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

by Hately, Warren

  “I’ll protect you too,” he said. “I mean it. You can trust me.”

  Dkembe nodded soothingly. He didn’t regret the lover’s soft touch he offered to his friend’s arm as they drew apart.

  “We’re in this together,” he said.

  Erak dropped his eyes and snuffled.

  “Nice not to be alone,” Dkembe said and meant it.

  But they were all lies. The only good advice his father ever gave him came at a terrible cost, but Dkembe’d followed it ever since. When the Risen broke into their apartment, his father was too obese to escape with the rest of them. A twenty-one-year-old Dkembe looked back at the two deranged creatures riding his father to the floor and Dkembe’s father yelled, “Run!”

  And he’d run every time since.

  *

  THE STREETS OUTSIDE were thick with people hurrying to jobs or hitting the traders early. Everywhere Dkembe went, people were huddled in twos and threes, and it was almost possible to believe the most recent edition of the Columbus Herald was a collector’s item, people poring over the news reports with their exclusive details about the secret radio contact with a surviving US warship, though people had stopped calling the city Columbus in recent times and Dkembe wondered if the two-sheet newspaper would ever get renamed the Sanctuary Herald instead.

  His route took him past the corner block where the self-appointed Sisters of Mercy had erected a field hospital. Most Citizens avoided the area, and for good reason. A quick walk past the scaffolded site reinforcing several big Army tents and tarpaulins salvaged from an old evacuation center carrying the weight of last winter still in its mildewed folds. The screaming from inside followed the Sisters’ latest amputation – a common solution to so many medical problems, it seemed, and as Dkembe hurried past, a tearful-looking young woman with blood up to her elbows stepped out into the muddy road and poured a bucket of the stuff into a 44-gallon drum while several children of the street eyed the deposit with covetous gleams. One short glance into the subdued bedlam of the half-empty field hospital was enough for him. At least one of the cots held corpses yet to be removed, surgically killed with a cattle gun at the chief matron’s direction.

  Dkembe prayed he’d never need the Sisters’ help. That thought only triggered more about the idea of leaving the sanctuary zone for the city outskirts, part of the half-cooked plan Tom mentioned at Karla and Ionia’s behest. Dkembe’s resolve against any such proposal only deepened.

  The entrance to Brown Town remained a choke point, thanks to the staggered school and ex-prison buses parked there in the early days of the settlement, and since then not only left to rot, but taken over by traders hawking their services and wares to the steady trickle of Citizens moving in and out the small enclave of a half-dozen eight- and ten-floor tenements. Dkembe noted fewer troopers than on past visits, though a pair of tough-looking guards just inside the market stretching between the buses and the first forecourts had a job on their hands. A gruff-looking man with a motorcycle vest over his sailor’s sweater stood between them. The troopers inspected the man’s confiscated revolver, intent on the lecture, and not watching another two men in matching leather vests hanging back at the awning of a stall repairing clothes keeping an eye on their friend.

  Even the whiff of potential conflict sent him hurrying through the plaza. A grizzled old woman in a lighthouse keeper’s yellow raincoat flashed a gnarled forearm covered in wristwatches, and then she opened her coat to him as if a glimpse of her wizened chest might be the sweetener. Dkembe veered so hard away that he almost side-swiped the tent strut of another booth where the trader jumped up in alarm to protect his display of bifocal glasses and cigarette lighters. Dkembe apologized with a tip of the cap he wore, swore under his breath, and headed into the courtyard of the second big apartment block.

  There was nothing like public open space in the inhabited zone, and the sweeping flight of steps and the brick plinths around it were overcome by a wickerwork of tents, lean-to structures and improvised stalls, though few were manned by traders. Whole families occupied several, with young, black-eyed children sitting out in front inappropriately dressed for the weather even if the sun had burnt its way through the sodden cloud cover nearer to the middle of the day. A middle-aged woman with a Middle Eastern look bawled out at him in a rich New Jersey accent, at which the children rattled begging cups. But Dkembe had nothing to give. He thought guiltily a moment about the chocolate which still tasted as a memory in the back of his mouth, but then angrier rebukes at the beggars stormed into his mind and Dkembe navigated the path up the confined stairs and into the open tenement foyer instead.

  The lobby had surrendered to the elements some time back. Cardboard nests lined the walls beneath a series of covered noticeboards. Several old men played pinochle with what looked like tarot cards, betting with scraps of food while sipping some kind of degenerate alcohol from old fruit tins, or maybe it was the old spoiled contents itself. Dkembe didn’t care. He brushed off a dirty-faced woman with a toddler strapped to her and moved up the internal stairs.

  Suffice to say, the elevators had crapped out some time ago. His friend was on the second floor, the carpeted old corridors thankfully free of unwanted guests, but when Dkembe knocked, the door was opened by a different black man who offered a ready smile, comfortable in his powerful build to protect him against any potential threats. He had a thin scar running across the bridge of his noise, almost like it was deliberate, and freshly-plaited corn rows receded from his bullish brow.

  “Uh, I’m looking for Jay?”

  The other guy didn’t give any reaction at all.

  “Uh huh,” he said like an imitation of Tom Vanicek. “Who are you?”

  “Dkembe,” Dkembe said. “I’m Dkembe. We’re friends.”

  “Yeah, OK,” the man said. “Come in.”

  Dkembe ducked his head as if he might hit it on the doorframe, though that wasn’t much of a risk. The other man had two inches on him, as well as the imposing physique. It didn’t help that he was shirtless. His ebon skin glistened thanks to his incomplete workout, though the stranger stepped over the dumbbells on the carpeted floor and slipped on a v-neck pullover rather than continue. The living room of the two-bedroom apartment had a row of low shelves crammed with salvaged books, a small Buddhist-style shrine, a closed guitar case, two big indoor ferns and a sideboard with a mirror pulled out from the wall at an awkward angle, but focused where the stranger sat down upon a Tibetan rug so that he could admire himself.

  “I’m Vegas,” the man said. “Jay’s at the store.”

  Dkembe was quick enough to understand that was a metaphor. He peered around as if x-ray vision might suddenly sprout to reveal OK Jay in the bathroom stall.

  “Dkembe?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Have a seat, man,” Vegas said. “Don’t be making me crane my head up at your lanky ass. Sit down. You want some tea or something?”

  “No, it’s –”

  “Already got some here.”

  Vegas motioned to an ornate silver pot resting on an upturned wooden crate covered in a tasteful cloth that would normally suggest a woman’s touch. Dkembe guessed it was house-proud Vegas rather than anyone else, though he was a good-looking man – enough to trigger Dkembe’s paper-thin inferiority complex, anyway – and if he was Jay’s flatmate, there would be a stream of impressionable young women through there soon if not previously.

  Dkembe settled to the rug. Vegas poured into a tiny cup and passed the green tea to him lukewarm. He retrieved his own identical cup and took a short hit.

  “So you two live together?” Dkembe asked.

  “Surely do,” the other man agreed. “What you after my boy Jay for?”

  “He still working?”

  “Yeah, man,” Vegas said and offered a handsome white smile. “Don’t be askin’ him for any cold cuts though, alright? Those are some freaky-ass motherfuckers he’s with.”

  “I’m not after anything free,” Dkembe said like he felt
he had to explain himself. “Jay and me worked together in Construction before he moved in here, and I . . . kinda lost contact. This place, Brown Town, it’s a real world in itself, huh?”

  “More and more every day, brother.”

  Vegas said it like he wasn’t happy about it. Dkembe must’ve crinkled his brow or something because the other man shrugged and sat up even straighter.

  “People around here getting anxious,” he said. “You heard of the Dominators?”

  “No.”

  “You’ll see ‘em around,” Vegas said. “White boys mostly, a few Arabs, wearin’ club leathers, you dig?”

  “‘Club leathers’?”

  “Motorcycle jackets.”

  “Oh,” Dkembe said. “I saw a couple gettin’ rousted by the troopers on the way in.”

  “And troopers got to be careful these days,” Vegas said ominously – almost like he was the threat. “They’re gettin’ thinner and thinner on the ground. Dominators have moved in like this is Gangs of New York or somethin’.”

  “They moved in?”

  “Yeah,” Vegas said. He stood up. Dkembe joined him. “People say they was a survivor group on the outside. They only look like bikers. A few ex-military. Made things pretty bad for people out there in the wild, and then they came to the City instead – in with the rest of us.”

  “They were bandits?”

  “Bandits?” Vegas had a rich laugh, mostly at Dkembe’s expense. “That what you call ‘em? Funny. That’s some medieval shit. They’re bad guys, through and through. I know that much. And the City just let ‘em move into here and now . . . man, it’s like we got lice.”

  Vegas shook his head, unhappy at his own word choice.

  “Vermin, man,” he said. “Rats. I dunno, wolves?”

  “There’s wild dogs outside the sanctuary zone,” Dkembe said.

  “Yeah, huntin’ in packs,” Vegas replied. “And now they’re here.”

  They fell silent as if by agreement. Vegas took a big introspective draw of breath and tried to summon his earlier charm.

  “I’m not grumblin’ at you, brother,” he said. “You on your own? What’s your situation?”

  “No, I have . . . people,” Dkembe said. “Workin’ with some good folks. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Workin’ with our people though?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Vegas only smiled a moment. He drew alongside Dkembe in a way that felt unsettling, though he didn’t do anything more menacing than shuck back his black sleeve to reveal a blacker arm he placed alongside Dkembe’s own to draw his attention to their skin.

  “You know what I’m sayin’?”

  “No,” Dkembe said, addled by the remark. “I’m with good people. All different colors.”

  “You’re with other negroes like you?”

  Vegas said the word in full black action movie mode, turning up his lip in a snarling grin more like an unfortunate leer. And Dkembe did a quick shuffle of the index cards in his head and couldn’t explain his chagrin at proving the other man’s skepticism right. Despite anything else, he was the only black man on Tom’s team.

  Uncle Tom, he thought to himself and grew wistfully ashamed. Vegas saw it and nodded coolly, moving across the living room to the small shrine. He knelt and fumbled out matches to light a short candle.

  “You heard of the Brotherhood, Dkembe?”

  “Yeah,” the slightly younger man replied.

  “They’re in a real mess right now,” Vegas said.

  “Yeah,” Dkembe said again. “They killed a bunch of troopers –”

  “Yeah,” Vegas said. “They were my people.”

  Dkembe blinked in surprise and Vegas stood again wearing a low-key smile.

  “For a while, at least,” he said.

  His eyes drew Dkembe’s attention to a photograph on the shrine. Another black man whose identity he didn’t know.

  “And you know Akira?” Vegas asked.

  “No.”

  “The Ancestrals, they got this sign?”

  Vegas held out his hand to show the sigil like a broken-armed cross tattooed near his thumb.

  “Yeah, OK,” Dkembe said even though in truth he didn’t know much about them either.

  “Akira turned me on to a way of thinking,” Vegas said. “Slaves helped build this country. Not every black man in America’s descended from slaves, but the ones who are, they aren’t just the children of slaves, my brother. They’re descendants of the slaves who survived. Do you get me?”

  Vegas’ voice turned low and fervent.

  “Every generation, if you think on it,” he said. “Each child of a survivor, producing another survivor. You got some Darwinian shit goin’ on there, brother.”

  Vegas motioned suddenly as if something had just occurred to him, though it felt like a practiced speech.

  “Who were the greatest sporting stars, back in the day?”

  Dkembe puzzled where the other man was taking his argument, and shrugged to play along without conceding anything.

  “You want me to say black people.”

  “Well it’s obvious, yeah?”

  “There were lots of great athletes of every color.”

  “You remember the NBA?”

  “Man,” Dkembe sighed. “Yeah, I loved the NBA, man.”

  “All the best players were black, just say it,” Vegas said and grinned. “It’s like some guilty secret we’re meant to deny so the white people don’t get their knickers twisted.”

  “There was that ten-foot Chinese guy –”

  “Oh man, that guy was a freak,” Vegas said. “Chinese motherfuckers cloned him. Anyway, that’s not my point.”

  “You’re saying because black people are good at sports, we should . . . what?”

  “It’s not a popular opinion,” Vegas warned him.

  “What?”

  “We’re the fuckin’ master race, brother.”

  “You . . . serious right now?”

  “Damned straight,” Vegas said. He grinned at his own boldness. “What are sports, anyway, Dkembe? Tell me that.”

  “What?”

  “What are sports?”

  “They’re just games,” Dkembe answered. “They’re not life.”

  But Vegas shook his head. His voice dropped low and sincere once more.

  “Games, brother, were just designed by warriors to prepare for far deadlier times. Ain’t that what we’re in now, deadlier times? I’d say that. Wouldn’t you?”

  OK Jay saved Dkembe from a reply, strolling in through the door wearing a bright orange puffer jacket that matched his broadening grin.

  *

  HIS FRIEND JAY shot Dkembe an apologetic look, taking the least time possible to extract him from an ever-deepening conversation with the enigmatic Vegas. Clearly, the other man had strong views on issues of race – especially as it applied, post-apocalypse – and didn’t often pass up the chance to preach. But it took more than skin color to bind people together in this world, or so Dkembe believed.

  “Enough with your Brotherhood bullshit, brother,” OK Jay said with a tired smile. “We goin’. Come on, ‘Kembe, been an age since I seen you.”

  “A couple of weeks.”

  “Like I said. . . .”

  Vegas took his dismissal well, if he took it at all. He shadowed the pair to the doorway.

  “That’s nothin’ to do with the Brotherhood, yeah,” he said. “Dkembe, it was good talking with you, brother. You going to Council tonight?”

  “Maybe,” Dkembe lied.

  “Cool,” Vegas said. “Might see you there.”

  Dkembe was self-conscious at his fixed smile, and wondered how Tom would handle such a moment. He took in Vegas’ earnest expression, at the same time posed like an underwear model making the most of the curtain-filtered light.

  “Who does your hair?” Dkembe asked. “I really like it.”

  The other man’s face fell and Jay steered Dkembe out the door with a few of the Jamai
can cuss words he’d mostly dropped from his repertoire in their Construction days. Obviously, time in close confinement with his male supremacist pal had brought it back out of him, which was a good trick for a man who emigrated to the States when he was about five.

  They pushed back down the hallway and fell into an easy jog together down the stairs into the crap-strewn lobby like they were just a pair of neighborhood boys – “off to the store” like Vegas had said. OK’s eyes barely took in the desperates shuffling around on the muddy tiled foyer floor, in his head still back in the room with Jay’s housemate.

  “Man, he’s gettin’ up my nose of late,” Jay said and scowled to show he meant it.

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see,” his friend replied. “Vegas didn’t freak you out a li’l?”

  “Yeah, a bit.”

  Dkembe shrugged. OK Jay grinned and motioned ahead of himself as he started to walk to the left of the building, past some tents lashed around a pair of skeletal trees, and Dkembe blew on his hands even though it wasn’t needed.

  “He’ll get in your ear if you let him, so watch it,” Jay said. “The minute he sees a black man, he gets a stiffy.” Jay gave a ribald laugh and didn’t notice Dkembe’s lack of enthusiasm. He just felt uncomfortable instead, and wanted to know where they were going. “He likes a black man more than any white woman I know, says we should be in charge of this world now.”

  Dkembe’s eyes widened at that. Jay pushed a draped awning aside to reveal a cramped outdoor cantina with a few tables and chairs between it and the first of the angle-parked buses. The cantina itself was an old minivan with the windscreens replaced by a cluster of bright pot plants doing their best to ward off the pre-winter chill.

  “Drink?”

  “Uh, I don’t really have anything right now –”

  “You’re good for it,” OK said. He motioned with two fingers to the Slavic man working out of the hollowed-out vehicle. The cantina boss nodded, and returned to fussing with a barrel and a tube. “I’ve got credit here, supplying them their meat.”

  “That’s why I wanted to talk to you, man.”