Blood Runners: Box Set

by George S. Mahaffey Jr.

  Cozzard and Lout suddenly spun in a flourish and pointed as Longman looked sideways to see a teen boy watching everything from the shell of a rusted car. The teen held what looked like a camera of some kind and ducked low and out of sight as Longman whistled and gestured.

  Cozzard and Lout drew handcrafted pistols with oversized silencers from their dusters and took off. They’d have to act quickly to determine whether the teen was from a family that mattered. Either way, they’d have to put the boy down; he’d seen (and probably heard) far too much.

  What the boy saw was a threat to Longman, and anything that might negatively impact on his rule did not have a long shelf life. Even if they did have to drop the boy, Longman would simply “guide” the resulting investigation and pay a bribe for Absolution and then all would be made right.

  The teen boy clambered around the side of a building, chest heaving, as he hooked his leg and slid down an embankment while the first bullets kicked up the sandy soil all around him. He dove to his right and managed to come up on the balls of his feet in a full sprint, making for a tin shack, which he catapulted through.

  “Take care of it,” Longman commanded.

  Cozzard led the way, excited about getting some real action, Lout beside him as they fired at the boy and blasted down the embankment, peppering the tin shack with rounds, reloading, then emptying their silenced pistols out again.

  At the base, they glanced around, checking for him, and just saw the shack ahead.

  Cozzard licked his lips, “I fucking hope to God I can plug that young punk in the head.”

  “Not if I get him first,” Lout said with a wicked grin.

  They split, taking either end of the shack, pulling their weapons around.

  He’d done time in the iron house in the days before and, unlike most, Cozzard had learned to thrive in the new chaos. Free from the confines of societal mores and the stickiness of the law, he was able to largely do as he pleased.

  He took great pleasure in the kills and specialized in headshots. It was a vascular area, the head; the tissue there engorged from the chase, ready to release great fonts of red as soon as he fired the first slug. Even though the area from the neck up was his primary target, he was mindful of avoiding contact with his targets’ eyes.

  The eyes troubled him, and he agreed with whomever it was that once said therein lies hidden the last shreds of a victim’s humanity. He held up a handful of brown powder and hoovered it, while thinking that, when he shot down the boy, he’d make sure to focus his gaze on the top of his head and fire low and then he’d do his bastardized version of counting coup over the corpse.

  Cozzard swallowed hard, then kicked open a door to reveal… nothing.

  The teen was gone. Cozzard toed at the dirt and checked the slide on his pistol, not reacting in the slightest as Lout stepped in.

  “No sign of him out that way?” Cozzard asked. .

  Lout shook his head, then froze, eyes on the floor. “Payday, baby.”

  Cozzard spun to see what he was looking at, and then grinned. There was a blood-trail wending across the ground leading under a bent section of wall.

  The boy, the witness, might have escaped, but he was wounded.

  That afternoon, Marisol and the Apes climbed back into their tactical vehicle and rumbled down into the interior of New Chicago to fulfill their other roles as tax collector and enforcers of Longman’s protection racket. The system was quite simple: if you were able bodied, you paid a tax to Longman, either in the form of goods or services. If you didn’t have either, well, that was a problem … a problem that had to be discussed with the Apes.

  The rear of the tac vehicle lowered and Marisol squinted at the sun as it daggered through the clouds. This reminded her of how the new times were so much worse than the days before. In the years before the Unraveling, Marisol generally only feared the darkness, if at all. But now, even daylight brought with it new horrors.

  The Apes hoisted their weapons and struck off down a street that was teeming with commerce, both lawful and illicit. There were patriotic slogans plastered on walls and images of a thoughtful Longman hanging from streetlamps, but if you looked close enough, there was anti-government graffiti. Walls and even the street were tagged with the word “Resist,” along with other symbols that she was unfamiliar with.

  The Apes continued on into the city and under the battery of turbines and solar panels that provided ample amounts of electricity on most days.

  Marisol saw men hawking food and others trading garments, including a rotund man named Lennox that Marisol had heard was a chieftain of the Mudders and somebody who was under surveillance for possibly trying to foment a rebellion. Lennox whispered something to the men around him and then slipped down a stairwell. Looking up, Marisol noticed two young boys running past, handing out what passed for newspapers.

  She watched a boy hand a newspaper to Farrow. It was little more than a bundle of rags which contained a few stories crudely printed in ink along with some discolored photos.

  “What’s the good word?” she asked.

  Farrow scanned the paper, the ink discoloring his fingers.

  “Unemployment dropped to seventy percent—”

  “That’s it?”

  He smiled and continued reading.

  “—and an outer settlement that was threatening New Chicago has been taken care of,” he said. “Apparently some of Longman’s men ambushed a pack of cannibals and drove them off.”

  “That’s good,” she said, nodding. “Thank God.”

  He shot a look at her.

  “How do you know any of what I just said is true?” he asked.

  “Because it says so,” she replied, pointing at the paper.

  “If it’s in writing it’s true?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” she said. “Isn’t that the way it’s always been?”

  “There’s a reason these things are printed and passed out, Marisol.”

  “Right, because it’s the news.”

  He smiled and looked around and for an instant they were sufficiently alone that neither worried that someone might overhear their conversation.

  “I read a book a long time ago, kid,” Farrow said.

  “You? Reading?”

  “Stifle it,” Farrow replied playfully. “Anyway, the quick and dirty is that the guy who wrote it, the author, thought that the only thing that keeps people together and compliant is belief in shared stories that are often not true. Myths.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “Only thing that matters is whether the man who pulls the levers around here does. And by all accounts, Longman is all in on creating stories that we can all rally around, regardless of whether they’re grounded in reality.”

  “So what’s the takeaway?” she asked after a few seconds of introspection.

  “That just because you see something writing don’t mean it’s true. There are no more facts and very little truth. Always question what the man tells you,” he replied, tearing the paper up and casting it aside. “Always.”

  Ten minutes later, the Apes crossed a main road and wound through a cluster of what were once tenements. The lower classes of New Chicago lived here, mostly younger adults and families. Drug use was rampant and Marisol had heard this was by design. That since most of the populace in the tenements were younger, and therefore the most able to stage some kind of revolt, Longman had to keep them stupefied. Marisol had no firm proof that this was true, but as she moved between the buildings she saw evidence that almost every male between the ages of twenty and thirty seemed to be openly whacked out on the White.

  “Ain’t no way this shit happens ‘less the gentleman in charge knows about it,” Farrow said under his breath, seeming to read Marisol’s mind.

  Harrigan motioned at Marisol and Farrow, holding up a piece of paper. Then he pointed to one of the buildings.

  “We got us a warrant to search a premises,” Harrigan said.

  “What are the grounds for it
?” Farrow asked.

  “Distribution of narcotics.”

  “Since when is that a crime?” Marisol asked.

  “Since they ain’t paid their tribute,” Harrigan answered, grinning.

  The Apes moved briskly between the tenements and down into the basement of a red-brick building whose façade was so speckled with birdshit that it appeared to be crying tears.

  They advanced on a green metal door at the end of a long corridor, where Harrigan knocked loudly as Marisol and Farrow caught up. Nobody responded and so Harrigan knocked again.

  “Open the damn door!” he shouted.

  Still no response, though voices on the other side of the door could be heard.

  Harrigan looked back and nodded.

  Sikes tossed him a twenty-pound sledgehammer that he hefted up and swung, using it to batter the door down.

  In seconds, the Apes were through the door.

  A gunshot echoed and bedlam ensued. Farrow handed Marisol a black baton as they waded through the debris on the other side of the green door, boxes overflowing with canned food, card tables stacked with drug paraphernalia, and an old TV hooked to a movie player, a cartoon on a death loop, watched by some drug-addled teens, a girl and a boy, who were grinning and drooling.

  At the back of the space were two bedrooms out of which emerged an older man and a woman dressed in ratty clothing. Marisol watched Harrigan read the warrant to himself.

  Harrigan looked up from the warrant and squinted at them. “You Rawlings?”

  The older man nodded.

  “Where’s the man’s cut?” Harrigan asked.

  Rawlings hitched up his pants, looked around. “Take whatever you want.”

  “We will,” Harrigan replied with a sneer. “But first, we want the cut.”

  “I ain’t got it yet,” Rawlings said. “Business is slow.”

  Harrigan looked to the other Apes. Sikes laughed.

  “Maybe you haven’t been applying yourself, Mister Rawlings, sir,” said Sikes.

  Sikes kicked over a card table and Rawlings made a motion to protest, but it didn’t stop Harrigan from swatting him across the jaw with his baton. Rawlings went down hard and Harrigan set upon him. When the older woman moved to intervene, Sikes bashed her over the head with his baton.

  “Let the civvies be!” Farrow shouted.

  Harrigan flicked a quick look back.

  “Fuck off!” he answered.

  “We don’t beat women,” Farrow said.

  “What?! Are you new here, Farrow?” Sikes asked, looking over with a sneer.

  With something that resembled pleasure, the other Apes went to work on the man and woman, beating them into oblivion. All of the Apes joined in, aside from Farrow and Marisol.

  Farrow stood there watching, his face as hard as granite.

  Marisol’s blood boiled.

  She saw the batons shiny with blood, heard the cries of the man and woman subside into shudders. The first note of protest came from her lips.

  She wasn’t the only one surprised as she said, “Stop it!”

  The batons paused in mid-air.

  Harrigan glanced over, a look of bafflement on his face. He couldn’t tell who’d spoken the words. He must’ve thought it was the younger man and woman, still watching the goddamn cartoon, because he made a move toward them—

  “STOP!” Marisol cried.

  Harrigan did stop, and for an indeterminate period of time he simply stared at Marisol. Then his brows converged.

  He glared at her as he wiped his red-stained hands across his tactical vest. “What the fuck did you just say, girl?”

  “I said stop it.”

  Harrigan guffawed and the other Apes shot glances toward Marisol. Harrigan closed the distance between him and Marisol in eight paces. Almost there, his eyes hopped to Farrow.

  “I know she’s the tracker and all, Farrow, but now your girl thinks she’s the One-Zero? Our fucking boss?”

  Farrow hesitated. He could feel the energy radiating from the other men. The kind of electricity that meant that anything was possible. He’d felt the same thing years earlier, back when he was a beat cop on the mean streets of Baltimore. Back during those first hectic days when the power went out. The government had been slowed by hyperpartisanship, so no disaster management officials were in place when the sky fell. No officials meant no response which localities strictly on their own. Farrow remembered how he could somehow sense the vibe on the street, the unrest amongst the civilians, the sensation that everything was about to come apart. He felt the same thing now, realizing he needed to cool the temperature in the room before the powder keg exploded. He swallowed slowly and held up his hand in a gesture of goodwill.

  “It was a mistake, Harrigan,” Farrow said, white-knuckling his baton. “She spoke out of turn, that’s all.”

  “You bet your ass she did,” Harrigan replied, looking from Farrow to Marisol. “Best keep her in line ‘fore I’m forced to put her down.”

  Marisol didn’t answer. She also didn’t break gaze with Harrigan, who was unnerved by the way in which she never seemed to blink. Harrigan turned to the other Apes.

  “Okay, boys. Grab our share and let’s go,” Harrigan shouted.

  The ride back to base was uneventful, with Marisol sitting in the back of the tac vehicle, rubbing her fingers together. The day had been filled with brutality and senselessness, just as almost every other day in New Chicago was, but from the horror of the beating in the apartment had come a glimmer of hope. She could speak out amongst her fellow hunters, she could, to a certain extent, resist, without the fear of reprisal. It was the first time she’d ever questioned the actions of the older men. It was the beginning of something, but what she didn’t yet know.

  5

  Aside from his interaction with his comrade Erik, Elias kept to himself in the Pits for the first few months. There was no other way, what with all the training, resting, and rhetorical conditioning.

  His days were evenly divided as he waited for his first run: half spent in a crude cube with a concrete floor, stacked with weights and hand-crafted exercise devices, the other half spent running or listening to speeches from past Runners who’d been through Absolution and lived to tell about it. While rare, there were a good number of former Runners who’d survived so many sessions of Absolution that they’d been given retirement by Longman himself, along with jobs as trainers under Moses or with the Guilds.

  Elias finished his time in the weights room, achieving some measure of bulk in the last few weeks, bench-pressing much more than he weighed. Two hundred and twenty-five pounds. “Two wheels,” his trainer had called it. He did this for reps and then “super-setted” with an exercise that involved pulling a sixty-five-pound dumbbell high over his chest.

  Next, he worked his legs, doing sets of barbell squats, hack squats, stiff-legged deadlifts, and all sorts of extensions, weighted and unweighted.

  When he was finished, he wiped the sweat from his brow and flicked it away, and asked for permission to run outside.

  The late-summer air was not yet heavy as he exited the room and smacked his legs to warm the blood and sustain the pump, and then he was off, moving slowly at first, then jogging. Elias enjoyed the late days the most, the hours just before twilight when the light went golden and he was given license to roam outside the Pits.

  By directive, he was permitted only to run on preordained paths, curved trails of asphalt and hardened dirt that paralleled the river or the man-made ridgeline that fell below sections of the wall.

  He was so good, so fast, that the trainers often permitted him to run on his own, and it was in this time that he deviated from his orders and took shortcuts and switchbacks that led to the edge of downtown New Chicago.

  He was forever curious, though he’d never actually visited the belly of the city before.

  Elias ran out away from the Pits and along the river, and then he cut past row houses and backyards and small businesses and former houses of worship
.

  He stopped and stared at the ragged wall that lined the horizon, keeping New Chicago in the middle between it on one side and the Great Lakes on the other.

  If this was his lot in life, he meant to make the best of it. But that didn’t stop him from pausing from time to time and wondering what else might be out there for him. If he survived enough of these runs, would he find out?

  Carrying on, he crested a hill and then stopped again at a series of giant wooden poles that stood at the edge of a roundabout, like sentries. Posted to the wood were hundreds of pieces of plastic-sheathed paper. Survivor logs, yellowing lists of names of those who’d made it through the Unraveling. He scanned these often, looking for a sign. Searching for a sibling’s name, even though he suspected none of them had made it.

  He was barely at the age of memory, living in the outer suburbs in a nice house with a mother, father, and two brothers when the sky had exploded. He was amazed at how quickly everything had changed. How the lights had flickered off, and the stores, once lively and full of good, had cleared out and closed their doors. How friends quickly became enemies. There was a part of him, fed by rumors and the like, that had always wondered whether the Unraveling wasn’t an orchestrated event. That somebody, that some power beyond his comprehension and with abilities far exceeding those of the Russians and the Chinese, had manipulated the whole thing. Was that too farfetched to believe?

  Whatever the reason, Elias’s father hadn’t panicked when others had. His old man had a plan. The family would wait out the initial chaos and then make a run for a small hovel (his father’s “bug-out” shelter, as he called it) that he kept hidden in a section of woods in the country. It was nice, he said. At the edge of a trout stream that ran clear and cold and deep.

  They didn’t have to wait long. The food ran out after a few weeks, the water a few days after that. When a group of neighbors tried to force their way inside, his father picked up a gun and did what he had to do. It was time to go.