“He’s about thirty.”
“That’s not that strange,” Lilianna said.
Both young women turned their eyes on her like they’d already forgotten she was following. Lila licked her lips, Aurora urging her reply with one raised eyebrow.
“It’s just, like, you know, we’re in medieval times,” Lila said. “Younger women often got married off to an older man, one who’d proven himself.”
Aurora turned her raised brow towards Montana.
“Er . . . what?” she said sarcastically.
“You think we’re in medieval times?” Montana asked.
“Well, sort of,” Lilianna said. “You know what I mean. Sorry, it’s just maybe the stuff my dad says, kinda stayed with me. The moment a woman was old enough to carry children, they did. And the mortality rate –”
“That sounds creepy as fuck,” Aurora said quietly.
“Well, think about where we are in history,” Lila said in lukewarm defiance, though still not loud enough to wake the other sleepers. “We got hit with a pretty big reset. It makes sense things would go back that way, without air-conditioning and cars and –”
“Jeez,” Aurora butted in. “Who invited her?”
Lilianna was too shocked to say anything, and Montana playfully thumped her friend’s arm, not only unaware of Lila’s reaction, but wallpapering it over with blithe good humor. Aurora shot Lila a bemused look of fake apology as Montana quickly changed her shirt and Grizelda in the nearby bunk hissed at them to shut up – only triggering more of the pair’s giggles.
“I still say it’s a bad idea going out,” Aurora said.
“What?” Lila said without thinking. “You’re going out now?”
Montana replied with a sheepish expression.
“Curfew’s not until nine,” she said. “I’ve got time for a drink.”
“And maybe something else,” Aurora sniggered.
Montana grabbed her coat off the hook and tinkled her fingers Lilianna’s way. The rejected newcomer just stood there, abandoned as Montana and her best friend slipped back out of the dorm room resuming their low-voice gossip as if Lilianna had said nothing at all.
*
LILIANNA EYED MONTANA’S empty bed as Aurora woke slowly above her, stretching and then dropping down from the top bunk. The hard-fringed young nineteen-year-old followed Lila’s eyes and then swept them back to her and shrugged.
It was just a little after dawn.
“Someone got some action,” she said.
Lila was too torn about what to say, so she said nothing except to express her doubts in a worried glance back at the undisturbed bed.
“Relax, Lilly.”
“It’s Lilianna.”
“Montana’s a big girl. You can’t say I didn’t warn her.”
Aurora casually pulled off her shirt and stood there topless, doe-eyed, awaiting some kind of reaction from her younger roommate. Lila ignored Aurora’s slender display, and the slightly older woman shrugged again and walked to her footlocker and started rummaging through it for a clean navy shirt, glancing up again at Lila once she had one pressed to her chest.
“What are you worried about?” she asked. “You haven’t been out after Curfew before?”
“Not like that.”
“It’s not like she was out on the street,” Aurora said. “She probably went home with that piece of shit. So she wasn’t out after Curfew, OK?”
“Who’s Gunderson?”
“Just some guy.”
Aurora dressed quickly. Their other dorm mates were already gone.
“Getting changed?” Aurora asked. “You start in Comms today, yeah?”
“Yes.”
“Well, get dressed,” Aurora said. “It’s Wednesday. Council after dinner, PE before they’ll let us eat.”
“PE?”
“Physical education,” Aurora replied. “Monty calls it Physical Exhaustion. It’s mandatory, drills and such, three times per week. You got that, right?”
A coolness crept into Lilianna’s face as she nodded, then steadfastly moved to her new locker and retrieved her new track pants and runners. She almost tore her own shirt off in defiance – except she’d slept in her navy tee anyway – but the nylon sleeve on her right arm stilled her hand. She knelt beside the locker, a squirrel’s look back at Aurora, oblivious as a shrewd, private, calculated look took over her smile instead.
They were downstairs a few minutes later, joining the somnambulant traffic of other young people in mismatched track gear headed through into the gym. Although Lilianna knew the expectations on her for continued training, no one had given her a timetable or overseen her induction at the Bastion as she’d expected, except for Montana, and through her, Aurora taking Lila into their hands. Lila walked stiffly beside Aurora’s deliberately casual sashay as she waved fingertips at another of their group and then soon about twenty of them filed into the gym.
Sorrel Williams wore a thin white t-shirt that clung to his gargantuan frame more like a bedsheet thrown there by an errant wind. Lilianna’d never experienced high school, but understood well enough the atmosphere, with Williams blowing on a whistle around his neck as he gathered the last of them to stand around two edges of a square of padded floor dirty with scuff marks and shreds of old tape. A number of foam-wrapped batons were set out across the gymnasium floor on the far side of the dojo-like space. And if the whistle wasn’t enough, Williams clapped huge hands together to silence the last titters of conversation.
“Alright,” the tall man boomed. A few older men at the weights racks continued on the far side of the room as Williams scanned the assembly with watery dark eyes. “Recent events have shown the wisdom of insisting on basic fitness and weapons training skills. But one area we’ve neglected that now needs to be addressed is personal combat.”
Williams dowsed a latecomer with a belligerent look and then resumed his address.
“The enemies of the Bastion aren’t always going to have guns,” he said. “It’s crucial each of you can defend yourself and each other if needed. Many of you were younger, or protected by other people in the early days, before the City. Anyone can use a knife and try to silence a Fury, or kill another person. But then you’re relying on luck. I’m going to show you a few things with a nightstick, OK?”
The twenty young Administration officers nodded, Lila among them.
“First, though,” he said. “Who here’s got any experience in fighting unarmed?”
There was a moment’s lull. A spark lit in Lilianna’s brow and she thrust her hand up.
“A little,” she said, and then surprised everyone, especially Aurora, when she pointed at the other young woman. “You too, right, Aurora?”
“Me?”
Aurora’s cocky confidence dimmed as Williams turned eyes on her.
“Yeah,” the other woman said weakly. “Some.”
“Perfect,” the huge Williams boomed. “Step out, both of you.”
Aurora shot Lila a confused look, and doubled up when she met Lilianna’s grin.
“OK, ladies, we’ll get you to show your stuff, and then I’ll offer some pointers from there,” Williams said. He clicked his fingers loudly demanding everyone’s attention. “I want everyone watching. It could be you on the mat next, OK?”
Aurora had slipped on a zippered track top she now removed, all the while with eyes glued on Lilianna trying to discern what the hell was going on, without actually paying attention to the younger blonde’s moves. Lilianna couldn’t lay claim to any great prowess when it came to unarmed combat, and she’d been trained and practiced by her father who also didn’t have any real skills beyond those which time and chaos had honed in him. But that was a damned sight more than Aurora could claim, and she also didn’t have Lilianna’s motivation.
Lila stepped in close and grabbed Aurora by the shoulders and easily swept the startled girl’s legs out from beneath her. Aurora hit the padded ground hard and squeaked more than grunted with the impact. Williams called out some kin
d of exhortation and Lilianna moved away so Aurora could stand.
“That’s a pretty basic takedown, but well done,” Williams remarked. To Aurora, he narrowed his gaze and asked, “You OK? Good, then pay attention.”
The scornful tone hardened Aurora’s face as she sniffed, steeling herself as she set her jaw towards Lilianna. Lila started circling, unable to stave off a massive beaming grin.
Before any sort of conversation could erupt between them, Lila darted forward, then feinted. Aurora’s hands came up to protect her face, and Lilianna dropped, pitched her shoulder into the other young woman’s midriff, then stood to flip her off her feet.
Aurora twisted, coming down hard again, softening it with her side.
“Good one!” Williams called. “Again, one more time.”
Lilianna offered Aurora a hand up that the other woman was never going to take. Feigning no offense, Lila backed away with a wry smile and almost blushed to see several of the younger Admin males openly admiring her. She turned her back to them just as Aurora rushed at her.
It wasn’t really fair because the tattooed nineteen-year-old didn’t have any real hand-to-hand experience at all. But she came so fast, it was instinct more than malice that forced Lilianna to step aside, jiu-jitsu-like, making fists to club aside Aurora’s outstretched grasp.
But it was definitely malice that drove Lila’s fist into Aurora’s bread basket.
The young woman was winded as much from her own momentum as the punch itself. She made an unladylike choking noise, lifted briefly off her feet, and then Lila again swept her leg behind Aurora’s knees causing her to plummet to the mat.
This time, Lilianna was quick enough to catch Aurora under one arm, saving her from the floor. But Lila took the surprise and the split-second between them to pull Aurora in close.
“My fucking name is Lilianna,” she whispered. “Got it?”
At once, a harsh woman’s voice called out as if in rebuke.
“Lilianna Vanicek!”
Lila let Aurora slither from her grasp, turning as the track-suited recruits parted to reveal a coffee-skinned woman in black-gray fatigues and a quilted vest: former Councilor Carlotta Deschain, standing unimpressed with a stack of folders and a paperback book in the crook of her arm.
“Um, that’s me,” Lila said.
Deschain threw a tired look to Sorrel Williams, whom she obviously knew well.
“She’s with me.”
“Understood,” Williams said. When Lilianna moved past him, the big man stopped her with a hand the size of a pitcher’s glove. “Miss Vanicek, good work.”
“Cheers.”
Lila snickered with a derisive glee she knew she couldn’t afford, and stifled it immediately as she fell in beside Deschain. The older woman wore an austere, ill-tempered look that didn’t seem her usual self, though among all the other gossip of the Bastion, questions about whether the recently quit Councilor and her husband Ernest Wilhelm were still an item featured prominently. That was just one reason among many for Lilianna to keep her mouth shut as she followed Deschain from the gym.
The ex-Councilor slapped the paperback into Lila’s hands the moment they reached the hall outside.
“This is for you,” she said.
“I’m meant to be starting in Communications today –”
“And you are,” Carlotta replied. “That’s why you’re with me.”
Lila checked down on the book as they walked: a weather-beaten copy of Elementary Cryptanalysis.
“You used to be a military codebreaker, right?” Lilianna asked. “I thought you’d be the one to head up Communications then, if. . . .”
“If?”
“Well, you’re not on Council anymore.”
“No, I am not.” Carlotta said it with barely-concealed pleasure. Her walk became more relaxed as they headed towards Miss Stacey’s domain. “You start on that book after we’re finished,” Carlotta said. “I’m going to show you a few things to get you started, and then I need you to speed through that book as fast as you can. You can read, right?”
“Of course I can read.”
“Good,” the other woman said. “You can be my plus-one for the Council meeting tonight. You can tell me what you think of the book then, OK?”
“OK,” Lila said. “You still have to do those meetings?”
“I might not be a Councilor anymore, but I’ve got a stake in the City’s mission as much as anyone,” Deschain said. “To make sure this contact with the USS Washington doesn’t bite us on the ass, we have to restrict who can access the communication logs. You’ve come along at the perfect time, Lilianna.”
Chapter 5
WITH IWA GONE, there was nothing to explain Tom’s trepidation as he walked back towards the corner tenement his family’d recently called home. The permanently impromptu people’s park on the adjacent corner, watched over by the sanctuary zone wall, had spilled out further into the laneway in just a few days, and now several skinny men were at work rigging a new cottage-style shanty structure leaving no room for the four-wheel drive Tom had briefly once parked nearby. It didn’t matter. Vehicles were fewer and fewer, and God alone knew how the City’s ethanol plant kept running despite the violent clashes of recent days. A woman and a teenager bicycled past the working men as one of their ropes snapped, sending one Citizen to the filthy pavement, his friends laughing, the woman nearly hitting the group reiterating the point that the wide thoroughfares of Columbus’s yesterdays were gone for good, at least within the sanctuary zone.
The bike repair shop on the building’s ground floor was open for business, and its proprietor Kit Conners stood on the other side of the narrowed street, a toolkit in his hands, a troubled look on his face. Tom at once rescanned the street for sign of the miscreant Urchins who’d triggered troubles before, but the only youngsters were a group of a half-dozen school-aged children, whatever the hell that meant, kicking something around in the street Tom hoped was a ball. Conners caught sight of Tom closing in on his old digs and still fuming and muttering to himself about the incident with the City troopers and Ernie Wilhelm. The bike mechanic kenned Tom’s expression in turn, and something about the mutual gravities of their moods drew the men together.
“Mr Vanicek.”
Tom blinked at the honorific, but acknowledged the other man with a polite nod.
“Kit, hello.”
The mechanic offered a hand, too early in the day for his usual grease and grime. In the same movement, Conners motioned back towards his workshop. The skinny lad usually on-site moved busily opening the store’s handmade shutters, exposing the workshop to the chill morning. Conners wore a polar fleece pullover and Tom wore a sheepskin-lined jacket apparently called a “drover’s coat,” the Australian label inside it said.
“Shame you’re not around anymore,” Kit said. “Thieves are getting brazen. Stole one of our BMXes last night.”
“Kids?” Tom asked.
“It’s not a big bike,” Conners said. “Diego talked me into rebuilding it. Turns out that was a waste of time and effort.”
The repairman looked genuinely defeated by the news. Tom nodded astutely, mostly for show, and his eyes drifted back to the Ancestrals graffiti unfaded on the nearby brick wall. A breeze arose, and the air bit at Tom’s ears. He found himself looking to the sky as if anticipating snowflakes, but the snow was weeks away, surely.
Conners caught his gaze.
“Yep, gettin’ colder,” he said.
Tom rubbed his hands together theatrically.
“I saw Eva packed up,” Conners continued. “What’s happenin’ with her digs?”
“Beats me,” Tom replied.
“I figured you’d know.”
“Me?” Tom said. “No, man.”
He nodded to Conners again and headed for the apartment entrance, still without its front doors. Streetlife now occupied the foyer, including two dirty dome tents half-obscuring the stairs. A woman with a very young, black-eyed child in her lap tried co
axing life from a small gas camping stove, looking up as Tom passed with a reproachful look like he’d just walked through her living room. Mud from the street showed plenty had trod that beaten path, and Tom continued without apology up the stairs to the landing so recently his own. The strangeness of it all stayed with him though, explaining his look as the nearby door opened and Mrs Uganda poked her head out.
“Ah, Tom,” she said as if his timing were perfect.
“How long have people been camped out downstairs?”
“Just the last day or two,” she said sadly. “It’s not the same without you around.”
Tom harrumphed. “It’s more about those missing front doors, don’t you think?”
“There’s still the trouble with the people in #1. . . .”
Tom followed her morose brown-eyed look over the railing. A cardboard nest with a wild-bearded man asleep in it occupied the space between the toothless front doors and the ground-floor apartment Uganda eyeballed. A dirty brown stain marked the wood like a shitty handprint. Tom’s brow furrowed.
“What about Hairball?” he asked.
“What about him?”
“You want eyes and ears in the building. . . .”
Mrs Uganda scoffed, gesturing back inside her still-open apartment.
“Wait a second, won’t you?” she said.
“I’m just back to grab a few last things.”
“It won’t take a moment,” the old woman said. “It’s something for you.”
Tom sighed tightly and nodded, using the interlude to unlatch his old front door and cast it wide, letting out the stale air he imagined. He looked back down the stairs to Iwa Swarovsky’s landing which he’d walked past, lock-jawed refusing to look. With her gone, a strange sense of relief trickled through him knowing he was leaving the building without plans to come back.
True to her word, Mrs Uganda returned with a ceramic pot cradled in her cardigan arms. A gentle and not entirely palatable smell of spices intruded around him as he turned and accepted the warm crockery.
“What’s this?”
“Fish stew,” she said and smiled richly. “My old recipe. That should stick some meat on your boy.”
After The Apocalypse Season 2 Box Set [Books 4-6] Page 9
