Tom could almost smell the other man’s keenness. He looked to Dkembe instead.
“What do these Ascended say?”
“What do you mean?”
“What did they say?” Tom asked again. “Did you outline what we need?”
“No,” Dkembe said. “I haven’t spoken to them yet.”
“These are religious nut-jobs,” Jay said from the side.
“I thought I should talk it over with you,” Dkembe added.
“Cool,” Tom agreed. “Sounds like a few unknowns, though. Are these the clowns, look like the KKK?”
“Yeah,” Jay said.
“They keep their women chained,” Dkembe added.
“Yeah, right,” Tom said with evident second thoughts. “I’m not stealing anyone’s workforce, at least not before I know what I’m doing, and sure as hell not aiming to get a bunch of doomsday cultists off-side.”
He looked over the pair, then at his new wristwatch.
“If you’re free,” Tom said to OK Jay, “Let’s go there now.”
“Now?” Dkembe said and obviously regretted his line, shifting uncomfortably on his tattered trainers. “I thought I was runnin’ lead on this one for you?”
“Sure,” Tom said. “But we need more than just butchers. We need their facilities. I might as well come along.”
He didn’t give a second thought to his promised work in the vegetable garden.
“Jay, are you cool?” Tom asked instead. “I’m trading for a side of pork later on. I’ve got Council tonight, and I’ve got to find my son. But we’ll eat well, and you’re welcome.”
The newcomer shrugged, doing well to convey manners while remaining noncommittal.
Dkembe clearly saw it was all on him now. He nodded his assent to Tom and kept his eyes low when the older man tried to focus his gaze, almost willing the eye contact through mental projection alone. But Dkembe had that beaten look Tom so often tried to ignore. He clucked, more than a sigh, and checked the Colt Python remained in place as he motioned back to the door.
*
IT WAS A fair walk to the south side of the City, taking them through an area unfamiliar to Tom whose life – like so many others in the sanctuary zone – revolved off the axis of The Mile on which life and death and all points in between were carried out in and among the other daily business. Pedestrians grew more scarce as they left it behind. Greenery flowered amid the ruined shopfronts and the numerous decaying vehicles left in situ, but new neighborhoods also thrived within the devastation. The majority of the Citizens they passed, as they threaded through one and then another vacant checkpoint in the City’s internal defenses, were busy reinforcing Construction efforts, men and a handful of women working almost independently of the rest of the City that supported them. The last buildings were only recently cleared out, with new enterprises slowly taking shape or halted halfway through, and the workshops full of trucks undergoing restoration, and the people sorting winter clothing, or hammering planks into wooden crates, or cleaning out muddy bottles for re-use, left Tom vaguely impressed. It was good to see what a little breathing space allowed to flourish, Citizens banding together to eke out their lives addressing what the City obviously lacked like one of them “free market economies” people fetishized back in the day.
Maybe they won’t all die when the snow comes, he thought to himself.
The last brick tenement threw its shadow against the southern boundary wall. A lone trooper walked along an observation ledge at a height where she could watch into the vacant building instead. A number of half-dressed black men shunted gear in and out of the place from two flatbed trucks. Most of the equipment looked like sound gear, and when deep electronic music started thumping out as Tom, Dkembe and Jay approached, the men outside the building paused for a rowdy cheer before getting back to work.
“That’s that place I was tellin’ you about,” OK said to his friend. “They all part of Vegas’ crew.”
The tall, steel-roofed building opposite couldn’t have had a more different vibe. Pick-up trucks lined the street, while two heavyset men hauled sides of some kind of big animal carcass from a rear gate right under the shadow of the twenty-foot-high back fence. Muck and garbage lined the street, and the ancient Ohioan sidewalk and brick-paved alleyway around the front of the compound was dark with the gory sludge forever oozing out from beneath the ramshackle wooden fence like it was trying to escape. A man in a mud-stained white costume stood beside the front gateway. He held a pump-action shotgun, the butt on his hip, and scanned the trio with his disconcerting hooded gaze. Tom took a deliberate slow breath, momentarily fighting back against his overtime sense of self-preservation.
Jay held up a hand and greeted the man. Tom chanced the look around, noting the Ascended had corralled three different buildings into their lair. The outside wooden fence looked more like something from the Civil War era than defenses built a year ago to constrain the lot. Chimney smoke blew down across the scene reeking of burnt offal, once it caught them. Tom coughed and held a hand to his face, only then seeing Dkembe tug up his shirt collar as an impromptu mask. His offsider shot him a shy look of shared amusement, and as Jay led them into the complex, the stink of it only got worse.
“Jesus Christ,” Tom wheezed. “What is that? My eyes are burning.”
“Some toxic shit in here,” OK Jay said.
“Need a damned gas mask.”
But the reek eased off once they were up a series of walkways, Jay leading Tom back through the same route as Dkembe earlier, past the abattoir pens, the back shed shielded from view, and then they passed into the workhouse where a tall figure in a white hood stood awaiting them, alerted by some signal within. A man with a thick handlebar moustache that disappeared into the black moss-like beard covering his face and continued as a pelt across his broad chest stood beside the Apex. Powerful arms folded together clad in a thick leather coat above his black jeans and cowboy boots.
“Master Apex,” Jay said in a flat voice. “These people asked to see you. Tom and Dkembe.”
Jay motioned to the bearded man.
“And this is Martin.”
Martin nodded solemnly at Tom. Tom tried for a chipper, unaffected tight smile. It was hard, for just then he noticed a wooden rack far to one side in the room on which were stacked bloody pairs of men’s, women’s, and children’s shoes. A hacksaw like the type used by forestry workers leaned against that wall and they hadn’t bothered to clean it.
Jay had spoken right when he said the Ascended were a law unto themselves.
It was hard to continue at that point – Tom hating the harsh diplomacy City life kept requiring of him, and any pretense at ethics he’d seemingly abandoned at the City checkpoint the month before. But he angled towards the “master” and offered the Apex his hand – not at all surprised when he stood there with that hand outstretched like a fool. Tom’s taut smile served him well, and then Martin surprised by offering his hand instead. Tom took it, almost going for the second hand on top, but thinking better of it. He shook firmly, released the dry grip, and nodded to himself as if to say that was enough formalities.
The Apex didn’t say anything. He stood unmoving like a Christmas tree with a bedsheet thrown over it, and having that thought, Tom’s smile was briefly reborn before it had to be smothered in case it got out of control. Fortunately, Martin’s dark eyes had a similarly sobering effect.
“What is your business?”
“Meat,” Tom said. He had to choke out the words. The taste of chemicals in his mouth didn’t help, though it was the rack of tiny shoes he kept picturing. “Animals. Slaughter and cleaning out.”
The Apex moved his head then. The conical hood covering his face rustled inaudibly. Tom held his breath waiting on the strange man to speak. But it was Martin who spoke again.
“I don’t see them with you.”
“Thought it might be rude turning up with two-hundred cows,” Tom said.
Bemusement with himself probably wasn
’t the right tone. Tom straightened and motioned behind, as if he had the cattle parked outside.
“I have an arrangement,” he said. “Before the winter, someone will drive the animals here. I’ll have them just outside the sanctuary zone.”
“How will you protect them?” the bearded man asked.
“I’m working on that,” Tom replied. “Not worth protecting them if I can’t find a place to. . . .”
“To slaughter them,” the Apex said.
His reedy voice was dry like his henchman’s handshake. Warm, but hard. Implacable, yet almost detached, maybe uncommitted.
“Yes,” Tom said. “Obviously, I’m after a partner for this part of the deal.”
“And you would partner with us?”
Unlike Martin, the Apex had a slightly effeminate pitch to the airy way he spoke. He sounded like an aging stage actor in his final role. The mask made the man’s intentions unknowable, yet Tom found it hard not to gawp all the same. He sensed more than saw Dkembe uptight beside him, and he shot his lieutenant a reassuring look without knowing much else.
“You have the workers and the facility,” Tom said. “Right?”
“We call it ‘the Cathedral’,” the Apex corrected him.
Lofty prick, Tom thought, and tried not to show it on his face. He nodded as if completely understanding the messianic reference.
“Cathedral, facility, it’s whatever to me,” Tom said bluntly. “If you can do that sort of volume, let me know. Otherwise, we’ll look elsewhere.”
Tom acknowledged Dkembe beside him. The spotlight didn’t love the nervous-looking young man. Dkembe made a pained smile. Tom forced himself to exhale. The Apex didn’t say anything, nor even move again, but his henchman finally nodded.
“We’re interested to talk more,” Martin said. Then to Jay, he added, “Get the others.”
Jay nodded, not on the clock for the Ascended today, but clearly with a role to play. The brightly-dressed younger man headed out through a side door, and Tom briefly scanned Dkembe again. He couldn’t tell if it was anxiety or irritation just beneath the surface within his lieutenant.
There was no awkward silence. The first of the abattoir team entered almost at once, wiping his grimy hands on a rag unlikely to do much. A freckled, wide-faced woman who looked more like a hardbitten canteen lady than a butcher followed after. Two more figures in tall masked caps came in too, and Tom was smiling in preparation for whatever the hell came next when what came next took him completely by surprise.
Tom hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the man he knew as Walter since the two of them met on the last evening before reaching Columbus. But he’d never forget – nor forgive – the cap-wearing RV driver who offered to buy sex with Tom’s daughter.
“Uh-uh,” Tom said without even meaning to speak. “Not him. No way.”
It was apparently polite to remove hats in the Apex’s presence. Dkembe had done it, and Walter was still halfway through removing his and adjusting to the crappy light inside the workhouse when Tom spoke. It didn’t take more than a second for the skinny older man’s dark eyes to tune in on Tom and recognize him too.
“Not him,” Tom said again, except this time it was much lower in his chest.
The words weren’t enough, failing him, suffused with an old, slow-burning anger that had never really went away. Despite the multiple sets of eyes watching him, Tom couldn’t just stand there with the limbic hatred boiling away his thoughts from underneath, faced with the other survivor whose very existence seemed utterly counter to Tom’s best interests and maybe his family’s basic safety.
For just a moment, Tom froze with uncertainty, no one else except for him and Walter knowing what the fuck he was talking about. Tom’s blinking gaze went from Martin to the masked Apex and then across to the pathetic shoe rack near the back doors.
Tom crossed the distance to Walter before anyone expected it, reaching out to grab the wiry older man by his shoulder as if to spin him around, and moving so swiftly Walter didn’t even dare believe his life could possibly be in danger.
That’s why he took Tom’s combat knife directly into his chest, gasping and looking down as if for confirmation – at which point Tom ruthlessly stabbed him three more times.
Dkembe cried out in shock, but no one else moved.
Walter slumped with blood flecking his groans as he died and Tom held him just long enough to angle the blade down into the top of the man’s head to pierce his brain to silence him for good. Then he discarded the dead man, exhaling like a beast, turning back to Dkembe’s horrified if not terrified eyes to look cold-blooded at Martin instead.
“I’m offering ten live cows for each hundred the Ascended slaughter, process and clean,” Tom said, unaware or maybe just no longer caring if the red droplets on his face gave him a madman’s look. “From this first shipment, I want the whole meat and nothing else. Bones, guts, hide – you can have the rest. And you’ll have your ten whole cows too.”
He quelled his heavy breathing, still too embedded in the moment to appreciate the savagery of what he’d done or that he’d done it. The deeply primitive blood rite of the kill kept his chest heaving and his eyes locked on Martin, and then switching to the masked Apex beside him.
“What do you say?” Tom asked flat voiced.
The conical hat turned to Martin almost as if something was expected of him.
Martin offered Tom a hooded, perhaps surly look, then cleared his throat with a growl.
“There’s always a market for meat,” he said.
The Apex regarded Walter sprawled out on the concrete. Just slightly, the tall cap moved. The heavyset woman and another abattoir worker knelt at once to haul dead Walter upright by the arms. OK Jay stood frozen, face like a man not yet sure if he was implicated too. But his eyes mirrored the petrified shock in Dkembe’s face.
Tom still had the bloody knife in hand and he wiped it deliberately on the lower leg of his pants. It didn’t still his shaking hands. When he stood, he looked aside at his lieutenant too hurt and intimidated to look back.
*
TOM STORMED AWAY from the Ascended’s bloody Cathedral checking his hands grown quiet as a steely resolve crashed down in place where his remorse should be, and as he took long strides back in the direction of the City proper, something akin to marvel ran darkly through him as he remembered the timid, withdrawn man he’d once been – or at least how he judged himself, back before the world changed practically overnight. The past nearly six years were a tough and winding road, and not without mistakes. But it was those mistakes which informed his hardened mindset as he walked. Tom knew he should feel regret, maybe shame, and definitely fear for taking such a brutal reprisal. But he had greater regrets – regrets about times he didn’t do what his gut shrieked was required because he was too chicken shit and afraid to do it.
Yet by the time he hit The Mile, inevitable second doubts slunk their way back in. Tom tugged at his modestly-bearded chin, scowling for any onlookers to notice, for all intents and purposes wearing the expression of a man still with that bloody knife in hand, the imminent threat sliding lifelessly to the floor from his guilty grasp. Tom spied troopers on the street corner, caught up in a debate with a frail-seeming man with blazing eyes, and Tom remembered his pre-emptive attack on Finnegan Locke wasn’t anywhere near as successful. There were Rules in the City, they’d reminded him. The second time was the charm.
Tom blew out his cheeks, caught himself in his gravid look, and exhaled mightily as he re-oriented towards his compound to check on Lucas before the lowering sun presaged his appointment in the City’s town hall – and making sure no one drafted him onto some misguided ballot in his absence.
The transition from bloodshed to ordinary business wasn’t as easy as he made it look, but he was working on it.
Neither Luke nor Kevin were at home. Karla and Ionia were in the nursery, working cheerily enough under the dappled light coming through wire mesh, and Tom joined them for an hour, suffocatin
g his thoughts, listening out for Lucas and anticipating Dkembe’s return even though it didn’t happen. Tom went upstairs and made one last stop at the family room, and then eyed the doors to Kevin’s, and then to the one Dkembe shared with Erak Gonzales which troubled him still though it wasn’t a problem for today or perhaps a problem at all.
None of my business, he thought with more relief than expected.
Tom lingered in the headquarters long enough to try eating the last of the cold oatmeal, but couldn’t manage it, though it wasn’t so bad he regretted ditching Mrs Uganda’s fish stew back in the marketplace. They had a gas bottle under the range, but he wasn’t inclined to fire it up, looking for any excuse to excuse the ravaged feeling of his hollow gut, his body protesting at the fresh murder even if Tom wouldn’t. He forced down a quart of water instead, drowning out his complaints, locking his jaw with a tension even he knew didn’t serve him well. He’d counsel either one of his children out of it. But old habits died hard . . . unlike some old foes.
Truth was, he felt mostly relieved. Tom thought on Finnegan Locke again and sighed, refilling the glass bottle to drink again. Then he took one of the CB radio handsets from the hooks inside the door, checked the battery charge, and headed out.
*
PEOPLE WERE ONLY starting to filter into the town hall as Tom arrived, and he caught himself at the exasperated thought that anyone would think him keen for the Council meeting. For many of the creatures of the Administration, the off-weekly gatherings were the best show in town. And the Council forum drew in the sanctuary zone’s key players, even if there were others like Finnegan Locke whom the Council hadn’t yet mapped and doubtless never would because they’d rarely set foot inside the premises.
Tom trudged into the repurposed derelict dinner theater and moved past several young men with clipboards beaming patient smiles at him. Tom nodded to them politely, and had to all but manhandle his way past as they greeted him by name. He didn’t crave the celebrity.
After The Apocalypse Season 2 Box Set [Books 4-6] Page 20
