Refugees from the Righteous Horde (Toxic World Book 2)

by Sean McLachlan

  “Hold it right there,” she said.

  Leonard glowered at her. “You think he’s better than me? He’s got—”

  “Shut up,” Annette said. She had enough squabbling going on between New City and the Burbs. The last things she needed was to inherit more trouble.

  Everyone stood around in silence for a couple of minutes. Leonard glared at Jeb, who gave him a disdainful look in return. Finally Jackson returned with the tarp, some rope, wooden poles, and some plastic pegs.

  “Figured these would be better than metal spikes. Don’t want to tempt our guests,” Jackson said with a grin, holding up one of the pegs. “They better hope there’s no strong winds tonight or they’ll be wearing the tarp like a blanket.”

  “I knew you’d feel sorry for these poor, oppressed working men,” Annette mocked him.

  Jackson snorted. “Hell, no. Religious zealots are the worst oppressors the working class. The opium of the people weakens the spirit of class resistance and—”

  “OK, OK,” Annette silenced him with a wave of the hand. She didn’t have the patience for one of Jackson’s political lectures at the moment. Actually she never had patience for them, and certainly not right now.

  Jackson and Charley laid out the tarp and used the poles, rope, and pegs to create a tent. By the time they were done, the guard had returned with the razor wire. He and a friend carried a spool of it on a pole and wore thick gloves on their hands.

  “Careful laying that out,” Clyde said.

  “I’ve been pricked enough to be careful,” the guard said.

  As the guard unspooled the wire to make a perimeter around the tent, Annette turned to the prisoners.

  “Now here’s the deal. We’re going to feed you and you’re going to tell us everything you know about the Righteous Horde and that piece of shit who thinks he’s the new messiah.”

  The prisoners nodded eagerly. The thinnest one, who hadn’t said a word up to this point, perked up and asked, “When do we get to eat?”

  Annette felt a trace of irritation. These guys had been trying to rob a farm yesterday, and tried to take over the whole city a couple of weeks ago, and they were already getting impatient to be fed?

  “You’ll get food when I get around to it and you’ll be damn grateful,” Annette said. When she saw the man’s face fall, she added, “This evening. Don’t worry, we won’t let you starve.”

  I’m getting soft, she chided herself.

  From the looks on Clyde’s face, he agreed.

  “I’m sure you frisked them, but you should frisk them again before we put them inside,” the Head of the Watch said.

  “Good idea,” Annette agreed. Clyde was overly cautious but that wasn’t always a bad thing.

  The guard finished laying out the barbed wire, leaving an opening at one side that he could close and fasten with a padlock. It wasn’t the greatest barrier in the world, but it would keep them penned in. They’d never get over the wire without being spotted by the sentries on the wall.

  She turned and called up to the men and women manning the parapet.

  “If anyone tries to escape—”

  “Look out!” Jeb shouted from behind her.

  She turned just in time to see the flash of a knife.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Jeb winced as the knife cut a hot line along his forearm. He had pulled out Leonard’s clasp knife, snapped it open, and put it in Leonard’s hand. The burly man’s eyes widened with surprise as Jeb forced him into a struggle and with an automatic reaction, Leonard took a swipe at him.

  Jeb staggered back, holding his bleeding arm.

  Annette spun around, saw the bloody knife in Leonard’s hand, and gave him a barrel straight in the gut. The shotgun pellets tore through him, gushing out blood from his back and nearly tearing him in two. Leonard fell on the ground, doubled up in agony. He gasped once, gulped for air, and died.

  The other machete men cowered on the ground. By some miracle none of them were hit. Jeb felt disappointed.

  “What happened?” Clyde shouted.

  A sentry on the walls shouted, “That big guy pulled a knife and the other guy stopped him. They were right behind you, Annette. That guy saved your life!”

  Jeb you are a fucking genius,Jeb congratulated himself.You played a long shot and it paid off. You got it made now, boy.

  He grimaced as he saw how freely the cut on his arm flowed. It was deeper than he first realized.

  Try to be a more careful genius next time.

  Annette put a hand on his shoulder and they both stared at the wound.

  Shit, I’m really leaking.

  “Thank you. We better get you patched up.”

  Jeb nodded in acknowledgement and looked around at all the faces staring at him. Had anyone seen what really happened? He’d done it quick and clean, with lots of people milling around obscuring the view. It was no wonder that the sentry was fooled. The question was, how about everyone else?

  It looked like it. Wait, no. One of the other machete men was looking at him with a knowing eye. When he saw Jeb staring he lowered his head.

  “That’s bleeding pretty bad,” Clyde said, his voice softer now. “Let’s take him to The Doctor.”

  Score!

  Clyde frisked him. He’d have to watch this Clyde fellow. Too damn suspicious. A drop of blood oozed through Jeb’s clutching fingers and spattered on Clyde’s cuff.

  Clyde and Annette led him toward the gate as the guard moved the machete men inside the wire.

  “Thank you,” Annette repeated.

  “That guy was a nutcase, a fanatic. He wanted to make one more kill before he was executed. When he saw women carrying weapons it drove him crazy. The Pure One forbade it,” Jeb cut himself off. He was starting to babble. The cut hurt like hell.

  “Sounds like a nice guy,” Annette grumbled.

  “Dumb too,” Clyde said. “Annette’s the best shot in town. Better than me even.”

  Good to know.

  They came to the gate at the wall, the same gate and wall the Righteous Horde had lost so many men trying to storm. The rain of bullets coming from the parapet, the firebombs exploding and turning men into torches, the screams of the dying. . .Jeb shuddered. He’d seen a hell of a lot in his day but that was too much. He’d have run all the way to the mountains if retreat hadn’t meant death. In the Righteous Horde nobody disobeyed orders and lived.

  To his surprise the guards at the gate took Annette’s weapons. Why? She didn’t look too happy about it. Clyde got to keep his.

  There’s a lot about this place you don’t understand. Keep your eyes open if you want to make it to a hundred.

  They passed through the gate and Jeb got to see the inside for the first time. He forgot his arm as he stopped and gasped. It was like a town from the Old Times, even better than the settlement outside the walls! Tidy frame houses stood in orderly rows. Clean, well-fed residents strolled along as if they didn’t have a care in the world. Laughing children played in the streets. Electric lights shone from inside windows.

  “Move along,” Clyde nudged him.

  They continued toward a huge concrete building that looked like it had been a warehouse before the fall of civilization. Jeb looked around and saw the key to New City’s safety. The town stood on a peninsula, its landward side protected by the wall and every shore covered with razor wire. During the attack, The Pure One had ordered crews to build boats and assault those shores but since the razor wire ran right next to the water the crews hadn’t been able to land and got gunned down. It had been a slaughter almost as big as the one on the wall.

  “You got a great setup here. This is how everyone should live,” he said, his voice almost still with awe.

  “Yeah, and you and your crew almost wrecked it,” Clyde growled.

  Jeb shook his head. “I was against The Pure One before, and seeing what could have been lost, I’m twice as against him now.”

  Another guard stood at the warehouse door. He frisked Jeb
before Clyde and Annette led him inside. Jeb gaped again. The vast interior was subdivided by curtains and partitions into dozens of spaces. They passed by a couple—one a cobbler’s workshop and another a storage unit—before he was led to a metal staircase leading up. A strange hum reached his ears. He stopped. He’d heard that sound before, many years ago.

  “Is that. . .an engine?” he asked.

  Annette nodded, nudging him in the back to get him moving again. “Yeah. We have a small motor pool. Sounds like our mechanics are tuning up one of the four-by-fours.”

  “On the settlement where I grew up we had a generator. Didn’t have much biofuel for it but we’d turn it on to work a buzz saw to cut timber. On Christmas we’d string up lights.”

  Annette smiled. “Every Christmas we fetch a fir tree from the mountains and set it up in the marketplace.”

  Tears came to Jeb’s eyes. He turned so the others wouldn’t see.

  What’s happening to me?

  They led him upstairs, the staircase clattering with their footsteps.

  More surprises greeted him on the next floor. The first room was a clean, quiet place where a teenaged girl sat at a desk listening to Radio Hope and writing down everything the announcer said.

  “. . .sterile saline solution has a number of uses and can be easily made from simple materials. First you need to sterilize the container and the tongs you’ll use during the preparation process. Put the tongs and container in a saucepan. . .”

  They passed through another room, Jeb’s ears straining to hear. The Pure One had forbidden listening to Radio Hope and like everyone else in the Righteous Horde, Jeb had missed it. The cult leader never explained why he had banned one of the only good things in this world. Jeb figured he wanted to be the lone voice in the wildlands.

  As they left the room, Jeb realized that he had been so enchanted with listening to the broadcast he hadn’t checked out the girl. He allowed himself a wry smile. That wasn’t like him at all.

  All those thoughts vanished when he saw the next room.

  He would have never dreamed of seeing such a place except in the pictures of old magazines. There was clean carpet on the floor, decently preserved furniture, and on a desk shone the screen of what he had heard was called a computer. He stared at it. Old folks said they had almost magical powers. These things knew everything, and once they had been all connected and could talk to each other.

  “Who do we have here?” a voice said.

  Jeb snapped out of his reverie and looked around. A gaunt, pale man stood at the doorway to another room. Beyond him Jeb caught a glimpse of clinical white walls and shelves filled with bottles and packages.

  “A prisoner,” Annette said. “We captured six. They robbed one of the outlying farms.”

  The man’s face darkened. “Why didn’t you shoot them?”

  “They surrendered,” she replied.

  No, you asked us to surrender. That was the biggest surprise of my life, chick.

  “I didn’t authorize you to take prisoners; I sent you out to get that murderer.”

  “You didn’t say I couldn’t. Besides, they took care of that murderer for us. This guy claims he jumped them. More likely they robbed and killed him for his food. Either way, it’s one less criminal we have to worry about.”

  The man walked over to Jeb and examined his wound.

  “How did this happen?”

  “Saving Annette’s life,” Clyde said. “One of the other prisoners had a knife hidden and was about to stab her in the back. He stopped him.”

  The thin man gave Jeb a searching look.

  “Are you the one they call The Doctor?” Jeb asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “I heard you heal people for free.”

  “People, yes. Barbarians, no.”

  “He saved Annette’s life, Doc,” Clyde said.

  “I didn’t want to join,” Jeb said with what he hoped was a pleading voice. He wasn’t used to pleading. “They overran my settlement, killed all the old people and children, and gave the rest of us two choices—convert or die. We didn’t want to fight you. We even tried to fight the Elect, kill The Pure One, but they had guns and we didn’t.”

  The Doctor raised a hand. “All right, all right, shut up.”

  “I can give you information,” Jeb said.

  The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of information?”

  “I was a servant of one of the Elect. It was the only way to get enough to eat; otherwise I would have never served one of those bastards. Never.”

  “Yeah, yeah, you’re as pure as the driven snow. Get to the point,” The Doctor said. But his tone didn’t match his actions. He was already leading Jeb into the next room, which looked like a hospital from the Old Times. He sat Jeb down on a padded table and went to fetch some gauze and a bottle of iodine from one of the shelves.

  “I overheard a lot of things, like what The Pure One’s plans were if they couldn’t take the city.”

  The Doctor held Jeb’s wounded arm and started to put iodine on the cut with a piece of wool. Clyde and Annette stood at the doorway. Clyde had a pistol in his hand.

  “So what are his plans?” The Doctor asked.

  Jeb’s mind raced.

  Think of something good, and think quick. What would you do?

  “He was going to go back through the South Pass,” he replied. This part he knew was true, because that’s where they were headed just before he deserted. “Then they were going to move south through the plains beyond.”

  The Doctor looked up from his work, his face suspicious. “There’s not enough forage there.”

  “There’s more than in the north. We picked that area clean. Besides, the Elect planted some food caches in the area. I don’t know where. They wouldn’t say when I was around. One mentioned there was enough flour to last the Elect a month, even a supply of Blue Cans for The Pure One and his bodyguard. Those bastards always get the best.”

  “OK, so what will they do after a month?” The Doctor asked as he affixed surgical tape across the cut. “It will be the dead of winter by then, and the plains are pretty harsh in winter.”

  “They’re going to pick off every settlement and scavenger they can find and try to make it down to the Southern City.”

  The Doctor’s hands froze. “The what?”

  “There’s a city far to the south. It’s one of the old ruined cities but it never got nuked and isn’t any more toxic than the wildlands. There’s a big settlement there of people who have restored some of the buildings.”

  “Bullshit,” Clyde said.

  “We get traders from all over and I’ve never heard of a settlement like that,” The Doctor said.

  Jeb tensed. This was the only other part of his story that had the basis of truth. He’d heard rumors of a settlement far to the south, living in the ruins of one of the old cities.

  He was trying to think of something more to say when Annette came to his rescue.

  “I’ve heard those stories. Some of the scavengers tell them. I heard them even back in my scavenging days.”

  The Doctor turned to her. “You never told me that.”

  “Actually I did a couple of years ago but you ignored me.”

  From the tone of her voice it sounded like Annette thought The Doctor ignored a lot of what she said. Was this why she couldn’t go armed inside the walls?

  “Refresh my memory,” The Doctor grunted.

  “The stories are all mixed up,” Annette said. “It’s one of the old cities, like Jeb said. An inland place along one of the rivers.”

  “I heard the river was dried up,” Jeb said, thinking quickly. He’d seen boats out in the cove and he knew The Doctor’s next question would be why no sea traders had mentioned it. “They must have some water, though.”

  Annette shook her head. “I didn’t hear that but all the stories are vague. Nobody can say exactly where this place is.”

  “So nobody’s actually been to it,” The Doctor sa
id.

  “Not that I heard,” Annette said.

  “It’s just a scavenger’s tale,” The Doctor scoffed. “Like the stories of giant supermarkets full of Blue Cans and container ships being spotted out to sea!”

  “I knew someone who’s been there,” Jeb lied.

  Everyone turned to him. Jeb licked his lips and continued.

  “An older guy. I met him before I was captured by the cult. Said it was two month’s walk to the south from here along a dried up river. They had a real nice outfit going there. From what he said it was bigger than this place and just as advanced.”

  “So why did he leave?” The Doctor said, doubt lacing his voice.

  Jeb shrugged. “He was a wanderer. Never stayed put except in winter. You know how scavengers are. I was a farmer myself.”

  The Doctor let out a bitter little laugh. “And I bet he tried to sell you a treasure map to this place!”

  Jeb shook his head. “No. But it sure sounded nice. Electricity, machines. . .civilization, just like here.”

  “We’re the only city left,” The Doctor stated.

  Jeb studied him.And you’re damn proud of that, aren’t you? You wouldn’t be so special if you weren’t the only one. But maybe you aren’t the only one. Maybe the rumors are true.

  “So where is this guy now?” Clyde asked. Jeb noticed he still had the pistol pointed at him.

  “He wintered with us a few years back and wandered off come spring. I never saw him again.”

  “The point isn’t whether these rumors are true or not,” Annette said, “what matters is that The Pure One thinks they are so that’s where he’s headed.”

  The Doctor wound some gauze around Jeb’s forearm. “In that case he’s no longer a threat. He and the rest of those fundamentalist throwbacks will starve out on the plains. We can forget about them.”

  Annette shook her head. “No we can’t. He’ll wreck the farms, kill all the scavengers. Look how much he’s laid waste to the countryside already! What are we going to do for trade next harvest fair? There won’t be any more scavengers or independent farmers coming in. And who’s to say he won’t turn back around and try to get us, or take over that city and build his own little empire?”