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

by Hately, Warren

  And then she took a resolute breath and went to stand.

  Greerson leaned forward and easily pushed her back down. The jail cot squeaked almost comically and she steadied herself on the springs not to make a fool of herself. She covered it with her trademark glower. Denny Greerson only smirked, and McGovern behind him made a warning fist and looked inclined to use it.

  Madeline dropped her eyes.

  “What do you want?”

  She hated her own voice sounding so mongoloid, though in truth she was lucky to be talking at all. Her jaw was already bruised deep along the left-hand side, matching the twin black eyes the explosion left her with. McGovern wore black leather gloves that made another beating far too easy an option.

  “We want the names and locations of all other Lefthander sympathizers still living in the City,” Greerson said. “And we want them now.”

  Madeline gave them a sorry look she hoped translated into one of defeat.

  “No one,” she said, and motioned to her fellow prisoners. “You killed them . . . including soldiers who tried to surrender.”

  “Your group aren’t soldiers,” Greerson snapped.

  “The man wants names,” McGovern added unhelpfully.

  Madeline let her head drop again. McGovern shifted weight, off-camera, but Greerson stilled him.

  “Names,” the Safety Chief said. “Now.”

  “There’s no one.”

  “How far did you get with your contact with the USS Washington?”

  Madeline couldn’t help her shocked, mostly crestfallen expression. Greerson smirked, privy to whatever the Council had told him.

  “Yes, we know,” Greerson said and then lied, “Ortega gave you all up before Tom Vanicek killed him.”

  Unable to know better, Plume gently sighed, knowing how likely it was Ortega divulged the whole plan to topple the Administration if it meant saving his miserable life. Greerson was pleased with her reaction, though not as ready to handle the defeated silence that followed.

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Tell me about the contact with the Washington,” Greerson repeated. “What did they say to you?”

  “If Carlos rolled . . . he knew more than me,” Madeline said.

  “You’re letting Ortega and the Colonel take the fall for the whole thing?”

  “No,” Madeline replied wearily in a dull voice. “I was Colonel Rhymes’ advisor. I own that. There wouldn’t have been any firefights if you’d all kept out of it.”

  “Horse shit.”

  “You brought that on,” Madeline said with a sincerity fueled by genuine belief. “You attacked St Mary’s. You –”

  The Safety Chief scowled and punched her in the midriff.

  Madeline dropped to the ground and fought for dignity as well as her breath, both lost to her like something she might find on the floor of her cell. Greerson and McGovern shuffled around each other as she tried not to black out. Then Greerson went to haul her up again and Madeline stood quickly herself, shaky on her feet like a newborn calf, desperate to keep his hands off her.

  “The Council’s not convinced,” Greerson said. “And while they’re not convinced, you have to deal with Arthur and me.”

  Madeline very much doubted the Council directives included her abuse, though she also knew Ernest fucking Eric Wilhelm III and his minions could connect the dots – they knew how she’d be treated – and chose to ignore it anyway. She was surprised Wilhelm hadn’t been down to take her yet himself. He’d always had that look about him, Madeline thought.

  “I can’t tell you what you want to know,” she said sluggishly. Her hand spiraled lazily, the marks up and down her forearms looking worse than they were, she told herself, because of the antiseptic light. “Maybe some of them survived. I don’t know. I’m in here.”

  “You need to give us some names,” Greerson said. “Otherwise. . . .”

  Madeline didn’t want to know, but she asked, “Yes?” all the same.

  “Otherwise, we’re here until we get every single name of all your known associates – every single fucking one – and we’ll put names to corpses and see who else is left.”

  Greerson turned his snake-eyed look back towards the half-dozen scruffy men still watching them, almost caught off balance by the vengeful looks they wore. He covered himself with a bemused snort, then looked back down at her.

  “Your men seem to enjoy watching,” Greerson said.

  Then he looked to McGovern.

  “Could you go again?”

  “Probably not,” the jailer laughed. “But we’ve got other men.”

  Madeline swallowed down with difficulty, and let her fingers curl into talons around the metal frame of the bed.

  *

  THERE WERE SIX guards in the lock-up, and Madeline got to know all of them better – all except for one, a sad-faced older guy who looked like a school teacher and turned out to be the only actual ex-cop in the Brewery District station.

  Apart from the Safety troopers corralled into working as jailers, the station had three more crew. Also male, two of the men worked alternate days bringing their food from the on-site kitchen. It wasn’t anything to brag about. Madeline could barely chew anyway, but feared her hard-won fighting strength would desert her without even basic protein requirements, and so she forced herself to eat the watery stews, using her fingers as the lack of cutlery required.

  Each time the jail’s lone security door opened, she fought off the urge to bolt upright and find a corner to protect herself. But the startled rabbit routine didn’t play well, and wouldn’t help her much anyway. Sometimes, the visits weren’t conjugal. Just for shits and giggles they also hauled out individual men into the bare concrete space at the end of the six pairs of cells, beating the crap out of the unlucky dissident more for the looks on the other rebels’ faces, taunting Plume that they’d start hanging her men if she didn’t give them more names. When Greerson was there, he always made a point of demanding answers – questions all around a theme of giving up the names of any Lefthanders still at large in the sanctuary zone, or the contact with the Washington’s surviving Congress – but McGovern would carry out the same routine just out of enthusiasm for the job. For all Plume knew, their treatment was fully sanctioned. They sure wanted their fucking answers, anyway. And so far Madeline – and all of her men – had refused to give up a single one.

  And so it was going to turn really nasty.

  Madeline anticipated it, taking a tense breath and slowly looking across as the heavy steel security door cranked open. And she gently released her breath when it was just one of the orderlies bringing the porridge with kidney beans in it they called breakfast.

  But Plume’s breath hesitated as she saw the man.

  They called Stuyvesant “the Saint” because he signed all his coded letters St.

  And his was one of the names Madeline and the other Lefthanders hadn’t revealed.

  “Breakfast,” the tall man croaked.

  Stuyvesant looked perennially like a man who’d just woken up, forced into his clothes which instantly hung like pajamas on his lanky, sandy-headed frame. A life outdoors left his expression pinched into a look of uncertain scrutiny, his skin chapped pink from the elements and riddled with stubble the color of plants that only grew in the dark.

  The Saint pushed the trolley, and she and the other men stood cautiously, trying to feign just receiving breakfast even though they all swapped far too many startled looks for Madeline’s liking. She hissed – literally hissed, just a noise among the trolley’s clattering – and the men across from her stilled themselves, Loring and his best friend Kovac faking disinterest all of a sudden, Johnstone clanging his metal dish noisily against his bars.

  “What’s the chance of some bacon?”

  The Saint sniffed, looking down quickly at the trolley as if he were just one of the regular servers. Madeline watched the act and commended him for it, fingers stroking her chin as she moved closer to th
e bars. Stuyvesant started handing laden dishes into the other cells while taking back empties in their place.

  “Where’s the other guy?” Plume asked him conversationally. “It’s his day. Guy with a mole on his face?”

  “David had an accident,” the Saint said, focused on his work. “They asked me to step in.”

  “Easy day’s work for you,” Plume replied.

  “Yeah,” he said. It was his turn to serve her, and though she’d forgotten to hand over her empty plate, Madeline took the offered dish, noting hers was the only one covered with a metal lid. “Lucky break for me,” the man said. “I only just transferred to the kitchens, too.”

  Now Stuyvesant winked at her.

  “Put my back out working Construction, you know?”

  He motioned at the meal he’d delivered.

  “Enjoy.”

  Stuyvesant nodded, back in character, and hauled the trolley behind him as he left the room.

  *

  MADELINE ATE THE soggy note, but not before allowing herself a moment of hope reading the message it carried.

  You are not alone.

  It was a lovely sentiment, but radically short on the details she wanted. Elation lasted all of three seconds before she switched gears and started trying to sort through possibilities, addressing each of her short-lived fantasies in turn with brutal rationalism.

  As her pale forehead furrowed, Madeline shot a warning glower at the other men in the cells. Loring checked in on Patrick and DeVille, burrowed forever now under their blankets trying to hide from the reality of their dire predicament, and Loring’s pal Kovac gave Plume a cheery thumbs up to indicate both the broken, blanketed men didn’t have a clue.

  If Stuyvesant somehow survived St Mary’s, that took the list of names Madeline dared not supply to the Administration to a grand total of five. The Saint also knew the people who’d known about the Lefthanders’ cause all along and declined to commit, trusting they could negotiate with the paramilitaries if and when hers and August Rhymes’ vision came to pass. Maybe some of them were on board now, though that seemed doubtful if they hadn’t signed up when the Uprising was at full strength.

  Madeline pushed thoughts of the old dead Air Force colonel from her mind. How many of the surviving Lefthanders still believed she and the ornery old bastard were lovers? Or that Plume, a former Navy lieutenant, only rose within the City due to her more feminine influence? That was speculation that had to be buried, along with much of the recent past.

  Further thoughts aborted as the security door opened noisily.

  At first, there was no one.

  She had the rapid thought, Could their plan to free us be happening so soon?

  And then cruel reality swung back in as Arthur McGovern walked in wearing a smug grin, a police baton in one hand and two of the other troopers behind him.

  *

  DAYLIGHT DIDN’T REACH the holding cells. At best, it shone a concrete-colored light down through the grimy glass panes running along the top of the wall above the cages. The bars and security mesh weren’t needed to tell Madeline Plume her prospects of escape had dwindled to low betting odds, as her father would’ve said. Stuyvesant hadn’t been seen since.

  Day ten in captivity, and the dried blood still crusted her ruined ears. Day ten, and she still wore little more than a surgical gown and the blanket they threw in to ward against the freezing concrete floor. Day ten, and she was ready for more of the same.

  The heavy door at the end of the room cranked open. Barely awake, the dread settled back in like it was all she could rely on. McGovern and Denny Greerson emerged through the doorway like ghosts from the world beyond the old DEA bunker.

  Two guards followed carrying rifles, loitering at the back of the room and potentially no real use if things did go seriously wrong. Although she couldn’t enact most of the possibilities, Madeline rapidly assessed almost all of them as Greerson stood back to let McGovern work the key to her cell.

  “Good morning, Miss Plume,” the Safety Chief said with a pallid smirk.

  McGovern chuckled at Greerson’s ever polite tone, sniffling to himself as he opened the door to the cell and the Chief stepped through with McGovern close behind. The jailor then relocked the door while Denny paused to study her, unaware he was seeing only the portrait of a woman awaiting the slightest chance to make her break.

  She backed against the wall out of habit, for all the good it did her.

  “I’ll suck your dicks again,” she said. It was hard to speak with her own words coming back as if underwater still. She forced herself to meet Greerson’s leveled gaze. McGovern worked the Velcro on his ballistic vest, still chuckling aloud.

  “There wouldn’t be the need for that if you told us what we want,” Greerson said. “And time’s running out.”

  He didn’t move a hand otherwise, just stood there, examining her like a rat in a lab.

  “There’s nothing to tell you,” Plume answered quietly. “I’ve told you that.”

  Greerson hummed and ran a thumb across his stubbled jaw, not a dissimilar complexion to the Saint.

  “You want me to start hanging your men?” the Chief asked in a deliberate soft voice.

  Madeline’s eyes flicked across to the tortured Lefthanders watching her, her true believers, her soldiers. She caught Loring’s anguished look and narrowed her gaze, imbuing it with steel as she gently shook her head at him, then turned back at once to meet Denny Greerson’s grin.

  “I’ve told you there’s no one else.”

  Yesterday, she’d told the Chief to go fuck himself. Those words came back to haunt her, and now it all felt like a fait accompli anyway – a masquerade to condone her captors’ worst offenses. Avoiding falling pregnant was just another dirty post-it note on her daily to-do list.

  McGovern played his role straight from central casting. With Greerson not moving a finger, the jailor stepped in and clutched Madeline by the face, holding her there despite her locked-in eye contact with his boss. McGovern squeezed hard and Plume’s eyes watered. Greerson made a noise and she was released, and Madeline refused to collapse like they all wished, her included, standing instead on shaking legs mustering the best show of defiance she could manage as Greerson sighed and punched her in the solar plexus like even he was sick of it.

  But Madeline arched back cat-like, and the blow barely landed. In an instant, she danced back and then leapt forward, delivering a palm strike to Greerson’s face that catapulted him backwards against the bars. The watching men cheered as one, some leaping to their feet in time to see McGovern drive the Taser into what little meat remained above her thigh.

  Madeline dropped to the ground in a spasm and barely registered the new concussion as her skull struck the edge of the metal bed.

  *

  BY THE NEXT day, Madeline and her troops had given up worrying whether their jailors had the placed bugged, which seemed unlikely, as the survivors’ whispered talk got out of hand and the guards forgot to feed them for half a day. Then the guy with the mole on his face whose named Madeline would never know appeared trundling the dinner cart one-handed because his arm was in a sling.

  “What happened?” she called out to him on impulse.

  The mole man just ignored her, already wearing a bitter look, and when Loring and Anwar repeated the question, pitching their tones for sincerity, the server gave an embarrassed grunt and told them he’d fallen over coming back from some local hooch joint. If Stuyvesant had bushwhacked him, he either didn’t know or wouldn’t admit it to them.

  “How much longer are they holding us?” Madeline asked.

  The server looked taken aback. Madeline held up her empty hands.

  “Hey, none of us are under any illusions we’re getting free,” she told him with a bleak laugh. “More likely, it’s execution. We just wanna know. What can you tell us?”

  Answering the first question didn’t mean they had rapport. The longer Madeline spoke, the angrier the server appeared – and too late,
she realized it was that she was speaking that inflamed the de facto lunch monitor so much.

  “They’re gonna execute you alright,” the ugly little man said in a snide, bullying voice. “And everyone knows about your friends on the USS Washington now. They’re not coming to the rescue either.”

  Plume just watched, then snickered, adding a deliberate eye roll.

  “You lost that race, lady,” the server now practically yelled at her. “A City Council mission took off out of here two days ago to go meet them.”

  Madeline was glad for the extra information, but offered the mole man a chagrined grin because he seemed to expect it, hoping it might goad him into saying more. He wasn’t keen on questions otherwise. But his own raised voice seemed to scare him, and the nameless man glanced back towards the steel security door like he knew he had no business doing anything except delivering the meals on his trolley.

  Far-off noises at first sounded like an electrical malfunction, or like firecrackers – or any number of other doppelgangers for gunfire that first occurred to Madeline as she strained her ears. The food server caught her look and frowned. A few of the men muttered, Johnstone hissing for shoosh. There were other noises filling the gaps when the gunshots ceased. Indistinct and uncertain.

  “Is that. . . ?” the server asked.

  “Yes,” Madeline nodded. “That’s people screaming.”

  The server flicked his gaze back at the door.

  “It’s coming from the City Council meeting.”

  Before the man could say anything else, gunfire sounded shockingly loud just outside the door to the cells, metallic and echoing and incredibly close.

  A single gunshot followed right after.

  The Perspex window pane in the door at the end of the chamber exploded in a red mess. Just beyond reach outside of Madeline’s cell, the man with the food cart started shrieking like a car alarm.

  *