by Sam Winston
There wasn’t even a means for staking a claim. But some still did. Even right here. Exactly here. The dark low noise of a tarpaulin flapping signaled it. The day was fading and the sun was dying and they heard that batwing rustle from off to one side of the road. Up along a half-circle of blacktop with a big wrecked building at the far end. The blacktop surrounding a patch of broken dirt and in the middle of the dirt a steel pole jutting up. A chain hanging loose from the top of the pole, clanging in the little breeze. The low rustling sound rose from somewhere back in the direction of the building. They weren’t ignorant and superstitious like city people about what kind of terrors might be out here, but the girl was only five years old and no bigger than a breath and the sounds were darkly suggestive. The ghost ship clanging of the chain and the liquid rustle of something furtive rising up as the sun went down.
She leaned into her father like a bareback rider and nudged her knees into his shoulders and whispered “Go,” and he went. Running or at least jogging, his breath coming harder. Going not away from anything, he told himself, but toward something. Some better place to string a rope between a pair of trees and hang their tarp from it. Some secluded place. All alone he’d have slept anywhere, but not tonight. Not with her. He’d have slept by the roadside with trucks screaming past or under a ragged outcropping with bats fidgeting over his head. He’d have slept in a newdug grave if he’d found one. But not now. He thought he’d pictured this trip pretty well but he hadn’t pictured this part. Their exposure in that makeshift tent. Her exposure.
The fear constricted his throat and made his breath come harder, and he jogged on as long as he could but not long. The dirt road was washboarded and riddled with potholes and he told himself he didn’t want to break a leg in the early dark. Where would they be then. He and looked back and saw his footprints in the dirt and didn’t like seeing them. Standing there panting. What if somebody. What if. Don’t think. He set the girl down and didn’t let go of her hand and she wouldn’t have let him anyway. “Let’s keep going,” he said.
“Where,” she said.
“Just a little farther.”
“I’m hungry.”
“Me too.”
They slowed so he could find an apple in her backpack and they shared it bite by bite. The PharmAgra label got caught in his teeth and he spat most of it out. She was still hungry and so was he, but neither of them said it. They’d eaten the apple down to the seeds and the stem and they were starving but who wouldn’t be.
She said, “We could plant these seeds if we wanted.”
“Sure,” he said. “Grow ourselves an apple tree. But that’d take a few years.” Working at the rest of that sticker with a fingernail. “We’re better off eating what we packed, don’t you think? That’s quicker.”
She sighed and gave a theatrical shrug. “I meant when we get home.” Like wouldn’t he ever understand anything.
They marched on. They came to a ruined intersection with lamp posts and sign posts and a traffic signal still hanging overhead on wires. Little gabled roofs over the stacked holes where the colored lights used to be. All of it hanging dark up there against the rising moon. He pointed it out and described what of it she couldn’t see. He said it sort of looked like a big birdhouse. She asked him what kind of birds lived there and he said they probably didn’t have birds here anymore. Just like they didn’t have them at home. Which he guessed wasn’t much of an answer, so he said maybe robins. Robins like in the book she had. Robin redbreasts. But they’re all sleeping now. It’s bedtime for everybody.
They turned there and went up a little distance to where some trees grew. Settled in among them and chose two and hung the rope from one to the other and draped the tarpaulin over the rope like a pup tent. Got supper out. Ate it cold rather than risk a fire, even a low one, even here surrounded by close-set trees and undergrowth dense with the last of summer.
* * *
Whoever woke them up had a flashlight. Over the years Weller had found plenty of flashlights in the dump and he had devised theories about how they worked, but he’d never seen one lit up. This one was shining into his eyes at close range and the man holding it was drawing back to kick him in the kidneys a second time, so he didn’t have the opportunity to think about it any. He just recoiled. Recoiled and half sat up and put himself between whoever this was and his daughter.
“Hands behind your head.”
Weller reached to retrieve his glasses.
“Behind your head or off it comes.” A clicking sound in the dark. “And then who’ll look after your baby girl?”
Weller put his hands behind his head.
“That’s better.”
The voice belonged to an old man. A powerful old man by how he kicked and a cunning old man by where he kicked, but an old man just the same. An old man who’d lived on cigarettes and solitude by the sound of his voice.
Weller shifted to block Penny better but the old man told him not to get smart. Keep his ass right where it was if he didn’t feel like getting shot. Although if he felt like getting shot he’d come to the right place and the old man would be happy to oblige. It would make things easier. He coughed and spit and said, “A dead fellow don’t complain so much when you take his brand.” Keeping the gun on him and making a rapid cutting motion across his own neck with the flashlight. The beam jumping around in the trees and then settling back on Weller and his child.
Penny peering around from behind her father. Light bouncing off her eyes.
“Come on now. Get up. We got places to go.”
They got up.
“Load those bags full.” He stood clear of the pushed-back tarp, among the trees, pointing with the beam. “Don’t leave anything behind. That’s right. That’s right. The blanket and all.”
Weller jammed and shoved, but everything that fit the day before didn’t fit now.
“You fold up that tarp and take it. I’ll carry the rope. Nobody’s coming back for any of this, so don’t get ideas.”
Weller didn’t have ideas.
“Now come on.”
They went back the way they came. Weller with Penny on his back and the old man behind with the gun and the flashlight. The flashlight burning like it would burn forever. They went down to the intersection with the birdhouse hanging overhead and they turned and retraced their steps from before.
“That’s a nice kitty cat you got there, sweetheart.”
No answer.
“You like kitty cats?”
No answer. She just wrapped her arms tighter around her father’s neck. Making his breath come harder. He stopped and the old man hollered at him to go on and he went on.
“Turn here.” The place where they’d heard that flapping sound. No sound now. Not that low rustle and not the beating of that chain. No air moving and no sound. They kept to the half-circle of blacktop. The way was uphill and they’d been hurrying and Weller slowed from the slope and Penny’s weight and his desperation all combined. The man came close and pressed something into his side. The barrel of the gun or the flashlight, who could tell. “March,” he said. Giving Weller a shove that set him stumbling. Turning off the light. Sunrise.
It was an old elementary school. Childish drawings still hanging in what few windows were still glassed, faded-out drawings that manifested themselves one by one in the rising dawn. The rest of the windows gaping. They went around to the side. Down a little alleyway cut out of the building like where they’d keep the trash cans. A concrete curb along one side surrounding an opening covered over with a blue plastic tarp gray in the pale light. “Pull that back and go on down.” Stairs below it into darkness. “Go on. Nothing down there’s going to bite.”
It was make a stand now or don’t make one ever. Weller kicked at the tarp and said he had to put the girl down or else he’d lose his balance.
The old man said just don’t get smart.
Weller put her down. She went backwards a half step and no more. Toward the mouth of the alleyway. Weller l
ooked toward the old man and said, “I don’t know what you’ve got in mind but you don’t need us. Just take whatever we’ve got. Take whatever you want.”
The old man pointed the gun at the child and said rest assured he would do exactly that.
* * *
Alongside a doorway at the bottom, three yellow triangles set inside a black circle. Black paint and yellow paint on a metal sign that was dented and buckled and rusted through in places but unmistakable. The words Fallout Shelter. There were no more children in this old school building, but there was still a place for children to go when the worst happened.
“Welcome to HQ,” said the old man. He threw a switch and a generator somewhere started up and a half-dozen lightbulbs strained to life. Clear glass bulbs hanging from wires strung around a big shadowy storeroom with pallets stacked along three walls and a long bare table in the middle. A couple of folding chairs. A single cot and a upturned shipping crate with a few things arranged on it. A heavy ashtray and cigarettes and an antique Zippo lighter. A water glass and some old magazines.
“Have a seat. Both of you.” Pointing with the gun.
Weller took the girl by her shoulder and directed her. They sat side by side at the table waiting for they didn’t know what. For whatever came next.
“Hands on the table,” said the old man. “Up where I can see them.”
Penny had to reach.
The old man drifted toward the upended crate and picked up a cigarette and lit it. Took the ashtray and put it on the long table. Didn’t sit down but looked like he’d considered it. “I’m in the collections business,” he said.
“Collecting what?”
“I think you know.” Tendons standing out in his neck and a vein pulsing in his forehead in the scratchy lightbulb light. Drawing on his cigarette and blowing smoke and coughing and the smoke making Penny cough too. “I think you know what I’m after,” he said.
“I don’t. I don’t know.”
Chewing at his lip for a minute and then laughing in one small burst. “I’m after whatever pays the freight,” he said. “A little flexibility never hurt an old soldier like me.”
He meant it. Old soldier. It was in his bearing and in his quickness and in his ease with the gun.
Weller took in the room more closely. A bunker, steeped in the cold closeness of anything underground, jammed with enough supplies to last a school full of children a month or a single man the rest of his life. Everything packed solid, as if the contents themselves were meant as reinforcement. Pallet after pallet of canned and boxed food arranged floor to ceiling. Water in barrels. Cases labeled Survival Crackers, which he guessed meant hardtack. All of that plus piled up medical kits and tightly folded blankets and cardboard cartons printed with mysterious letters and numbers by some government office. Everything neat and square and sharp, policed as if someone important might be coming to inspect at any moment. Including the handful of personal belongings on the upended crate. Personal belongings. They stood out. Like this was a prison cell or a barracks.
He looked steadily at the old man and asked him straight. “Are you with Black Rose, or what?”
The old man stiffened. Prideful in spite of himself. “You could say that.” He smiled just a quarter of an inch. Disappearing behind Weller’s back to hide it.
“I didn’t know they were out here anymore.”
“They’re not. But once you’re Black Rose, you’re always Black Rose.” Opening a locker or a cabinet back there. Fussing with something.
“That’s what I’ve heard.” Half turning. Like maybe they’d found something to talk about and he could use it to his advantage.
“Don’t get any ideas.”
“I won’t.”
“The girl either.”
“She won’t.” She was sitting up against her father rockstill. Frozen like some prey animal intent on making itself invisible. Her hands still folded and her eyes bigger than they had ever been in all her short life. Weller wanted to put his hand on her shoulder or give her some other small comfort but he didn’t quite dare, and then he did it anyway.
The old man left off what he was doing and came back around. He stood opposite them at the table and kept his cigarette between his teeth and poked one thick finger deep into the ashtray. Dug around. Separating things. Ash and butts from some other heavier objects that had sunken to the bottom. Little metallic pieces that made scraping noises against the glass. “I probably ought to keep these in a jar or something,” he said. “If I had a jar.” Pushing the ashtray forward so that Weller could see. A dozen or so little metal lozenges and cubes and bulbs, none of them more than a quarter of an inch long, most of them shiny and gleaming in spite of the ash but some brushed down to a matte finish and some not entirely metal but made partly of plastic or rubber with one or two little knobs or protrusions jutting out. Six or eight different configurations altogether. “These are where the money is,” he said. Tapping his ashy finger on the tabletop. An old prospector done with his panning. “I don’t mean these particular ones. They’ve been scanned off clean. Once they’ve been scanned off they’ve got no value except as souvenirs.”
“Souvenirs.”
“Like how the Indians used to take your scalp. Counting coup.”
“Those are brands, then.”
“Yes sir.” The old man picked out a rectangular slab with a narrow black stripe. “This one’s AmeriBank,” he said. Alongside it was a tiny one not much larger than a ball bearing, perfectly round. “Mutual Electric.” A glistening square with a metal prongs like antennas mounted in rubber on either side. “Black Rose.” He tapped at the side of his own throat. “Extremely rare.”
“I’ll bet it is.”
“Extremely hard to come by.” He tapped ashes over the little metal bits. Drew on the cigarette one last time and stabbed it out and stabbed it out again just to be sure and began circling the table. “What happens is people come around. People with different ideas about how a man might make a dollar. As a rule they’re Management types like you, slumming in the Zone. Got some deal they’re running when they ought to be minding their company’s business.”
“I’m not Management.”
The old man winked. “Sure. Sure. None of the other fellows are, either. Just so you know.”
“I’m not Management. Honest.”
“Time will tell,” he said. “Anyway, you know what I’m talking about. Black markets. Gray markets. Every kind of market there is.” He kept walking around the table. Behind Weller now. The sound of that locker opening again. “Contraband and so forth. Situations develop where the companies that pay for my services just aren’t getting their fair share of certain transactions.”
Weller turned to see what the man was up to in the locker. He was opening a brown bottle and he was soaking a rag with what was in it, and the air was choked all of a sudden with the high smell of a chemical solvent, and before Weller could move the old man was on him and he had the wet rag tight over his mouth with that solvent smell intolerably strong and he was out. He didn’t even hear his own daughter scream.
* * *
He awoke on the cold floor with adhesive tape around his wrists and a sick feeling in his stomach and a slit in his throat that wouldn’t quit bleeding. Crumpled on the floor in the corner, picking at the sticky tape and wanting to vomit but not knowing where. Feeling blood run down his neck. A little warm trickle of it dripping slow. His heartbeat behind it.
He came up to his elbows and saw the old man bent over the table. The back of him, working at something. Holding his breath and letting it out and drawing it in again hard, and then letting it out with a curse on it. The girl’s blond hair spilling.
He got to his feet and nearly toppled but didn’t. He tried to go noiselessly but his feet went any way they wanted. He reached the table and picked up the big glass ashtray and the old man looked up at him without really looking, and he raised the ashtray and swung it but missed. Miscalculated. Threw himself off balance and the
ash tray smashed on the concrete floor. Ash and glass and old brands everywhere. The old man ducking and a scalpel in his hand snagging Weller’s forearm, drawing more blood. The girl on the table wasn’t taped down like her father had been. She was just lying there limp. A narrow cut in her throat gaping a little and blood smeared around it and the old man’s index finger red to the first knuckle.
“Go easy there,” said the old man. Dropping the scalpel. Raising up his hands and stepping back to let Weller reach his daughter, who was even then coming around. “No harm done.”
Weller gathered himself bent over his daughter and held her close and wanted to stay there with his arms around her forever. Just putting himself between her and the world. He bent there breathing hard and sick with the girl waking up and beginning to get sick herself a couple of minutes behind him. The girl gasping and turning her head to the side and her father helping her turn it and the sickness coming unstoppable and her father thinking it served the old man right. Let her finish. Let her purge herself of the old man’s poison. Let her give it all back. Wiping her mouth with his shirt when she finished and picking her up and holding her close. Wishing he could kill the old man but still too dizzy to step clear of the table where he leaned and fearful of putting his daughter down anyway. Leaving her unprotected.
The old man sat on the cot, smoking a cigarette and watching them. Looking exhausted the way an old man will, an old man who’s been through something miserable and come out the other side. Even something of his own making. The stoppered brown bottle stood on the crate with the water glass and a different clear bottle stood with it. The gun on the pile of magazines. The cigarette in a fist in between his knees, the white of it stained red. “There’s rubbing alcohol if you want to clean up those cuts,” he said. “I’d recommend it. Never know what you might catch.” He raised the cigarette and pulled in smoke through the residue of their bleeding. “It’s your call, though.”