“Not really,” Lucas said. “It’s a market?”
“Yes,” Duce answered. “For those a-who make their business outside th’ sanctuary zone, you understand?”
Another quick scan confirmed the observation. A painfully thin woman in an old apron hauled a big crate onto one of the wood benches, cracking it open to reveal a small cargo of firearms. Several nearby men joined the one already talking to her, eager to see her offerings for themselves. The pinched-looking woman pointed sternly to the man at the ticket stall, and the customers nodded, absent-minded yet obedient as they continued perusing her wares. The smell of broiling food wafted across the scene too, and by dint of his growling stomach, Lucas homed in on the camp kitchen buried at the back of the defunct fresh market. The grim reality that they still had nothing to trade occurred to him again, ruing the hard-won AAA batteries they’d already squandered for their morning’s fun.
Luke moved back to Kevin.
“I’m starved,” he said.
“Here.”
The boy removed a sealed plastic bag from his underwear containing chunks of coarse muesli-based trail food the Vanicek family had subsisted on in recent days, and Luke’s eyes widened of their own accord.
“You took food from my place?”
“Our place,” Kevin said. “Remember?”
“Yes,” Luke quickly agreed, undeterred. “But . . . rations are tight right now. That’s. . . .”
He sensed Kevin waiting for him to name it “stealing”. And that would open yet another front between them when all Lucas wanted was something akin to harmony with the boy he’d sworn as his blood brother. They’d performed a little ceremony and everything. Lucas felt his stomach drop a notch, though even couriered inside Kevin’s pants, the morsels weren’t without their appeal.
“All I mean is,” he said carefully, “we’re going to have fresh meat soon – plenty of it – but for now we’re living on deals my father, Tom, has made with others . . . and there’s not a lot to go around.”
“Lilianna?”
“Yes,” Luke replied. He somehow knew instantaneously what Kevin meant. “She’s mostly at the Enclave now, and eating there.”
“So. . . ?”
“I’m just saying. . . .”
Kevin wasn’t one to mince words, nor waste them when they weren’t needed. His watchful, mouth-slightly-agape gaze was enough to force Luke’s backdown.
“Hand it over,” Lucas said lightly. “I’d eat almost anything right now.”
Kevin grinned and popped the seal on the airtight bag so Luke could help himself.
“We need to find you a backpack or something,” Luke sniggered.
“Can’t steal what you can’t see.”
“True,” Lucas said. “And people might not want to take this off you . . . for other reasons too.”
Kevin knew what his friend meant, but only snickered. Although he’d washed in the early days of their acquaintance, and when moving into the old apartment, it was almost like the younger boy saw a pungent body odor as just another means of defense. If it stopped other survivors stealing from him – or kept them away completely – all the better.
“What are we doing here?”
“Opportunities.”
It was the biggest word in Kevin’s vocabulary, and he said it like it was part of a bigger mantra that didn’t need uttering because of its obviousness. In the boy’s hard-edged world, every moment of brief advantage was to be rooted out, and then grabbed two-handed.
Lucas wanted to ask him more, but as was often the case, watching Kevin was more telling than any words. The boy’s narrowed eyes focused with laser precision on several new figures who entered the Waymarket from the north, the opposite way the boys had come: a young woman, a skinny teenage girl in a black wool cap, and three much younger children, one of whom, a young black boy, wore a dangerous-looking hatchet quite openly on his belt.
The newcomers pushed a shopping cart before them, though what was trash and what was treasure inside was impossible to discern. The younger children all carried firewood on their backs in small parcels. The woman pushing the trolley had a kindly look for everyone she passed, though the younger members of her troupe checked around themselves as thoroughly as armed guards. The boy with the ax had the small party’s lead, and a gaunt, grubby-faced boy followed close behind with a hand as if guiding the trolley’s front, the boy swaddled against the cold and reinforcing his age at no more than five or six. Similar was the girl, dark-haired like all except the adult woman, and as well as her small bundle of sticks, she clutched a tattered blue Carebear under one arm.
But it was the girl in the snow cap who held Lucas’ eye.
Like many, it was hard to tell if she was ten or fifteen – her clothes, and her whip-thin frame shearing the femininity from her if it wasn’t for her pretty face, anxious blue eyes framed by wisps of black hair. The girl seemed perpetually whispering to herself, her alertness the most likely explanation. Kevin clued in to his friend’s focus and gave a snickering laugh until Luke in turn locked eyes with him.
“What?”
“Trust me?”
“Yes.”
Lucas dropped his gaze, uncertain if he lied, but it was enough for his friend. The younger boy started moving and Lucas fell into his orbit yet again, chastising himself for feeling such a fish out of water despite knowing he couldn’t be anything else. Again came the liberating-yet-terrifying sense of knowing he was outside the wire without his father or Lilianna to protect him, and he knew or at least believed that was how it needed to be with his twelfth birthday just days away.
A flash of memory whirled in at that moment to haunt him: the singsong tones of Tom and Lila in a rendition of Happy Birthday while the power was still running and before the TVs were overcome with their coverage of the world’s downfall, back in the first weeks of the Emergency which robbed his childhood despite his father’s best efforts.
Steeling himself, Luke gave Kevin another firmer nod, and then Kevin abandoned any hesitation and plowed on ahead.
*
THE GROUP WITH the shopping trolley carried out some kind of trade for their firewood, and it wasn’t long after that Lucas realized he and Kevin were shadowing them. The woman who led the group maintained her pleasant smile with everyone she dealt, reminding Lucas of the beaming moms in several of the cached videos he’d just watched, her seeming implacability something supernatural in the ashes of the world they lived. After trading their gathered firewood with a skinny, cap-wearing dude who had a working vehicle nearby, the woman led her group through to the camp kitchen, and Kevin nudged Lucas to follow.
Meat stew and rice permeated the air trapped beneath two old military tents turned into a giant teepee at the back of the space. The kitchen had built itself around the remains of the Ford truck which plowed into the building long ago, and in the dimly-lit confines, several more survivors sat at their own stations repairing shoes, jackets, and engine parts, and offering to trade with an angle-grinder for a share of whatever might be inside the looted safes, toolkits, and metal lockers stacked into rough teetering walls at the back of the place. Clearly, the whole Waymarket had grown as some sanctioned yet clandestine halfway station for anyone who made their living outside the sanctuary zone, or perhaps lived permanently outside it.
The woman led her young charges through to the kitchen, their trolley safe out the front. She then bartered for three dishes of food the children shared between them, the quasi-teenage girl in the cap hanging back with a furtive air. Her electric eyes turned Luke’s way and he all but hid, while Kevin, in turn, made himself interested in the wares of the old lady astride mounds and mounds of bundled old shoes.
Amid Kevin’s act, and ignoring the subvocalized hiss from the other boy once he saw where Luke was headed, Lucas found himself drawn closer to the strangers. The smell from the kitchens was overpoweringly good, but the two women working on the other side of the truck only returned his interest with steely looks.
A third worker spoke with the woman leading the small group, the server’s eyes flicking rapidly between her mouth and the bright head wrap the woman used to conceal straw-colored hair.
Before Luke could get much closer, a good-looking bearded man stood from one of the only tables, wiping his hands on a rag and looking pleased with himself at the meal he’d just devoured. Lucas almost walked into him as the man stood and smiled impassively, motioning across to where Kevin watched, his pretend exploration of the old market forgotten.
“Are you boys heading back to the City?” he asked. “I’ll give you a ride in my lorry.”
“Your what?”
The man burped into his fist.
“Got a ride outside,” he said in a British accent. “South exit.”
The woman in the head scarf led her children past them, and Lucas took a moment to avoid eye contact with the girl in the cap. The big man across from him sniffed, then used the same rag as before to blow out his nose. Luke looked around again for Kevin, whose eyes narrowed with warning, and Luke nodded.
“It’s OK.”
“Sure?” the man asked with another bland smile, seeing Lucas already headed away. “I’m not gonna make you blow me or anything.”
The moment Lucas returned, Kevin dragged him along in a shadow pursuit of the woman and children with the trolley, and the man at the cantina shrugged, blew his nose again, and glanced around back at the kitchen as if maybe not quite finished eating after all.
Outside, a moisture not quite rain misted the cool air, and the sun was away behind so many banks of clouds that a return to sunshine wasn’t imminent. Luke stuffed his hands into the pocket of his jacket, and nodded to Kevin even though the other boy only had eyes for their prey.
“You should put your top on.”
The children trailed after the woman as she briskly pushed the cart before her, thrusting it out and taking a second or two to catch up to it before repeating the motion all over again. The little girl with the Carebear uttered something like a laugh, all of them freed of their previous burdens, and so headed out through the open north exit.
Once they’d slipped out of sight, Kevin started after them.
“C’mon.”
*
THE CLATTERING TROLLEY ahead was an easy guide, even if the woman and her troupe disappeared from sight frequently as they threaded their way north. And in those moments snatched between the shadows of the decaying suburban homes, Lucas rounded on his friend.
“What are we doing?”
“They live outside.”
“So?”
“Easy mark.”
Lucas frowned at the term, though he knew what was meant.
“What could they have worth taking?”
Kevin motioned for him to keep low, and his voice the same, pushing off from their latest hiding place and moving back to the next street corner. The numerous brick homes – many with stately steps leading to imposing, orange-daubed front doors – and the lack of fences made it easy for them to scurry in the trolley’s wake, Kevin padding like a ninja ahead and Lucas almost the same. There wasn’t much chance for debate. Each time they nestled down behind a plinth or a brick stairwell, Kevin moved on again like a squirrel through the urban decay.
Just as they reached the next street corner, the boys caught sight of their targets. The woman cast a cautionary look around, and Kevin and Luke jumped down behind an ornamental wrought-iron gate completely overcome by the ivy also wild across the whole next quarter block. Luke was surprised when Kevin stiffened, pressing back against him – and then saw they’d also stumbled into the resting place of a wild elk, its heavily-decayed remains turned into mulch among the rampant undergrowth.
Kevin shot Lucas a look as if daring him to comment.
When they checked on the woman again, she had a garage door open at one of the houses on the next side street, pushing the trolley in after her children who clambered into a beat-up truck concealed in the shadowed inside. The vehicle coughed into life, and barely so. But it wasn’t the woman at the wheel. She finished transferring the contents of the shopping trolley and then turned back to the upright garage door with a winding motion. The 4WD backed out onto the street with the older of the two young boys steering, his studious brown face turned back on the street and not watching for Lucas and Kevin across the way. Nor did the woman. As if checking for traffic, she lowered the garage door by hand, stuffed back the newspapers earlier lodged in place under it, and then hurried to the ride.
Lucas and Kevin watched helplessly as the truck belched filthy smoke and accelerated away down the street at a dirty clop still greater than either of the boys could run.
“Now we really are miles from the City,” Lucas said downheartedly. “Kevin, we need to go.”
Kevin glanced at the sky, and just at that moment the sun finally returned. The grayness retreated as God turned up the lamp. It was midafternoon still, though not for much longer. The breeze rattled leaves and sent even more ancient newspaper sheets scratching their way across the road as if in denial. Kevin slowly smiled, soothingly, fighting off a look at their defeat.
“Soon,” he said.
The noise of the chugging truck dissipated. The sound of birdlife came again, as well as the whispering wind – and then a long low moaning noise.
“Do you hear that?”
“Ssh!”
Kevin remained frozen, eyes unfocused as he strained to hear the not-close sound. The wind eased for a second, then came back carrying more of the low groans from across the way.
“There,” Lucas said.
The street corner across from them was home to a pair of brick duplexes. Foragers had marked their doors, but the window astride one of the sagging porches remained open like someone had slid it up, a length of weather-stained curtain stuck outside. On a closer look, the front door was also slightly ajar.
Kevin started forward and Lucas grabbed him.
“It’s a Fury.”
“I know.” Unno.
Lucas wasn’t sure what else to say, so only watched as Kevin advanced on the other property, before a sense of duty caused him to follow.
*
THE MOANS GREW louder as the boys approached. Kevin went lightfooted onto the porch, walking on the edges of his scuffed trainers and holding his breath as he gently forced the front door inwards. It squelched back on a carpet of sodden clothes and rotting newspaper and old personal effects, the wood warped with water damage at the bottom.
The whole floor of the house was muck. Daylight from a back room revealed a narrow corridor once lined with carpet. Now it smelled like a wetland, water from still-running taps somewhere keeping the house perennially an inch-deep in water with a smell like old sewage. It didn’t take much to step in carefully, Kevin and then Lucas moving across to the first open door.
The Fury had collapsed in the front room buried by a fallen stack of furniture, and laying pinned in the swampy water had half-dissolved the stranded thing. It was hard to tell if it was male or female once, though long strands of ringleted gray hair still hung in some clumps across its gray skull. Its defeated face had lain down in the pool for far too long to have much of a semblance, eyes gone, the teeth and jaw muscles working through flesh like old custard. With one arm free, it gestured towards them as if wanting a hand up. But its teeth gnashed, in the manner of speech, but really only the longstanding diatribe of hunger that drove all its kind.
“Foragers have been here,” Lucas said.
Kevin ignored him. He withdrew the short-handled scythe stolen earlier in the day and it was a subdued yet gleeful look Luke’s friend wore.
“Hey,” Luke said. “Let’s go.”
“In a minute.” Innaminna.
Kevin had his eyes locked on the creature. Although the fallen thing seemed to taste the air, and that hunger still drove it, the Fury had lost whatever menace it once posed. The small boy holding up a curved blade like a painter measuring the angles only left Lucas feeling sick. He tr
ied to clutch his friend’s shoulder, but Kevin shrugged him off.
Moving with precision, Kevin stabbed the hooked blade down into the top of the Fury’s skull and the creature slumped like he’d let the air out of it.
Kevin then withdrew the blade and calmly glanced at Lucas as if he’d never been otherwise. The boy tugged at one of the curtains and wiped his weapon clean.
“Nothing here,” Kevin agreed. “Lay them to rest, though.”
He nodded to his friend with a bashfulness that couldn’t be sincere, Lucas confused as he fell into step once again as they moved as if across stepping stones back out of the house.
*
IT WAS A long walk back towards the sanctuary zone. The boys trudged to the point where they lost all strength, becoming just two more shambling figures walking exhaustedly to their goal. Kevin kept his eyes in front of them, and Lucas followed up keeping checks on their rear. But for all they knew, they were the sole survivors walking through the outer ruins of the city. A dog howled off in the distance, and wildlife like squirrels, opposums and hares, as well as myriad birds, brought the deserted neighborhoods to life. At one point, a half-dozen white-tailed deer leapt out coming from the next cross street, saw the boys, and beat a hasty path away down a small commercial arcade.
As the boys headed back towards High Street on their path back to the First Gates, the strangely rural languor of decayed residential streets gave way to a harsh and treeless stretch of shops, hotels, three-floor brick office blocks, and older inner city dwellings with gutted stores lining their fronts. The animal life thinned out, and amid that newcomer silence, a man’s raised voice saw the two youngsters dart into cover.
They kept together, hurrying behind the brick pillars guarding the front of an old coffee shop. Nearly six years of storms had pushed the alfresco tables and chairs into a yellowing pile. Kevin and Lucas crouched down behind it, able to peer through the wickerwork of uprighted chair legs to spy on where a man cursed angrily into a radio handset.
After The Apocalypse Season 2 Box Set [Books 4-6] Page 13
