On day six, the Foragers found the remains of a small survivor camp, dozens of tins of dog food and a variety of board games about the only thing worthwhile. Fitz shot a walker in the back garden, possibly the daughter of the family once camped there, stranded now in a backyard swimming pool turned into a swamp. And Hugh shot a pair of wild dogs who trailed the crewmembers hauling gear to the truck from a decrepit gas station, the predators just waiting for a chance to pick someone off. Hugh declined anything to do with the carcasses, but a few of the other workers weren’t so shy. It was no wonder the dogs were circling, sensing their desperation.
The progress of the first week showed Tom just how long the future workload could be, the nervous expectation of each day transformed into drudgery, and his thoughts returned at times to the lone huntsman Jekyll and how the man fared, free and unaccountable somewhere in the wilderness the Columbus city limits had become. Only the cold reality of Tom’s family responsibilities – leavened by his nightly joy, shared with Luke and Lila, at their reunion – kept such hazy fantasies in check.
He found steadfast company with Hugh, Chicago, Miranda, Hsu – even Claypool – an unspoken camaraderie growing between them sufficient for his thoughts to turn from fantasies of escape into quieter contemplations as he went about his duties with Stoic reserve. They ate good, plain hot food every day, mostly chunks of meat in lentils, and on one afternoon soaked their gravy with fresh bread rolls Tucker won on the team’s behalf from the supply admins, which only elevated his legend further.
The work was bearable, but it was rapidly becoming clear that continuing on in the Foragers served the shambolic function of the City well, but Tom not so much. His son’s hollowed eyes troubled him in the evening as he remembered the grip of tiredness working a day job could bring, undermining Tom’s best efforts to hold his family together through presence alone. As the days passed, his disquiet faded, but not for the better, replaced instead with the growing conviction of his own enslavement, raw knuckle drudgery spiced with the odd moment of adrenalin replacing the uncertainty of survival on the road with Lilianna and Lucas during the past two years.
And he started to think about how best to play the angles to fast-track him and his children into the better life the City’s founders promised.
*
THERE WAS A bookstore in the small commercial center serving a half-finished suburban development. Tom spent an hour in there standing on a carpet of volumes pushed from their shelves, but otherwise perfectly well preserved. Miranda had already marked the store for a complete clear-out, the books of use to someone in the City, and Tom pocketed a few titles for himself, and then some others he thought might appeal to the children – or at least classics like Less Than Zero, The Collector, The Hatchet, Fahrenheit 451, Animal Farm, and Fight Club that might do a lot more for their education than Luke’s daily lessons in cabinetry, building electrical circuits, or World War Two history. The School’s volunteer teachers – paid the same one-stamp-a-day ration as their students – taught whatever they knew, and as long as no one got killed or badly hurt, for now the Council let them do as they liked, half the instructors with disabilities or unrecovered wounds keeping them from more useful work.
The Foragers ran an eight-day roster, with a lavish two days off for rest. On the second-last day of his first swing, Tom returned bone tired from a day removing thousands of unpacked reams of photocopy paper from an office supplies store next to the bookstore fronting a fire-ravaged estate and left wondering if there weren’t more crucial uses for their time. The City sent three ethanol-powered trucks to carry the surplus home, but the vehicle returning Tom and his team blew a tire driving over loose bricks scattered across the road, and it was almost nine o’clock by the time he trudged wearily past the First Gates and the Night Market on his way home.
Dr Swarovsky appeared alongside him wearing a fashionable summer jacket, slacks and heeled boots, a satchel slung over one shoulder, a cardboard cup filled with noodles steaming with salvaged spice.
“Doctor, you’re out late,” he said and smiled tightly, unsure of how to play the tone.
“I could say the same for you.”
“Truck had a mishap coming home,” he said. “I’m late.”
“I think I just encountered the same thing, but it was a City Council meeting.”
Tom nodded, smiled. The market was behind them now and the tranquility of the street took over quickly. Only a night light burnt outside the bike shop, the shutters bolted firm, and a quick scan confirmed a faint light in the living room window of his upper-story flat.
Swarovsky yawned tightly into her fist as they crossed the corner, a few people moving about still, but with the day’s urgency well and truly gone.
“I would offer you to come up for a drink, Tom, but I don’t think I would be much company,” she said in a half-hearted tone of apology. “I’m too tired, sorry.”
Tom shrugged. No biggie.
“A drink would be good though,” he said as if surprising himself.
The doctor didn’t take up the subtle suggestion – not that she missed it, or missed anything much.
“The Vixen should just be opening up,” Swarovsky said. “Its owner was at Council too.”
Tom’s recent invitation from Magnus popped into mind. His suggestion about a drink was to see if the good doctor was still keen to get to know him, but her lack of uptake was a bum note barely distracting him from the usual torsion he felt in those last moments on returning home. The idea of actual recreation was as foreign to him as anything else. Separation anxiety trumped almost everything else these days, and he let the doctor off the hook at her landing, not much heat in their parting, after which he tramped quickly up the stairs to knock so his daughter would let him in.
But it wasn’t needed.
The door was splintered at the lock and an unmistakable boot print marked the faded laminate. The door hung slightly ajar, so Tom let himself in, hurrying into the open kitchen usually the halfway point at which his children rushed to him as well.
Tonight, Lila stood anxious in the kitchen already, cross-armed and with a thumbnail between her teeth. Lucas stood from one of the adjacent living room chairs, a dark, angry look covering for the obvious fear in him.
“They took everything,” Lilianna said.
“We were robbed?”
“Yeah.”
“We weren’t here, dad.”
“I should’ve been home guarding our stuff,” Lucas spat.
Tom had to see for himself, sleepwalking as he did it, checking the pantry to confirm the parcels of flour, rice and beans, as well as their poor stock of vegetables, were gone as well. His family had finished the meat, and traded corn flour for whatever the woman lied outright about when she sold them chicken. That was now gone from the “freezer” too. Likewise, several items of clothing, which apparently included Lilianna’s jacket.
“Shit,” Tom said. “Have either of you eaten?”
“I couldn’t eat that shit at classes today,” Luke said.
Tom noted the cuss word, and that it followed one of his own. He studied his son’s silently furious expression and shifted to Lila, something shaken up within her too.
“Is that the worst of it?” he asked.
“It hasn’t been a good day.”
Lilianna started to sob and Tom moved to comfort her before even thinking about it, the girl burrowing into him and not so much crying as exhaling frantically into her father’s chest.
“I’ve got to get out of the Orphanage,” she said after another minute.
Tom guided her into the living room and squeezed Luke’s shoulder. They sat as one, Lucas after a few seconds joining Tom on the other side of the sofa.
“I thought you were getting some value in there. . . ?”
“I can’t do it anymore.”
She wiped her eyes. Tom didn’t think she’d say anything further, but she did.
“An eight-year-old killed herself today.”
She exhaled slow and deliberately the way Tom had taught them, the only thing saving him from concern at the robotic expression in her voice.
“Found a way up onto the roof and threw herself off.”
“Jesus.”
They sat with that for a minute. Lilianna started to cry more gently.
Lucas fumed a moment more, then stabbed his eyes at his father as if in accusation.
“It was Dkembe who robbed us,” he said.
“No,” Lilianna said at once.
“It’s his boot mark on the door.”
“Really?”
Tom instinctively looked back down the short hallway even though it was pointless, turning back at the end of his arc to refocus on his son.
“That’s a big jump, Lucas,” he said. “We don’t really have a lot to go on. Dkembe didn’t strike me that way.”
“Not at all,” Lila said.
“Jesus, dad,” Lucas said and sniffled a moment too. “Why don’t you trust me anymore?”
“What?” Tom blinked at him, feeling like he’d been slapped. “Where did that come from?”
“It’s the same type of boot he wore.”
“Lucas. Luke,” Tom said. “That’s . . . how could you know that for sure?”
They grew aware of the door creaking open behind them. Dr Swarovsky moved into the apartment carrying a candle in a glass holder.
“Are you alright?” she asked. “Someone slipped a note under my door telling me you were burgled.”
“Neighborhood watch,” Tom said with an unhappy laugh.
“No, it was . . . me,” Lila said.
Swarovsky looked around.
“I don’t keep much in my larder,” she said. “And if you promise not to mention it to others, I have a spare bedroom with two beds. Lucas and Lila are fine to stay with me tonight.”
The doctor said it more to them than to their father, though there was a faint, perhaps wry smile when she did look at him.
“Probably not enough for you though, Tom, I’m sorry,” she said. “I imagine you would want to sleep here tonight to guard your things anyway and work on securing that door.”
Tom opened his mouth only to realize he didn’t have a lot to say.
“There’s some kind of . . . procedure for this?”
He motioned at the apartment, the burglary implicit.
“Yes, you should make a report,” Swarovsky dully said.
“Doesn’t sound promising.”
“If you have some sort of evidence, you need to gather that yourself,” she said. “Security is tied up in more crucial work.”
“So there’s no . . . police?”
“Not in the way you are thinking,” the doctor replied. “I told you, you have to guard yourself closely here. It’s not perfect. Generally, the passive surveillance of so many people in close confines reduces the bulk of major crimes, the sorts of things people did to each other out there.”
Swarovsky thumbed towards the door, something jarring in her gesture for Tom, confronted with the contradictions of two such different worlds as they overlapped vividly all at once in his thoughts.
“Ivan and a few of the other tenants are with the Red Armbands,” she said. “You could try them, but of course . . . people here have a way of finding their own justice.”
The doctor’s heavy statement captured everything about the all-pervasive threat Tom still felt, like an itch at the back of his neck, so many imagined eyes all around him in the City he was left feeling raw and exposed.
“It could’ve been worse,” he said. “We haven’t claimed any rations in three days. We can restock.”
“Most people trade their hard rations with street traders, the eateries and such,” Swarovsky said. “Unless you want to live on hard rations all the time.”
“And have someone take them away,” Lucas said.
Swarovsky’s eyes lit on the boy, either surprised at his churlish tone or perhaps that he so directly understood the realities of the City. She defused the moment with a sideswipe of her gaze towards the children’s father.
“Sounds like you have things in hand, Tom,” she said. “The children are fine with me.”
Her gaze settled on him, becalmed, the first stirring of what was perhaps her trademark underplayed smirk.
“You should go have that drink,” she said.
*
IT WASN’T THE doctor’s orders. Despite work looming on the morrow, Tom felt restless and frustrated, activated by the new and unwelcome striations in his family dynamic and the prospect of a steep learning curve in coping with it all.
Lilianna was clearly drawn to Dr Swarovsky for unknown reasons, though the death of her own mother almost three years before was reason enough. And Lucas, whatever his earlier warmth towards the woman, he now trailed the doctor to the door inscrutable and fierce with his own inner turmoil.
A degree of Tom’s exhaustion lifted with their departure and he sat alone almost guiltily, glad for the relief, eyeing the splintered doorway, their meager remaining things in the bedroom they continued to share. The memory, even the thought of the dead Scotsman Skirts so ferociously reborn and then slain again guaranteeing to keep the front room vacant for some time.
“Fuck it.”
He stashed his gear, still wearing the tool belt as he slipped on his poorly-repaired green hunting jacket and headed down into the night.
The market was gearing down, Einstein’s still open, a few other traders illuminated with tiny globes and Chinese lanterns powered by the wheezing generator a collective subset of the stallholders kept running on kitchen oil and scavenged biofuels. Tom short-cut through like so many did to reach The Mile itself. The streets would be quiet until first light and Curfew lifted, but The Dirty Vixen beckoned a few hundred yards further along despite the looming Citywide deadline.
Named for its electric-lit sign of a devil-horned ‘50s film starlet, red light and shadows spilled from one narrow doorway marking the bar’s occupancy of a former wide-fronted brick microbrewery. The glass shopfronts were bolted over with battleship armor hung with necklaces of more small red and sometimes bare-naked heart-shaped globes. The entrance boasted further heavy-duty reinforcement, its open door metal-studded like something medieval.
The bar was decently lit within, or at least by post-apocalyptic standards. Magnus obviously had a penchant for mood lighting, and glass-shuttered lanterns rested either end of a gleaming bar. There was a disappointing array of bottles on the shelves behind it, in among a thousand-and-one curiosities and knickknacks, but plenty of clean glasses sat in plastic tubs on the floor behind. Stools fronted the counter. There were only four enclosed booths. Otherwise, Magnus had deliberately kept seating to a minimum, creating an intimate vibe. A doorway hid a possible kitchen, and as the main room narrowed towards the back, there was a second door, this one padlocked and with PRIVATE burnt into the wood.
The man himself tended the bar. He smiled broadly, looking peaceful as Tom walked in and performed the inevitable scan. Six Citizens sat in the booths and a man and a handsome-looking woman occupied the other end of the bar.
“Howdy,” Magnus said.
He grinned as he made like a cliché and picked up a glass tankard and dishcloth.
“You have to imagine the music.”
Tom managed a smile, glancing down at the bar as he set his hands on it and looked up again at their host. Age had made impressive little impact on his otherwise glowing features, Magnus’ carefully clipped beard almost white, his thinning, wavy hair styled to look less deliberate than it was.
“College professor turned barkeep, huh?”
“Not just any college, too,” Magnus said and smiled so that it was somehow without ego. “Published author, poet. I was even getting around to doing a podcast.”
“Sounds like you really made it,” Tom said.
“I promised you a drink,” Magus replied and smiled more tightly, like he was getting down to business even though they both had the sens
e a conversation loomed between them.
“Check out the chalkboard behind me for items I’ll trade,” he said. “Plus it lists the drinks, which is always handy in an establishment like this.”
“Shady establishment?”
“I try to run a tight ship,” Magnus said. “Does that sound authentic? I’m still trying to get the tone right. What did you use to do . . . er, Tom, right?”
“Lots of stuff.”
“Ha,” Magnus said and produced two smaller glasses. “Just tell me one.”
Tom exhaled through his nostrils to conceal the moment’s pause, neither disclosure nor dishonesty his intention.
“The last few years, before the Emergency, I was spending more and more time with troubled young people,” he said finally.
“Not your own, I trust?”
“No, them too.”
“I see,” Magnus said. “That’s cool. I could use a therapist. Surprisingly hard to find in this place.”
Magnus poured them each a shot of a nasty liqueur as he voluntarily outlined his own unabashedly fortunate tale of survival. He was a miserably unhappy tenured philosophy professor with a book in him he didn’t know how to write, which made the apocalypse almost a welcome relief, Magnus joked with a twinkle in his eye. He lived on campus at the time, courtesy of his second divorce, and when students and teachers started turning on each other, he and a few dozen others bunkered down and rode out the first weeks of turbulence. During the months after, they turned the abandoned university into a sustainable village.
“I was only on the road during all of this for about three months total,” he said and shrugged. “That’s why I have such good skin, lalala. I heard about this place almost at once, headed here, arrived just before last winter. Man. Brrr.”
After The Apocalypse Season 1 Box Set Page 16
