Blood Runners: Box Set

by George S. Mahaffey Jr.

  It was said that those operating the train offered aid and encouragement to anyone who chose to take a stand for right and wrong.

  Farrow never found that train, but soon he caught wind of a man named Longman and eventually crawled into New Chicago and found that all that was said of him was true. Longman appeared, at least at first, like a resurrected Alexander ready to lead his newly formed Macedon out of the shadows. But even as he was finding his place in New Chicago, the pain never left. The loss of his wife and daughter. A deep, gnawing grief, although it paled physically to the pain he was presently feeling. He was drowning, being tortured, water sluicing across his face and mouth. To make matters worse, Longman’s men had taken two fingers from him.

  “Pull ‘im back,” Lout shouted as Farrow came fully to, shaking off his memories. “Pull the big bastard back!”

  Cozzard and a brace of Longman’s punks yanked Farrow back by his hair and pulled the shroud from his face that they were using to waterboard him with.

  As a result of Marisol’s and Elias’s escape, Farrow had been taken to a room in Longman’s headquarters, the Codex Building, for questioning. The room was denoted “101,” a sly reference to an important book that was long since forgotten. Room 101 was the space used by the dictator for questioning those suspected of treason. Longman’s men believed Farrow had played a role in Elias’s and Marisol’s flight, and they were doing their damndest to break him.

  He rocked his body, but it didn’t move. He was manacled by belts bound tightly around his waist, chest, and ankles.

  Nearing his pain threshold, he gasped and upchucked a font of liquid bile as they undid his blindfold.

  He surveyed his hands. Those fingers. Raggedly severed. Neither sewn nor dressed, so blood rivered every now and again, sheeting Lout’s chin as he backhanded Farrow who slumped, biting back his own blood and shreds of flesh.

  “You know what your problem is?” Cozzard asked.

  Farrow spit out some blood. “No, but I’d love for you to tell me.”

  “You got one foot too many in the old world. You think you’re a hardass. Just tell us where they are and what they’re doing, and it’ll all be over, brother,” Cozzard whispered for the fifth time. But of course Farrow had no earthly idea where Marisol was going, only that she was headed to someplace hopefully beyond the reach of Longman and his bruisers and all the other petty tyrants who rose up when the world went to sleep.

  Farrow gestured for Cozzard to lean in close. “Oh, gotcha, so you want to know where she’s going?”

  “I been asking you for twenty friggin’ minutes!”

  “Took a while for it to sink in.”

  “Like I said, asshole. We’ll go easier on you if you tell us,” said Cozzard.

  “If anyone finds out that I told you—”

  Cozzard grinned. “You can whisper it to me if you like.”

  “Wonderful. That would make me feel so much better,” Farrow said, willing some emotion into his battered face.

  Cozzard leaned down to within an inch of Farrow. Jesus, what an idiot, Farrow thought. He paused and, then, without any hint or inkling of premeditation, snapped out with his teeth. He found flesh and bit hard.

  Farrow pulled back to look up and see that Cozzard was now missing the tip of his nose.

  “Hey! Guess what! You taste like shit, Cozzard!” Farrow thundered.

  He spat the tip of Cozzard’s nose to the ground and Cozzard howled like a branded beast. Lout and the other brutes spun and stared with nerve-brutalized shock, and then Lout stepped forward, cudgel raised.

  “We’re gonna piss on your carcass once we cross you over,” Lout said.

  Farrow snarled. “Come get some, bitch.”

  Farrow looked up and the cudgel came down. A crack sounded and darkness embraced him warmly.

  39

  Elias reckoned that Liza had finished doing what she could for Marisol. The flow of blood from her wound was staunched. Liza had remarked that while serious, the wound was a “through-and-through,” which meant that the bullet had only pierced the flesh. Marisol lay across an old door that had been found in the remnants of a nearby hunter’s shed. Elias watched her lie there, shivering, her flesh puckered and bluish in tone.

  “She gonna be okay?”

  Liza looked over at him, her face dark with worry.

  “Did what I could. I stabilized her. She’s young so that’s good and the wound wasn’t very deep. Thank God it missed her vitals.”

  Elias nodded as Liza moved in close to him.

  “Are you from inside that wall?”

  Elias tipped his head. “Yep. What about you? I haven’t seen you guys in New Chicago before.”

  Liza caught a look from Jessup and shook her head.

  “No, we’re not from there.”

  “So why are you here then?” Elias asked. “I mean, what were you guys doing out there in the grasslands?”

  “Scavenging supplies mostly,” she offered.

  Jessup looked over, “And we’re done. We got what we came for. We’re ready to push off.”

  “To where?” asked Elias.

  “None of your business,” Jessup responded.

  Liza cast Jessup an evil eye, then turned back to Elias as the others encircled him, Liza gesturing at Marisol.

  “Is she blood … kin to you?”

  Elias shook his head, “She’s an Ape, a hunter, and I’m … I was … a Runner.”

  Looks were exchanged amongst the others.

  “I don’t know what any of that means,” Liza replied, summoning a smile.

  “Okay, so it’s like this,” Elias said. “On the other side of the wall we’ve all got jobs, y’know? Like, mine was to run and hers was to hunt me.”

  Liza stared quizzically at Elias. She looked to Jessup who glowered.

  “Look, kid, if you’re making this shit up….” the big man said.

  “Would anything you’ve seen make you think that I was?”

  Jessup fumed, while Liza smiled again. She had a warm smile, a genuine one, and Elias instantly liked her.

  “So … I’m Liza by the way,” she said.

  “Elias.” He pointed at Marisol, “Like I said, her go-by’s Marisol.”

  Liza pointed to the bullet-faced man. “That’s Terry. Over there, Ava and Riley.” She pointed to the two girls with sad eyes and added, “they’re sisters.”

  Elias looked around at the rest, waiting.

  “Jon,” Liza said after a moment, alluding to the Hispanic who nodded, “Bennie,” she said of the black man who gave a thumbs up, “and that’s Blake and Harry” she said in reference to the off the assembly-line whites, including the one who looked like he was on death’s doorstep.

  “Where are you from?” Elias asked.

  Liza pointed out toward the Great Lake that was shimmering like a giant puddle of lead under the moonlight.

  “We’ve got a boat out there.”

  “We’re part of a bigger settlement,” Ava said, catching a nasty look from Jessup. Elias watched her recoil and surmised that she’d said too much.

  “We really should get your friend to the boat," Liza continued as the others gathered their gear. "We’ve got better supplies, water, food. We can keep her safe there.”

  For a moment he considered running away, but then, out of the corner of his eye, Elias saw branches and blades of grass waver. His gaze locked in, but he couldn’t see anything. Something or some things had definitely been there, though.

  A horrific screech echoed out in the grasslands, the war cry of the Thresher. Elias spun and helped Jon and Bennie hoist the door with Marisol on it and carry it up and over a skein of boxcar tracks and beyond a line of blacktop that was hemmed by telephone poles poking out of the ground like infected teeth.

  Elias squinted at dark forms dangling from the poles, then pulled back with a gag reflex.

  Flesh-ragged corpses.

  Whether they were Thresher or Longman’s victims, Elias couldn’t tell.


  As the group moved forward, Elias spotted something on the ground. Marisol’s backpack. One of the others had discarded it. It was lying partially open and something, some small doll had fallen from it. He grabbed the doll and stuffed it back into the backpack, which he threw over a shoulder, following the others past the poles and down an embankment that led to an inlet that looped out into the lake.

  Elias and the others snuck under a lattice of tangled vine that hung like webbing from trees and ducked under stands of angry bramble until they saw it. A long skiff hitched to a sapling, partially concealed by a thicket of scrub and sticker bushes.

  Elias watched the others board the skiff, carrying Marisol aloft like a religious sacrifice. He hazarded a glance over his shoulder and saw movement out in the grasslands once again. Clawed hands emerged from the foliage and Elias saw a pair of white eyes.

  The eyes stared hard at him, unblinking.

  The face of the Thesher was visible for a moment, and the monster seemed to be smiling at Elias. Elias blinked, but when he looked back, the beast had vanished.

  He stumbled back and helped push the skiff out into the ice cold water and then, sensing no other choice, he climbed aboard.

  The skiff was hooked to a whisper-quiet electric motor and made good time across the inlet, Elias at the stern, watching the water lap by. He could see a much larger sailboat anchored out ahead, less than a quarter mile away. Movement overhead caught his attention. He peered up to see one of Longman’s drones as it flew a sortie high over the boat before returning back toward New Chicago.

  “What the hell was that?” Jessup said, pointing at the drone.

  “A flying machine.”

  “I could see that,” said Jessup.

  “What I meant was … it was Longman’s eyes.”

  “Okay … so what’s a Longman?” Jessup asked.

  Elias considered this for a long beat. “He built the city on the other side of the wall and runs it all. He’s the master. He’s the one,” and here he pointed at Marisol, “who pretty much did that to her.”

  40

  “And I will make this city desolate,” the prophet of old had said, or at least that's how Longman recalled it.

  He couldn’t remember if Jeremiah, the man from the Holy Book, was a prophet or just a minor player, but he knew he’d mouthed those words on behalf of the Almighty thousands of years ago. They were entirely apropos now.

  He gazed longingly at a grimed-up monitor that streamed footage shot from his drone. The footage showed a group of shadowy figures exiting the mainland for a vessel that bobbed in the inky black water. Who the other figures were he couldn’t tell, but the most troubling thing was that, for a split second, he’d made out the face of the boy amongst them, the Runner, the one who’d escaped with the girl. Elias!

  He now had direct evidence that the lands on the other side of the wall were being used for something. But what? A staging area? A rallying point for the damned and disaffected who would soon be battering down the wall and coming to do great violence to him and those that served him? He wouldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t.

  He already had a plan in the works. Moses O’Shea was preparing to guide an expedition out to find the location, the area that blinked red on his digital map. His men, after combing through the hiding place where Marisol and Elias had been, found the secret stash left by the dead boy, Caleb Lavey.

  The more he reviewed the material his men had found, the more Longman grew concerned about the extent of the evidence that Caleb had complied. By the look of things, the dead boy had been cataloguing the misdeeds committed by him and his men for more than a year.

  Longman turned from the monitor and stared at a small digital recorder that showed footage shot by Caleb who apparently had tracked his men on various missions beyond the wall. The little bastard, Longman thought. He’d probably used his family’s Guild connections to enter Zones usually off limits to the general population. In short, he’d utilized his family’s status to become a spy.

  Longman viewed shots of his own men, taken from a distance, executing New Chicago dissidents en masse, machine-gunning them and tossing their bodies down into a great pit that lay beyond the grasslands in the Q-Zone.

  He also saw images of the men ransacking military and government facilities, searching for what Longman called “The Grail,” a small metal clanker box that would permit him to bring judgment down on all who plotted against him.

  Enraged, Longman hurled the digital recorder against a wall, gritting his teeth, pondering how it had all happened. How had a posse of his handpicked men failed to notice Caleb, a goddamn child, following them?! Heads would roll, of that he was certain, but now was not the time.

  A knock at his door caused Longman to trigger an opening device. The door swung inwards to reveal Cozzard with a thick bandage covering his nose. The wounded man tipped his head and strode forward, then deposited two items on the table before him.

  Portions of Farrow’s fingers.

  Longman picked the crusted curlies up and rolled them around in the palm of his hand. The digits were large and calloused, and the bisected nerve-endings caused them to half-flutter like a bird with clipped wings.

  “He didn’t say nothin’, boss,” said Cozzard.

  “He obviously said something,” Longman replied, gesturing to Cozzard’s bloody nose and his clothing, which was stained a dark red.

  “The bastard bit me.”

  “Yes, you took from him and he took from you. The question is, what information did you gather?”

  “Like I said. He didn’t say shit.”

  “How hard did you try to reach him?”

  Cozzard pointed at the fingers, “We worked him over good. Only one I ever done that didn’t say nothin’. Not a goddamn thing. Course,” he continued, “we could take more of ‘im. I could cut off his leg or his arm or something else.”

  Longman shook his head. “A man like that without a hand or a leg is like a dog without a bark.”

  “Since when did that ever stop us?”

  Longman acknowledge the truth of this with a nod. Then he eased his head back and closed his eyes. His mind buzzed with disordered thoughts and a searing pain gripped the corners of his eyes. He winced and rubbed his temples.

  “Do you ever wonder how it is that we came to find ourselves citizens of New Chicago?” Longman asked.

  Cozzard’s brow furrowed.

  “Sir … I don’t really understand what you—”

  “Have you ever asked yourself what binds us together, Cozzard?”

  Cozzard pointed at Longman.

  “You? You’re the thing that keeps us all together, right?”

  Longman chuckled.

  “No, not me,” Longman said softly. “If you really think about it, what keeps us together are tales.”

  “You mean like … fairy tales?”

  “More like shared stories. We believe in a collective vision not necessarily because it’s true, but because believing in it allows us to work together toward a common purpose. The building of the wall, for instance, came about because we believed it would make us safer and freer.”

  Cozzard scratched his head. Longman could tell that he had no earthly idea what he was talking about, that he didn’t understand his larger point (which had gone largely unrecognized by his subjects), that the wall had actually resulted in there being less freedom and less safety.

  “To answer your question, Cozzard, we can’t take Farrow’s legs because what we have here, a society premised on these stories cannot be sustained in the long run purely by violence alone.”

  “I’m surprised to hear you say that, sir.”

  “I’m equally surprised to say it. As for our friend Farrow, a man who was once of some station in our city, we need to restrain ourselves. We need to focus not on the enemy within, but on the enemy without.”

  Longman turned the monitor around. Cozzard squinted at the image of the boat, his feeble mind processing what he cou
ld see.

  “That, dear Cozzard, is what we shall focus on next,” said Longman.

  “That’s a boat, sir.”

  “Your powers of observation are extraordinary.”

  Cozzard didn’t catch Longman’s sarcasm. “Whaddawe want with a boat, sir?”

  “We want,” Longman said, grinning toothsomely, “those that are on it.”

  41

  Over the next ten hours Elias rested in a room on the boat next to Marisol. He was drained from the running and the killing and the fear of Longman and his men, a feeling of dread that drove through him like a downpour. He was utterly spent, more exhausted than anyone his age should ever be.

  When he was done sleeping, however, he checked on Marisol (who appeared neither better nor worse than before). Next he repaired to the deck and dangled his feet off the edge of the boat, watching the two generic whites, Harry and Blake, as they cast weighted nets and lines out into the water for fish.

  Harry and Blake invited him to fish and upon learning that he had never cast before with nets, they showed him how. Reluctant at first, he spent the better part of four hours learning the art of it, how to balance the feet, how to measure throws, how to snug the net closed at just the right moment.

  Harry, in particular, took a shine to Elias, who looked him in the eye and listened well and seemed to actually give a damn about what he had to say.

  “You used to be an athlete, kid?” Harry asked.

  Elias scrunched up his nose, but didn’t respond.

  “I ask only because I saw how you moved back there. Pretty damn light on your feet.”

  “I was a Runner,” Elias said.

  “I used to run myself a bit back in the day,” Harry responded. “My old man was the gym teacher in our school on the base and used to make us run a quarter mile for warmups before class, rain or shine.”