David shot him a glare. “Stop. This isn’t helping anyone. We have a job to do, still. Wiley’s gone, and we can’t do a thing about it, so let’s go deal with the things we can do something about.”
Wiley was alive, at least, and his guard hadn’t had a chance to injure him in his escape. Some blood in the cellar, but that was probably from when he’d jacked out the IV he picked his locks with. He’d have a gnarly bruise to remember Weldona by, but nothing more. Probably.
On the walk back to the car, David’s steps felt lighter, as though a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. The drive back to town hall was a quiet one, and Orien thankfully seemed content to leave David with his thoughts, while he merely tuned out Cobi’s monologue babbling.
His trip down Memory Lane with Wiley was cut short, however, at the sight that greeted him as they came around a corner and the hall came into view. A sizable crowd awaited him, though his alarm faded as he recalled that it was time for allotment distribution.
Cobi was the first one to climb out, in a rush, and as David climbed out, he heard, “—folks. Thanks for your attention. I have a big announcement to make, and I think there’s enough of you here to make this a legitimate quorum. That means an official agreement, for you farmers out there.”
Cobi paused for polite chuckles.
David stared at him, wide-eyed. This was happening now?
Cobi continued, “We’ve all come to know and rely on Officer David Kelley. His patience, his knowledge, and his wisdom have already seen us through tough times, but there are tougher ones coming.”
Someone called out, “I thought he was leaving us.”
Cobi raised his hands, as a ripple of murmurs spread. “He was, but plans have changed. Boy have they. So, we’re heading into what can only be called a ‘war time,’ and for this, we need a war leader. I’m convinced that I’m not one. I kept this place running, before the lights went out, and maybe I will again, someday. Effective immediately, however…I am stepping down as the HOA president and mayor of Weldona.”
As the crowd gasped, David muttered into his ear, “Are you sure about this? Now?”
Cobi winked at him. To the audience, he said, “I hereby nominate David to be our mayor, our war-time leader. It’s what’s best for Weldona, and I always told you I’d do what was best for you. Well, this is it. All in favor, raise hands, please.”
The crowd continued muttering in a dull roar, but almost every hand went up.
Cobi smiled, turning to David, and grabbed his hand to shake it. “Welcome to your town, Mayor Kelley.” To the crowd, smiling as though they still had camera phones and he was at a photo op, he said, “My last official act as mayor is to order everyone to refuse to give him a tank of gas. Can’t have him running off, now, can we?”
David forced a smile. This was not at all how he’d envisioned things going when he’d stopped to help a couple women and kids in a broken-down car… “You realize that’s just symbolic, at this point, right? I can just order the gas.”
Cobi never took his eyes off the crowd, nor stopped pumping David’s hand. “Yep, I sure do, but I hope you don’t resign to go be a Denver cop until we’re safe, my friend. I hope I don’t live to regret doing this.”
Orien sneered. “I already regret it.”
David nodded, ignoring his partner, and smiled at the crowd. Well, there it was… He was their mayor. With the weight of an anvil striking like in some old cartoon, he realized, this meant those people were relying on him for their survival, and not just in some abstract kind of way. Their lives—or their deaths—would forever be on his head, their blood on his hands if he failed them.
David’s stomach churned. This was real duty. Not some pledge, but duty. Well, he’d live up to that duty, he vowed, or he’d die alongside them.
69
By midmorning, the hunk of raccoon meat had cooked, and the wild onions had caramelized. Wiley sliced off a fat hunk and blew on it until, gingerly, he stuffed it in his mouth. It would have been better with some seasonings, but the abandoned house he had taken shelter in had been stripped of those. It didn’t matter, though. He was ravenous, and the raccoon he’d found living in the pantry had obliged him with a meal.
In short order, he had devoured half the animal. He leaned back in the lawn chair he had dragged into the kitchen, and patted his belly with a sigh. The idea of leaving half the animal behind was bothersome, but he didn’t want to risk it going bad and getting sick. Food poisoning, out here all alone, would likely be fatal. What a shame.
The sound of a pistol hammer being cocked back was Wiley’s first indication that he was in trouble. When he turned reflexively toward the sound, the three people standing in and behind the living room doorway were his second. For a split second, he considered reaching for his own weapon, but they had the drop on him.
Still, they hadn’t simply shot him where he sat… “Good morning, fellas. I suppose I could share my raccoon with you all, especially since you got the guns.”
Though his heart pounded, he forced a wan smile.
The first of the three men facing him—at least, he only saw three at the moment—grinned, flashing rotted teeth. “Why would I want some coon meet when I’m already stuffed on bear? Nah, dude.” He glanced back at his companions, still grinning. “Weldona boy, here, tryin’ to barter for his life.”
The other two smirked, and one said, “It sucks to suck.”
Wiley cocked his head. “What makes you think I’m from Weldona?” Those assholes had kicked him out, but that had nothing to do with Christine and her kids…
Though he expected them to answer with bullets, the man in front instead smirked at him. “You too clean, son. You ain’t no squatter; you a scout or something. But you made a big mistake, cooking that shit. I got, like, superhuman sense of smell, these days. Smelled you a mile away. But now I got a problem.”
“What problem is that?”
The man’s lips flatlined. “I never killed no one, before. But I can’t just leave you here, neither. Damn spy.”
It was clear they weren’t going to believe the story he had planned on telling them, about being a vagrant. Well, a half-truth was a whole lie. He had no problem lying to protect the people who had been so decent to him. Hopefully, that didn’t cost him his life. Hastily, he said, “Well, that’s where you’re wrong. I’m not from Weldona. I was there, but they kicked my ass out when they found out about my record. I’d love to kill every last one of those sonuvabitches, but there’s only one of me. Not much I could do, so I ran. I guess living with those townies for the last few weeks has softened me up, or you’d never have snuck up on me.”
At least that part was true.
One of the men behind Mr. Rotten Teeth stepped forward just enough to whisper in his ear. Teeth nodded, watching Wiley intently.
When the other man stepped back again, the front man said, “Well, today is your lucky day. We got all the food we want, for the moment, but it ain’t going to last forever. Weldona, now, they have more food than we could ever eat. Some of our boys have seen it with their own eyes, and the bossman figures we should go and get it long before we need it. But that’s Bossman, always thinking ahead.”
Wiley nodded. “Makes sense. What has that to do with me, though?” He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know the answer, but he was quite certain he didn’t have much choice in the matter.
“Simple. If you want, I’ll take you to our main camp. You can talk to him, tell him why we shouldn’t just kill you. Maybe he’ll kill you anyway. He ain’t exactly the charitable sort. Or, I can just shoot you now. Your choice.”
The men behind Mr. Rotten Teeth grew visibly tense.
Wiley shrugged. “I’m sure I can figure something out to make me worth more alive than dead. If not, I hope he just makes it quick.”
The three bandits chuckled, then one approached Wiley. He pulled a zip tie out of his pocket. “Wrists.”
Wiley held out his hands, wrists pressed togethe
r, flexing them as hard as he could without any tell-tale shaking. When a zip tie went on, he relaxed, pleased at how loose the zip tie became. Not enough to slip out of them, of course, but certainly loose enough that he could easily break them, if he needed. “Okay. Lead the way—I’m all yours.”
At least, he hoped they would believe he was all theirs.
The bandit leader turned out to be a mountain of a man. Though most of his followers were skinny, some with sagging skin to show how much weight they had lost in the last few weeks, this guy didn’t look like he had missed a meal since the lights went out. He had a long scar running on his left cheek, narrowly missing his eyeball, and it had the rosy pink color of a fresh scar, newly healed.
“You like my beauty mark?” The man’s voice rumbled, surprisingly deep, even for a man his size, but what Wiley noticed more was how softly the man spoke. Wiley had known men like that in prison, men used to other people listening to what they said. He had no need to bark for his flock to be afraid of him, and he knew it.
Wiley would not make the mistake of underestimating a man like that. He chewed his tongue for a moment, then replied, “Yeah. It suits you. I probably don’t want to know what happened to the guy who gave that to you.”
“No, you definitely don’t. But it’s whatever. My boys tell me they caught you hiding in a house, northwest of Weldona. At least they were smart enough to figure out you were too clean to be just a bum squatting in some abandoned house. I’ll make this question simple for you. I got plenty of people to crack Weldona open like a nut, and you’re traveling too light to have anything I need. So, what can you give me to buy your life? Because honestly, I would just as soon slit your throat as let you walk out of here.”
A chill ran down Wiley’s back. The way the man had said that, totally calm, it was clear that was no hyperbole. Well, if there was one thing Wiley wanted to do, it was to walk out of there alive. He frowned, thinking. What could he give them to buy his life that wouldn’t cost someone else and Weldona their own?
Wiley shrugged and raised his eyebrows. “Since I had to run, leaving everything behind to avoid getting strung up, I don’t feel like I owe them a damn thing. I know your people already know about the south entrance, since your scouts attacked it and got themselves killed. Did you know there’s another way into town?”
“Is that so?” The bandit’s eyes narrowed. “Now, I know I’m gonna have to kill you. You think I don’t have scouts watching that stretch east of Weldona? I know all about the landmines, fool. Nice try, though.” He looked over his shoulder. “Someone bring me my Ka-Bar.”
Wiley felt his eye twitching. He forced himself to take deep, even breaths, despite his sudden adrenaline surge. “No, I do not mean east approach. There’s another way in, and although it is protected, it’s not as much as that southern bridge your people tried to attack. I could lead you there, of course, if you don’t already know about it.”
The bandit grimaced. “I believe you would sell them out. Of course, that makes me think you might sell me out, given the chance. That’s a chance I don’t want to take. Sorry, son, but I promise it’ll be quick.”
Wiley shrugged and forced a grin. “The guys who caught me didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
Wiley raised one eyebrow at the bandit. “I had to leave Weldona because they were going to string me up, after they found out about my past.”
The bandit paused, eyes narrowing. “Your past?” His eyes darted to Wiley’s neck, wrists, typical places for prison tats.
Wiley shrugged. “Yep. I had only been there a few weeks, but even so, I was still surprised at how fast they turned on me for some shit I did a long time ago.”
“Yeah? What’s the statute of limitations on ‘shit you did’?”
“They don’t have one. And I promise you, it’s the same shit I would happily do to them, now, after they made me run for my life like some kinda bitch.”
The bandit’s mouth ticked up at the corners, and Wiley suppressed a grin. He had the brute’s attention. Right on cue, the bandit asked, “So why are you trying to bounce back there, if you got ran out?”
Time to cement the deal… “Because, honestly, screw them. I want payback, which is why I wasn’t long gone after I got out of town alive. I was just trying to figure out what I could do, but I hadn’t figured anything out yet. To be honest, that kind of pissed me off. But now, I’m thinking, maybe I got a way to square things between me and them.”
The bandit scratched his stubbly chin. Wiley recognized some of the faded-ink tattoos marring his hand. He’d pegged the bandit dead-on, he was certain, when the bandit asked, “So you want me to let you tag along and play ‘outrun my bullets,’ eh?”
Wiley shrugged. “That’s if you’ll let me, of course. I could be a useful guy, to a guy like you.”
The bandit sniffed, then rubbed his chin whiskers some more as he watched Wiley. After a moment, he asked, “What did you have in mind? Maybe we can come to some kind of arrangement, after all. Maybe.”
Wiley took a few seconds to make a big show of thinking things through, and then said, “There’s another way into town, like I said. It’s not as well protected as that south bridge you attacked. If you throw a diversion at that south gate, then bring everyone else along with you, following me to the place I know of, you can probably overrun their guards—just so long as the guards at the south gate don’t catch wind and shift their troops. If you think you can pull this off, I can take you there.”
“If I let you come with me, instead of just killing you.”
Wiley nodded. “Yeah, if you give me a chance to settle my score with them, first. After that, I don’t give a damn what happens.”
Wiley thought about Cobi, and allowed his anger and disgust at the bastard seep out to color his words. It wasn’t far from the truth to say he would not at all mind watching Cobi get some much-deserved karma, he realized. He could use that…
The bandit said, “I got a counteroffer. How about you just tell me where it is right now, or I’m going to use that Ka-Bar to peel the skin off your face and feed you to the freaking tigers running around here, so they stop pouncing on my scouts for a while.”
Wiley shook his head. “With all due respect, go fuck yourself. The minute I tell you what you want to know, you got no reason to keep me alive. I kind of want to stay alive, but if I’m going to die anyway, I’m sure not going to give my killer what he wants. You want my information, then you’ll just have to keep me alive. Besides, I’m a lot more useful to you than any of your other scrubs.”
The bandit paused, then grinned. “Deal. It costs me nothing to let you keep breathing. I hadn’t planned on attacking them quite yet, but if you know a way in, then we’ll do it soon.”
“Decisive action.” Wiley nodded. “I knew I figured you right.”
The bandit shrugged. “My boys and girls are getting antsy with all the waiting, and I don’t like that. I was thinking of killing one of them, just to make a point to all the other whining bitches, but maybe I won’t have to. I’ll get my people ready to move out, and then you’ll show me where to go.”
“Then what?” Wiley let a faint smile crease the corners of his mouth, an easygoing, “you can trust me” expression he practiced often. Hopefully, it would work yet again…
“If you agree, I let you live long enough to join the fight. If you’re still useful, when we attack, I’ll let you live even longer. But believe me, man, if you say no… it’ll go badly for you.”
Wiley smirked. Score one for Team Wiley. The big goon was used to getting his way, and couldn’t really imagine someone Wiley’s size being a threat. “Sure. I’d rather not have you peel the skin off my face, so yeah, I’m in. But only if you promise I’ll get a chance for payback for what they did to me.”
The bandit’s smile was the only answer Wiley needed. Probably thought it would be entertainment. Yeah, well, the biggest predator wasn’t always the one really doing the hunting.
70
Christine stuck her head through Cobi’s office doorway and stopped. David sat behind the desk, with Cobi standing over his shoulder, while Orien sat in one of the opposing chairs. “What’s, uh… What’s going on?” she asked. “Bad timing?”
David looked up, and the corners of his mouth ticked upward. “Hi, Chrissy. It sure is, but don’t let that stop you. What’s up?”
She looked back and forth between Cobi and David. No one ever sat in Cobi’s chair. Something was amiss, but—
Orien said, “Guess what? David’s the new mayor.”
Christine blinked. “Mayor? Of what?”
Cobi chuckled. “Mayor of Weldona, of course. You missed the quorum, I take it. Yeah, I abdicated the throne to him, and now we’re going over the paperwork. Got to keep everything legit and legal, you know.”
She narrowed her eyes. Cobi wouldn’t likely joke about that, but he sure wouldn’t step down on the eve of glory, either. “You’re pulling my leg.”
Orien shook his head. “Nope. It’s official. They even had a vote to make David the mayor. Took us by surprise, too.”
Cobi shrugged. “David’s the best man for the job. I hope he goes home when we’re safe, though. But for now, he’s the best man for the job, and to be honest, I don’t want to be the one people blame for those of us who are about to die fighting the bandits.”
Well, that sure sounded like Cobi. There had to be more to it, but she’d almost forgotten the reason she’d come. She’d get to the bottom of this latest mystery eventually. “That’s why I’m here, actually. The bandits… We captured one alive, after that raid, right? Have we questioned him, yet? I need to know what that means for my family. Did we get a ‘troop count’ on the bad guys?”
David signed whatever form lay on the desk before him, and set the pen down. “Actually, we have questioned him.”
Cobi’s lips flatlined. “You don’t owe her an explanation. She’s not more important than the rest of them.”
Inception of Chaos: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Story Page 42
