by Tyler Lahey
“Have you heard about Joseph’s little…what is it…religious self-help group?” Agis asked.
Harley snickered in the back.
Bennett leaned on the table to support himself. “I have. Jaxton and the others are in it. They meet nightly, in the old science wing.”
The Lieutenant chuckled. “Science wing, yes. Well their assembly is illegal. I won’t stand for it. It threatens us, you see that do you not?”
“Threatens us,” Bennett repeated, as the fringe of a high approached his hungry brain.
“We cannot have that, Bennett. Would you agree? The survivors deciding things for themselves in mass…debates? That is not a strategy for success. We must remain in control.”
“Yes. In control.” Bennett wanted to sit down and close his eyes. He felt good.
“Joseph cannot be allowed to continue these meetings. He will have to be punished.” Bennett heard Agis saying through the haze of exhilaration.
“He will have to be punished. Yes I agree.” he heard himself saying. When he opened his eyes, Harley was staring at him intensely, judging his reaction to the Oxy. He ogled at her, marveling at her beauty and the way her auburn hair framed what he perceived to be a sexual gaze.
He vaguely heard Agis chuckle. “Go fetch Layla. And let’s leave them be. He’s with us.”
Bennett closed his eyes and shuddered with a smile.
…
“So we go straight to the people.”
Joseph crouched forward in the creaking leather chair, his neck bundled in a crisp grey scarf. “We go to the Lieutenant first. Or he will view it as a power-play.”
“It is a power-play,” Elvis said. Liam found he appreciated the matter of fact tone.
Joseph grimaced lightly. “I didn’t sign up for anything like this. I wanted to investigate a code of morality.”
“The Lieutenant controls all the resources, and his favorites get the pick while we fight for the scraps,” Liam retorted.
Joseph regarded him keenly, with soft eyes. “Be careful. I fear there is more to the Lieutenant than meets the eye. What do you have in the fight?”
Liam opened and closed his mouth. Elvis rapped his fingers on the desk. “Harley.”
The confusion on Joseph’s face lingered for just a moment. “Ah. A girl.” The silence that followed confirmed his suspicions. He continued slowly. “I would examine if this is something you feel strongly enough about to risk the disfavor of our….leader.”
Liam bristled, his bulky form shifting in the cold air. The door burst open. Six of Agis’s deputies entered the room, hard face and tight lipped. The men inside rushed to their feet, and felt their hands reaching for imaginary weapons.
Agis entered last. “Brothers. It is time for us to have a discussion.” His face was warm, but his men were not.
Liam rose to his feet, feeling his hate surging as he locked eyes. “What is the meaning of this?”
Agis brushed Joseph aside and eased back in the leather chair, his men filtering throughout the classroom. “An unlawful assembly plotting to overthrow my leadership and kill anyone who stands in your way.”
Liam sneered, “You have a lovely way of twisting the truth, did you know that?”
Agis chuckled. “The people will believe what I tell them. This assembly is over. I am here to administer the punishment.”
Liam held the gaze. “Give us back our guns. Stop taking the best equipment and food for your own.”
Agis rose. “Where is your little king? Where is Jaxton?”
They remained silent. “The others will hear of this,” Elvis growled.
“They will indeed. They will hear that your band was attempting to stage a coup, and take power for yourselves. And that dictatorship would have nothing of the benevolence I have. I will spare you the shame of a public punishment. Who’s idea were these meetings originally?”
Joseph raised his hand. “Mine.”
Agis nodded. “Your crime is sedition. Liam. Elvis. You will not be punished. You will bear the shame of knowing what your actions have caused. Pass the message along, to the others you slink around with.” He rose, and exited the classroom, shutting the door behind him.
The pasty police officer drew a baton from his holster, and took a menacing step towards them. “Step away,” he commanded.
Liam did not move, but Elvis took a measured step in front of Joseph. “Why don’t you ditch the baton? Unless you need it,” he said calmly.
The pasty one sneered. The other officers in their bulletproof vests and black boots raised their sidearms and advanced.
“Don’t shoot them!” Joseph roared, stepping out from behind his friends. There was malevolence in his burning eyes, for the first time in his life. “Here I am,” he whispered.
The pasty one grinned wolfishly and handed his baton to another. With the next step, he lunged forward and struck Joseph across the face with a closed fist. Liam and Elvis balled their hands into fists, and ground their teeth in rage at gunpoint.
…
Carter put his muddy boots on the principal’s old desk, knocking off several keepsakes. One glass globe shattered. “Oops,” he said, yawning.
Bennett stared at him, his stomach turning in anxiety. It had been four days since Billy had been pulled from their unit. Since then, they had taken home no prizes, despite ten-hour days in the wild.
“It’s December 15th. Or the 14th. I can’t figure that out.” Taylor chewed on the end of a pen, scouring over a sheet of paper and a calendar.
Bennett surveyed the five men under his command. Three were from Agis’s group, and Bennett knew the others vaguely from the summer. All were lean, scraggly men on the brink of desperation. They had all heard the rumors.
“How many days do you think we have left?”
“Before what, you drama queen?” Carter asked, his face a gaunt mask littered with rogue hairs.
Taylor looked up, licking his lips feverishly like he always did. “Before we are punished.”
Carter guffawed. “No one is going to punish us.” He hoisted his rifle triumphantly.
Taylor licked his lips. “I heard Agis kicked Timmy’s crew out of the inner rooms, made them sleep in the science wing, with all those windows. It gets cold there, at night. They had their rations cut in half.”
“Sounds like some bullshit to me, T. Besides, Timmy’s crew hasn’t brought a deer back since the last week of November.”
Taylor’s nervous eyes flicked to Bennett, who tried not to look. “It’s been almost a week for us. I heard Timmy’s crew doesn’t get cots or mattresses till they meet their quota.”
“That’s a lie.” Bennett growled, moved out of sullen silence.
Carter spat against the wall. “Commander says it’s a lie. Hear that?”
Taylor and the others remained silent, reveling in the perceived spat that was about to come.
“What the Commander says, goes. He’s gotten this far, right. Haven’t you, Bennett?”
Bennett crossed his arms and heard the Velcro on his body armor crinkle. “Billy was the hunter. I fucking get it, Carter. But we gotta work with what we got.”
Carter shrugged ambivalently. Then he snatched a tiny model cannon and launched it against the wall, where it shattered. “I’m fucking done following you around in the freezing cold out there. We never find shit. And everyone else knows it.”
Bennett remained where he stood. He nodded, his lips white with tightness. He eyed the others intently. “Do you all feel this way?”
Someone else belched, and chirped up. “No one pays attention to us anymore. Cause we fucking suck, Bennett. And I’m starting to wonder why you’re even in command at all.”
The others nodded in approval, and stared at him in challenge.
“Give me another week,” Bennett pleaded.
Carter guffawed loudly and slammed his fist on the table. Bennett could smell him from across the room. Most of them had not washed their bodies since October.
“I
want to join another unit.”
“Me too.”
“As if Agis would allow it! Insubordination is sedition! We all know what happened to that kid, Joseph. Him, Jaxton, Liam, Adira, Elvis, Wilder, Duke…..they were all in on it. Trying to take down Agis. We saw how they punished him. If you abandon me now, I will charge you with the same crimes.”
Carter rose to his feet. “You wouldn’t dare.”
Bennett bit his lip, and drew a large vial from his pocket. “This was supposed to be a reward, if we took a deer down today.” He held up the white powder for all to see. “We have Agis’s blessing. He believes in us. This is a gift from him. Fuck it. Let’s use it now.”
Carter smacked the wooden table. “That’s what I’m talking about!”
Taylor licked his lips. “I’ve never done that.”
Carter clapped him and Bennett on the shoulders as the others drew closer to the desk. Their hair was ragged, their frames gaunt, and their teeth filthy. No one brushed their teeth anymore. “Now’s as good a time to try as any.”
Bennett suppressed a grin, thrilled he had turned things his way. “Carter, open the top drawer in the desk.”
Carter did as he was told, and drew forth a large bottle of whiskey from the desk. “Remind me to thank Agis.”
Bennett pushed the papers off the desk. “Everyone gets some. And we go out tomorrow. Same time.”
Carter sniffed his portion and roared. “Same time,” he said, shaking his head like a dog.
…
“So he didn’t let you touch him.”
Harley watched Agis rub his cleanly shaven chin. “He pushed me off immediately.”
Agis frowned and stood out of his chair in the Library’s annex. All signs of debauchery were carefully hidden, though Harley knew where each stash was located.
“Jaxton won’t crack that way then. He must actually love that girl, Adira.”
“He must. If there’s anyone who could tempt him, it would be me,” Harley said confidently with a shake of her auburn hair, as she sunk onto their shared cot.
Agis grinned. “Of that I have no doubt.”
Harley rose suddenly, her eyes glistening with intent. “What is your plan, anyways?”
“The same plan as always, my love.”
“Ew don’t say that,” Harley groaned as she returned to a state of lethargy. “How long will we stay here?”
Agis grunted as he took back a shot of cold vodka. “Summer, I suspect. Then we move west.”
“Some will want to stay,” She ventured.
“No, they won’t. Not with the hold I’ll have on them by then. I’m already running the show, baby. It just gets better from here. We’re going to pick the best. The most skilled people, the people with the best genes, people who can contribute, you know? Then we’re going to really start over. And we’ll take everything with us, of course.”
“You’re going to take everything from the Citadel? Now I know you’re crazy,” Harley cooed as she drank some of the cold liquid herself. She poured Agis one more.
He joined her on the bed. “We’ve done it before. In the last town, some little sleepy place in Northern New Jersey.”
“So you make some lesser people stay behind, and you take all their equipment, their supplies? Why wouldn’t they follow you?”
Agis shrugged, and dropped his voice so it was a gravelly whisper. “I send a team back, at night.” He snapped his fingers. “Poof.”
Harley stared at him, intrigued. “You better not leave me behind,” she said, knowing he wouldn’t.
He kissed her sloppily. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Harley pulled back. “Some of the units are running out of incentives. They’re complaining about the cold, about going out every day. We lost another kid yesterday to an infected. They’re still out there.”
Agis’s brow furrowed. “They’ve gone through the supplies I have them fast. I’ll have to educate them, when I deliver more.”
“We could start them on the heroin. That would give them an incentive,” she cooed.
“No. No. Heroin is useless. Its too powerful, they’d become useless to me. We’ll stick with the cocaine, the painkillers, I think I still have some ecstasy left.”
“What about when you run out? How many stations did you have to raid to get all this stuff anyways?”
Agis drew a lazy finger to his lips. “Shh. I have other things to keep them in the field, working for us.”
“Oh?”
“I’ve had some interviews, of sort, with some of the girls.” He said with a twinkle in his eyes.
Harley threw her head back in delight. “And I wasn’t invited?! Shame on you.”
“They’ll work for me. I’ll send them in groups to the units that bring back the most food. That will keep these sex-starved men in the cold.”
Harley regarded him lustily. “You better do that soon. People know how badly Joseph was beaten by your men. I don’t think everyone believes the story you gave.”
“They will forget,” Agis said with a sweep of his hand.
“Why did you have me try to sleep with Jaxton?”
Agis drew up. “Are you angry at me?”
She nodded no immediately.
“I said I wanted to bring the best with me. Something tells me he would be a good man to have by my side.”
“Am I not enough?” Harley asked.
Agis grinned to hide his annoyance; he thought that man could grow to be quite the obstacle if he chose to do so.
…
Annabelle crouched over the cot with heavily wrinkled eyes. “I’ll come back tomorrow again. And the next day. And the next.”
Joseph attempted to rise on one elbow, but the doctor held him down. “Rest.” The injured man collapsed back onto his pillow, his face a mangled mess of swollen tissue and discolored flesh.
Jaxton kept stride with her as she walked out. “You don’t believe this madness, do you? Does Joseph seem like the type of person to partake in a plot to take down Agis? We wanted decisions to be made as a whole, not just by Agis’s whim.”
Annabelle stopped, and drew a deep breath. “No. But it doesn’t matter. That’s what he was charged with. And that’s why he was punished.”
Jaxton grabbed her arm in full sight of the others in the classroom. “Of course it does. Agis’s men and women get the warmest classrooms. They get the best cots. They get the best guns when we go hunting. They get more food at meals.”
Annabelle pushed his arm off, but tenderly. “Jaxton. Of course they do. That’s how this works. You have more important things to keep an eye on.” Jaxton nodded as she turned. “Wait, why did you join Agis, in the first place?”
Annabelle drew away from him. “Because I was foolish, Jax. I’ll see you later.”
Jaxton turned back to his friends, deep in thought.
“I don’t like this Jax, I don’t like this one bit,” Wilder said, his eyes like daggers. “Did you know certain people don’t get access to the medicine, to the vitamins? People who he thinks are weak, or without a useful skill. I’ve spoken to many of them.”
Elvis leaned in, stony. “I’m with you all, no matter what you decide.”
Liam looked over his shoulder to his broken friend in the cot. “I hate that man. We need to do something. If it’s war, I’ll be at the front.”
Wilder and Duke nodded fiercely, thrilled even Liam was feeling aggressive. What a day indeed.
Jaxton looked to Adira, who regarded him with melancholy eyes. Then he spoke. “We bide our time, friends. We bide our time and wait for the right moment to strike.”
The others whooped their approval, even over the feeble protests of the wounded man.
Chapter Sixteen
Bennett rose in the darkness, stepping carefully over the sleeping bodies of half-naked men and women. He squinted in the pale light of the coming dawn, which spilled through a single window.
They had taken down a deer, a skinny doe, but a deer. Bennett looked
at the naked women sleeping among them. Agis had rewarded them well. He stepped to the table, and snorted another line of white powder. They had used it all. More would have to be procured upon further success. He felt terrible. His body revolted against the alcohol and drugs he had poured into it the night before. He would want more tonight, he was certain. He would see Agis. Was their leader still awake?
When Bennett rapped on the door to the annex, he was beckoned by a tired voice. Agis sat in front of a hand-held radio, shadows of torchlight dancing around the tiny room. He spoke without taking his gaze off the radio. “Have a seat, Bennett.”
Bennett did as he was told, though he was shirtless. And it was cold. Harley was asleep, naked, in a tangle of sheets on the cot behind them. His eyes lingered over her perfect physicality.
“We have a big decision, before us,” he said slowly, rubbing his eyes. “I knew I could count on you, Bennett. Your team brought in a deer today, I hear. Very good.”
“We did, sir. We sure did. It couldn’t have come sooner. Though, I should add-“
“Yes?”
“The men will want more, more drugs tomorrow, I am certain. We are out.”
Agis looked to him with dark eyes. “Bennett, you must ration it. That is your responsibility. Regard it as a reward or incentive, to be handed out at the right moments.” Bennett felt he was being scolded. “I will give you more next week. Till then, the women will come every other night.”
“Yes, sir.”
Agis gazed at the radio again. “There is another group, heading towards us.”
Bennett sat up in his chair. “What? Who? How far?” He bit his lip to wait.
“Two days, I estimate. I made the mistake, of telling them where we were, before figuring out who they were,” Agis croaked. He didn’t look himself.
“Sir?”
“There are about fifty of them. Most are regular military. Some civilians.”
“Military,” Bennett repeated the word. What did this mean? “Are they…threatening us? I don’t understand.”