After The Apocalypse
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Book 6
Resolution
by Warren Hately
Contact the author at wereviking @ hotmail.com
or follow @wereviking on Twitter
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visit warrenhately.com
Cover by Ryan Schwarz
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Chapter 1
THE WOMAN’S TEARS carried so starkly through the darkness that he almost felt ridiculous for the night vision goggles masking his face as he crouched low in the bushes, mouth open to quieten the noise from his rapid breaths. He hardly needed to bother. A rapacious breeze cut its way through the low-lying bushes and overgrown grass near the edge of the old fence-line, collapsed some time since the property owners went the way of nearly everyone else on the city’s outer limits.
Ernest Eric Wilhelm III felt over-equipped for such pathetic prey, but engorgement overcame any fashion sense, knowing, as he’d planned, it was just him and his quarry along out beyond the neglected farmstead – and if decency alone was going to stop him, it would’ve happened a long way before now.
As Wilhelm crouched there, keenly erect and listening, Dana Lowenstein’s spectral form emerged from hiding as she lumbered unevenly across the overgrown yard, Wilhelm watching her pick her way barefoot towards the half-collapsed machinery shed and the concrete-walled workshop behind it. The homestead itself had burnt down in recent times, daytime revealing it as nothing more than black skeletal ruins jutting out from the overgrown tundra. In the dark now, the ruins and the husks of two vehicles hunkered down like monoliths of the ancient past, mostly submerged between the riotous bracken and grass slowly consuming the derelict property Wilhelm had tracked through a dozen times before.
He knew the layout of the two buildings – and he’d soldered the back door of the workshop himself. Seeing the Council President veer towards it, his wolf-like grin forced the heavy goggles to ride up despite the rubber chin strap, and thus acclimatized to the night, Wilhelm gently removed and holstered them beside the small pack bound tight to his lower back.
The moonlight was enough to show the sobbing, distraught, confused Council leader tread carefully towards the shed’s open door and venture inside, clutching her torn clothes, and it was almost too much for Wilhelm to bear as he squeezed the erection straining through his black tactical pants, checked over his gear one last time, then carefully withdrew the climbing ax from the toys he’d chosen for tonight.
And just like a wolf, he then loped low through the grass moving silently towards the workshop marked already with his scent, his truth, his lifelong becoming.
The spray-painted word “HASTUR” was almost invisible beneath the quarter moon.
*
WILHELM SWEPT INTO the laboratory, momentarily thrown off as he always was at the jarring sense of stepping back in time, as if the apocalypse hadn’t gone and ended everything.
Abraham’s workshop blinked and hummed with an impressive array of computers, towers, external hard drives, and various other gadgets the software genius had established for himself. Old-world tech was one of the rarest luxuries of them all, but as a Councilor, Ben-Gurion had extra resources – as well as the expertise to put it all together.
Ben-Gurion forced himself out of the wheelchair he normally used, nearly fumbling the clutch on his walking stick as he straightened, shooting the inbound Wilhelm a smile that oozed self-pity. Wilhelm’s face only tightened into its usual smile. His hands extended wide to gesture all around, and he knew Abraham found it tiresome that he made the same comment every visit, but that was precisely why he did it. People were just automatic teller machines, and once he found the most efficient hack, he’d always keep stabbing the same numbers every time.
“It is very impressive, what you have built for yourself here,” he beamed.
Ben-Gurion winced and nodded, happy to let it die for once. He didn’t look well, his face never quite recovered from the beating he took, and it wasn’t just the out-of-control multiple sclerosis straining his expression. His eyes strayed and defrayed and returned again to Wilhelm in the middle of the room.
“You know I just want to live, Ernest,” the other Councilor or ex-Councilor or whatever he was said. And again with the puppy dog eyes.
Wilhelm smiled like a statesman. The software engineer dropped his gaze, sniffled.
“Dana promised me a search team,” Abraham said. “Not much chance of that now, huh?”
“Yes,” Wilhelm said brightly. “She is still missing.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I told you before,” Wilhelm said again. “Your best chance now of finding medicine or another treatment lie with the USS Washington.”
“I know that.”
Wilhelm gestured. “I thought you would be getting on with decrypting that Air Force notebook?”
Ben-Gurion nodded absent-mindedly.
“I did that already,” he replied. “I figured if there was anything on that hard drive worth torturing me and nearly getting me killed, I’d just find it myself.”
“You decrypted a classified US Government notebook already?”
Ben-Gurion shot him a look cool enough to evoke the Councilor’s foolishness. Wilhelm grit his teeth a moment, nodding with discipline.
“What are you going to do, now?” Abraham asked.
“What do you mean?”
“The City’s in chaos,” the self-described genius said. “The Council President’s gone, or whatever the story is you’re telling. Ernest, you know I don’t . . . it’s not that I don’t care. I just wanna live, OK?”
“I understand, Abraham,” Wilhelm replied. “There are no hard feelings between us. You know I had nothing to do with Ortega and his ‘rebellion’. They nearly killed you –”
“– if not for Tom Vanicek.”
“–and it had nothing to do with me,” Wilhelm said. “You are still a trusted advisor, just like back on the base.”
“Then what are you gonna do?”
“With?”
“The chaos?”
“Nothing,” Wilhelm said and allowed himself a short smirk. “You understand our predicament as well as anyone, Abraham. We can only protect our supporters now.”
“But Burroughs is dead, Dana’s . . . ‘missing’ or . . . whatever,” Abraham replied. “No one’s seen Hoskeens since the Night.”
“That is why I am bringing other community leaders into the decision-making process,” Wilhelm said. Cocksure, he added, “The Citizens seemed to want elections. We can hold them. But first we have to face the winter, and after that, see who is left to vote and how much they care about elections then.”
“Cold,” Abraham said.
“No pun intended?”
The other man grimaced.
“Ernest,” he said. “The Air Force material. . . .”
“Yes?”
“Well, there’s enough intel in there to keep the New York Times in front pages for a month, if any of that was relevant anymore, which it’s not,” Abe said. He shivered as he spoke and begrudged his weakness as he sneered and soldiered on. “But there’s a lot of Government facilities in there. Top-secret ones.”
“And?”
“And one not that far away,” Ben-Gurion said. “Really.”
“Interesting.”
“Ernest,” Abraham said. “There could be anything in those locations. If they didn’t survive the Fall, they might be sitting with God-knows-what in storage.”
“If you’re thinking about your medicine again. . . .”
“That would require uninterrupted refrigeration these past five years,” Abe said. “I’m not an idiot, Ernest. But still –”
“Yes,” Wilhelm agreed. “Worthy of further investigation – when we can.”
“But I’m not on the same timeline as you.”
“Agreed,” the Councilor said. “You say you want to live? Maybe you should make the most of the time you have left.”
Ben-Gurion looked suitably chastened. Like the feverish look beneath his beaten demeanor, there was something else there, too.
“I heard the Vanicek girl’s going to go . . . missing soon as well?”
Wilhelm’s fixed smile remained inviolate. His eyes flashed annoyance.
“You ‘heard’ that, did you?”
“I told you, Ernest, I don’t . . . I don’t care as much as I want to live,” he replied. “I know what you’re up to, outside the wire, and this. . . .” He cleared his throat and looked away. “Team-building exercises, maybe you’d call them?”
“The loyalties I am building will ensure we survive this winter,” Wilhelm answered hotly. “This is a new world. Maybe not a better one. Do not judge me. Be . . . glad, instead.”
Ben-Gurion oddly snickered then, motioning down to himself, his cane.
“I’m not exactly able to keep up with your other ‘advisors’.”
Wilhelm gave away nothing except a lot of nostril flares. Ben-Gurion wrestled with his own shame, slumping back into the wheelchair with his hands as if mangled in his lap.
“So?”
“Her name’s Lilianna,” Abe said, hesitant. “I thought. . . .”
“No, forget about it,” Wilhelm answered at once. “Sincere apologies. She is already . . . You will not be able to involve yourself in Vanicek’s daughter’s fate.”
Wilhelm fought a sudden weird giggle, as if plotting some kind of Shakespearean marriage farce and not something far more sinister.
The engineer’s eyes fell into his lap and he slumped. He needed a blanket. Wilhelm studied Ben-Gurion like a specimen in the lab – in the morgue already, perhaps.
“Tom Vanicek is a threat to us,” Wilhelm said. “There, I said it. It pleases me no more than you, Abraham.”
“And Lowenstein?”
“Dead weight.”
“And your own vendetta,” the software engineer replied.
“We have never seen eye to eye,” Wilhelm said almost casually. “And I wondered often, through those years, what it would be like to hunt her down and take her final moments.”
Ben-Gurion gave a pained sigh and he wiped his eyes.
“And?”
“And now I know.”
*
“I JUST DON’T like it,” Denny Greerson said as the black, bald-pated Councilor stood there as implacable as ever, mirroring the Safety Chief’s arms-folded pose and not doing quite the same job of being irate. Wilhelm kept betraying the slightest smirk – the same one with the habit of irritating people, including his subordinates, which also secretly delighted him.
“After everything else, I did not think you would be so bothered, Chief,” he said.
“I said don’t call me ‘Chief,’ Ernest,” the other man snapped.
Wilhelm’s face deepened into a scowl. His arms dropped heavily to his sides.
“And you can call me Councilor, in turn,” he said. “You are in charge of Safety now, Greerson. People need to know it, too. If you do not want the job, I can easily find someone else.”
“What, like one of those guys?”
Greerson motioned to the next room. Wilhelm scoffed, though it looked more like a pout.
“There are still more than fifty thousand survivors sheltering with us, Greerson,” he said. “We cannot manage them all, or it will be chaos. Like last winter. We need those communities to control themselves.”
“Is that who they are, community leaders?”
“Select community leaders, yes.”
“Insiders,” Denny offered. Wilhelm scowled.
“The Brotherhood will be answering to you, Greerson,” he said, then added, “Chief,” to reinforce his earlier point.
“They don’t have the training . . . or the discipline,” the Safety Chief replied.
Wilhelm studied him for half a second, fingers stroking across his own close-shaved chin.
“You remind me of the man who wants to get in the elevator, Denny, but does not want to go down,” the Councilor said. “You were happy enough to learn about our . . . ‘team-building exercises’, correct? You can play nice with the Brotherhood. We need Sandler and his men, understood?”
“You don’t find them. . . ?”
“What?”
“A little bit, uh, racist?” Greerson said. He quickly held his hands up. “I know you forget you’re black sometimes, Wilhelm, but they never will.”
“The Brotherhood aren’t racists, Greerson.”
“Coulda fooled me,” the Chief replied. “They fell out with that Vegas guy and his Black Panther wannabes.”
Wilhelm only snorted. Greerson raised an eyebrow.
“What?”
“Sandler is a Jew,” the Councilor said. “There are no ‘races’ anymore, Greerson – only the hunters and their prey. We need their numbers. At least for now. And that is why you need to control them.”
Greerson blew his cheeks out and looked away. Wilhelm’s expression hardened again.
“I have work to do, Chief, and you are going to have that little Vanicek whore soon enough,” he snarled. “I would expect a touch more gratitude.”
Greerson’s mouth moved agape like he was about to cluck, but the taste of it didn’t sit well with him, leaving him open-mouthed and displeased and ashamed and guilty as all get out.
“Yeah,” he answered eventually. “I’ve got things to do too.”
“Then I will leave you to it,” the Councilor said.
He turned his shoulders as if to the exit in not much of a subtle hint.
Greerson raised one pale eyebrow.
“Er, see you over there, then?” he asked.
“Yes,” the Councilor said. “I will meet you there, when it is all done.”
“Cool,” Greerson said. “I can find my own way out.”
Wilhelm nodded, eyes hooded, and waited until the troop commander was gone before moving across to the richly-paneled sliding wooden doors he now drew apart to reveal a long table with three men sitting impatiently waiting for him. The air hung with smoke, instantly setting off another of Wilhelm’s scowls.
“Who on Earth said you could smoke in here?” he snapped as he entered. “Put it out.”
One of the men with Sandler sat up as if busted by an angry parent, and he looked around apishly with no ashtray in sight, which only angered their host further because all of that ash now spotted the expensive carpet.
“Fool.”
He swept in and plucked the hand-rolled cigarette from the Latino’s hand, then stabbed the burning tip into the shoulder fabric of the man’s shirt. Romano remained too startled to react at first, looking down as the skinny cigarette crushed into him, then registering the faint pain of the lit end buffered by his shirt. He batted Wilhelm’s hand away, and Wilhelm let him do it, circling back around while gray-bearded Zardoz only snickered, and Aaron Sandler kept his eyes on him, trying hard, as he always did, to look too cool for school.
It wasn’t a convincing act. Sandler had a weak build and his attempts at swagger were worse. He sat slumped, insouciant, failing to channel the spirit of a young James Dean as he flicked his eyes across to his other henchman with a look of annoyance, as if he hadn’t also sat through ten minutes of Romano’s smoking before Wilhelm finished his confab with their departed Safety Chief.
Wilhelm took heavily to his c
hair at the end of the oval table.
“Are we ready?” Sandler asked him. Trying to cool the air.
“We are waiting on one more person,” Wilhelm said.
They seemed disturbed the elegant-looking Councilor now looked completely unflustered.
“But before he arrives,” Wilhelm said, “do I need to impress on you, yet again, the nature of our agreement? It matters nothing to me that you killed Burroughs, but if you cross me, I have the entire City Administration at my disposal.”
“Save your threats,” Sandler said. He kept flicking his eyes to Zardoz beside him, over-reliant on the tough older man’s dangerous aura. “Already told you, we’re a part of that Administration too. Half our men are City workers, one way or the other.”
“And there will be more work in the days to come,” Wilhelm assured him. “I never saw snow until they stationed me in Ohio,” he added, almost as if it were now just a pleasant conversation. “I thought my first winter was long, but it was nothing like last year. We need each other.”
Zardoz betrayed a snicker. Wilhelm’s eyes darted to him, ready to crack down on dissent. The disturbing glaze in the old trucker’s eyes urged caution instead, which meant the Councilor’s gaze just hung there, as if granting him permission to speak.
“Just remember you don’t cross us too,” Zardoz wheezed and bared ursine teeth. “I lived on human flesh before. We’ll eat you too, if we have to, to live. You got that?”
Wilhelm exhaled and sensed as much as noted the shadows moving through the sitting room outside. Romano and Sandler held their breaths as if waiting for the return threat.
“I am going to show you what loyalty brings,” the Councilor said. He broke into a startling white smile. “And I think you are going to like it, too.”
*
FINNEGAN LOCKE LOOKED more comfortable than any of them in the plush Councilor’s apartment – apart from maybe Wilhelm, of course. Locke entered alone, trailed by one of the staunch members of the Councilor’s security detail, bolstered with fresh and loyal recruits now the idiot Amsterdam had embarked on the doomed Greenland mission. The twin troopers – dubbed “Milo & Otis” by someone other than him – waited for Wilhelm’s dismissal like a pair of trained Dobermans, which was just the way he liked it.
After The Apocalypse (Book 6): Resolution Page 1