I hated this conversation. It was one I'd had a dozen times. It was the gangs, it was the kids, it was waiting for them to get better... all of those were the reasons, but none of them were. At the heart of it, was just that I was a broken man. Waiting on life to kick me down again. I'd always sort of realized it, but it had never hit home until now.
“Less talk, more work,” I said, trying to change the subject.
11
I'd already scoped out the gang and had hit them before. Usually before or after they had come out of the museum, never while they were in it. As far as I could tell, this group had been a Chicago street gang before the EMP event knocked out the power. They were an equal opportunity employer and I’d bought my junk from one of their guys a year or more ago.
Getting hooked isn't always a conscious decision. I'd be willing to take the blame for being weak... But when I’d arrived home from my last deployment all busted up... I’d been given an almost limitless supply of Vicodin. From there, it seemed like the pain would never go away. I never knew if the pain was real because I didn't feel it anymore. So, was it a trick of the mind back then?
When the Vicodin ran dry, I used to be able to find morphine. That was expensive stuff and it wasn't a long hop, skip, and a jump from morphine to the cheaper and more dangerous heroin. I'd just found Salina's clinic and had gone to a couple of checkups when she'd noticed the tracks on the inside of my arm. She’d known what it’d meant, what the score was.
She didn't judge me, but she didn't pity me either. That woman sat me down and gave me some hard truths. Sure, I was pissed... but when I’d realized that my life was no longer mine to control, I'd gone to her to help me kick it. Since the EMP, it was almost impossible to find anything. Score one for world annihilation, eh?
“What you got?” Danielle asked me.
She startled me. I thought I was the only one on the rooftop. She was supposed to be my lookout down below, and not even from this building!
“Jeremy came and relieved me. Jamie is watching the kids for now.”
“Jeremy came to relieve you or join you?” I asked her, returning my gaze into the binoculars and glassing the museum.
“I don't know,” she said, but she was smiling. I could hear it in her voice. She was smug and happy. “And he brought some more ibuprofen for you. Said being up here all crouched funny would make your back act up.”
Damn the kid for being right... but still...
“Thanks.”
I took the pills, popped them into my mouth with my left hand and started feeling for the water jug I knew was beside me. My entire focus was on the entrance of the museum because I'd seen a ton of movement. Someone was coming or they were fixing to go. Seeing the rag-tag collection of old cars and trucks parked on the east side I could only guess, but if I were pressed, I'd say they were fixing to go somewhere.
“He also said you might want this, instead of your shotgun,” Danielle took the AK-47 off her shoulder and laid it against the two-feet high knee wall on the flat roof. The barrel stuck up, but not by much and from a distance, it'd be impossible to tell what it was without binoculars.
“Thanks. That might come in handy,” I told her. “Now scoot before Jeremy breaks cover to come find you.”
“Sir, yes sir,” she whispered and took off before I could swat her.
My position was a good three hundred yards away from the museum, and finding a way inside their territory hadn't been horrible. I'd gone in through the storm drains and come up through a manhole in an adjacent alleyway. The hardest part of the job had been getting the manhole up and out of place without making a ton of noise. It’d been heavy and not something you could just pick up and put down lightly.
More movement caught my eye and I focused again. Four men or what I assumed to be men, dragged out a figure who’d had their arms zip-tied together. I tensed and focused on the figure... mentally cursing myself for not having shot the AK yet. If it was a decent gun, three hundred yards would be nothing. If it was some cheap knockoff, it might not be worth the metal it was stamped and milled from.
The figure was lean and as far as I could tell, male. At least, when people are that gaunt and thin with no curves showing and you assume male. Or I do. A black sackcloth had been placed over the figure’s head and he was being guided to an old Volkswagen Microbus. The blue and white hippy van fired up and three of the men held their guns on the prisoner and climbed in after him. The driver goosed the gas pedal a couple of times.
Even well muffled, it was almost as loud as the hoots and jeers from the men who were left behind. I tried to bring my focus in on the hooded prisoner more when the bag was torn from his head, so one of the men could throw a punch. Even from here, I recognized the man, or at least who he resembled.
Mid-forties. Brown hair gone salt and pepper, length to mid-back. Long beard. Slimmer than me, but from a distance he looked enough like me that I was surprised.
“Damn,” I muttered.
“Uncle Dick, can you tell us a story tonight?” Mouse said, plopping in my lap and holding up a hairbrush.
“I... I don't know,” I said, my voice shaking a little bit.
“You know, if they snatched him, it isn't your fault,” Mel told me. “You don't know if it's because he looked like you.”
“No, I don't.”
“But even if they did, pretty soon all guys are going to look like you. If you hadn't noticed, not many people are shaving nowadays,” Danielle said.
I nodded to her, conceding the point. I started brushing Mouse's hair. Pauly had come up and handed us bowls of the thick soup. I thanked him and put the brush down next to Mouse and started eating as she got up to eat.
“How many new ones did you count today?” Jeremy asked.
“I saw a few more men than I had before. I think they're recruiting,” I admitted.
Even the gangs hadn't been immune to the starvation and die-offs. I'd seen these guys bringing stuff in and out of the museum. Buckets and buckets of stuff. What I really wanted to do, before I staged anything, was to grab one of the men and sweat the information out of him. I hadn't told the kids this, but tonight wouldn't be a night where I woke them up from my nightmares. I was going to nap, but I'd found in the pile of jewelry and junk, a wind-up camp alarm clock. I was going to sleep with that inside my pillow and hope for the best.
“How are you going to take care of so many?” Danielle asked me, sitting down next to Jamie, followed by Jeremy, and then half the kids scooted closer.
Danielle had a vested interest in seeing the guys go down. Mouse and Pauly too. It had been this gang that I'd rescued the young kids from, and if word had gone out that one of the other slaver gangs had been hit, they would probably assume it was me who had done it.
“I'll figure something out,” was all I told them.
We ate in near silence and Steve, one of the twins pulled out a tattered book after we'd all finished. Where the Wild Things Are... I loved that book. I used to read it to Maggie when she was a kid. Instead of hurting, I held onto that memory and I felt halfway alright with the world.
It felt like I'd never slept, but when the alarm started going off, I shot my hand under the pillow and hit the button. I could hear a couple of snores cut off and the changes in breathing, but nothing that would signal I'd woken any of them up. Even at my home base, I was playing the game, so I didn't want to rock the boat for now. I got out and padded down the passageway towards the bathroom. Then, I quietly grabbed my shotgun and a dark hooded sweater and headed towards the museum. I wasn't going to go in as close as my lookout spot. The gang was more active at night, but I was hoping that they'd be lulled by the three am time and be half drunk as well.
Only the gangs had limitless supplies, it seemed. They could trade people for whatever they wanted. It was a new kind of currency, one that I was hoping to put an end to. Human trafficking had been going on for as long as men had walked the earth. That didn't make it right, though, and I was fixing my sig
hts on one of the largest groups out there. One that hopefully would lead me to the sick fucks by the docks.
“You’d better come back in one piece,” a quiet voice came out of the darkness as I started to climb the staircase to a sub-basement that hooked into an old building.
I spun, the shotgun coming up, and I found Danielle in my flashlight's beam. My heart was going a thousand beats a second and I dropped the gun, letting it tuck itself back in place on the drop sling.
“I will,” I told her. “I was trying to sneak out.”
“I know,” Danielle said, “that's what woke me up. When you go take a leak in the middle of the night, you stomp around like a damned dinosaur. You were stealthy tonight.”
Was that even a thing?
“Kid, I promise I'll come back in one piece.”
“You need backup?”
I looked at her, and her eyes were large. I knew it was personal for her, and I considered the pros and cons of letting her come with me.
“Not this time,” I told her, “but if I get a chance to snag one of these guys, want to help me question him?” I asked.
She nodded quickly.
“You want to wait here for me?” I asked her, “I'm going to try to snag someone. I might need a hand dragging them if my back acts up.”
I could see her teeth in the dark and she nodded again.
I went up through an old building's sub-basement. The sub-basement had been sealed off at least once, but it was in an old firehouse that had been renovated into flat-style apartments. I was able to squeeze my way to the basement by crawling up along the wall where the sewer lines came down. The support bracing was like stairs... and what used to be the opening for the coal chute was boarded over. I made quick work of that with a pry bar, trying to be as quiet as I could.
Nothing stirred above me, except for the stealthy rustle that told me that rats were nearby. That was nothing strange, to be honest. The city hadn't kept up on the poisoning and for a while, their population numbers had exploded. I'd worried what they might be contracting or passing on, but in the end, it didn't matter much. I got the final board out and I climbed up and into the basement level.
I clicked on the flashlight and looked around, one hand on the pistol grip of the shotgun just in case. Boxes and garbage bags of stuff were all over. On one side, an old boiler sat quiet and cold, water pipes coming out of the manifold and shooting up into the spaces above it. In another time, the copper wiring and plumbing would have been ripped out of an abandoned building, but now copper was almost useless. So there it sat.
I thought about using the stairs, but I saw large basement windows, the kind that swung up and out on one wall. As quiet as I could, trying not to trip over the garbage and boxes that littered the floor, I tried to peer out. The flashlight just reflected the light back into my eyes. I knew better, but I was getting anxious. I clicked it off and sat in the darkness to let my eyes adjust.
It took a while, but soon I could make out a difference in the gloom. Moonlight filtered through the windows. Weak, but I could start to make things out. I couldn't quite get to the latch, so I turned and saw an old kitchen chair under the stairs. As carefully as I could, I got it and came back, releasing the latch and pushing the window open. It squeaked horribly and I almost fell off the chair, my heart beating loudly in my chest.
“Damn,” I whispered, gripping the shotgun tight in case somebody had heard.
I waited. One minute, two, five. I pushed the shotgun in front of me and used my hands to pull myself up. A quick push off with the tips of my toes was just enough to get most of my chest on the trash littered pavement.
“I told you, I heard something,” a voice said in the darkness.
I wasn't in a panic, but there were at least two people by the sound of it, walking this way. I could just make out the beam of a flashlight from somewhere around the corner of the buildings. I'd noted that I'd come out in an alleyway, and I didn't see anywhere to hide except...
“Yeah, I wasn't sure if that was you hearing things again. You're so paranoid, Larry,” another voice answered.
“Shut up you two,” a third said, “If Gary finds out we were slacking on our rounds, he’ll shoot us. Don't be loud, and don't draw attention. If somebody's out here, we'll find him.”
Three figures moved in front of the alleyway and I shut my eyes when the light passed on and over me. I opened them up and looked from underneath the trash bag I'd pulled on top of me. The bag had been mostly dry, but something rank wafted to my nostrils from it.
“Hey, look!”
I could move my eyes to the side enough to see that the flashlight was now lighting up the open window of the building I'd just left.
“Was that open before?” Larry asked.
“The fuck should I know?” the third figure replied, “Jay, you remember this place?”
“Yeah,” Jay, the second figure said, “It's the old flophouse where Tanya's family stayed. She was on the upstairs.”
“I meant the basement window, you dumb fuck.”
“Oh, well, it wouldn't surprise me. They had bums and needle freaks getting in all the time.”
“One of us should go call this in,” Larry said.
“You volunteering? You going to wake the boss up? How do we even know somebody is nearby?”
“I told you, I heard something.”
“Then you can go wake the boss up, get the whole damned gang awake... and when we go into the basement and nobody’s there, it's on your ass.”
“I'm not the one who fell the fuck asleep when I was supposed to be doing my rounds.”
An arm lashed out in the semi-darkness and the flashlight fell as Larry was decked in the face. The strike sounded like a slap, but I could hear the surprised breath that left him as the pain kicked in.
“Motherfucker,” he snarled.
Noise discipline was gone and I was about to bury myself further when the second man rushed in to break it up. He tripped over my legs, unburying me. He fell with a scream and the third figure turned to yell or lash out at him. When he turned on his flashlight, I was already moving. I didn't want to use the shotgun if I had to, but I had a feeling I was going to have to, and soon.
Instead of running, I rolled once while pulling my knife. As the man who'd knocked down the first started pulling his pistol to bear on me, I sunk the blade into his thigh and twisted. His face screwed up in a rictus of pain and instead of screaming, a hiss of air left him as he tried not to cry out. He was already falling, and I pulled him towards me as I rose to my feet, one hand reaching for the wrist that held the gun.
He tried to pull the trigger, but I now had my feet under me. My knife flashed out and sank into his chest to the hilt. I pulled the pistol free and turned. The man who'd tripped over me was patting the ground around him, looking for something he dropped. The man who'd been punched was quickly getting to his feet and a handgun materialized out of the darkness behind his back and he held it out on me.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asked, his voice cold. At his feet, the other man started making whimpering noises
“Just some bum who was looking for food or a fix,” I said in a hopeful voice, my palms sweaty.
“Yeah, right. Hey... Carl?” The gun wavered for half a second as he shot a glance back to the man who was crawling on his hands and knees.
“Almost found it,” the man said, and then made a triumphant sound as he rose, holding an old chromed Saturday night special on me.
“So, who the fuck are you really?” the man asked, taking half a step closer so his gun was within swatting range.
True tip, don't get within swatting range with a pistol. Only idiots would do that in an attempt to intimidate somebody. Since I wasn't afraid to die, I wasn't intimidated.
“I was homeless before the EMP. I'm just looking for food, a fix, someplace to stay. The last place I was at had a ton of rats, but man... I didn't know this was the marked territory.”
“Drop the gun.
You killed him, and you're going to regret that,” he said.
“He was an ass,” the second man said, his gun pointing towards me. “How did you get so close?”
This was not going well.
“I came in two or three days ago. I've been camped out in the basement,” I lied.
In the darkness and confined spaces, I might have a better chance.
“Drop the gun, asshole.” I felt the cheap pistol press into the back of my head.
I dropped it, letting it clatter onto the pavement. I held my arm up as the man grabbed the sling of my shotgun and removed it. I was going to fucking kill these punks. He patted me down and found my backup knife... not the one that was buried in the man. I made sure to keep that in mind as an available asset if I was feeling stabby again soon.
“You've been down there for two or three days?” The man in front of me, Larry, asked.
“Yeah, there's a few cases of food. It's not bad if you don't hate spam and corned beef hash... it would be great if I had eggs to go with it, but I...” I started blathering fast, hopefully sounding nervous and scared.
“Is there anybody else down there?” The man behind me asked, resting a hand on my left shoulder, and grinding the pistol into the back of my skull.
“No,” I told them truthfully.
“Let's go,” the man behind me said, pushing my shoulder.
I started to kneel down by the window but was kicked in the face. The man behind me lost his grip as I fell backward. I could taste the blood sheeting down across my lips and in the back of my throat from the broken nose. The pain was bad, but it was something I could compartmentalize and keep at bay. It was the watery eyes I had to worry about. It limited my vision and I got to my feet slowly, with my hands up.
“Ok, then you show me where to go,” I told them.
They led me around to the front of the building, and into the public hallway. A staircase went up on the left-hand side and the lower level was mostly open space with a door and a sign on that read ‘Manager’. Another sign read ‘Basement Storage’.
The Devil Dog Trilogy: Out Of The Dark Page 12