down your names and give you temporary passports. Then you're going to go straight to City Hall, explain your situation, and do whatever they tell you to do. Is that a deal?"

  "If they tell me to leave, I'm going to tell them the same thing I told you."

  He brayed laughter, mist drifting from his mouth. "Listen, will you pretend to agree with me so I can swear up and down to my prick of a superior officer that you solemnly swore to abide by the adjudications of the sovereign nation of Manhattan?"

  Despite herself, Ellie laughed. "I so swear."

  "Boom! I'll grab the paperwork and we can get you on your way."

  He walked to the shack behind the barricade and returned with three clipboards and pens. Ellie set to work filling in her name, residence, and reason of visit.

  As she passed it back, the second soldier frowned at Ellie's rifle. "What about their guns?"

  The first man rolled his eyes. "Jesus, Ezra, do you want to send someone into the island unarmed right now?"

  "Then you get to answer to Valentine."

  "No problem. I'll just tell her you were asleep at your post." He laughed some more, collected Ellie's paperwork, and passed them each a laminated badge. "You know where City Hall is?"

  "I used to live here," Ellie said.

  "Why didn't you say so? Welcome home!" He stepped aside with a flourish. As they passed, he winked at Dee.

  Past the bridge, they descended to street level. Hobson lifted his gray brows. "Well."

  "Did you know they had a government?" Ellie said.

  "I'd heard rumblings. I'd always assumed it was a tin-pot setup."

  "Unless they're a complete farce, they'll know about the slave trade. We'll pry the intel out of them and go straight to the source. Could be out of here in a couple days."

  The wicker frame of Hobson's right snowshoe snapped. He cursed, but the shoe held together. "Let's pray they're corrupt."

  Dee raised one eyebrow. "Why would we want that?"

  "Easier to bribe."

  They walked past miles of brownstones and tall project towers. An hour later, they paralleled the park, walking along a stone fence that had been topped with barbed wire. Log cabins and shacks dotted the fields and hid in the trees. The grass had been plowed under; most of the land was brown dirt and churned-up stalks of the fall harvest. Axes thunked wood. Here and there, people strolled down the paths, dogs clicking along beside them. Watching them, Ellie could almost pretend the plague had never happened—except each man and woman carried a rifle on their shoulder or a pistol on their hip.

  "This is so weird," Dee said.

  Ellie took in the skyline of Midtown. "Remember it?"

  "It smells even worse than it used to."

  Hobson chuckled. "Makes you wish you had an off switch for your nose."

  Once the park was behind them, the city grew quiet. Every few blocks, Ellie glimpsed a drape stirring or a figure watching them from an apartment, but virtually all the windows were dark or broken or thick with dust.

  The steel mountains of Midtown sloped down to the foothills of Chelsea and a Village that had just managed to become completely gentrified before the Panhandler wiped the slate clean. Ellie felt like she was trespassing over a grave. Nonsense, of course. More people had died in New York in the centuries before the plague than during the collapse. Cities like this had always been cemeteries. The only reason you didn't notice was because people had been so good at replacing the corpses with live bodies.

  She kept both eyes out for trouble, but the turrets of City Hall soon climbed from the downtown highrises. As they crossed its plaza, a wary soldier exited the front doors, stopped them, examined their laminated passports, and allowed them inside. They unbuckled their snowshoes and left them by the door. After the last two weeks, walking without them made Ellie's feet feel lighter than air, as if her legs faded into nothing somewhere around the shins.

  "Dude," Dee said, voice echoing across the stone chambers. "They have lights."

  "So do we," Ellie said. "They're called candles."

  "Yeah, and they smell like sheep fat."

  An expansive walnut desk commanded the back of the room. It was abandoned, but the click of their heels summoned a woman from the chambers beyond.

  "May I help you?" she said.

  "We're looking for someone," Ellie said. "We're—"

  She held out her hand. "IDs?"

  Ellie handed over their passports. "We just got here."

  The woman looked up sharply. "The island is currently closed to visitors. Were you invited by one of our citizens?"

  "Not exactly, but—"

  "Then I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

  Ellie braced her forearms on the desk. "We don't want to be here any more than you do. Unfortunately, neither of us has a choice. You want us gone? Then give us a hand."

  The woman sighed and looked past Ellie's shoulder. "Garza! Bollings!"

  Boots echoed from the front and sides. Four soldiers in urban camo converged on the desk.

  Hobson thumbed back his hat and planted his feet. "Are you on orders not to listen to a single word we have to say? I am Sheriff Oliver Hobson, chief lawman of the Lakeland Territories. We are here on the official investigation of the kidnapping of one of our citizens. I will speak to a representative of your law enforcement or make it known to all that Manhattan has no law."

  Colloquially, Ellie was used to thinking of their homeland as the "lakelands," but as Hobson spoke, she heard them in a new light, capitalized and proper. Not just a vague patch of mountains spotted with big pools of freshwater, but a unique place: the Lakeland Territories. A village—or perhaps a loose-knit clan—of farmers, shoemakers, fishermen, and shopkeepers. They weren't all in tune, but even Mort Franklin's religious fanatics had recognized, in the end, that they were responsible to something greater than themselves. Not just their god, but their people.

  As the receptionist hemmed and hawed, processing Hobson's proclamation, Ellie saw the power in that. The Lakelands didn't have to be a herd of prey animals, where it was a matter of course to lose a few of their own to outsiders every now and then. There was power in numbers. Especially when those who were good at keeping the predators at bay—and in turning the hunters into the hunted—put their talents to use.

  "Federal agent Ellie Colson, DAA," she said. "I'm working in conjunction with the Sheriff of the Lakelands. I've got no interest in being forced to pursue a charge for obstruction of justice."

  The receptionist went very still. "Do you have identification?"

  Hobson tented his fingers on top of the high desk. "Do you think it's wise to try the patience of a man stupid enough to wear a badge in this day and age?"

  She pressed her lips together. "I'll speak to the Sheriff of Manhattan. I can't guarantee he'll see you."

  "If he won't, I'd like to see his badge."

  The woman glared at Hobson, then clicked away from the counter and entered the back rooms. The soldiers watched them from across the lobby. While they waited, two women and a suited man emerged from a frosted side door and murmured to each other, eyes on Ellie.

  "Suppose they'll go for that?" she said.

  Hobson shrugged mildly. "Depends on whether their sheriff wears the tin for its shine, or what it represents."

  "This is a joke," Dee said. "They can't guard the whole island. We could row across the river any time we want."

  Ellie smiled, put a finger to her lips, and glanced at the soldiers, who were busy pretending they hadn'
t heard and that the island was indeed under their complete control.

  It was some time before the heels clacked from the back office. The receptionist returned, accompanied by a young man who followed so close behind her that he appeared to be tied to her elbow.

  "The sheriff will see you," she said.

  The young man smiled and detached from his host, showing Hobson and his "deputies" up the marble stairs to the second floor. The sheriff's chambers were expansive and draped with thick rugs. After the echoing vastness of the stonework, the carpets seemed to swallow all sound.

  The sheriff wasn't as old as Ellie expected. Late forties, though thickets of gray had taken root in his temples. He sat in a plain wooden chair with scuffed arms and scratched varnish.

  "Reba tells me you're from upstate," he said. "You got a car?"

  Hobson shook his head. "We used our feet. Primitive, but rather more reliable."

  "Through all that snow?" The sheriff puffed his cheeks. "Hope I've got good news for you."

  Ellie laid out the situation, starting with George Tolbert's loan and following the line through Quinn's kidnapping, transport to Albany, and the van that had taken him away right before the blizzard. As she spoke, the sheriff's face grew more and more pinched.

  "That's a thread I wouldn't hang much weight from," he said. "You said the van headed south. How do you know it came here?"

  Ellie leaned forward in her chair. "The Clavans' employees specifically mentioned doing business with the city. The captives we spoke with reinforced the idea they were making a delivery here."

  "Don't know about the rest of the continent, but in Manhattan, slavery's illegal."

  "So what?" Dee said. "The real government used to make drugs illegal, and I could get them any time I wanted." She glanced at Ellie. "If I'd wanted."

  The sheriff nodded distantly. "That was a different time. We got fewer rules now, but we take the ones we've got more seriously. For me, I see little difference between slavery and murder."

  "How many men do you have under your command?" Ellie said.

  "Enough I can't always keep track of their names."

  "They patrol the whole island? We crossed most of it on the way here and I didn't see a single man in uniform."

  He narrowed his eyes, as if trying to spot a trout below the surface of a river. "No doubt there's corners of the room that escape our broom. But it's tough to hide an operation like a slave ring. If there were such a group operating in Manhattan, this office would know about it."

  Ellie wrapped her hand around her fist. "When I find it anyway, I'll try not to rub it in your face."

  "I'm not sure how you got into the city, but you might have heard there's a brouhaha brewing between our two biggest gangs. Think about the kind of people who might be dealing in human slaves. The timing's no good to be asking hard questions of bad people."

  "Is it ever?" Ellie laughed. "People like this trade in fear. These people took my daughter's fiancé. Pushed her past the point of fear. As for the sheriff, he fears lawlessness more than gangsters. And me? I get the best of both worlds."

  The man was silent for three seconds. The skin around his right eye twitched. He made an upward gesture that might have been a salute or a signal that, if she were so intent on making a mistake, he wouldn't stand in her way.

  "Good luck to you," he said. "If you find your boy, bring me the details. I'll have work to do."

  Ellie got up. The others followed her into the hall. The young man was waiting for them. "How did it go?"

  "Regretfully, the sheriff had no useful information."

  "Are you going to keep looking?"

  She met his eager gaze. "Until we find him."

  "Then I'm supposed to give you this." He passed her a folded note. Ellie read its contents at a glance: "THE TEMPLE. MET. 5 PM."

  She held it up between her first two fingers. "Who gave this to you?"

  He shook his head. "I don't know."

  "Did someone stuff it in your ear while you were tying your shoes? How can you not know?"

  "They left it here with a note for me while I was in the bathroom. I'm sorry."

  Ellie bit down her frustration and jogged down the stone staircase. In the lobby, Reba called after her. "If you're staying in Manhattan, you're required to register your residence."

  Ellie didn't slow down. Reba repeated her order, but no one tried to stop them. Ellie had figured as much. Their government was theater. They put on their titles and costumes and badges, but when it was time to enforce their power in the real world, the light came up and exposed them for the actors they were.

  At the doors, the three of them grabbed their snowshoes. One of the soldiers followed them out and watched them cross the plaza. Hobson wore a funny smile.

  "Care to share your note with the rest of the class?" he asked once they were out of easy earshot.

  "Someone wants to meet us at the Met."

  "The Met?"

  "Metropolitan Museum of Art. Uptown, other side of Central Park."

  "That's it?" he said. She handed him the note. He glanced at it, turned it over. "I'd assume it's regarding a tip."

  "Or someone who wants us to think they have a tip."

  Dee glanced between them. "What else are we going to do, wander around looking for the van? Put Quinn's face on milk cartons? I'm going."

  Ellie sighed and checked the sky. "If we're going to get there in time, we'd better leave now."

  "One question," Hobson said, crunching through the snow behind her. "What's 'the temple'?"

  "Exactly what it sounds like."

  They took Broadway uptown. At 14th Street, Ellie stopped in Union Square to eat lunch on one of the park benches. A mounted statue of George Washington watched them eat their dried fruit and meat. The supplies they'd taken from the house in the woods were running down, but Ellie thought they had enough for at least four more days before things got tight. They finished and moved on.

  "That used to be in all the movies," she said, pointing to the wedge of the Flatiron Building. "Think it was in Spider-Man."

  "Cool," Dee said in that particular teenage tone that always made Ellie feel like the oldest and stupidest person on earth. She quit playing tour guide and headed straight to Fifth Avenue, following it all the way north.

  The Met stood beside Central Park like something teleported from the glory days of Louis XIV. Pairs of columns supported a scalloped roof. A mountain of steps funneled patrons to the front doors. Behind dingy plastic cases, giant posters advertised the upcoming Giacometti exhibit. The dates were six years behind.

  "I remember this," Dee said. "We came here for class sometimes. I always got lost."

  "Me too. Stick together." Ellie tugged off her snowshoes, jogged up the steps, and set them beside the front doors.

  Inside, sunlight streamed through the windows, lighting up amoeboid swirls of dust. The collection bin by the front doors had been shattered and a constellation of coin-sized blue entrance badges scattered the creamy stone floor. One statue had been toppled face-down, chips of marble astered around it. The others looked untouched.

  Hobson turned in a slow circle. "With a place this fine, it's a wonder some roving band of assholes hasn't been by to smash it."

  Ellie nodded, not paying particular attention. "What time is it?"

  He clicked out his pocket watch. "4:07. Assuming I've been remembering to wind it."

  "Then we might actually have time to find the temple."

  She wandered past the cobwebbed admission booths to the broad left-side doorway. Marble statues beyond, blank-eyed Greeks. Memory jogged, she pulled a 180 and crossed the lobby to the opposite wing that housed the Egyptian collection. Dee slowed to look at the jackal-headed statues and sarcophagi. Some had been stolen, others toppled and abandoned as too heavy, but most of it was still in place.

  The vacancy of the place was one more sign of how much sway the "government" really had here. Ellie wasn't the sentimental type, but these treasures�
��including some actual bodies—had been taken from their homeland and brought here to display. The remains, both physical and cultural, deserved to be honored. Stored away safely, at the very least. If the government couldn't take care of that much, she had no illusions they could do better for their people.

  The lengthy passage fed them into a high and open chamber. Slanted windows covered one whole wall, overlooking leafless trees and piebald grass.

  "Ah," Hobson said. "The temple."

  Waning light displayed the two pieces dominating the room. On one end of a low platform, a stone gateway stood fifteen feet high. On the other, separated by a vast flat space, a small temple fronted by two stone pillars squatted under the high modern ceiling. Statues perched here and there. A shallow moat had once isolated the temple platform, but the water had dried up long ago, leaving nothing but a greenish stain on the channel floor and several dollars in spare change. Ellie walked around to the flat bridge and peeked inside the temple, but it was empty.

  "Guess we're early," she said.

  The room was clearly vacant, but she checked its nooks and corners anyway. Dee found the placard for the exhibit and read it raptly.

  "This thing is like a million years old," she said. "Who just buys an ancient temple? What kind of country sells one?"

  "In their defense," Hobson said, "they had an awful lot of the things."

  Ellie tried the door leading out to the park. It was locked or stuck. That left two points of egress: the passage they'd come through, and another leading back into the heart of the museum. Besides the two pieces of the temple, there was little cover. As Dee fooled around behind the stone chamber, Ellie conferred with Hobson.

  "Take cover behind the temples?" she said. "Or post one of us to the side of each entrance?"

  "I'm not exactly a latter-day Clausewitz," he said. "But if our blind date is bearing bad intentions, I'd rather start with some space between us."

  "Right. Sticking near the temple will make it easier to regroup, too."

  "Boo!" Dee said from above them. She'd climbed onto the temple roof and popped her head over the ledge.

  "Jesus, Dee!" Ellie flinched, throwing her hands up around her face. "Get down from there before you break something."