Tom took in the detail of the scene and didn’t even dare have the actual thought, freezing time and space as much as consciousness allowed so he could stagger free down the vehicle’s passenger side, plucking at the door handles and lucky when the back one opened and the bigger of the two desiccated corpses fell out onto the ground. A number of other ancient cadavers littered the ground around it already, their skulls marked with bullet holes of a desperate last stand which failed, now a museum piece of the moment like some relic from Pompeii. Nearby, yet another Fury lay, plastered across the macadam, featureless and mewling weakly at Tom even though picked nearly clean by the local wildlife.
The child Fury scurried over the skeletons to harry Tom’s boots. He thwacked down as hard as he could, aiming to split her skull open, but hit her spine with the rod instead. The little Fury’s spinal column gave a mighty crack, but even paraplegic, the dead little girl clutched Tom’s legs and started hauling herself up him bodily as Tom freaked out a little in turn, diving in through the open car door as he kicked out, legs cycling air instead, the child’s own useless legs dragging behind her in stained, decaying white stockings as if she were dressed up for a party not long before her time of death.
Tom let go of the steel rod in desperation, clambering backward into the vehicle as the brutish bigger Fury now threw itself in frustration onto the vehicle’s back window and roof – and its tactics weren’t as futile as Tom hoped. It brought meaty forearms down repeatedly on the back windscreen and spider-web cracks appeared.
“Holy mother of. . . !”
Tom realized he was backing through the petrified remains of a dead child, the car’s previous occupant, while a much more lively corpse was still trying to kill him. The little girl’s black tongue quested from her bare mouth, tasting the air around Tom as her blotchy gray hands got hold of his belt and she hauled herself up onto his chest.
Still inching across the back seat, Tom felt something hard dig into the small of his bruised back, which remained out of reach to his left hand. He brought his maimed right arm into play, hissing through clenched teeth and in truth nearly shitting himself in pain as well as the terrible fear he’d die amid such foul irony.
And his right arm wouldn’t move at all.
The linebacker’s furious assault on the back window redoubled. The windscreen cracked even further, sagging inwards. Tom stabbed his thumb into the zombie girl’s eye with a repulsed battle roar, plunging it right in, yet only holding the abomination in check as he twisted onto his side, listless right-handed fingers trailing over the handle of the handgun last used to dispatch the car’s owner and her daughter and left behind on the seat between them.
Tom couldn’t even make a fist, but he nudged the black pistol deeper into the cushioned seat and sat up as well as he could, pressed into the door on the far side of the back seat, the only one with its window still intact. The child Fury gave out a pitiful, terrifying, high-pitched shriek as Tom finally caved in its eye socket with his fist and his thumb pierced deep into its sludge-like brain.
The dead girl went limp and Tom dropped back exhausted.
The rear window glass overhead gave another mighty crack, the noise of the remaining Fury twice as loud, electroshocking Tom back into life, the squat neglected pistol in his left hand. He pointed the gun at the window above him, aware of his confinement, and the weapon’s boom nearly blew out his ears.
God alone knew what an Ohio housewife was doing with a Colt Python, but the heavy round punched a hole through the windscreen and the linebacker’s neck.
Tom fired again, but the gun only clicked.
“God damn it. . . .”
With his every feature contorted in either agony, fear, or desperation, Tom pulled the trigger again and then again. The Python finally chambered a live round and he blew out the last Fury’s brains at point-blank range through the glass.
At that point, he didn’t dare lay down without thinking things would only get worse.
*
TOM LIMPED OUT into the parking lot with the handgun hanging like a lead weight from his exhausted hand. He cradled a box of .357 cartridges in the crook of his other arm. Despite his depletion, he’d returned the ax to his tool kit and scanned the parking lot for any more intruders before circling around to the dusty red Subaru like a pilgrim at the end of a years-long quest.
He tucked the Python into his belt, freeing one hand to scrub at the dust on the rear hatch window, confirming the cached supplies glimpsed earlier. The trunk was locked, but Tom tramped around to the corpse of the Fury he’d slain and extracted the key from its eye, wiping it on his filthy jeans, weak and wheezing and nearly overcome by his own stench, let alone the exhaustion, the bite to his shoulder hurting like a motherfucker. Then he depressed the keyless entry and the vehicle gave a satisfying beep.
Tom ran a hand over the wagon’s weather-stained flank.
“What the hell are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”
He flung open the rear hatch to look down on the elaborate emergency supplies concealed from casual view by a sheet of black netting. He moved the camouflage aside to reveal a cardboard box of tinned food, boxes of candles, cans of molasses, Ovaltine, protein powder, a fishing rod and tackle, a metal toolbox, a serious first-aid kit, several unboxed solar lights, a case of emergency flares, a halogen lamp, a spare car battery, and any number of other things so expertly gathered and packed for any and all contingency that it almost had Tom spooked.
Pistol in hand once more, he scanned the periphery of the near-fatal parking lot in a scene transformed back into a tranquil late summer day. The horse Trigger was nowhere in sight. Whatever crows lingered overhead had taken off for now. A silence beset only by cicadas reigned over all.
Tom weighed the keys in his hand, looking around one final time. He walked over and recovered his longbow and then went around collecting the spilled arrows, stowing them in the back of the wagon before clambering painfully into the driver’s seat and bringing the mythical beast to life.
*
Questions about Enclave plan unanswered
by Delroy Earle
THE Five have dismissed concerns raised by Citizens about ongoing resourcing of the Enclave and whether the exclusive compound serves the City’s best interests.
Detailed questions sparked by this week’s City Council meeting went unanswered after Herald inquiries.
Councilor Ernest Eric Wilhelm III said Citizens were wrong to label Enclave officers a “private army”.
“Running the City requires everything from every Administration officer we have,” he said.
“I can assure resourceful Citizens that Enclave staff and residents do it tough when times are lean, just like everyone else.
“The Enclave benefits from being one of the most-established precincts within the City and it’s our plan to extend the safety and security required to bring the same stability to other areas.
“Construction crews are working daily to make new areas of the City safe and habitable.”
An Administration worker who asked not to be named said reclaimed areas were filling faster than they could be cleared because of the recent influx in new Citizens.
However, the same source said immigrant numbers decreased during the past month.
Administration managers approached by the Herald about existing rations stocks deferred questions to Council President Dana Lowenstein.
Dr Lowenstein said the Enclave was just another vital part of the overall vision for the City.
“It’s in every Citizen’s interest to have the Enclave run as smoothly as possible,” she said.
Dr Lowenstein would not confirm ration payment rates, private benefits, or addition inducements offered to Enclave residents.
She said Enclave troopers received the same double ration as all other Safety personnel on active duty.
However, she dismissed rumors Administration officers were paid three ticks, the same as the extra “danger money” pai
d to Foragers.
“It’s ridiculous to suggest any office workers would be rationed the same as Citizens putting their lives at risk,” Dr Lowenstein said.
She and Cr Wilhelm ignored direct questions about the mandatory military training for all Enclave workers.
*
WITH MORE THAN half a tank of purloined diesel, Tom drove back to the City and reached the barricade near the Giant Falcon at twenty minutes before sunset. A squad of four troopers came out to inspect the vehicle, turning their guns on him along with their equally astonished looks, not knowing exactly what to make of the grimy survivor.
Tom threw off their questions by saying he had to speak to Ortega. Mere mention of the Safety chief’s name cut through whatever half-hearted regulations the troopers followed. They weren’t exactly professional soldiers. The oldest guard in charge of the checkpoint looked over at his colleagues as if waiting for their opinions even as they went ahead and opened the gate. Tom nodded sternly to the troopers, not even wondering at their allegiances, and equally unsure about his own, mostly just focused on trying not to show how much pain he was in – and that he had no clear plan on his next move beyond seeing his children again.
If Pamela survived the trek back to the City and spread had word of Tom’s plight, there was nothing to show it in the guards’ behavior. The supervisor tipped his Kevlar helm at him, and Tom entered the walled City proper.
City streets unaccustomed these days to vehicles meant it was growing dark by the time he negotiated more than navigated the Subaru into the street beside his apartment building, evening coming on in full spectacle, Citizens heading for the Night Market on foot and on bicycles while the residents of the street set up their nightly tent village.
For a man driving 15mph, Tom parked the car with the savagery of an action hero and then opened his door with a long groan, surprised he wasn’t creaking himself as he got out with his eyes scanning robot-like across the shanty dwellings on the far side of the street. No sign of the Urchins. He pressed the remote lock on the wagon and his eyes finally fell on Ivan, alone on his Red Armband duties, chatting happily with a teenage prostitute and blithely unaware.
Ivan caught Tom’s look and did a double-take, apologizing to the rent boy and rushing across to Tom glancing around as if to dodge any passing vehicles.
“Tom Vanicek?”
“I could do with some help.”
“Anything,” Ivan said. “What is it?”
“I need some help getting up to my apartment,” he said. “And for God’s sake, don’t tell the whole planet I’m here, OK?”
“Where have you been?” Ivan asked and threw a brawny arm around to catch Tom as he sagged. “People were saying you’re dead or you ran out on your children.”
Trying not to growl at the suggestion, Tom focused on crossing the paved street and entering the apartment building which he saw was now completely open to the street.
“Where are the doors?”
“Taken,” Ivan said and laughed. “Don’t know by who. Needed them for shelter, maybe?”
“Or someone’s planning on dumping another fresh Fury on us sometime soon.”
Ivan’s jaws snapped shut, imagining the scenario, but Tom was in too much difficulty just getting up three flights of stairs to argue the point. Ivan rapped his knuckles on Iwa Swarovsky’s door as they passed and it was only a second later the doctor stuck out her head, eyes widening in alarm.
“Tom?”
Whatever her other instincts, professionalism won out.
“I’ll get my bag.”
The moment gave Tom a breather at his own front door, and he knocked on it as loud as he could, neighbors be damned, and when it opened to reveal Lila and Dkembe, he very much nearly fell in.
*
DAWN BROKE WITH Tom center stage on the rear bedroom’s lousy mattress. Although they nestled as close to him as they could, neither of the children would let him do anything but take the middle of their bed on the floor. Their father was so heavily bandaged, stripped down to his dirty underwear, the swaddling alone could account for an almost total lack of mobility. Incoming sunbeams lit across his torso and then his eyes and Tom softly groaned, waking Lila, who lifted a plastic water bottle to his lips as if she hadn’t been sleeping at all.
Tom dropped his head back onto the cushion and his daughter sat up, the morning sun in her matted hair, Lila’s face shadowed with concern as she looked down at him and held out fingers as if to trace the bandages on his chest and thought better of it. She slowly started crying again instead.
“Please,” Tom said more weakly than he liked. “It’s going to be OK.”
“You were gone for so long,” she said in a hollowed-out voice.
Tom took in Lucas curled asleep like a marsupial basking in his father’s radiant heat. A fever coursed through Tom, and if he wasn’t so bloody-minded about it, he might’ve feared the danger if he died in his sleep and became one of the risen.
But after everything else, a mere fever he could handle – or at least that’s what he told Iwa Swarovsky. Tom carefully sat up as Lucas stirred, sliding across to wrap his arms around his father’s waist, Tom trying not to gasp, the swelling so tender around his dislocated shoulder he thought he might faint as Lilianna threw decorum to the wind and also pressed against him on his other side. Tears bled silently from her eyes, moistening his bloody dressings, while Lucas seemed ready to return to sleep as long as he didn’t have to let go.
“Guys,” Tom said slowly. “I have to pee.”
He’d already pissed his filthy jeans a few times and he was dimly conscious of fighting off Iwa’s demands to cut him out of his grimy boxers as well. Passing out in his piss-stinking shorts didn’t win him any hygiene awards, but there was only so much indignity he could bear, even under – or perhaps because of – the medical attention. The kindliness of Iwa’s hands tending him opened Tom to a strange and unfamiliar aspect of his new life that he sure as fuck didn’t want to kick off by having the beautiful woman clean his dirty balls and ass crack.
That was a job he now had to contemplate himself.
Truth was, Tom was almost afraid to use the bathroom after the kicking he’d received. If there was blood in his piss, he didn’t want to see it. Disentangling himself from Luke and Lila, he eased himself into the privacy he needed for far longer than he wanted, careful with his bandages and the dish of water and a stack of clean linen left by the doctor late the previous night.
There were so many things they’d still failed to prepare for in their first month in the City, and adequate clothing was one of them. The fading summer heat had let them cheat such bare necessities so far, but at least Tom had a second pair of jeans and a faded grandpa shirt he put on with difficulty, right shoulder still pretty much useless, tape holding together the worst of his ribs. He declined to look at himself in the mirror, the stitches in his lip lucky to hold together, or at least that’s what Iwa warned, eventually joking with him – late after the children left them alone and they’d had to turn off the car alarm for a second time – that it meant she couldn’t return the kiss she’d enjoyed so much before her latest stint of checkpoint duty.
Tom crawled out to the living room sofa and stretched out just in time for Dkembe to re-enter the apartment from his early morning routine, a half-bottle of suspicious-looking milk and a plastic pot full of eggs in his hands as he let himself in, nodded to Tom on the settee, and set about putting things in place in the kitchen. Whatever’d passed during Tom’s nights away, their flatmate had kept busy. The kitchen barbecue arrangements were now part of the fixtures, an extra wooden counter fashioned around it. A filtration system of some kind hung over the sink and plastic tubes disappeared into the taped-shut cabinets.
“I have to thank you for watching my kids,” Tom rasped as loudly as he could.
Dkembe moved from the kitchen towards him.
“I was going to ask if you wanted something to eat,” he said.
“Yes,”
Tom said. “And as soon as they’re awake, I need you to go down and clear all the gear out of the Subaru.”
Dkembe’s eyes unfocused, one of his most obvious tells whenever confronted with authority – and Tom’s status as the alpha dog only embossed by his return from such a harrowing misadventure.
“I only say that because there’s more stuff we can use,” Tom said. “All of us. You’ve been busy. The kitchen looks good.”
“Your kids are pretty good amateur carpenters,” Dkembe said. “Lucas has talent.”
“I hope you heard me say my thanks, Dkembe,” Tom said. “You did, right?”
Dkembe shrugged.
“What else was I gonna do?” the younger man replied. “You don’t seem that easy to kill, Tom. I had a feeling you’d be back.”
“Tough on Luke and Lila, though.”
“Yeah,” Dkembe said. “Lila’s. . . .”
His voice drifted off and Tom discerned a worrying mistiness in the younger man’s eyes now nothing to do with his crumbling self-assurance in the face of authority.
“She’s really good with him,” Dkembe said with his pause unnoticed. “And Lucas, to be honest with you . . . he seemed pretty chill.”
Speak of the devil, Tom’s son appeared at the edge of the room as if summoned.
“The man came by and said you were on a mission,” Lucas said.
Tom struggled into a sitting position, eyes on his son as quickly as his incapacity allowed. Dkembe retreated to his preparations, but frowned at the remark and kept listening.
“What man, Lucas?” Tom asked.
“He came day before yesterday,” the boy said and then seemed to catch on that he’d implicated himself in something more serious than expected, which seemed hard to believe when he immediately added, “He told me to keep it secret. He said it was important.”
After The Apocalypse Season 1 Box Set Page 45
