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

by Hately, Warren

  Loyalty so far, anyway.

  To Tom, it felt like he alone knew the dark business that might still test their allegiances.

  Crimson’s tears echoed from the stripped-back house. Tom stopped in the doorway and looked back at Attila nursing one of the rifles.

  “Dkembe?”

  “He and Erak, gone.” Before Tom could ask, Attila added, “Cleared their gear out.”

  “Good.”

  “And took weapons,” the gruff man added.

  “What weapons?”

  “The Remington,” Attila answered. “Some ammo.”

  Tom grunted, expression unreadable even to himself. He bid the other man a brief farewell and stepped into the gloom of the cold house, tasting a newborn enmity towards Dkembe and his strange companion rise from beneath the weight of a guilt which might never leave.

  “Just one more killing,” Tom whispered to himself. “Then we go. For good.”

  A former editor once told him “life’s a shit sandwich – but you get a choice of toppings”. That’d never felt more apt.

  Tom took a breath and set his shoulders and headed to the sound of Kent’s wailing stepdaughter.

  *

  THE NIGHT’S TRAGEDIES were underscored by the four of them leaving Ortega’s old compound, now void of life except for the teenage girl still crouched sobbing in the wardrobe. No amount of gentle talk could tease her out, and Tom’s own rawness left him little will for the effort despite his deep sense of obligation, driven by an even deeper wish for atonement.

  None of which rivaled the death wish for vengeance.

  Even Lilianna’s ongoing entrapment within the Bastion couldn’t abate the furnace of Tom’s single-minded focus on ending Finnegan Locke’s second life. If it meant killing more children . . . it wouldn’t be the first time, now, he knew, the awful acts of the dark hours of the past morning still with their hooks in him, as great as any cloak of worries Tom dragged like a dead body’s weight as he led Attila, Karla, and Lucas in the direction of The Mile.

  “Do you remember the layout?” Karla asked Luke for the second time.

  “I said ‘yes’.”

  “Just remember,” Tom intervened. “My son’s only back-up.”

  He eyed Karla and dour Attila a moment to underline savage earnestness.

  “There’s no expectation on either of you,” he added more softly. “I helped make this problem – and I aim to fix it for good.”

  “I want a piece of this Fagin prick too,” Karla told him.

  Attila only gave his characteristic grunt. Tom evaded Luke’s eyes, playacting yet another scan of their surrounds as they pressed through trash-lined streets, discarded junk and increasing amounts of actual garbage now poor Dan MacLaren and so many others were dead, and basic City functions like trash collection had gone the way of so much else. More and more people turned out into the streets as they progressed, several seeing the guns and dour looks and mistaking Tom and his team for people with answers.

  “Are you going to the Depot?” a haggard man asked.

  “Do you have any Rations?” said another.

  A woman with a face like an open grave tried clutching Tom’s shirt, but he shoved her off. The midmorning hour destroyed any tactical surprise, but he had little patience for that now anyway – and his companions sensed it. The Citizens outdoors turned and tracked them as they passed, drawing closer and closer to the subdued main thoroughfare.

  No one failed to notice the armed war band on the march.

  Tom had one of the Mp5s slung over his shoulder, but he carried his father’s longbow in his free hand, his back clustered with Kent’s sword in pride of place competing with the low-slung quiver. Karla had her Mp5 alert, and likewise, Attila with the leftover AR-15. Lucas begrudged never getting his own archery gear back, but seemed content with the weight of the snub-nose assault rifle he’d made his own. Taking Tom’s cue in the matter, each had bound electrician’s tape around their legs and boots, even at the crotch, better to ward against anticipated knives. They all wore jackets, and Karla had knee and elbow guards salvaged from old motocross gear.

  The Citizens they passed showed more than curiosity. Hunger, fear, desperation – all were etched into the hard lines created by deprivation and mounting starvation. For all the free running water in Columbus, dirt and soot stained clothes and bodies alike. Children lurked like shadows in doorways and almost anywhere they could hide, and the hard, predatory looks Tom only glimpsed in passing was enough to tell him Locke’s Urchins were just the start of the sanctuary zone’s problems. It seemed too many older survivors had abandoned ambitions of civilization, normalizing the lurking barbarism of their offspring. Tom’s crew passed a boy squatting between two piles of refuse and old bicycle parts, pants around his ankles, but when he looked up imploringly and moaned, “It hurts, mister,” Tom held Lucas back, the hint of the child’s knife and some kind of madman’s ruse catching his eye.

  “Keep moving,” Tom ordered.

  The Mile remained a shadow of its former self. The days elapsed since the last City-wide tragedy and the fires that came after meant supply and demand were underscored by a new desperation. The City’s sprawling bazaar was the lifeblood of its trade and the key to its survival. And on that count, its survival didn’t bode well.

  The slow-motion train wreck of City life was far too apparent. The usual shelters, hovels, commandeered workspaces, repurposed old vehicles, vans, shipping containers, porta-toilets, evacuation netting and defunct CDC shelters choked the streets everywhere they looked. But only a handful of stalls were open for trade, and despite very little to offer.

  A gray-skinned man called out that there were no Rations on The Mile, as if hoping to discourage them, and yet within a few more yards, a seriously tall, seriously gaunt-looking man in a catcher’s vest and steel welder’s mask guarded one of the few remaining public eateries. The smell of tasteless broiling stew whispered out of the place, tantalizing regardless, and the sentry clutched a weapon like a sharpened hockey stick to discourage vagrants. Mere yards away, a ragged woman and her dying child lay on a bed of crinkled plastic sheeting, too starved and listless to move. An older man crouched a short distance from them with his pants down too, squatting to shit. Tom had the thoughts, At least someone’s still eating – and then took in the rats crouched beneath the man’s open sewer as the shitting man grabbed one of the foul shiny creatures drawn like a moth to the candle of his trap – and the bile welled in Tom’s throat making his eyes water.

  He stopped and dug one of the .38 rounds from his vest pocket and tossed it for the mask-clad doorman to catch.

  “Get these people something to eat, please,” Tom said.

  The sentinel didn’t move and the bullet bounced hard off the cracked sidewalk. Tom’s companions filed past, but Tom stood his ground.

  “We’ll be coming back this way in fifteen minutes,” he told the sentry. “All four of us.”

  The welder’s mask concealed the man’s eyes behind tinted glass. Like a robot, the head slowly angled on Tom and then down to where the bullet lay. A muscle worked in the man’s splotchy neck. He knelt carefully and picked the bullet up like it might escape. He examined it briefly, then tossed it back at Tom.

  Tom made the catch with his left as the muscles tightened in his throat too, but Karla clutched his arm hard enough her nails stung.

  “For fuck’s sake, Tom,” she growled. “You don’t think we’ve got enough on our hands for today?”

  Tom glowered at the gatekeeper a moment more and sniffed agreement and they moved on.

  “Are you sure about this?” It seemed Karla had a sudden appetite for questions. “We still don’t even know where this Locke lives.”

  “We will,” Tom replied.

  “By hitting these . . . Edgelords?”

  “We’ll find Kevin,” Tom said.

  “Someone will know him, or know where he is – and that’s with Finnegan Locke.”

  *

 
CROSSING THROUGH AND then beyond The Mile took them back into streets where the wind came renewed at them like the City’s own self-defense system, a banshee-wailing as if the sanctuary zone fought off an infection – perhaps Tom and his team. Certainly, a black intent radiated off them as they marched as if with banners aloft. But each time they spotted a trooper patrol, Tom’s quartet melted into cover by silent agreement, using the chaotic scenery to traverse to within a bowshot of their latest destination.

  The corrugated iron gate looked serious beneath the old-tech decorations welded across the front of the Edgelords’ compound. Tom and his followers hugged an adjacent wall, moving under the awnings of the last of the boarded-up old shopfronts to reveal a murky alleyway, tall brick walls, and the top of the Edgelord’s perimeter fence like medieval battlements blocking out the weak overhead sun.

  In that alley, a pair of troopers stood with their backs to Tom’s team, weapons over their shoulders. Tom froze, a hand raised in caution, then also registered a woman with her dress pinned beneath her breasts as she let the first of the troopers have his way with her while the second man awaited his turn.

  Attila paused at Tom’s signal. Karla crossed the alleyway and sought cover, then glanced into the scene with a wry face. Tom checked back at his son and couldn’t stop himself. “Lucas, don’t look,” he said, earning himself a justified scowl.

  The second trooper glanced back at Tom’s voice. He offered a pugnacious snarl. Attila grabbed Tom by the arm and the next moment they were gone.

  The Edgelords’ gate was ajar to restrict traffic in and out. Karla had the lead by reason of impatience, and as they’d agreed, the four intruders stormed through as a group with Lucas at their tail. The move caught the compound’s lone watchman by surprise. For all his security role, the plump Edgelord embroidered with gadgets only managed to open his mouth and yelp before Karla clubbed him in the side of the neck with her gun, allowing Tom and Attila to continue on through.

  Despite the gale beyond the walls, a handful of youngsters stood around outdoor tables and benches. It was still early in the day and the place wasn’t full. Lucas had outlined the compound’s basic layout. Attila peeled right, towards the prefabricated buildings, while Tom ran in a crouch straight for the camper trailer’s door, relying on peripheral vision for any sign of Kevin.

  One of the teenagers started shouting as the intruders streamed in. The boy’s shout was the only other sound in the world for a moment – other than the meaty sound of Karla’s ongoing subdual of the first guard with multiple attempts. The shouted warning conjured a curious, pale-looking creature from the trailer with goggles pierced or stapled to its face. Tom drew the longbow on him as a flash of movement also caught his eye.

  A bigger, even fatter version of the gate guard burst from the prefab computer lab pointing a crossbow at Tom – unaware Attila stood just the other side of the same door.

  The Edgelords sure ate well. It was a shame they didn’t shoot the same.

  The crossbow bolt flit unevenly across the yard – by poor design or the interfering breeze, it couldn’t be said – and the shaft rather than its business end struck Tom’s arm.

  Maybe Tom didn’t realize he wasn’t shot, or perhaps he just didn’t have much impetus to care. He turned his drawn bow and released the shot as a right of reply with much better aim.

  There was power in the traditional bow all the other Road Warrior contraptions lacked. Wind or not, the arrow seemed to time travel the short distance and emerge as if already buried beneath the other man’s scraggly beard.

  The Edgelord gave a choked sob, and then Attila was on him.

  Tom whirled back around to throw himself across the remaining distance to the camper door before anything else stupid could happen, shoving aside the reinforced door the occupant weirdo tried to close, then kicking the damned thing in when the Edgelord fought him on it.

  The Colt Python slid easily from the back of Tom’s belt and the Marilyn Manson cosplayer fell over himself trying to get out of the way. In the same move as he forced entry, Tom ducked his head, ascending into the cramped trailer. The most gargantuan of all the Edgelords lurked in wait with a handmade spear he thrust straight at Tom.

  Dropping to the ground was the only thing that saved his life.

  But life offered the spearman no such relief.

  The Colt in Tom’s hand roared and kicked fire. The gunshot hit the grotesquely fat man somewhere in the middle of his black-clad belly, but without immediate effect. Tom fired a second and then a third time as he stood.

  Gunfire within the camper was appallingly loud. The first, far skinnier Edgelord scurried over the top of the kitchenette table in an effort to find cover as his protector slumped like a slaughtered bear leaking blood from his chest and belly before finally exploding like a wet red firecracker as Tom’s fourth bullet took half the bastard’s face off.

  The survivor scrabbled at some kind of flap or secured latch on the far side of the camper’s table, but Tom dragged him back bodily by one skinny ankle.

  No other gunshots came from outside. Tom hauled the skeletal black-clad disaster out of the claustrophobic camper to dump him onto the hard-packed ground where broken plastics and the inner workings of old phones were scattered like an additional layer of grit.

  “Troopers!” Karla called out.

  She retreated into an excellent ambush position as Tom quickly took in Attila recruiting Lucas to hold his M4 on two more captives, the Edgelords’ patrons all fled. The Hungarian was still moving into a back-up position when the troopers from the alleyway thrust their guns in either side of the half-open gate.

  “Put your fucking guns down!” one of the Safety officers yelled.

  “We’re all-clear in here!” Tom yelled back at them. “No cause for alarm. We’re not gonna shoot.”

  The lack of any immediate gunfire lured the braver of the two men into peering in through the metal gate. He glimpsed Attila crouched near the corner demountable, and then Tom out in the open with the Edgelord squirming at his feet. The trooper was still assessing the odds when he realized Karla had him dead to rights if she wanted. The man paled visibly. He looked back Tom’s way with an utter lack of confidence.

  “You’re Tom Vanicek, right?”

  Tom exhaled like a snorting bull and drew the longsword from its scabbard over his back.

  It was a movie moment, but the trooper didn’t want to wait to see how it finished.

  He backtracked to his companion, head shaking and muttering.

  “Nothing to do with us, man,” he said. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  *

  THE CAPTIVE ON the ground wept tears of blood where his eyewear had torn free of its scabby mounts. Tom could barely look at the man. He held the Python like a club, scouring the compound repeatedly and coming up with nothing. Two more survivors knelt under Lucas’ guard beside the corpse of the Edgelord with the faulty crossbow.

  “Where’s Kevin?” he asked. “He’s a kid.”

  “There’s a lot of kids, come and go here.”

  The Edgelord blinked rapidly through the goggles. Tom morbidly wondered why the young man had done such a thing to himself – the small wounds trickling blood into his eyes as he squirmed on his back as if he might anticipate and thus avoid the executioner’s gunshot when it came. Tom kicked him in the ribs instead, sword by his side.

  “What about Locke?”

  “Lock?”

  “Finnegan Locke?”

  The man nearly fouled himself, panicking as if Tom now spoke a foreign language.

  “He means Fagin!” one of the watching captives yelled.

  “Fagin?” The skinny Edgelord twisted around yet again, now trying to get up. Tom pushed him back over with a boot and he squirmed some more. “You’re after Fagin? Fagin?”

  “That’s right.”

  “OK,” he stammered. “OK, we can help. Got no beef with us.”

  “I need a location.”

  Tom kept
his voice low – ironic for all the ruckus he’d raised. He didn’t even think about the two fresh corpses, only Locke, and the same fate he planned to deliver him.

  The Edgelord started blurting a pained description of Fagin’s base. Like Tom, his old nemesis had a two-story building to himself, except of course he wasn’t alone.

  “They call it the Rats Nest, man,” Tom’s captive wheezed. “It’s a no-go zone for almost everyone.”

  “The kids,” Tom said.

  He let his interrogatee stand at last.

  “The Urchins, they’re with him?”

  “I don’t know, man,” the skinny man said and ducked his head, whimpering, not good with all the violence despite years immersed in it. “They come and go, OK? Like, all the time. That place is a . . . that’s a fucking murder hole, man. You can’t get in there like you did here.”

  “Yeah,” Tom said. “Your security sucks.”

  The captive crouched in a stoop, hands raised ready to ward off blows. Tom gestured him away with the pistol and looked back to his war party with all malevolence exhausted.

  “I can’t see these creeps coming after us,” he said. “What do you think?”

  “Let them live,” Karla agreed.

  Tom understood the look of relief on his son’s face, and did him the honor of pretending not to see it. What worried him more was the day he’d see his own revenge-at-all-costs expression in Lucas too.

  The compound’s sheet-metal fence groaned as the wind picked up into a steady howl, punctuated with the occasional clattering of loose debris now made highly mobile. A crash echoed from somewhere beyond the yard. Luke and Karla flinched. Karla fixed her worried gaze back on Tom.

  “It’s getting wild,” she said.

  “If it’s too much, you go,” he answered, and strode to where they all now gathered near the guard sprawled beaten and still unconscious inside the gate. “Now’s the time to strike. We don’t have darkness, but this storm will cover our approach.”

  He gestured to the rising gale and looked to Lucas and tried not to think of the tall boy as his son, which proved impossible. Luke saw his father’s expression falter, pained as he spoke to him.