“No,” he said.
And he grabbed her around the waist with one hand and pulled her into him, throwing himself into the oblivion of the hope she would return it, then thrilled and shocked and strangely nervous when she did. Iwa pressed her slim leg and hip into him and Tom felt a hardness arise at once that seemed as alien to his life during the last few years as almost anything else so far.
Their lips locked and he tasted her delicate sweetness, but the doctor broke off the passionate kiss before Tom could go full postal, his other hand encircling her opposite hip and sliding down over her ass.
It wasn’t as if prudishness drove Iwa’s abrupt retreat. She wore a pleased look that was nothing about her pleasure, and everything about Tom once again proving himself a man of action.
“That was unexpected,” she said and almost tasted herself.
“‘Expect the unexpected’,” Tom said and smiled with intent. “That’s one of the things they used to say too.”
An entire conversation he could imagine having with her right at that moment paraded through his thoughts like a flash fiction version of his life flashing before his eyes. Whether it was Iwa’s evasive seduction, Hugh’s diatribe from the previous night, or ongoing thoughts about his daughter’s safety, none of it was the correct counterpoint to their first kiss. The doctor cut it short and it was on Tom not to let it trouble him.
“I wanted to ask you something,” he said like a tease himself.
“Yes?”
Iwa struggled to keep the anticipation from her eyes, and for his part, Tom had to suppress a Cheshire Cat’s grin at fueling her disappointment.
“A few streets over, everyone’s growing their own greens, keeping chickens, you name it,” Tom said. “Why’s no one doing that here? Lilianna’s at least growing spring onions in our living room.”
Iwa was a cool customer. She retrieved her lowered baggage and casually turned to indicate her willingness for Tom to follow her downstairs, which he did, delaying long enough to enjoy a quick profile view as the doctor swept down to the lobby, murky thoughts and counter-thoughts in Tom’s mind about what his children would make of his predicament.
“There’s a good reason it’s different here compared to deeper in,” Iwa said as she led him away from the front door, a service entrance beckoning between two of the ground floor apartment doors and headed out the back.
“There’s a few good reasons, actually,” she said. “We’re in closer proximity to The Mile, and like in Brown Town and around the Enclave, these were some of the earliest areas settled in the reconstruction.”
The trade door opened into a fairly pathetic outside courtyard enclosed by a single-rank brick wall that’d collapsed in one section some time ago, giving easy access into the back of another small tent village and what smelled like their untreated, pit-dug latrine.
“Jesus,” Tom said. “That smell.”
“Not the least of the discouragements,” Iwa said. “You should ask the people on those other streets how they keep anything outdoors secure. Your previous tenants, the people who lived here before, they tried to keep a goose locked up out here. It didn’t last a day.”
“Anything to do with those kids out in the street, the Urchins?” Tom asked. “Or should we ask this mysterious insider you were talking about earlier?”
The doctor shrugged, disinterest an understatement.
“Shame,” Tom said. “Seems like it could be a productive space.”
“More power to you, Tom,” she said. “I’ve got a train to catch.”
She turned to leave, but stopped once she was in the door as if committing the sight of him to memory.
“Nice haircut, by the way,” she said. “Let me know how you get on?”
Tom only smiled.
*
THE MILE WAS pulsing busier than ever, and Tom found himself missing his wristwatch already, though it was easily replaced if he wanted, teenage hustlers and a crazed-looking, much older woman in a bikini top using her naked dugs as a gimmick to haul in bystanders to admire the row of timepieces on display up and down her scrawny arm. A loudspeaker played the day’s music, donated by a Japanese guy with a gas-powered wok stir frying damned near anything anyone traded him, an old-school ghetto blaster with its innards exposed mounted behind him like the eagle standard of some forgotten Roman legion. Two women sweltering in their flak jackets forced their way through, leading a line of children roped together for their own safety, if not for everyone else, and a tall skinny black guy clattered past on stilts, purpose uncertain, but only reinforcing the sometimes-carnivalesque atmosphere of the place.
Tom navigated between an African hair braider, a legless man offering competitive chess, more homemade soap and candle-makers, a gold-trading stall, and past a carpet-lined booth offering well-maintained antiquities of the recent past like iPods and pocket calculators and ribbon-fed typewriters and alarm clocks and ever more wristwatches; and after that, more than one flaccid woman pressing into him with offers of sex before he finally found the shortcut Hugh had shown him. He slipped through, craning his neck around as if checking for his safety as he reached the stall housing the radio display. It was early still, and flaps of green Army canvas hung down, blocking any signs of life. Fortunately, the old coot who also called the tent his nightly bedchamber sat on a stool perched over a rivulet of dirty water running through the buckled sidewalk, using it for his morning shave.
“Hey, old timer,” he said and immediately wondered if he’d played it wrong, sounding like he was in a Western.
The dude with the straight razor didn’t seem to mind. He mismanaged a small mirror in one hand Tom now saw was twisted like a dog’s paw, the skin tanned with some old injury. He glanced up at Tom and stood with relative haste, sensing a potential customer.
“You come back lookin’ for me, pal?” he asked and craned his neck and shielded himself against the morning sun. “Looking for a lost one? Holdin’ onto that hope? There’s stories out there, friend.”
To make his point, the old man peeled back the first of the canvas flaps and secured it, giving a dingy view onto the slumbering old-world machinery within.
“Gotta pay to play,” the trader said. “What you got?”
“I’m not here for the radios,” Tom said. “Someone said you had old cables? Got a . . . computer I’m trying to power up.”
“Universal power cords? Sure.”
The man fastened another flap open, picking up his shaving kit and carrying it into the musty tent, a bedroll still laid out in one corner of the ten-by-fifteen-foot space. There was movement along the back of the canvas, beyond the several shelves of dusty telecommunications equipment and shortwave radios, but the old coot didn’t seem fazed, nor did Tom once he kenned the voice of whoever passed for backyard neighbors in such a place.
“You don’t ever get sick of living here, right on The Mile?”
“I’m rollin’ solo,” the man said as if that might be a surprise to Tom, who kept sarcastic comments to himself.
“Need fuel for my generator,” the man said. “Got anything like that?”
“A couple of AA batteries.”
“As if that’s any help,” the man said. “I’m Montgomery Stewart, by the by.”
“Tom Vanicek.”
Paranoia alone tempted Tom to give a false name, but old Monty didn’t bat an eyelid at the mention and – not that it was based on much statistical evidence – Tom was glad he hadn’t acquired himself a public profile yet. Just another reason he felt justified using Delroy Earle’s own tools against him. As Tom knew himself from long ago, reporters were inherently vulnerable to sources more than willing to play free range with the truth.
Tom motioned to the shortwaves, which were just a few of the options stall visitors had in Monty’s electronic emporium.
“Tell me straight, does anyone get any hits on these?” he asked.
The old man eyed the equipment with a speculative mien and shrugged.
“There’s people out there, man.”
“That’s not what I’m asking,” Tom said.
“Not everyone dropped their cocks and grabbed their socks to rush here, you know,” Monty said. “People come here tryin’ to get news – the kind you can’t get in the newspaper.”
The Raptor crash and its numerous insubstantial implications were foremost in Tom’s mind as he considered the old man and wondered how on earth he could make a living from such guesswork.
“What about . . . other places like this?” he asked.
“Cities?” Monty replied.
“Cities or . . . you ever wonder about all the Government bunkers, the military, people like that? What happened to ‘em?”
“This place started from an Air Force base,” Monty said. “Whole communities uprooted themselves to come here . . . but not all of ‘em.”
“Yeah,” Tom agreed. “So wouldn’t places like that show up on the shortwave?”
“Not if they don’t wanna be found.”
Montgomery motioned him towards a metal trunk. He had a collection of them, in fact. He knelt easily enough, spry for a man kicking it close to seventy, or at least he looked that way in “zombie years,” as Tom’s kids would say it. One of the lockboxes was eel-dark with various electrical cables, and Monty quickly prized a laptop cable obviously compatible with the device hidden in Tom’s bathroom. The sight sent a quiet thrilled through him, coupled with a subtle anxiousness that crept into his bowels at the same time.
“I got a can of beans with your name on it,” Tom said.
He produced said can from his shoulder pack, not expecting Montgomery to look unimpressed, then immediately annoyed with himself for thinking it’d be any other way.
“Jesus,” Tom snapped. “What’s that look for?”
“You gotta do better’n that, kid.”
“You got a lot of demand for those old power cables, huh?”
“It’s a cord, not a cable,” Monty said.
“Whatever.”
“Don’t think you understand the value what you got in your hand there,” the stallholder said.
The remark confused Tom for a second – and then he realized he’d already taken possession of the black cord, curling it around his wrist like a giant strap of licorice, the faded tin of beans in his other hand.
“Old parts like them mightn’t be much use to many people,” Montgomery said. “They still got valuable wires and stuff hidden inside ‘em. Guys with solderin’ irons always passin’ through here askin’ if they can take ‘em. They don’t wanna pay much either, huh.”
Tom had no idea why he’d brought it with him except his security on the homefront was so poor, at least until he fixed his front door, but now he finally clued into his own unconscious wisdom as he retrieved the remaining lozenge of Hugh’s neighbor’s honeycomb and prepared to say goodbye to his hopes for a honey-sweetened coffee at shift’s end.
“Here,” Tom said. “A sweet treat. That and the beans. All I’ve got for now if you’re not in the market for batteries.”
Montgomery’s eyes lit up like the proverbial kid in the candy store. Although the small chunk of honeycomb was stuck with a piece of paper napkin and half-covered in lint, he took it anyway, welcoming the beans Tom now felt like he’d thrown in gratis. It was damned hard to judge the barter economy and he’d a feeling if he didn’t catch up soon, winter could prove long – and maybe even fatal.
He stuffed the electrical cord into his pack and hurried back the way he’d come.
*
TOM WAS ALONE in the apartment, still with just enough time to plot an intersect with MacLaren if the gay ex-soldier still used the dreaded Human Resources building as his 8am base. There was no time for more coffee anyway, and eating fell by the wayside too as he pulled out the computer and set it down on the coffee table and plugged in the cable, confident it would fit, then plugging it into a socket in the wall.
He waited all of three seconds before trading a look between the laptop, the cord connection, and then the socket he’d switched on, before he slapped his own forehead and collapsed backwards in the seat.
“What the fuck were you thinking, asshole?”
The solitary voiced rebuke hung over him just as palpable as the mildewed curtains, two planks of plastic board on house bricks behind him elevating Lilianna’s optimistic greenhouse as close as it could manage to the light.
Past professional training wouldn’t let him ignore the chagrined expression locking his jaws apart, literally if not just metaphorically finding it hard to swallow his own idiocy. His children had already joked about him making sure all the sockets were switched off, and obviously old habits died hard, even after five years of apocalypse. Now he sat there, alone with his own embarrassment and sense of humiliation, and pondering just how deeply the ghost world of the fallen years could pervade his expectations that he was so focused on the cable, he took the means to power it like some sort of magical given.
Still not able to settle himself, Tom once more broke down the equipment and stashed the cable with the laptop back in its hiding place.
The next solution would have to wait. It was time to get to work.
*
TOM JOGGED THE last distance to the squat Human Resources building, conscious as he approached there wasn’t a truck in sight. Fortunately, there was a pair of them parked down the side entrance and he spotted MacLaren manhandling a couple of the day’s recruits onto the back of the closest vehicle.
“Do you come here to sign up the leftovers every day?”
MacLaren grinned seeing Tom, walking to meet him and shaking hands.
“I can always use an extra pair of hands, especially one good with a gun.”
The handsome MacLaren winked at Tom, a caricature of his own ribald intentions even if he knew nothing but friendship looked likely.
“I heard you took out a pair of bad guys the other day.”
“Word travels fast, huh?”
“Not so much,” MacLaren said. “But sometimes. I used to crew with Fitz. Told me you saved their hide. Councilor’s too, huh?”
“Yeah, they’re giving me a medal.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” the bearded man said and laughed.
“Reclaimers working today?”
“Always,” MacLaren replied. “You working your weekends off the Foragers?”
“I’m looking for extra work, if the pay’s the same rate as last time.”
Tom was pleased with his evasion of the question, but not so much in the pause on his friend’s face.
“Best I can offer today’s two ticks,” he said. “Reclaimers do all sorts of duties. The depot job’s gone into the next phase. We’re on garbage escort today.”
“Garbage escort?”
“Outside the gates,” MacLaren said. “Don’t worry. I’ve got a ticket for three more rifles.”
The former commando eyed up the longbow slung over Tom’s burly shoulder, the same side as the backpack, the quiver belted low for ease of access and secured at the small of his back.
“Or don’t you need one?”
“No need to double up,” Tom answered. “I could’ve claimed my semiauto back, but Admins snatched the bullets. Standard practice, they tell me.”
“Yes sir,” MacLaren agreed. “Let’s hope we don’t need them anyway. Come on. We’ll be safe enough outside the City.”
*
TOM WAS MINDFUL MacLaren previously confessed to losing his nerve outside the safe, regular work his Reclaimer team performed. He seemed chipper enough, today but his frequent reassurances about keeping safe outside the sanctuary zone were clearly ill-aimed with that past discussion in mind. Tom discerned a bright nervousness about him, who even to a straight man like Tom, seemed unnecessarily photogenic in the early light as he hustled everyone else into the trucks with his handsome smile and declined to ride the cab so he could clamber up in the back of the lead vehicle and join Tom with a meager half-dozen newbie-tagged recruit
s looking out over the district as they traversed it with now-familiar dull looks equal parts fear and fatigue.
The convoy only went as far as the First Gates, driving in along the Boundary Road via Brown Town, the place with its village of parked buses and neighborhood market he’d walked through with Tucker only the day before. The trucks pressed slowly through the crowds of The Mile, going slow before pulling into the terminal courtyard, a line of wagons with horses and several dozen garbage workers idling half a football field away on the far side from Speaker’s Corner and the route to Tom’s home.
“We’re on foot from here,” MacLaren said.
“Not worth the fuel bill?”
“Exactly,” MacLaren said. “Just a little walk in the sunshine, all along the freeway.”
He jumped from the back of the truck and Tom copied him slightly more carefully, slowly stretching his upper body as the other workers milled around while MacLaren went off into a confab with whoever led the trash collectors. A supervisor from the gates plotted a trajectory to join them, and then Tom was distracted by the tall shadow of Kent, the good-hearted Pacific Islander guy who was a regular on MacLaren’s Reclaimers missions.
“Hey brother, heard you got in some bang-bang, yeah?”
“Jeez,” Tom said. “Et tu, Kent?”
The big man chuckled, throwing his wedge-nosed face up like an Easter Island statue come to life, completely surprising Tom by launching into a baritone rendition of some old song that Tom didn’t recognize at all until he recognized the Country and Western rendition of Tommy Gun by The Clash.
*
THERE WERE TWELVE men and three women in MacLaren’s gang tasked with escorting fifteen wagons and more than thirty mostly scrawny, bedraggled-looking men and women eking out a life for themselves as the City’s garbage disposal unit under the somewhat high-flown Department of Sanitation tag. As trash collectors, none of them were armed, and like the half-dozen newcomers on MacLaren’s squad for the day, many of the low-paid workers sported plastic wrist tags denoting their newcomer status.
After The Apocalypse Season 1 Box Set Page 26
