“Does he do this often?” Tully whispered.
Jeff shook his head. “The last time was when he prophesied you’d come out of the hole.”
Ace spun around angrily. “Quiet,” he snarled. “The angels are speaking to him.”
The Holy Man arched and twisted grotesquely. Matt and Joe held onto his arms and legs. Ace bent lower, straining to catch every word of the prophecy. The muttering grew louder and more distinct.
“The warrior from the darkness will sit at the right hand of the lord and be his champion. First he will slay the unclean in the midst of the Tribe, then by his hand the trespassers on the lands of the Tribe will be slain and the vermin driven out.”
The men nodded as though the Holy Man’s babblings meant something to them and shot quick sidelong glances at Tully. Ace gritted his teeth and glared at Tully with unconcealed hatred. Carla, too, studied Tully, and her expression darkened as an infantile grin spread across his face. But the prophecy wasn’t over. The Holy Man shook his head from side to side and rolled his eyes. Spittle dribbled from the corner of his mouth, and he gasped for breath as the words came out in a rush, tripping over one another in an almost unintelligible jumble.
“But the Bringer of Light has risen from his stronghold in the darkness, and only the champion will dare to lead the remaining tribes of the Earth against him. In vain, for nothing will prevail against the Light-Bringer, and he shall be the last champion of all time.”
The body of the Holy Man trembled, his limbs twitched uncontrollably, and he began to retch. Matt had the good sense to roll him onto his side to let the vomit drain away, and the rest of them held him down until the fit was over. Jeff was staring at Tully with a horrified expression. Matt shot him a quick glance of commiseration. Tully was white, the grin wiped from his face.
Ace turned to him with a mocking smile. “You wanted to be a warlord. So, you’re a warlord—the last fucking warlord ever. Enjoy.”
“Shite,” Tully murmured.
Chapter Thirteen
Carla sat in a corner of Lady Day’s Fine Lingerie Boutique, her arms wrapped around her knees. Tully had sent Jeff off to scavenge a few bits of furniture. Ace and his gang had returned to their duties. Carla hunched herself even smaller and stared at the carpet. Tully ran his hands through his hair, struggling to find the right words.
“I’m only stringing them along, Carla. You know me better than that. You can’t really believe that I secretly enjoy being their chief thug!”
“There’s nothing secret about it, General,” Carla replied bitterly. “It’s written all over your face. Oh, I know you’re not like Ace. There’s nothing sadistic about you. You’ll never take to wearing bracelets made out of plaited human skin like he does. But you did get a thrill out of killing that…that…thing, and you get a real buzz out of the way the other gorillas bow down before you. Admit it, Tully.”
Tully groped for an explanation, but found he hadn’t one handy.
“And another thing,” Carla went on relentlessly. “I am not your woman. Not yours or anybody else’s. Let’s just get that straight. I am not part of the swag you just won for yourself, and no, don’t tell me it’s just a front! I won’t have you speak like that about me.” Carla’s voice was close to breaking. “I always thought that… Never mind.” She shook her head. “Just don’t say those things again.”
Tully wrung his hands then ran them through his hair again. There was a clattering out on the walkway and Jeff burst in, out of breath, carrying three plastic café chairs.
“Ace wants you in the main room. Everybody’s there. Quick. He’s bloody fuming!”
Tully groaned and held his hand out to Carla.
Jeff shook his head. “Not her. It would look…funny.”
“It’s okay, Jeff. I understand.” Carla sounded weary. “Man talk. Go on, General, I’ll wait here and play house on my own.”
Tully blustered but the right words still eluded him. “See you later then,” he mumbled, and headed off with Jeff to the supermarket cafeteria.
* * * *
Carla had changed, Tully thought, kicking at an empty beer can. It was as though she was a different person, someone he didn’t recognize anymore. There had been a time when they… When he’d assumed…well, that they were a unit—Carla and Tully. He dragged his fingers through his hair again in a gesture of exasperation. She was sharp with him now, judgmental. As if he had any choice in the matter. If Ace made him fight, there wasn’t much he could do about it, was there? It was either cooperate or die—no appeal, no jury, not even a trial. This was chaos.
Tully started to get self-righteous. What did Carla think would happen to her without him around to protect her? How long did she think she’d last? Then a wave of shame submerged him as he remembered how she had been the one with the idea to dupe Jeff and slip a knife into her boot, how she had stood up to Ace when Tully had gotten himself thumped for being cocky, how she had shouted out to remind him about the hidden knife before Tab massacred him. She’d saved his life! And what had he done, for Christ’s sake? Only almost gotten them both killed with his stupid, smart-arse remarks.
“Shite!” He spat out the word and kicked the beer can again.
“What’s up?” Jeff asked.
“Why does nobody ever tell me to shut the fuck up before it’s too late?” Tully asked in a fury.
“Did you say something stupid?”
Tully sighed and gave Jeff a friendly punch in the shoulder. “Never mind. It’s my big mouth. I’m responsible for it, not you.”
Without the noise, the crowds and the lights, the shopping mall was a sinister place. The empty walkways echoed to the sound of their footsteps, a cold wind howled through a gaping hole in the roof and set loose metal sheets flapping with an ominous booming and cracking. Everywhere piles of debris and smashed lights and windows bore witness to the fighting for control of the place.
Shops had been pillaged, some burnt out, all had been defiled in some way. The walls were plastered with tags, scrawls and daubs, spattered with paint, excrement and blood. Even in the cold, even with half the glass in the doors and windows put out, the stench remained. It was the smell of decay, of putrefaction, of a whole civilization rotting away. The smell alone would have told Tully that the place, if not the whole world, was irretrievably dead.
He shivered. “This place gives me the creeps. Why does nobody do a survey, decide which is the least awful part and consolidate it?”
“What d’you mean?”
Tully waved at the smashed roof and shop fronts. “This part, for example… You can’t do anything with it. You can’t heat it. There’s no roof, so it’s swamped with ash and rainwater, and you can’t defend it. How many are you? Forty? Fifty? How much space do you need?”
“We,” Jeff corrected.
“Okay, how much space do we need? Not an entire bloody commercial center anyway. See? If we limit the space to what we need, we stand a chance of being able to keep it warm and a bit more secure. We tear down the parts we don’t need and build defenses out of it. The way you live at the moment isn’t rational. There aren’t even enough men to patrol the entire perimeter, never mind defend it. And we really ought to get a move on with clearing a likely area to plant. There’s sod all left to eat here.”
“You mean plant stuff to eat? Get stuff to grow? Out there?” Jeff looked incredulous.
“The sun comes out sometimes, doesn’t it? And it must rain, because everything’s sodden inside where the roof’s gone. All we have to do is dig down through the crap until we find the soil.”
“You talk like the guy in the bank. He’s always going on about digging an’ clearing an’ that. Ace just laughs.”
“Ace is a bloody idiot,” Tully said darkly.
“Well,” Jeff said, “now you’re his warrior number one, maybe you can get him to give it a try.”
“I’m meant to be his Warlord, not his chief agricultural advisor.”
“Does that mean you’ve
changed your mind?”
“About what?”
“Going.”
Tully glanced at Jeff then looked away. “Maybe,” he said. “Not just yet anyway.”
* * * *
Jeff and Tully had made their way along the first level of the mall to the supermarket entrance. The ground-floor level was strewn with broken glass and smashed shop furnishings, and they avoided it wherever possible. An icy wind swept through the empty hall, and ice formed at the edges of the scattered pools of dirty rainwater.
Ace had made his headquarters in the backrooms, the managers’ offices, the staff rooms and cafeteria. Everything useful had been emptied from the shelves. Most of it had been taken away by the mysterious tribes who had fought with the Flay Tribe for possession of the place—or so Ace said. Tully would have liked to know a bit more about Flay and how Ace got to be its leader. Why were there no older men or children younger than Jeff? Why were the women brutalized? And who had dreamed up the weird stories about worms eating their way through time and space?
But most of all Tully was disturbed by the place itself. They had left a city that might have been dirty, overheated and overcrowded, but at least it had been alive. There was still night and day, bluish sky, trees and sunshine. A few minutes falling through the void of a wormhole had plunged them into the cold ashes of the end of the world. And what if it wasn’t over? If Dog Skin was to be believed, the worst was yet to come.
* * * *
The meeting was a sort of tribal gathering in the supermarket cafeteria—a tribal gathering of the most basic kind, as there was nothing to drink and no festive nibbles to lighten the atmosphere. The tables had been pushed back and the chairs placed in a semi-circle with Ace in the middle, flanked by a glowering Joe and a livid Holy Man. Tully counted twenty-four individuals, all European males from late-teens to mid-twenties, as far as he could judge.
The tribesmen wore an assortment of clothing rifled from the boutiques in the mall, with a preference for the hunting, shooting and army-type gear that, despite its good quality, was, after five years of neglect and hard wear, looking seriously shabby. They all wore layers of shapeless and colorless pullovers and jackets against the cold, and the lucky ones possessed shapka-style caps with fur earflaps.
They seemed to be toting their entire arsenal—a collection that made Tully’s stash look pretty feeble. Rifles lay across their knees. Knives and heavy blunt instruments hung from their belts. The assembled tribe looked like a tableau of Siberian partisans posing for a Soviet photographer before going out to take on a Panzer division.
Tully let his attention settle on one face after the other, trying to assess the mood of the assembly before Ace waded in and told them what to think. The faces harbored a variety of expressions, ranging from alert interest to blank indifference, from admiration to hostility. Tully began to think that the meeting looked more like a court martial than the simple formality of getting his Flay tribe member’s card.
Ace leaned back in his chair, sleeves rolled up to the elbows to reveal thick spiked armbands, and pulled a long knife awkwardly from the sheath at his belt. His right wrist was obviously out of action.
Shame I didn’t break the bloody thing, Tully thought, wincing as his own battle wounds rubbed against the rough flannel of his shirt. Ace held up the knife so the feeble light caught it, turning it back and forth as if admiring the workmanship. Finally, in an indolent gesture, he pointed the knife at Dog Skin.
The Holy Man got to his feet, as if the mere act of standing required a superhuman effort. He spoke slowly and clearly in a voice as drained of color as his face.
“The warrior here before you has been successful in his initiation task. The mad dog is dead. He claims the right to the title of first warrior for his prowess. Does anyone dispute his claim?”
Dog Skin neither turned his head nor even looked at the assembled tribe. His gaze was inward, his eyes a complete blank. Tully wondered what he was on. The tribesmen looked at one another but no one spoke.
Not until Joe heaved himself upright and bawled, “Yeah, I do! He came out of a hellhole, an’ nothing good comes out of the hellholes. It was a fluke he killed Tab. He’s no better fighter than Jeff! I say shove him back down a hole an’ let the worms decide what kind of a champion he is.”
There was a murmur of assent and Ace began to look as if he was enjoying himself.
Tully began to sweat. “Forgotten the prophecy already have you, Joe? When the other tribes attack, what will happen if you’ve got rid of your champion? And the Riders? What hope have you against them without me? Ask the Holy Man. He knows more about it than me. I didn’t ask to be your champion. He foretold it. And since you’ve made me kill your unclean, which I didn’t ask to do either, incidentally, at least have the decency to keep your part of the bargain.”
“What’s this prophecy then?” The speaker was a tall fair boy with lively blue eyes and a broad mobile mouth. He sat forward in his chair, hands resting on his knees, his shapka pushed casually to the back of his head. The Holy Man replied, like an automaton, before Ace could open his mouth.
“The warrior from the darkness will sit at the right hand of the lord and be his champion. First he will slay the unclean in the midst of the tribe, then by his hand the trespassers on the lands of the tribe will be slain, the vermin driven out.”
“The rest of it’s not important,” Tully interrupted. “Just some fairy story crap, and we don’t believe in fairies, do we, boys?”
There was a general movement of enthusiasm. Tully heard someone asking what did slain mean, but all in all he felt he had the crowd on his side.
“So, which of these trespassers will we go after first?” the blond boy asked. “Or do we wait for them to start trespassing first?”
Tully’s ears pricked up. “Tell me about them.”
“Well, Gouge and Matonge are the nearest, but there’s the Kusha too, and they’re sitting on a depot that used to supply all the supermarkets of some big chain in the region. I’d be for going after the Kusha. They’ve no guts for fighting if they can’t creep up behind you and slit your throat. The Matonge are nuts and they use voodoo magic, and the Gouge have psychopaths and serial killers for warriors.” The boy was looking at Tully and there was laughter in his eyes this time, but not of mockery. He just didn’t seem to be taking things very seriously.
“As Warlord of this outfit,” Tully replied in the same tone, “I’ve just appointed you Intelligence Officer. You can give me a briefing on the current situation after the meeting, before I plan our first move. What’s your name?”
“Jim. Lord Jim really, but Jim will do.”
“Fine. Any other questions, or can we adjourn? I was in the bear pit this morning, remember, and I’d quite like a bit of a lie down.”
“You can shut your mouth or I’ll adjourn you permanently,” Ace lashed out in a fury. His pale eyes were icy and the fingers that gripped the long knife were white at the knuckles. “Now, sit down with the others and listen!” Tully gave a clipped salute and sat down at an empty seat behind Jim. Jim turned with a grin and gave Tully the thumbs up sign. Tully grinned back before putting on a serious expression in reply to Joe’s scowl.
Ace stood to face his assembled tribesmen and began to prowl along the inside of the semi-circle. “This smart arse here has earned the right to join the Tribe. Before he also earns the right to have his liver ripped out for insubordination, we finish the initiation ceremony, right?” The crowd nodded. “First he needs a battle name.”
“What’s wrong with Tully? Or if you’d rather, General Tully has a certain ring to it—”
“Joe!”
Joe swung around, knocking his chair over as he lurched to his feet, and grabbed Tully by the throat. “If you don’t want a cosh up your ring, you’d better shut your bleedin’ row.”
Tully squirmed and tried to pry Joe’s fingers free.
“Okay, Joe, drop it! You can crush his windpipe a bit, but try not to break his n
eck.”
Joe pushed his red face into Tully’s, his thick lips curled back in a snarl.
“You even break wind again an’ I’ll tear your fuckin’ throat out.”
His hot, rank breath made Tully feel sick, that and the pain in his throat. He rubbed his neck and swallowed painfully. “With your teeth, I suppose.”
Joe swung his fist, but Jim caught it before it reached Tully’s face.
“Please, Joe,” he pleaded. “You’re blocking the view.”
“Sit, Joe!” Ace barked. “Let’s just get this over with, shall we? Now, this battle name. The Generalissimo here probably doesn’t realize why we all have a short, sharp name, what with him having a squeaky clean record where it comes to fighting. Somebody enlighten him. Matt, you can usually speak a sentence with most of the words in the right order.”
Matt, despite being built like a rugby prop, with shaved head and a nose that had been broken in a fight, blushed slightly as he turned to Tully. “Imagine you’re outside. You’re tracking a couple of spies from the Gouge tribe. You’re in front. You pass a smashed up bus and one of your mates sees an ambush. If you’ve got a sensible name he shouts, ‘Oi, Matt, down!’ You duck and you don’t get hurt when they chuck something at you. You got a stupid name and he shouts, ‘Excuse me, Aloysius Alexander, but I think you ought to get your head down. There’s a good chap,’ and you’ve got your head blown off before he’s even finished.”
Tully chuckled. “Okay, I take the point. But I choose my own name. I’m not having Ace pick something like Po or Toots or Dick.” The others hooted. Tully felt he was winning. “I think I’d like to be called Thor, if you have no objection.”
“Thor?” Jim spluttered.
Abomination (The Pathfinders Book 1) Page 8
