Blood Runners: Box Set

by George S. Mahaffey Jr.

  107

  Minutes, that’s all Moses thought he and Malik had before an assassination team came looking for them. They’d served their purpose, they’d betrayed the girl and the others and now they were expendable.

  Malik was no longer a young child, but Moses was carrying him just the same, holding him in his arms, never wanting to let him go again. They neared the Pits and Malik squirmed and Longman lowered him to the ground.

  Malik looked up at Moses, at the stranger before him because that’s what Moses was even though the boy could see much of himself in the haggard face that looked back at him.

  “I want to go back,” Malik said.

  “To where?”

  “The Codex Building.”

  “We can’t go back there, son.”

  Malik’s eyebrows arched.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re coming with me now.”

  “To where?”

  Good question, Moses thought. If they were lucky, hell, if they were downright blessed, they’d have just enough time to devise a plan to get on the other side of the wall. There was no other way. If they stayed in New Chicago it was only a matter of time before they were murdered.

  “We’re going to the other side of the wall, Malik.”

  “There’s nothing out there,” Malik replied.

  “The sun doesn’t just rise and fall on New Chicago, Malik. There’s other and better things on the other side of the wall. There’s a new world out there.”

  Malik considered this, tapping his foot on the ground. Then he looked Moses dead in the eye.

  “What’s your name anyway?” asked Malik.

  “Jesus, kid, I’m your father.”

  “I heard when you said that before, but what’s your name?”

  Christ, had he actually forgotten to tell him his name? Moses wondered.

  “Moses. I’m – my name is Moses.”

  “That’s a weird name.”

  “It’s the one I was given.”

  “Okay, so it’s Moses.”

  “I’m your father so call me that and add a ‘sir’ to the end. Boy don’t call his father by his first name.”

  “I’m not a boy.”

  Moses softened. He forced a smile.

  “I know you’re not.”

  “How do I know you’re my father?”

  “Cause I say.”

  “Just cause you say, doesn’t make it so,” said Malik.

  Moses did a slow burn. Then he reached a finger down and tapped Malik on the nose.

  “You know where you got that from?” Moses asked.

  Malik was silent and Moses pointed at his own nose and the low nasal bridge and flattened nostrils. Father and son had the exact same nose.

  “That originally came from your grandfather who gave it to me and then I passed it on to you. You’re welcome by the way,” Moses said.

  Malik looked Moses up and down. He noticed Moses’s right hand which was trembling like a leaf in a stiff wind.

  “You’re scared aren’t you?” Malik asked.

  “I ain’t scared of nothing,” Moses said, betrayed by his quivering pinky finger.

  He reached out a hand and took Malik and guided him down into the outer area around the Pits. Some of the Runners caught sight of him and shouted his name, but Moses didn’t stop.

  He and Malik dashed past the training area and beyond the concrete domes and the cemetery where the dead Runners lay. The pair passed under the crossbeam that marked the way through the alley to Moses’s office.

  Upon entering his office, Moses was surprised to see that it remained intact. He’d expected that Longman and his goons would have trashed the place, but it was largely untouched.

  Moses locked the door and moved to his desk as Malik stopped and stared at the only photo in sight: the cracked photo of him and Moses.

  Moses dropped to the ground and pulled up the section of flooring beneath his desk. His eyes closed, he prayed that the tin-punched box was still there and by some miracle it was. Still full of small, silver bars.

  Moses hoisted up the box and grabbed a nearby rucksack and placed it inside. Then he dropped to his chest and reached into the floor cavity again and fished around. The two older-model pistols were still there, taped to joists in the crawlspace. Moses grabbed the pistols and four magazines of ammunition and stood to see Malik watching him, cracked photo in hand.

  Malik pointed to the pistols.

  “Can I get one of those?” asked Malik.

  “You know your way around one?”

  “I told you I’m not a boy anymore.”

  Moses stared at one of the guns which was dark and oily.

  “You ever use one?” asked Moses.

  Malik was silent.

  “Malik, you answer me.”

  Malik looked up.

  “Yes, I’ve shot them before.”

  “You kill anything?”

  “No, sir.”

  Thank God, Moses thought. At least he’d been spared the killing, but for how long Moses was unsure. He knew that to get over the wall they would have to do things that no father would want a boy to do. It was either that or they placed the barrels in their mouths and ended the whole thing now. He wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t.

  With great reluctance, Moses handed over one of the guns and Malik took and inspected it, expertly pulling the slid back. Then he thrust out an open palm.

  “I’m gonna need some ammo, Moses.”

  Moses just stared at him.

  Moses handed over a single magazine.

  “Thanks, Dad,” said Malik.

  Ten minutes later, Moses and Malik had slipped out a rear entrance and angled around the back of the Pits unseen. Moses was pleasantly surprised to see that Malik ran as fast, or faster, than he did. Father and son hit the curved trails of asphalt and hardened dirt that paralleled the river and soon they had vanished into a latticework of shops and forgotten buildings, making their way toward the outer edges of the wall.

  108

  Jessup and Terry ran through the tall grass, circumventing a windfall of abandoned cars and industrial machines at the skirt of an industrial park.

  They took cover behind a ribbon of overturned coal-cars that lay beside a ruined set of train tracks. Peering up and over a small mountain of coal, they could see something in the distance. A quarter mile behind them, Longman’s killers roamed through the grass, looking for something to kill.

  “Those bastards are incredibly persistent,” Terry said.

  “They won’t be when they see that,” Jessup said, gesturing to a brace of Thresher who were hiding under a section of plastic tarping that had been snagged in a section of foliage. The tarp partially concealed a hidden spot in the middle of a morass of trees that was near an enormous, open section of piping leading into the ground.

  Jessup watched as one of Longman’s brutes parted a section of shrubbery to reveal the hiding spot. The man spotted the Thresher who ducked down into the ruptured pipe. Jessup watched as the man reacted and signaled for his comrades to fall back.

  Jessup and Terry sensed that Longman’s men were somehow out beyond their position, so they crept back through the undergrowth toward the place where they’d stashed most of the goodies they’d lifted from the armaments vault.

  Jessup could see that Terry was laboring, so he stopped near the edge of what was once a city park. The men stood silently for a long beat, Jessup watching Terry’s chest rise and fall.

  “You can say it if you want to,” Jessup said.

  “What?”

  “‘I told you so.’”

  “I’d never say that, J.”

  “But you’re thinking it aren’t you?”

  Terry shook his head. “We all knew what the risks were.”

  “Sure, just like all the others times. That ambush in Elgin, the set-up near Cedar Grove when we lost Tim and Brandon and Mister Bennings. Bottom line is, I keep fucking up.”

  “You’ve always done the
best you could.”

  “And lost a lot of good people along the way.”

  “She’s still alive, Jessup. Liza. I can feel it,” said Terry.

  Jessup kept his eyes downcast. “I know she is, Terry. I know she’ll find a way to make it.”

  “She’s a fighter.”

  “Yeah, that’s what worries me,” Jessup replied, leaning against a rusted metal pole that used to hold a street-light.

  “He set us up, didn’t he?” Terry said. “Moses double-crossed us.”

  Jessup nodded, sucking on his teeth. “I had a chance to put him down and I didn’t do it.”

  “Better that you didn’t. Better to let him live with what he’s done,” said Terry. “What happened to the kid by the way? What happened to Elias?” Terry asked.

  “He ran away.”

  “Jesus, I never would’ve thought it.”

  “He lost heart,” Jessup said.

  Jessup kicked at the ground.

  “So what the hell are we gonna do?” Jessup asked. “Don’t see a whole lot of good options right now.”

  “I was a pretty shitty soldier, J, ‘cause I never bought into the whole team thing, but I do remember my C.O. telling us that most of the time an enemy does not expect a frontal assault.”

  Jessup gnawed on his lip, deep in contemplation.

  “They won’t expect us so soon, that’s for damn sure,” Jessup said.

  “Course there is the matter of that godforsaken wall,” Terry replied.

  “Those kids found a way out didn’t they? If there’s a way out, that means there’s a way in.”

  Terry nodded.

  “No matter what happens I want you to know I’ll stand with you. You tell me what to do and I’ll do it, Jessup.”

  Jessup smiled and extended a hand and Terry took it and half-hugged Jessup.

  “We hit the truck and take what we can carry and then we go back to the skiff,” Jessup whispered. “Then we find a way inside the wall.”

  Terry nodded and then they headed out through the city’s overgrown urban canyons, shunting up and around a city park on the edge of the grasslands, heading back toward the water.

  109

  Elias knew he only had a moment to prepare as he stared up at the Thresher who spit and mewled at him from above the hole. It was just pulling back its arm when BOOM! The monster’s head disappeared in a plume of bone and gristle. Several seconds stretched by and then another face became visible. A face Elias instantly recognized. Bennie!

  Elias did a double-take, rubbed his eyes, then looked up again. Bennie was still there, alive, although he appeared as if he wished he wasn’t. He held a machine-pistol in hand, the smoke curling up past his eyes. Bennie had the eyes of a heavy combat veteran now and his face and body looked as if they’d been carved up by knives. There were bruises and lacerations everywhere that seeped red.

  Without uttering a word, Elias reached up a hand and Bennie lowered himself as far as he could so that he could grab Elias’s wrist and pull him back up onto solid ground.

  “You’re alive,” Elias said.

  “For the moment.”

  Bennie leaned down to within an inch of Elias, his voice barely audible.

  “Here’s the deal kid: there is no small time for small talk. We move now, we move fast, we do not stop for shit, you got that?”

  Elias did and followed Bennie who ran lightning quick through a gap in a chain link fence and up a staircase that led to a landing pad above what was once an industrial loading dock.

  From their perch they had a decent view of the surrounding lands and could see where the Thresher were, and where they were not.

  Elias leaned against the rear wall of the pad and slowly lowered himself to the ground. Bennie handed him a dented canteen and he took a long pull from it.

  “I thought you were dead.”

  “So did those things out there ‘fore I went and saved your skinny ass.”

  Elias handed the canteen back.

  “How’d you make it out alive?” Elias asked.

  “Only some of me did,” Bennie said, half laughing while pointing to the deep, oozing gouges on his legs and back.

  “Three of the damn things jumped me when we went for the vault. They herded me against this sinkhole, maybe five feet across and twenty feet deep. Thought they were gonna have me for dinner, but guess what? They can’t jump. Bastards can sniff the air like blood-hounds, but they can’t friggin’ jump particularly well. So I hurdled the hole, hit the other side and ran for cover. What about the others?”

  “They’re all gone.”

  Bennie blanched as Elias’s head dipped.

  “It was a trap,” Elias continued. “The whole thing. We went to the wall to make a deal and Moses, he set us up.”

  “Jesus. Even Jessup and the others?”

  “Jessup and Terry left. Jon’s dead…”

  “The girl you were with?” Bennie asked.

  “They took her back inside the wall.”

  “Where’d Jessup and Terry go to?”

  “Probably to get the stuff we stashed in the Jeep,” Elias said with a shrug.

  Bennie’s face fell and it looked to Elias as if he might burst into a storm of tears. Several seconds passed and he fixed his expression in a fierce scowl and grabbed his weapon and starting walking back down the staircase.

  “Whoa. Where are you going?!” Elias asked.

  Bennie stopped and looked back.

  “They’re going to get the others aren’t they? Jessup and Terry?”

  “I don’t know that for sure,” said Elias.

  “I know those two,” said Bennie. “They ain’t gonna leave anyone behind. If I was them, I’d be heading for the wall.”

  “There’s no way they can get inside,” Elias said.

  “There’s a chance, ain’t there?”

  Elias slowly nodded. “I guess … maybe … yes.”

  “Then that’s where I’m going too.”

  “Why?” asked Elias.

  “I’d say they’re my friends, Elias, but actually they’re more than that. They’re my family now. They’re all I have. And if they’re willing to put it all on the line, then so am I.”

  Elias stood and held Bennie’s look.

  “If you decide not to come,” Bennie continued, “I won’t hold it against you. I will, however, say a prayer for you. Because I do believe that turning your back on folks who’ve saved your ass is the only sin that God won’t forgive.”

  And with that, Bennie racked his chin into his neck and spun in a flourish and moved out at a brisk trot.

  110

  Marisol was only partially conscious, rousing to find herself strapped in a chair in a room that was devoid of light. The very same room Moses had found himself in when being questioned by Longman.

  Her head was gripped in some kind of metal vice that made it almost impossible for her to move in any direction. Her gaze fixed on the gloomy space before her. A ringing filled her ears and her head swam. She squinted, her slitted eyes searching the murk. Instantly, she thought back on a time many years before, when she accompanied her brother for a swim on a moonless night in the Gulf of Mexico.

  She was bobbing in the water, unable to see more than a few inches in front of her face. But she felt something beyond her brother was in the water with her. Something larger, something hidden whose very presence cast off a faint sound. Almost like an indrawn breath.

  She remembered plunging her head underwater, the brine stinging her eyes, nearly obscuring the massive form that swam by underneath her. Just as when she’d been in the water, she could sense a presence nearby. Something or somebody was in the room with her.

  And then came a voice, distant at first, then closer. It sounded as smooth as slowly churned butter, repeating words she’d heard before.

  “It’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

  Her eyes widened and a form materialized out of the shadows on the other side of the ro
om. It was Longman. He smiled and advanced on her, reaching out to hold her chin in his massive hands, admiring her features.

  “Even in a dirty swamp, a lotus blossom may bloom,” Longman said. “I never really believed that was true until this very moment.”

  He smiled at her and she glared back silently, stone-faced.

  “The words I said before. About falling into the hands of the living God. Do you know them?” he asked.

  “I heard you say them,” she replied.

  “Ah, but do you know where they come from?”

  She remained silent.

  “They’re from the Book. The Bible. Hebrews. Chapter Ten, Verse Thirty-One.”

  “They’re just words,” she muttered. “Words are bullshit.”

  Longman laughed at this and clapped his hands. More light filtered in to reveal things Marisol hadn’t noticed before. Her eyes ratcheted down to see the metal gutters on the floor, the oval table before her, the horrible things arranged under the table’s glass top, pieces of human anatomy.

  She’d seen death so many times before that the fingers and noses and ears under the glass, while horrible, barely registered. She was too busy watching Longman as he entered the light in full, smiling like a child hiding a secret.

  “Toward the end, before the Unraveling I probably would have agreed with you that words were just words. I mean, they’d lost almost all meaning hadn’t they? Facts too. They were … elastic … fungible. Of course that was by design, by the men and women whose job it was to keep everyone pitted against each other.”

  Longman drifted out of sight. Marisol could hear his breathing, his voice, but couldn’t see him. His hands suddenly came around the edges of her shoulders.

  “But now I know, having endured more than one man should have to endure, that words are sometimes the most powerful tools at one’s disposal. They can be used to build people up, or put them down. They can be, for lack of a better word, weaponized.”

  He moved alongside her and looked up at the ceiling, deep in contemplation.