Freestone took a movie-star drag from the cigarette, milking the drama from the moment.
“We have an injured man who needs medical attention,” he said.
Now his eyes were on the floor.
“We need a doctor, with us, you know, permanent-like,” Freestone said. “We talked about it ourselves and thought if your people were reasonable, you could set up a roster. There’s a few basic supplies we want – and a few things to keep our women happy – but after our visit, we’re gonna travel west and see what we can rustle up for you. We’ll be away for most of the season, up until the cold comes, so whoever you send us is signin’ up for that. There’s a list of other shit, too, but we’ll be reasonable. We’re not havin’ any trouble feeding ourselves, as you can see.”
As if remembering his manners, Freestone caught himself and quickly looked around until he found Magellan in the background lighting a second cigarette.
“Rustle up some refreshments for our guests, will you, Maggie?”
Then Freestone looked back at Tom with a shark’s grin.
“And let’s get in a round of drinks.”
*
TOM AND WILHELM insisted on the urgency of getting back to the City, but like some Viking earl, the lord Freestone was just as insistent the pair stay and drink to seal their deal.
Somewhere in the middle of the discussion, Wilhelm silently acquiesced, and as Tom and Freestone mapped out the logistics and the undeniably central role Tom now looked set to play in it, Tom did so with a tacit understanding Wilhelm would somehow work with him to make it stick. Tom was glad he was good on his feet – two double shots of the poitín the cowboys distilled while on the road were an added challenge – because the conversation was like quicksand: he’d agreed to the “cattle lord” role without thinking through the enormous logistical challenges it entailed.
“How they hell are we going to butcher these things?”
But he didn’t want to think too deeply on his acquiescence in the deaths of these future cattle, at this moment rolling free and easy somewhere out on the Confederates’ range. In the life before, he’d lived on meat from the supermarket – or more often the “artisan butcher” operating out of the wholefoods store downtown. Hunting was a whole separate deal. Killing tame cows for their meat felt akin to shooting someone’s dog.
And Wilhelm couldn’t give him any solid answers. The increasingly boisterous conversations around the laminated tabletops gave Tom and the Councilor a moment alone.
“You’re not exactly chiming in here, Ernest,” Tom said. “I know I wasn’t meant to be the one doing the horse-trading here. Are you mad at me?”
“Not at all, Tom.”
Wilhelm shrugged so eloquently Tom didn’t need any more words. There was indeed a sense of the inevitable about the whole thing. The City had to do whatever it could to secure such a supply. And it was Tom’s own damned fault for sticking his nose into everything that he’d now found himself transfixed by the unwanted role.
“This could make you a very wealthy man, in City terms.”
Wilhelm eased back on his stack of slabs as if finally unveiling the point he’d secretly sought to make all along. And Tom, beguiled, frowned at the imputed slur.
“You think I set it up to roll out this way?” he asked.
“Family first, right?”
Tom couldn’t say much, especially since he’d never refute it. But it left him without much to defend his reputation, and just as swiftly he wondered if that even bothered him. He had to remind himself Wilhelm was just another species of rodent, no matter his workmanlike level-headedness under stress. If anything, it was ironic to see the Councilor’s esteem for him drop just as Tom finally saw through his initial disinclination towards the man.
“Whatever,” Tom said.
“Teach you that trick, did they, your teenagers?”
“I only have one teenager.”
“Honestly Tom, I think Freestone’s logic is sound,” Wilhelm said and shrugged again. “It’s far more practical for the Council if we deal with you, too, and you know I trust you to do it.”
Wilhelm met his eyes, tried the habitual shy smile, and knew Tom wasn’t buying it.
“You will be our very own first cattle baron,” the Councilor said. “And you are going to need our support to deliver.”
“It’s Freestone who put it that way,” Tom said. “Do I look like I really want to play some medieval cattle lord? No.”
“It sounds more impressive every time you say it,” Wilhelm said. “If you control the City’s meat supply, that will give you a lot of influence inside the sanctuary zone.”
Tom snapped back at him with florid irritation.
“I think you’re forgetting this whole idea’s for the City’s sake, not mine.”
“That’s not how it turned out though, is it?”
“So?” Tom replied. “I’m somehow responsible for you inviting yourself along so Freestone could sniff out what a fake piece of shit you are and strike the deal with me instead?”
Wilhelm’s eyes bulged – and he was well onto his fourth drink by then.
He flew up from his seat with an angry growl and swung his fist not inexpertly at Tom’s head. Actually caught off-guard for underestimating the man, Tom managed to pull aside just enough that the Councilor’s fist only skimmed his temple.
Tom staggered back all the same, unbalanced, off his seat of pavers, and one of Freestone’s men happened to have his leg out while playing cards and drinking in a cloud of cigarette smoke beside them. Tom tripped over, clutching the exposed cinder block wall, and hauled himself around in agony just in time to see Wilhelm barreling in at him.
The Councilor caught him around the midriff and slammed him into the wall and then the pair of them spilled down onto the floor.
“I did play College football, I’ll have you know!” Wilhelm yelled.
And the dozens of Confederate men now filling the room behind them erupted in one gigantic simultaneous cheer.
*
LATER, FREESTONE’S MEN blamed Tom and Wilhelm’s ruckus for luring a pair of roaming Furies to their supermarket base, but the sentries’ iron discipline and the desire to protect their precious wards meant the pair of naked ex-Freemasons charging gangling and long-limbed to the east face of the vacant building were ended with two neat rifle shots.
Tom and Wilhelm wore matching bandaged temples and a similar hangovers as well. Now it was really late, though at least their hosts now seemed appeased, watching them air their rivalry through a good old-fashioned traditional fistfight. It was pitch dark outside and time to refocus on their mission – thoughts sobering enough that the miscreant pair eyed each other with grudging agreement about the course ahead.
Freestone stopped Tom near the supermarket doors as they made their final farewells. He offered his hand upraised and they clasped.
“I’ll see you next in the City in a couple of days,” he said. “Have your plans in place and find us a doctor.”
“I know a doctor,” Tom said and felt a short pang at the idea of Iwa departing with the Confederates.
“It might be good to take a day or two extra, unless you can’t afford it,” Tom said. “We’re headed back to try and head off . . . I don’t even know what. It could be a disaster. A deal-killer, if you get me?”
“Just watch your head and don’t get yourself killed,” Freestone said. “I need you to deal with whoever’s in charge, if anyone wants this to go ahead.”
A slight hint of desperation crinkled in the leader’s eyes. Tom quietly noted it and nodded and wondered if he already took some aspects of City life for granted himself. These were hardy, humble, stoic, hard-headed people, and most were in the prime of life right now. It wouldn’t be that way forever, and Tom had survived too long in the wilderness himself not to ever take medical help for granted ever again.
*
THE JACKAL’S MOTORBIKE ran out of fuel just within a short hike from the sanctuary zone. T
heir newfound enmity aside, Tom and Councilor Wilhelm dismounted cautiously with the grayscale of midnight casting every decrepit city block into a potential hive of dangers.
At least they were both strapped. Tom’s right shoulder had taken such a pummeling it was almost completely numb, which he knew should be worrying him were it not for a host of bigger problems demanding for attention. Wilhelm looked equally fraught, and rightly so. He was headed back into his own City with a target on his back and a betrayer at the controls.
Knowing Ortega was the architect of so many recent calamities was strangely bittersweet for Tom, intuitively mistrusting the man from the get-go. If Tom was a betting man – and he wasn’t, because he didn’t like to lose – he’d wager Ortega’s back-channel links to Colonel Rhymes had run for a long time.
He hoisted the assault rifle to his shoulder as Wilhelm also checked the shadows masking every street and doorway. It almost felt fated they’d encounter some kind of further danger before they made the sanctuary zone, especially with the Curfew long into effect and the three main gates sealed until sunrise. Yet true to form, and surprising his expectations, Wilhelm told him it wouldn’t be a problem.
“We have to cut to the east,” he said and led the way into the next street.
Tom fell into guarding their tail as the narrower street blocked out most of the moonlight, rendering their path ahead a shadow-tomb of rusting vehicles, shattered shopfronts, and banked mounds of clutter as if the city was slowly flushing its ancient arteries of human waste. Skeletons lay in the street, some just grinning skulls nestled amid the trash heaps, but twice they passed fallen Furies seeing their last days out. A rotting woman in a niqab pawed uselessly at them from beneath a car’s rusted grille, while the other was now just the remains of some once-hardy survivalist gone to pieces in the middle of the roadway with his legs tattered rags after the predations of the city’s wildlife. When a pack of wild dogs appeared behind them, ten minutes into their cautious advance, thoughts of potential attack kept Tom forcefully on edge the remainder of the way.
“You know where you’re going?” he hissed.
“Trust me.”
Wilhelm shot him a wan grin, steering them across the street and through the busted, fire-blackened security grille of an old delicatessen now a graffiti-riddled ruin within, shelves, everything bare, just more garbage underfoot. A cleared path ran the length of the narrow store, through the old kitchen, then down two steps to a small refrigerated room and a wire door, deliberately fastened with a padlock on which the Councilor turned the combination – and just as quickly let them both through.
Wilhelm ignored Tom’s raised eyebrow as he reset the lock behind them.
“Safe and sound, like I promised,” he said.
“Secret entrance, huh?”
“It’s known to a few,” Wilhelm replied. “Sadly, it doesn’t bring us up within the Enclave.”
He met Tom’s eye.
“We’ll have to cross the City under Curfew,” he said. “Are you OK with that?”
“If you are,” Tom said. “You’re the one with a price on his head.”
“Oh,” Wilhelm said and tried his best action-movie grin – which wasn’t his best. “Do you think I am the only one Ortega wants dead? Especially now?”
“I just want to get home to my kids.”
Tom shrugged off the Councilor’s look by scanning to see where they were headed, the wire door leading to concrete steps in an alleyway solidly blocked off by dumpsters and then a parked box truck to the west. Wilhelm motioned across the alley to a fire door. Tom opened it almost reluctantly, weapon at the ready as it revealed an empty corridor, the back of what was once a dispensary. They mounted the steps and went inside, past a deliberately-sealed staircase, and on to the front of the drug store. Boarded up from within, a sturdy glass door stood reinforced with steel bars and a pulley lock.
“There’ll be patrols between here and the Enclave,” Wilhelm said. “The question is how many of the troopers are loyal to Ortega and how many of them were in the dark about this whole thing just like us.”
Tom shot Wilhelm another look, impatient for him to open the gate.
“Ortega’s not my problem,” he said. “I’m going home to my children.”
“What do you mean ‘Not your problem’?”
Wilhelm looked gobsmacked and Tom regretted the slight burn he felt at the admission.
“No way, Tom,” the Councilor said. “You don’t think Ortega will leave you alone if we don’t go back right now and gather the Council to confront this? We could be on the edge of . . . of. . . .”
“Of what?” Tom offered. “A coup?”
“Exactly.”
Tom gave another grim laugh.
“Like I said, not my problem.”
“You can’t possibly believe that.”
“It’s not about what I believe,” Tom said. “It’s about what I choose. The City’s facing a rough, maybe catastrophic winter, and somehow I’m the guy left to deal with the Confederates because they don’t trust you. I’m not on your Council and I’m glad. It sounds like a goddamned death sentence to me.”
“If Ortega’s faction gains control –”
“They might already have control.”
“– if they gain control, once they’ve dealt with me, they’ll come for you.”
“And that will be my problem,” Tom said.
It was a shame he felt none of his own bravado. This was just another in a long line of expert performances. He wanted to go home and wake up Iwa for some pain relief – whatever she had to hand – and make sure Lucas and Lila, even Dkembe, were safe and sound.
Wilhelm had other ideas, and he cleared his throat as if readying for more negotiation.
“What about your promise to Hugh Anderson’s widow?”
Tom set his jaw and took a moment before answering.
“When I’ve finished sifting through the ruins of your bun-fight with Ortega,” he said, “maybe then I’ll have some answers for her.”
“I asked you to be the City’s special investigator, if you recall?”
Tom sighed. Only his left hand could still form a fist. His temple throbbed where the Councilor hit him. Wilhelm thought it appropriate to give a gentle laugh.
“We discussed this before,” the Councilor said. “You’re a part of this City now, Tom. And like you said yourself, it feels like I can count on my thumbs how many people I know for certain can be trusted, and . . . god damn it man, we need you. What do I have to . . . have to . . . do I have to fucking blow you to get you to come with me?”
Tom blurted a laugh at the unexpected and completely unconvincing profanity from the former desk-jockey turned politician. Wilhelm looked down, abashed, a pretty good performer himself despite Tom’s numerous misgivings. He knew Wilhelm was a turd deserving to get flushed, but he’d kept up his end throughout the past twenty-four hours – and maybe like Freestone’s Confederates, Tom somehow respected him more for taking the punch.
“I don’t think I could even trust you to get your black ass home safe without getting it blown off,” Tom said. “Can’t have that on my conscience.”
“Your City Council thanks you.”
“I’ll wait for my civic reception,” Tom said. “I want it to be like the end of Star Wars where they all get medals and we’re wearing white.”
“Ha,” Wilhelm said. “I’ve never actually seen a Star Wars movie.”
Tom narrowed his eyes, finally understanding the kind of person he was dealing with.
Then he sucked his teeth, remembered Freestone’s mannerism and quit it, nodding gruffly at the door instead.
“Let’s fucking go already.”
*
THE DRUG STORE had a basement, and there was cinder block, brick, and plaster debris everywhere along the path through to a sewer they then climbed down into, walking only about thirty yards forward to a rusted ladder, up which, and through a hatch, they came out into one of the city’s old wat
er-monitoring stations. A metal staircase beckoned. Wilhelm favored Tom with an encouraging look and led the way. At the end of a short industrial corridor, they finally emerged from the door of a mundane, brick-faced building with the street-front crammed by the back of several market stalls.
They were on The Mile.
After dark – and long after the crowds were cautioned off the City streets – the only residents were those hidden away inside the surrounding dwellings or sequestered within the closed-up stalls themselves for fear of getting shot on sight. That said, a single figure shuffled slowly down the middle of the dormant street, glimpsed only briefly from between the shutdown shelters. Tom’s first thought was for Furies, but one look at the man revealed the shambling wreck of a quite alive, but equally destitute Citizen.
“So much for Curfew,” Tom whispered.
“Some people treat it more like a suggestion,” Wilhelm said.
He patted Tom’s left shoulder as if curiously well-practiced at such after-hours stealth. Tom followed the Councilor down the back of the laneway, perilously dark without any electric light, and within another minute they scurried across The Mile, through the flaps of several huge curtains of faded black plastic swimming pool liner, and then navigated a maze of shanty dwelling until they could cut through to the next side street edging ever closer to the Enclave.
“Stop where you are.”
The voice came almost quietly, given the hour.
Tom and Wilhelm froze in the middle of the narrow, brick-paved street. It took everything in Tom’s resolve not to lift the gun to protect them – though his aching limbs weren’t much use for such behavior anyway – and the memory of MacLaren’s men doing the same and thus sealing their dooms chimed like a bell through him. They turned to face the two-man trooper patrol with an equally dark-fated mood.
The skinnier of the two men had them covered with an M16. His bigger comrade advanced several cautious steps.
“Lower your weapons,” he said.
Tom’s left hand was already near his belt. While he relaxed his uncomfortable grip on the M4A1 slightly, his free hand drifted back as far as it could to the handle of the Colt.
After The Apocalypse Season 1 Box Set Page 57
