After The Apocalypse Season 2 Box Set [Books 4-6]

by Hately, Warren

  Councilor Ernest Eric Wilhelm III declined to list specific measures subject to the review.

  However, he confirmed the move marks an end to the City’s active recruitment phase, with personnel ordered back from checkpoints outside the sanctuary zone.

  Cr Wilhelm denied all suspended projects were finished for good.

  “The coming weeks will see a return to the cold weather that proved a major challenge in the City’s first year,” he said.

  “At the moment, we have to focus on core business. That means keeping Citizens safe, warm, and fed.

  “However, the Council also reminds Citizens we are not a welfare state,” Cr Wilhelm said.

  “We advise in the strongest possible terms that Citizens look to their own preparations.”

  New Citizens would still be screened and tagged, but at the sanctuary zone perimeter.

  Other programs believed suspended include construction of a second rations depot, housing reclamation, the external commuter rail system, and development of sanctuary zone streetcars.

  Cr Wilhelm said it was not true troopers would no longer investigate crimes and urged Citizens to continue making reports.

  He would not be drawn on whether Citizens should expect further cuts to ration allocations, as revealed by the Herald last month.

  The disorder of last week’s armed revolt triggered speculation the Council would draw on key local political figures, including the Brotherhood’s male supremacist leader Edward Burroughs and Traders Alliance spokesman Samuel Hoskeens, to bolster the Administration.

  Mr Burroughs declined to comment.

  Mr Hoskeens said the Alliance preferred to run candidates to elect a new Council.

  “I wouldn’t say things have gone too well, would you?” he said.

  Council President Dana Lowenstein refused to answer questions about the latest timetable for democratic elections, despite the recent hit to Council numbers.

  However, she defended the effectiveness of City operations and said Forager missions as well as agricultural and fuel-harnessing programs continued.

  The Herald also sought comment from Cr Abraham Ben-Gurion about his ongoing role on the Council amid rumors he resigned.

  In a written one-line statement, Cr Ben-Gurion said he “continued to serve the City”.

  Chapter 2

  THE COMMOTION IN the kitchen was just Lewis being a klutz with the dishes again, but that didn’t spare him the look of borderline hatred he’d become used to as Burroughs sat unmoving at the table in an oasis of dead noise created by the conversations stilling at once. The big man inhaled slowly as the junior apologized and nobody said anything: four sets of eyes watchful of the older man with his eyes downcast on the table, Lewis whispering more apologies and getting on with the clean-up.

  “Food’ll only be another minute,” he said.

  Edward Burroughs unclenched his big hairy paws almost like an orchestra conductor instructing his lieutenants to relax. Dangerfield and Zardoz up and excused themselves at once, looking like they’d won some kind of reprieve, leaving just Sandler and Vegas at the edge of what looked like a card game in progress, but was anything but.

  Vegas was the only one of the Brotherhood not sitting bolt upright straight in his chair. Whether he’d earnt it or not, the mahogany-skinned brawler sat picking the calluses across his palms, shooting just the repetitive watchful looks the others had paid Burroughs in full before the chance to get out. Sitting there, thinking such thoughts, their leader snuffled the temptation to grin and let them know how wrong they were. He knew he had a temper, but it suited Burroughs for his men to fear him as a far more volatile man than he was.

  “I thought they’d stay for the meal,” he said with his usual ursine growl.

  “Dangerfield has a shift on the gates,” Sandler said too quickly, and knew it.

  “I don’t need you being his apologist,” Burroughs said.

  “Nor . . . nor was I.”

  “Uh-huh,” Burroughs said unconvinced. “Where’s Zordoz headed?”

  Vegas snickered and finally sat up, finished with what he was doing.

  “With his tail between his legs,” the black man offered.

  Burroughs said nothing to that. Instead, Lewis brought the pot across from the wood stove and started ladling the tomato-rich stew into bowls. It smelled good. Vegas picked up and handed Burroughs the pepper and their leader briefly locked eyes with the younger man.

  “You know me too well,” he told him.

  Burroughs took the shaker and added more pepper to the chili than made common sense. Sandler only licked his lips, watching, eyes distracted by constant looks back to Lewis once the skinny young man finished serving and set the fire-blackened pot on the hearth.

  “Isn’t there . . . wasn’t there some bread?”

  Burroughs flicked hooded eyes at him. Sandler was already too pale to blanch. He licked his lips nervously, color only rising as Vegas gave a long, low chuckle, including Burroughs in his derision.

  “Do you have legs, Aaron?” Burroughs asked Sandler.

  “Y-yes, of course.”

  Burroughs sighed, no energy for the rebuke as he roughly motioned into the kitchen across from them, Sandler squeaking his wooden chair as he went to collect the basket himself. Burroughs fell into Vegas’ amused look, but grunted rather than share his humor.

  “Something funny to you, Vegas?”

  “Plenty o’ things,” the other man said.

  Vegas was young by Burroughs’ standards, but that didn’t say much with Edward pushing fifty five. Despite his flashy corn rows, Vegas had a lived-in look beyond his years – like most of them. Made him hard to place. And the arrogance which rubbed the others up the wrong way didn’t flatter him. Nor the free and open way he spoke.

  “You’re really goin’ to consider that traitor’s offer, after they locked you up?”

  Burroughs took a moment, chewing the chili. Lewis could cook, for sure. It almost tasted like bacon – and it sure as fuck wasn’t bacon.

  “You call Wilhelm a traitor, like we have some kind of different politics than him?”

  Burroughs posed the question, conscious to maintain his unflappable demeanor no matter what. The other man remained free with his tone. Sandler’s black eyebrows furrowed as he set down the coarse dark bread, but he said nothing else.

  “That’s not why I call him a traitor and you know it,” Vegas said quietly. “But sure, we got different politics than him, don’t you think? And you gettin’ no compensation after all they did to you? Seems like you was holdin’ out for a medal or something. Shit.”

  Burroughs took the bread, made sure the upstart was watching, then twisted the rough loaf apart with blatant ease. Roughing up bread wasn’t much of a strongman’s act, but it made the point. And just as negligently, Vegas sniffed to show he wasn’t cowed by subtle threats.

  “And yeah, man,” Vegas said. “Don’t we have different politics to that? Sandler’ll back me up on that, right Aaron?”

  Vegas knew he was pretty, and added that with a boxer’s physique that would’ve made him a hit back when Instagram was still a thing. The deliberately pouty, sarcastic wink he threw to their offsider was designed to rile Sandler more than bring him into their deliberations. Sandler didn’t have a notch on Vegas, but he was cunning in a way Burroughs had come to admire – though he never let the skinny kike know it. That’d just be throwing away an advantage which Sandler, of all people, would never begrudge him. For his part, Sandler kept his face neutral despite Vegas’ taunts, batting dark lashes back towards Burroughs in a show of deference.

  “We all stand to gain from the City,” Burroughs said. “Yes, Wilhelm asked, and yes, I said I’d think about it. Isn’t that we want, more Men at the table?”

  “Not many places left at that table, after St Mary’s.”

  Burroughs nodded. None of his men were part of the Lefthanders rebellion. He’d tortured several to make sure. That was maybe another reason for Sandler k
eeping quiet today, knowing he’d escaped that inquisition by dint of his allegiance so far.

  Vegas stood abruptly, but Burroughs kept eating.

  “Things to do,” the other man said.

  He nodded to Sandler and headed out.

  *

  “YOU KNOW WHY he called Wilhelm a traitor, don’t you?” Sandler whispered, safe after the swaggering Vegas had gone. “It’s a skin thing. I’ve told you about this.”

  “Sandler. . . .”

  “Boss, you know no one’s more loyal to you than me,” the skinny younger man said. “We’ve been through too much together, come too far.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Vegas and his crew –”

  On cue, another crashing noise sounded, though this time beyond the doorway and stairwell through which Vegas had so recently departed. Burroughs was nearly finished with the meal anyway, and he stood as Sandler did the same to hurry ahead of him through the kitchen door.

  The angry voices hit them the moment they reached the landing. In the stairwell below, Vegas faced off as his two regulars Dalkeith and Abara extricated themselves from a tussle with the other half-dozen members of the Brotherhood more or less living full-time at Burroughs’ home, their de facto headquarters. The angry shouts and pushes ceased the moment Edward’s shadow fell over them, and the big man took his time descending to make sure he made a presidential entrance – and that he wasn’t going to get caught up in the violence flavoring the air as thoroughly as anything from the kitchen upstairs.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” he asked, loud enough for all to hear, soft enough to still the hearts of wiser men.

  Abara threw off Gabe Romano’s grasp and retreated to his cohort, the skin tones all darker on one side of the room, closest to the front door, and highlighting the baseline rationale for the tension increasingly distracting Burroughs’ Men from the work he wanted done. That alone was enough to spark his fury, but he hadn’t fallen into a position of power by kneejerk reprisals – even if there’d been reprisals aplenty after the week the City’d been through.

  Vegas said it with a scowl, rather than words. His offsiders were likewise close-lipped, and Burroughs swept his brooding gaze to the white men, though some would question whether that included McJack, who was a meatloaf of the different races once making America famous for its welcoming open arms.

  “They’re spoiling for a fight,” Romano said.

  No one laughed at his squeaky voice now. The chance of a full eruption – from Burroughs, or maybe Vegas and his team – was far too likely. Their leader reviewed the terse argument and the simple statement, lit his eyes on Vegas, and saw the other man wisely back away.

  “Dalkeith didn’t mean nothing by it,” he said. “Be chill, man.”

  “We’re all equals here,” Burroughs said stiffly. They knew that wasn’t true. One word from him and any of them could be dangling from a noose, their carcass sold on as stew for some misfortunates to munch on on The Mile without a clue, or for some of them, without a care as to its origins. “I want this shit to stop, got it?”

  The white boys nodded. Vegas’ crew were slower on the uptake, deepening Burroughs’ scowl. He bared his teeth at Vegas and the other man nodded slowly, everything in his body language longing for the nearby exit. Burroughs also wished he’d take it, defusing the unwanted complication to the business they were meant to be doing.

  “I asked those two to report for trooper patrols,” he added.

  Abara and Dalkeith flicked their eyes to Vegas and everyone saw them do it, Sandler with an audible intake of air. Burroughs only scowled again, turning on the other men.

  “Freaky, McJack, you too, right?”

  “Yeah boss,” McJack said.

  Freaky was also a slow learner. He wouldn’t quite meet Edward’s eyes, which itself wasn’t unusual except for the tang of dissent in the oxygen around them.

  “Is there a . . . problem?”

  “Your boys don’t think we should be backing up the trooper patrols,” Vegas said.

  “You know that’s not the issue so don’t say that.”

  Burroughs feigned mild surprise at Sandler’s hot interjection, though the surprise itself was genuine. Their leader had a hard time showing much, which was mostly a benefit. Now he held his tongue to see how brave Sandler might be, his wiry-framed lieutenant casting his gaze around the room looking for support and finally falling back on Burroughs watching implacably.

  “Boy’s got something on his mind,” Vegas snickered.

  “I don’t think you should be calling anyone ‘boy,’ don’t you, Vegas?”

  Cast-iron shutters fell down on the black man’s insouciant expression.

  “Speak your mind, Aaron,” Burroughs said. “Brotherhood doesn’t mean much if we can’t talk the truth to each other.”

  “These guys don’t want to team up with us because of our skin,” Sandler said, completely failing to hide the truculent resentment from his voice.

  “You’re not on trooper duty,” Burroughs said. “What are you talking about?”

  Romano found his voice again.

  “Abara called us ‘white pussies’,” he said.

  The comment only made the other black men chuckle, though they had the caution to drop it the moment Burroughs raised an eyebrow.

  “Then let’s stop bickering like pussies,” Burroughs said. “You’re Men, not breeders. Best you all remember that.”

  He dropped a forceful stare on each of them.

  “Get to work,” he growled.

  Vegas offered an ironic salute, glad to quit their squalid base. Dalkeith and Abara went with him, and Burroughs only glanced back at Freaky and the burly McJack.

  “Nothing says you have to like each other, but it’d help,” Burroughs said. “I promised the Brotherhood would back trooper patrols until this fucking meeting Wednesday night. Until then, do as I say, got it?”

  He didn’t look back for acknowledgement, but that wasn’t the first mistake he’d made that day, and it wouldn’t be the last.

  *

  NIGHTFALL COMING IN early suited him well. Burroughs tugged up the faux fur collar of his jacket, hoping for more anonymity than he could expect as he trudged along The Mile, declining to stop as several passing men nodded to him or moved in to touch his shoulder. He shrugged the last guy off, conscious of a pair of troopers eyeing him disdainfully from the next intersection. The smell of meat and garlic filled the air, the smoke from sidewalk cook fire burning his eyes and just another excuse for him to continue forward, easing out of the stream of human traffic at the stall where Elias shot him a knowing look and went right back to heckling passers-by for their attention as he cranked up the volume on the shitty RnB from his boom box, a scarred woman in the chair already with one of the other tattooists doing the business.

  A barricade of old carpets ate the street noise, throwing the side entrance to Mercutio’s into darkness as well. Burroughs gave one last brisk look around, hesitation the enemy of stealth, and a quick rap on the door taped over with old cardboard saw a disfigured man open with the requisite caution befitting such a contemptible business.

  The moans – and then the smell – hit Burroughs at once. And somehow elicited a grin.

  The foyer of the cramped old shop likewise had every surface carpeted with a hodgepodge of old Persian carpets and floor coverings of any and all sorts. There were a number of plush chairs and sofas for those waiting – and two ashamed-looking men averted their eyes the moment Burroughs’ bear-like frame filled the doorway – but Mercutio knew he was coming and the limping doorman quickly ushered him across the room, past the battle-stained shop counter and through into the back room.

  The noises grew louder, but the smell was much the same. An antiseptic stink was plastered on top, industrial chemicals used like pre-Napoleonic French nobles lacquering on perfumes rather than attend to basic hygiene, but Burroughs’ guilty conscience kept him mute on the subject. Beyond the doorway, a tough-looking
man wearing not much more than a leather apron scanned him, recognized the VIP, then performed something like a clumsy bow.

  “Mr Burroughs.”

  “Don’t say my name.”

  “Yessir,” the brute said. He lifted aside the curtain flap to reveal the doorway hammered into the brick wall. “You know the way. Stall two.”

  Burroughs nodded, thinking to himself that it was hard to maintain his dignified bearing in such conditions. He was quick to peel off his jacket, hanging it on one of the pegs nailed into the dimly-lit wall. The doorways ran down one side of the hall and it always annoyed him when the workers called them “stalls” instead of “rooms”, but the animal braying from behind at least one of the four doors suggested the description was probably more apt than Burroughs’ denial.

  “Sir?”

  Edward returned the aproned man a begrudging look.

  “Yes?”

  “Boots on, I’d say.”

  Burroughs grunted and nodded, unbuckling his pants at the same time he sat on the hallway bench to pull off his combat grips, leaving the tongues hanging open like wagging gossips as the curtain shrouded him with the illusion of privacy and he tugged down his dirty jeans until it was just him and his socks. A big toe poked through the one on the left. Burroughs concentrated on it as he slipped back into his footwear, trying not to notice the puddle of congealed ooze leaking beneath the bottom of the closest stall door.

  He only had a moment’s meditation. The curtain hauled back violently and another bear-like man not dissimilar to him and the other worker forced the hissing Fury through, the worker not as cowed at their noble guest as his colleague. The worker instead only motioned at the second door, eyebrow raised as he grunted and wrestled the scrawny, hag-faced young woman into the corridor at the end of a wire loop tethering her to a ten-foot pole.

  Burroughs was already hard. Like a man contemplating a fancy meal, he turned to consider the row of implements dangling filthy and unwashed on their hooks further along the corridor, selecting the fireplace poker with the hooked barb at one edge. Then he clomped across in his flaccid boots and pushed the door in on the grimy bare-brick chamber beyond and let the handler push his selection ahead of him towards the wall-mounted restraints illuminated by sick candlelight.