“Doesn’t matter what I called them,” Tom said and coughed to avoid an anxious laugh. “If you could do that, that would be very cool.”
The idea of trading small parcels of coffee made Tom feel like a drug dealer, however accurate that might be. With the irony of his own addiction notwithstanding, Tom reasoned he’d at least resisted the urge to take up booze and cigarettes.
“What are you going to do with that laptop, dad?” Lilianna asked.
Tom shrugged defeatedly. It was hard to believe the idea burned within him as much as it did, since he had no clue about which way to turn now that it worked.
“Einstein has a computer at his place,” Lucas said. “It plays movies. You could check out that DVD there? Do you think it’s got the Internet on it?”
Tom’s smile became a rictus grin. Lucas was getting an education of sorts, but there were some things never likely to make much sense to him, the much-heralded Information Age crumbling into ruin before he remembered any of it. And there wasn’t much point educating him otherwise. Tom and Lila exchanged glances and his daughter smirked at her brother’s cute ignorance – but this was the girl who thought men shouting to see her pussy were inquiring about her pet cat.
“You’re getting along well with Einstein, huh?”
“Yeah,” Luke agreed. “He says it’s cool to use pedal power to refresh the generator any time you like. But he wants a cut.”
“Get me those doggie bags and we’ll give your friend a nice surprise.”
Lucas beamed at that – maybe expecting another in a long series of lectures about “stranger danger” such as those filling their nights along the road to Columbus. And Tom threw back his remaining half-cold coffee and stood, reclaiming his bow and quiver and readying to head out into the day.
The wristwatch he still hadn’t replaced would show the time just before 7.30am, but in the Neolithic standards of the new epoch, the City was wide awake and bustling in the early daylight as Tom emerged on the street casting a watchful look across the resurgent itinerants and traders emerging from their makeshift shelters and readying for another day. It was warm already, and headed towards truly hot, sparking yet more idle thoughts about the dreaded winter which felt so far away with the sun beating down and already seeing him shrug out of his jacket.
While Tom performed the awkward switch, looping his coat through the strap of the pack he wore while juggling the longbow and quiver, he ignored a few strange looks from passers-by instead to scour the encampment of tents and lean-tos on the opposite block. There was no sign of any Urchin shadows, and without them to draw his focus, Tom found his eyes settle on the inverted graffiti glimpsed just days before – the exact same Nordic rune featured in the emblem worn around his dead friend Hugh’s neck.
The thought was a black cloud over his head, regardless of what the weather showed. He hunched his shoulders and proceeded towards his rendezvous with the Reclaimers.
*
MACLAREN’S CREW WAS assigned to help with a solar-power project about two miles outside the wall, working with a Construction team under the guidance of a lead engineer and guarded by a quartet of troopers who commandeered a horse and cart for their transport for the day. As anticipated, talk about the night’s gunfight dominated the morning, and the presence of the troopers, spooked as thoroughly as anyone could be by news the assailants were some of their own, left the whole incident hanging over them as they worked.
It was hard going, undoing the rust of decades to remove the weather-battered solar array from a cluster of three-story townhouses in streets so close to the sanctuary zone yet still marked by the five-year-old crisis. The Construction crew had scaffolding in place from the previous day, preparing things for Tom and the Reclaimers to do the monkey business.
Remembering Ortega’s words, Tom waited until he had Dan MacLaren’s ear and a moment’s quiet. They stood together near the Reclaimers’ ethanol-converted truck refilling water bottles from a tank at the rear. The half-dozen Construction workers had mostly appointed themselves overseers, and stood apart like a faction of their own, twenty yards away chuckling at the ungainly work plus the sight of Kent using his impressive frame to do the work of two men down at ground level.
“So much for leaving existing infrastructure intact for the expansion,” Tom said.
“City’s got problems now that call for an immediate fix.”
Something about the way MacLaren said it left Tom in no doubt there was plenty of subtext in the remark.
“You and Chief Ortega must be old pals,” Tom said. “He was asking after you, last night. Asked me to ask you to check in with him.”
“Carlos and I ran a fire crew in the early days.”
MacLaren shrugged, then did a double take.
“Wait,” he said. “You were there last night?”
Tom nodded slowly.
“There was a fancy Council dinner.”
MacLaren chuckled humorlessly.
“Yeah, but I didn’t know you’d get caught up in the action.”
“Hardly that,” Tom said. “But I tagged along.”
“Thought that bow of yours might come in handy?”
There wasn’t much point getting caught up in the specifics. Tom offered a shrug of his own by way of reply. MacLaren scanned to ensure they still had privacy.
“You would’ve heard about the troubles we’ve been having to the north?”
“Only a whisper,” Tom said.
“It’s more than a whisper,” his friend said. “Last week, we intercepted a family of four. Pilgrims. Must’ve plotted a course that missed the two checkpoints north of Columbus. They came up off an off-ramp while we were pulling apart fences.”
MacLaren made a face.
“Not happy people,” he said. “Told us Raiders held them up, stole all their gear. Left them hogtied for an easy meal for any roaming walkers. The girl got free though, saved their butts.”
“Raiders . . . and they didn’t hurt the women?”
“Hurt them?” MacLaren looked briefly incredulous, as if Tom’d offered a personal insult. “I doubt they want more mouths to feed, even for the sake of . . . whatever we call it these days.”
“‘Rape’ still seems the right word to me.”
MacLaren sighed and glanced away as a series of guffaws overtook the nearby Construction team. There was a lot more broiling under the hood of Dan’s thoughts than this moment or maybe any other moment was going to reveal. Tom felt compelled to pat him on the shoulder and MacLaren sniffed as it he appreciated the concern.
“I’ll get back to it,” Tom said.
“Something’s gonna have to be done about this problem, Tom.”
“Your Raiders?”
“Not just mine,” MacLaren said. “This affects everyone.”
Tom was disturbed by the intensity of the other man’s gaze and the implicit suggestion he had any part of this fight.
“I’m just here to keep myself and my kids safe.”
With those famous last words, Tom went back to work.
*
THE RECLAIMERS DISEMBARKED at the Human Resources building, and despite the hour wending its way towards sunset, the heavy knot of dread Tom’d nursed in his guts all day worsened as hesitation gave way to the inevitable he knew he could no longer put off.
After claiming the valuable two ticks in his rations book, rather than head for home, he steered through The Mile to cross town and make for Hugh’s house.
There was a padlock on the garden gate and no signs of life other than Hugh’s co-tenant Garrick standing on the porch sadly mucking out a corn-cob pipe and paying little attention to the street. Several young men whisked past Tom on bicycles, one giving a titter of laughter as he rang his bell, and the noise drew Garrick’s eyes to Tom standing immobile. The deathly thin older man descended the steps making a pained face.
“Good evening, Mr Vanicek,” he said.
Garrick produced a key from a moth-eaten cardigan so thin he could wea
r it despite the balmy weather. He unfastened the padlock and Tom had the pause to remember his dinner here, and the memory of Hugh’s strange formality overtook him, juxtaposed as it was against the sight of his bullet-riddled corpse.
The gate clicked open and Tom stepped through.
“Paying my respects,” he said.
He offered the beekeeper a hand which the older man took in his own papery grasp.
“We didn’t meet properly last time I was here,” Tom said. “I’m sorry for that. I had a taste of your fine honey. My kids have begged me for more.”
Garrick gave a slow, sad, myopic nod.
“Even with such a sad state of affairs, life goes on,” the old man said. “As does the trade. We can talk on that another time.”
“Sure,” Tom said. “Do you drink coffee?”
The word brought a surprising flush to Garrick’s face.
“It’s been a while, but hell yes,” he said.
“Then we’ll have that chat,” Tom said and motioned to the shut screen door at the top of the steps. “How’s she holding up?”
“Janet?” Garrick asked. “Not good, my friend. Not good. It’s come as a shock to all of us. Don’t make no sense.”
“You’d say it’s . . . out of character?”
Tom tried not to wince at his own question, the styled manner of it such a flashback to his own past life that – not for the first time – he felt the discombobulation of the present moment, startled as if he were the last one out of everyone who expected those old skills to come back into use.
“We shared a house,” Garrick said. “Doesn’t mean we were close.”
The old man’s eyes narrowed, hardened. Tom thought he’d lost him for a moment – played the investigator hand a little too close, and for reasons he’d soon regret – but Garrick’s tough expression cracked and he gave a mighty sniffle as a forecast as more tears rolled in.
“Damn it,” he said. “Always had my back. Always showed me courtesy – me and mine. Plenty of white men would’ve made things tough, told to share premises with a bunch of starvin’ negroes. Not Hugh.”
“It just took me by surprise, is the only reason I ask,” Tom said.
“Took us all by surprise, Tom.”
“And Janet. . . ?”
“Did Janet know her husband was plannin’ on hittin’ the City armory?”
Garrick’s raised eyebrow hung there a moment, then he slowly shook his head, surrendering to the sadness of the moment as the threatened tears started running in earnest and he motioned to the house.
“Go ahead and ask her yourself,” he said. “Poor woman’s sittin’ in there cryin’ on her own wonderin’ how the hell she’s gonna live without a man by her side.”
*
IF ANY WOMAN looked miserable and utterly without hope at the prospect of life on her own, it was Janet. She rose from where she stood, slumped against the work table in the normally busy kitchen, her clean, pale white hands the clearest indicator of the tears of desolation keeping her from any other work.
Tom forced a smile both kindly and respectful as he entered. One of the women from Garrick’s family sniffed the mood and dried her hands on a dishcloth before leaving them to it, her pile of onions dirty from the garden left unwashed on the far counter, a pot on the wood stove bubbling away.
“Janet,” Tom said. “I’m so sorry.”
Hugh’s wife stood, but that was about all the impetus she had. She stood there, a meek and forlorn figure, a tear-stained tea towel twisting back and forth in her hands.
“How’re you holding up?”
The words triggered another collapse. Janet pitched towards the counter hard enough Tom feared she’d crack her head, but she covered her face with her arms as wracking sobs overcame her for what wasn’t the first time that day. Tom eased slowly around to her side of the bench, not making the error of wading in too close lest his dutiful visit turn into heavy lifting. As much as he wanted to fight it, a slimy feeling of repulsion crept through him at sight of the pitiful woman like the whiff of death Tom imagined predators sensed in wounded animals left to fend for themselves.
“You have to help me, please.”
The words came out of Janet’s constricted throat with sudden force, though their hoarseness was less surprising. She lifted her head and fought back her grief, drying her red-rimmed eyes with the wet cloth.
“Hugh was a good man,” Tom said.
The words were little more than an offering. The night’s events showed Tom was in no position to judge the truth value in his own posthumous praise. And it was a neutral riposte to whatever the grieving woman thought Tom could offer.
“He didn’t do this,” Janet said in little more than a whisper.
It was like the strength bled out of her as surely as if she’d slit her wrist standing at the table. Her statement was incomprehensibly wrong and they both knew it. Tom didn’t need – and didn’t judge it wise – to detail the reasons he was so certain that, whatever else transpired, Hugh, son of Anders, definitely had an active hand in his own demise.
“I’m very sorry for your loss.”
Tom pitched his words to match hers, then followed it with a deep in-breath to steady himself, hoping to imbue some calm in the moment. It took the distressed woman a disconcerting length of time for her eyes to finally find their way to his.
“Please help me,” she said. “He was everything to me.”
“And he loved you, I know.”
Janet scoffed, and the response was like a slap.
“We cared for each other,” she said thinly. “Love can’t survive through all of this.”
Tom nodded, and as much for the distraction as anything, he asked, “How’s your daughter holding up?”
The mean-spirited part of himself was already deep in regret at even making the visit, though he loathed himself for it, soldiering on through and past those belabored misanthropic complaints to force a look of what at least passed as mild compassion as Tom drew alongside Hugh’s wife.
Janet made a vague gesture and didn’t mention her daughter again. Instead, she clutched Tom’s arm with a fierceness that kept him on the alert.
“Hugh’s not what they’re saying he is,” she said. “Please. He is . . . he was a good man. It’s not fair they drag his name through the mud like this when he can’t defend himself, making out like he’s some sort of . . . woman-hating . . . hateful whack-job.”
Tom said nothing, feigning empathy where he felt surprisingly little.
“You were Hugh’s friend,” Janet went on after a moment before turning watery eyes on him full bore. “He respected you. You saved his life, Tom. Do this, please?”
“Do . . . what?”
“Troopers were here this morning,” Janet said. “They turned the whole place over. Garrick’s side as well. ‘Looking for evidence,’ they said.”
“Evidence of what?”
“They say he was conspiring against the Council.”
The explanation sounded a little heavy-handed, no matter how dire the night’s bloodshed.
“I need someone to speak for Hugh,” Janet said softly, losing what little strength she had. “They won’t listen to me. They might listen to you . . . the hero of the Raptor crash, right?”
“I don’t see what I can –”
“Please,” Janet repeated, though the force was gone from her words and now she just looked worn-out and defeated, as was her right. “I need to know too, but more than anything, Hugh doesn’t deserve this. I know he did . . . I don’t understand what he did. No one does. Or why. Please, Tom . . . for the hospitality he paid you, set this right.”
*
THE FORLORN WOMAN’S pleas sat with him for the next two days as Tom returned to his Reclaimers work aware of the subtly-shifting mood within MacLaren’s team and the City at large. The dull but grueling work gave him the chance to set his house in order, quite literally, with his son true to his word arranging a trade with his schoolmate Kevin, and T
om parceling up all but the last of his contraband coffee supply into those various tiny-sized clip-seal bags using Einstein as their distributor. For a cut, the smart-mouthed trader helped the family convert their deal bags of caffeine into a veritable cornucopia of supplies, and once the Vanicek clan collated their rations books, a sense of peace and stability came to the apartment only bolstered by Dkembe’s steadying presence and the solid lock on the door.
The carpenter turned his skills to other uses too, helping reformat the kitchen space, ripping out the old island bench and installing the metal skeleton of an outdoor barbecue. He sketched plans with a pencil, and problem-solved a bunch of complex shit that would’ve defeated Tom’s lack of technical skills, rigging the hotplate to run on pilfered electrics powered by the portable generator replenished – also for a cut – at Einstein’s stall. Tom was impressed.
Although he kept a close eye on his son’s interactions with Einstein, the ornery old Asian dude was so clearly motivated by the ruthless quest for personal gain that anything more unpleasant seemed unlikely. If Tom accidentally-on-purpose made it clear the terrible range of injuries that might befall him if it proved otherwise, that was just a little insurance to make sure he could sleep at night.
Truth be told, the pantry stocked with supplies and Dkembe’s strained but stoic presence in the tiny household gave Tom a peace of mind previously unimaginable amid all the still unnegotiated stressors of their new life.
He knew he’d reached a new point of equilibrium when he could feel it in the easing of his tensed breath.
Which was just in time for it all to fall apart.
*
Traders report rations cut suspicions
by Melina Martelle
Traders Alliance spokesman Samuel Hoskeens believes City rations are coming in under-weight as part of an unspoken Council austerity crackdown.
Mr Hoskeens said the weight discrepancy in parcels was noted in recent weeks.
After The Apocalypse Season 1 Box Set Page 36
