by Jim Heskett
“Babe,” Dave said. “Some help here, please?”
Isabelle rushed to her two remaining friends. Dave had taken off his shirt and was wrapping it around the gash in Sutter’s arm.
“Zach?” Sutter said, panting and grimacing as Dave tightened the makeshift bandage.
Isabelle shook her head.
“What happened here?”
Isabelle helped Dave apply pressure to the wound. “The Infinity happened.”
10
After some discussion, they decided to let Zach’s body stay where it had fallen. They all agreed it sucked, but there was no time to have a burial and service or do any of those old-world things that the living sometimes still felt the dead were owed.
They spent the next hour searching the storage units to find the weapons. No luck. There was hardly anything of value, except for a few gallons of gas tucked away deep inside one container. That would prove useful, at least.
Sutter tried not to complain about the cut on his arm, even though it hurt like hell. He needed stitches, but at least they managed to stop the bleeding. By fashioning Dave’s extra shirt into a sling, he regained the use of one of his arms.
Back at Cassie’s house on Fulton, they searched and found no weapons stashed there either. No roommate, as Cassie had claimed, or at least not one there now. There was even less of value inside Cassie’s place.
When they got tired of searching, they gathered in the living room to reassess. They sat on the collection of bean bag chairs, and Dave occupied himself with a Rubik’s cube which still had about half the original stickers.
Silence hung in the room like a dreary fog, and the longer it persisted, the more awkward it became.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” Dave finally said as Sutter wrapped a clean piece of cloth around his arm.
“I don’t understand how she could turn on us like that,” Sutter said. “How is this cult so persuasive they can corrupt people and make them believe all these lies?”
“In a way,” Isabelle said, “Zach tried to warn us about her. I thought it was some personal grudge, but seems like he knew something we didn’t.”
Sutter pulled the cloth tight, which sent a jolt of pain up into his shoulder and made him momentarily dizzy. “Zach was a good guy. I saved his life once, even though he didn’t want me to.” He stopped short of mentioning his inability to save Zach’s life this time because it wasn’t necessary. They’d all failed to save Zach’s life.
“What do we do now?” Dave said. “Do we go back, or do we press on?”
“We press on,” Sutter said.
Isabelle took a deep breath and tented her fingers in front of her face. “I get that you want to keep going, but I’m not sure if it’s the smart thing to do.”
“But what about our deal with Mrs. Rappaport?” Sutter said. “Don’t we owe it to her and Zach to try?”
“We don’t know for sure that she can deliver,” Isabelle said. “Maybe she rounds up a couple hundred soldiers and ex-cops. Will they be able to get enough supplies to wage a guerrilla war against all these cult members? Are they going to be willing to put their lives at risk to hunt down and root out all these psychos?”
Sutter chewed on his lip for a few seconds. “I think she can. Don’t ask me why, but I got a feeling that this is our best chance.”
“Something else to consider,” Dave said, “is that we don’t even know exactly where this Infinity headquarters is.”
“We can find it,” Sutter said. “Mansion with a wrought-iron gate. Red Bank’s not that big, I’m sure we can put our heads together and figure it out.”
Isabelle took out her pistol. “I have maybe fifty rounds of 9mm ammo left for this gun. I have about twenty rounds for the sniper rifle in the trunk. After that, I got nothing, and I can’t imagine you have much more in your reserves. How are we supposed to fight them with that?”
Sutter ran through the arguments in his head, but he couldn’t fault the logic. It seemed like a suicide mission either way. “So we try to save the camp by killing the Infinity leader or we condemn them to die.”
“What if there’s no camp to go back to?” Dave said. “We knew the Infinity were coming, but not when. What if they’ve already attacked? We could be walking back into a smoking ruin.”
“Then,” Isabelle said, “maybe this is where we go our separate ways. We do what we’ve always done and go back to surviving.”
Sutter winced as he tightened the cloth around his wound. “You two can do whatever you want. I’m not going to give up. I know Zach died for nothing, but I’d like to pretend that I can still make it mean something.”
Isabelle sighed, but Dave leaned forward in his chair and pursed his lips.
“Maybe he’s right,” Dave said. “We made a deal with Rappaport. If we cut out now, the whole thing could collapse.”
Sutter watched Isabelle run through a series of facial expressions, eventually settling on acceptance. Yes, he knew it was probably a suicide mission, but it’s not as if they had a better plan available.
Dave opened his mouth to say something, then he paused. Sniffed the air. “Do you guys smell that?”
Sutter stood and circled the living room. He did smell something too, like a faint hint of rotten meat. Then the smell clicked into place. “I think I know what that is. I’m not sure if we want to go looking for it.”
Dave either didn’t understand or he didn’t care, because he rose from his chair and started up the stairs to the second floor.
“Where are you going?” Isabelle said.
“I have to see it,” Dave said.
Sutter and Isabelle followed Dave up the rickety stairs as the smell of burnt flesh grew stronger. Dave stopped outside one of two doors on the second floor, took a breath, and pushed the door open.
On the floor, in the middle of a circle of decaying rose petals, was the body of a man, or possibly a woman. Hard to tell, since the person’s genitals had been removed and his or her flesh had been burned into a rippling mess. A series of pentagrams had been drawn on the floor and the walls, probably with this person’s blood.
“Jesus,” Dave said, gagging.
“This is what they do,” Sutter said. “If we don’t stop them, they’ll do this to everyone in this country.”
***
I-95 whipped by, trees and billboards, the occasional car wreck or roving group of survivors prying into car trunks with crowbars, tossing looks at the SUV as it sped along the interstate. Isabelle tried not to think of Zach because he wasn’t even a friend. Mostly, she felt sorry for Sutter because, for some reason, the ex-cop had taken Zach under his wing and treated the guy as his responsibility.
Those kinds of attachments always ended in heartbreak.
And Sutter had clammed up, pulled his Yankees cap low, and stared out the window. Miles after miles, he would barely turn his head to look at anything else. She couldn’t believe that his sightseeing was making him feel any better since the unwelcoming landscape of this new America was the most depressing thing ever.
“Okay,” she said, and then found she had to clear her throat after not speaking for a couple hours, “we need to start talking strategy here.”
“We’re almost in Trenton,” Dave said, “so it’s only about sixty miles to Red Bank.”
“I know you don’t want to hear this, Sutter,” Isabelle said, “but Zach was the only one who’d been in that Infinity house before. This will sound calloused, but not having him puts us at a big disadvantage.”
Sutter nodded but didn’t turn his head from looking out the window. “That occurred to me. But it doesn’t change the plan.”
Isabelle and Dave shared a look as they had to slow when entering the city. The collection of abandoned cars thickened as the billboards and trees of the outer suburbs became the tall buildings and street signs of Trenton, New Jersey. People started to appear on the sides of the road in twos and threes, watching these outsiders invade their city.
“We sho
uld probably begin to think about finding a place to bed down for the night,” Isabelle said, “because we need time to…” she went silent as a knocking sound came from the front of the car. She leaned forward. “What is that?”
The knocking grew louder, turning into a banging.
Dave’s eyes shot wide and he slammed on the brakes. “Oh shit, no, this can’t be happening.”
Knock, knock, boom.
The front of the car jumped as Dave struggled to get the wheel under control. The car fishtailed along the city street, screeching left and right as the burning rubber smell filled the air. Isabelle and Sutter shouted and braced themselves as they were tossed around in their seats.
The car came to a complete stop as smoke leaked out from under the hood.
“Get down!” Sutter said, pointing his gun out the window, frantically looking around at the surrounding buildings.
“Don’t bother,” Dave said. “That wasn’t a bomb.”
Dave got out of the car, then Sutter and Isabelle followed. Dave popped the hood as simmering smoke billowed and escaped the engine. “We blew a rod. This car’s fucked.”
***
With sleeping bags tucked under their arms and backpacks slung over their shoulders, they trudged along Bridge Street over the Delaware River. Carrying the sniper rifle case made Isabelle’s arm ache within minutes, but no way would she leave it behind. They’d already had to abandon the last few gallons of gas back at the car.
Stranded, no car, no gas. Vulnerable in every way possible.
Dave had insisted that she take and wear Cassie’s bulletproof vest, but the damn thing was so heavy, she had to give serious thought to the merits of wearing it versus leaving it by the side of the road.
“So here’s the situation,” Dave said as they reached the other side of the bridge. “We’re about fifty-five miles from Red Bank. We can walk, and that will take us three days, possibly four, if we don’t encounter anything serious along the way. The problem is, I have maybe two day’s worth of food, and I’d guess you two have about the same.”
“We’ll figure something out,” Sutter said. “We need to get there as quickly as possible. Spending four days walking might give them enough time to raid the camp.”
“If they haven’t already,” Isabelle said.
Sutter nodded. “We’d be better off spending a day in Trenton, trying to find transportation. ”
“And how do we get transportation?” she said. “We have nothing to trade we can part with unless you’ve got a propane tank hidden up your butt.”
“I wish,” Sutter said, then after a second to let it sink in, Dave and Isabelle chuckled, then Sutter did too. Felt good to laugh after the darkness that had descended since the incident at the storage facility.
They walked into the city, not knowing exactly where they were going. On Bank Street, a group of teenagers sitting around a fire by the side of the road tossed ugly looks at them. Kids acting tough. Isabelle made sure they saw the gun sticking out of her waistband, which diverted their attention back to the fire.
But one of them was undeterred. “Hey! What you got in that suitcase?”
She ignored him, but he took a step out into the street toward them, just fifty feet away. “Look at me, bitch, when I’m talking to you.”
Dave stopped. “You watch your mouth.”
The other three teenagers took an interest now.
“Dave, forget about it,” Isabelle said. “It’s just some punk kids.”
“No,” Dave said as he dropped his sleeping bag in the street. “I’m sick of this bullshit.”
Isabelle opened her mouth to respond, but before she could, a group of three guys in black hoods came pouring out from behind a building, headed for the teenagers. They were carrying shotguns.
The teens tried to scramble and run, but the hooded men opened fire, cutting all four of them down. The blasts echoed around the surrounding buildings, making Isabelle’s ears ring.
The kid who’d called her a bitch had fallen bloodied but was still trying to crawl away.
One of the attackers lowered his hood, revealing a sneering face as he stood over the teenager. “You think I don’t know it was you?” he said, kicking the dying kid in the ribs. “You think I wouldn’t know who tried to break into our warehouse and take our bikes?”
Isabelle’s ears perked up. Bikes meant motorcycles, which meant more than one. Which would mean they would also have gas.
The man cocked the shotgun and blasted the poor kid in the face, exploding his head into pieces. He and the two hooded companions regrouped, then walked back in the direction they’d come from as if they were out for a stroll. On their way out, one of them stopped and eyed Isabelle.
“What are you looking at?” he said.
“Nothing,” Dave said. “Just passing through.”
The man grunted, then carried on. They disappeared into an alley.
“Sutter,” Isabelle said.
“Yeah, I know,” he said.
Dave kicked a piece of newspaper in the street which had blown into his path. “What are you two talking about?”
“Babe, pick up your sleeping bag. We need to follow these guys.”
Dave’s mouth dropped open. “You mean these freaks who just murdered four teenagers in front of us?”
“Yes,” she said. “They’re our ticket to Red Bank.”
11
Victor rolled his wheelchair down the long hall in the Red Bank mansion, admiring the paintings and the sculptures resting on pedestals. He hadn’t spent enough time with the artwork in this house. The mistress had redecorated a few years before her untimely death, but much of the original art remained, and it helped maintain a nostalgic kind of old world beauty. Worth a lot of money, back when money was worth something. Would someone trade a sack of brown rice for a Rembrandt now?
He stopped in front of a door, leaned in his chair, and opened it. Inside the sitting room, a young man was hunched over a laptop connected to a bank of batteries. The young man’s heel bounced rapidly against the floor, making his lower body vibrate.
“Any progress?” Victor said.
The young man swiveled in his chair, and upon taking in Victor’s face, suddenly went quite pale. His mouth dropped open and he stumbled over his words.
“If it’s bad news,” Victor said, “just tell me.”
The young man checked the laptop screen one more time as if things might have suddenly changed in the last few seconds. “I’ve been unable to reach the satellite network. I know we’d hoped there was only some kind of technical problem, but as far as I can see, the satellites have gone completely unresponsive.”
Victor sighed. “Do you know why?”
The young man shrugged. “Could be anything. General power failure, maybe solar flares knocked them out, or any number of reasons. We don’t have much control from here.”
Without the satellites, there was no way to use the sat phones to communicate with the dispersed members of the flock. Victor had told the followers at the house that they would leave messages in all the major cities, but that was a time-consuming plan. He’d hoped he wouldn’t have to do it, beyond the few small groups of scouts he’d already sent.
He tried not to let the anxiety show on his face. What he’d said to Norman before, about being weak, wasn’t simply a baseless worry.
“Very well,” Victor said. “You can continue working on it for the rest of the day. If you make no breakthroughs by that time, then we will reassess.”
The young man’s left eye flickered. Victor assumed he would take that last sentence to mean that if he made no breakthroughs, the young man would pay the price with his blood. When their numbers were much larger, he probably would have. But now, every member was too precious.
But it didn’t hurt to let the kid think that way.
“Thank you, Leader. I won’t let you down.”
12
Isabelle, Dave, and Sutter followed the hooded men through a maze of
back alley pathways, keeping a respectful distance. Tracking them was easy, because the thugs kept talking, their voices bouncing off the brick and stone walls of the surrounding buildings. An auditory trail was almost as good as breadcrumbs.
The men, some brand of a local gang, didn’t appear to have any obvious connection with the Infinity. But as they kept talking, one of them said something about the subway in New York, and Sutter went white.
He stopped short. “Why am I not surprised? These gang bangers are Red Streets.”
“Who?” Dave said.
“New York gang,” Sutter said. “I thought they’d all moved on. And they did, but into New Jersey, apparently. They’re not dressed like they used to, but I’m sure it’s them.”
“Does this change what we need to do?” Isabelle said.
“No,” Sutter said, “I guess it doesn’t. These guys are pretty nasty, though. I’ve tussled with them before. Seen them do some awful things that you don’t even want to know about.”
Isabelle waved Sutter forward since the voices up ahead were beginning to fade. The alleyways grew narrower and darker at each turn.
In a couple minutes, the Red Streets gangsters stopped. They’d entered a kind of courtyard created by apartment buildings on three sides and the loading bay of a warehouse on the fourth side. In this open space were a few dozen men, but more importantly, a collection of motorcycles lined the courtyard, continuing down the loading bay and into the warehouse. Must have been fifty or sixty bikes out on display.
Isabelle had been peering around the edge of a building to get a look, and she pulled back. “This is it,” she whispered. “They do have bikes. They’ve got to have gas, too.”
Sutter looked around at the tall apartment buildings around them and pointed at one slightly taller than the other two. “We’ve got to get a better vantage point. See it all at once.”
Isabelle and Dave agreed, so they retreated back to the front of one of the brick buildings and entered a wide hallway. Piles and piles of mail littered the floor. Bills, letters, and junk mail, all of it at least a decade old. On one side of the room, a bank of mailboxes had been opened like the shutters of windows.