OK Jay took a chair and looked back expectantly for Dkembe to explain.
“I’m workin’ this job.”
“But you got no currency in your pocket,” Jay said.
“Well, no,” Dkembe agreed. “Not right now. It’s sort of a . . . long-term thing.”
“Jeez, man, what are you doin’?”
“Working, man,” Dkembe said. It was about the angriest he was willing to get, and it faded fast as he succumbed to the need to explain himself. “There’s this guy, Tom, and his family. I sort of fell in with them. You mighta heard of him. Tom Vanicek?”
“Nope.”
“Oh, OK,” Dkembe said. “He just . . . uh, he just killed a bunch of people. . . .”
“He that guy killed Ortega?”
“Yeah,” Dkembe said. “I didn’t know you knew Ortega?”
“I didn’t know Ortega,” OK said. “Not in the biblical sense.”
He clearly didn’t know the meaning of that phrase because he delivered it with a set-upon look as if annoyed at the guilt by association of even mentioning Ortega’s name.
“He’s like your boy Tom,” Jay said. “You don’t need to know ‘em to know about ‘em, you get me?”
“I get you.”
“You think your boy Vanicek killed Burroughs?”
“Burroughs?”
“Ed Burroughs,” Jay said. He motioned back towards his home tenement as if Vegas was standing just behind them. “Leader of the Brotherhood, yeah?”
“Yeah, I know that,” Dkembe said. “I just didn’t know he was dead.”
“So he won’t be going to any Council meeting tonight.”
Jay chuckled, leaning back on the rickety chair with his arms crossed as if pleased about it. The dour man from the cantina came across and set down two narrow glasses with what looked like Turkish coffee. He and Jay had a brief conversation about cuts of leftover meat that might be edible for the small bar’s meat skewers. Dkembe sat throughout it, arms folded too, as if in protest that his friend could think Tom would do something like kill Edward Burroughs. The only conclusion he could reach was that his friend didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about, and clearly hadn’t met Tom. Dkembe cleared his throat when the aproned man left.
“I came to talk to you about meat,” he said to Jay.
“You need a cut, man?” his friend asked. “There’s only so much I can do, but you tell me what you –”
“I’m not after meat,” Dkembe said. “It’s . . . complicated to explain. Did you read about the deal with the Confederates and how the Council wants to . . . to secure a meat supply, for the City, because of winter and –”
“Yeah, I heard about that,” he said. “Don’t read no faggotty newspaper though.”
“Uh-huh,” Dkembe grunted and ignored him. “Well, if those cows come to the City. . . .”
He thought a moment about Tom’s hilarity at what his cattle baron role entailed, Dkembe almost sporting the shadow of a grin himself as he fought through his word-fog to work out how to explain as quickly as he could, but OK Jay was smart, and cut right to the chase for him.
“Yeah, man,” he said. “You’re gonna need the Ascended. Holy cow.”
Jay laughed a moment at his own joke and Dkembe consented to a panting smile.
“How many animals you talkin’ about?”
Dkembe’s shoulders tried to replace the words he couldn’t conjure. In the end, he groaned, “Maybe two or three hundred? We don’t really know.”
“We?”
“Tom and me.”
“It’s Tom and me, is it?”
“He called me his ‘lieutenant’.”
“So it’s more like Tom, and me.”
Dkembe shrugged. Jay continued on.
“And what about me?”
“You?”
“Yeah, me,” he said. “Those Ascended fuckers are freaky. I only stay on there because of the side racket, you know . . .and they appreciate my skills.”
“So they should.”
“I never thought workin’ in a meatworks was gonna turn into such a hot property once the world came to an end, you get me?”
“Yeah, man,” Dkembe said. “Knowin’ my way around tools, it saved me.”
“Even monkeys can use tools,” Jay said with sudden scorn. “You want to be more than a fuckin’ monkey, ‘Kembi?”
Dkembe failed to conceal the hurt look. “What you talkin’ about?”
“You got a cattle killin’ problem, and your best friend’s the solution,” he said and extended his arms wide, always with a little of a theatrical bent to him. No wonder he and Vegas were friends. “So unless you wanna be a tool-usin’ monkey, how’re you gonna turn that into ‘Tom and me’ . . . or even into ‘me an’ Tom’?”
Sitting opposite, Dkembe considered what Jay said, then Jay drained his coffee. Dkembe took a slower hit, surprised it was something akin to the real thing. He drank the rest with renewed enthusiasm, then thoughtfully set the small glass down slow.
“Couldn’t it be me, Tom, and you?” he asked.
OK Jay shrugged like he was holding a balloon he didn’t particularly care to stop from drifting away if the wind took it. Dkembe’s expression hardened, but his friend didn’t notice, reaching down to throw back the dregs of his empty glass.
“Maybe,” Jay said. “But we got to stick together, you an’ me. Vegas is right about that. We’re brothers, right?”
He offered over his knuckles for a fist bump Dkembe half-heartedly returned. Then Jay wiped his lips, anticipating the next stage of their journey already.
“It’s not my day for workin’, but I can take you there,” he said. “Guided tour. Comin’?”
Dkembe nodded, likewise tried to drain his empty glass, then followed his friend from under the shadow of the drapes.
*
THE SMELL WAS almost overpowering. Dkembe didn’t know how his friend did it, but OK Jay quickly fit a bandanna in place and suggested Dkembe do the same, though he didn’t have one and resorted to thrusting his face down into the collar of his undershirt as they advanced. His own strong body odor did a good job, though his eyes stung with the fumes from open containers and a chemical bath of some sort established at the end of the first big shed they entered.
There wasn’t much face to be lost, pun intended, by burying his in his shirt. From what Dkembe saw, all the other workers had face masks or breathing apparatus to help them do their job, and the others – the Ascended, who oversaw the abattoir – wore conical white Klan-style cloth headdresses split at the front like a pair of tent flaps covering their faces as they moved in and out of the complex they had fashioned for themselves at the farthest reaches of the sanctuary zone. Or it used to be the far side of the zone. The back of the slaughterhouse and the de facto marketplace attached to it was bolstered by a sheet-metal fence twenty-foot high used at one point to contain the safe zone. The patrolled outer boundary had moved south of Thurman Avenue twice since then, moving into what people once called Merion Village. The double bifurcation of the suburb created two distinct, two-block-deep neighborhoods one after the other – Oasis, named after the corner building; and the unimaginatively titled Black Town which they were in, named for all the pollution-intensive collectives deemed necessary by the Administration, but pushed to its edge.
Apart from Jay, only a half-dozen other workers weren’t members of the apocalyptic religious cult that had a more-than-slightly disturbing sideline in the meat business. Jay led him up a walkway of planks and then a metal runway covered in blood and caked animal shit, then they were inside the first big compound walking on a raised wooden deck overlooking a number of pens below. Most were empty. Jay explained they did the bulk of the killing at sunrise.
“Don’t ask me if it’s a religious thing,” he said in a low voice, and continued that tone as he slowly outlined the operation the Ascended oversaw. “Not that many people need help killing, but there’s plenty of traders who need butchers. That acrid shit you
can smell back there? That’s glue. Ascended got that as a side hustle. Other shit too. Never knew animals were good for so many different things.”
They moved along the platform, which had a wooden ledge to lean on if one wanted to overlook the executions – and Dkembe had a sense there were a few who would. A muscular, whip-thin man whose entire front was grimy with dried blood, and a tall, cowled figured in stained white robes fussed with a mechanism on one of the gates. Just a repair job. The ground was muddy under their feet, the rich ochre color of blood-soaked soil. Jay nudged Dkembe and they continued on.
“If you meet anyone, they might send you to meet the Apex,” his friend said. “Watch yourself with him. He’s their leader. Anything he says goes. But you’ll probably be dealin’ with Martin.”
“Who’s that?”
They moved from the first shed into a covered walkway, past a flap of tarpaulin, and into a deeper, concrete-floored shed. An old metal roof high up on struts soared over them, the tall brick building repurposed with two rows of work benches running from one end to the other, with several industrial tubs on wheels left to fend for themselves within the half-empty shed, the bulk of the work already done by morning’s end. A skinny man in a pullover did his best to mop up the worst of the bloody drag marks down the middle of the concourse.
OK Jay pointed to one of the only three other figures in the room, and it was a rough, hairy-jowled figure in a black jacket, jeans and cowboy boots he indicated. Martin talked in low, instructive tones to a man made taller by his cardinal’s hood, that face disturbingly obscured by the mask’s split front as seemed the norm. Beside him, head bowed, a young woman stood with a chain hanging from a collar around her throat. She wore a conical white hat, something like a lady’s wimple, but wasn’t afforded the dignity of anything else except an inadequate, tattered white smock that left her arms, legs, and sides bare, completely unprotected against the gathering cold. The young woman’s skin was pale, almost blue in the nautical light, colder in the shed than outside and with their breaths coming out in wisps.
The girl turned to glance at them, and locked on Dkembe for just a moment with her pale green eyes before the chain collar got tugged, dragging her back into submission. Dkembe felt his heart jump, equally startled by the gaunt beauty looking at him as he was by the sense of warning that undercut everything in the chill air.
“Even if they don’t look like Ascended, they’re Ascended,” Jay whispered. “It’s just me and four normal guys helping out. Gordon here with the mop. What they say goes.”
Jay motioned for them to retreat and Dkembe followed, more thoughtful than he should be in such a foul place. Dkembe couldn’t tell whether he felt the captive girl’s eyes on him as he left or whether it was just wishful thinking. But the makings of an idea sure to impress Tom had already stirred, and he left the slaughterhouse with his friend thinking on the different moving components – and of not wanting to be just another of Tom’s tools.
Chapter 9
THE GATE SQUEAKED aside as Tom stood watching helplessly as the two women pored over the hacksaw-induced plumbing arrangements with the outside tank. Dkembe and a stronger-built young man in a bright orange jacket entered, Dkembe’s friend standing watching the work-in-progress in the former grow house nursery as Tom’s lieutenant latched the gate again and cast one last look through it out onto the street outside. Then he met Tom’s curious eyes and shook his head, all of them aware they didn’t have adequate security, nor knowing how badly they needed it. So many of their fellow Citizens who posed a threat now were dead, after all – except for those maybe still locked up at Councilor Wilhelm’s leisure. It remained a bone of contention between him and the errant Council man during their mid-morning meeting of just an hour before.
Security wasn’t the only thing on Tom’s mind. He straightened his back with a muted groan as Karla picked her way back through the screened fencing they’d partly-dismantled to allow the work on the storage tank. The hard-faced blonde motioned to the long-settled tubs housing beds of turned-over soil, their previous harvest packed into loose crates at the far side of the compound, exposed to the remote September day sun in an optimistic attempt at drying out.
“Everything’s good to go,” Karla said. “Remember, I’m a diesel mechanic, not a plumber.”
Tom still had one eye on Dkembe and his offsider. He motioned at the nearby door, still for Tom slightly haunted by Pamela de Jong’s ghost.
“I’ll be with you in a minute,” he said to the new arrivals.
“We’ll be in the kitchen,” Dkembe said.
Tom nodded and swung back to Karla.
“Seems to be plenty of water,” he said. “I’m surprised the City doesn’t try and ration it . . . or have some levy for bigger users.”
“We’ll be using plenty,” Karla said. “But there’s plenty of it. They built two dams and accessed groundwater, back before the Day. Fifty, sixty, whatever-it-is-thousand people don’t have anywhere near that old demand.”
“It’s safe to drink, right?” Tom asked.
Karla’s bleak expression held his attention.
“Boiling the drinking water might be a good option, when you can afford the fuel.”
Tom nodded, adding that to his mental list.
“For someone who’s not a plumber, you seem to know your way around, though,” Tom said. “If you’re a diesel expert, why do Forager duties instead of . . . I dunno . . . something else?”
Karla grunted. Ionia joined them trying to wipe grease off her face.
“We were on the team that cleared out the treatment plant to begin with,” Karla said. “You know that railroad you came in on?”
Tom nodded.
“You know how many early Citizens died for that?”
The working train had struck him as an amazing extravagance, and a huge effort for a City that couldn’t yet govern itself without self-harm. But others told him there was a lot of goodwill in the early days of the sanctuary zone, toughened by the bonds forged on the Air Force Base where the idea sprouted. That goodwill had fled them too.
“No,” Tom replied.
“Almost none,” Karla said. “And that’s because of what we went through fixing the water supply.”
“Bad?”
“Security was non-existent,” Ionia said instead.
“It was like Wilhelm and his crew forgot the Furies were even a threat,” Karla added.
Tom nodded with thoughtful compassion, which saved him taking the discussion further. It was good to know, however historical the past clusterfuck now seemed to be. But Wilhelm had already shown he had more zeal than common sense, at least sometimes. It was only the embattled Council man’s surprising resolve under pressure that retained a shred of Tom’s esteem.
“I have to talk to Dkembe,” he said at last.
“Who’s doing your planting?” Karla asked.
Tom looked aside to the twin rows of huge wooden tubs submerged in a six inch layer of muck and old tires.
Wistfully, he answered, “I thought it was something I could do with my kids . . . only now, Lilianna’s moved into the Enclave to see . . . I dunno, something . . . and Lucas. . . .”
Tom blew out his cheeks and surrendered to a tired chuckle.
“Well he sure as hell isn’t at School, so I don’t know what’s what there.”
Karla stood patiently through the unwanted facts about Tom’s life, then told him, “We could do it,” and motioned to her girlfriend who also wore thinly-masked enthusiasm for the idea.
“Be a nice change from fixing up old trucks and cleaning the shit out of these old pipes,” Ionia said and favored Tom with the first genuine smile he’d seen.
“OK,” Tom said. “I don’t really have much of a plan. . . .”
“Not a green thumb, Tom?” Karla smirked.
“Not really,” he said. “I was an office drone, before all this.”
“Let us have a look over it, then,” she said.
“OK,” To
m thankfully agreed. “But I’ll be out to help. Don’t worry about that.”
“Sure.”
“I’m trading for some pork – or I hope it’s pork – before Council tonight.”
Tom smiled broadly as he spoke and wondered what part of him felt the need to reassure the pair, to keep them happy and engaged in their mutual endeavor. He’d like to think it was merely strategic, but he felt himself wilt strangely in the two women’s presence – maybe sensing his own obsolescence in their clear self-reliance on each other, as well as themselves.
He nodded again and turned for the side door.
As always, his eyes prized for marks left behind, but there were none. Tom and Dkembe had scrubbed that section clean of Pamela’s death for far too long to leave any trace behind.
*
THE TWO YOUNG black men stood close together in the kitchen while Dkembe churned the metal pot of morning oatmeal with the doors open on the cabinet they used for their larder. Tom had much earlier joked it wouldn’t be enough to store supplies for their growing household of workers, but right now the shelves were lonely with just a few cans, the sacks of staples, and precious little else.
“Have you seen Lucas while you were out and about?”
“No, sorry,” Dkembe said. “This is my friend Jay.”
“OK Jay,” the man said himself.
He took Tom’s handshake with a broad smile. Tom did his best to return it, though fumbled the job with thoughts about his son’s whereabouts. But this was clearly business. He nodded to Dkembe to give him the spiel.
“OK’s a butcher,” Dkembe said.
“OK? Cool.”
“I work for the Ascended,” Jay said to Tom. “You know those honkies?”
“People still use the term ‘honkies’?” Tom replied.
Jay only laughed. “We talkin’ serious religious creeps.”
“Great,” Tom said with a deliberate lack of energy. The two men understood him completely.
“Not everyone working there’s one of ‘em, though,” Jay said. “There’s me, and four others. I could speak to them for you, maybe come across as a team?”
After The Apocalypse Season 2 Box Set [Books 4-6] Page 19
