Blood Runners: Box Set

by George S. Mahaffey Jr.

  “We came to scrounge supplies,” she said.

  “How many?”

  “There are others, not many, but I guess you probably already knew that.”

  “And the special two? Your new friends. The boy and the girl?” Longman asked. “What of them?”

  Liza was silent and the blade pressed again to Ava’s neck and she yelped so Liza was forced to nod.

  “Where are they?” asked Longman.

  “They went ashore.”

  “To do what?”

  “Gather more supplies.”

  “What kind, Liza?”

  “The kind that go boom.”

  Longman assessed this. One of his guiding principles was never ask a question you didn’t already know the answer to. Everything Liza told him, he generally already knew about. He simply wanted to assess how deeply embedded the lie was in her.

  “What kind of men are they?” Longman finally asked. “The ones you came with?”

  At this she looked up and glared daggers at Longman.

  “They’re not like you if that’s what you mean.”

  Longman grinned so hard his mouth hurt. “Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure. They wouldn’t have survived this long if there wasn’t a little of me in them.”

  Longman circled Liza, studying the lines of her face and attendant micro-expressions along with her body language. God how she reminded him of Sara. That had been her name, hadn’t it? How long it had been since her name tickled his lips? Sara. Love of his life. The keeper of secrets. She was just like the one presently before him.

  Liza belched and twitched, her face reddening. Embarrassed. She felt a warm current move up and down her legs and suddenly experienced a bunching in her abdomen. Then she felt a warm trickle of urine which seeped through her clothing and pinged against the floor.

  Longman looked down, surprised that the urine was pinkish in color. His eyes roamed up and he noticed it for the first time. The fact that Liza had a slight rounding of the belly. Ordinarily he would never have noticed it, but there it was just the same. He’d seen something similar back in the military with a few of the enlisted women. He knew what the pinkish urine and the belly meant.

  Longman smiled.

  Liza had been keeping a secret after all.

  She was with child.

  82

  Longman exited the room housing Liza and Ava, trying to process the day’s developments. Rarely had elation crawled so powerfully inside him; he had the woman who was carrying a child (whose child? One of the ones from the boat?), and he was soon to hear from Hendrix who was part of a plan that he, Hendrix, was totally oblivious to. Sure, the Ape named Farrow had somehow managed to elude his men, but that was of little concern. Unbeknownst to everyone else, all the pieces, all the moves he had so delicately plotted ahead of time, were slowly coming together.

  At the sound of footfalls, Longman looked up to see Cozzard dashing toward him.

  “You’re gonna wanna hear this, boss,” Cozzard said, gesturing back.

  Cozzard stepped aside to reveal Lout holding up Hendrix. Hendrix was bloody, bruised, and wild-eyed.

  “He’s in a bad way, sir,” said Cozzard.

  Longman nodded. “Understatement of the century, Mister Cozzard.”

  Hendrix opened his mouth and before the words could coalesce into speech, he collapsed to the floor.

  They carried Hendrix into an ante-room and Longman ordered his men to fetch bags of crushed ice and cool drinks and wetted towels to sooth Hendrix’s pain.

  Hendrix was laid out on a leather couch that Cozzard and Lout had looted from an art museum a few years before. Two women with jagged hair that looked like it had been styled with axes soon appeared. They worked for the Codex Guild, paid “companions” in Longman’s feudal version of “the water trade.” The women dropped to their knees, almost prostrating themselves in what looked like bows, and then they toweled off the sweat, grime, and blood from Hendrix’s face.

  One of the women let Hendrix sip from a small glass filled with an expensive, amber liqueur. He stared at the woman, barely out of her teens, luxurious red hair pulled back to expose her naked neck. Hendrix made a motion to the woman and Longman snapped his fingers and the women departed.

  Hendrix eased his head back and fought for air. Longman waited for Hendrix to speak, studying his wounds, the way his flesh tented over his cheekbones. Hendrix looked like he’d died weeks earlier and been hauled up from the grave.

  “It was a setup,” Hendrix said softly. “Moses was in on the whole thing.”

  Longman didn’t reply. It was another trick he’d learned as a lawyer. One of the most effective things to do when questioning someone was to stare silently at them. Humans generally wanted to please and most people would continue to talk without additional questions if you just continued to hold their gaze.

  “We found the place and he went into this vault,” Hendrix continued. “Then he grabbed this metal briefcase and ran out. We chased after ‘im until those monsters, the Thresher, appeared.”

  “How many people did you lose?” Longman eventually asked.

  “All of them, sir. All of them but me.”

  Longman steepled his fingers under his chin and Hendrix gulped. “The others were there too, sir,” said Hendrix. “The boy and the girl. The ones that escaped. They were with another crew that put down every goddamn Thresher, just shot ‘em all up.”

  Longman nodded silently. While not specifically aware of this, he’d surmised that Moses might try to find a way to save his own ass. He was somehow relieved by the whole thing, because it simply meant that it would be easier for him to spring the final trap. They were all together now, all of his enemies. He was so many steps ahead of the others out in the grasslands, Moses, the boy, and the girl, that it almost didn’t seem fair. A serene look came over him and the he stood and thanked Hendrix for his efforts.

  “You’ve done an excellent job, but now it’s time. Go and get him,” Longman whispered to Hendrix. “Go and get the boy.”

  83

  There was an air of anticipation and excitement in the Codex Building. Longman could feel it as he drifted through the building, shadowed by his personal retinue of guards. The people, the workers, the soldiers, everyone running this way and that knew that something was in the wind.

  Longman’s face was damn near ebullient as he flowed past. The last few hours had provided a respite from the tension that had built up over the last few days. He was nearing the precipice, he was on the verge of crushing the conspiracy involving the boy and the girl and the others out in the grasslands.

  He remembered a famous writer once saying that conspiracies were impossible. They didn’t exist because no real person was ever capable of keeping a secret of any actual substance for any measure of time. But that wasn’t true at all. Conspiracies existed, both civil and criminal, and Longman knew all about them. As a child, his father, an anti-government zealot, had been in and out of his life. But when he was there, he told Longman stories about something called the Central Intelligence Agency and a sorcerer named Gottlieb who was once in its employ. This man, this demented genius, oversaw myriad programs, including one called MK-ULTRA that centered around psychic jiu-jitsu and purportedly caused the deaths of many men, including one named Frank Olson.

  Olson was a family man and a grunt who died battered and bloody on a New York City street, the victim, it was said, of his own hand. In truth, a cabal of Agency like-minders, at the behest of Gottlieb, had drugged Olson and brought about his demise and then covered it up for decades along with a whole host of other unfortunates. Those conspiracies were real and orchestrated at the highest levels of government and whenever anyone challenged the validity of believing generally in conspiracies, Longman’s father didn’t hesitate to mention Olson (“Remember Olson, Lonny,” he’d say. “Remember Olson”).

  Longman had ordered full power to the building and so the elevators were working well for once. He and his guards were ushered into an inn
er lift that dropped straight down through the middle of the Codex. The door finally opened into the cavernous basement of the building. Longman and his entourage negotiated a winding path that curved through small mountains of weapons, gear and supplies, stacked in schizophrenic rows. His eyes glimpsed the other end of the building. He could see a shiny metal door.

  More guards appeared out of the half-light, trailing automatic weapons, keeping this area of the basement secure from unwanted intrusion. He half-waved to the guards and the shadow-dwellers disappeared from view.

  The light strengthened as he drew closer to the door. He could see a still-functioning palm scanner mounted above it. He stopped and held out his hand as a laser swept over his hand and then WONK! the mighty door hissed open.

  He stepped through a thin mist of dust and down three steps into a sunken space. The space was wide and narrow and housed industrial machinery that had been hauled from the other side of the wall and never repurposed. The machinery was stacked on either side of a path that ran through an open bay door at the back that continued down under the city, eventually connecting with the tunnels that were used in the days of old to ferry men and equipment under the streets of Chicago.

  Directly below Longman, however, cradled like a baby inside a steel stand on a powerized trolley that resembled a golf cart on steroids, was the nuclear warhead that he’d freed so many years before from the Air Force base.

  The delivery case had been opened and all of its parts—the neutron generator, the batteries, the arming mechanism, the fusing and firing implements, and everything else that comprised the five kiloton weapon—were laid out like the instruments in an operating room.

  Longman stood before the weapon and perused a device on its side, a receiver that would function only when it had downloaded a sequence of numbers, the authorization codes. Devised by an element within the National Security Apparatus, those codes had been changed almost weekly in the years before the Unraveling.

  Once entered, the codes unlocked a butterfly valve that, when engaged, set in motion a timer that lasted five minutes. Once the time had elapsed, an inner glass chamber shattered, mixing two chemicals that, when combined, helped to detonate the device. All he needed was the codes.

  Longman bowed his head and placed a hand on the exterior of the device and a pulse of energy blitzed through him, sucking the air out of his lungs. He heard the voices of what sounded like a thousand people. Whispering his name, singing his praises for all that he’d done to bring a measure of normalcy and certainty to the new world. But every story has to end, and Longman knew the curtain would be coming down on his very soon. He simply wanted to make sure there was ample justification when it all came to a crashing end.

  Suddenly, another more powerful current surged through him and he collapsed on his side. His guards reached over and he violently waved them off. His eyes lolled and his men feared he was having a seizure of some kind.

  Whether it was real or imagined, he thought, for an instant, that he’d just seen the very face of God and heard His words.

  And I shall make this city desolate.

  God willing, Longman would do just that.

  84

  Liza’s face was a mixture of contempt and resignation as she strained against her bindings, fighting to move out of her chair. She looked over at Ava who was staring at her, eyes wide, but unseeing. As if she was looking out from the inside of another body.

  Struggling in her chair, Liza caught her reflection in one of the metal panels affixed to the side wall. A small measure of pride rose up inside her. From this position, the ropey muscles in her arms abulge, she resembled in her mind a heroic freedom fighter of some kind.

  Emboldened if only for an instant, she whispered to Ava again, told her that the time was come to take action, but Ava didn’t respond and Liza realized her defiance lacked weight. She viewed her reflection again and saw this time, a woman who was flustered and sagging and beaten.

  And to make matters worse, the stench of decay that seemed to envelope the building as a whole was exceptionally palpable in the room, magnified by the fact that Liza was indeed with child, the result of a single night spent alone with Jessup some months before. It had been a mistake to lay with him, or at least she thought so now. She continued to have feelings for him, but recognized just how silly it sounded to even think about bringing a child into the world. Still, maternal instincts had quickly clouded her judgment and a short while ago she’d broached the subject once again with Jessup. They had agreed to welcome their child into the world and raise him or her together, whatever the consequences.

  But she she’d seen the look in Longman’s eyes when he spotted the bloody urine before. She could tell in his eyes that he knew she was pregnant and there was no telling what he might do.

  She was tired now, but every time she felt like giving up, images flashed in her mind’s eye. Grainy, crimson shots of the madman coming in and opening up her abdomen and pulling her baby out in a great, ball of membranous gore.

  She couldn’t give up now. She wouldn’t. She was fighting for more than just her own life. She refused to go down without a fight.

  She continued to squeeze out with all her might, alternately tensing every muscle in her arms, and then going limp, working to build some slack in the rope that tethered her to the chair.

  Brooding on this, she noticed something in the circle of rope that lay near her shoe. Something glimmering inside the rope. A thin, coil of nearly imperceptible wire a few inches shy of one foot. The kind used to strengthen the rope’s midsection.

  Liza reached down and with all of her dexterity, somehow found a way to pinch the wire between her fingers. It seemed, at first blush, as delicate as a strand of spun gold. She folded the wire. Then folded it again. By the fourth fold, the strand had taken on some small measure of heft and she twined one end into a point and then secreted the wire inside the cuff of her shirt, ready to greet whatever came through the door next.

  85

  Knowing that Marisol had the preternatural ability to sense things before they happened, Jessup recommended she and Elias take the night watch from a perch on a raised slope of naked rock. The pair sat a few feet away from each other, watching for any sign of movement in the grasslands.

  Elias had difficulty sorting through the emotions that filled him as he sat and watched the countryside. Anger filled him first. His anger was palpable, yet not directed at any one person, although Longman was certainly a significant part of it. But he was also angry at the universe for turning his life upside down. For taking away his family. For forcing him to be something that maybe he was never destined to be. Fear was a close second to anger. He hated to admit it, but he was scared of failing, terrified of letting people down, and weak-kneed about going anywhere near New Chicago’s wall.

  Marisol sat coiled up on the rock, maybe eighteen inches or so away, and in some small way, he hoped she’d sit nearer. Her face was canted like a cat as she listened to every sound, scanning the shadows for any telltale signs of movement. He studied her under the moonlight. Fine features that looked like they’d been carved from caramel-colored marble. For a moment he gave serious thought to unburdening himself to her. He imagined her reading his mind and saying preemptively: “You were right about before. We don’t even know those people really, do we?”

  And then he’d say: “They helped us and we helped them so that makes us even.”

  And her: “The only ones we owe anything to are ourselves.”

  But of course she hadn’t said anything to him at that moment and Elias, being too shy to initiate conversation with her, just gave her a quick smile and dropped down from the rock.

  He made his way through the murkiness and relieved himself, making sure to remain out of Marisol’s line of sight.

  Turning back, he startled at the sight of Moses who was seated in the undergrowth, eyes closed, appearing as if in a trance.

  His eyes slapped open and he looked up at Elias.
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br />   “Always found it helpful to meditate before the big day,” Moses said.

  Elias nodded and said, “My dad used to make me do the same thing before we played a game.”

  “Good man,” Moses replied. “Visualization we used to call it, El,” he said. “Thinking about things before they happen usually helps you not to muck ‘em up. And sittin’ out here, at the edge of the world, really helps you to spot the deep issue if you know what I’m talkin’ about.”

  As was often the case, Elias was unable to fully discern Moses’s riddles and musings.

  “What’s the deep issue?” Elias asked.

  “That you need to be heading out before dawn.”

  Elias was silent as Moses looked around and seeing nobody in sight, turned his gaze back to him.

  “You hear me?” Moses seconded.

  Elias nodded, said, “If I went, where would I go?”

  “Where was you plannin’ on going ‘fore that girl got shot?”

  Elias didn’t know how to answer this, but his look spoke to Moses.

  “You need to hold fast to your original plan,” Moses said.

  “Plans are meant to be changed, aren’t they?” Elias asked.

  “Who the hell ever said that?”

  “My father.”

  “Nice thought for sure, but where did it get him?”

  “I gotta stay,” Elias said.

  “Why? Cause of them? Cause of her?”

  “Course not.”

  “Then what? Talk to me. What is it? The others? You think you owe ‘em or something?”

  “They helped me.”

  “And?”

  “And that means they’re good people. That counts for something doesn’t it?”

  “Does it?” Moses asked.