Blood Runners: Box Set

by George S. Mahaffey Jr.

  “What about you?” Elias asked. “You’ve helped us out. Doesn’t that make you a good man?”

  Moses’s lips sputtered for an instant and it looked as if he was having trouble breathing.

  He sucked in a burst of air and whispered.

  “You know what the Good Book says about people, kid?” Moses asked.

  Elias shook his head.

  “It says ‘there are none that do good, no not one.’ Don’t forget that. Ever.”

  Moses stood and vanished in the brush. The exhilaration of the day was fully and finally over, replaced by something else, something somehow familiar. A sensation that had gripped Elias in the past and usually sent him running for the exits. He’d felt the same thing the night before his real family had taken off to live in the country and again on that fateful afternoon when the Thresher came for his step-parents. A deep sense of impending, unavoidable loss.

  86

  Over Locks’s repeated protests, the Mudders marched Farrow at knife-point down over the gloomy brow of a hill and onto a path that curled into the Zones set aside for working folk.

  “I keep telling you,” Locks said to the others, “this guy’s with me. He helped me bust out of the Codex.”

  “That don’t cut any ice,” the lead Mudder, a shaggy, leather-skinned man said. “Just ‘cause you shared interests on the inside don’t me it’s the same on the outside.”

  Thoughts of flight quickly crept into Farrow’s mind. Fleeting notions of wigging out and head-butting the first man walking along beside him, and then taking on the others before vanishing into the night. But even in a moment of fractured semi-solitude like this, Farrow thought back to his days walking the beat. To his training. To what he once believed in. Things like duty and honor. Isn’t that what separated him from Longman and the others? His steadfast refusal to jettison longstanding morals and principles?

  He peered over at Locks who was still trying to intercede for him. Locks had helped him escape and he owed the man, at the very least, his freedom. He would do nothing to jeopardize Lock’s life or his position amongst his brethren, so he stifled his tongue and continued walking.

  The group roller-coastered over a rise that provided a view of the dwelling place of the Mudders and Scrappers and all the other working classes in New Chicago. A most dismal place, barely visible in the murky light cast from a series of aging street lamps. This was Zone 2 territory and Farrow immediately thought it resembled the very worst parts of East Baltimore. By way of Beirut.

  Pods of spindly dogs pissed in plain sight near swarms of little soot-spattered Mudder children who cackled and ran in zigzags and circles. Farrow took in the countenances of the olders who gazed at him, but there was nary a cheerful face to drive the gloom away.

  They moved in a line under thin webs of light cast by solar lamps that they held up. Farrow caught sight of a few closed circuit cameras positioned on some of the street lamps and threw a hand across his face in an effort to disguise himself. He trudged across byways covered with straw and grass clippings to deaden the noise of vehicles, old trucks and the like, many without proper rubber tires, that plowed down the muddy verges.

  He was forced along like an automaton toward an ugly, slab-sided building that filled up one side of the street. The headquarters of the collective that purported to represent the “interests” of the less well-off in New Chicago.

  Farrow was marched through the entrance at the rear of the building and was immediately confronted by a burly guard twirling a thick, wax-ended, metal-tipped cane like the leader of a band.

  The guard wedged the tip of the cane under Farrow’s chin and nudged it up. He seemed to recognize Farrow and spat in his general direction, then mumbled and stepped aside as another guard opened a metal door that revealed a work-space of some kind. Through the open door Farrow could see tinkerers and smiths showered in sparks as they worked at forges and lathes and general labor-stations.

  Beyond the labor-stations there was an open door and men visible, cheering and drinking inside. Farrow caught sight of what appeared to be two male Thresher, fighting to the death for the pleasure of the Mudder audience. One of the men spotted Farrow and slammed the door shut.

  At the far end of the room, a large side-panel, a hidden partition in a wall that you would never have suspected was there, opened and Farrow ducked as he was pushed under a divider, and entered a windowless space filled with plumes of smoke.

  Seated inside, nearly oozing out of a black, horse-hair chair, was a corpulent man named Lennox who was dressed in filthy dungarees and a torn work shirt. Because girth equaled guile in New Chicago (you weren’t well fed unless you were a person of some station), Farrow immediately knew that Lennox was a man of means. Someone who obviously knew how to game the system.

  Sitting beside this sow of a man was what looked like a child reclining in a dented, electric baby rocker. The rocker had a worn label on the side that said Fisher-Price and it swayed, back and forth, one wonky foot rhythmically clubbing the floor.

  Farrow squinted and was shocked to see that it wasn’t a baby after all, but an aged, little person wrapped up in what looked like swaddling that resembled a child’s sleep sack. The tiny man’s eyes went wide and he whispered something that only Lennox could hear.

  With extraordinary effort, the big man heaved himself up out of his chair. He tottered, belched, farted, then wobbled forward, a cheroot fired up in the corner of his mouth. Lennox gave Farrow a contemptuous toss of the head and rubbed greasy hands over his mildewed knickers and ratty vest. His gaze wandered over to Locks.

  Lennox and Locks shared a moment and then they embraced, not exactly the warmest of moments, but it appeared as if they were on good terms. It was the kind of greeting you give a friend you haven’t seen in some time.

  Lennox circled Farrow who could see the fat man’s tongue darting around his pink, bucket-sized spittled-flecked mouth. Farrow felt an instantaneous revulsion at this ambulatory pudding who studied Farrow and then looked enquiringly over at Locks.

  “So what have you brung us?” said Lennox.

  “His name’s Farrow. We were tossed together in the Codex and found a way out,” replied Locks.

  “You’ve got the scent of the Killer on you, friend,” Lennox said, sniffing in Farrow’s direction and referencing Longman who many in the lower classes simply called ‘The Killer.’

  “He was an Ape,” Locks said.

  “Thought I smelled pig,” Lennox replied, then looked scornfully at Farrow and continued, “You was on high and now’ve been brought low, eh? Cast down in the darkness with the rest of us. They gonna be looking for you though, Ape. All of Longman’s butchers gonna be on the hunt since you busted out.”

  “He can help us,” Locks said.

  “Surely he can,” Lennox replied. “He can usher us onto our reward post-haste. He can bring the wrath of that devil down on us quicker than we planned.”

  “He’s valuable. He helped me,” Locks pleaded. “He knows means and methods. He’s a brawler.”

  Lennox looked to the other Mudders, then shook his head.

  “Get rid of ‘im,” he said to Locks, “Take ‘im somewhere else.”

  “Ain’t nowhere else to go to, sir,” Farrow said as Lennox’s cheroot glowed and sizzled.

  “They gonna be busting down doors and slitting throats looking for you,” Lennox said.

  “They’d be doing that anyway,” Locks offered.

  Lennox shook his head and ashed his cheroot as Locks threw up his hands and gestured to the others.

  “How long will we wait?” Locks asked. “How long until we stop talking and do something, really do something for the love of Almighty God?”

  Lennox took this in, circling Farrow, tapping his cheroot so that tiny sparks filled the air.

  “How many have you killed?” Lennox asked.

  “As many as I had to,” said Farrow.

  “In the world before, what was your profession?” asked Lennox.
<
br />   “I enforced the law.”

  “Were you just muscle, or were you learned on strategy?”

  “I was as good with a pencil as I was with a gun, if that’s what you mean,” said Farrow. “I was a cop.”

  “Your hands. How dirty do they be?” asked Lennox.

  “So dirty it’s impossible to get them clean again,” Farrow said.

  “Then you’re no different ‘n the rest of us,” Lennox said before turning and kneeling aside the tiny man in the rocker who cooed and whispered to him. Farrow was unable to hear what was discussed, but Lennox nodded, and looked back at him and Locks.

  “Okay,” he said, “bring the big bastard back.”

  Two Mudders pulled aside metal panels at the back of the room to reveal an inner chamber where people were working. Farrow saw dozens of men and a few women seated at tables. Feverishly building things: knives, cutting instruments, pistols, rifles, and bullets. Small mounds of bullets were everywhere and then there were the vests. Thick, padded vests with little pockets that Farrow immediately recognized as built to house hand-packed explosives. Suicide vests.

  Lennox picked up a knife and ran a finger down the glimmering blade.

  “So here’s the quick and dirty, Ape,” said Lennox. “Though I myself am not specifically involved, there are eighty-five souls who’re willing to risk their necks to bring down the dictator. Mudders, all of them. In addition, there are seventy-plus Scrappers who are willing to join if, and only if, the Mudders take the lead and get the ball rolling.”

  Farrow nodded.

  “So roughly a hundred-and-fifty against five, maybe seven-hundred, assuming all of Longman’s goons show up,” Farrow said.

  “How’d you like them odds?” asked Lennox.

  “I been up against worse.”

  Lennox actually cracked a smile at that, his gaze sliding out to Locks.

  “If anything happens,” Lennox said, “if you fail to topple that monster I will turn my back on you and wash my hands, and it will be as if none of this ever was.”

  “I know that, Lennox,” said Locks.

  “And if you should succeed, whatever comes next, one third is mine.”

  “That’s a hefty price,” said Locks.

  “This thing that you do, that I help to underwrite, is not insignificant, Locks. It is not something that’s done lightly,” said Lennox.

  Lennox moved back into his inner chamber as Locks tossed a rifle to Farrow and whispered, “Welcome to the revolution.”

  Locks turned, and Lennox’s men slit Farrow’s bonds with a knife, and then they went to work.

  87

  Striding down through the hushed inner corridors of his lair, Longman continued to feel a strange sense of euphoria. It was the elation he’d felt back during the days directly after First Light. When he was sitting behind the controls of his drone, meting out cold, hard justice.

  He’d received his vision from down in the bowels of the building when the machine was engaged, and the wheels were turning, and everything was coming to fruition. Just as he’d seen in his visions and foretold to the others. They were all on the cusp of a great cleansing, and nothing cleansed quite as effectively as fire.

  Longman spotted Cozzard up ahead, drumming his foot on the grated, metal floors.

  “Is the boy awake?” Longman asked.

  Cozzard nodded, said in return, “Still don’t get why we need ‘im.”

  “That’s not something you need to get,” Longman replied. “Plus,” he continued, “sometimes it’s necessary to have the lamb to gain the attention of the lion.”

  Cozzard had no earthly idea what this meant, but he turned and opened a door that revealed the lamp-lit space Longman had visited before.

  Upon his entering, Longman’s interior guards exited and Longman was there, seemingly alone in the semi-darkness. Something stirred and Longman turned as the spindly form from before, a boy, a teenager rushed up and embraced him, wrapping arms around Longman’s lower body.

  Longman felt downright benevolent as he patted the young man on the back. He was proud that he could muster some modicum of affection, which was wrapped in the sense of impending victory, of unalloyed triumph.

  Longman looked down and smiled at the young man whose skin was the color of burnished teak. There was so much of Moses in him, Longman thought. In the eyes and long nose and the way he stood, weight balanced on his right leg. He was a beautiful young man and Longman smiled because he knew Moses would do anything to be with him again, including betraying those who’d saved him.

  88

  Farrow began to have mixed feelings as he struck off after Locks and a few other Mudders, following them through a six-foot tunnel that linked several buildings in Zone 2.

  On the one hand, this expedition, this pre-revolutionary jaunt, imbued him with a sense of accomplishment that he hadn’t felt since First Light. Here he was standing up for right and wrong, just like how it used to be when the world, at least what he could remember of it, was black and white. On the other hand, the sudden realization set in that Farrow was surrounded not by trained cops and former military bruisers, but castoffs and those from the lowest ranks of a city that was teeming with undesirables.

  How could they possibly hope to topple a man who had his own army?

  He realized he’d been left behind, standing alone, pondering these things. A whistle caught his attention and he looked up to see Locks waving at him, so he clicked ahead and followed the others through a small opening little more than a rabbit-hole that lay on the far side of a bricked wall.

  Farrow ducked under a stone arch into an open space lit by lamps and smelled the mingled scents of cordite and decay and urine.

  Hands reached out and tightened a screw on the lamp’s wick until there was barely a trickle of illumination.

  Farrow turned and appraised the forms that were busy inside. Perhaps four dozen putative partisans, mostly men, but a few women, their faces appearing disembodied in the semi-darkness and hovering smoke.

  This was what he would be working with.

  Farrow said a silent prayer as Locks unscrolled a set of finely-detailed maps that showed the entirety of New Chicago and the layout of the Codex Building.

  A lengthy discussion and strategy session ensued and it was decided that they would find a way to attack the city’s power-source first in order to blind Longman (to disable his web of security cameras) and sow confusion in the last hours of darkness. And then, in the resulting chaos, they would be joined by a hefty contingent of Scrappers. Together they would find a way to hit the bastard head on.

  It was here that mention was first made of the necessity of some sacrificing all for the greater good. Locks pointed at a suicide vest as several of other partisans nodded and thumped their chests with clenched fists.

  “Do you think it’ll work?” one of the partisans asked of Locks. “Do you think just a handful of us will be able to break through?”

  “Remember when they took down the White House back in twenty-nineteen?” Locks replied, holding up one of the vests. “What was it? Twelve-”

  “Nine,” Farrow finished for him. “It was nine sappers that charged across the lawn. Five were cut down before they could pull their cords. Three blew themselves up near the outer walls. One of them made it inside.”

  “But that’s all it took,” Locks said. “All it took was one of them to get the whole thing started. If we can do that, set off just one of these inside the Codex, we can show the city that he’s not invincible.”

  The others nodded at the truth of this as a half dozen of the partisans slowly slipped the suicide vests on.

  Later, as the other men were busy prepping their weapons and discussing the finer details of the initial assault, Farrow passed through a hutch in the space, searching for Locks.

  A homely woman approached him and held out a plastic bag filled with a gruel concocted of minced pork parts and cabbage stalks that had the consistency of warm bath-water and the odor
of ripe feet. He downed the slop and continued on and found Locks standing against a rear wall, rifle and bandolier of ammo slung over one shoulder, his back to Farrow. Locks’s head was bowed and Farrow could hear him quietly muttering to himself.

  The patter of Farrow’s feet caused Locks to pivot and Farrow was shocked to see Locks wearing a torn, stained, clerical collar.

  Locks grinned.

  “Jesus, God,” exclaimed Farrow.

  “Not exactly, but close,” answered Locks.

  Farrow reached out a hand and touched the collar.

  “Surprised?”

  Farrow nodded as Locks fixed the collar and adjusted the bandolier of ammunition that hung lazily below it before grabbing two rifles.

  “You know what they call an inner city priest, Farrow?”

  Farrow shook his head.

  “‘Street preach.’ That’s what I was for nine years. Ministering to the best people in the worst neighborhoods in Kansas City. Mostly shelters, but also a few low income hospitals and clinics and the like.”

  “Tough gig.”

  “I volunteered for it. I was young and dumb and figured I’d test out that whole God sending us out into the world as sheep in the midst of wolves thing.”

  “How’d that turn out for you?” asked Farrow.

  “Strengthened my faith believe it or not. Helped me to see the truth in the Lord saying that in order to navigate the world of the low-dweller, one must be as wise as a serpent and as innocent as a dove.”

  “You still feel that way?”

  “Only as to the former,” said Locks.

  Farrow stared at the rifles in Locks’s hand.

  “I walked the same kind of beat as you I s’pose. I was a cop,” Farrow said.

  “The whole time I had my money on a soldier, but a cop was a close second,” Locks said before lobbing one of the rifles to Farrow who dropped it, his fingers still bloody and slick from where Longman’s men had savaged them.

  “Course, in a way, we’re alike,” said Locks. “Cop and priest. Different kinds of same as my father used to say.”