After The Apocalypse (Book 5): Retribution

by Hately, Warren

“Home,” Kevin said instead. “Home for now.”

  He’d never called it that before, and that he called it “home” now somehow only made Luke more uncomfortable. He gestured more wildly back towards the theater site.

  “No, Kevin,” he said. “My father –”

  The people in the doorway behind them screamed as one, hauling ass back into the sunken establishment and slamming shut a door made from a wooden pallet and disguised to look like it was only resting against an otherwise featureless brick wall. A sense of motion in the street demanded more immediate review, and Lucas twisted about and started running just in time as a yellow-faced woman with dirt and mud in her hair tore in at them with her bloodied lips agape and hands outstretched.

  Lucas dodged the Fury going left, then at once guiltily quested back around for sign of Kevin as his friend lifted the 9mm Colt double-handed and shot the woman in the head.

  The rank Fury dropped wetly, the stink of the grave itself coming off her.

  “Holy shit,” Lucas whispered.

  Several more gunshots went off. At least one sounded close – a lot closer than the dinner theater. Then a hard banging noise was followed by a roar, imperceptible as a shockwave of warm air that started unthawing the night. What the boys saw was an eerily beautiful plume of flames and black smoke filling the sky in the western part of the sanctuary zone.

  “That’s . . . that’s. . . .”

  Luke had no words to complete the sentence. Kevin grabbed him by the shoulder to go.

  “Boys!” a voice rang out. “Stop there.”

  And the Gray Hood jogged back into the street.

  *

  THE MASKED VIGILANTE walked up to the pair once assured they’d halted. There was some sense of his reluctance even before they saw his face, but then the lithe figure sighed and slowly pulled the gray ski mask off to reveal Lilianna’s boyfriend’s face.

  “Beau?”

  “I couldn’t leave you out here . . . because of your sister,” the young man said, clearly unhappy.

  “What are you doing out here?” Lucas asked at once. “How did you know where to find me?”

  If Beau was short-spoken at other times, now the handsome young man looked like necromancy was needed to make him talk. The hood in his hands bore the majority of his ire. He offered an equally distorted look to the two boys.

  “I didn’t.”

  He motioned ahead.

  “Came back to get you home, Lucas,” Beau said. “Your friend, too.”

  “Kevin,” Luke said with distraction. “If you didn’t know where to find me –”

  “We can talk,” Beau said. “Another time. But listen.”

  Now the young man stepped close and bent slightly, head at their level despite Kevin drawing a short distance off.

  “You can’t tell anyone what you saw me do,” Beau said.

  “You’re the Gray Hood?” Luke asked.

  “I’ve got my secrets,” Beau said darkly. “You do too. What would your father say if he knew?”

  A hot flush tore through Lucas almost hard enough to send him yakking again. Kevin was already way ahead of him, and Beau as well.

  “No one,” the smaller boy hissed. He locked eyes seriously with Lucas. “We tell no one.”

  Luke wanted to say something stupid about his friend needing medical treatment, but knew even without thinking it through that Kevin was desperate, however cold-blooded he appeared. Lucas nodded once, slowly, and thus sealed the pact.

  His rising terror came again, more subdued this time, and he gave out a soft long slow strangled moan which seemed to satisfy Beau, who folded away the mask, checked the street around them, and draw a 9mm from his hip to lead the way on in the direction Kevin had taken.

  *

  THE BOYS TRAILED after Beau who moved at an inconsiderate pace for Kevin’s injuries, but any show of concern from Lucas earnt a rough shove. Kevin’s face was determined, chin down in his chest, and the surreal quality of the night and the aftermath from his overdose of adrenalin meant Lucas could barely stay on the course just caring for himself. The gratitude bordering on idolatry he held for Beau as his sister’s boyfriend marched them unerringly towards home base was all that kept him upright.

  The ambient gunshots tapered off at some point, though whenever Lucas checked behind himself he saw the streets aglow from the fire burning in the direction of where he thought his father fared, and the sight left him disoriented and shaken with shock. At one point, Beau paused long enough to grab him by the shoulder and propel him along. Curfew bells rang out in their wake.

  “Hold it together a little while longer,” the young man said. “And remember what we said. You were out late. I came across you.”

  “Yes,” Lucas agreed.

  Beau didn’t look satisfied with that, which made Lucas’ lip tremble – at which point the boy grabbed hold of himself in a mental headlock and growled, fingers squeezing into fists of defiance. Although tears still fell, he hunched his shoulders like a good little warrior and buried his fresh trauma with all the rest of it.

  He led the others to the gate entrance of Ortega’s old grow house. The awkward bouncing rickety wheels and the squeaking of the gate were so disturbingly mundane that Lucas had to work harder holding himself together, which wasn’t helped as a shadow moved out from the side door up ahead near the incomplete vegetable garden and Luke saw Dkembe emerge from the gloom.

  “Lucas?” the young man said. “Kevin? And you too, Beau?”

  The two twentysomethings barely knew each other. Beau offered an unreadable nod. Dkembe looked too startled to say much more anyway, though just as they crowded closer to enter the kitchen, he added, “Man, your father’s been goin’ nuts lookin’ for you, man.”

  “He’s not here?” Lucas asked even though he already knew.

  Dkembe shook his head. He held up a radio handset.

  “He was at Council, earlier,” he said. “We spoke. He was lookin’ for you still. Now he’s not pickin’ up.”

  They let Lucas absorb that, while Dkembe asked Beau about Lilianna and her boyfriend shook his head fiercely.

  “You have to stay here with these two,” Beau said. “Lilianna was at the meeting too.”

  Dkembe nodded, stammered, said nothing. If Lucas had kept up, he might’ve complained, but Beau simply nodded at them and strode from the room with a fierce purpose.

  Lucas looked at Kevin, who ignored him, eyes locked on the kitchen counter, and Dkembe slowly sat down on one of the stools like a thing deflated. He clapped a hand to the back of his head, eyes moving towards the boys and then away again as if he didn’t dare.

  *

  THE CHAOS OUTSIDE gave way to moments of sporadic gunfire, and then screams in distant streets. The tolling of the Curfew bell resumed, by which time the headquarters’ other denizens emerged, and Lucas tried to interest Kevin in a cold plate of beans flavored with canned herbs.

  Gaunt and spooked-looking Gonzales took up a watchful perch in the kitchen, while the lesbians Karla and Ionia, each armed from Ortega’s arsenal, patrolled the yard. When the Hungarian import Attila let himself in through the side gate, left bloodied from his night out carousing, the big man warned that trooper patrols were shooting almost anyone on sight.

  “We just have to stay here,” Dkembe said.

  “What about my dad?”

  Dkembe looked pained at the question, while breathless Attila checked nothing else was needed from him before he went and retrieved a heavy duty machete and a Glock with an extended magazine.

  The noises out in the old growing area startled them all. Erak Gonzales stood and circled around so he was at the back of the room, in prime position for an escape, and Lucas checked on Kevin who also backed away towards the counter.

  Then his friend drew his new gun and aimed it at the doorway.

  Luke’s father appeared with a grimy, startled, disbelieving look on his face that made way for confusion at once as Lucas yelled and leapt from his chair.
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  “Kevin, no!”

  Tom froze in the boy’s crosshairs, and Karla behind him did the same. Ionia faded backwards out of sight and the moment stretched, taut yet elastic, and snapped as Kevin lowered the pistol without his face changing mood throughout.

  “Fucking hell,” Tom gasped.

  Nothing stopped him rushing across the room then, matched by Lucas – crucified in a moment of hesitation, feeling Kevin’s eyes on him – and then Tom collided with his son and seized him in a fierce bear hug despite the weapons crisscrossing him on their straps.

  “Oh my boy oh my boy oh my boy where the hell have you been?”

  His father stopped crying long enough to hold him at arm’s length, wiping his tears without knowing the amount of awful grime across his face. His short graying hair was flecked with human tissue, his sleeves red to the elbows with gore. The front of his shirt was even worse.

  Lucas felt the familiar trembling return. Hot spasms crashed through him and the tears were wild enough to drown him. Tom took him again into a deep embrace which went on long enough the others realized the pair deserved some privacy. Attila voted to go watch the gate and the others moved on too.

  Except for Kevin, who took a stool near the counter and waited, eyes on them, oddly patient.

  *

  IT WAS A while before Lucas could speak, and he allowed himself the comfort of his father’s body despite the cold-faced boy watching from the kitchen bench. Lucas sniffled and sat up as his father asked for an explanation for the third time.

  Tom twisted at the waist, sitting on the kitchen floor at that point. His eyes took in Kevin.

  “Luke? Kevin?” the solid man said. “Anything you say is fine, I just want to understand. You wouldn’t believe the night I’ve had.”

  He actually laughed at the ridiculous mundane comment and stood, wincing as he did it, slowing before he could make it fully upright. Luke’s father made a pained face, and briefly checked the cuts on his hand as he finally straightened and groaned.

  “Jesus.”

  Tom looked about to topple. Lucas quickly guided him to a chair. Tom sat heavily and his elbow slipped on the table’s edge. At once he righted himself, then gave another soft disbelieving laugh completely unconvinced at his own amusement, maybe more frightened. He lifted hollow eyes back to his son.

  “We were out late,” Lucas said. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”

  “Karla said Beau brought you in?”

  “Yeah,” Lucas said, glad that at least wasn’t a lie. “He helped us get home.”

  “There were guns,” Kevin said suddenly. His voice was shockingly loud. “Lots of guns.”

  “Yeah,” Tom said and nodded tiredly. “There was indeed a . . . a lot of guns.”

  He rested down on the table’s edge like he might pass out. Luke looked over at Kevin.

  “Tired?” he asked.

  Kevin shrugged.

  “I’ll give you some help,” Luke said. “Upstairs.”

  He stood from the table, but Kevin didn’t move. Then slowly the other boy stood and left the table without speaking, gliding away down the hall.

  His feet started on the stairs before Lucas blinked out of his daze. Tom rested, maybe even slept with his forehead on his arm upon the tabletop. Luke’s hand hovered, but then he withdrew as well, giving a final look of deep angst. Then he hurried out after Kevin and up the stairs and nearly walked face-first into Kevin’s bedroom door as it shut in his face.

  *

  LUCAS WENT INTO the bedroom he shared with his father – and his sister, when she was living with them – and Tom entered just a minute later. Luke’s father looked shattered beyond comprehension. He’d taken a moment to sponge off the worst of the gore caking him. The jacket was gone, replaced by a tan, knee-length coat with sheepskin lapels. More warm clothing sat piled in the corner of their barren room, and Lucas stood there picking through it, still dazed himself, as Tom came up and rested a hand on his shoulder.

  “You OK?” he asked. “Scary being out late or. . . ?”

  Lucas bowed his head, but not for the reasons his father assumed. Any remark onwards from here was Lucas lying to him, going against a lifetime’s loyalty trained through their survivalist focus on not getting killed. To do otherwise felt fundamentally wrong, but the shame in him – and despair for his brutalized friend – made the truth impossible.

  “It’s OK,” he said in a hollow voice. “Yes, I was scared.”

  He turned. Tom backed off. There wasn’t much furniture, but they had two raised double beds pushed together. Lucas looked at the metal welding across the bedroom window and thought of Beau daringly smashing his way in to save him.

  “I’m weak, dad,” he said.

  “What? No.”

  “It’s true.”

  “No,” Tom said again. He studied his son a moment. It looked like the effort cost him something. “You might’ve noticed not many people survived as well as we did, out there, before. Before the City. Not many boys your age could’ve done what you did.”

  “That was all you, dad.”

  “Nonsense,” Tom said. “I taught you what I learned myself, nothing more. You’ve always been champin’ at the bit to get older, and –”

  “And now I am,” Lucas said bitterly. “And I’m still a kid.”

  “What,” Tom asked him, “you want to be like Kevin?”

  His fathered dropped his voice, as if worrying, as Luke did, that his friend might hear them from his bare upstairs room.

  Lucas rocked back at the question, unbidden in his thoughts again the image of Beau coming dramatically out of his forced entrance, the Japanese weapon in his hands, so graceful, strong, and in control. Compared with Kevin and the Edgelords, a subterranean fire lit within him and fastened hold of his face, which hardened, unnoticed as he turned away from his father.

  “No, I don’t want to be like Kevin,” he said ultra-quietly.

  I want to be more like the Gray Hood.

  Any further discussion was cut short as their bedroom door opened to reveal Lilianna bedraggled and marked with soot and blood over almost every inch of her frame.

  *

  LILIANNA’S BLACKENED FACE split into a wide grin as she entered and Tom and then Lucas leapt across to her. They were mindful of Beau standing in the wood-floored corridor outside, and once Luke had his arms locked around his sibling’s waist, he looked past her to Beau looking uncomfortable for such myriad reasons that Lucas could only nod him a grateful smile which of course only made the young man look ready to hurry away.

  Tom smothered himself with his daughter’s face and hair, and went to kiss her forehead only to see the hardened rivulet of gore like dried wax leaking from the scalp wound. He cast a look at Beau as if ready to blame him for it, but just as quickly scowled back to Lilianna point blank, unaware how his glower made even his daughter shrink away.

  “Jesus, love,” he said. “I told you to stay safe.”

  “You can talk,” she replied and backed off, managing a smile still. “What did you think when you came here and I wasn’t waiting like a good girl?”

  “I figured you were probably in the fucking thick of it,” Tom answered.

  Lila nodded. Tom exhaled, gently touched her shoulder, still checking her over for wounds. Lilianna deliberately motioned Beau forward.

  “We had to help bring the fire under control,” she said. “Beau’s been with me. I cut my head . . . earlier, before he even got there.”

  “Yes,” Tom said, and then to the young man, he said, “I hear I have a good reason for thanking you. You brought Lucas and Kevin home safe and well.”

  Beau nodded. He was awful with the eye contact. He spoke to the door instead.

  “I just . . . Lilianna, you know . . . I couldn’t leave them.”

  “Appreciated,” Tom said. He offered his hand. They shook. He added, “Sincerely.”

  Beau nearly betrayed something, then and there. His eyes flicked so fast to Lucas that Tom looked mo
mentarily addled. Luke tried distracting with a cheesy smile.

  “Yeah, thank you, Beau,” he said.

  “And you’re welcome to stay,” Tom said to him. “I might even have to insist on it. We’re locking down tight now we’re all home.”

  “But dad,” Lilianna said. “The Bastion?”

  “I don’t even know if you could reach it safe, right now,” Tom replied. “I’m serious. You led from the front tonight, Lilianna.” His daughter flushed, though her bloody face obscured it. “I knew you’d stay and do your part. That’s why enough’s enough, and we’re all staying put now. It’s dark, and morning’s still a long way off. We’ll talk about it again once there’s daylight. Agreed?”

  Lucas sat on the bed and yawned, glad for a change that he had no voice in this debate. No question of him going anywhere. He watched as Lilianna’s expected fightback turned into a curious look on her face as she glanced into the bedroom at her brother, then turned back to Tom.

  “Well, if Beau’s going to stay, I think we need to have one of those conversations right now,” she said.

  Tom kenned her meaning even if for the moment it eluded Luke. He didn’t care. He took off his shoes and socks and shivered, and barely noticed as Tom nodded, drunk with fatigue, and followed Lilianna back out through the door.

  *

  LUCAS FOLLOWED WHEN Kevin came back from the bathroom, trailing his friend and sworn blood brother to the other bedroom door. Kevin glanced over his shoulder without expression and went in, leaving the door ajar.

  “Close it,” the younger boy said.

  Lucas shut the light out along with the impression of the bare nest of clothes and blankets Kevin had acquired for himself in the room’s farthest corner. There was a window above it, the old blinds scrawled by a child’s crayons once. Not much light came in, it being dark and all. The sanctuary zone remained in blackout mode, and the unlit street outside was quiet for now.

  Lucas felt his way to the room’s only seat and sat as his eyes adjusted to the poor light. Kevin sat cross-legged on the hamper of clothes, a few books beside him, the purloined kitchen knife in his hands. The 9mm Colt rested on the spread-open cover of Oliver Twist. A small pile of grimy cups and plates were tucked just out of reach, unlike the gun. But the look on Kevin’s dour face as he turned over the knife was one of contemplation rather than hurt.