by Chris Lowry
"Which is?"
"Chief Administrator."
"Like a mayor?"
"We have The Mayor. I’m more like a City Manager."
The Mayor?
There weren't too many cities left, and I was almost sad that someone was trying to bring back a role I traditionally assigned to politicians.
But we weren't in a traditional world anymore, so maybe it was time I expanded my mind.
"The Mayor is...out," said the man in the suit. “I’m Phil.”
He stuck out his right hand and left the gun in his pants.
His grip was strong, which surprised me. Closer, I could see bunches of muscles at his shoulder and neck.
The suit was an affectation, a way to throw off anyone who looked at it.
I’d known guys like him before the fall. Most of them had been in special forces with one of the military branches.
Gray men.
Guys you would never suspect of being bad ass.
The square crow was hiding something.
Phil moved with an easy grace I associated with an athlete. But he looked like a college professor.
"What brings you here?" he asked with what appeared to be a genuine smile.
"Z's," I answered. "Do you get many people showing up at the gate?"
The smile floated, but didn't seem connected to his eyes or any other part of his body. His shoulders looked tense, his right fist clinched.
The good nature was an act.
"That's not really an answer," he said.
He held his left hand down by his side, gesticulating with the right hand.
"I was waiting for a different question," I told him.
I wasn't trying to be an asshole. Sometimes it just comes out naturally.
The smile slipped off his face and the skin between his eyebrows knitted together.
"I'm looking for people," I told him. "I was sent here to find them."
"Who sent you?"
I didn't like the way he asked.
Truth be told, I didn't like much about the entire situation, having to trek over to pick up some lost souls and drag them back to the awful place I'd just been.
But what do they say about beggars?
They can't make good choices when their kids are being held hostage by a madwoman.
Livingston was quiet.
The streets were orderly and clean, houses set up with mobile homes between them to handle the increase in population.
But that population was absent at the moment.
Or hiding.
I felt like I was being watched, or maybe it was the tension Phil carried flowing out and over to me.
I usually only go wrong when I don't listen to my gut, and right now it was screaming at me to turn tail and run.
"You want a drink?" Phil led me toward a building that had once housed a couple of businesses, now gone.
It could have been one of those office strip malls, insurance agents or small realtors back in the before.
Now all the windows were barred or boarded up, and there was only one door uncovered to get in and out of the place.
I could smell why when he opened the door.
I've always been a fan of craft brew and brew tours were a regular part of my dating life pre-Z. I'd been to wineries and distilleries, and the distinct taint to the air of fermenting liquid left an impression on my mind.
I can't say what it meant that I started salivating when I smelled it.
Phil ushered me through and into a front office type room. The walls connecting it to the rest of the building had been knocked down, and a simple bar built to block it all from the front.
This wasn't a pub, it wasn't a diner.
This was something out of the old west that served one function.
To drink.
"Hey!" Phil called out. "Come meet a stranger. I'll be back to get you in a minute."
He left me on the far side of the bar as I watched the shadowed interior. When something moved in the darkness, I couldn't help but feel just how unarmed I was.
A tiny woman stepped out of the orifice in the wall and glared at Phil. She extended the same look to me, eyebrow quirked up in a question I’d seen before.
“Who the Hell are you?”
Her voice was high and light. It fit her sprite like body with an almost cartoonish lilt that made me want to laugh.
I thought that might be a mistake though.
She had red hair, a dusting of light freckles across her nose and a network of scars on her knuckles, testament to some bashing from the past.
“Is that any way to treat a guest, barkeep?” Phil laughed.
It sounded forced, like he was being nice because he had to be.
“Sorry,” she said and glared at me harder.
"I'm Sparky."
She stuck out her hand.
"That's a weird name," I shook it and ignored the clammy dampness that clenched me back.
Her grip was strong, calloused palms trying to crush mine as if she wanted to prove it.
"You want a drink?"
"Are you pouring?"
"Wouldn't offer if I wasn't," she rubbed the tip of her nose with the back of her hand.
I watched her pour clear liquid into pint sized mason jars. Her hand shook as she handed me one.
"Better days," Sparky toasted.
I was craving a cold draft beer when I took a swallow and managed not to spray it all over the girl.
"Holy crap," I sputtered.
She drained her glass and plopped it on the table with a thud, smacked her lips.
"Ninety proof," she crowed.
"Tastes like a hundred," I coughed.
"I've got that too."
She lifted a tarp behind the bar and patted a huge steel cylinder hidden underneath.
"Are you fueling rockets?"
"Something like that," she poured more of the ninety in her glass and drank it like spring water.
"This is a nice setup," I told her.
She unscrewed the top of a mason jar and took a sip. I could smell it from the other side of the backyard. Pungent. The kind of smell that could strip paint and clear your sinuses, maybe something with a fun name like memory crasher, or dementia if you used it to make drinks.
"I made it so we could have fuel," she said. "But the Mayor had other ideas."
She said it as if his ideas weren't worth consideration, or she had held them up and examined them and discarded the thoughts for being subpar.
But she was drunk.
What did she know.
“I’m about to go get him,” Phil warned her.
“Then go do it,” she spit back.
Phil chuckled, fake and smug as he stood up from leaning across the bar.
“Stay here,” he told me. “I’ll be back.”
We both watched him leave, the bartender and I, then she poured herself another one and sipped it slower this time.
“You with them?” she asked.
“Just passing through.”
She nodded, as if this confirmed something she suspected.
“You haven’t met the Mayor yet.”
I shook my head.
“You’re in for something.”
“Usually people say treat after that.”
Another sip.
Another look.
“Won’t be much of a treat I’m afraid.”
“I’m looking for- “
But I didn’t get the chance to tell her, or ask any more questions.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Phil came back, stepping into the bar with loud clomps from his white shoes.
“The Mayor will be with us shortly,” he announced.
Behind me, Sparky growled and grumbled.
Phil strolled up behind the bar and began helping himself to a refill of the homemade.
“Help yourself, why don’t you?” Sparky snapped.
“Don’t worry, I will,” he snapped back.
No love lost between those two.
But her eyes flashed when he mentioned the Mayor, so maybe she hated him more.
There were dynamics at play, and I didn’t have enough information to figure out who was what.
Phil leaned across the planks and rolled the mason jar in his hands.
“Did you watch westerns much before the fall?”
“Not that I can say. I've seen a few.”
Phil twirled the moonshine around in the jar and stared at it, like someone trying to scry the future.
“You remind me of the cowboy themes I once taught in college.”
“You got to watch movies for class?”
He took a sip and let his eyes go misty.
“Daily.”
“I must have skipped those days because that sounds like an awesome job.”
“It was. Much better than this, but then perhaps it better prepared me for this world. For the type of men who survived."
He looked at me then, cold eyes calculating, like he was studying me.
He reached up and poured more shine into the glass. I lifted it halfway to my lips and let it fall back again at ease.
I wanted the burn in my throat, but I wanted my wits about me even more.
"I'm not a cowboy," I told him.
He didn't hesitate to sip his, downing the glass it two large swallows.
"No? Errant drifter moving aimlessly from town to town, sometimes as a gun for hire, sometimes as a peacemaker?"
"You just described half the population remaining."
"There is something about you," he said, the hooch hitting his bloodstream and making his shoulders relax. "An ease with violence."
"I've seen more than my fair share."
"And created more by the look of you."
"Is that a nice way of saying you think I'm pretty?"
He grinned and poured some more for himself. He reached across the bar and tapped his glass against mine.
"You're working hard to create a world where you won't belong."
I thought about that for a moment and let the weight of it settle between us like a fog.
Was he right?
Was I working hard to save my children and build a society that would have no place for me?
Once upon a time, before the divorce was final, I considered buying a trailer and living in it. Just an old RV, big enough for me, with bunk beds for the kids to visit.
Mobile. Easy to move.
My ex said I needed a home if I wanted visitation so I settled on a townhouse in a small community and liked it enough that I stayed for a few years.
But I never really got over the lingering thought of a gypsy life lived in an RV that moved from campsite to campsite across the country.
What a way to explore.
This was all before.
Now the idea of an RV still lingers, but coupled with concerns about fuel. And who would want to take it from me. It would be nice to never worry about where to sleep, but that would be replaced with a level of paranoia that would be uncomfortable to live with.
Like this town.
It was a nice place. Well stocked, well protected, well-armed.
Nice homes lined clean streets with clearly defined public facilities. Food storage. Weapons storage. A lake in the middle for water.
Living in a place like this had to make you paranoid all the time because it’s the kind of town a lot of people would want.
Bad people.
Tough people.
People like Mags.
I could tell she sent me there for a reason other than what she said.
She didn't want me to bring her people back. Either she was coming here and I was a distraction, or there were other things at play that I wasn't aware of.
Probably that.
I wasn't aware of a lot.
“That’s him,” said Phil and nodded over his shoulder.
I shifted slightly so I could see.
A shadow stepped in the doorway, sunshine bathing his back so that the front of his body was almost all dark.
Featureless.
He filled the doorway, towering over me by at least a head, maybe more.
A growling laugh filled the small space in the bar.
“Did you start the party without me?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Mayor was long and lean, like a shorter version of a square crow that plopped off the pole and started walking around. His face was all hard angles and planes, like life before the Z had not been kind.
“Phil, let’s bring our guest outside and introduce him to some of the boys.”
He strutted like life after made him a king as he stepped into the light.
I suppose it had.
Everything about him was lean. All muscle and gristle, and a big smile that hinted at cruelty instead of mirth.
I could handle mirth.
I didn't want to handle cruel.
It wasn't that I was too concerned about the Mayor. Any person who refers to themselves by a title had something wrong with them. Like people who talk about themselves in third person. D-bag.
That's what I thought of the man in front of me.
A big D-bag.
Which made me wonder how that become a derogatory term. D-bags are for cleaning, right? Like a vacuum bag. Why didn't V-bag get associated with frat boys and butthole behavior?
I almost asked the Mayor, but he was showing off.
Right then, he had three boys in front of him, the youngest looked like he was just out of sixteen and learning to shave, and the oldest not yet legal to buy booze.
Of course, he could steal it now. It was open season on whatever a person wanted to take, and the Mayor looked like he had been taking a lot.
The three of them held long spears, handles worn with palm sweat and oil, blades pitted and covered with rust, or blood or both.
"I call these my full house."
I could tell he wanted me to ask why. I didn't.
He grabbed a spear from one of the three.
"They have one job. Walk around my fence and whenever they see one of those walking dead suckers, they poke them."
The Mayor demonstrated with the spear, jamming it into an imaginary Z.
"It's a simple job, don't you think?"
He rolled his wild eyes from the trio to me and back again.
"A simple job shouldn't have mistakes, should it boys?"
He stopped in front of the last kid on the end, the baby of the group. A look enhanced by the quivering lip that started as soon as the Mayor's eyes landed on him. He looked a lot younger after that.
"Lancers," I shouted.
The Mayor didn't even turn around.
"What did you say?"
"Why don't you call them lancers instead of the pokers?"
He still didn't turn around.
"I don't call them the pokers. I call them my full house."
Still staring at the boy with the quivering lip.
"The spearmen then?"
I wanted his eyes on me. My gut was screaming.
"The Spearmen," said the Mayor. "I like that. Sounds like a country group. The Spearmen. Yeah, that's got a good ring to it. Like soldiers. Soldier's don't make mistakes."
He lunged forward and shoved the tip of the spear through the young man's heart. The boy gurgled twice and dropped.
"Mistakes get people killed and around here," he spit on the corpse. "Nobody dies unless I say so."
He held the spear to the second boy in line.
"Chop off his head and put it in the garden," he said. "Then find me someone for the night shift who won't fall asleep on the job."
"Yes sir," the second boy stammered.
"What about you?"
The Mayor finally turned around.
"Are you in the market for a job?"
He grinned and made a couple of motions with his hands, one to send the pokers off with the body, the other inviting me to follow.
I watched the kids struggle under the dead weight for a moment, and fell in st
ep behind him.
"The benefits suck and the boss is a real stickler for the rules," he said. "But other than that, the job sucks."
"You had me at benefits," I muttered.
His right eyebrow shot up to his hairline.
"Really?"
I shook my head.
"Just passing through."
He hesitated before the grin returned.
"Phil said you were a funny guy. Quick with the names too. Did you get the tour?"
"Everything but the garden."
He stopped and put his hand on my shoulder.
"He skipped the garden? Damn, that's the best part. That's like going to Disney and skipping the castle."
He turned and led us up a different road.
"That Phil," said the Mayor. "As an administrator, I don't know where we would be without him. But his showmanship needs work. I'll talk to him about that."
He shook his head and laughed.
"He is my right-hand guy though."
His skinny legs carried us to the edge of a fence.
"I made sure of that."
The grin stayed plastered on his face.
I barely heard him. My eyes were stuck on the fence that boxed in a city block.
"This is the Garden," the Mayor exclaimed.
There wasn't a castle. There wasn't even a house, just razed foundations where homes once stood.
The two pokers walked up and tossed the dead kid's head over the fence into the enclosure.
It bounced twice and settled in with hundreds of other heads. Zombie heads.
Hundreds. Maybe more.
Mouths working. Eyes open.
And the man next to me grinning like he just won a ribbon in a science fair project.
"Do you like?"
I grunted because I couldn't speak.
"It's great, isn't it? Nobody else has anything like it. It's a huge morale booster, let me tell you. Or at least to keep the riff raff and malcontents in line."
He drew his thumb across his neck.
"Anyone who steps out of line or breaks the rules gets the old Queen of Hearts."
We locked eyes and held them. If I wasn't convinced he was loony tunes before, that gaze made me a firm believer.
"The Joker is the only fool who can do anything to you."
His eyes got wider. His pupils dilated and began to glow as his face lit up.
"Hot diggity damn!" the Mayor slapped his hip. "Phil said you were funny."
"You said that already."