“You two sounded excited about something,” he said at last.
Kevin stayed fixed to the spot, but Tom’s son Lucas edged forward to show what they’d found: on old iPhone. Tom raised an eyebrow and shrugged.
“What’s so cool about that?” he asked. “You can buy them by the dozen on The Mile.”
“It’s not the phone, dad, it’s what’s on it,” Lucas said.
Tom kept waiting for the conversation to make sense. The old phone was completely inert, the screen and buttons still caked with dirt.
“It’s a dead phone, son,” he said. “We’ve . . . you used to have a few of them, if you remember, back in the mountains, when you were little?”
Being “little” wasn’t territory Lucas wanted to revisit. He gave a passable impersonation of his father as he scowled and twisted away with the inert iPhone as if punishing Tom for it.
“I know that,” Luke said.
“Ask him,” Kevin hissed quietly.
But not quietly enough. Tom wasn’t such a grand mediator that he was about to pretend when they started whispering in front of him. He cleared his throat instead, crossing his arms and even managing to get his injured wing in on the act as he shot Kevin the hairy eyeball.
“Ask me what?”
“Dad,” Luke said. “Can we go out later?”
“Out?” Tom said dumbly. “What about our housewarming?”
Kevin interjected with another of his dull breathy whispers, painfully autistic eyes trained hard on Tom like some Pavlovian experiment gone wrong.
“You said it wasn’t happening.”
Tom turned the dial up on his self-evident misgivings.
“And you know that . . . how?”
Kevin flinched at his own error and the unwitting exposure.
“Kevin,” Tom said to him. He strained the anger from his voice about as effectively as a waiter wiping down a guest with napkins. “You’ve been eavesdropping?”
Lucas added, “That means listening in,” he said for his friend’s benefit.
“Listening?” Kevin almost grunted. “Yes.” He met Tom’s eye, blanched, looked away again. “Of course. Smart.”
It took Tom a couple of seconds to interpret the boy and then a few more to realize Kevin was right. If the situation were somehow horribly reversed, the only logical thing would be to gather as much intel as required to make sure no threats could possibly sneak up on the undersized boy. The whole world could be against him, from his perspective. And Lilianna was frequent in her criticism. One look at Kevin’s face and he could believe the boy thought they’d as soon slit his throat as simply raise problems with him face-to-face.
“OK, listen,” Tom said even though he had no idea what else to say. “You’re right, Luke’s sister’s going to the Enclave . . . the goddamned Bastion . . . and so yeah, we’re not doing anything special, just need to get the rest of our stuff loaded in, and –”
“Kevin and me don’t have much to bring,” Lucas said. “Does that mean we can go now?”
“Where are you going?”
The boys checked in with each other, but it wasn’t a conspiracy, just excitement. Lucas waggled the grimy old phone.
“Taking this to the Edgelords,” he said.
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Just off The Mile,” Kevin muttered.
“They’ve got the Internet,” Kevin said. “And there might be some of it on here.”
“Internet?”
“Yeah!”
Tom took in the fervor in the boy’s eyes, Kevin beside Luke with at least enough common sense that his own excitement didn’t really show. Tom kept tracking between the two of them and then the phone, retrieved from a dirty bucket of things pulled out of Ortega’s potting mix, and then it all finally started to click.
“You think there might be stuff on the phone?” he asked. “Like, data?”
“Edgelords can get to it,” Lucas said. “And they’ll pay. Can we go?”
Tom sighed. He used his left hand to gently withdraw his right arm from its sling and lowered the injured arm until it hung safely by its own weight. His right shoulder throbbed and they’d run out of any sort of painkiller two days before. Tom hadn’t seen Iwa the whole time.
“It’s not like I’ve got a better offer for you,” he said at last. “Are you going now? At least it’s daytime. You’re not missing classes now, are you, son?”
Luke’s sunny demeanor darkened at his father’s cheap shot, and the boy squinted back, as if asking should he feel hurt for being happy without his father, or that he’d ditched on School for good. Tom immediately felt like a piece of shit, which only reinforced that he wasn’t much good for company right now. He waved his good hand dismissively and swiveled to go track down Dkembe and the other strange newcomer Gonzales.
*
ASIDE FROM EVERYTHING else it entailed, Daniel MacLaren’s death left his Reclaimers crew without a squad leader, and when they bumped into each other in the market place, it had almost felt like kismet for Tom to offer Kent work. The six-foot-six Pacific Islander was poor MacLaren’s second in command, but he had no taste for the work, and like the others made unemployed by MacLaren’s fatal folly – in which Tom’d played a hand that still left him seething with unresolved fury and more than a good measure of self-loathing – Kent was shaken by the sudden shift in the dynamic. The idea of safe employment inside the sanctuary zone had obvious appeal, and the two men shared a weirdly affable bond without much base.
Dkembe enlisted Gonzales and the surly Hungarian survivor Attila from his work with the Construction teams, but Kent was shrewd and loyal enough that he steered Tom towards Karla and Ionia, also from the Reclaimers. Karla was an experienced mechanic and her soft-spoken companion had learnt everything at her girlfriend’s side since landing in Columbus the previous fall. That the women had lived through the City’s first winter and treated the advancing sequel with grim practicality won Tom over to recruiting them as well.
“They may as well take that upstairs room,” he said to Kent as he eyed his son’s departure and tried to focus on the task at hand rather than his perhaps-imagined intuitive concern. “Are you sure you don’t want to move in too?”
“No, it’s OK,” Kent said in his usual affable way. “I’m settled. This’ll be good work. Thanks, Tom.”
“We’re all helping each other,” Tom replied. “That’s how I see it. I’m not looking to get into any more trouble, and if we’re helping the City in the process, all the better.”
“So you’re on board, huh?”
Tom cranked one eye at the big man easily towering over him, contemplating his reply and trying to read the Islander’s utterly unremarkable face.
“You’re a bit of a cultural cliché, you know, Kent.”
Tom snickered with as much mustered amiability as he could manage, dissembling the question that still hung over him whether Kent was there to ask it or not.
“Eh, what do you mean, Tommy Gun?”
“Man, you gotta stop calling me that.”
“Not many of us Islanders dig The Clash, bro,” Kent grinned back. “Cliché in that?”
“Still, you always seem so fuckin’ cheerful. . . .”
“That’s a bad thing?”
“No,” Tom replied. “Just difficult to manage.”
“I’ve seen my share of shit, bro.”
Kent’s face darkened. Tom knew the big man had a twin brother, and now that too was in past tense. But his new foreman wasn’t keen to continue the discussion, and the work ahead of them was a good justification for that. Tom patted Kent’s shoulder, not even wincing this time as he smiled gruffly, squeezed his recalcitrant right hand into a fist, and then headed towards the compound’s gateway.
*
ACTIVITY ON THE Mile ebbed and flowed with the transit of workers coming back early into the built-up zone, and others finishing the daytime business of trading for the basics needed to make life in the City possible. A group of
young boys hawking firewood clearly hewn down from weatherboard housing – and others interrupting Tom’s passage to offer handmade soaps, candles, knives and magickal charms designed to protect against Furies – all slowed his pace as Tom headed back in the direction of his old digs with a leaden sense of foreboding about what might not even come.
The peddlers and itinerants couldn’t derail Tom’s gloomy train of thought, but the trooper patrol bursting out of one of the nearby abodes took him almost completely by surprise, followed as it was by their yells as a painfully thin, soot-stained teenage girl broke free of their restraints to charge out into the crowds and make a run for it. Other Citizens dived for cover, much faster on the uptake than Tom, astonished further yet when the two armed and armored men lifted their guns on the fleeing teen as if they might open fire. Instead – and much to the disgust of the female trooper – the Safety patrol stowed their weapons instead and took off after the young woman down the path she’d cleared through the milling foot traffic like Moses streaking madly across the Red Sea.
“Sheesh,” Tom muttered aloud to himself.
Hoping to avoid any more instances of such havoc, he turned off The Mile at the soonest chance, pushing aside tent awnings to move into one of the sodden alleyways created by even more hawkers’ huts, the serene Ohio streetscape barely a memory any more with all the unexpected infill. A fortune teller arose from her stool and was summarily ignored with a single rude gesture as Tom grunted, distracted by the smell of what he hoped was pork roasting, and nearly instantly collided with the lean figure of a man coming the other way.
Finnegan Locke.
A look of mutual and completely unexpected recognition flashed between them like telepathy, so palpable that Tom experienced it like a flash of light – a flash of alarm, in fact, as the fraudster he’d known in civilian life halfway across the country saw Tom at once for who he was. Old grudges die hard, and Tom had already guessed all the furor since his arrival in the City and newspaper publicity meant his erstwhile nemesis Locke was already wise to him.
The scar Tom’d seen when spotting Locke at the City Council meeting glistened angrily in the daylight through the silver hawthorn of the beard he wore like most men in the City, razors a luxury few could afford, now with the trappings of the civilized world stripped away. Locke’s gray eyes revealed a lurid cocktail of seething anger and a cold-burning lust for vengeance once thought completely lost to the convicted criminal, serial fraudster, and all-out corporate villain.
Every option in the chess manual of life flew through Tom’s thoughts in the one hot conviction there was no better choice than to seize the chaos of the moment.
Before Locke could do much more to react, Tom grabbed him by the shoulders with both hands, injuries forgotten in the heat of the moment as he whirled the leaner man into and through several wheelbarrows stocked with foul-looking melons. Finnegan lost his footing in the mucky channels scoured in the lane, all the paving stripped by those with other plans for the bricks, and before Locke could right himself, Tom barreled into him and pushed him into and through the faded red fire door on the side of the building the various tents and lean-tos used as their base.
Tom’s advantage continued as the door let onto several steps down into the submerged ground level of a former warehouse, and whatever the three men inside were doing, the brash entry frightened the bejesus out of them and they fled before Tom could even land atop his quarry.
But he was completely unprepared as Finnegan Locke ignored getting to his own feet to scissor his legs around Tom’s ankles instead, bringing him noisily to the floor.
The force of the impact knocked the air from Tom’s lungs, and Locke was already up and moving like a spider monkey over and across him, his legs bicycle kicking the air just for long enough to direct his energy into a new Brazilian Jiu-jitsu move where Locke’s wrapped around Tom’s head before he could get an arm up in defense.
Sheer panic flooded through him, with no idea the former stockbroker and disgraced felon had such skills in him.
Locke’s legs around his neck were a vital danger. Fear spurred Tom to heft his greater bulk to one side, gripping the dusty concrete floor for purchase as he rose up against the other man’s bizarre pincer grip, planting a knee into Locke’s midriff good enough to release him. But when Tom went to smash down his right hand, he pulled up short lest he punch the floor because Locke again rolled backwards over his own shoulder and away.
“Fucking Vanicek,” the other survivor hissed low in his throat.
“Locke,” Tom grunted in reply as he stood woozily. “Thought you’d rot in that prison cell.”
“Never underestimate the kindness of your fellow man.”
Finnegan’s eyes nearly flashed yellow in the incomplete light. A sociopath’s grin tread water across his face, ignoring Tom’s grave look.
“Don’t count on it here,” Tom said.
“No,” Locke replied. He kept moving, hands raised, facing off. “You were just gonna neck me?”
“Aiming to.”
“You grew some balls at least, you gutless queer.”
Tom’s eyes narrowed at the slur, too breathless and still freaked at his predicament to deign the reply. His opponent watched his every move, serpent fast, now positioned between the doorway and any chance of escape.
“You really fucked up, Vanicek.”
Tom grunted. It looked true, though he wasn’t admitting defeat yet.
“You have some fancy moves,” he said instead, then motioned off-handedly. “I’ve killed better men than you.”
Locke only snickered.
“Relatable,” he said. “Bad news for you, Tom. Made quite a name for yourself here, huh? I look forward to seeing what the newspaper makes of finding you dead in here.”
The other man hurried at him. Tom instinctively warded against blows to the face and Locke grabbed him by the jacket instead. From there, he moved so fast Tom couldn’t tell if he kicked his left leg aside or if he used his arm to do it. All he knew was the lightning-fast grapple felled him hard. He struck the dirty concrete again, worst shoulder first, and the pain lancing through him gave his attacker the half-second needed to scramble into a hold with his crotch pressed down into Tom’s face.
Tom was utterly outclassed.
He twisted sideways to the best of his ability, which wasn’t saying much. His right arm was numb, betraying him once again, and any panic Tom might have about worsening his half-recovered injury was eclipsed by the fear that he might indeed die there, forgotten on the old factory floor – and even worse, that it meant Finnegan Locke would have his victory.
Sheer strength let Tom bundle free as he roared. Locke danced back, suddenly both of them upright again, and then Locke lashed down with a savage heel kick right into the middle of Tom’s upper thigh, Tom’s leg braced in a position of strength now turned against him as the unyielding limb nearly cracked with the force of impact.
Tom shrieked in pain as the fire door burst open again allowing daylight inside.
“Hold right where you are!”
The intruder was a big man, silhouetted against the white. Locke just as quickly saw which way things were going and turned to hurtle up the steps and into and then past Tom’s unwitting savior.
“Hey! I said –”
The man instead found himself twisted about and thrown onto the factory floor as Finnegan Locke vanished into the crowd of a dozen-or-so concerned Citizens beyond the door frame.
Tom fell to the seat of his pants, grabbing his leg in agony and taking more time than he’d like to recognize his ex-Forager buddy Claypool grinning like an idiot also on the ground across from him.
*
“TOM VANICEK,” Claypool said with a hyena’s grin. His fixed and unmoving smile hung open like a flap, rheumy blue eyes ever watchful for the reactions he loved to bait. A big fat man before the world fell apart, time had whittled the meat from the rangy tall Claypool’s bones, but nothing of his delight in others’ dis
tress.
“What the fuck you doin’, Vanicek?”
The question was genuine, just like the snark beneath it.
“You wrestlin’ with that guy, or you two fuckin’?”
“Claypool,” was all Tom could manage.
He got to his feet again with a grimace at his clutched leg. He offered his unexpected savior a hand and Claypool took it amiably enough. He stood too, dusting himself off.
“People outside,” he said. “Said there was some kinda ruckus.”
“A ruckus alright,” Tom said and exhaled more than just weariness.
He grew conscious of Claypool’s dim grin again focused on him.
“What?”
“You tryin’ to kill that dude?”
Tom blew out his cheeks.
“Maybe,” he said. “You gonna tell the troopers?”
“What, and rat out another Forager? Naw.”
Tom somehow expected as much, but something akin to a genuine smile crossed his mind if not his face as he offered the big bully his hand.
“Not Foraging anymore, Claypool, but thanks.”
“All good, Vanicek,” he said. “Turner’s still pissed at you, by the way.”
“Fair enough,” Tom said. “I’m pissed at myself too.”
“Why’s that?” the big man asked.
Tom considered the answer for longer than seemed polite, but that didn’t discourage Claypool’s dogged interest. Tom finally sighed and started for the exit.
“Just maybe bit off a bit more than I can chew,” he said.
He waved farewell to his former comrade and then headed cautiously back out into the alley.
Uprising aftermath sees rationalization of programs
by Melina Martelle
THE City Council says Administration will move into a “holding pattern” and suspend non-critical operations as it works on plans to recover from last week’s Uprising.
After The Apocalypse Season 2 Box Set [Books 4-6] Page 3
