The Post

by Kevin A. Muñoz

  But it does me no good to turn away. It does Phoebe no good. I lost a childhood, and I lost a daughter. But if I abandoned my post now, I wouldn’t be a victim anymore. I’d be a monster. The Little Five is my responsibility. And while there have been people I could not save, and there will be others I cannot save down the road, another child will not be one of them.

  So I bring my tired mind to bear. If we had any sense that Phoebe was missing, it stood to reason that we’d inspect the trucks. Randall and Banderas wouldn’t take her out of the Little Five that way. Still, it’s not safe to assume that the Clarke County traders are innocent. Getting out of the Little Five isn’t difficult, but staying alive outside without transportation takes one’s full attention. An unwilling fellow traveler creates numerous problems best avoided.

  So Phoebe’s abductors may have planned to meet up with the Clarke caravan well out of view of the Little Five. But there are few safe routes out of town. There are too many hollow-heads to the north. The southbound tunnel is too well guarded. A route to the east wouldn’t be impossible, but too many of us are out there working the fields at all hours. That leaves only one good option: Inman Park. That neighborhood is directly connected to the Belt Line trade zone, a long and narrow—and easily protected—two-mile stretch that could deposit Phoebe’s abductors well out of our reach within a matter of hours.

  I check my holster, my sidearm, my knife. “If she’s lost to us,” I say, facing Braithwaite, “I swear I will feed you to a hollow-head.”

  I don’t stay in the station long enough to listen to her reply. The moon is veiled by an overcast sky. No street lamps or car lights, only the flickering glow of lanterns in windows and the odd incandescent bulb powered by battery-stored bicycle and solar power. My magnet flashlight doesn’t make much difference. Doors open around the plaza, and the members of the sweep team converge on the station, brought out by Pritchard pounding on windows. Even some of the power company join the search, defying the brush with which Braithwaite’s betrayal has painted that group.

  Still buckling her belt and tucking in her shirt, Luther arrives with Kloves. Her M1903 Springfield rifle is slung over her shoulder, bouncing against her hip as she comes to a halt in the street. “Give me something to do, Chief,” she says, flexing her fists. “I’ll wring that woman’s neck if I can’t find anything else to do with my hands.”

  My first instinct is to take everyone to the Inman Park fence, but I have to be sensible. I instruct Kloves to coordinate most of the sweep team to do a building by building search of the Little Five, on the unlikely chance that Randall and Banderas have holed up with Phoebe somewhere in the town. I tell Pritch to remain at the station and keep an eye on Braithwaite and send runners out if any news comes in.

  I hook a finger at Luther. “You and I, we’re going to Inman Park. We’ll take Olsen, Wright, and Robb from the sweep team.” I set a quick pace, jogging toward the gate.

  There are always two locked chains on the gate between the communities. One of the locks belongs to the Little Five, the other to Inman Park. To pass through the gate one must have permission from both sides; otherwise, at least one of the locks stays shut. The Little Five keys are held by the mayor, Pritchard, and myself, while the Inman Park keys are held by our counterparts on that side. I don’t recognize the locks that are now in place on the chains: someone must have cut the old locks and replaced them with ones that would pass a casual inspection.

  I resist the urge to have Olsen recall the sweep team searching the buildings. There is always a chance that this is a ruse, to make it look like Randall and Banderas left the Little Five, the same way the breached fence was a ruse. I test the locks to confirm that they are secure, rattle the gate for a moment, and then remember Andrew. The enclave’s primary lookout will be watching from atop one of Inman Park’s tall buildings, off to the southwest, scanning the perimeter with binoculars. Even if one of the perimeter guards doesn’t come by soon, I can count on the sniper to alert someone.

  And yet, while that solves our immediate problem, it poses another: if Phoebe’s captors came this way, how would they have avoided the sniper’s gaze? If they intended to slip into the enclave and disappear in the crowd, they would have to avoid being spotted on their way in. Cutting the locks instead of picking them might save time, but there could never be a guarantee that Andrew wouldn’t swing his gaze in this direction at any moment.

  “I’ll go get cutters,” Luther says. She turns to leave but I hold her back.

  “That’ll get us in, but we’ve still got trouble,” I say, rattling the gate again. “They may have had help on the other side. Possibly the lookout. We need to be careful.”

  Owen uncovered a hidden network of some kind: that’s the best explanation for the map Phoebe described, and it accounts for Braithwaite’s numbers station. She was hiding her role in plain view, after a fashion, and doing it well enough that I never had the slightest suspicion until three days ago. If that could be true of the Little Five, it stands to reason that the same could be true of Inman Park.

  “Would Belinda know who it is?” Luther asks.

  “I doubt she was part of the inner circle. She was lured into being a transmitter with the promise of biodiesel supplies. Whoever they are, they probably keep their identities as secret as possible, even among themselves.”

  Olsen gestures for my attention. “There are people coming this way,” he says, then adds with his usual flat humor, “We could just ask them.”

  Three men and a woman, walking up the middle of North Highland Avenue, all armed. I recognize Barkov among them but don’t know whether to feel relief or tension. The tightness in my chest releases, irrationally, when Barkov waves to me. My second thought is to mistrust his motives, but if I let myself go down that path, I’ll have too many suspects and no allies.

  Barkov calls out to me, “I have a good guess for why you are standing there like a baboon, my friend. I was right that they came from here.”

  “Two men and a girl?” I ask.

  “A girl, yes,” Barkov says, reaching the gate. “We know her. We know Phoebe. She is your mayor’s daughter.” He rattles the two chains. “What is this? Why are the locks changed?”

  “There were two men with her,” I continue.

  “There is one man with her,” he says. “A black man. They are together in the old parking station. He is threatening her, and we cannot find Andrew.”

  “Shit,” I mutter, assuming the worst.

  “You tell me what is going on and why you changed the locks.”

  “That wasn’t us,” I explain. “Two men abducted the mayor’s stepdaughter and took her through here. They cut the locks and changed them, so they wouldn’t be noticed. There’s a lot more I should tell you but right now—”

  “You want to rescue the girl and save the day,” Barkov says with a sigh of fatigue. “Like Old West.” But he shrugs. “Do you have bolt cutters? No?” He gestures to the woman next to him, and she hurries back the way they came. Barkov rattles the fence in front of me. “We are going back to the parking station. When you come, try not to get in the way, yes?”

  I send Robb to gather up a handful of people from the sweep team. Barkov may not want us interfering, but I’m not going to sit on my hands. By the time the woman returns with the bolt cutters and breaks through the two replacement locks, I’ve already been joined by five more men. The ten of us follow the woman down North Highland toward the parking deck.

  The multilevel parking structure sits behind what used to be a coffee shop, long since converted into a kind of cold storage warehouse for the enclave’s food stores. Behind the parking deck are a few apartments, then a surface lot, and then the Belt Line trading stalls that won’t see use until next summer. This gives anyone atop the structure a pretty good view of the area but doesn’t explain why someone would hole up in a building with too many access points. Maybe Randall and Banderas aren’t quite as canny as they led Braithwaite to
believe.

  The side vehicle entrance to the parking deck has been blocked off with construction site barriers. Barkov and the other peace officers are on the street side of the barriers, discussing some matter of hostage negotiation policy that no one ever expected to have to implement. Barkov takes one look at my crew and makes a face of both amusement and distaste. “We don’t need an invasion, Edison. It is just one man and a girl.”

  “One man holding a girl hostage,” I remind him, but his expression doesn’t improve. “Tell us what you want us to do. This is your dance. But remember, she’s our girl.” After Barkov nods, I ask, “Has he made any demands?”

  “Only to be allowed to leave,” he says. “With your girl. Tell me what is happening here, Sam. He is not one of yours. I don’t recognize him.”

  “He’s with the traders from Clarke County.” I want to explain the rest, but I don’t have enough of the answer yet, and trying to pick my way through it now would only make Phoebe wait longer for rescue. “I don’t know much more than that. He left the Little Five with another man named Banderas. They got through the gate in broad daylight without their heads being blown off by your man Andrew, who has gone missing. You tell me what you think that means.”

  “Shit,” Barkov says, mimicking my earlier comment. He turns back toward the dark maw of the parking structure. “And she is not a simple hostage,” he adds. “No one would have thought twice, even two unfamiliar men walking down Highland. But a struggling girl? So she is valuable to him. He will do whatever he can to leave here with her. Negotiation will be harder. He did not take her to keep himself safe. We cannot offer a replacement. She is his only real demand. Do you understand?”

  Someday I will have to ask my friend about his life before the collapse.

  “You think we are going to have to kill him,” I say with no pleasure in my voice.

  “Perhaps,” Barkov says. “Probably.” He slaps me on the shoulder. “You are a pessimist. We might make him believe that we will let him go. With your girl. Right now, he cannot see us from where he is hiding. He does not know that you are here.”

  Barkov and his people will have to convince Randall that they don’t care about Phoebe, that they are willing to let the two leave just to get him out of their hair. But that depends on too many unknowns. Where is Banderas? Is Andrew, the Inman Park sniper, a part of their network? Any bluff we might attempt would be spotted as far away as a sniper rifle. It is a dangerous gamble, and I point this out.

  “I have had someone talking to him for some time,” Barkov says. “We did not know you were coming.”

  I suppress a strong urge to push past the barrier and confront the man myself. That won’t improve the situation at all. We have no advantages here, except time. And even that may not be ours, if Randall is especially convincing in his threats, or Banderas has his own tricks.

  “We need to find his partner,” I suggest. “If he’s still here. Maybe that will give us something real to trade.”

  I don’t think Randall and Banderas came to the Little Five specifically to kidnap Phoebe. They came to solve the problem of Owen and Abigail. They took Phoebe as insurance and a reminder to give them what they want. That makes her valuable, but maybe not more valuable than one of their own. They’ve still made their point, even if Phoebe comes back safe and sound.

  “You are volunteering?” Barkov asks. “Then go. But do not make trouble. You are not the police here.”

  “I know that,” I reassure him, then signal to my group to move away from the parking deck. We gather in the street, shrouded by a darkness untouched by the weak street lanterns lining the sidewalks. Quickly I give my instructions. “The enclave is laid out in two roughly parallel strips. One strip is North Highland Avenue, where we are now. The other strip is the Belt Line market zone. The best way out of here is through the Belt Line, going back the way we came, then curving off toward Piedmont Park. Once you’re out, you’re in the open, and free and clear of pursuit. Chances are Banderas hasn’t gone that way yet, but I want three of you scouting ahead anyway. The rest of us will do a sweep along North Highland. Check unlocked buildings. All the way down to the bridge over Freedom Parkway. But remember, this isn’t the Little Five. Like Barkov said, we’re not the police here.”

  DAY TWELVE, 6:00 A.M.

  As the sky begins to turn to steel, Luther and I take point with Olsen, Wright, and three sweepers following a few paces behind. I unholster my service pistol and keep a two-handed grip on it as we proceed down the yellow line of North Highland. Olsen and Wright fan out left and right with the others, checking doors on both sides of the street. Some of the doors open, lantern light splashing out onto the sidewalk, bleary-eyed occupants making noise about the disturbance. But most doors remain shut, and unlike the Little Five, the residents of Inman Park seem to like locking their doors.

  I blink hard against my fatigue. Luther, carrying her Springfield with the barrel in the crook of her elbow, grits her teeth and mutters, “She put us in a fix, didn’t she?” When I snap a glance at her she says, “Belinda. Obviously.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask as Olsen returns from half a block down, shaking his head.

  “I mean the biodiesel,” Luther says. “Now what do we have to trade, if we can’t make it without whatever that shit was she needed from these assholes? I mean—”

  I interrupt, almost halting in the street. “You can’t think she did the right thing, making a devil’s bargain.”

  “But she didn’t know, did she?” Luther says. “It doesn’t matter now. If she was in any way responsible for those deaths, it’s not like we can let her keep doing her job. So who’s going to find another source? Who’s going to be the one to get us out of the hole she put us in? There has to be another way, right?”

  “God, I hope so,” I mutter as we come into view of the bridge that marks the boundary of the Inman Park enclave. The bridge extends North Highland Avenue beyond the enclave’s gated perimeter fence, an inversion of the way our own community closes off its southern border.

  “Holy crap,” Luther says, raising her rifle and gesturing to the rest of our team. I see it immediately after: the gate is open, rolled back completely so that the entire length of the perimeter across the bridge is exposed. In the dawning light I notice movement just beyond a pair of gutted Volkswagen buses on blocks perpendicular to the road.

  I lift a hand to halt the team. I don’t know the area well enough; I don’t know how dangerous this section of the perimeter is. The slope down to the street below is steep, making it unlikely that hollow-heads could climb up to attack the fence, but the bridge is much less secure than our tunnel. And it is wide open. The buses are not a real barrier: I’d guess that the enclave uses them as baffles, to prevent hollow-heads from simply rushing across the bridge to strike the gate. But there is still enough room on either side for two people to walk abreast.

  The wood and iron gate opens to the side, on runners, but someone has relocked the heavy chain to prevent the gate from being easily wheeled back into position. Closing the gate will mean getting much closer and making a considerable amount of noise. Without a better vantage, I can’t tell how many hollow-heads are on the other side of the buses—or how dangerous it would be to try to secure the fence again. If even one shrieker hears us and reflexively calls out, there could be a horde on the bridge in a matter of minutes.

  Just above a whisper, I tell Wright to run back to Barkov and tell him about the sabotage. I instruct Olsen to find a way to get on top of the buildings to our left, so I’ll have eyes on the far half of the bridge. From here back almost a block, the old storefronts are a single contiguous building, which means Olsen can find a safe place to climb and then make his way quietly across rooftops.

  But this also poses a problem. Back when the hollow-heads were new, everyone assumed that the best defense was to hole up in a building and wait them out. Groups gravitated toward urban areas with tightly-packed buildings, th
inking them to be much more defensible than open spaces. But hollow-heads don’t think like people do. They don’t encircle; they don’t avoid impediments. All of the assumed disadvantages of wide open spaces turned out not to be anything of the sort. And the enclosed streets, the locked buildings, the single-entry barricades—these became killing fields for the hollow-heads to enjoy. Hollow-heads don’t run away. They don’t frighten. They don’t become claustrophobic. Confronted with a locked door, they break through a window without a second thought. And then a much-prized secured building becomes an abattoir. An unbroken street block, seen as an excellent way to control points of entry, is a funnel down which hollow-heads can find their panicked prey.

  Inman Park enclave is a slaughterhouse waiting to happen, and as I wipe nervous sweat from my palms, I realize just how bad it’s going to get. The Atlanta Medical Center, the eastern heart of the hollow-head infestation in the city, is only a few blocks west of where we’re standing, on this very street.

  The first sign of real trouble doesn’t take long to make itself known. Two figures tumble around the front of one of the Volkswagens, both of them dressed in ancient rags that have seen too many winters. The two figures are male, tall, and gaunt like starving men. I have my weapon up and ready to shoot when I remember Randall and Banderas. The crack of the gunshot may spook them, alert them to our presence. I have no doubt that they are responsible for the gate being open. I’m sure they’re paying attention to whether anyone notices.

  Luther seems to have the same momentary hesitation, as she and the others look to me for guidance. It is a mistake, and we have all made it. Both hollow-heads stop their shuffling approach, open their mouths, and shriek.

  “Fuck!” Luther shouts, and this brings us back to our senses. I fire the first shot, catching one of the shriekers in the chest. It slumps against the Volkswagen, its siren cry cut short like a needle pulled off a record. Three shots from other weapons miss the remaining shrieker; then a round from someone’s revolver catches it in the face.