Surviving The Dead | Book 9 | War Without End

by Cook, James N.

  Ferguson sat forward, folded his massive arms on the table, and lowered his voice. “The warehouse missed check-in.”

  Heinrich froze with a spoon halfway to his mouth. He stayed that way for a few seconds, then slowly put it down.

  “How long?”

  “Almost an hour now.”

  Heinrich kept his face carefully still. He pushed his plate away, folded his hands in his lap, and sat back in his chair.

  “And the tavern?”

  “All secure.”

  A nod. “What have you heard?”

  “The feds are on the move. One of our guys in the Bureau called in. They’re mobilizing tactical teams.”

  “Any idea where they’re headed?”

  “No. They’re keeping things quiet.”

  Another nod. Heinrich thought through the possibilities and knew there was only one explanation.

  Someone talked.

  “Any idea what happened?”

  “To the warehouse?”

  No, to your fucking chicken coop, idiot. Heinrich kept his anger in check and said, “Yes.”

  “No, but I’m guessing somebody hit them. Whoever it was, it ain’t the feds. We would have heard about it by now.”

  Heinrich took a drink of water to sooth his dry throat. As he put his cup down, he had to fight the urge to throw it across the room.

  Blackthorns. Has to be.

  “We have to assume we’re compromised,” Ferguson said. “We need to get you out of here.”

  “I know.”

  A few seconds of uncomfortable silence.

  “What do you want to do about the bunkers in the city?”

  Heinrich turned his head and looked Ferguson in the eye. “Blow them. And tell our people to get the hell out of there.”

  The giant’s jaw flexed as he took this in. “Where do you want them to regroup?”

  “Manzanola. The old high school.”

  “I’ll let ‘em know. What about the Boroughs?”

  Heinrich thought about it. If their operations in the city were blown, the Boroughs would not be far behind. As much as he hated to admit it, the tribe’s tenure in Colorado Springs was at an end.

  No matter, he thought. We’ll just find another place to set up shop. Same as last time.

  “We’re burned here. We need to keep the feds and the Army occupied while we escape.”

  Ferguson ran a hand over his mouth, lowered his head, and took a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll see to it personally.”

  “No. Have one of your sergeants do it. If the warehouse is gone, we have to assume Maru is gone too. You’re my second now. I want you with me when I leave. Gather an escort and meet me at the stables. I’ll get everything ready.”

  “Okay.”

  As his new executive officer stood to leave, Heinrich put a hand on his arm. “Move quickly, Ferguson. We don’t have much time.”

  “Understood.”

  Heinrich watched him leave and felt his rage and frustration begin to wane. The more he thought about it, the more he saw this as a good thing. He had grown tired of the Springs anyway. Doing business here was more stressful than it was worth. He welcomed the idea of finding someplace smaller and easier to manage. The image of the city burning behind him while he rode away to greener pastures gave him a profound sense of relief.

  To hell with it, he thought. It was fun while it lasted.

  Starting up again would be no problem. The tribe had huge caches of trade goods stored away in the mountains. He could gather them, buy livestock and wagons from outfitters along the caravan routes, and disappear into the swarms of people that would be fleeing the city in the very near future. Then he would lead the tribe south toward opium country. The trade there was run by small groups of farmers lorded over by warring clans of traffickers. He did not foresee having too much difficulty dealing with them. They were a divided lot, constantly fighting each other, a gaggle of undisciplined thugs preying on poor farmers to grow their poppies. He saw tremendous opportunity there.

  Heinrich drained his water, waved to the owner, and walked calmly out the door.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Ferguson,

  East Gate Market, Outer Boroughs

  Ferguson stood in the upstairs window of his house and watched the hurried movements of lanterns glittering along the alleyways. His men were preparing to evacuate the Boroughs, and they were doing it in a hurry. It was a drill they had practiced many times: one man got the word from Ferguson, who spread it to several others at the tavern down the street, who ran and told others, who ran and told others, and on it went. In ten minutes’ time, the tribe would grab their go-bags, tell whoever was at home they had urgent business, and muster at the network of barns and sheds where wagons, livestock, supplies, and weapons waited.

  On any other day, they would saddle up their horses, put oxen in the traces, load up the wagons, and wait for inspection. No riding out, no leaving behind their women, and, in a few cases, their children. Just a long boring sit in a dusty stable with stinking animals while waiting for Ferguson or one of his sergeants to show up and give the all-clear. Only today, there would be no inspection. There would be no all-clear. The exercise would not end with a grunt and a roll of the eyes and a few muttered curses on the way home. The password had been given.

  Nougat.

  A word no one used anymore because it did not mean anything anymore—except to the tribe. To them, the word had so much weight it could crush a hundred strong horses. To them it meant, this is not a drill.

  Ferguson knew he needed to be moving. He should be on his satellite phone giving the order to set the charges that would free the monsters when the tribe was at a good safe distance. Charges that would detonate at the slightest provocation if someone tried to disarm them. It was what he was expected to do. It was what he had trained to do. But he did not do it. The weight of the little black device was heavy in his coat pocket. He kept his hands carefully away from it.

  Not that he was absolved of anything, of course. Far from it. He had used the satellite phone once already to call the stations behind the city wall. The caches of monsters there had most likely already been blown. Ferguson had felt a brief pang of regret at the decision, but then upon reflection, had said to hell with it. The Springs had had things too good for too long. It was time for those city-dwelling shitbirds to find out how the other half lived. People in the Springs were little better than animals, Ferguson told himself. A bunch of rats in a warren tearing at each other for scraps of meat.

  Fuck ‘em.

  Things were different in the Boroughs, though. Out here, people stuck together. They looked out for each other. There were no walls, no guardsmen, no Army presence, and no hospitals. Balanced against that, though, was the fact there was also very little government. People out here were free to live pretty much however they wanted. And they did. Ferguson loved that about this place.

  As he thought this, he was struck by a sudden feeling of warmth in his chest, a tingling in his face, a coldness in his hands and legs, a churning in his stomach. He began to tremble, first in his hands and then in his knees. His breath came in short, wheezing gasps. For a moment he was worried he was having a heart attack, but then he realized, no, this was something familiar. It felt just like the afternoon a sheriff’s deputy had shown up on his porch to deliver the news about his father. Ferguson had stood at his mother’s side and listened and felt the same stunned, sinking, blood-draining realization he was having right now. But unlike before, this feeling did not stem from being told his father had been hit by a tractor trailer while riding his motorcycle drunk. This feeling stemmed from the undeniable revelation of a truth about himself he had been denying for a long time now.

  He had changed.

  Something inside him had become different. Until this moment, he had never identified himself with anyone or anything, never seen himself as a part of some greater whole, never harbored any feelings of belonging or allegiance. Even his role with the tribe ha
d been born of pure necessity, something he had done to survive.

  He had discovered at an early age, being the son of an enforcer for a meth-dealing motorcycle club, that every king needed soldiers to carry out their orders. And those soldiers needed to be led by someone the king could trust. Someone with the raw force of presence to intimidate even the most vicious of men into subservience. And that was what he did, what he had been doing since the age of sixteen. It was his specialty, a skill he had developed, mastered, and marketed as a means to earn a living. He aligned himself with men who possessed the charisma and magnetism he lacked, men who could sway others to their service through persuasion and force of will. He did the work for them they did not want to do for themselves. Dirty work. Violent work.

  Only now, for the very first time in his life, he found himself questioning if this kind of work was still what he wanted to do. If this was still what he wanted to be.

  When he had first come to the Boroughs, when the tribe had entered posing as a merchant caravan out of Arkansas making their first foray into the Springs, Heinrich had ridden over to him and motioned for Ferguson to follow. No words. No explanation. Just a gesture and a manner of motion that brooked no argument. Ferguson had sighed wearily, nodded to one of his sergeants to let him know he was in charge, and then spurred his horse to keep pace with his chief.

  They rode to a low hill overlooking the eastern side of the vast, sweltering slum the Boroughs had once been. At the edge of a steep slope Heinrich had reined in his mount and sat up straight, one hand on the saddle horn, the other poised on his hip, elbow outthrust, figure framed by the setting sun. Ferguson had clenched his teeth and tamped down the urge to snort. It was the most obvious attempt at a dramatic pose he had ever seen, and even if done correctly, would have looked no better than a dim-witted child’s idea of dime-novel romanticism. As it was, it just looked like a fumbling idiot trying for majestic and landing on ridiculous.

  “When you look out there,” Heinrich said with a dramatic sweep of his hand, “what do you see?”

  Again, Ferguson forced himself not to laugh. He wondered if Heinrich knew, as he posed and preened and tried to look like something he was not, that he had dead leaves stuck in his hair and his horse had just lifted its tail to take a big, leaky shit.

  “Nothing much I care to look at,” Ferguson said, and meant it.

  Heinrich smiled. “You lack vision, Mr. Ferguson. Not that I blame you. You’re a man who sees the world for what it is, and that is a quality about you I would not diminish. But I ask you to look beyond what is and think about what could be.”

  Ferguson looked out over the slum again. He saw rickety buildings pieced together from scrap that looked ready to collapse at the first strong wind. He saw gaunt women with sunken eyes dressed in rags scurrying hastily from one place to another, constantly looking over their shoulders, eyes darting. He saw starving children with distended guts and slack, indifferent faces peering out of doorways and sitting in clusters on a street slick with raw sewage. He saw men with weapons openly displayed moving among them, their expressions twisted with cruelty and aggression.

  All in all, he saw nothing worth admiring.

  “You want me to burn the place down or something?” Ferguson asked.

  Heinrich laughed. It was the first time Ferguson had heard him do it, and it unnerved him. The sound was high and manic, like the way his father used to laugh when he dropped too much acid.

  “No, Ferg. I don’t want you to burn it down. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

  Heinrich waited. Ferguson knew the man loved his dramatic pauses, loved to keep people hanging on his every word. He also knew he was expected to take the bait by providing the obvious response, so after waiting an appropriately long moment, he said, tiredly, “Well, what do you want me to do?”

  A triumphant smile. “I want you to save these people.”

  It was the last thing he had expected to hear.

  Getting the job done had taken time, and he had been forced to kill over a dozen people, but he and his men had dismantled the loose network of bullies and thugs that had lorded over the place, organized what was left, and set to work turning the slums into a place where people could live in peace. It had taken over two years, and the road had been anything but smooth, but when he looked out over the Boroughs today, he saw a land transformed. More importantly, he saw people transformed. Gone were the gaunt figures in rags and the starving children and the slinking murderers and the shacks and the sewage. People here today wore simple homespun clothes and walked straight and confident and the children were well fed and the men carried themselves with the dignity of the gainfully employed and the streets were clean and the buildings were well maintained. Ferguson took a measure of pride in knowing he had been instrumental in making these changes happen.

  Except now, on the whim of a fucking man-child lunatic, he was supposed to destroy it all. Burn down all the hard work he had put into this place. Destroy the legacy of his sweat and toil, of overcoming challenges and obstacles and struggles and dangers and fucking breaking his back day in and day out to make the Boroughs the kind of place a man could live with some goddamn dignity. He was supposed to forget all the friends he had made, the buildings he had watched go from being holes in the ground to flourishing businesses and homes, to forget all the children he had watched be born and grow and the marriages and funerals he had attended and the drinks he had shared with these people in the taverns and the meals and the long nights playing cards by the warmth of a roaring fire with a pint of moonshine at his elbow.

  Heinrich expected him to follow orders, unleash the monsters, and ride away with him to God knew where while those fucking things tore this place apart.

  Tore his life apart.

  Fuck that.

  Ferguson put his hand on the wooden sill of his window. He loved this house. Loved it in a way he had never loved anything else in his life. He had built it himself, with his own two hands, the symmetry and style of the woodwork reflecting the affection and excitement he had felt while building it. This was not just a house. It was his home. The Boroughs were his home. And he would be damned if he was going to destroy its just because some batshit crazy psychopath thought it would be a good idea.

  But that will create its own problems, Ferguson thought, and it was like a splash of cold water to the face. He took a moment to calm himself, deep breaths, get the heartbeat under control, clear your head, don’t make decisions hot, my friend. Make them cold.

  Better.

  Heinrich would be pissed, that much was certain. Ferguson did not really care about that, at least not in the sense that he feared Heinrich’s temper. He was, however, worried how the rest of the tribe might react. Ferguson did not quite understand why, but there was a large contingent of men within the tribe who genuinely admired Heinrich. They cheered for him when he came around, did his bidding, bowed their heads like good dogs when he was happy and scattered like frightened children when he was angry. That said, there were also quite a few men who were silent while the others cheered, who accepted orders with quiet reluctance, and kept their mouths carefully closed when rewards and punishments were doled out. He knew who they were. He just did not know if he could count on their support.

  Support for what?

  The question came to mind unbidden. But after only a few seconds’ thought, he knew. He had always known, ever since the beginning when he had seen for himself just exactly the kind of cruel, twisted, self-absorbed twat Heinrich was. He had always known, sooner or later, he would be asked to do something that even an old crook like him could not stomach, and when that day came, Heinrich would have to be dealt with.

  His ruminations were interrupted by a motion at the edge of his vision. He grabbed a pair of binoculars off a table nearby and peered at the East Gate leading into the Springs. The gate had opened, and several black Humvees were pouring out of it.

  That would be the feds, he thought. Just like I figured. Someone told th
em where to find Heinrich.

  For a second, there was panic. But then Ferguson took a breath, and then another one, and in a flash of inspiration, a plan formed in his mind. He took his satellite phone out of his pocket.

  “Richards,” came the answer.

  “It’s Ferg.”

  “What can I do for you, boss?”

  “Come to my house, double quick. We need to talk.”

  A long silence. “What about, boss?”

  Ferguson weighed his next words carefully. “I’m not too happy with the way things have been going around here lately. How about you?”

  “Let’s just say I would have managed things differently, if it were up to me.”

  “Same here. I’m thinking maybe it’s time for a change of management. Starting from the top.”

  “The very top?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “If you can think of anyone else who might be amenable, bring them along, but do it fast. The feds are on their way. The locals will slow them down, but we don’t have long.”

  “I’m on it. Be there soon.”

  Ferguson put the phone back in his pocket and stood staring at the feds as they sped across the open space between the city and the Boroughs. He stood and waited and felt himself begin to smile.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Eric,

  Red Barrel Tavern, Southtown

  I heard the gunfire start before we were halfway up the block.

  “Shit,” Gabe said, hunched under the wagon’s canopy across from me. “He went in without us.”

  “I told you we were taking too long,” I said.

  “Fuck off. We needed a wagon.”

  “We should have stolen one.”

  Gabe glared at me and said nothing.

  “Doesn’t matter now,” Cole said. “The party’s already started.”

  “He is right,” Great Hawk said and moved to a kneeling position to face everyone. “We should get out here and approach on foot.”