“We got snipers up in the buildings, of course,” he answered the question no one had asked. “That’s just the gate crew. For everyone you see here, there are at least three more out there.”
I didn’t comment on that, but Nate gave a curt nod. “Twelve-hour rotations?”
“Eight, actually,” Tanner explained, surprising me by divulging vital information. “The maze is doing a good job keeping the undead fuckers out of the city, but when they break through, we need our people sharp and ready to stop the incursion before they make it through the first perimeter. Never breached the other four.”
Listening to that made me wonder how many people they must have here just to keep their rotations up. And there I’d thought Dispatch was the living, breathing center of civilization. But I had been wrong before, as history had proven—over and over again. I hadn’t really had time to get more than a look at the guards, but from their gear and mannerisms they could have been any scavengers that we’d met out there—well-equipped, provisioned, but a long shot from the orderly rank and file of cohesive, larger units. Hell, that could have easily been us out there—if we hadn’t spent the summer doing our very best getting killed off one by one.
It took us another hour to get to the next gate, and another until Tanner told me to wait for the others to catch up. While I let the Rover run idle, I tried to get a sense of where we might be, but without any maps out, I had no fucking clue. It had been a while since we’d headed west, at least judging from where the sun was standing. We certainly weren’t anywhere near downtown. As soon as the last car had joined us about a minute later, Tanner told me to take a few more turns before he had me halt once more, this time so he and a few of the others could get out. They spent about two minutes making sure that the area was secure before they pulled what had looked like just more overgrown rubble, but turned out to be a series of tarps draped over wooden boxes and other lightweight debris, aside. He didn’t get in before he signaled me to go through the newly-opened passage, but I didn’t need any command to know that I should wait about a hundred yards later at the next, more or less natural border before us. Tanner got back in after they had closed off and concealed the passage again.
“What are you waiting for?” he asked when I turned to glance back at him. “Down into the river bed.”
“North or south?”
Tanner chuckled softly. “South, of course. Who’d want to live downtown if you can live on the beach? Way’s free until Wrigley, but you can go further down up on the bank. You’ll see it when we get there.”
The L.A. River wasn’t filling much more than the middle third of the huge concrete trench that cut right through the city, but unlike in the movies, it wasn’t a pristine, ready for car chases riverbed. Debris from all around had ended up in there, usually in small islands where sand and vegetation diverted the flowing water. It made everything look a little more organic, and compared to the ruins all around us it was almost like a portal into a different world—one that had miraculously escaped the apocalypse. Upriver I could see one of the bridges that had led over the river once. Most of it had ended up in the river, splitting the stream into a multitude of runnels, with lots and lots of detritus piled up all around the larger pieces, including the hulls of several cars.
Out of the maze of the destroyed city, it was still slow going as I did my best to keep the car out of the water and mud. Crawling through the maze of destruction had been claustrophobic as hell, but now I felt exposed, out here in the open. My nerves were strung tight, no longer because of the armed stranger breathing down my neck but my instincts screaming at me that something must be hiding out there, ready to come at me the second I let my guard down. Like in Douglas. Like in Sioux Falls. Like in that fucking weird town in the middle of nowhere that had been brimming with zombies. But I didn’t voice my concerns, for once content to bite my tongue instead. If Tanner really wanted to lead us into a trap, he could have just shot us at any of the many turns in the maze.
A few miles south from where we’d entered the cement boulevard of the riverbed, the stream started to swell until we drew close to a stretch where water covered the entirety of it. Not only that, but what lay downriver looked more like marshland than the more regulated parts we’d just traversed. To the east, a ramp led up onto street level, half obscured by another destroyed bridge. It was when I crawled up and out of the riverbed when I realized that this bridge, at least, hadn’t fallen prey to whatever natural disasters had wrecked the city. The dust had settled, but the large pieces had recent, not yet eroded edges—and right next to the ramp several bulldozers and other construction machinery sat in the middle of the road, a crew of ten people surrounding it. They ignored us after seeing the other vehicles follow our two cars, intently discussing maps or taking a break. The sun was already descending toward the horizon, but they didn’t look ready to turn in for the night yet.
“You’re deconstructing the city,” I noted when I just couldn’t keep my trap shut anymore.
Tanner gave a grunt that could have meant anything. “How do you think we keep our community safe?” was his only reply—but it made a lot of sense.
The further south we went, the more obvious the changes to the surroundings got. While before there had been gates every few miles, we passed more and more checkpoints as we kept following the river. Most of the intersections had roads blocked off, and the vehicles that seemed haphazardly left all over the place looked like the rust and destruction was mostly cosmetic. We also passed several other construction—or rather, deconstruction—crews. My estimate of how many people must be in New Angeles climbed higher and higher if they had that many to spare not just guarding the settlement, but continuing to fortify it.
“Just two more checkpoints,” Tanner told me when we passed another gate, this one reinforced by walls made up of shipping containers. “At the next gate, turn left, then right. Our visitor entry is that way.”
That sounded civil enough—until we got to the final stretch before another, presumably the last, gate. It had likely been a small commercial area, the buildings too tall for residential, single-unit housing, but now it was a kill chute if I’d ever seen one. Wide enough that snipers could cover the entire width of the road, with not a piece of rubble in the street that was large enough to hide a dog, let alone a person. Windows and doors were walled shut, same as the three intersections that I could guess at where the breaks between the buildings had been filled up with debris, too densely packed that any vehicle could have attempted to get past them. Even on foot, scaling them would have been slow going—leaving anyone on guard time aplenty to shoot down the intruder. Atop several of the buildings I could make out walls made of sand sacks topped with barbed wire, the thick barrels of machine guns trained down at the street below. All of them were manned with several people, and I thought I could hear a dog or two give brief barks that demanded attention. I doubted that even a mouse could sneak through there without being observed—and maybe making for some extra protein for the next meal.
My skin was crawling the entire time I drove through the corridor, the feeling of unease increasing when I realized that it was only the Jeep behind us. Tanner’s presence was all of a sudden comforting—they wouldn’t gun down one of their own, right? Everyone was watching us, faces impassive, but there was some chattering going on. Gun barrels followed our every motion.
Somehow we made it to the gate unscathed, but sitting there, waiting for Tanner to give the correct code phrase, tore on my nerves. The sun was setting, but down here in the corridor it was already dark enough that my eyes had stopped burning. The deep shadows that the tall buildings threw on us made it easy to imagine an army lurking all around us, independent of the guards we saw.
With a loud, grating sound the gate finally retracted, letting us into a similar, if somewhat wider, corridor that ended in a square, the surrounding roads walled off so only people on foot or bikes could get through. “Park over there,” Tanner told me, pointing
to a part of the square that was empty. There were a few other vehicles there, all armored and looking about as used as ours. I couldn’t help but eye the Humvee with apprehension, remembering all too well how Stanton had told us about their “visitors.” The sense that we were walking into a trap was still clouding my thoughts, the endless maze that had taken us hours to traverse only adding to my paranoia. Here, we wouldn’t be able to fight our way free, that much was for sure.
I exhaled slowly and kept my hands on the wheel after turning off the Rover, waiting for further instructions. Tanner cleared his throat, looking faintly bemused. “You can take your weapons with you. We’re not keen on getting our asses chewed up for you. But don’t overdo it, you’ll have to leave it all outside the boss’s office. We take security serious here.”
He got out, leaving us to do our thing. I stared after him for a moment before I turned to Nate. He gave a slight shrug as he grabbed an assault rifle from the center console. I hesitated, then got my Mossberg. All things considered, I still preferred my shotgun in close quarters.
The cooling air outside was blissful when it hit my face after hours locked inside the car. Pia and Burns joined us, accompanied by their “guide.” I expected more of an escort to form, but Tanner made a gesture to follow him and started toward the half-blocked roads, with not a care in the world that he exposed his back to our weapons this way. I followed, a little cautious, but trying hard to hide it.
There was a funny smell in the air, and it took me half a block between the surprisingly high buildings to recognize it: people. Before the shit had hit the fan, I’d never realized that civilization had that inherent smell to it. Part exhaust fumes, part cooking scents, all living, breathing people. I could hear them, too, in the distance—the swell of voices, tools, even a few dogs barking. Once we were past the barriers, the street widened again, but it was no longer as empty as before the gates. There were boxes, trash cans, the odd bag or some discarded tools. Vehicles, too, but mostly small ones, best suited to move small amounts of cargo over short distance. As we passed under a high ledge, I saw a calico cat glare down at us, watching us but clearly not intimidated by our presence.
We crossed an intersection, and off to the left I caught a glimpse of another barrier, and beyond the telltale dancing lights of a larger fire, with a few dark silhouettes standing close. One of them turned and raised a hand, Tanner and the other guy greeting back without stopping for an explanation. The next intersection was a larger one, a few bigger vehicles building parts of the barriers. As we stepped into the open space, I heard music drift over from the same direction where the fire had been. There were more people standing around, chatting, eating, but they ignored us as well except for the odd curious glance. They were all armed and looked ready for a sortie out past the gate, but didn’t seem very alert. Unlike the rowdy bunch we’d encountered in Dispatch, none of them looked drunk, and they kept their conversations between themselves. More than one bare hand that I could catch a glimpse of had a dark mark.
Two more blocks and Tanner took a turn right. Up ahead, the perpetual gloom lightened as the tall buildings broke away into two- or three-story houses, and beyond that I could see a huge, open square that seemed completely free. Rubble was stacked at the lower levels of the buildings, making me guess that the square was a recent addition, thanks to more construction equipment that I glimpsed down another street. There were people milling around up ahead, lots of them, standing or sitting in lawn chairs. My eyes were drawn to the other side of the square where the side of a taller building was lit up brightly. It took me a moment to realize that they were projecting a movie onto the unnaturally bright—likely painted white—wall, and the people below were watching it for the most part where they weren’t busy preparing and eating dinner. Children and dogs were running between the groups of adults, squealing with delight, and not much supervision. And there were lots of them. A lot more than I’d expected to be alive anywhere. As we drew closer, I saw a woman snatch up a toddler that couldn’t have been much past his first steps, teetering after a string of older kids. She snuggled him to her chest, giving him a brief kiss that he vehemently protested, straining after the dog that tagged after the group that was surely getting away from him. Slung across the mother’s other shoulder was a rifle, and the pockets of her pants were bulging with what I was sure was spare ammo. She half turned our way, a smile on her face, the motion revealing her rounding belly. After a brief wave to Tanner she sat the kid down and let it stagger on, following at a sedate pace. I had a hard time gauging the child’s age, but he couldn’t be much older than twelve months or so, born well past the apocalypse.
“You have children here,” I more noted than asked, bewildered.
Tanner gave a brief snort. “Small ones, larger ones. Even a few older people, but they had a much harder time getting through the winter than everyone else. Lots of families, and getting more every day,” he said, not without pride swinging in his words. “Now that it’s about to get cooler soon I expect more people will come back. We had somewhat of an exodus in spring when people took up the call to go foraging outside of our borders, to recruit more people and bring back resources.” The way he said it, he regarded those points one and the same.
I couldn’t help but watch the crowd gathered in the square as we passed. Apparently, six armed people in full gear were not a sight that alarmed anyone. I got the sense that a few were watching us back, the odd speculative look following us, but no one approached. That left me feeling peculiar—my paranoia hadn’t exactly gone away, but it was hard to scrutinize every single thing when there was a general air of normalcy surrounding everything here. I could be wrong, but I doubted they’d parade us around like this just to put us up against a wall later and shoot us.
At the other end of the square we turned back into the gloom of the concrete canyons, passing what was obviously another checkpoint. Tanner drew a few nods from the guards. The glances they spared for us were calculating, and more than one hand twitched toward a gun. Yet they looked at ease, confident, rather than doing any posturing shit. Alert, yes, but not ready to jump at their own shadows. My back still itched as we walked past them, making me hunch my shoulders slightly.
A block away from the square, the last of the rubble from the buildings that had likely been cleared to create the open space subsided, leaving only more boxes and tools around. At one corner a heap of trash bags rested under a graffiti-sprayed “don’t litter” tag. The sight of that made me smirk.
Around another corner, and Tanner led us toward a door that looked like an unassuming side entrance into a high-rise, the few intact windows in the upper floors glowing in the last rays of the setting sun. There were more armed people milling around, smoking and drinking beer as they chatted between them, only bothering to step aside as Tanner physically shoved one of them away. Directly behind the door a flight of stairs led down two levels. At the landing between them we picked up a few more guards, trailing behind us. Three were tall, fit guys like Tanner, but the other two were women, one in her middle years, her black hair tied into a messy bun at the back of her head, the other, shorter woman barely out of her teenage years, the sides of her head shaved to leave the long, vibrant green dyed shock of hair in the middle to hang down to her scrawny shoulders. No one spoke, but Punk Girl had a hard time keeping her liner-blackened eyes from widening.
The door at the bottom of the stairs swung open, greeting us with a gust of warm air and a blast of loud music. Rock, and if I wasn’t mistaken, it didn’t come from a tape. Beyond the door yet another flight of stairs led into a surprisingly large, rectangular room, one side close to the stairs taken over by a bar, a few stools alongside it the only furniture I could see in the mostly dim light. Opposite the stairs was a stage, currently occupied by the people creating the melodic racket that made my teeth rattle just a little. The room was stuffed with people, some drinking and chatting, others singing along with the band.
Rather than turn to t
he last flight of stairs, Tanner walked over to a gallery overlooking the dance floor, toward yet another door at the very end of the room, roughly above the stage. There were guards posted before it, and they only opened the door after a brief exchange with Tanner. Beyond lay a much smaller room, barely large enough to not crowd the lot of us as we piled through the door. Two of the walls were mirrored from top to bottom except for yet another, reinforced door. Along the wall between exit and entry were empty racks and a sturdy bench. Harsh illumination came from neon lights overhead, forcing my eyes to contract to slits.
Tanner turned around, regarding us levelly. “Weapons go on the racks. The bench is for your other gear. Do us all a favor and drop it all right there without holding anything back. We will find it, and then we have to do that whole mistrust thing, and who really wants that?” I had the strangest feeling that he was singling me out, but ignored it.
“Define ‘other gear,’” the Ice Queen rasped. Under her stare, even Tanner withered.
“Down to your underwear should do,” he explained, flashing a surprisingly cheerful grin. “You can get dressed again once we’ve made sure you don’t have half an arsenal hidden away. Standard precautions. No one sees the boss without getting checked first.”
“Paranoid much?” I muttered, but wasn’t really surprised. So far, Dispatch had been the only place that hadn’t had any stricter rules about that. It was a little strange that they only seemed to care about weapons, not the odd bite any one of us could be sporting. Then again, if they really knew who we were, they also had to know that getting chomped on wouldn’t exactly make us more dangerous.
“Not without reason,” Punk Girl explained. “We already thwarted three assassination attempts this year.”
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 2 | Books 4-6 Page 89