Tom only shook his head, silently appalled to hear trust make his son so vulnerable.
“Did he give you a name?”
“Just that he’s a friend of yours, and that you’d be back,” Lucas said. “He said you weren’t dead. You were on a mission.”
Ortega was already on Tom’s mind, though he had his son give a brief description that matched.
“He looked like a pirate,” Lucas said. “A pirate with sad eyes.”
“Jesus.”
An ill feeling crawled through Tom’s stomach so forcefully that he managed to get upright and into the bathroom before it was time to take the mother of all dumps.
*
TOM DIDN’T HAVE one of the City’s carry permits for the four-inch Python at the small of his back and he didn’t think he cared any more, shrugging off his convalescence as well as a man with one working shoulder could do before heading out into the night like a hunchback, an hour shy of Curfew, threading his way through thinning crowds to the Council chambers.
As he’d hoped, the meeting was drawing to a close. A tall, thin, frustrated-looking woman with a black ponytail struggled to keep her cool at the microphone despite Council President Lowenstein repeatedly telling her to sit down.
“I thought you’d agree Miss Plume raises a valid question,” Colonel Rhymes said in the woman’s defense, at the other end of the long table center-stage.
Tom moved through the back of the chamber, briefly recalling his near panic attack seeing Finnegan Locke during his last attendance. He scanned the room with fresh eyes for peace of mind – even though the past few days had put the idea of danger in the City into a whole new context, and leaving Tom grimly wondering if he could even rely on himself anymore.
“We all know Miss Plume’s just a convenient mouthpiece for you these days, Colonel,” Dana Lowenstein replied to the old man across the stage. “I’m just surprised to hear her advocate democratic elections. Couldn’t Delroy Earle make it tonight?”
There was a titter of laughter which concluded with the newspaper man in question rising from one of the seats in the gallery to wave his notebook over his head, well-versed in his theatrical grin.
Tom checked the tuck of the grandpa shirt clinging tight to his bandaged trunk and then slipped down the stage-left exit as Lowenstein banged her gavel and the frustrated woman Madeline Plume finally gave up and sat. For a moment, it seemed her eyes sought Tom out from across the far side of the half-lit gallery, but by then he was back stage.
*
TOM HIJACKED THEM walking around the building to their dining room, stepping out from a doorway to one side with his hand in the pockets of his canvas jeans, wounded right arm in a sling across his chest.
Wilhelm’s eyes flashed with surprise, a riot of conflicting emotions – happiness, confusion, more than a hint of anger – clearly etched on his face. Lowenstein pulled up short, trailing Ortega, and the group behind them included David Hamilton and Aileen Leng in her electric chair faltering as if Tom might be an assassin.
“I need to speak to you,” he said.
“What happened to your face?” Wilhelm asked.
“And your arm?” Aileen added.
“I’ll explain,” Tom said. “Inside?”
A minute later and the Council President hurried all non-essential staff from the conference room, the dining places set, but unlikely to be served any time soon given the undivided attention of the Councilors in the room. After the exchange at the meeting, Tom wasn’t surprised to see August Rhymes not in attendance, but Wilhelm’s woman and co-Councilor Carlotta Deschain was MIA too. That left Hamilton, Leng, and Shakes Ben-Gurion with Wilhelm and Dana Lowenstein, and alone among all their advisors, Carlos Ortega at the back of the room as if tasked with their security alone and the discussion nothing to do with him.
Tom wasn’t so sure about that.
“This had better be important to pull one on us like this, Mr Vanicek,” Lowenstein said.
Tom thought he had a reply all prepared – and then realized none of the Councilors had any clue he’d been away.
Even more suspicious than before, Tom looked at Ortega, who stared back with a steely calm, an unlit hand-rolled joint in the corner of his mouth in lieu of a cheroot.
“Tom?” Wilhelm prompted.
“OK, shit,” Tom said. “This is gonna be complicated.”
Not one for decorum, he helped himself to a seat completely unable to conceal his infirmity. At least the Councilors had the decency to show concern, and he fended off the President asking if he’d seen a doctor and Ernest Wilhelm trying to take his arm.
“Listen,” Tom said. “There’s some people who’re dead and there’s something to discuss about the Raiders.”
“The Raiders issue –” Wilhelm started to say, but the President cut over him.
“Who’s dead?”
“Daniel MacLaren and a handful of other troopers,” Tom said.
He couldn’t stop his eyes flicking to Ortega despite the Safety chief’s total lack of reaction. Tom frowned, concern suddenly underscoring thoughts about Pamela and that maybe she hadn’t made it back to the City after all.
Unless she had survived – and still no one else knew anything about it.
Tom sighed with the impossibility of outlining the whole disaster at once.
“We went out to recon Raider activity north of the checkpoints –”
“Who authorized that?” Lowenstein demanded.
“Let him tell the story, Dana,” Ben-Gurion said.
The former software genius nodded to Tom.
“It’s not like it was my idea,” Tom said.
“Then whose was it?”
“Dana.”
The President sighed, folding her arms over her bosom and sitting back in her chair as if restraints were needed for her to let Tom continue as the others wished.
“I’m not sure if MacLaren really intended recon or if some of his team were just trigger happy, but we encountered the Raiders . . . and came off second best,” Tom said.
“Worse than second best, really,” he continued.
“The Raiders aren’t a bandit gang or a bunch of rapist cannibals,” Tom said. “MacLaren . . . we fucked up. MacLaren’s men shot first. There was a . . . firefight . . . a pretty big one. But there’s more to it than that.”
Tom looked around the table and then across to Ortega standing sentry at the double doors. Tom narrowed his brows, but the chief, giving nothing away, slowly unstuck the joint from the corner of his mouth and took a place at the far end of the table.
“I’ve got a bunch of questions, Mr Vanicek,” Lowenstein said in a stern voice. “I appreciate your flair for dramatic suspense. What’s the other thing?”
“OK,” Tom said and composed the pitch as best he could.
“The Raiders are a hundred-strong band living in open country using horses and wagons,” he said. “Freestone’s Confederates, that’s what they’re called. If you think of them as sixty-odd armed cowboys and their women and children, all mobile, all the time, that’s about the best description I can give you.
“They don’t want anything to do with your City, but there are things they need.”
“Did you just say ‘your’ City, Mr Vanicek?”
Aileen Leng stared him down across the length of the table, nothing reticent in her gaze now. Tom only shrugged and immediately regretted it, wincing, then covering his pain with an unconvincing nod.
“Maybe I spent a little too long among the natives,” he said. “My point is, they’re living off the cattle running wild across the tri-State area and they’ll trade with us for a regular beef supply.”
“These are the Raiders who killed our people?” the President asked.
“They didn’t kill me,” Tom said and glanced towards Ortega. “Or the other surviving trooper I was with.”
Ortega slowly nodded at him. Pamela lived.
“Who were you with?” Wilhelm asked.
“Most of t
he . . . squad I hadn’t met before,” Tom said. “A few Foragers. The other survivor was a woman, Pamela de Jong.”
The name met without much recognition. Aileen Leng briefly stole Ortega’s ear, requesting information, and Tom’s gaze played between Abe Ben-Gurion’s thoughtful look and Dana Lowenstein’s mild outrage.
“This situation you’re describing is preposterous,” she said and actual spit flew from her mouth even though she sat as still as a classical statue with a bad haircut.
“Who sanctioned this?” she demanded. “And why did you sign up for such an utterly reckless scheme? What were you thinking? Excuse me for saying it, but the idea I’d formed about you, Tom, this seems like precisely the opposite to what I’d expect.”
“I don’t disagree,” he replied.
Tom let his solemn expression drift towards Ortega.
“I can’t explain it,” Tom said.
“Tell us about the deal with the City,” Wilhelm said.
“They need a doctor,” Tom said. “Like, full-time. Ammunition, medical supplies, things to make life easier while they keep doing what they’re doing.”
“We could accommodate them here,” Wilhelm said.
“They don’t want that,” Tom replied. “But I know you’re worried about the City’s food supply, with winter coming and everything.”
Cr Wilhelm shook his head with such a condescending look Tom immediately realized he was wrong.
“No, Tom,” Wilhelm said. “I don’t have any concerns about the food supply.”
“You shouldn’t trust everything you read in the newspaper, Mr Vanicek,” Lowenstein added.
The chosen target for her barb wasn’t with them, and the look of camaraderie she offered Wilhelm seemed flustered and unconvincing. David Hamilton was the only one less than absorbed in the discussion. Tom tried to catch his eye, but instead the scientist gnawed his thumbnail, staring at the tabletop.
“What are we meant to do with this information, Tom?” Wilhelm asked.
“I’m meant to ride back the day after tomorrow to give them your reply.”
“Ride?”
“Er . . . I picked up a vehicle.”
“If you came off a horse, that’d explain the injuries,” Cr Leng said.
“No it wouldn’t,” Tom muttered.
“I want to know what we are going to do about our own troopers engaging in violent contact without authorization,” Lowenstein snapped. “Chief Ortega?”
The Chief eyed her almost with disinterest.
“We have bigger problems with the troopers right now than some of them taking on a problem you didn’t want to face,” Ortega said. “Have you forgotten the firefight that took innocent lives right here in the City just a few nights ago?”
“Wasn’t Dan MacLaren one of your men?” Lowenstein asked.
“Dan joined the Reclaimers a long time ago,” Ortega said. “I didn’t realize he still had it in him. Makes me kinda proud.”
And Ortega shot such a fierce look at Tom that Tom momentarily stumbled.
“It didn’t have to end with him dead,” he said to the Chief at last.
Ortega only met Tom’s eye as if daring him to say more, and not for the first time, Tom wondered why he didn’t.
“I’m surprised at you,” Wilhelm said to him. “And disappointed, Tom.”
“I’m just fucking angry,” Lowenstein said. “You were operating on MacLaren’s orders? What made you think you had permission to take part in a . . . goddamn military operation outside the sanctuary zone?”
The image of Tom’s handsome, misguided friend shot in the head flashed through his mind and it just didn’t sit with him right to let MacLaren take the fall with Ortega sitting just a few seats away, practically daring him not to say otherwise.
“Nothing illegal about going outside the City,” Tom said through clenched teeth.
“I knew Dan MacLaren,” Wilhelm said with a slow-burning intensity. “We all remember him from the last year on the base. Are you telling me he was secretly part of this Brotherhood too?”
Ortega only laughed.
“I don’t think the Brotherhood’s doors are open to queers,” he said at last. “Kinda clashes with their belief men are so superior, right, Madam President?”
“I don’t appreciate your homophobic smears, Chief.”
“Hey,” Ortega said to her. “No judgment. We all got our kinks.”
Lowenstein reddened and then it deepened, knowing the Ortega had the better of her.
Tom stood with a tense grimace amid their awkwardness.
“You let me know what you decide,” he said.
“Sit down, Tom,” Wilhelm said.
“I delivered my message.”
“If you think you don’t have any culpability in this, you’re wrong,” Lowenstein snapped.
Tom exhaled heavily, eyed the room, then pretended they were only making a request. He sat like a thousand-year-old man.
“At this point,” Aileen Leng said, “I think it’s fair to ask if the Council still has confidence in our Department of Safety chief.”
“What?”
It was clear Ortega fought the urge to stand and tower over the disabled woman. He clutched the edge of the table instead, wearing the same brand of fingerless gloves as MacLaren. With an irritated scowl, Ortega lit his much-handled joint and Lowenstein swatted at the air before the smoke could even reach her.
“I’ve asked you not to do that in here.”
“Not breaking any laws,” Ortega snickered.
“Dutch oven,” Dr Hamilton said with an odd sense of cheer.
At least the Australian didn’t seem to mind the exposure. The scent of cannabis after so many years took Tom by surprise and he eyed the Chief with barely-concealed hostility for his irreverence in the face of MacLaren’s death.
And yet he still chose not to say anything. It felt like cowardice, however much he dressed it as pragmatism.
“I can’t answer for every trooper’s personal beliefs,” Ortega said. “The ones you’re meant to be watching are Foragers. They’re Burroughs’ men. The Brotherhood.”
“And how are they reacting to you taking their leader into custody, Chief?”
Ortega stabbed his eyes at Shakes Ben-Gurion, sitting looking pallid and disengaged and forever with the hint of an ironic smile. Abe didn’t look at all concerned about Ortega leaping the table like he’d like to smash his head in. Maybe with his own illness, Abe had bigger concerns.
“I actually have to agree with Councilor Ben-Gurion,” Wilhelm said slowly. “The Safety response to the armory raid was . . . a little heavy handed, to put it mildly, Chief.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Ortega said. “Do you want a bunch of armed male supremacists running through your City? I don’t think they’re interested in a general election.”
Ortega was ex-special forces. He eased back, ridiculously comfortable as he sucked on the joint and surprisingly offered it to Ben-Gurion a few seats away.
“I’m fine, thanks,” Shakes said. “I preloaded.”
The software genius looked around the table and shrugged with a cheeky smirk.
“It makes those public meetings a little easier to bear.”
Tom slumped in his chair, the ache in his body and the tiredness returning to his mind urging him to find a way to leave. Wilhelm spoke over them again.
“The truth is, we still don’t know what we’re facing,” he said. “Your searches – and taking Mr Burroughs into custody – have stirred up more than they’ve revealed, Carlos. Do you really think it’s helpful to inflame an already-bad situation this way?”
Ortega inhaled at the end of the question, but Wilhelm didn’t give him time to answer anyway.
“If you think the Brotherhood, these ‘male supremacists,’ are behind the armory raid, we’re getting nowhere,” Wilhelm said. “Burroughs won’t even admit he’s a member, let alone their leader. Then you’ve got Madeline Plume out there stirring things up because the Colonel ca
n’t let go that we’re no longer military. And then there’s the other guys you mentioned.”
“The Ancestrals,” Ortega said.
“I don’t understand how they fit in here,” Wilhelm said. “Ancestor worshippers?”
“Ancestor worshippers and the men’s rights crowd,” the Chief said. “They’re all the same thing.”
Returning to his earlier grievance, Ortega turned to look at Aileen Leng.
“I’m hurt by your remarks, Council woman.”
“You’re a big boy,” Aileen replied. “You’ll get over it.”
“I don’t think anyone’s seriously casting aspersions on your qualifications for the job,” Wilhelm quickly said to him, though he checked in with Lowenstein before ploughing on. “That said, the response to this incident hasn’t been helpful. We can’t keep Mr Burroughs in custody. We risk igniting a powder keg, whether these ancestral . . . brotherhoods are behind the armory raid or not.”
Wilhelm turned to Tom on his left.
“Tom, what we really need is an independent investigator,” he said. “We don’t have police, detectives, or anything like that. Just out ten rules. Maybe we need someone who can get inside one of these groups and feed us intel from within.”
“You’re talking about me?” Tom asked and would’ve laughed if only he didn’t want to cry.
“That’s right.”
“OK,” Tom said. “First, I don’t ‘feed’ anybody anything except for me and my children, understood?”
“No one’s trying to be disrespectful, Tom,” Lowenstein said.
“Are you clowns for real?” Ortega barked over them.
Dr Hamilton laughed aloud for his own mysterious reasons, a delighted theatergoer. Ben-Gurion and Aileen Leng smothered smirks. And Ortega motioned at Tom, though he failed to follow the gesture up with any further insight, letting his exasperation sit there like a bad smell.
The Ancestrals were set to honor Hugh, son of Anders, that evening, along with one of the other dead troopers named Obi Watanabe, also a member of their cabal. Nothing in the past few days had erased Tom’s unintended pledge to Hugh’s widow – or that he had questions of his own. For those reasons alone – and telling himself it was just for now – Tom nodded to Wilhelm as if his agreement was just another yet-to-be-fulfilled prophecy.
After The Apocalypse Season 1 Box Set Page 46
