The Bar at the End of the World

by Tom Abrahams

  “Again, Davis,” Li said, a hint of frustration creeping into her voice, “what do you suggest?”

  The Marine looked over his shoulder, appearing to take stock of their assets. “We have three tactical assault transports. I think we split up here. Identify your truck as Alpha. Mine is Bravo. The one in the rear is Charlie. I’ll take my men here.”

  Davis pointed to a position one block from the valley. He pinched the screen with the haptic-enabled fingertips of his glove, and the map widened. It revealed the area around the target point and gave Li a clear, overhead perspective of the valley.

  The Marine was right. This was dangerous. Each block held four buildings, or what was left of them. Not only did they give the enemy the potential high ground, but ample strategic angles from between and among the quartet of multistory structures between intersections. She counted twelve structures along the valley: eight that stretched along the length of it leading up to the target, and four on both sides of the compound’s access point.

  “From this position, with my team in front, we can identify potential hostiles and either engage or hold our position,” he said. “Your team should move here.”

  He tapped the screen. A yellow dot appeared on the opposite side of the valley two blocks from the entrance to the compound.

  “At that point, we should be able to identify whether there’s an immediate threat. That’s when we send Transport Charlie in one of two directions. Either that team drives straight up the gut of the valley, or it sits at the mouth and waits for us to converge.”

  The dot representing Transport Charlie was on the same street as Davis’ team, but was on the northern side of where the valley intersected it. Davis’ team, Bravo, was on the southern side. Together, the three teams formed a positional triangle.

  His finger traced the two possible routes for Transport Charlie. It could go around the back side of a block of four buildings and re-enter the valley just north of the target, or it could go south, turn east into the valley, and proceed up the gut.

  “That’s a lot of ifs,” said Li with a sigh. “A lot of moving parts.”

  “All fluid machines have a lot of moving parts, ma’am,” he said.

  At first glance, Davis appeared kind. He had boyish looks, smooth, light-brown skin, and a toothy grin. His eyes, though, were dark and hardened from whatever they had absorbed during his time as a Marine. Theirs was not an easy existence.

  On the surface, the TMF Marines were peacekeepers who made sure the queues for water, paper, or food didn’t get unruly. They were armored security at the most visible spots in the protectorate.

  Clad in all black, the force was unmistakable against the brown and tan hues that dominated the city-state. They stood out, and not just because of their distinct appearance or the ubiquitous M27 rifles they carried with purpose.

  The men and women of the TMF Marines represented the power of the Overseers. They were everywhere, all-knowing, and they had the autonomy to act first and seek permission or forgiveness later.

  On one hand, the Marines were there to keep law-abiding citizens safe. They maintained order and assisted those in need. On the other, they were no better than the Tic enforcers, who might use their authority to ruthlessly intimidate or physically assault anyone they thought had crossed an imaginary, often fuzzy, line.

  The Overseers and their armed Marines used information as power. They used it to invoke fear. There was an imbalance of information in the protectorates. The Overseers knew where the water came from. They knew how the agro-engineering labs functioned. They knew what lay beyond the walls of their own city-states.

  The reason the Tic was successful was because it too had information others didn’t have. It leveraged that information, that power, to its advantage.

  As much as water appeared the basis of the protectorate’s, and the Tic’s, economy, it was centered on the exchange and withholding of information. If the citizenry had as much information as the Overseers, if there was a balance, Commander Guilfoyle and his lieutenants would lose their control. These Marines would lose their power.

  All of this swirled around in Li’s mind before she looked at Davis. It didn’t matter what kind of Marine he was—if he used his power to threaten and coerce or to help people—as long as he facilitated the aim.

  “Let’s do it,” she said. “The longer we stand here, the less chance there is they’re not ready for us.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Davis. He hustled toward Transport Charlie and communicated with the Marine in the front passenger seat. A minute later, he was in his own vehicle and they were moving.

  Li explained the plan to her driver and told him where they needed to be. He put the truck into gear without questioning their mission.

  The two men in the rear compartment worked on their rifles. One of them checked the scope attachment while another replaced one magazine with another. The one with the optic hummed a tune that sounded familiar to Li, but she couldn’t place it.

  The rumble of the transport’s slow roll shook Li’s body. She steadied herself by pressing her hands against the dash in front of her, taking in the ramshackle collection of structures on both sides of the street on which they drove. They inched toward their destination, moving so she might have been able to run faster than they traveled.

  “Heads on a swivel,” said the driver, a Marine with the last name George. He lowered the windows. The humming Marine heaved his M27 to the sill and planted the barrel on it. The other one in the rear compartment did the same.

  “Bring it,” said the humming Marine.

  “Good to go,” said the other. “Loaded, locked, and eyes on the prize.”

  Li rolled her eyes. Sure, these guys were battle-hardened, but their machismo was over the top. All they’d ever really faced was a pathetic, hungry populace who barely knew what the world was before the droughts.

  George swung the wheel to the right. The transport turned, its wheels crunching the debris on the dirt road. The driver accelerated out of the turn.

  “Turn left up here,” said Li. “Then make another left at the next block.”

  The driver nodded and the truck jerked as he shifted gears. Li noticed a man standing on a corner, hands in his pockets. He avoided making eye contact with her as the transport rumbled past him.

  When they passed him fully, she eyed the large side-view mirror at the front edge of her door. The man jogged away with purpose. He rounded a corner a block behind them.

  He was definitely a spotter. Davis was right. The Tic were expecting them.

  “Give me your Com,” Li said to George.

  Without questioning her, George reached into his chest pocket and removed the electronic device identical to the one Davis had used. Li was familiar with it and its multiple functions, but they hadn’t issued her a new one since her return. Things had moved fast.

  “It’s unlocked?” she asked.

  “Yes.” He made the second left, swinging south toward the valley.

  Inertia from the turn shifted Li in her seat. She adjusted herself and touched the display on the Com with her haptic-enabled gloves. A short pulse rippled through her finger, and she tapped an application that allowed her to communicate with the other transports.

  “Bravo, this is Alpha,” she said. “We’re nearing our position.”

  “Good copy, Alpha,” replied Davis. His voice was clear above the audible noise of his transport. “We’re in position, south of the valley. We’re all clear. Charlie, what’s your position?”

  “This is Charlie. We’re north of the valley, one block from our position. All clear.”

  “This is Alpha. We’re not clear,” said Li. She was vaguely aware of the stare George was directing at her. He’d apparently not noticed the spotter. “They know we’re en route.”

  “Good copy, Alpha,” said Davis.

  “Good copy, Alpha,” said the lead for Transport Charlie. “We’ll move to alternate position and report.”

  “Thi
s is Bravo,” said Davis. “Once in position, report your status. We’ll reevaluate.”

  “Good copy,” said Charlie.

  Li hesitated. “Good…copy,” she said, mimicking the radio lingo. The road running east and west in front of them was what Davis had identified as the valley.

  “Stop here,” she said, referencing a two-story, roofless structure that looked more like a rusting cage than the frame of a building. “Davis said this is a good spot for some surveillance before we proceed.”

  George steered to the right and eased the transport to the side of the road, then jumped the curb to park the truck. The ruins would give them complete cover from whatever awaited them in the valley.

  He shut off the ignition and the truck coughed before going silent. They sat there for a long moment, listening to their surroundings.

  A warm, subtle breeze drifted through the open cab, carrying with it the familiar sour odor from this part of the city. It smelled to Li like rotting flesh. That was probably what it was. The ground was too hard for proper burial here. If people didn’t burn the dead, they carried them to abandoned buildings and left them there for whatever surviving rodents might find them.

  Li thought about the rats in her cell. Their skittering and incessant squeaking noises had almost driven her crazy. Then one night she’d caught one. She’d held it by the tail, pinched between her fingers. She’d watched it kick at the air and paw for some purchase it wouldn’t find.

  She’d stared at it in the dark and talked to it. She’d told it what she had planned. She’d confided in the mammal who she was and what she’d done to survive.

  It had struggled, not willing to give up and not understanding what was coming. Watching the rat, Li had thought people were sometimes like rodents. They scurried along searching for food and water, but ultimately their fate lay in the hands of something more powerful, something with information they couldn’t possibly know.

  Smell was the strongest memory. It surpassed the other senses in catapulting Li back to those experiences she’d just as soon forget. The odor of death, pungent and unmistakable in its sour mixture of gasses and rot, was everywhere here. It was among the most familiar of all scents, Li knew. From her youngest days, she couldn’t escape it.

  Presently, she sucked in a deep gulp of fetid air that made her want to gag, and then she held her breath. She unlatched the heavy transport door, shoved it open, and exited the transport. She needed to focus on the here and now and not on the past. Now was what mattered.

  Her team, Alpha, was in position. They were ready to round the corner and be the bait. Two of the three Marines were at the corner already. The third hustled across the north-south street to the opposite corner to get a different perspective of the valley.

  Li checked both positions and decided to join the lone Marine, who by now was on one knee, eye to his rifle’s sights. He was pressed up against the west-facing, crumbling stone wall at the intersection of the street on which her transport was parked. The long stretching valley ran east and west.

  As she began her soft-shoe to the other side of the street, a flash of light caught her attention to the north of her. She stopped and swung around, M27 in her hands, leveled waist high. She didn’t see the source of the bright flicker. It was there, though. Li was sure she hadn’t imagined it, and was exposed here in the street’s middle.

  A quick scan told her there was no safe place to hide if, in fact, something was there, stalking her team. Li raised the rifle to her shoulder and moved north. She tightened her grip on the rifle, her finger just off the trigger. Blood surged through her veins, and the beat of her heart was so fast against her chest it almost hurt.

  It was quiet. Other than the clatter of her men behind her and the sound of her boots on the road, there was nothing to distract her from listening for the source of the flicker. She was closing in on the next intersection when she noticed it again. This time she saw its source.

  Li lowered her weapon and took off running at a dead sprint. Within a second, she’d reached the intersection and rounded the corner to the left. She stopped and raised her weapon again.

  “Stop!” she shouted. “Or I’ll empty this into your back.”

  The man twenty yards from her stopped. He raised his arms above his head without her having to tell him anything.

  “Keep ’em raised,” said Li. Drawing closer to the man, she ordered him to his knees and then flat onto the asphalt. She recognized him. In his left hand was a radio transceiver, the same kind of radio she’d used to signal the TMF before she’d escaped the compound. This man was a Tic.

  “I know you,” she said. “You were on the street back there. We passed you.”

  The man kept his chin on the hard surface and faced forward. Li kicked at his legs to spread them farther apart and jabbed at the small of his back with the barrel of her rifle.

  “Who are you?” she asked. “I know you’re a Tic. But who are you?”

  The man remained silent. Li pressed the heel of her boot into the man’s calf, applying pressure with her weight.

  “Staaahhp,” he groaned, his painful cry echoing off the buildings.

  “Answer me, then,” Li said.

  Turning his head toward Li, he released the radio and pushed it away. It skidded, raking across the rough asphalt a couple of feet. “I’m a scout,” he said through gritted teeth.

  She leaned into her bootheel, pressing into his leg. He groaned. “Are you armed?” she asked. “Keep your hands flat on the ground.”

  He shook his head. His fingers fanned out on the asphalt. Tears drained from his left eye, which was against the dirt.

  “Who are you scouting for?” she asked.

  “The Tic,” he said, spittle flying from his mouth.

  She dug in harder with her heel. His leg twisted awkwardly, and he squealed.

  “I know you’re working for the Tic,” she hissed and checked over her shoulder for the Marines. She didn’t have much time. “What is your job?”

  The man sobbed from the pain. Snot clung to his nostrils.

  Li eyed the radio feet from him. “Who’s on the other end of that thing?”

  He whimpered and sounded on the edge of hyperventilating.

  “Who!” Li barked.

  He caught his breath long enough to answer her. “Brina,” he said. “The enforcer. Brina’s on the other end.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Near the compound,” he said. “They know you’re coming.”

  It wasn’t surprising the Tic was expecting them. That Marine, Davis, was right. Whatever upper hand Brina thought she had was gone now.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Zeke’s boots were giving him blisters. It didn’t matter that until now they’d been the most comfortable things he’d ever worn on his feet. They’d somehow rubbed his heels raw. With every step, he acutely knew of the inside of the boot rubbing upward against his skin.

  Wincing and cursing, he squatted awkwardly to adjust his socks. As he fished around inside the boot with his fingers, Uriel exhaled loudly enough for Pedro to hear her back at the cantina.

  “Again with the boot?” she asked. “If I’d wanted to work with a child, I would have had one. Every time you complain about them, I want to throat punch you.”

  It wasn’t twilight yet, but the day was long and there wasn’t a lot of time left before sunset. Uriel ran a hand along the sides of her shaved head and adjusted the knot at the end of her ponytail. One hip jutted out as she stood between Zeke and a single-story strip of businesses that weren’t open.

  “What’s today?” she asked.

  Zeke finished picking at the socks and stood to test the adjustments. It was better. Not much better, but the sting wasn’t as acute. “How should I know? What day it is, what month it is, I couldn’t tell you. It’s like it was wiped from my mind.”

  “Maybe it was,” said Uriel. “Dying has different effects on different people.”

  Zeke took two steps toward the
corner of the long building and peered around the corner. A family walked hand-in-hand along the center of the street. A mother and father, with two young boys who were barefoot. The clothes they all wore were threadbare.

  Zeke noticed the father had an empty-looking pack on his back. The mother carried a large shoulder bag at her side under her arm. It too appeared empty. They were likely headed to the nearest watering or ration station.

  A wave of guilt washed over him. His blisters were nothing compared to what that family, and so many like them, faced daily.

  He stared at the bare, dirty heels of the boy holding his father’s hand. It reminded him of his childhood and the abject poverty, the loneliness, and the constant pang of hunger that ate at his gut. The sensation of hunger and thirst was so omnipresent that it became part of the white noise of his life. Without its absence, he became unaware of its presence. Would these children turn to crime to pull themselves, kicking and screaming, from the mire of the protectorate? Was that the best future they could hope to have? Would they die with regret as he had? His mind drifted back to Uriel’s assertion that death affected everyone differently.

  He snuck back behind the building and told Uriel it was clear. Only a harmless family stood between them and the next block closer to the Tic compound where he hoped to find Li.

  Using the wall to push himself to his feet, he stood and stretched his back. The fabric of his waistband pulled taut against the revolver at his midsection, and he touched it, remembering he had two shots left. Zeke moved around the corner of the building. Uriel followed and eased alongside him, the M27 in both hands, her heavy steps matching his as they marched forward.

  Uriel tightened her grip on her weapon when the family fifty yards ahead of them stopped and the father turned around. The man whispered to his wife before tugging on her hand. They quickened their pace, the smaller of the two boys struggling to keep up. The father glanced over his shoulder as they widened the distance between themselves and Uriel and Zeke.

  “Can’t blame them,” said Uriel. “I’d run too if I saw us coming.”