Blood Runners: Box Set

by George S. Mahaffey Jr.

  Farrow held up his rifle and eyed Locks closely.

  “We’re going to have to do some very bad things, Locks. Not just talk, but actually do them. You know that don’t you? Things that maybe go against everything you believe in.”

  The men swapped a look and then Locks whispered, “I know that. I also know that that’s the message of the Gospels, isn’t it, Farrow? That sometimes there can’t be salvation without the shedding of blood.”

  Locks pulled the firing bolt back on his rifle and disappeared into a crowd of partisans as Farrow watched him go.

  Farrow’s hands quivered, but he drew strength from what he believed was to come. He and Locks and the others fighting the good fight, taking a stand against evil. He smiled to himself because down in this filthy little hole of a room he finally realized it. His life, this ordeal, did have meaning. His destiny was to rise up out of this cesspool and challenge Longman’s rule and strike a blow for the dead and forgotten. Fortifying himself with this thought and a few gulps of air, Farrow followed after Locks.

  89

  Elias woke with a start. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and glanced at the sky, the first tinges of dawn visible. Staggering to his feet, he looked around, shocked to see the cement underfoot. Somehow he’d left the grasslands behind and was standing in the middle of a street that ran through an immense, darkened city.

  “Hello!” he shouted. Nothing responded or stirred, not even in the heavy shadows that fringed the street.

  He moved slowly over the ruined artery, wondering where Marisol and the others were. He jumped up onto a junked car and searched in every direction. There was nothing but more city and the strangest thing was that the wall was nowhere to be seen. Where the hell was he?

  Dropping down from the car, he maneuvered past the twisted wreckage of a tractor-trailer. He saw two adults moving down the other side of the street. There was something about them, something about the way they held themselves.

  “Mom?” Elias called out.

  The adults stopped. Elias’s eyes adjusted to the murk and he could see it was his mother. She hadn’t aged a day, nor had his father. They looked exactly as he remembered from the days before the Unraveling. Elias’s mom held up a hand in a gesture of goodwill.

  “I tried to come back, mom,” Elias said. “When those people ran us off the road, I looked for you. I swear I came back.”

  His mother mustered a smile. “I know you did, sweetie.”

  “But I’m here now,” Elias said.

  “It’s too late,” Elias’s father said. “We’re already in another place, son.”

  Elias’s throat tightened. “I’ll go with you then.”

  The smile vanished from the face of Elias’s mother. “It’s too far and you don’t know the way.”

  “So show me,” Elias offered.

  His mother mouthed the words “I love you,” and then took a step back with Elias’s father. The darkness seemed to reach out and swallow them whole. Elias blinked and they were gone.

  “I’ll help you find them,” a soft voice said.

  Elias flinched and looked sideways. He squinted and saw another figure, the outline of a man, sitting on the edge of the street with his back against a streetlamp. The man’s head was tilted down, his features obscured. Elias struck out toward him.

  “But if I do that, you’ve to do something for me,” Longman continued.

  The man looked up and Elias felt fear suddenly lodged itself in his throat. It was Longman! Fatigue hovered at the edges of Longman’s eyes, but it was him just the same. Elias stepped forward and studied Longman who looked like a shell of his former self. He resembled a husk, gaunt, as if every ounce of his energy had been drained from his body.

  “Why would I do anything to help you?” Elias asked.

  “Because you owe me. Did you know that the actions you took with the girl threatened everything that I worked to build back in New Chicago?”

  “The city is an evil place. It’s a pesthole, that’s what Moses used to say.”

  Teeth bared, Longman muscled himself up until he was standing before Elias.

  “Do you know what the most important commodity in the world is?” Longman asked. “The belief in the future. I had that established in New Chicago. You may not have agreed with how I did it, but I had people believing that tomorrow would be better than today. That is a powerful thing, Elias.”

  “Everything you did was a lie,” Elias replied.

  “Only because the truth was so much worse.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What if I told you that everything you see is false.”

  “What do you mean?” Elias asked, edging back.

  “Me, you, everything that surrounds us. What if I told you that none of it is real? What if I told you that the ones who did this to us, the presence that ended the world, has placed us here? That we’re little more than rats running around a trap.”

  “More lies,” Elias hissed. “That’s all you do is lie and cheat and murder people.”

  Longman smiled. “Whether you choose to believe me or not matters little because one greater than me is coming for you. That much I promise.”

  At that moment the city itself seemed to sigh and then Elias heard a sound … footfalls … the patter of feet. Bare flesh slapping against cement. Then came the strangled cries, the grunts and guttural notes. He turned and saw misshapen forms pulling themselves up out of the semi-darkness. Emerging from sewers, and upturned pipes, and subway drops. A rootless tribe of marauders. The Thresher!

  “My children,” Longman cooed. “They’ve come to embrace us.”

  Elias crabbed back as the Thresher moved toward him. Their numbers swelled by the second and he started to run. He could hear Longman laughing in the background as he bolted down the street.

  He swung left, then powered across an alley, the ravenous Thresher giving chase. He turned a corner and skidded to a stop, stupefied by what lay before him. It was a mound of bodies that ran, unbroken, through the middle of the city. Men, women, and children were present, lying in a great jumble. Some bore signs of trauma, slicked with blood, while others appeared to be asleep.

  Goosebumps ridged Elias’s arms, but before he could react there was movement in the pile. A figure rose up. It was Marisol! She beckoned him, her expression stark. He ran toward her and slipped and fell.

  “Hurry,” Marisol said. “They’re coming for us.”

  Elias stretched out a hand and she took his wrist and pulled. Soon he was on his feet, clambering up the hillock of bodies. He wanted to grab and hold Marisol, to tell her that he had feelings for her, but he was falling behind. Elias slipped again, and fell down through a hole in the pile of bodies. He could smell the funk of the Thresher and their pig-like squeals. The end was near as Marisol pivoted screamed, “GET UP!”

  Elias blinked and screamed, opening his eyes to see Jessup looking down at him. He was back in the grasslands and the sky was still dark, but he could tell that dawn was just around the corner.

  “You hear me, kid? I said it’s time to get up.”

  Elias slowly nodded, shrugging off the nightmare, looking around, seeing that he was laying on several pieces of cardboard near an open rucksack.

  “You okay?” asked Jessup.

  Another nod from Elias who stood, jelly-kneed for an instant, massaging his face, running a hand through his greasy locks.

  “Dream?”

  “Kind of,” Elias said, nodding.

  “That means you had a good life once.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The fact that you remember,” said Jessup.

  Jessup could tell Elias didn’t quite understand and so he dropped to his knees and helped Elias toss his stuff inside the rucksack.

  “What I mean is, memories ain’t much more than remembrances of things that already happened. Warm and fuzzy. So if you dream that means that you had a good life once upon a time. That you lived and did things wort
h remembering.”

  “Everything worth remembering has already happened,” Elias said.

  “Maybe, but that’s why we’re doing what we’re doing, isn’t it? That’s why we keep on keeping on. Because we want to make sure we’re creating something in the future that’s worth looking back on.”

  Elias nodded and Jessup favored him with a smile while slapping him on the shoulder. Terry appeared, looking tense and keyed up.

  “We’re good to go,” Terry said. “We’re ready to go hot and move in on your signal.”

  90

  Cozzard marched purposefully down the corridor, past tiny rooms with walls covered in glass that was pebbled for semi-transparency. Longman had asked him personally to go and retrieve the two whores they’d stolen off the boat. Rarely had Longman made personal requests and there was something in his voice, an urgency, that led Cozzard to believe that something big was about to happen.

  He chuckled to himself and ran a hand down the blade that he kept stashed in a side pocket. If he was lucky, the feed to the room might be off and then maybe, just maybe, he could have a quick go with one or both of the women before anyone noticed.

  He entered the room and squinted in the imperfect light. That’s when he noticed it. The fact that only one of the chairs was occupied, the younger girl was just sitting there, a strange little smile on her lips. Her shirt was unbuttoned and Cozzard observed the pale flesh of her belly. His head buzzed and he took two steps forward. His feeble mind was a second too slow in processing the whole thing as-

  WHAM!

  Something small and glimmering plunged into his eye, causing it to explode like a mashed grape. Instantly his vision blurred as excruciating bolts of spotty white light clouded everything.

  His world torqued crookedly, his arms windmilling, a wave of pain swept like storm clouds across his face.

  Cozzard reeled, falling back against the wall. Out of corner of his good eye, he saw her. Liza! She’d done it! She’d stabbed him in the eye!

  He realized whatever she’d stabbed him with was still jutting out of his bloody socket. He could see a thin coil of wire that she’d folded into a shank. Cozzard pawed at the wire, groaning, driving it deeper. He struggled, grunting, then managed to pinch and pull the wire out along with a gobbet of flesh and a rope of blood that splashed the floor.

  “YOU BITCH!” he screamed at Liza.

  Cozzard’s world seemed to slow for a long beat until everything narrowed to a single image of the woman running full-bore at him. Her eyes were wide and her lips were pulled back in a snarl that revealed her gums as everything sped back up to normal.

  The whore threw an elbow WHAM! catching him under the chin before he could react. His balance was still off, so the blow knocked him back hard against a wall as he crashed and flipped onto his side.

  Liza grabbed Ava’s hand and pulled her out of the chair, then through the door and into the hallway.

  With wobbly, groaning movements, Cozzard staggered to his feet in anger, his bloody eye speckling the ground as he dragged himself forward, picking up speed. He could see the two women up ahead of him, making a break for it.

  Ava had been reduced to a bundle of racking sobs as Liza pulled her forward. Off in the distance she could hear shouts and the echo of machines and was uncertain whether anyone else knew they’d made a break for it. Turning to her right, she pulled Ava toward a black door at the end of the hallway.

  She was panting now and her elbow throbbed from striking the man, but they were close. Only a few feet away, gaining ground, Liza reaching out for the handle when she heard the sounds behind her.

  Turning, she saw Cozzard. His face was grotesque. Blood streamed from his eye and his visage looked like it was gripped by some kind of demonic malice.

  Before she could react, Cozzard brought his fist down on the side of Ava’s head like a pile driver. The young girl crumpled into a flutter-legged swoon, crashing to the ground unconscious. With no other choice, Liza threw open the black door and disappeared inside.

  Making his choice, Cozzard roared in anger. Dragging Ava by her hair, he reached out and pulled down a wall alarm that echoed as he slumped against a wall. He let out a big, asthmatic sigh as he felt the blood bubble and dribble down his cheek from his pulped eye.

  “Get up,” Cozzard heard an angry voice say.

  Craning his neck and blinking off a soupy rime of blood from his gory eye, he gasped when he saw Longman standing over him. From where Cozzard was sitting, Longman looked almost eight feet tall.

  “Get. Up.”

  Cozzard struggled to stand, uneasily pushing against the wall, one hand still gripping Ava’s hair.

  “The girl,” Cozzard blurted, gesturing to his eye, “the other one, the older whore did this to me. She stabbed me and then she got away and has-”

  “Let her go,” Longman said.

  “What?!”

  “I said let the other one be,” Longman replied. “She won’t be able to get out of the building and besides, I’ve got what I need.”

  He looked down at Ava and then gathered her up in a bundle and handed her to two guards who’d just appeared out of a side door.

  “What are you going to do with her?” Cozzard asked.

  Longman smiled darkly. “She’s going to be the main attraction.”

  “For what, sir?”

  “For what’s about to begin, Mister Cozzard.”

  Minutes later, Ava was carried down to a work-room, one floor below, and into a windowless multi-purpose space with cement block walls.

  In this space, small pods of men were standing over long wooden benches under tube-lighting busily poring over machined parts and tiny gizmos, clusters of wires, timers and various electronic components while consulting hand-drawn diagrams. At their feet were marked sacks of fertilizer and metal crates filled with what looked like clay. In short, all the elements necessary for the making of explosives, bombs and booby traps.

  Those working inside turned at the sound of footsteps and any that wore caps doffed them as soon as Longman appeared behind his men.

  An older man with long braided hair and a jeweler’s loupe in his eye approached, sizing Ava up.

  This was Archer Blood.

  Longman’s architect of personalized destruction.

  A savant when it came to booby-traps and improvised explosive devices.

  Longman’s master bomb-maker.

  “Is it like you said it was, sir?” Archer asked.

  Longman nodded.

  “How long will it take?” asked Longman.

  “Shouldn’t be very long,” Archer replied and then whistled to another man who stood before a metal table upon which were neatly placed what looked like surgical instruments.

  “Can’t promise you it’ll be sterile,” Archer said.

  “We’re beyond that now,” said Longman.

  Archer pocketed his loupe, took Ava up in his arms and carried her over to an empty table. Longman watched as one of the other men injected Ava with an amber liquid in a large gauge syringe, a sedative. Ava sighed and then fell silent. The men went to work. Longman turned away as they made incisions in the small of Ava’s back. There was no need for him to watch further.

  Longman turned, and moved into an alcove filled with all manner of weapons and equipment. He stood before a mirror and held up his arms. One of his underlings, just a boy in his teens, grabbed a set of shiny black body armor and fitted it around Longman and snugged it tight. Longman looked at himself in the mirror and smiled. It was about to begin and he was ready.

  It was in the wind now.

  91

  Elias stayed low and out of sight, eavesdropping on Jessup and the others who were busy running through their plan of action, one final time. They’d been going over the details, back-and-forth, for what felt like ages.

  This is what Elias had learned: Moses (wearing body-armor pilfered from the vault), would clutch the clanker box and move past the traps and other obstructions before sign
aling to Longman’s wall guards just as dawn broke, while Jessup and the others would lie in wait or follow closely behind, taking up positions in various sniping blinds.

  In the event that those inside the wall starting shooting, they would have the means to lay down suppressive fire, giving Moses a chance to beat a hasty retreat.

  Elias wanted to verbally unload on them. Just letting loose with a battery of questions directed at what was so obviously a deeply flawed order of battle. Didn’t they see the size and scope of the wall? Had they been listening when he and Marisol and even Moses detailed the atrocities committed by Longman? Apparently not, because the idiots were primed to stroll right down the main thoroughfare and do what? Hold out some metal box and ask Longman to make a trade? There was no conceivable way the plan could be successful, Elias thought. The whole thing was doomed. They would all be crossing over to their final oblivion if they tried to barter with Longman. All of them. But not him.

  He turned in disgust and nearly barreled into Marisol who was standing and watching him.

  “What’s going on?” Marisol asked.

  “T-they’re ready. They’re going out.”

  She arched an eyebrow.

  “You’re not?” she asked.

  He hesitated, then shook his head as her brow furrowed and she tried to brush past him.

  He extended an arm to block her way as she grabbed it and seemed to stare right through him.

  “You don’t have to go,” Elias said. “We could head north or go up along the coast.”

  “And then, what?” she replied. “We head north like you said? To some place you’ve never even been and don’t know anything about?”

  Elias’s face flushed.

  “It’s something,” he answered.

  “You know why you couldn’t tell me what the other, better place was? Because there isn’t one. At least not right now. I know that now and I can’t, I won’t, leave this place until I help them make Longman pay for what he’s done to everyone.”