Kent, MacLaren, a guy named Filipe, and a pasty-looking Irish woman called Bess were assigned the company’s rifles, two of them older-model M16s. Tom declined to feel ridiculous carrying his ancestral bow, re-tensioning the string while the First Gates cranked open and the long and slow-moving caravan got on the road. MacLaren’s team left the trucks parked beside the gates, the sentries on the grandiose lookout tower needlessly training their guns on them as they headed outside the sanctuary zone on foot at the end of the convoy.
Their unit leader fell into step alongside Tom as they exited the City.
“Are you still sure about the rifles?” MacLaren asked.
“No point doubling up,” Tom said. “This is a safe-enough gig, yeah?”
“Just a stroll along the freeway,” the other man replied. “Here.”
MacLaren pulled a pair of binoculars from a motorcycle saddle bag he’d taken from the cab of the lead truck. There were a couple more of the devices inside.
“Lookout duty, that’s what this mostly is,” the commander said. “We go for a little trot down the motorway and keep an eye out for bogies while the trashmen do their thing.”
The binoculars were capped. Tom hung them around his neck and otherwise ignored them, humming quietly to himself as MacLaren took that as his cue to move further along the line, having a word with the other Reclaimers now on escort duty.
Outside the First Gates, High Street became an overpass with inherited zombie-proof fencing, designed for simpler times to thwart motorists and the occasional suicide tumbling into the sunken freeway below. Tom was again struck by the medieval feel of the grimy twenty-story office blocks at the other end of the caged avenue looking back across at the sanctuary zone like abandoned fortifications more suited to an ancient time other than the late Twenty-First Century consumer capitalism which spawned them as well as the suspended walkway connecting them either side of the avenue. The dead freeways, crisscrossing beneath the overpass, were preternaturally clear, and not by any accident. Some serious time and effort had gone into moving the rusting shells of the forgotten gridlock, transforming once hectic markers of the past apocalypse into a series of fortified embankments through which the garbage convoy would eventually pass, but not until they’d navigated across the other side.
“Look alert!” MacLaren yelled out from up ahead.
Tom wondered if even a shouted warning was wise, given their situation. Of course, just beyond those gates now easing shut behind them, the City threw up a background susurrus as likely to attract the risen dead as anything. Sentinels athwart the First Gates kept the approach to their crucial barricade well and truly surveilled, with even the corpses of the occasional snipered Fury cleared away because of the perennial superstition the dead only drew more of them.
The wagons and their placid steeds jostled, clinked and whistled slightly as the caravan progressed. At the far end of the sheltered avenue, the expressway fencing gave out. Another methodical fortress of abandoned wrecks was stacked wall-to-wall across where High Street continued past what street signs named Fulton Avenue, beckoning away into the deeper recesses of Columbus as yet unclaimed by the reconstruction effort. Instead, Kent took up a position on a sheltered curb, waving the wagon convoy along even though everyone seemed to know their part to play in the weekly ritual, the lead horses and cart turning right, Tom maudlin and nostalgic at the same time eyeing the huge green signs for Cleveland hanging overhead amid a latticework of light poles and street signs it staggered him to think humanity once had such enterprise to erect almost everywhere, the days when dodging gridlock and shaving five minutes off your commute seemed about life’s greatest priority.
Here, again, taken-for-granted reclamation work secured the northern boundary between the decrepit office buildings. MacLaren came to a casual stop, he and several of his team forming a quick defensive unit in a pause between the storefronts and office blocks where an open parking lot had long-since overgrown, the tapestry of unwelcome foliage offering cover for imagined threats – thankfully none of which materialized.
MacLaren shot Tom a sarcastic salute and followed with a wink. Unsure of the territory here – in more ways than one – Tom managed the ironic smirk his response required, giving into his nerves and nocking an arrow to the bow he carried otherwise inert, following the convoy as it veered slowly right, across the intersection, a view of the boundary wall east of where his own home lay now coming back into view as the wagons took the short detour to the off-ramp.
More slowly than Tom would’ve believed possible for such a well-worn route, the convoy of fifteen loaded wagons made the descent with the occasional scraps of garbage falling uncared for onto the pitted roadway as they moved down into the valley floor of the freeway and the sanctuary walls rose higher over their heads until the point they were obscured from sight.
The great roadways never seemed more obvious in their function as arteries now that they traveled through the corpse of the city as a necropolis, the absence of life and the eerie wrongness of going against what would’ve once been the flow of traffic plucking at Tom’s instincts like a nagging aunt.
He kept his eyes sharp, as he’d been told – not that such warnings were necessary. He remembered Dan MacLaren’s own confessions, and not for the first time since he’d come to Columbus, trepidation about the dangers of the outside world seemed in no way weird. The only weirdness was how he’d lived so long in it, and that a part of him, at least, still craved the wide open spaces he’d grown to fear. The claustrophobia of the ruined city – so many square miles of uncharted, unprotected civilization now sunken into a ruin of hiding places and dead ends – only highlighted the incipient madness of the City’s overall enterprise: its achievement forever distinct against the chaos it sought to reclaim.
The slip road was crowded by more greenery, spilling unchecked now amid the ruins of more automobiles simply pushed aside to clear a path to the City’s designated dumping ground, and here, a rifle shot’s distance from the wrong side of the boundary walls, efforts to scour the land of traces of the dead had surrendered. Tom was a veteran of the decayed suburbs and dead-end towns between Columbus and Knoxville, and no stranger to the way such banked-up, otherwise so seemingly ordinary scenes remained a window into the past – not just the dead, rusting, weed-encrusted automobiles, but the detritus of the fallen age in such riotous and violent display. The desiccated remains of corpses showing what happened when left in the open for five years were bad enough. Displayed for all to see amid the burst and looted suitcases and carry bags along the roadside – the long-lived trappings of that time, back when humanity considered its future safe – had now fulfilled their prophecies of non-biodegradability.
It was heartbreaking, if one still had a heart for such things, to see the unintended mementos of a lifetime looted and discarded and piled up with all the other mess – broken plastics, children’s backpacks and strollers, bicycles, food wrappers, books, household goods, tattered shoes and old clothing turned to muck by the passage of time and the elements.
MacLaren caught up to Tom and motioned at the occasional gap in the scenes as they trudged past them, the roadway evening out as it stretched open ahead while angling slightly north away from the still out-of-view City walls.
“This is where we scavenged a lot of our trucks, or at least took them for parts,” MacLaren said. “You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff we found in the early days, locked in the back of some of these wrecks. Looters weren’t up to scratch, that’s for sure.”
Tom nodded and pretty much ignored the comment.
“You said before, about things turning ugly?” he said instead. “What did you mean?”
“The winter was pretty tough.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“And what have you heard about the rations?”
“Nothing,” Tom said. “What do you mean?”
MacLaren didn’t say anything for a moment, their transit bringing them towards a fenced overpass
and the briefest of views of the City walls much further now to the south than Tom expected. With a mind to their safety first and foremost, MacLaren’s reply turned into an elongated pause as he checked behind them, the pair in the middle of the convoy, and then Tom thought he spied movement up ahead and above. The overpass was choked with abandoned vehicles presumably left in place as another safety measure for wherever it connected to the sanctuary zone, but when he tried scanning the elevated view with the binoculars as they approached it, he couldn’t find any signs of life – Fury or otherwise.
They’d traveled about half a mile by then, and at the point where the convoy’s route started towards the next exit ramp, someone had forced through the concrete crash barricade separating them from the far side of the freeway. Dirty tire marks showed in a vast wash of dirt and mud marking the road, cutting across the road surface and leading into a cleared gap in the thick wall of trees and free-flowing greenery on the far side of the route and up the embankment, plunging through a broken chain-link fence to reveal what at first looked like a construction site in front of a complex of enormous buildings so obviously a hospital and ancillary wings that Tom didn’t even bother confirming in a scan of its signage. He was still disturbed by the haunting quality of the interstate signs for Cleveland, exhuming sense memories of struggles on such similar freeways to this that Tom questioned whether he still had the nerve for such outings, MacLaren’s own private demons regardless.
MacLaren spoke again once the shadow of the overpass was behind them and the convoy ahead started its slow ascent away from the hospital buildings. On higher ground, Tom would get a glimpse of new fencing surrounding the site – one of numerous City projects to reinvigorate or otherwise just exhume the value in the world’s abandoned technology – but for now it was MacLaren’s words demanding focus.
“There’s a whisper going ‘round Foragers aren’t bringing in enough to help keep the system afloat.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Tom said. “My last shift, we spent a day hauling office supplies. Photocopy paper and stuff like that.”
“Can’t feed people with office supplies.”
“You can’t feed people just hoping to live off the dead.”
MacLaren frowned, unclear at Tom’s meaning, so he explained by way of another question.
“You’re telling me the rations supply, that’s all down to the Foragers?”
“The Council’s done some good work, getting the farms up and running, orchards, plenty of people with private enterprise,” MacLaren said. “But it’s not enough. Not on its own. And some of the land . . . it’s going to take years before it starts producing.”
“So they’re planning for a bright future. . . ?”
“But there’s plenty people worried about right now,” MacLaren said. “City’s under enough pressure as it is, and now we’re hearing there’s raiders hitting pilgrims coming in from the north. Something’s gotta be done. Something more, I mean. Enough debate.”
Tom chewed on that as they walked, scanning around behind him from their fresh elevation as the off-ramp curled slowly towards a network of turnpikes, a spaghetti junction ahead of them floating above a landscape of riotous green. From their higher position, he had a view across more of the guts of old Columbus, the way to the north increasingly open, nature having its revenge and reclaiming whole warehouses and office blocks like the bones of titans in the middle distance. To the south, as the ramp turned away from it, a better view of the City construction site hove into view, along with a big sign for the National Children’s Hospital.
“The City seems spread thin,” Tom said. “What’s happening back there?”
“Just what you’d guess . . . and what you said,” MacLaren answered. “City’s growing so fast, the Five decided just last week we have to work towards annexing the hospital site and see if we can get it up and running. Word is, we’re gonna send mission squads deeper back into the wild.”
“For rations?”
“No,” MacLaren said and laughed because the need for exactly that was so obvious. “They want more photovoltaics. Columbus is picked clean. The deep ecology folks want to start a wind farm, but we’re years away from that. The Colonel – he’s one of the Councilors, if you haven’t figured that out yet – says we should get power up and running using ethanol. Old fluke’s got everyone flustered and no one wants to tell him the ethanol plant’s barely running as it is.”
“Colonel?”
“One of the Air Force Base survivors,” MacLaren said. “Colonel August Rhymes. One of the originals.”
Tom grunted an acknowledgement and noted the respect in MacLaren’s voice as he continued on.
“There’s other folks – hell, this City’s awash with rival groups these days, everyone pushing their agendas – folks saying we need a rations-backed currency to bring more law and order to the local economy. None of them been told yet about the shortfall. City Council’s keeping everything under wraps. Always does.”
“You sound like you have a pretty good insight.”
“Ortega,” MacLaren said. “I answer to him. Head of Public Safety. You haven’t met him?”
“Nope.”
“If what I hear about your dinner invite’s true, you soon will.”
*
THE CONVOY CAME to a halt as if via telepathy. The more seasoned hands jumped from their wagons as the foot troops eased into positions of watchfulness, suspended on the curving overpass with sweeping views over the city that would’ve been majestic, even in its ruinous state, were it not for the huge mounds of garbage and the stink generated by months of steady waste disposal.
The trash collectors knew their business, men and women alike, and they set about the robotic task of clearing their wagons by hand while Tom and the other sentries settled into a steady surveillance of the routes fore and aft. Tom’s eyes kept coming back to the disturbing sight of the City’s excess, the primitive solution to their garbage problem balancing practicality with risk, and leaving a wasteland of hills and barrows like the slums of India less than a mile from the First Gates.
He grew aware of a commotion between several of the trash collectors closest to him, and scanned around to check Kent and MacLaren were within earshot as he moved up to the overpass rail to see what was what. Two skinny men and a petite woman wearing work gloves stood at the perch pointing down into the far-extending mire, the woman yelling out to someone or something on the ground fifty feet below.
“What is it?” Tom asked as he slung his bow and lifted the field glasses for a closer look.
But he didn’t need them.
A stunted-looking boy, probably teenaged, scuttled amongst the fresh rubbish down the trashy slope created by a year’s dumping, and added to by the latest delivery. He wore overalls and not much else, scant regard for safety let alone hygiene as he moved in on the fresh garbage barefoot and bare-armed and completely unmindful of the woman’s shouts from up above as she called to him, yelling out “Hey! Hey!” with no real clear intention yet frustrated as all get out that the boy wouldn’t listen.
A moment later, they spied a rangy old man with a wild beard pulling a cart between the piles of effluent, accompanied by a little girl.
“Goddamn scroungers,” one of the garbage men muttered.
“You get this a lot?” Tom asked.
“Seems to be getting worse,” the man replied.
“Look,” the woman in their company said and pointed. “The boy’s tagged.”
“He’s from the City?”
The woman and the other man shot Tom a look like he was a moron to ask. Then the woman turned back to the view over the concrete rail and made her hands like a bullhorn.
“Hey!” she shouted again at the scroungers below. “You need to get the hell out of here! There’s no Fury patrols outside City walls!”
Tom noted the female trash collector wasn’t wearing a tag. Nor were her pals. If anything, they looked like veterans to this sort of ordeal – whi
ch didn’t explain why she was yelling her head off.
Further up the line, MacLaren shouted his own commandment before Tom could pick through the sensitivities of the moment – again making Tom look like a doofus.
“Shut her up!” the unit leader shouted at him.
The reason for his urgency became more clear.
Up on the roadway, a lone Fury advanced on the front of the parked convoy. All on its lonesome, the undead thing – like all its cursed brethren – had just enough instinct that it didn’t make a mad-dash suicide run into a defended position. In life, it looked like the man was a cop, though at some point in time he’d lost his pants and most the meat off his thighs. But the monster retained sufficient sense to know it was hopelessly outnumbered.
The cursed thing loped forward, then paused, torn between proximity to easy meat and annihilation, its animal instincts seeing it drop to a crouch, slavering and conflicted, subtle mewls inaudible at that distance.
Tom turned back to the three Sanitation workers, MacLaren’s command enough that he didn’t have to do much more than pass on a stern look. But the moment was broken by the short woman next to him immediately returning her surveillance to the rubbish dump, something in her face softening into a look of pained, though subtle despair as she shook her head.
“I fuckin’ warned ‘em.”
By coincidence, or maybe stirred by the woman’s alarm, another Fury dressed in a tattered snow jacket and ski pants scurried like a demon through the canyons of discarded trash honing straight in on the old man with the cart and his little girl.
Tom swore under his breath.
“Get out of there,” he whispered to himself, forlorn at the unlikelihood of it, the scroungers unable even to see the thing, standing between the rubbish piles as they were.
“Fuckin’ scroungers,” one of the men swore.
Tom had questions, but his heart was in his mouth at sight of the little girl, aged no more than about six, grimy-faced like was her birthright and wearing nothing apart from the lightest summer dress and scavenged sandals.
After The Apocalypse Season 1 Box Set Page 27
