Looking Back Through Ash

by Wade Ebeling

  While most of the city’s more influential citizens lived sealed away inside the western housing section of the Warehouse, Daniel Moore owned a house outside the protected Warehouse boundaries and paid the taxes on it diligently. He had helped to build this world, earning free access to it in doing so. Being that Daniel could leave at any time, he always wanted to. There were perpetually too many milling bodies about, too many eyes looking for an angle. It was far too stressful to endure for any length of time. A deep-rooted mistrust of people ensured that his trips to the Warehouse were always kept short and without much interaction with others.

  Deciding to give the guards a few more minutes to return, Daniel follow a dirt path to the right, skirting around the outside of the building. He walked slowly past a tattoo kiosk, watching the artist pumping away at a foot-powered gun as he worked on a rotund whore. Daniel pulled a spare pistol magazine from his left pocket, then stripped one of the cartridges before stuffing it back down. As always, he made sure that the magazine faced the right way, just in case he needed the extra rounds later.

  Waiting his turn in the four-deep line outside the bar, Daniel turned the loose round over for two grams of potent looking marijuana. Through a hole in the plexiglass window Daniel mumbled, “Thanks.” to the acne-scarred girl on the other side. The triple-beam scale sitting between them showed that the weed had weighed a little over and he appreciated the small gesture.

  As Daniel headed back around to the front, he gave a wide berth to four members of the ‘Trays’ gang. Each of them wore bright yellow jerkins that had been dyed using the inner bark of the eastern black oak tree. He knew all about this gang, everyone did. They had been the first bunch of hooligans to arrive on the scene with numbers big enough that the Council could not just employ the military to put them down like all the others.

  The concentration of the Trays power lay inside a dome-shaped building to the west, which was once filled to the ceiling with road salt. After they gained controlled over this and an apartment block directly adjacent to it, the Trays became a force to be reckoned with. One of the towering apartment buildings became their hardened fortress. From there, dug in like ticks, they refined the salt down to finer grades. Once the Council realized there was no shaking the gang off their backs, they were quick to make an accord with them. Their vast supply of salt could be traded in the bazaar and, to prevent the brewing unrest, the Council made it widely known that only the one competing monopoly would be allowed. The salt game was controlled with an iron fist; these were definitely not the kind of people you trifled with.

  Making his way back around the beaten dirt path, Daniel tried to not look quite as scared as he felt. The guards had still not reappeared outside, and he knew he would have to deal with the crowd alone. With their carts full of useless salvage, the drifters found themselves in limbo when they arrived in New Warren. If they could not get one of the scarce clean-up jobs through the city, who supplied all of the workers to the camp, they were destined to remain outside of the fence gate until they could steal or sell enough wares to pay for a spot inside the bazaar. However, most of the people living outside of the Warehouse were themselves scavengers so, as a general rule, residents would not support the competition. Daniel was no different and he would usually try to completely ignore the drifters, unless something extremely rare had been found. Having looked briefly inside the carts that lined the trampled path on his way in, finding nothing of interest, the quicker he could get from the fence gate down to the blacktop parking lot would be all the better.

  As it stood now, the old world was fast becoming useless and dead. A good number of things could be replicated, sometimes even quite handsomely, by using bits and baubles of formerly useful items. Nevertheless, remnants of the old world’s former glory no longer came easy to those searching them out, as any hidden scraps had to be dug from the ruination piece by piece.

  Knowledge that had once passed down to each following generation, just as a matter of simple survival, became abandoned when it was deemed no longer pertinent. As society thought itself progressing, these matters became nothing but archaic garbage piling up alongside the hi-tech road to the promised better life. Humans, though, are a clever lot when pushed to the brink, be it starvation, exhaustion, or sanity, and this mislaid-information quickly found a way to come back into favor. Just one long-forgotten book could revive an entire area. Once one person learned some tidbit of once-common wisdom, it had a way of making its way around with a velocity not seen since the verbal grape-vines of old.

  Still, when there is nothing left to be had, there is nothing left to be done about it except a reversion to the ‘might makes right’ mentality. And this just happened to be the exact point in time that the drifters found themselves trying to eke out a living. On any given day, where there used to be just a dozen or so transients at the gate, there were enough of them now that they honestly posed a threat, and what made this even worse was that they knew it.

  As the years had passed around the Warehouse, the ranks of people standing outside the fence had swollen and contracted. Due to the sheer volume of foot traffic that came in and out through the gate, an easily removed chain drooping its way across the opening had been put up as a subtle deterrent. The rusty chain might show where the actual boundary line with the Warehouse was, but it was the knowledge of what would happen if caught trespassing that actually kept the drifters compliant; it would either be their worst day, or their worst and last day.

  At least sixty of the drifters stood in Daniel’s way now, each the most desperate kind of person, each looking to gain a piece of the perceived better life on the other side of the razor wire crowned fence. Most of them were even more than willing to accomplish this base goal by any means necessary. Though they all came from different backgrounds, they still shared the same uniform. Torn, soot-streaked and poorly-fitted attempts at clothing associated them all as being in the same profession of searching through piles of burnt rubble. The few women within the crowd wore shapeless tunics, sewn together using snippets of mismatched, colorful materials. Their nipples poked out at odd angles, breasts having been pressed immobile by pieces of fabric tied tightly around their necks and torsos, different variations on the same halter-top theme.

  Some of the Drifters would most certainly have guns tucked away, but the weapons would be old and battered, most likely single shot rifles, cut down and mended with bailing wire, or homemade zip guns made from whatever materials happened to be close at hand. Almost everybody, including the women and their near-feral children, kept plainly visible one variety or another of the dual-purpose weapons. The kind of objects that could be helpful in breaching thick walls or digging through compacted wreckage, yet still useful for offensive and defensive purposes. The most common of these tools were fashioned axes of all sizes, pry bars of all lengths, and shortened shovels with replacement handles at the ready. In this abandoned corner of southeast Michigan, outside the ring of protection offered by New Warren, one moment you could be searching the basement of a collapsed house for a possible undiscovered pocket of riches, and fending off bushwhackers the next.

  Daniel’s pebble-kicking approach had aroused the hawkers to yell out their itineraries. These standardized lines were shouted without much zeal. After all, the audience was just one person. He, again, briefly entertained the thought of waiting for the guards to return outside before trying to leave. This he knew would only show the drifters the fear that they seemed to feed upon, giving them all the more reason to harass him when he did go through later on.

  He rolled the tops of both bags tightly, and gripped them firmly with his left hand, thus freeing the right to stay in close proximity to the pistol. Always ready for quick-action, the recently cleaned and greased matte black Taurus PT24/7 PRO C DS sat forward on his hip. It was a semi-compact, handy automatic with a double-action trigger and a two-stage, decoking safety. It held twelve .45 cal., 55 grain rounds in the main magazine and 10, now 9 after buying the pot, in
the smaller spare in his pocket. It was not the best gun for a shot of any range, but considering that the vast majority of the population now used melee weapons, and that most combat took place in the up-close-and-personal range, it suited his purposes just fine. Besides, it was the pistol his father had on him when he died.

  Primed for the impending harassment, Daniel ducked under the chain, plunging himself into the middle of the disconcerting crowd that had started to collapse around him. Trying to preempt the worst of the pestering that had yet to happen, he yelled out, “I don’t want anything!” Some, but not nearly all, of the smelly throng parted upon hearing these seriously spoken words. It was only those who remained interested in him that Daniel really dreaded trying to deal with anyhow.

  Three men became conspicuously separated from the group, which was now currently dividing itself along both sides of the narrow path. These men spaced themselves across the pathway like an echelon, obviously an attempt to slow his built-up momentum. To Daniel all three of the men looked quite pleased to have a new victim. It was the kind of look that only came along with prior success.

  “Wha’cha got there?” the stocky man in the center asked cheerfully.

  The man stood about five-foot-eight and played host to more hair on his body than anyone Daniel had ever encountered before. The armless, faded-blue flannel that he wore was unbuttoned revealing a thick, black mat of curly hair that stretched all the way from his belly to the top of his head. There was only a small oval around the man’s eyes where flesh could actually be seen, and even this was etched by a startling unibrow. It would have been comical to see this man from a distance, but Daniel felt none of that humor standing nearly face-to-face with him right now. His hands were empty, but the look in his eyes spoke volumes as to how dangerous this hairy man truly was, despite his friendly tone.

  Both of his flunkies, still perched just behind on either side, chuckled a little too eagerly. The tallest of the trio, pacing around to the right of the hairy man, stood almost as tall as Daniel, who was six feet two inches. He was shirtless and fidgety, every tendon and rib protruded with late-stage malnourishment. There was a large spade or knife stuck down his patched pants, held in place by an electrical cord serving as a belt. A pair of red-tinted ski goggles over his eyes and a length of brown material tied around his head served as an impromptu dust mask, but it also obscured the details of his face.

  As intimidating as those two were, it was the shortest of the bunch that drew Daniel’s gaze. This man was covered in filth and blackened ash, making any attempt at discerning the original color of his clothing quite impossible. His face was scratched and scabbed, like he had fallen in a briar patch, repeatedly. This smudged mole-man was very deftly twirling a small camp axe. The motions of his hands were almost a blur as he expertly tossed and spun the honed blade from hand to hand. His skill with the weighty tool was very obvious.

  Daniel was forced to stop walking, just to keep a short distance between him and the three men. He was ringed on either side by carts and fellow drifters, who were starting to take an unhealthy interest in the exchange. Daniel once again contemplated turning around to make his way back up to the Warehouse. He might be able to get some of the guards to come back out, maybe even get an escort all the way down to his truck.

  A flash of indecisiveness later, given the human proclivity for defending one’s bravado, he refused this option. It would only show the weakness that these lecherous bottom-feeders were looking for, what they thrived on. In fact there was no guarantee that Daniel would not be jumped from behind as soon as his back was turned. He suddenly felt that this was precisely what these men were trying to get him to do; bash him on the back of the head like cowards, no doubt.

  Instead of retreating, Daniel answered the hairy man’s question by making a quick flourish with his right arm, which ended when he placed his hand on the pistol, unsnapping the webbing that held it in place.

  “Oh…Are you talking about this…? This here is a .45,” Daniel said happily in reply, like they had been friends forever and he was just showing off a new toy. Seeing that the men’s eyes were now fixed upon his hand and pistol, he clicked off the safety for added effect. Daniel was scared beyond all belief, his pulse quickened, his vision narrowed, and the sounds of the world started to fall away.

  The hairy man took a step forward, trying to keep his crocodile grin from going askew as he said, “No, no. Not that…,” his eyes rolled, “Those. What have you got in the bags, friend?” Despite the chuckle in his voice, Daniel could tell that some of the authority he was trying to convey had gone into hiding on him. “You got anything good in there that you might…say…like to share with us? I mean, we are friends, right?” He then turned his head to look at his cronies, watching them sequentially nod in agreement.

  Daniel did not know whether the man did this as a reminder about his being outnumbered, or if he was just making sure that the pair still stood behind him. Either way, it bolstered him enough to take another step forward. The hairs on the back of Daniel’s neck stood up on end, and his palms suddenly felt moist and clammy. He had to take action soon, the man was almost within arm’s reach.

  “I’ve got nothing for you…or your dogs,” Daniel spat, taking half a step backward, while smoothly pulling the pistol out at the same time. He kept the gun’s barrel pointed in a neutral position, the ground by his feet. Trying to force his peripheral vision back into use, Daniel darted his eyes around, desperate to ensure that no one was sneaking up on him from behind. Bringing the pistol into play could easily backfire. He was so handsomely outnumbered that it might quickly escalate the situation beyond his control.

  Playing off of Daniel’s slight breach in etiquette the hairy man spoke, not just to him, but to the crowd in general. “Hey, there’s no need for that!” he announced, arms spread out wide. He had said it as if he was genuinely hurt by the sudden appearance of the gun. The hairy man was certainly smarter than Daniel had initially given him credit for. The man was testing the waters, seeing if he could urge more help from the surrounding crowd. The crowd, however, remained blissfully silent and motionless. No help was coming for either party.

  “Look, just get out of my way. I’m not in the mood to play with you or your fucking buddies right now,” Daniel expressed heavily. It was too late to try another tactic, best to stick with the illusionary position of strength. He attempted to accomplish this by including all three of the men in the overt threat, the pistol tilting up ever so slightly. There was still no mistaking that he was surrounded by a far superior force, even if their body odor did well-up tears.

  The dirty thug stopped spinning the axe, dangling it down by his knee; not a good position for a fast move. The tall skeleton of a man had still made no attempt to reach for whatever kind of weapon it was tucked down his pant leg. The zenith of the past few moments would come down to what the hairy man did next, as he was obviously the leader of this dysfunctional troupe.

  The grin was wiped clean away from the hairy man’s face, as if Daniel had only imagined it there in the first place. It certainly no longer looked like a face that had seen many smiles. He now seemed to be trying to gauge the distance between himself and Daniel. His hand started to twitch while he apparently contemplated a suicidal lunge forward.

  Survival out in the unprotected areas often meant having to swallow your pride, which is undoubtedly the absolute lowest form of the phrase ‘live to fight another day’. This was usually sold to the brain as a weighed-out equation involving energy expenditure over potential energy gained, but it still involved yielding ground first. Luckily for Daniel the fuzzy man had learned this lesson long before meeting up with him.

  There was little chance of surviving a head-long attack, so the hairy man eventually relented. Looking more than ever like he was only one generation removed from having knuckles dragging on the ground, his brow furrowed, mentally struggling between bloodlust and self-preservation. “Yeah, you’re a big tough guy with that gun. Pr
obably doesn’t even have any bullets in it. Bet’cha it don’t. I will remember this, ya know? We just…maybe…wanted a little of wha’cha got. An’ you go an’ pull a fuckin’ gun on us,” he spouted, trying to still sound tough, but it came across a little like whining. “Let the big man through. We’ll see him again…soon enough.” The hairy man hissed out this last part just loud enough to ensure that Daniel could still hear him.

  Like a dejected child with a few chuckles coming from the crowd, the man walked to the north side of the path, sitting down on the bumper of a truck-bed trailer to mope. His cronies followed suit after some ineffective posturing. The hairy man knew Daniel was not bluffing. He had always been able to tell lie from truth, fear had a way of making it very plain. This man was not as scared as he should have been. The gun he held was loaded, full of trusted ammunition too. Men were never that brave when counting on second or third generation reloads.

  Despite having to pass within an uncomfortable proximity to the three men to get by, Daniel ignored his racing pulse and longing desire to go the other way, calmly saying, “While you are remembering, remember that you started this dumb shit, not me.”

  Daniel kept the pistol in sight until after he had made it safely past the scoffing men. When his pulse reached a comfortable level again, he holstered it right next to his favorite blade. Hidden from view behind the large nylon holster was an Army pilot’s survival knife. The tanned leather of the metal-backed sheath had become supple after years of constant use. The sharpening stone within its built-in pouch, was now ground concave as a result of his compulsion to keep the blade honed razor sharp. He always carried it as a backup, just in case the pistol failed him in some way.