by James Cook
“No shit?”
“No shit. We’ve got a fix on them. They’re holed up in some shithole marauder settlement in Arkansas. There’s a pretty good chance we’ll be able to recover some of the trade Gabriel lost.”
Eric laughed. “I bet Gabe about shit his dick when you told him that.”
“He expressed a keen interest.”
“And what does he have to do in return?”
“The other mission.”
“Which is?”
“If you’re not in on it, I can’t tell you.”
“No dice, Caleb. The answer is still no.”
“Then I can’t talk to you about it.”
Eric stifled a yawn and turned back toward the bar. His hand was steady as he picked up his drink.
“I guess I’ll just have to live with that.”
EIGHT
The headquarters of the Blackthorn Security Company was a large facility.
When the company was founded, they had set up shop in a couple of abandoned hotels near the airport. Since then, as they had grown in size and wealth, the original headquarters was insufficient to their needs. Consequently, they had purchased the US Olympic Training Center from the federal government. It had survived the Outbreak mostly intact, and what damage was done had been repaired by the government back when they were using it as a refugee shelter.
After the refugee district had been built and the refugee population relocated, the Center had sat unused for over two years. The Blackthorns got a pretty good deal on the purchase; I think the government was just glad to get the place off the books. BSC was still in the process of relocating their operations and personnel to the new facility, but the main office was up and running in a building that had once been a communications and marketing center for the University of Colorado Health.
A tall chain link fence topped with concertina wire had been erected around the training center grounds, complete with a rolling gate manned by armed guards. There were two watchtowers behind the main gate, both with snipers and machine guns, and other towers spaced along the fence every few hundred feet. Beyond the gate, I saw a small fleet of vehicles—everything from Humvees to armored personnel carriers—sitting in a sizable parking lot toward the northwest corner of the perimeter. The vehicles were painted charcoal black and bore the BSC logo. I decided my previous perception of BSC’s success had been a gross underestimation.
The guards stopped me at the gate and asked me for ID. I handed them my black card. They recognized what it was, and what it meant, and handed it back to me.
“What can we do for you, sir?” The guard in charge asked. He looked to be in his late thirties, darkly tanned face, and a hardened look about him that suggested he was no stranger to violence. However, he knew BSC was still subject to federal oversight, and if I wanted to come in, he would be ill advised to stop me. Not that he couldn’t if he wanted to, but if I went back and reported that I had been refused access to the facility, BSC’s management would be getting a very angry visit from someone with the authority to put them out of business. So for now, they were being polite.
“I’m here to see Tyrel Jennings,” I said.
The guards looked at each other. “Sir, he’s usually pretty busy. Do you have an appointment?”
“No. But trust me, he’ll want to see me.”
The guards looked uncertain. I gave them a reassuring smile. “Look, fellas, I’m not trying to get anyone fired here. I’ll have a seat on that bench over there. Talk to whoever you need to, and when you’ve gotten clearance, let me know. Fair enough?”
The lead guard looked relieved. “Sounds good. Be with you shortly.”
He walked toward a small shack with a radio antenna sticking up from the roof. I saw him pick up a handset and speak into it. There was a wooden bench on the lawn just in front of the fence line under a maple tree. Judging by how uncomfortable it was when I sat down on it, I guessed it was more for decoration than actual use. A minute or two later, the head guard shouted for me and motioned me over. Someone was already rolling the gate open.
“Do you know where to go, sir?” the guard asked.
“The old UC Health building, right?”
He looked surprised. “Yes sir. Just check in at reception and they’ll help you from there.”
“Thank you.”
“Thanks for being civil with us. Not everybody with a black card is.”
I nodded once and walked through the gate.
It was not a long walk to the BSC corporate office, but I found myself approaching slowly. I normally don’t suffer much in the way of anxiety, even in combat. Being even-keeled is kind of my thing; I was known for it in the First Recon. Cole used to jokingly call me Iceman, and it caught on after a while. But I didn’t feel like an iceman walking toward Tyrel’s office. I felt like a puddle of useless goo. Finally I stopped and stared at the front entrance. Something my father once said to me popped into my head:
Son, when you’ve got a job to do, best just to get it done. Even if it scares you. Most of the time, you’ll find the fear of a thing is worse than the thing itself.
I took a deep breath, told myself to stop being such a candy-ass, stood up straight, and walked into the building.
The receptionist was no surprise. Tyrel liked women. The prettier, the better. I would not have gone so far as to call him a chauvinist, but he definitely had some antiquated notions regarding the female of the species. I approached the front desk and smiled politely.
“Hello. I’m Sergeant Caleb Hicks here to see Mr. Jennings.”
The receptionist smiled back. If I weren’t so in love with Miranda, I may have been dazzled. “Yes sir, he’s expecting you. Down this hall, all the way at the end. His name is on the door.”
“Thank you.”
I walked down the hall and realized my skin was cool. I had broken a light sweat on the walk to BSC headquarters, and now it seemed to be evaporating. There was a moment of confusion, and then it dawned on me what I was feeling was air conditioning. I stopped under a roof vent and closed my eyes. A sigh escaped me. General Jacob’s office had a small air conditioner in the window, but he never turned it up very high. Here, I was in the presence of central air conditioning set at what I guessed was about seventy-two degrees. What luxury. I had forgotten how good it felt.
After a few seconds, I remembered why I was there and proceeded to the door at the end of the hallway. It was made of dark, heavy wood with shiny brass letters on a wooden plaque attached to the door with screws. The plaque read:
Tyrel Jennings
Chairman and CEO
I raised a hand to knock, but the door opened before I could. Tyrel stood in the doorway.
I froze.
His face was as hard and angular as I remembered. He was shorter than me, medium build, but obviously very fit. He had shaved his beard and his hair was cropped close to his head. There was a bit more gray lining his temples than there had been the last time I saw him. At a glance, he seemed unremarkable until you looked at his eyes. Black as obsidian, and about as merciful as a tiger shark. I’d seen armed soldiers tremble under his glare. He favored me with a blank look for a few seconds, then his face split into a smile and he opened the door wide.
“Get your ass in here, kid. Let me take a look at you.”
I found myself smiling back and did as he asked. Tyrel shut the door, stepped in front of me, and looked me up and down.
“You look a hell of a lot better than the last time I saw you. You’ve filled out, put on some muscle.”
“About thirty pounds.”
“Jesus, kid. You must have been in bad shape back when they locked you up. How long ago was it, two years? Three?”
“A little over two.”
“Damn. I tell you, when you get to be my age, the years pass like seasons and the months pass like weeks. A day takes about twenty minutes. The longer you live, the worse it gets. Come on in and have a seat.”
I sat down in a padded leather c
hair lined with little brass studs. The carpet in the room was dark green, there was a wet bar on one wall, a leather sofa and two armchairs complete with a coffee table on the other. The walls themselves were paneled in hardwoods stained almost black, and several paintings had been hung around the room. I did a double take at the one on the wall to my left above the sofa.
“Is that an original Monet?” I asked.
A grin. “I’ve always admired his work.”
“Jesus.”
“Don’t think he was a painter. So what brings you here, kiddo?”
I shrugged. “I’m not here on official business. I just…”
“You wanted to see me.”
“Yeah.”
Tyrel tilted his head. “You say it like you’ve done something wrong.”
“It’s been over two years, Tyrel. I haven’t written, or sent a telegram, or anything.”
“And?”
“And, well, I feel bad about it.”
“And you thought I was going to be upset.”
I shifted in my chair. “I was a little worried, yes.”
Tyrel leaned back and laughed loudly. His eyes crinkled up and he had to grab the arms of his chair to keep from tipping over. When he had control of himself again, he wiped his eyes and said, “How long you been in the Springs, boy?”
“Um…about a week or so.”
“I bet you been stewing over this the whole time, haven’t you?”
I felt myself flush. “Pretty much.”
Another laugh. “You ought to see yourself. Tall as a tree, broad-shouldered, scars on your face, and eyes like a stone-cold killer. Killed two men before you were eighteen, and God only knows how many since then. I’ve seen you drop ghouls at a hundred yards with nothing but iron sights, and yet here you sit, twisting your hands together and shuffling your feet like I just caught you stealing from the cookie jar.”
I smiled at my old friend and felt the embarrassment evaporate. “Hey, I did not shuffle my feet.”
Tyrel stood up and came around the desk, arms open. “Come here, you idiot.”
*****
The Robber Baron was the first honest-to-God steakhouse I had seen since the Outbreak. A revival in the beef industry over the last two years had seen the cattle population, which were nearly wiped out during the Outbreak, make a dramatic recovery. Beef was still in short supply, and was highly expensive, but for someone like Tyrel, price was not an issue.
I cut into a piece of filet mignon that cost as much as two whole goats and tried not to moan. The cow it came from had been grass fed, and the steak was seasoned and cooked to perfection.
“My God,” I said. “All I need is a good lay and I can die happy.”
“Can’t help you there,” Tyrel said. “Prostitution is illegal in town. But go outside the wall and you can get whatever you want.”
I made a face. Surrounding Colorado Springs was a collection of slums the rival of the poorest places anywhere in the world. Over the years, real estate prices and rents in the city proper had risen steadily and driven the poorest people outside the wall. At first, according to those who’d witnessed the process, it had not been that bad. People built simple houses, planted gardens, raised chickens, that sort of thing. The Army did a good job of keeping the undead away, so life had not been bad.
But as time went on, and more and more people were forced to live outside the wall, things quickly deteriorated. When it got bad enough, the government stepped in and forced the people who, up to that point, had been living in the shadow of the wall, to pick up stakes and move half a mile from the city. A fence had been built and laws passed to keep the slums away from the Springs. As a result, a barren no-mans-land of empty ground now stood between the crippling poverty of the Slummers, as they were called, and the city dwellers.
“No thanks,” I said.
“I was just kidding, Caleb. You tried to go there, I’d knock you over the head and lock you up somewhere. Only thing you’d find in the slums is a knife in the back.”
“Is it really that bad?”
“Yes, it is. People only go there in numbers, and armed. Otherwise, you’re a victim. And don’t even think about trying to blend in. You’d stand out like a sore thumb.”
“How so?”
“You don’t look starved, or dirty, or riddled with disease. You stand up too straight, your clothes aren’t rags, and you look like you eat at least once a day. Slummers would mark you in a heartbeat. Probably fight over who got to kill you first.”
I shook my head sadly. “Does the government try to help at all?”
“They used to. But they got tired of sending aid workers in only to have them disappear along with whatever food or medicine they brought with them. President tried sending in the Army as escort, but that only caused riots and even more bloodshed. Finally they gave up.”
“So they’re just left there to starve and die.”
“It’s not really like that. Slummers can come and go in and out of the city as they please. They can look for work here, buy property here, do what any other citizen is allowed to do. Cops keep a close eye on them, but there are strict non-discrimination laws in place. On top of that, there’s still plenty of good land available in Kansas. Anyone can apply for a land grant, and most applications get approved. And if they don’t like Kansas, there’s nothing stopping them from getting together and building homesteads elsewhere, they just have to protect themselves from infected and marauders.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“I know it’s not. And I know it’s a bad situation all around. But what can anyone do? The Slummers know their options. The reason the live where they live is they either lack the knowledge to run a homestead, or can’t get enough people together to make it work. Either that or they can’t find work in town. And then there’s the folks who just plain don’t want to do for themselves. That’s why they run whorehouses and sell cheap booze and buy opium from the drug runners out of Mississippi and Alabama. Opium addiction is getting to be a big damn problem around here.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Well, now you do. And if you find yourself in the refugee district, watch your back. Half the junkies in town live there. Fuckers will kill you for your boots.”
“You know, Tyrel, whatever problems the Slummers have, those problems are going to make their way into the city. It’s only a matter of time.”
“I know. It’s already started. You can’t have two populations living this close together without making trouble for each other. Especially with all the animosity going around. There’s some powerful folks lobbying Congress and the Senate to pass laws making it so only citizens with a registered address can be issued IDs.”
“What would that accomplish?”
“Be a way to keep the Slummers out.”
I snorted. “What the hell good would that do? If the Slummers want to get in, they’ll find a way in. Law be damned.”
“You know that, and I know that, but the lobbyists don’t. And even if they do, they don’t care. If it was up to them, they’d have the Army carpet bomb the slums and be done with it.”
“That’s the most disturbing thing I’ve heard in a long time. And that’s saying something.”
“I’m with you on that one, son. Look, I know all about being poor. I’m the youngest of four kids. My family lived in a tarpaper shack in western North Carolina until I was eleven. One day my father packed his few belongings and told us he was going down to Asheville to look for work, and if he couldn’t find anything there, he’d head down to Charlotte. He was gone eight months. We thought he wasn’t coming back. If not for welfare and food stamps, we’d have starved to death. Momma took to drinking, and I’ll give you one guess how she got the money to buy her booze.”
“Dear God. I’m sorry, Tyrel. I didn’t know that.”
He waved a hand. “Probably ‘cause I never told you. Anyway, dad showed up one Saturday morning in a rental car. He was wearing new clothes, an
d he looked healthier than I’d ever seen him. He told us he’d found a good job and rented a place where we could all live down in Asheville. I looked at my mother, and I swear to God she looked like she’d seen a ghost. My oldest brother, who was seventeen at the time, pulled all us kids aside and told us if we didn’t keep our damn mouths shut about what momma had been up to he’d peel our hides with a dull knife. And we believed him. So we all drove down and moved into a double-wide trailer on the outskirts of Asheville. I thought it was paradise. I mean, the place had a furnace. It was winter in the Appalachians. I was so used to freezing, I’d forgotten what it felt like to be warm.”
“Tyrel…”
He raised a palm. “I know what you’re gonna say, and I appreciate it. But you got to understand, this was all a long time ago. I’ve put it in perspective and moved on. Now do you mind if I finish the story?”
“Sorry. Go ahead.”
“Things were all right for a while. But it didn’t last. Momma wouldn’t let Dad put his hands on her. At first he thought she was mad at him for being gone so long. He apologized about a thousand times until she couldn’t take it anymore. Conscience got the best of her. She told him what she’d done. Dad got real quiet and told her she needed to go see a doctor. So they did. Turned out she had syphilis. It was still in the early stages, so they were able to clean it up with antibiotics. Dad had the rest of us tested too. He told Mom it was to make sure she hadn’t passed it on to us by accident. But I don’t think that was the truth. I think he was worried she’d been turning us out. She hadn’t been, so we all tested clean. My folks stayed together after that and eventually patched things up. But it was never quite the same between them.”
Tyrel went silent, eyes far away. I let him be for a while and quietly ate my steak. My appetite was mostly gone by then, but I didn’t want to waste Tyrel’s money. His story played through my mind a few times until I realized he’d left out a vital detail. At first I didn’t want to ask, but curiosity finally got the best of me.