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

by Hately, Warren

  THE METAL DOOR cranked ajar and a man with a Filipino complexion stormed inside wearing a red headband and toting an MP5, two more of them on straps across his back. Following him was one of the Lefthanders’ farm boy recruits, Milligan, who favored an M16 and looked almost ready to empty his weapon on the prisoners in the cells.

  Madeline flinched, but that was nothing like the almost theatrical way the mole man dropped his shit clattering to the floor and immediately knelt among it, hands raised, smug-to-terrified in zero-point-three seconds flat.

  “Please! I didn’t do anything!” he yelled. “I just feed them!”

  “It’s true,” Madeline said with the brisk tone of command.

  Milligan looked at her and nodded, something of his blood lust in abeyance, and while the Filipino advanced pointing his gun at the server now groveling on the floor, his offsider looked back at the door and bit his lip. The Filipino barked for the man on the ground to lie down, and the man did, ignoring the piss-colored stew everywhere.

  “Stay there!” the gunman shouted. “On the ground!”

  “He’s actually gonna be in the way,” Madeline said.

  She mustered a calmness she didn’t feel, her men’s eyes on her. And she took a moment to nod to them, reassurance without a smile. Madeline wasn’t their mother, and sometimes it felt like she had to fight for them not to drag her into it.

  Stuyvesant then stalked in through the open jail room door, goose stepping over a helmeted corpse outside while fussing with the keys he’d retrieved.

  “Don’t worry about him,” Milligan said and gestured at the dead guard. “Headshot.”

  “That’s enough killing for tonight,” Madeline said.

  Stuyvesant smirked, something European in his bland American accent.

  “You might want to tell that to them?”

  He motioned outside as he kept smiling, still fiddling with the keys, a look of benevolence mixed with the raised eyebrow to suggest maybe a woman still on the wrong side of the jail cell door should keep her objections to a minimum. There was certainly a case for that. Madeline watched, almost licking her lips as the Saint sorted through to find a cell door key. He also motioned to the unknown Filipino gunman and then at their server still slithering about on the ground like he had a bad case of worms.

  “She’s right about him, though,” Stuyvesant said. “Get him out of here.”

  The other gunman nodded and stowed his weapon, dragging the prostate man through the rest of the mess and pushing him to one side of the open area before the security door. The Saint stepped into that gap, checking his footing with bemusement, and not at all like a man committing armed insurrection and a jailbreak in the one fell move.

  “I didn’t think you were coming back,” Madeline half-whispered.

  Stuyvesant wriggled his eyebrows instead.

  “Oh ye of little faith.”

  And he inserted the key into the lock.

  Within seconds, the other men were free too. The Filipino, called Emilio, handed two guns over to Loring and Kovac, and Johnstone and Hussein took weapons from Milligan. The last in their cells, Bendigo and Anwar looked out at Madeline imploringly.

  “Patrick, come on.”

  The pair tried jostling the crouched man, still covered in his blanket. The last remaining member of the troupe – nicknamed Benatar by someone else a long time ago – escorted the other madman out, DeVille, who wore his blanket like a shawl. Madeline hadn’t seen the scrawny man’s face in days, and harsh lines cut gray with malnutrition through his beard. His vacant dark eyes didn’t see anything as he allowed himself to be led to freedom.

  Madeline fixed her gaze back on the blanket-humped figure of Patrick and the two good soldiers still trying to help him.

  “Soldier, on your fucking feet,” she growled.

  The others outside the cells already waited, and there was a palpable sense of not wanting to wait permeating the room. The Saint shot Madeline a raised eyebrow and shrugged, in the same motion producing a 9mm Colt he handed over, saved just for her. Madeline saluted him and took it, and cast one rueful look at the pathetic figure clinging to the struts of his cot.

  “Leave him.”

  With that, Madeline stepped fully from her cell and joined Stuyvesant. The armed Lefthanders positioned themselves around the open security door ready to defend them, while Madeline asked the Saint for his plan.

  “It’s pretty simple,” he said. “We have two vehicles outside.”

  “How many men down?”

  Stuyvesant only raised again that infuriating eyebrow.

  “It’s just us, Miss Plume,” he said with a dry laugh. “There’s not many of us to go around.”

  “And men down . . . for the Administration?”

  Again came the dry laugh.

  “I wouldn’t be concerning yourself with them.”

  “Well, I am,” she snapped. Conscious everyone else was hanging on her words, Madeline gave an anxious look towards the door before then taking the time to eyeball everyone else in the room. “If we’re all that’s left, we can’t risk putting those with sympathies off-side. We’re getting out of here . . . but no one shoots to kill without my command, got it?”

  “Lieutenant. . . .”

  Madeline accepted the challenge from the Saint. He’d liberated them from captivity, and proven true to their creed when he might’ve evaded detection altogether. Madeline owed him that respect, provided he wasn’t using that platform to make a move against her. They might call her Lieutenant, due her time in the Navy, but few were under any misapprehension that it was Madeline Plume truly running the show at St Mary’s. Poor dead August Rhymes was more like a figurehead, a head of State, rather than the engine room of their resistance.

  Stuyvesant slowly sorted through his expressions like shuffling through a deck of cards, trying to get the magic trick right, and not quite sure which smile to use. He settled on a weird, faltering look of embarrassment that he clearly didn’t feel as he scratched his head, looked around at the others, and winced with mock sympathy.

  “It’s a little late for that.”

  “What do you mean?” she demanded.

  “It’s too long to explain –”

  “Tell me.”

  “We launched a co-ordinated . . . attack . . . to produce the distraction to free you.”

  “An attack?” Madeline replied. “If there’s three of you here, there’s not enough of us left to even. . . .”

  She stopped speaking as she sensed the Saint’s amusement at his own punchline.

  “What did you do?”

  “Oh, we created a distraction,” the other man said. “One they might not recover from.”

  He nodded at her, and the others still listening.

  “It’ll be a moot point if we don’t get going,” he said. He offered a mock bow towards the exit for her benefit. “They call me the Saint, but maybe you should go first, milady?” Then he added, “Are you feeling bullet-proof? You don’t want anyone hurt, after all. . . .”

  Madeline motioned to the Kevlar vest Stuyvesant wore.

  “Are you afraid of dying or something?”

  She winked at him with a confidence she didn’t feel, and as far as pissing contests went, there was no way anyone else was allowed out that door first now other than her.

  And so she went.

  *

  MADELINE WAS FIRST through the door, and right into the sight of one of her rapists sprawled dead with his brains exploded around the rim of his helmet, and then the ex-cop machine-gunned laying at the bottom of the adjacent stairwell. Taking in the gory spectacle, Madeline let the Saint stride past her to take the lead, and she returned her gaze warily to the dead man with the school teacher’s moustache, bullets through his legs and chest leaving him ripe for reincarnation as one of the Feral, as she’d once thought to call the Furies.

  Emilio and Manning led the other men from the cells, and as a group they moved up the stairs and out through double doors wit
hin the old DEA office more like an old-world police station. Another two corpses lay sprawled and exsanguinated on the corridor’s blue carpet, more of Madeline’s faceless abusers, and Loring took a moment to stave in the two dead men’s skulls. Madeline noted the radio handset at the edge of the crime scene. The surviving Lefthanders were barefoot and wearing not much better than Madeline’s hospital gown, but they also wore a bloody determination that almost frightened her.

  “Keep it together,” she said quietly – almost like she was speaking to herself.

  They started to jog down the corridor after Stuyvesant leading the rest.

  “Remember what I said before,” Madeline called to her team. “We’re not adding any more bodies to this mission than we have to, alright?”

  Men like Loring, Kovac and Johnstone nodded. They’d spent time in captivity together and had stayed staunch throughout. They almost gave her hope the mission could start again.

  Maybe if they survived the night. . . .

  *

  THE LANKY MAN led them out into an open-plan office, all the tables and desks part of daily life in the City’s prison. Stuyvesant swiveled about while the Filipino and his blonde partner moved past a security counter to triangulate at the front door. The other four Lefthanders carrying firearms proceeded after them, the remainder hanging back. Private Loring peeled off the group to shadow Madeline, a self-appointed personal guard.

  “Trucks still in the street,” Milligan called back from one side of the front door.

  “Alright,” the Saint said loud enough for everyone to hear. “Go.”

  Emilio and Milligan held the doors open. Kovac was the first outside, though he had no clue about the plan, and everyone else hung back long enough for the Saint to unsling his shotgun and stalk out like a man trying to remember where he parked his car. But he strode unerringly across the empty street to where two vehicles stood with their engines running. The first was a nondescript black van, the second a battered and rust-stained old carpenter’s truck.

  “Out here,” Stuyvesant said.

  He hefted the Remington 700 and checked the night scope attached to it, but the street was relatively quiet. The ruckus from the town hall was inaudible now, though maybe that was just the pulse hammering in Madeline’s ears as she kept after them despite the soreness in her womb and limbs. She caught her naked foot on something protruding in the street and growled low in her throat, refusing to make any other noise as she paused in the middle of the street in her ridiculous gown, the dingy prison blanket wrapped around her still, the Colt by her side, and motioned the remaining men out towards the two vehicles to avoid anyone wasting time.

  But it couldn’t be helped.

  It was well after sunset already, and the sodium headlights swinging in on them amid the roar of a malfunctioning ethanol engine were bright enough to blind almost anyone. It was natural to shield her eyes, even if that didn’t help, but that also didn’t stop Plume instinctively moving into cover behind the second truck as she prayed for her sight to return.

  “Don’t move!”

  “Stop!”

  “Freeze!”

  “Hold it right there!”

  The yells falling atop each other came from competing throats as several of the Lefthanders pointed their weapons at the new arrivals, and the newcomers hesitated, half out of their Humvee, but not entirely committed to a close-quarters firefight. Blinking through sunspots, Madeline saw the vague outline of one of the three City troopers holding a pistol and recognized her nemesis Arthur McGovern at once.

  All her fine talk of no further bloodshed abandoned her as Madeline saw red, and crouched beside her, Loring looked astonished and yet not entirely surprised at the low terrier’s growl coming from their leader’s throat.

  Madeline marched out of cover lifting the gun from her side. Loring shadowed her.

  Two of the armed men were exposed and didn’t see her coming despite the lack of effort Madeline made in disguising her approach. McGovern looked askance and noticed her, expression widening as Plume fired and the trooper just behind him took a bullet in the neck.

  The single shot triggered her men, and the trooper with the misfortune to be in the Humvee’s driver’s seat came half out of the armored cab with his MP5 raised and took gunfire from three different directions instead. Bullets whisked past Madeline as they ricocheted, and McGovern ducked down, still completely exposed as Madeline closed the final distance to hold the Colt aimed at his head.

  The firefight ended as soon as it’d begun, and several of her men stood standing watching her, while the Saint had the pragmatism to finish ushering the others towards the van. He slid its side door open as Loring got the gist of what his boss wanted, stowing his gun to drag the prison jailor out into the crucifixion of bright headlights bathing the front of the DEA building. The cafes along its ground floor were boarded up, vulnerable long broad windows smashed in long ago, the area otherwise deserted despite Curfew not yet in effect. A few lonely gunshots rang out across the stilled City. Any more were drowned out by McGovern’s growing sniffles as he crawled around on his knees trying to work out which way to beg.

  Then he found Madeline’s bare feet and looked up.

  She kept the gun trained on his forehead. Wherever their jailor had been off-shift, it hadn’t extended to the usual flak jacket and combat boots. He wore a pair of ordinary leather shoes, a military shirt thrown over his sleepwear like an afterthought.

  “They called you?” Madeline asked him.

  McGovern nodded.

  “I live nearby . . . heard the gunfire, and. . . .”

  Madeline pistol-whipped him then, but just because she could.

  McGovern felt in a pile, and she motioned with her pistol. Anwar, Hussein and Kovac grabbed the man and twisted his arms behind his back to take McGovern with them.

  Madeline found Stuyvesant calmly waiting for her attention from the open door of the lead vehicle.

  “Stay on my tail,” he said.

  Miss Plume nodded curtly, twisting back towards the second truck as the men bundled McGovern in after them, and Private Loring offered down his hand to help her up on the back.

  The two vehicles drove slowly out onto the side street and turned away from The Mile as fresh sounds of gunfire rang out across the City behind them.

  Winter is coming

  By Delroy Earle and Odo Geirhart

  CITIZENS are on notice to start preparing for cold weather as City programs falter, raising the specter of residents left to fend for themselves as winter approaches.

  Reports from The Mile this week said there was a run on warm clothing, heating appliances, and dried foods, leaving some traders with bare shelves.

  Traders Alliance spokeswoman Octavia, no last name given, said stallholders were operating in a dwindling market.

  “We remain concerned the City is diverting resources from Forager patrols to its Enclave project,” she said.

  “We would appreciate full disclosure, and a statement from the Council confirming that rations allocations will continue during winter.”

  Trader DV8R said some stallholders would consider shutting down when the winter snow came.

  Another trader who declined to be identified was critical of Citizens who “don’t understand that the world has ended”.

  The woman said Citizens had to temper unrealistic expectations about commodity goods.

  Pre-Fall items like canned food and batteries were no longer reliable, if available at all.

  “Newbies are the worst,” she said. “Newbies got sold on a pipedream and it’s like they think the Council rolled things back 10 years. Newsflash: they didn’t.”

  The Alliance’s Ms Octavia said newcomers had to embrace the spirit of private enterprise.

  “Many Citizens who wish to see the City reach its potential are also identifying shortcomings in the market and adopting innovative practices as a result,” she said.

  “We see that in re-emerging craft industries suc
h as darning, knitting and weaving.

  “But again, if Foragers are focused on the wrong priorities, the raw material for these enterprises are not available without significant risk.”

  Traders said scroungers were increasingly headed outside the sanctuary zone looking for supplies.

  Safety Chief Denny Greerson said gate protocols were changed to allow those efforts.

  Another trader, utensil merchant Sangupta Nadcharri, said an increase in unsupervised minors was also eating into stallholders’ trade.

  “Some of these are new orphans,” he said. “But the growing number of ferals is something the troopers don’t want to address.”

  Chief Greerson declined to comment.

  He said he was unaware of reports of vigilante action against a group of men allegedly threatening traders on The Mile.

  Traders said the vigilante wore a “gray hood” and left two alleged thugs requiring medical treatment.

  Chapter 8

  THE HAND MOVING across Dkembe’s back that woke him recoiled at once at the look it met as the dark-skinned man sat up, not in any hurry, but turning too so Gonzales beside him shuffled away crab-like. Erak’s lank greasy hair fell around his narrow skull like something serrated, the weird gray-black color glinting like tin foil under the sunlight coming in through their shared window.

  Dkembe consolidated his position on the double mattress, turning so the sun didn’t hit him and watching without expression as Gonzales absorbed his rejection and dropped his eyes to the soiled bedding. He had his own blanket around him. His nakedness turned Dkembe’s blunt regard into a minor scowl.

  “Put some clothes on, man,” he muttered.

  His accent thickened in the other man’s company, something of the street sneaking its way back in. Lately, he’d focused on his diction, spending so much time in Tom’s company and not wanting to do anything more to make the older man think he was just another slack-jawed nigga from the hood.

  “It’s still early,” Erak said quietly. He wouldn’t meet Dkembe’s eye.

  “It’s daytime,” Dkembe told him.