He thought of Erak at home. Home.
And then he thought of the girl.
Tom said he’d flee the City, but Dkembe didn’t know whether Tom’s departure would lift that curse or be a part of it. Vanicek’s seemingly constant, flagrant explosions of violence were a brutal metaphor for the whole place.
Vegas and everything he’d said and all the stupid Black Panther kindship underlying it came into his thoughts only to be banished just as quickly by the knowledge he’d deserted that man too.
But Dkembe set his shoulder to that. Guilt he could live with – as long as he lived.
His eyes checked every hidey hole and ambush spot he passed as he clenched his jaw for survival. There were people he could help, and those beyond his help, too. Sometimes, in the past, that’d meant everyone. And he’d lived. His betrayal of Jay wasn’t his first, and it sure as fuck didn’t feel like the last. He’d grown inured to the taste of it, no longer registering how he had to swallow back the bile as his face took on an angry, pent-up mien that foreshadowed whatever passed in Dkembe for determination. Determination for now, anyway.
Determination until he had to run again.
Self-loathing alone got him through the journey back to Ortega’s old grow house. Despite the risk, all was quiet as he slipped in through the gate and caught movement at once as Gonzales stepped out of the inky dark in the undercover area.
“‘kembi,” he said and moved forward, almost hesitant. Fear came off him like a rank body odor. Dkembe stopped him coming any closer with a gesture.
“We’ve got to talk,” he whispered. “And quickly. Upstairs.”
*
THERE WASN’T MUCH to pack in their bedroom, but Dkembe got to it anyway, hurrying to gather his stuff before Erak even followed him through. The candlelight silvered Gonzales’ complexion and his dark hair hung around his sharp, concerned face like wavy daggers, dark eyes held in perpetual squints.
“What happened?” he asked in the hushed tone required. “What are you doing?”
“Who else is here?” Dkembe asked instead.
Erak blinked. “The girl, the one who survived . . . She’s hiding in the cupboard and won’t come out.”
“Anyone?”
“No,” Erak said. He glanced down, mindful as Dkembe continued stuffing clothes into his knapsack. “Just the children and . . . the woman. No one had silenced them, so I. . . .”
“Tom Vanicek’s off the hook,” Dkembe said bluntly. “He’s jumped the shark, man. We have to flip.”
“Flip?”
“Get the fuck out of here.”
“But where would we go?”
“Right now, man, seriously . . . You gotta believe me, we just need to be anywhere else but here. Right now, Erak. C’mon, let’s go.”
Dkembe motioned an efficient mime of Gonzales following suit. Nonetheless, the almost emaciated man let his eyes fall again to the lamp-lit floor.
“Erak,” Dkembe said.
“I don’t. . . .”
“Now’s not the time,” Dkembe said. “We need to pack and leave.”
“And go where?” Erak asked again. “It’s blowing a gale outside. We’re safe here.”
“We. Are. Not. Safe. Not here.”
Dkembe’s look was all it took, but the words helped. Something dawned for his companion and Gonzales fell into a stammering mess trying to pack his own meager things in record time. He continued shooting Dkembe worried looks as he hurried around the bedchamber.
“What did he do?”
“He killed my friend,” Dkembe said.
Erak looked around to confirm just how pitifully little they had.
“It’s the middle of the night,” he said lowly. “Dkembe, what are we going to do?”
“It’ll be morning soon.”
“And?”
“I have somewhere I think we can go,” Dkembe said. “People.”
“People? What people?”
“We have to go,” Dkembe said and then braced himself to add, “And there’s someone else, too.”
Erak’s expression froze.
“What do you mean ‘there’s someone else’?”
“Not like that,” Dkembe snapped. “Someone else needs help too.”
“It’s that Ascended girl.”
Dkembe’s reaction proved the truth of it, too astonished at Erak’s intuition to restrain the look of surprise he tried to reel in as quickly as he could, losing the eye contact battle with Gonzales who turned away and for a moment looked about to take a foolhardy kick at the burning candle. An image of Dkembe’s murdered friend leapt into place instead – Jay telling him “We gotta stay brothers, ‘kembi” – which throttled anything else likely to come out of his mouth to placate his bedmate.
Beneath it all thrummed the urgency of their departure.
“Erak, we can talk it out, but not right now.”
Gonzales didn’t say anything, nor did he turn.
“Erak, please, man,” Dkembe said. Don’t make me leave you here.
Gonzales finally met his eyes. He didn’t flatter himself, pouting like a sullen child. The look he offered instead filled Dkembe with repulsion – and at his own reaction too. But he blanked that expression as well as he could too.
“We’re headed into a wild time,” he said simply. “There’s no City any more, not for reals. It’s us against them again. You understan’ me, man?”
Erak said nothing even though somehow he did. Dkembe nodded.
“And there’s good people,” he said. “People who’re sufferin’, they need help too. Here, just before it all hits the fan, yo . . . now’s the chance to act before it’s all too late . . . for all of us.”
Erak slowly sniffled, eyes flicking to his backpack, a grimy towel and pair of jeans hanging out.
“You’ve been thinking about this,” he said. “So don’t tell me you don’t have a plan.”
Dkembe didn’t want to lie, even if it was another surprise to realize Erak was right about that too.
He knew the Ascended fort inside and out – and they started work just before dawn.
*
HE AND ERAK piled into their warmest clothes and took the bags with them from the house and didn’t stop to take anything until they reached the side area with its depleted gun lockers.
Dkembe handed Erak the Glock and the spare half-empty magazine for it. The pump-action 12 gauge was left when Tom’s hunting party kitted up earlier, and the rounds for the grenade rifle glinted in the half-light with temptation.
The plan that Dkembe hadn’t known he had continued falling into place, and amid the chilling rush of it all was a quiet, demented thrill, too. Here he was, leading the charge. Here he was, calling the shots. Here he was –
Getting free of Tom Vanicek.
Spooked, Dkembe grabbed two of the 40mm grenades and stuffed them into the pocket of his pants he now saw were streaked with dried blood. Again he thought of Jay – and Vegas – and hated himself for how quickly – now his plans were in action – those thoughts twisted treacherously serpentine back to the girl the Ascended called one of their “Anointed”.
Jay’s gentle taunts echoed in Dkembe’s memories as well.
Erak moved the gate and the squeak broke Dkembe’s attention so that now he turned from the dream vision of the Ascended girl and into Erak’s gaunt silhouette across from him, gilded by the sickly moonlight.
“We should just go,” Gonzales said. “Please, Dkembe. It’s just us. Forget anyone else.”
A smile crossed Dkembe’s face that Erak didn’t know well enough to know was fake.
“You were keen enough to come with me last time, remember?”
Erak’s features crumpled.
“Alright.”
*
MORE TIME PASSED than Dkembe wanted as he hurried them on an unerring course towards the Ascended’s precinct. A pinkish dawn congealed into sky the color of tin foil, but with none of its luster. The charnel block around the fence-enclosed compou
nd was a void for signs of life, the muddy trampled intersection showing nothing but a few parked pick-ups clustered further along the side entrance towards which Dkembe strode, more confident than he felt. Erak trailed behind like a recalcitrant churchgoer and Dkembe had the dark thought, He’ll fit right in.
He gave the surrounding blocks one more scan on their final approach. A two-story brick tenement set a fair distance back across the opposite city block had a banner hanging from the top windows marked by a curiously indistinct symbol, the wind gotten to it so the declaration hung twisted, plastered across the weather-beaten bricks like a tongue. That same breeze picked up even more strongly as Dkembe hit the far sidewalk, carefully pointing the loaded shotgun at the ground, the pavers cracked and broken and muddy.
A lone Ascended guard stood anonymous in his white Klansman garb. The cotton tabard left the man’s arms bare. Sparse gray hairs covered well-fed flesh. Motorcycle gloves up to the elbows added to his post-apocalyptic effect, as did the M4 strapped across his back and the machete dangling from its strap around one black wrist. Bloodshot eyes behind the mask slits watched Dkembe and offered nothing in the way of greeting.
Dkembe halted and squeezed a look past the man and into the back cargo area revealed by the open gate. Flailing winds minimized the stink. It was as much the memory as any fresh stench of chemicals and rotting blood that swept across him as Dkembe hesitated under the hooded man’s impassive eye and Gonzales paused behind, hanging back. The noise from the workers starting their early morning shift echoed, distorted from beyond the compound wall.
“I need to see Martin,” Dkembe said.
After a long moment, the guard’s wrist moved. Nothing more. The machete on its sling dangling gently in wake of the movement. Dkembe glanced once at Erak, spooked, and spooked Gonzales in turn by clearing his throat, awkward, and chancing another look beyond the loading bay.
The Ascended guard did nothing as Dkembe slowly went through. Gonzales looked as if he was thinking really hard about it, but he skipped after Dkembe once he saw his commitment, moving through into the slush-ridden back area, the geography of inner buildings made clear within line of sight across to where the ramp led into the back of those cattle pens so crucial to Tom’s cattle plans now surely in utter ruins . . . or they soon would be.
There was no OK Jay at work that morning. The fatality of it all hung heavy on Dkembe. He bit down on the guilt again as if it might escape him in some kind of anxious, free-for-all collapse if he allowed it. The only option was to master his nerves. Dkembe distracted himself from his own distress by focusing on the nearest of the workers coming in and out of the inner gate off to his left.
“Excuse me!” he called.
A terminally florid, hardbitten woman in a once-reflective pink puffer jacket begrudged him a look as she wrestled out a heavy toolbox. The fortysomething blond nodded with the grunting jut of her bristled jaw.
“Whut?”
“I need to speak with Martin,” Dkembe said.
A distance of about fifteen yards lay between them. The woman returned a dour grimace and for a moment looked like she’d just turn back through the gate and leave him there.
“Not here,” she said instead. “Come back later.”
Dkembe advanced into the back bay where a truck stood. Along his right, between the fence and the first warehouse wall, two more workers wrestled out what looked like a dead antelope they abruptly dropped to the hard-packed ground with looks of disgust as a graying human body rolled out of the parked truck as well. The corpse hit the ground with force and the unpleasant noise carried across the whole courtyard. The woman in pink sniffed, professionally curious. Dkembe and Erak stood midway point between them all, just a few yards short of the ramp up into the roofed cattle yard.
“Dead Fury,” one of the men called across. “Rotted out weeks ago. No use to us.”
“Still gotta unload it,” the woman bawled back.
She stepped across to Dkembe and eyed him up and down. The heavy toolbox in one hand didn’t trouble her as much as it could. The gruff woman’s calculating look unnerved him, but she spoke before Dkembe’s anxious throat-clearing resolved into speech.
“You gotta shuck them guns here,” she said.
Dkembe felt the weight of the Remington as if someone else just put it there.
“Yeah, of course,” he said.
The woman lowered the metal box and held out a hand. She calmly took the shotgun and then looked to Gonzales who sheepishly handed over the Glock.
“Whatchoo want Martin for?”
“It’s important.”
“Repeatin’ myself?”
She didn’t look happy about it. Dkembe buckled.
“It’s about Tom Vanicek,” he said.
Whatever the woman already knew, she kept it a mystery with the air of any old regular worker not getting paid enough for this sort of shit. The best she could manage was a feminine grunt which escaped her as a clear gesture for the pair of them to stay put. Dkembe held his tongue as she trod away up the ramp taking their guns with her.
“Dkembe. . . .”
“Chill, Erak.”
“Chill?” A justified yet petulant sigh escaped the other man. “Dkembe. . . .”
The woman and another Ascended guard reappeared. The woman motioned. By the time they reached her, she’d already gone, bustling back past them to retrieve her toolkit and get on with whatever they’d interrupted. The hooded, blue-eyed guard clutched a fire ax almost casually, and he swiveled on a boot heel the moment he had their attention.
Apparently, the Ascended sentries didn’t speak.
The Apex was a different case. He glided out into the dingy concrete pass that cut to the shed’s inside back wall which was decorated with dead hanging naked light globes and rusting old cattle hooks.
“There is a matter of urgency?” the masked figure said in his light, unaffected singsong.
Nondescript brown eyes regarded Dkembe and Erak through the delicately-stitched eye-holes of the crisp conical mask that covered him like a pope’s regalia, layered on his chest atop a fuller white gown which looked much older and more travel-stained than the headpiece.
“M-master Apex,” Dkembe said like he remembered it. “I’m . . . I’m sorry to intrude on your Cathedral –”
The Apex took a sharp intake of breath Dkembe feared was the trigger for some awful alarm, but instead the tall masked figure raised his arms like a benediction and Dkembe had to force back his panic like the heavy contents of a wardrobe threatening to tumble out opened doors.
“You are welcome,” the Apex said calmly.
His reedy voice took a long pause. The sentry shuffled his feet and it was as if Dkembe could hear the wooden handle of the fire ax creaking in the man’s strong grasp.
“You mentioned Tom Vanicek,” the leader said. “We remember you. What would you tell?”
Now was the moment for his gambit – and Dkembe stalled. The patriarch’s brown eyes fell on him with the weight of centuries as Dkembe stammered and Erak shifted anxiously beside him and it was too late to flee.
“I was . . . was told, Martin said you. . . .”
“Yes?”
Dkembe dropped his eyes and on impulse knelt on the dusty concrete.
“That I could serve,” he said.
The Apex’s apron rustled. Dkembe looked up to see the faceless expression shift from him to Erak and then back again. Erak knelt too, as if for no other reason than to stop his legs shaking, and then it was just both of them, like lambs for the slaughter – and the appropriateness of their setting for such an execution sent adrenalin like fireworks into Dkembe’s skull. His pulse hammered so loud he feared it might knock him out, his nervous system taking over to save the greater organism from disaster. Yet the Apex only touched the tops of each of their heads and blessed them.
“The Hand spoke to you at our behest,” the Apex said. “Stand.”
Dkembe arose, blinking like a coal miner coming back
from weeks underground. Senseless, half-formed syllables choked him and Erak set a hand on his arm as if to save him blacking out.
“Martin said that I . . . already served. . . ?”
“Yes,” the Apex answered carefully. “All serve, even those who do not know it.”
Those haunted brown eyes fell on Dkembe once more.
“The last of Man will be the Ascended,” the Apex said as if tired of his own voice. “Do you think this was the Apocalypse, child? No. It has barely begun. Satan unleashed these terrors on the Earth as his last challenge to the Almighty – and the will of Man. Those who wish for Ascension, among we righteous, must now triumph above all – mastering every dark art, every debasement, all sinfulness, if we are to emerge the victors, unrivalled by the Devil’s kindred.”
That was a lot to take in. Dkembe blinked rapidly as he processed.
“Then how can I. . . ?”
“You already serve,” the Apex said. “You are already my Hand.”
“And my friend too?”
“If he will submit.”
Erak nodded to say he would, no comprehension in him at all.
The Apex returned his linen visage to Dkembe. The mask angled slightly, awaiting the words quiescent within the younger man.
“Martin said . . . the Hands . . . in return, you would. . . .”
“Yes?”
Dkembe’s voice cut out like a sputtering motor.
He was a victim of his own plan now: first surprised that he had one; then breathlessly drawn along in wonder at its execution – and finally seeing now it’d never made sense.
“The girl. . . .” he said.
The hooded Apex watched like a hawk biding its time until the Spring. He stood, cloaked and masked like a museum exhibit, silent and unmoving for so long that the slow, awful souring of the moment congealed into the dread confirmation of everything Dkembe now feared.
After The Apocalypse Season 2 Box Set [Books 4-6] Page 60
