Orien said, “You mean, don’t tell anyone you cried and peed your pants?”
David glared at his partner. Antagonizing Cobi was a sucker’s move right now. There was a time and a place for honesty, and a time to just say, “Yes, sir.” This was that time.
Cobi laughed, though, instead of the anger David expected. “Oh, wow, yeah. That was a Kodak moment, as my dad used to say. But again, it was just a moment of temporary insanity. I don’t have your training. I guarantee it won’t happen again, though.”
David highly doubted that.
Cobi continued, “Unfortunately, once word gets out about Wiley, some eyes are going to turn to Chrissy, too. She’s the one who brought the stranger in with her, after all, and her supporters mostly live out there, on the farms, not here in town. I may, sadly, be forced to reinstate her exile. Once I’ve re-secured my position thanks to Wiley, here, I’ll have to cement that with another win. But I’m not a monster. I’ll use my rebuilt strength to make sure her children can stay, safely in town, for however long Fran and they would like.”
David had frozen the instant he said Christine’s name. He almost hadn’t heard the rest, his shock was so great. It took a moment for him to confirm he’d heard it all correctly. Cobi really was going to throw Christine to the wolves for his own gain. Or more likely, he’d never actually forgiven her for challenging him, and for ramming her plan through for the work chit Weldona bucks, in lieu of Cobi’s idiotic plan to steal all the farms.
Were people so screwed up that they’d harm the whole town to soothe their ego? One look at Cobi, strutting back and forth in front of Wiley, told him the answer. But perhaps, there was something David could do about it. A way to take the teeth out of Cobi’s bite, without the snake ever realizing it.
David nodded at Cobi and, grim-faced, said, “Yes, sir. I see what you mean. But Cobi, I don’t think you’re doing yourself any favors.”
“Say what?” Cobi cocked his head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
David scratched his head. “Well, it’s just that, if you let the mob dictate a lynching, you’re handing your power over to them. They could get used to that whole mob-rule thing. I think the town needs better than that from you. I think you need to be the leader they need, not the one they want. You tell them how it is, not the other way around.”
Cobi paused to scratch his chin. After a moment, he nodded slowly. “Yeah… You may have a point, Officer Kelley. Have any suggestions?”
“Certainly,” David replied without hesitation. He met Cobi’s gaze and put all his effort into maintaining his unflappable on-duty demeanor. “You order your chief police officer to execute the court’s order—and the murderer. Present them with a fait accompli, so they see you can not only call the important shots, pardon the pun, but you don’t need their permission to do what’s right. You give me the word, and I take him out back and finish this. Then, your crazy kidnapper over there can’t use it against you, either, because you took decisive action. For you, it’s win-win.”
Cobi glanced at Wiley.
David did, too, but the man’s stunned, outraged expression was more than he could take. He looked away, just as Cobi’s eyes clicked back over to him.
Cobi didn’t answer, for a moment, as he worked through the idea in his head. Probably trying to figure out how it could bite him in the ass…
“Okay, Officer Kelley. I’m the mayor here, and it’s my duty to protect these people. We have a prisoner on death row, but no prison to hold him in. We can’t contain him, and we can’t let him go. I hereby order you to carry out the lawful court’s sentence of death, and to do so immediately.” He turned to Wiley, and shrugged. “Sorry, man. Your fate was sealed when you took the law into your own hands, and—”
Wiley lunged for Cobi, but still flat on his stomach with Orien on his back, he only ended up struggling in vain to move even an inch. “You bastard. I saved your life. Just let me go, man. I’ll take my chances out there. You owe me that.”
Cobi shrugged. “No, sir. I owe you nothing. You’re alive today because I let the town take you in, you and Chrissy both. I’d say we’re even. Besides, David’s killing you. Not me.”
Orien hissed at David. “You can’t do this, boss. This is bullcrap, and you know it.”
David forced himself to hold Orien’s gaze. “I know that the laws we swore an oath to uphold have condemned him to death. And I know you won’t do what’s needed.”
“I notice you didn’t say ‘what’s right.’ Even you know this is wrong.” Orien’s eyes narrowed.
David didn’t shrug, didn’t frown, just looked his partner in the eyes. “Wiley said it himself, Orien. We uphold the law; we don’t serve justice. Sometimes, one injustice is better than a bigger one, later. By doing this, Weldona comes together under a strong leader, and maybe, just maybe, survives the storm that’s coming. It’ll be here tomorrow at the latest, and we’re not ready.”
Orien snarled, then climbed to his feet and stormed out of Cobi’s office, into the main hall. “I wash my hands of this, David. I sure don’t know how you sleep at night.”
Cobi made a tsk, tsk sound with his tongue against his teeth. “Seems your partner has forgotten his oath, and that he’s sworn to uphold the law. If everyone got to decide which bad guys it was okay to murder, and which ones got to go to jail, instead, there’d be a whole lot more murders in this country.”
“Maybe.” David looked, glum, down at Wiley.
“I’m going back out to check on things. I’ll return in a few. In the meantime, I expect you to serve justice, Officer Kelley. Execute the court’s sentence by executing a serial killer endangering us all.”
“You’re still a piece of crap, Cobi,” Wiley said, but made no effort to struggle anymore.
Once Cobi was gone, David shrugged. “Let’s go, killer.” The next couple of minutes were a blur as he got Wiley to his feet, even having to use his baton once to motivate the man to move at all. Over Wiley’s barrage of insults and curses, he pushed the dead-man-walking out the door, across the parking lot, and out onto the elementary school grounds nearby. There would be no one to interfere, there.
When they got behind the school, David said, “Do you want a blindfold? I have a bandana I carry, and you can use it.”
“Fuck you and your bandana, pig. I mean that, too, David. You’re a damn pig of a human being.”
“Probably.” Definitely, actually. But right was right. He turned Wiley around to face him. “Listen, Wiley. You did save two lives back there. And I don’t know what I’d have done if it had been my sister. But I do know that your pistol, which is in my back pocket, will always remind me of you.”
“You sonuva—”
“I also know that I’m not shooting a tied-up man. No dignity in that. I’m going to take off your handcuffs, even knowing that, if you somehow managed to knock me out, you’d have easy access to both your gun and my car keys, in the same pocket. You could escape, and run away from this town so far that we never saw you again. Now, I can’t have that. So you have to promise me, if I take off your handcuffs, you aren’t going to punch me in the jaw as hard as you can, because I don’t want to get knocked out.”
David stared into Wiley’s eyes. Seconds ticked by. Then, Wiley’s angry expression shifted, just slightly, and he said, “Sure, David. I promise I’ll behave.”
David took a deep breath. If Wiley were smart, this was about to hurt. A lot. “Okay, then. Turn sideways so that your right hand is away from me, and I’ll unlock your cuffs. I suppose, if you were to knock me down then, the key would still be in the cuffs. That’d be embarrassing, giving you the way to get out of them once you ran.”
“Sure would.” Wiley turned, just like David had ordered.
David leaned down and slid his key into the cuffs. Bending as he had… Rookie mistake. It gave the perp leverage, if they decided to swing… He turned the key.
Click.
All David saw next was darkness, and his head filled
with pain. The last thing he saw, out of one eye, was the pavement rushing up to meet him.
Good boy…
58
Bryson stared at the man aiming a rifle at his head. “I… What? You… What?”
The refugee frowned, and his furrowing brow made the haphazard bandage on his head seem to dip down over his forehead. “I said, give me your food, your water, and the keys to your car. I’ll let you live, but only if you get walking, and I mean right now, partner.”
“You…you want us to walk? Out of here?” Bryson blinked rapidly, eyes darting around. “What?”
Christine’s stomach lurched. Oh crap, that idiot was going to get himself killed, and if they started shooting, Hunter and Darcy were behind Bryson, in the car. They were in the field of fire, she remembered it being called in some movie. Maybe she should just give them the food. Bryson could just deal with it, but she wasn’t about to let her kids get shot.
But then she froze, before she ever really started moving. The car keys. Bryson’s car didn’t work, and that meant her car. They’d have to walk back to Weldona. Her view of the refugee mob on the road came back to mind. She and her kids would never get around them safely. She didn’t even know where they were, now. They could have turned off at any side road…
No chance.
Christine shoved her fear aside, and focused all her might on keeping her hand from shaking inside her purse. She had to look serious for what came next. They had to believe it was real—because with her kids in danger, it was real.
Decision made, she brought the pistol to the opening in her purse, took a deep breath, and then shoved it barrel-first toward the man with the rifle. “Mister, I have a counter-proposal you should consider.”
The man looked over, and his eyes went wide. As the rifle barrel shifted toward her, she drew back the hammer, turning the weapon into a single-action trigger. A hair trigger. “Ut-uh. I don’t recommend that.”
“Put that away, girlie, or I’m going to shoot him. He’s what, your husband? Right? I see him looking at you for help. You married a punk, girl. Thought you should know.” He grinned, revealing darkened, misshapen teeth—but his barrel stopped moving.
“Go ahead.” She ignored Bryson’s wide-eyed stare, and said, “He’s not my husband—he’s my ex. He just kidnapped my kids, and I don’t give two damns what happens to him.”
“Maybe I’ll shoot you, then, and then I’ll have two guns.” Again, his barrel didn’t move. Not yet, but Christine had no doubt that if he smelled weakness, that would change fast.
Moment of truth…
Christine forced herself to smile back at him. “I train all the time with this, and I guarantee you, I can pull the trigger faster than you can switch your aim. Try me.”
“You don’t have to be faster than me, lady. You gotta be faster than all of us.”
“Maybe, but you die first, mister. Think about what you say next, very carefully.”
She adjusted her grip, compensating for suddenly sweaty palms, but held her gaze steady and ignored the sudden overwhelming heat she felt, sweat forming on her back. Adrenaline was a royal pain in the ass.
Seconds ticked by. The man’s tension, reflected in his three companions, was palpable. Christine was tense, too. In her head, she began to count. If she reached ten, she decided, she’d end this the hard way. The fast way. Silently, she begged the man not to force her to pull that trigger, but she found it somewhat amazing that she had no doubt she could. Not with her kids in danger. That sudden confidence she felt also gave her strength, and she held his gaze without blinking.
As she reached eight, his rifle barrel dipped toward the ground, and his shoulders slumped, though his eyes stayed glued to her pistol. “Oh, hell, lady. We’re just hungry. I haven’t eaten in two days, and it was three before that. Just give us some food, and we’ll leave you all alone. That’s all you gotta do, and we bail, you get your kids from this punk-ass, and we all live another day. Deal?”
“Oh, thank God,” Bryson said, and staggered back a step, the Mustang fender catching him. “I’ll go get—”
“No.” Christine was so startled by the force of that one word that she almost looked at Mary for confirmation, but caught herself. She plowed ahead, saying, “If my car breaks down along the way, we’re out here for a while. My kids aren’t going to miss a meal so you don’t starve to death. Sorry, that’s the way it’s going to be. You should have stayed in Denver.”
The woman with him wrapped her arms around his waist tightly, and buried her head in his shoulder. “Damn, I’m so hungry, baby. I don’t want to eat what the others are eating. Can’t we stay out here?”
“The others?” Only by great exercise of will did Christine keep herself from looking all around—taking her eyes off the rifleman.
“You got no idea what it’s like in LoDo, lady,” the man said. “You’d have left, too. If you know someone, you can work for the mayor. He calls himself the governor, now. Then, you get to eat raviolis and Top Ramen and whatever hell else they got stocked away in warehouses, but the rest of us… There’s only two kinds of food. Rats, and big rats.”
Christine paused, confused. “What rats? Denver doesn’t have that problem. This is bullcrap.”
The lady said, “Big rats… People. They’re eating people, right in the fucking street. Whole blocks sneak over one street, grab the fattest scarecrow they can find, and then they throw themselves a block party.”
He added, “It’s a ‘Long Pig Fiesta,’ our neighbors called it.”
“You…ate people?” Christine’s stomach flip-flopped.
He shook his head. “No, we weren’t about to do that, not when there’s so much food out here, in the farms. That’s what the news rags all say, right baby?”
The woman nodded.
Bryson said, “The newspapers are all closed. They’re lying.”
The woman frowned at him, but kept her eyes on Christine. “Yeah. No one knows who’s printing them, but I think it’s the mayor. They say the farmers are hoarding more food than even all of Denver could eat, the greedy fucks.”
The man blurted, face reddening, “Meanwhile, my cousin got grabbed by Colefax Crushers a week ago, after our people by Samaritan House got hit in a damned police ambush.”
Christine most definitely didn’t like where this conversation was headed. “Why did the police ambush you, then?”
“We were trying to raid a warehouse. We said ‘screw long-pig, why’s the mayor get to decide who eats and who doesn’t?’ But without our block being big ballers, after the ambush, all the other blocks around us got hungry eyes.”
The lady said, “You’ve got to feed us something. We’re not bad guys. We’re the good guys. We won’t kill people to eat them—we only ever ate what died some other way, I swear. I don’t even eat the hearts, b’cause that’s just not right. That’s where love is.”
“Love is dead,” the man said. “In Denver at least. So, our whole block just up and left in the night, all three hundred of us.”
Christine raised one eyebrow. Either that was a lie, or things were worse out there than even this guy was claiming.
He continued, “I see your doubt. We got separated from the others, fighting our way out of Aurora.”
The lady nodded. “You think Denver’s bad, with people barbecuing people in the streets? Aurora is what Hell looks like.”
Her man shuddered, and got a faraway look in his eyes. “The shit I saw there…I’ll never forget it. And I will never go back.”
Christine frowned. Their problem, not hers. “You say you’re the good guys, but here you are pointing rifles at families.”
“But this rifle isn’t even loaded. I’m sorry we lied, but I’m so damn hungry, my big guts are eating my little guts.”
“Then why’d you bring it all this way, if it’s empty?”
“We used all our bullets getting out of Aurora alive. Some of us did, anyway. Two hundred made it as far as where we all got separated. Man,
the Rorites came out of the shadows, they came up from manhole covers, they jumped off roofs. They’re insane.”
“What are Rorites?” Christine had a feeling she already knew, and if she was right, they stood between her family and Denver, damn Bryson and his idiot plans…
The woman said, “The animals in Aurora. Denver cops and their civvy goons can barely keep them out. Everything between LoDo and west Aurora is just a ghost town. Everything but the ghosts either left or got eaten, when D-P-D pulled back.”
The man said, “The Rorites, their leaders wear masks made of kids’ skin. The faces, skinned and stretched and sewn together with tendons. That’s what everyone says, anyway. I didn’t see any, but I believe it.”
Bryson, backing away from them to put the Mustang—and the kids—between himself and the rifle, said, “Bull. When I left, it wasn’t anything like that. Those ‘rags,’ you called them, they said there was plenty of food from everyone. The neighbor towns give them food for protection from the Aurora gangs—the Rorites, you called them?”
The other man nodded. “Yep. But it’s no joke, and it isn’t bullshit. There is enough for everyone, but only for now. The mayor doesn’t want to run out of food, come the end of August. So, lots of people vanish in the middle of the night. Whole house-loads of people. Once in a while, we find one of the attackers, shot by their victims and crawled away to die. They got…barcodes, tattooed on their faces. I seen those guys before, guarding warehouses. They’re the mayor’s people. You get it?”
Christine shook her head. She did not want to get it. Where this story was going, it was nothing she wanted to imagine.
The man shrugged, though, and said, “The mayor’s gangs are the strongest, and the gangs are eating each other. He’s keeping his people alive and his stockpiles piled, at the same time. Do the math. The mayor kept all those people blockaded in the city, as much as he was keeping everyone else out. Didn’t you hear about blockades when this all started?”
Inception of Chaos: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Story Page 35
