The Bar at the End of the World

by Tom Abrahams

  Two. One.

  Graham touched his chest to find the trigger. He put his hand to it and glanced up to see a dead man charging toward him. Ezekiel Watson? How is he alive? And working with the TMF? Behind him was the slender but delectable barmaid Adaliah Bancroft.

  Graham processed all of this within a split second. It was disconcerting and confusing, but it was all the better he take Zeke too, however it was that he remained alive. All the better.

  In that infinitesimal moment that stopped him from pressing the button and doing his duty as he’d planned, a pair of rounds drilled into his brain, severing any chance he had of signaling his finger to do the job.

  Ezekial Watson, he thought. A dead man killed me. Graham’s world went dark. The shooting stopped. The world fell silent.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Zeke stepped over Graham’s body, noticing the wired contraption underneath the dead man’s jacket. He bent over to get a closer look. “I think he’s wearing a bomb vest.”

  Li took the bone-handled knife from the sheath at Graham’s waist. At Zeke’s pronouncement, she took several large steps back.

  “If it is,” said Li, “your shots saved us all.”

  Zeke motioned to Uriel with the M27 in his right hand. “Told you I needed another weapon.”

  Uriel moved next to Zeke, ignoring his comment and partially shoving him out of the way. She squatted over Graham’s body and cursed aloud.

  “Yep.” She spat another curse. “That’s an explosive vest. Give him a wide berth.”

  Li eyed Zeke. “Nice language. This is the company you keep now?”

  Uriel looked up at Li, then shifted her gaze to Zeke. “Maybe we should have let her rot here. She doesn’t seem too grateful.”

  “Grateful?” asked Li. “Grateful for what?”

  Uriel stood up and stepped clear of Graham’s corpse. “We came back here to save your ass.”

  “I didn’t need saving,” said Li. “And your boy here, I don’t know if he told you or not, but he abandoned me. He left me to rot.”

  A smirk crept at the corners of Uriel’s mouth. Zeke started to interject. Uriel beat him to it.

  “He tells me everything,” she said. “Everything. So yeah, I know. And if it’d been me, now knowing you, I’d have left you too.”

  “I told you this was a bad idea,” Davis interjected.

  Li bristled. “You don’t know me.”

  “C’mon,” said Zeke. “Enough of this. Uriel, I can talk for myself.”

  “She should get that tattooed on her ass,” said Li. “It would complement the rest of her ink.”

  Uriel started toward Li, but Zeke stopped her with a hand to her shoulder. “Enough.”

  “Who is this guy?” Davis asked Li. “Why are we listening to him?”

  Zeke offered his hand to the Marine. “I’m Zeke. I was a Tic. A bootlegger. Li and I—”

  “Were nothing,” said Li. “We were nothing. It wasn’t real. You made that abundantly clear. Remember?”

  Uriel rolled her eyes. “Holy mother of the good lord,” she said. “This is a freaking soap opera. If I weren’t already technically dead, I’d shoot myself.”

  The remaining six Marines who were alive, including Davis, gathered around the unfolding drama. Davis held up a hand, seemingly not catching the oddity of Uriel’s admission. Who would believe that, after all?

  “We need to clear this place,” he said. “We don’t know what other traps they’ve set. And we’ve only got so much time to gather the intelligence we came to get and report back.”

  “Fine,” said Li. “I’ll deal with this later.”

  Davis motioned to three of his men. “Take that corridor. Get what you can get and report back here in fifteen.”

  The men took off in the direction Davis had instructed. That left Davis, two Marines, Uriel, Li, and Zeke next to Graham’s dead body.

  Davis met the other two Marines and Uriel with a firm gaze. “How about the three of you take the opposite corridor,” he ordered more than suggested. “I’ll go with these two. We can cover the most ground and get out of here.”

  Zeke motioned for Uriel to go along. She mimicked him with a childish mocking of his request. Zeke silently asked for her to comply. Rolling her eyes, she relented and marched off with a pair of Marines. Once they’d disappeared around a corner, Zeke was left alone with Li and Marine Davis.

  “All right,” said Davis. “I think we need to cuff them. Now that we’ve secured the tunnel and Graham is dead, we should take this guy and his friend into custody. He clearly—”

  Zeke stepped toward Davis. “I just stopped an explosion from killing all of us. Now you want to cuff us?”

  Davis moved to Zeke. He was taller than Zeke and looked down at him, their faces inches apart. Zeke could smell his sweat, the stale odor of the Marine’s hot breath.

  “You’re a Tic,” said Davis. “Once a Tic, always a Tic. You’re scum. I should off you right here, right now. Nobody would do anything about it. Nobody would care.”

  “I care,” said Li.

  Both men turned to face her. Zeke figured Davis was as surprised as he was to hear her say that, to hear her admit she still had feelings for him.

  “Then I should cuff you too,” said Davis. “You were in charge of the mission. The mission is over. I’ll take command now.”

  “C’mon, Davis,” Li said. “That’s absurd. He saved your life as much as he saved mine.”

  Davis turned and raised his M27. He stood between Li and Zeke.

  Zeke felt the push of the rifle’s barrel at his gut. Davis’s stare was cold, almost blank.

  “You can’t kill me,” said Zeke.

  “Is that so?” said Davis. “How about I test that theory.”

  “It’s not a theory.”

  Davis took a step back, the rifle still leveled at Zeke. His finger slid onto the trigger. He lifted the weapon to his shoulder. Then his eyes went wide and he dropped the M27. It hit the tunnel floor and rattled as Davis grunted. A confused look spread across his face and he spun away from Zeke as he reached for the knife blade buried to its hilt in his back. He lost his balance and dropped to a knee. Davis tried speaking but only managed a squeak before he dropped face-first onto the floor next to his rifle.

  Zeke stepped back from Li, his hands raised above his head. His voice trembled when he spoke. “What was that! Li, what’s going on? You were with me, then with them. I-I—”

  “He was going to kill you.”

  “Maybe,” he said, “but not really. Now you’re a killer. That’s not who you are, who you were. You’re with the TMF. You can’t kill Marines.”

  “I’m still with you,” she said.

  She looked down at her feet for a moment. When she lifted her chin again, her eyes glistened. Her chin trembled.

  Zeke wasn’t sure what to make of this. Was she lying again? Was this a trap. Some part of him wanted to believe her. But so much had happened, how could he trust her again? Especially after watching her kill a man. He was suddenly cold. What had all of this done to Li? What had his failings forced her to become?

  She grabbed Davis’s wrists and motioned toward his feet. “Yes. Are you going to help me?”

  Zeke reached down to grab the Marine’s ankles and lifted the dead weight. The strain pulled at his back, but he managed, and the two of them carried the body into a spot along the corridor where the pools of light didn’t reach. They put the body where the others wouldn’t find him, at least not without searching.

  They dropped the body, and Li stepped toward him, staying in the darkness near the wall. Still holding the knife, she pressed her body close to Zeke’s. He backed up until he felt the cool texture of the wall on his fingertips.

  A wave of fear washed through him. His purpose for coming here was to save her. He wasn’t sure he had.

  Yes, he’d helped her. He’d stopped Graham and the suicide bomb. She inched back from him, but was close enough for him to smell her, to remember
when being this close wasn’t close enough.

  “We don’t have long,” she said, some semblance of the Li he remembered returning to her tone. “They’ll come back. They’ll find him.”

  Li looked different to him. Whatever had happened in the time between his disappearance and this moment had changed her. Sure, her appearance was altered; she was thinner, slighter in some way. But it was her demeanor, the way she carried that thin frame with a confidence that bordered on defiance. Never mind his sweet Adaliah had just stabbed a man in cold blood after leading a deadly charge on a compound that killed another dozen people.

  “We don’t have time for me to ask all the questions I have about you, about how you’re even here after what I saw,” Li said. “I don’t understand any of it…” She paused to gather her breath. “Why did you leave me?”

  Zeke didn’t hesitate this time. “I had to come back. When I left you, as much as it hurt to do it, I hoped that if I ran, they might let you live.”

  “They tortured me,” she said, holding up her fingers to reveal missing nails.

  Tears welled in Zeke’s eyes. “I’m so sorry. I did what I thought was best.”

  “Running? Leaving a note like that?”

  “I did that because I hoped whoever found it would believe it and let you be free. I hoped they would see I acted alone and out of anger rather than love.”

  “That makes no sense,” she said. “That’s naïve. You know these people.”

  “It is what it is,” Zeke said. “I knew as soon as I left, it was wrong to leave you. We should have taken our chances together. I panicked. Thinking if they caught me and saw I was using you, or whatever, then—”

  “You already said that,” Li interrupted. “My bosses thought it meant you’d figured me out, that you knew who I was.”

  Zeke’s gaze flitted toward the body of the man she’d killed. He swallowed hard. “It’s clear I don’t know who you are at all.”

  Li took a step back. She gripped the knife. “I’m a spy.”

  Zeke shook his head in disbelief. “A spy for what?”

  “It’s complicated,” Li said. “The short version is I work for the Overseers. They recruited me when I was young.”

  “They put you with the Tic at the bar?” asked Zeke. He knew he should be shocked, but it all came together. A woman like her working at a Tic bar? It had to be too good to be true; he was only too lovestruck to see it.

  Li nodded. “Yes.”

  “Why there? I don’t get it. It was just a bar.”

  “I took you as smarter than that, Zeke. I guess you really are a simple bootlegger who runs from place to place without ever stopping to look at the ground underneath his feet.”

  Zeke lowered his chin and stared at his feet. It wasn’t fun being judged, alive or dead.

  “It was to get to you,” she said, “or someone like you. Someone I could play, someone who would give me information without even knowing he was doing it.”

  Zeke looked up. His lips trembled. “So my note to you was true even if I didn’t mean it to be. Everything was a lie. Nothing about us was real.”

  Li steeled herself, pulling her shoulders back and clearing her throat. Zeke was certain her eyes glistened again.

  “Are you going to help me or not?” she asked. “I think they’re coming back.”

  “What’s your plan now? You’ve got no friends on either side of this now. You’ve killed Tics.” He nodded toward the body. “You killed a Marine.”

  “I want out,” she said. “I’m sick of playing the games, playing both sides. I want away from here, this hellhole. I want something better. I-I-I want you.”

  Zeke felt his face grow hot. A tingle of adrenaline shot through his body. Despite everything, the lies, the betrayals, she still wanted him. And he knew in that moment, even after seeing what awful things he was capable of, he still wanted her.

  “Fine, I’ll help you,” he said. “We’ll get you out of here.”

  The echoes of the returning trio preceded them. From the sounds, Zeke knew this was the group Uriel was helping.

  “Let me run ahead,” he said to Li. “I’ll delay her. Then you can…do what you have to do. That way she won’t get in the way.”

  “Fine,” agreed Li. “Go ahead.”

  Zeke started toward the approaching Marines and found them in a pool of light fifty yards down the hallway. He called ahead to let them know it was him.

  “Don’t shoot,” he said. “It’s me, Zeke.”

  The trio stopped. The Marines were carrying with them what looked like hard drives. Wires hung from them. Each of the men was carrying three or four in each hand, their weapons strapped over their shoulders. They couldn’t have opened fire if they’d wanted to.

  Uriel also cradled a collection of electronics.

  “Hey,” Zeke said to the group, slowing his approach. “Davis and Li are waiting for you. I’ve got to speak to Uriel for a second. You guys go ahead. We’ve cleared this corridor. Davis suggested you head that way.”

  Burdened with their trophies, the Marines acknowledged him. They started their march down a new corridor, away from Davis’s body. Uriel stood still, a puzzled look on her face, and waited until the men had disappeared into the darkness beyond the scope of the pools of light to speak.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Li isn’t who she was when I left,” said Zeke. “She’s changed.”

  Uriel laughed. “I’ve spent a minute with that lanky crank and I could have told you she’s three layers of nothing.”

  “I have no idea what any of that means, but I’m guessing you already know my relationship with her was phony,” he said.

  “No offense, Zeke, but that’s the smartest thing you’ve said since you stumbled into Pedro’s. Can’t believe it took you this long to figure it out.”

  “You knew?”

  “You walk into a bar,” she said, handing him a couple of the hard drives to lighten her load, “and you spot a new girl. Woman, excuse me. Whatever. Anyhow, she takes a shine to you instantly and the two of you are inseparable. She moves in. She likes books. Banned books. You don’t. She keeps a gun by the bed for protection. You don’t like them. Then she shows up with your enemy, the same people who hung you from a building and let you die? Too much. Sorry. I don’t buy love at first sight. I’ve seen too much in too many places to believe in it. This story, the two of you, was unbelievable from the get-go.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” Zeke asked.

  “Not my place. Part of the Watcher’s journey is finding out what’s real and what isn’t.”

  They started walking along the corridor toward the others.

  “So if my mission wasn’t to save her,” asked Zeke, “what was it?”

  “Sheesh. I thought for sure you’d have figured this out, Zeke. I so much as told you that.”

  “Redemption, I get that. But how do I redeem myself if the reason I came back doesn’t exist?”

  “You’ll see,” said Uriel. “Or you won’t. What’s the play here?”

  “She needs our help,” he said. “I said yes.”

  She scowled. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I still care about her. She said she does for me. She wants out of here, out of the protectorate. She wants to start over.”

  “It’ll never work,” she said.

  He led her along the corridor, moving quickly. “There’s something else,” he said. “She killed a guy. Davis.”

  Uriel arched one eyebrow. “Really? How?”

  “With a knife,” said Zeke. “He was going to kill me. She stopped him.”

  “She knows you can’t die, right?”

  They reached Li. She was standing near the body. Blood leached across Davis’s uniform, glistening against the black.

  “You weren’t all wrong about her,” said Uriel. “She’s no shrinking wallflower. I gotta hand it to her. She’s all in.”

  “What now?” he asked Li, sta
ring at the body.

  “This is impressive,” said Uriel. “Good stuff. If you’re to be a double agent, be all you can be. And the knife? That’s a personal touch you don’t see too often anymore.”

  Li ignored Uriel and answered Zeke. “We figure a way out of here. I get a fresh start, a new life.”

  “You are not going anywhere,” came a voice from behind the three. “Stay right where you are.”

  They all swung around to see a fat man dressed in purple flanked by a sextet of armed men. The men weren’t Tic and they weren’t TMF.

  Zeke reached for the revolver at his waist, but stopped when the purple grape of an intruder cautioned him, wagging a scolding finger.

  “Ah, ah, ah,” said the man. “Don’t touch the weapon.”

  The man’s eyes flitted to the women and their weapons. He raised his eyebrows and then lowered them.

  “What are you doing here, Lieutenant Louis Donne?” asked Li. “What do you want?”

  The purple man moved forward, his stubby legs carrying his heft from one circle of light to the next. Armed guards kept pace with him, and their weapons remained at the ready, targeting Zeke, Li, and Uriel in sweeping motions.

  “Adaliah Bancroft,” said Louis, “I never trusted you. I knew you were too malleable. I tried to warn my uncle about threats from within. He wouldn’t listen.”

  Li’s eyes widened. “Frederick and Archibald know nothing about this,” she said. “This is all me. I want out. Just let me go and nobody else gets hurt.”

  He shook his head. “Right,” he said. “I let you leave. No punishment for what you’ve done. No justice. You should be hanging from the—”

  He stopped abruptly and stared at Zeke. His mouth agape, he took another two steps forward to study him closer, eyes moving from the Stetson hat atop his head to the strange, large revolver at his waist.

  “Wait,” he said, his face shifting. “I recognize you. You’re that bootlegger. You’re the one strung up above the Fascio right now. Except, that’s not possible. You can’t be here if you’re there.”

  His eyes shifted to Li and back to Zeke. Then he stared at Uriel and frowned. “But I don’t know you. Not a Tic, not a Marine. Are you a Badlander?”