Blood Runners: Box Set

by George S. Mahaffey Jr.

  The things, the Thresher, moved as one through catacombs that reeked of earth and still water. Tunnels carved into the soft ground beneath the over-world, earthen shoots that hummed with the musky, pungent odor of warm flesh. Their senses engorged by the smell and the vibrations from the actions of the things above, Thresher packs drove forward like early-morning commuters from hell fanning out of subway drops and scampering up toward a world of half-light.

  They were compelled to move by the madness hardwired in their brains, the result of exposure to mutagens, enormous amounts of solar and UV radiation that erased their gray matter and altered their DNA when the sky fell. A few of them had fleeting, excruciating memories of being alive, but those thoughts were quickly overwhelmed by the more primitive desire to hunt.

  They heeded the call of their bellies and the few inches between what had once been ears, a desire that imbued in them a nearly unquenchable lust to rise and kill and feed on whatever it was that scampered above. They had lived below ground long enough that they could feel the earth warming or cooling and would generally rise, like cicadas, when the temperature hit 64 degrees.

  Today though, was different. The over-world was alive with movement and harsh sounds, and one of them, a large creature as bald as a baby, wiped a shimmer of drool from a lazy lip and grunted and gestured up. The others raised their heads and then guttural murmurs echoed off the walls as they followed their noses up in the direction of Moses and the others.

  52

  Jessup watched Elias help lug weapons and gear and drop them onto the skiff that was being readied as transport back to the mainland. He and Bennie were busy pulling out long metal piping welded to base-plates that were bolted to the side of metal cylinders with glass gauges and turn handles. It was the kind of contraption Jessup had seen being used to fill up balloons at a county fair in the old times.

  Jessup watched Jon reach over the side of the boat and haul up a metal cage fixed to a length of sodden rope that was filled with a collection of dead fish. He opened the cage and pulled the fish out and, using a long fillet knife, hacked at the creatures to expose their runny entrails.

  He slid the dissected fish into a sack which he handed to Bennie who dropped it in the skiff.

  Jessup turned toward Liza who he’d been ignoring for several seconds as she lectured him on the lunacy of allowing Marisol to venture out, given her condition.

  “The kid and the girl aren’t mine, Liza,” he finally said. “What do you want me to do? Tie ‘em up?”

  “That’s not a bad idea.”

  He glanced at Elias and Marisol. “I don’t like the idea of them tagging along any more than you, but it’s not like before. Those two aren’t ordinary or average.”

  “Nothing is anymore, is it?”

  He smiled at this.

  “Maybe in some weird way, this was all meant to be.”

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “I guess what I mean is, I remember days when I wouldn’t even have to leave the air conditioning for more than a few seconds. Just roll out of bed, get in the car, park in the garage, sit on my ass for eight hours, and never break a sweat.”

  “And that was bad how?” she asked.

  “Maybe it wasn’t bad. Maybe it was just … too damned easy. Maybe this whole thing’s the universe’s way of setting things right, keeping us honest, making us work for our pay.”

  “So … the struggle’s the thing?” she replied.

  He smiled. “I’m not making any sense at all, am I?”

  She leaned up and pecked him on the cheek and whispered, “Absolutely not. We’ll talk later, okay?”

  He nodded, leaned his forehead against hers, and said, “I’d really feel better if you’d come with us.”

  “You would, but Blake wouldn’t.”

  Jessup’s eyes skipped over to Blake who was standing by himself, shivering, looking like hell. He wanted to remind her how much of a burden Blake was, how his various ailments and conditions had nearly cost them their lives on more than one occasion, but he knew she’d be pissed, so he kept that to himself.

  “We could get one of the girls to stick him,” he said in reference to Blake’s meds, but Liza slowly shook her head.

  “They’ve got nervous hands and, besides, we wouldn’t be able to keep up with you.”

  She placed a hand over his heart and placed his hand over her belly, and then fell in line with the others and climbed aboard the skiff.

  Elias turned to Marisol who was being quietly scolded by Liza about how she needed to stay behind, but Marisol wasn’t having any of it.

  She turned to Elias and thrust out a hand, which Elias took and helped her down into the skiff. They watched Blake and Harry (who’d decided to stay behind to help Blake), and the women waved to them from the deck of the boat as they pushed off and engaged the motor and headed for shore.

  The skiff was cramped, filled with Elias, Marisol, Jessup, Bennie, Terry, and Jon, and the small motor labored against the late-day waves. They reached the shore and Elias surveyed the embankments up and down the coastline, his eyes cataloguing the area for any sign of danger.

  “Here’s the quick and dirty,” Jessup said. “We’re navigating by that,” he said, gesturing at the cellphone, “so we’ll follow the map and locate the vault and make sure it’s safe before we head inside.”

  “And then?” Marisol asked.

  “Then we take as much stuff as we can carry and haul

  ass back to the boat before it gets dark.”

  “Little smash and grab, ladies and gents,” Terry said, smiling, smacking his hands

  together.

  Everyone strapped on what looked like homemade rucksacks and geared and weaponed up. Jessup reluctantly handed Elias back his shank and then dropped a rucksack on the ground that contained two pistols with extender magazines.

  Marisol grabbed up one of the guns and slapped in the mag and expertly pulled back the slide, checking the chamber.

  “Don’t worry," she said. "I’m not a rook.”

  Jessup nodded, then looked to Elias, who slowly bent and retrieved the other pistol.

  “I've always been more in the mindset of running from these things," he said. "Not using them."

  “So you've never shot one?” Jessup asked.

  He stared at the gun, then at Jessup.

  “Not for real, I mean. No.”

  Marisol slid over and said, "Stop worrying about it. I got you covered. I’ll teach you."

  She gave him a quick tutorial on how to load and unload the pistol, and when she was sure he had it, she turned back to Jessup and said, "Okay, time for that assault rifle now."

  "Excuse me?" Jessup said, shaking his head. "There are still some rules that apply, ace. For starters, I can’t hand over a boomstick to a kid who's probably not even old enough to vote."

  Elias sighed. "Even when there's nothing to vote for anymore?"

  Jessup laughed. "Especially then."

  Jessup threw up a hand and turned back and led the expedition forward.

  They stashed their flamethrowers and a few other bulky weapons behind an overgrown hedge-row, and then trod over a series of low dunes and past an ancient concession stand. They passed a parking lot pitted with sinkholes, the rusted shells of a school bus, a garbage truck, and a bright orange RV that was spray-painted with words like “Damnation,” “End Has Come,” “Repent,” and “Pale Horse.”

  This was an area once known as Chicago’s “Gold Coast,” but it had long since lost its luster. The group filed past a sign for North Lake Shore Drive and beyond the edges of Goudy Square Park beside a seep that spilled from a gash in the ground. Terry stopped here and cupped his hands in the cool water to splash his face, and then they were on the move again, the grasslands incandescing before them like an emerald tapestry.

  53

  The seven men in the skiffs could see the sailboat through the haze. It was cigar-shaped and bore the scars of past struggles. Bullet-dented sheet-meta
l draped over its sides, sections of wood that were gouged and charred, sharpened metal spikes protruding here and there to prevent unwanted boarding.

  Cozzard grabbed his oily, flowing hair and tied it off in a pony-tail. He checked the assortment of weapons and cutting utensils that hung off his person, including a pistol, various blades, and a close-in gut shank. He tossed looks to the others, reached in a leather sack and brought out a hunting mask he’d made.

  A grotesque half-face constructed from leather thongs and the tanned, hind-end of a hog he’d butchered and smoked ten months back. Tufts of swine hair sprouted from the mask that he pulled over his head, his mouth and eyes visible behind the fleshy faux-face, making it look as if he was some kind of ghoul trapped inside another body.

  Blood surged in his ears like the beat of tom-toms as he inched out a pole with a hooked metal end. He peered at Lout and the other men who were fixing their weapons and readying to board and then Cozzard swung the pole and latched onto the sailboat and brought his skiff parallel with it.

  Cozzard looked up and saw Riley, who had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was mesmerized for a moment by her sad little eyes, but she was not the one they’d come for. They stared at each other for a long, strange moment.

  “Greetings,” Cozzard said. Riley hesitated, then began wailing at the sight of Cozzard’s disgusting mask. One of the other men in the skiff looked to Cozzard, and then he shot Riley in the stomach with a partially silenced pistol.

  Frozen by the horror of the moment, Riley stumbled back, hands clutching her matted gut, rasping, struggling to breathe. She screamed again, but by then Cozzard had led the men onto the sailboat.

  Harry came forward first, armed with a hooked blade. Lout gutshot him so that he pitched back off the boat and into the water. Cozzard led the men ahead as more figures appeared from the hold.

  Liza was down below, .22 gauge needle in hand, readying to inject Blake with his meds. They both heard the shots and reacted. They headed upstairs, Blake gripping a sawed-off shotgun, while Liza clutched the needle and a small-caliber pistol.

  Gunshots rang out and one of the men next to Cozzard fell to his side, his skull split by a shotgun blast from Blake who was pump-firing. Part of the sail was chewed up by a slug from that gun as Cozzard squinted and fired a shot that blew Blake’s eye out. His corpse hit the deck and began leaking red.

  Lout grabbed Ava as she tried to hide and pulled her to the ground by her hair. He appraised the girl who had a strange, dreamy look on her face. She screamed, then Lout punched her unconscious only to catch the sinister wink of several bullets as they flew past his head.

  Liza was on deck now and triggering her pistol, spraying the end of the boat where Lout and the others were taking cover. Cozzard ran forward and dove as the unlucky goon next to him, a nameless vagrant with a shiny forehead, hit the ground and convulsed, a bullet having shorn off his lower jaw. Cozzard couldn’t make out the pistol from where he was, but he watched another brute charge the obscured shooter and then stumble back with a Liza’s syringe jutting out of his neck.

  Cozzard ducked and rolled and caught sight of the shooter. Liza. A woman who was breathtaking and deadly all at once. She wasn’t the girl that Longman wanted, but Cozzard wanted her alive. He dove back to the ground and bellied over the now blood-slicked deck and heard the woman cursing, struggling to reload her pistol. In a flash he was on his feet and standing before her, panting.

  “You got a bit of fight in you, eh,” Cozzard said and then he backfisted Liza who fell to the ground unconscious. Lout and the others whooped like a proper war party and advanced, looting whatever they could find as Cozzard signaled for two men to head below.

  They zipcuffed Ava and Liza and hauled them onto the boat along with the rest of the booty. The men briefly considered firing the boat, but then realized they needed to send a message to those who’d slipped out of their grasp. Plus the girl and boy, the ones Longman wanted, weren’t here, though they had two pretties to take back with them.

  Cozzard was pleased with that and so he ordered the other men to take care of the dead and leave a warning to any others who might come this way. Some of his charges fished the bodies of Harry and Blake out of the water and lined them up with Riley. They slid sharpened knives under the soft flesh above their eyebrows and lifted off their bloody scalps.

  And then, when that was finished, they hung the scalps from wooden poles and tossed the men back overboard and set to work on Riley.

  54

  Elias, Marisol, and the others stopped at the spur of a slope that rose out of the grasslands and surveyed the land around them. Marisol looked back, thinking she’d heard something from the direction of the water.

  Gunshots?

  She listened again and heard nothing, so turned back to survey the terrain ahead. Here and there were pockets of blacktop and cement, but the grasslands had reclaimed much of the worked-over lands from the time before.

  Jon and Bennie stuffed the ragged fish into openings on the piping and then spun the turn handles as Elias and Marisol caught whiffs of air and sucking sounds. Both men then lay the base-plates against their knees and depressed metal triggers as WONK! WONK! the piping launched the fish, a good three thousand yards into the air.

  Bennie read Elias’s stare and gestured at the piping.

  “Once the sky fell, the things left out here, dogs, wild hogs, and all the other shit started hunting more by smell than by sight. On account of the sun being brought low and all.”

  “The Serks too,” Jon offered as Bennie nodded and continued. “The Serks especially. So what we do is we mess with their noses, you copy? We shoot the rotten fish out all over the place and it distracts them. Messes with their olfactory senses. Keeps ‘em away from us,” Bennie said, laughing to himself.

  “Same thing we used to do with insects and stuff before,” said Jon.

  “Repellant,” Terry said wistfully to himself while swatting a school of bugs that were dive-bombing his neck. “Good God Almighty how I miss me some repellant.”

  “Beer, baby,” Bennie said, “I miss my beer.”

  “TV,” said Jon as Jessup and the others hooted derisively.

  “Air conditioning,” Marisol said, and everyone paused for a moment, then smiled and nodded.

  “Amen to that,” Jessup replied, realizing how everyone in the post-unraveling hellhole of a world would’ve killed for a little air conditioning.

  They followed a broad plain of thick grass that sprouted between empty house husks and discarded cars and ransacked shops. They stood and stared at an industrial graveyard. A surreal outcropping of mangled metal and shredded plastic and documents marked “Defense Logistics Agency.” A dustbin from the times before, a collection of military and government machines and gear and refuse.

  Inspecting the trash, they took note that the vast majority of the items appeared to have been damaged or destroyed at the time they were dumped. Jon and Bennie said this was because the items contained timers. They’d escaped from the massive refugee tenement called Meggido on the outskirts of old Miami and had seen how the timers were used by militias to make a real hash of things in the years after First Light. Car bombs, improvised explosive devices and the like. After that, what was left of the government decided to destroy any refuse with a timer in it.

  Elias held up a smashed section of circuitry from a rusted computer. He studied the charred circuits and then discarded the item and trekked after the others as they crossed a set of railroad tracks.

  Bennie told Elias about a train that still ran somewhere out in the west. A train protected by the good guys that still ran deliveries of food and supplies to the small pockets of people who hadn’t lost their humanity.

  “So how come you aren’t heading directly for that train?” Elias asked.

  Bennie’s eyes drooped. “Honestly, we aren't exactly sure where the train is.”

  Elias raised an eyebrow. “But it’s real?”
r />   Bennie nodded. “I believe it is. I mean, you gotta believe in something, right?”

  The group passed buckled streets dotted with stumps where tall strands of elm, ash, and sycamore trees grew before they were hacked down for fuel and shelter. The trees were cut in the long winters after First Light, back before sickness, war, and Thresher had culled the population.

  Elias wiped his brow and moved ahead of the others, heading north where the land unfurled from the grass to a series of low hills that blocked the view of what lay beyond. He turned to his side as Marisol flanked him, the pair walking in silence initially.

  “You never answered me,” Elias said to her. “Back before, with Longman’s man. You never said why you didn’t cross him over with the blade when you had the chance.”

  “I’m a tracker,” she said. “That’s what I do. I don’t do the lettings.”

  “Is that why you didn’t do me during the Absolution run?” he asked.

  She looked over at him and shook her head. “I’ve killed before if that’s what you mean.”

  “So how come you didn’t do me?”

  “None of your business,” she replied.

  He was silent for a few steps and then said, “I’m glad you didn’t do it. I mean, there were some of the Runners who loved the idea of going out like that. Being shot down during a run, but not me. I’m glad you didn’t cross me over.”

  “I’m glad too,” she said with a smile.

  Elias snapped his fingers. “Forgot to tell you, I found something you might wanna see.”

  She perked up, then he revealed her backpack which he’d retrieved back after she was shot.

  Her face came alive as he lobbed it to her. She caught it with both hands and clutched it close to her chest, as if holding a baby.

  “Where did you find it?”

  “Before. When you fell, I saw it. It’s no big deal so don’t go getting all weepy scenes about it and whatnot.”