“So what then? You changed your mind?”
She nodded.
“I realized I have to. I have to repay Longman for what he did. He murdered my father and brother.”
“If you go out there, if you go with them to the wall, you’ll never come back, Marisol.”
“You don’t understand,” she said. “He killed them … he took everything from me!”
“Not everything,” Elias replied. “You’re still here. You’re still alive. He didn’t take that from you.”
“He might as well have,” she said.
“But he didn’t. And he won’t if you stay with me.”
“And then what?” she asked. “What’s the big, grand plan? You keep looking like you want to say something, so spit it out.”
Without thinking, Elias reached out and kissed her once on the lips. It was the first time he’d ever kissed a woman besides his mother.
Marisol’s face went through a range of emotions. At first she looked as if she’d been sucker-punched, then appeared ready to strike Elias before her face reddened and she whispered, “I - don’t … why did you do that?” she asked.
He was flummoxed, searching for the words, but all that came out of his mouth was:
“I don’t … I don’t know why,” he replied.
“Why did you do that?!”
“I SAID I DON’T KNOW!”
She shoved Elias back and turned on her heels and he watched her disappear down the slope with the others.
Elias kicked at the ground and fumed, wanting to turn and run and never look back, but something kept him rooted in place. The thought of Marisol out there on her own deepened the urgency with which Elias felt he had to act. He had to do something and then, grimacing, he reluctantly grabbed his rucksack and weapons and followed after the others.
92
Deep in the tangled gloom of the underbelly of New Chicago, forms were visible in the semi-darkness. Farrow, Locks and the other putative resistance fighters, Locks’s partisans, sprinted across an intersection and then slid down an embankment and hopped a fence that ringed a refuse culvert. They eased into the muck at the bottom of the culvert and waited.
Farrow thought to himself that this was how the revolution would begin: utilizing a spiderweb of culverts and sewers, Farrow, Locks, and the other partisans would fan out and hit the power-plant to blind Longman, while simultaneous sending out a recon and surveillance team armed with cameras to assess the results of the initial attack. Then, based on the intelligence received, they would commence an attack against the Codex Building, preferably an hour or two after dawn.
While the Codex Building had back-up generators there were only a smattering of them in most of the other Zones. Some of the CCTV cameras were still hooked to solar batteries and thus, still functional if the power ebbed, but the vast majority were not.
This meant that if the city surveillance system was blacked out and Longman figuratively blinded, even if only for a short while Locks, Farrow, and the others might have enough time to reach the Codex Building before Longman regained his sight. The plan might seem risible to an outsider, but it was the only course of action that seemed viable.
Trudging through the open-air sewer was like going back to some primitive time, Farrow thought. Here he was, filthy-faced and wild-eyed, hip-deep in ooze with a blade in his hand, ready to do great violence to whomever he might encounter. He was, for all intents and purposes, truly in his element.
Somebody whistled and Farrow ran forward out the other end and dropped to the ground. He crawled toward Locks and the other men who were surveying the path ahead. The land here was gloomy, barely visible by a string of naked bulbs hanging from a wire somewhere overhead.
“There it is,” whispered Locks.
Farrow squinted and out in front of them, perhaps a thousand feet away, was a concrete access road. And beyond the road was the outline of a high fence that surrounded their target. A bunching of cinderblock and punched steel buildings that housed the generators and other sources of power for a good portion of the city.
“Ain’t gonna be easy,” Farrow said.
“Nothing worth doing ever is,” said Locks in return.
A pair of guards patrolled near the main gate and a dormant armored vehicle could be seen parked near the front of the primary building.
Farrow looked over at the partisans and several of them had ghost-white faces and jittery eyes. He’d seen that look before in the mirror on the first day he’d walked the beat alone back in Baltimore. The sensation that the safety net had been pulled away and it was time to either sink or swim. It wouldn’t be easy. Like Locks said, it never is. Even now he wondered whether he’d be able to pull the trigger. His secret, the one that nobody knew was that he hadn’t shot a single person since coming to New Chicago. Not a one. During the hunts he’d always fired his weapon, but so had the others and it had been impossible to discern who’d actually done the deed.
He began to wonder whether he’d be able to do it again if need be. Shoot someone down. He wondered whether he even wanted to. Did he want to return to the man he once was? The one back in Ohio and Iowa and the other places where he’d rampaged after his wife was killed and his daughter taken away? Or was that who he really was? Who he was supposed to be?
Another thought crept into his mind. One centering on how easy it had all been. Evading Longman’s men, escaping from the Codex Building. Sure there was some effort and sweat and a good bit of luck, but they’d made it out hadn’t they? Escaped the madman when so many before had failed. Was he being paranoid? What if Longman had willed the whole thing to happen? Allowed them to escape to serve some purpose Farrow could not yet discern. He shook his head. Nobody was that devious. Nobody was able to move that many steps ahead of everyone else. And if Longman was, then God help them all.
Perhaps sensing this, Locks grabbed his arm and Farrow snapped out of his momentary gaze.
“We can do this,” Locks said, gesturing again in the general direction of the partisans. “We can hit the thing head on and take it down and almost everyone that goes in, comes out.”
Farrow watched the members of the recon and surveillance team, the ones with the cameras, disappear into the shadows. He held Locks’s gaze.
“The odds of us breaching the gate and then the interior buildings are slim,” Farrow said.
“Not if we use the right methods,” replied Locks.
Locks looked back and two partisans, a man and a woman who sported the tight visages of the true believer, combat-ran toward him. Wrapped around them were suicide vests.
“God help us, there is no other way,” Locks said, his face grim.
Farrow nodded as Locks held up a balled fist and signaled for the suicide bombers to hold their position. Farrow heard them whispering their prayers, holding hands. He checked his watch and scanned the heavens. In a few hours, the battle would begin in full.
93
The sky was just beginning to lighten, daylight an hour or so off as Moses, Jessup, Marisol and the others moved as one through the brush and past the obstructions that lay in and around the grasslands. They were about a half mile away from the wall.
They wound snail-like through a section of trees and then past a warren of calcified cars and machinery. Jessup and Terry dropped several rifles, bandoliers of ammo, and two rucksacks in certain strategic locations, just in case they had to fall back.
Moses was ahead of them the entire time, plumbing his memory, eyes peeled on the ground ahead. He led them past several additional traps, pointing them out gesturing with both hands.
His nose curled up at a rank odor that rose up off of his sweaty flesh. Something beyond the aroma of perspiration. It was a smell he’d noted only a few times in the past: once when Lish had slammed the door in his face and taken Malik away; and again, only a few days before, when Longman had given him the option of slow death or the expedition out into the grasslands in search of the clanker box. It was a profoundly disturb
ing funk. The stench of weakness and betrayal and defeat.
The clanker box felt like a sack of stones in Moses’s right hand, but he wouldn’t let it weigh him down. He couldn’t. If it was going to happen, it would be very soon and so he picked up the pace. Just a footstep at first. Moving faster, hoping the others hadn’t noticed that he’d quickened his step, putting the slightest bit of additional distance between himself and the others.
Peripherally, Moses glanced back and didn’t see Elias or Marisol and for that he was grateful. Whether they’d stayed behind or taken off for parts unknown was of no real moment. All that mattered was that they’d listened to him. They’d listened and would most likely survive what was to happen and for that he said a silent prayer. Any deaths that might be lodged on his conscience were quickly allayed by the thought that whatever happened next, at least he’d saved them. That had to count for something.
Several hundred yards behind Moses, Jessup white-knuckled his rifle, sucking the air through his teeth. His senses were on overload. He didn’t like the idea of moving out in the open toward the wall. Didn’t like it one bit. It was against every lesson and tactic he’d learned in the military, but what choice did they have?
His vision swung around and up and that’s when he noticed it for the first time. Moses didn’t sweat. Jesus! Even when he’d launched himself out of the portable shitter, there wasn’t a drop of perspiration on the man. But there it was now. Roping the back of his neck. A long shimmering, strand of sweat beads.
The significance of this, if there was any, was lost on him as he hedged a look to his left. Terry was there, silently nodding before slipping toward a thicket of shrubbery, unfolding a bipod on his rifle, preparing to set up a crude sniping blind. Jessup whistled at Jon and motioned him to advance, which he did, moving with alacrity toward Moses.
Unnoticed by the others, Marisol had drifted off to the right and was moving briskly through the shrubbery like a gazelle.
She ran in an effort to stifle the emotions that raged within. Her feelings for Elias, she couldn’t deny she had them, competed with the strong desire to avenge her father, brother, and mother. Suddenly, uncalled, an image came to her. A vision of Longman grinning like a madman, pulling the slide back on a pistol before he blew her father and brother into eternity.
The need for vengeance was strong and soon swallowed up everything else, all the other feelings of fear and yes, love. Just like that, the old sensations came back to her, the heightened situational awareness and singing of blood in her ears. The ones she’d always experienced during the Absolution runs. She looked up and realized she was almost there and she was certain, if only for a moment, that she could smell Longman.
Elias was the last one through the grass, following Marisol at such a distance that he periodically lost sight of her in the bracken. What a fool he’d been to confide in her. To kiss her! He did his best to reconstruct the whole ordeal, but the more he contemplated it, the more embarrassed he became. After what had happened, there was even more justification for him to bolt now, wasn’t there? More reason to leave before she saw him again. Before she laughed and belittled him. So then why was he moving forward? Why in the holy hell was he running after her? It was as if his mind was heading in one direction, but his body simply wouldn’t obey.
He curled through a hedgerow and over a thicket that sprouted from upturned asphalt, he slipped onto a path that led around a bend and reached out and grabbed a webbed section of brush.
He gasped when he saw it, the edifice springing up into view. Rising over everything, a quarter mile away. Its massive shadow filling the horizon.
The wall.
94
While the wall that ostensibly protected New Chicago appeared formidable on the outside, the inner portion of it was in a slow state of disrepair. Having been built in various stages with less-than-skilled labor and materials of questionable value, it was a constant struggle to maintain.
Groups of men and a few women lived and worked in squat quarters nestled inside the wall. They slept in anonymous little warrens, barely larger than gas-station restrooms, where they functioned as guards, or lookouts, or maintenance workers.
As dawn broke a shift change was in order and a tall, thin, troll-like guard was exiting his sleeping quarters on the interior of the wall.
The guard made his way slowly over a mad tatter of gangplanks and walkways that led through the wall’s innards. He tongued the sides of a scrap of paper to test whether it was worthy of holding a pinch of The White. Licking the paper, he rolled a cigarette. He reached a metal locker and inserted a key, then removed an assault rifle and a magazine of ammo. Clutching these, he struck off back over the catwalk and mounted a set of creaking, wooden steps and moved up.
The begging daylight shuddered in from gaps in the wall, spots where the poorly welded sections of steel and aluminum were pulling apart. He smiled to himself, realizing how precarious the whole thing was. If some force from the outside hit the walls at just the right spot, the whole thing might come crumbling down.
Reaching the end of the stairs, he grabbed a handhold and pulled himself up onto the wall. The flooring here was metal grating, four feet wide in most places.
In the past, the wall had been lightly guarded. Over the course of the last day, there was more activity. More men keeping watch, more laborers bringing arms and ammunition up to be stored in metal cases that were bolted to the sides of the wall.
He’d even seen some of the killers that normally
stood beside Longman at official functions and the like, so he knew that something was definitely in the air.
The guard took a long pull from his cigarette, the drug filling his lungs, the high taking hold, a loopy grin on his face. The smoke bobbed like a metronome and the guard nodded at the sentry he was relieving and moved into the turret where he was to stand watch.
He inhaled a final time and then ashed his cigarette, the high making him weak-kneed as he looked down onto the land on the other side of the wall. His attention was immediately arrested by something out in the distance. Something or some things were moving through the grasslands.
At first he thought it was the drug and he squinted and rubbed his eyes. When he opened them, there was a man walking toward the wall. He gasped and sighted down his rifle to zone in on the potential target.
It was indeed a man. A man as black as the bottom
of an ink well. A man he’d previously seen during the Absolution runs. He was strolling through the grass, carrying a metal object in his right hand. The guard strained his eyes. He could barely make the black man out. But yes. It was Moses!
95
Liza swayed as she crept down the staircase, utterly lost inside the Codex Building. She was shaking, trembling, confused, wanting to go back for Ava, but realizing there was no way she could save her. Her hands slid over the scabrous metal banister as she angled, sidewinder-like, down and around the staircase to another door.
On the other side she could hear the heavy thump of what sounded like industrial equipment, so she inched the door open and peeked inside. Her line of sight was partially veiled by whorls of smoke kicked up by ponderous generators and other machines that spit and thrummed.
Liza felt a sharp pain in her stomach and leaned against a wall to catch her breath. She stood there, unfocused for several seconds, lost in contemplation. The pain reminded her of the child growing in her belly and suddenly she saw Jessup. She wasn’t even sure that she actually loved Jessup. Not really. But there was a connection and maybe that was enough to sustain them. Maybe she’d learn to love him and then the three of them would start a normal family somewhere far away. Her mind fixed on the big man for a beat. She wondered where he was and whether he and the others were searching for her. Feeling ashamed at focusing on her own predicament, rather than that of Ava and the others, she crept on.
Peeking out from behind a massive structural beam, she spied a bank of controls manned by a lopsided, middle-ag
ed man in a shabby worker’s smock sporting a large belt laden with tools.
The man was stooped over the panels, prying open sections and jiggering the electronic innards with a wrench and a long screwdriver.
She wondered about the man. He looked harmless enough. Maybe he wasn’t like the others. Maybe he was just some grunt, conscripted by the madman, forced to labor here.
Maybe he would help her find a way out.
Sensing no other option, she tiptoed forward, the man’s back drawing near. She sucked in a mouthful of air and balled up one fist just in case.
The man reacted to the soft patter of her footsteps.
He slowly turned and stared at her.
“I’m sorry,” Liza said. “I’m a little lost.”
“Aren’t we all,” said the man, a beatific light in his eyes.
Her balled fist went limp.
“Can you show me the way out?” Liza asked.
“You’re not from here are you?” the man asked.
“What makes you think that?”
“Your eyes mostly. They don’t have the darkness behind them,” he replied. “Plus you have your teeth. All of them. You’re like the lovelies that Longman keeps for on the upper floors.”
Liza took a step back.
The man’s face morphed.
An evil leer splashed his face.
“Why don’t you tell me what your name is, sweet thing,” the man cooed.
Liza didn’t reply and the man advanced.
“Did the man send you here as a gift? Did Longman send you as a present for all the good things I’ve done?”
“I’m sorry I bothered you,” Liza sputtered. “I must be in the wrong place.”
The man’s mouth peeled back.
“Oh, no, dearie,” he said. “You’re exactly at the right spot at the right time.”
Blood Runners: Box Set Page 39