The 1000 Souls (Book 2): Generation Apocalypse

by Michael Andre McPherson

  “I saw one of these in a gas station last year,” Kayla said to Rachel, who had come out to show off her baby and see Kayla on her journey. “I just assumed it was junk.”

  “That was the idea.” Rachel seemed unaware that the baby was fussing in Kayla’s arms, working itself up to tears. “Those buses were another one of those secrets that Barry and Joyce’s Raiders kept. They had them stashed in garages all over Atherley, all over the county. I guess the idea was to have them ready in case we needed to evacuate if things went totally sideways.” She looked along the line of buses. “But now you’ll be gone, and we’ll be stuck here.”

  Kayla rocked the baby, practically bouncing it in her arms, terrified that it would sense her fear and know that she was totally uncomfortable holding the little creature. What if she dropped it or something? At the first real cry, she shoved the bundle back into Rachel’s arms.

  “Don’t worry.” Kayla tried not to show her relief at handing back the baby. “We’ll be back. I mean, Joyce’s Raiders and me anyway. I heard Joyce and Jeff promise Barry that.”

  “I’m surprised you guys are going at all, but I guess we’ll all be breathing a bit easier here for a while, have some space to raise our families. I hear there’s like six hundred volunteers going, mostly single young men. Better pick a hubby while you’re down there, because it’ll be slim pickings up here after this.”

  Kayla checked the magazine on her Uzi for the hundredth time. “I don’t know Rach. I’m not as brave as you, bringing a kid into this world with no guarantees it’ll grow up.”

  “There never were guarantees. Kids got killed in car accidents, from falls, from cancer.”

  “Now we’re lucky if we live long enough to get cancer.” Kayla cursed the words before she’d even finished. “Oh Rach, I’m sorry. I’m sure Justin will grow up strong and healthy here at the Keep.”

  Rachel had lost none of her toughness over the years, but to Kayla’s surprised it now cracked. “Just you be sure to come back for his first birthday, okay?” Her lip quivered. “It’s been you and me since the end, until the baby that is. Now you’re with Joyce’s Raiders and going out into the world to do something, and I can’t imagine life without you.”

  Kayla swept her up in a hug, careful of the baby between them and fighting to prevent the flow of her own tears. “I’ll be all right and I’ll come back. You’ll see. It’s going to be fine.” She patted Rachel on the back and stepped away, again checking the magazine on her Uzi.

  “It’s full,” said Rachel.

  Barry’s voice broke through the crowd. “Kayla.” He waved from two buses down, where he stood near the open door with Joyce and Jeff, the latter looking hung over. “A word, please.”

  Kayla gave Rachel a peck on the cheek and trotted over, knowing that with the sun above the trees, Joyce must be anxious to get them on their road. Just as she reached them, Kayla saw the little hands of seven-year old Margaret holding on to Joyce’s thigh from behind. One blonde pigtail peeked out from the level of Joyce’s hip, also giving away the child’s hiding place. Kayla had forgotten about Joyce’s daughter. Surely, the child wasn’t coming along?

  “Listen,” said Barry. “This kid, Tevy, he’s Bobs’ man, no doubt.” He crossed his beefy arms and studied Kayla to see if she understood. “I’m sure he’s a good fighter and all, but I want you to stick with him, keep an eye on him. There are things he doesn’t need to know.”

  “What things?”

  “None of your business.” Joyce picked up her daughter, an aggressive maneuver that the child interpreted as play.

  “Turn me upside down!” she called.

  “You’re too big for that, Mags.”

  Jeff shook his head. “Be reasonable here, Joyce. She can’t keep him from knowing shit if she doesn’t know what the shit is.” He turned to Kayla. “We don’t want Bobs’ to know that Joyce has a daughter, okay? I know that’s weird, but just don’t mention Margaret, and if she does find out, tell her it’s really Alison’s daughter, okay, but Barry didn’t want anyone knowing she was having a baby so young.”

  Margaret chose this moment to chase after another little girl, and they ran a weaving path through the piles of luggage lining the road adjacent to the buses.

  Kayla fought to keep all the subterfuges straight. They weren’t to talk about Margaret, but if she did come up, they were to say it was Barry’s granddaughter, but that everyone was pretending it was Joyce’s because Barry was embarrassed that his daughter had a teenage pregnancy—his daughter, who was now married and eight months pregnant.

  “Okay,” she said, her voice a tentative experiment. “Pretend, within pretend, within pretend.”

  Jeff gave one of his mischievous winning smiles that had melted so many hearts. “Told you she was smart.”

  But Kayla wasn’t done being smart. She had always assumed Jeff was the father, but they weren’t even the least bit like a couple or an ex-couple. Joyce and Jeff genuinely seemed to be just friends and comrades-in-arms.

  “Who’s Margaret’s father?” Kayla asked.

  The angry expression on Joyce’s face didn’t put Kayla off, and the sudden tension of everyone else in the little group told her she had hit a very important nerve.

  “None of your fucking business,” said Joyce.

  But it was too late. Kayla did the math, thought about who else Joyce had been close to nearly eight years ago and the fact that, as far as she had heard, there was only one man in line for sainthood down in Chicago. One martyr.

  “It’s Bertrand Allan, isn’t it?”

  Jeff actually reached out and held down the barrel of Joyce’s Uzi, as if he feared she would shoot Kayla.

  “Keep your mouth shut,” Joyce said. “You don’t tell anyone.”

  “I still don’t get why this is such a big deal. So you and Allan did it before he died.”

  Jeff held up one finger to quiet what was clearly going to be an angry retort from Joyce. Kayla decided that it was a true sign of the trust of their friendship that Joyce nodded and let Jeff speak.

  “Bobs has made Bert out to be some super martyr. During the famines she constantly reminded people to be like him, to go out and kill rippers and sacrifice themselves if necessary. It was more than just her publicity stunt. It helped rally people around her, to point to the Savior of Chicago and say that thanks to him everything would be okay if they could just survive one more starving winter. It would be a disaster for her and Alvarez if Bert turned out to be less than perfect.”

  “Okay,” Kayla said. “I can be very good at keeping my mouth shut.”

  Barry nodded. “Good, but Kayla, I don’t want this Tevy kid knowing anything more about the Keep than necessary either. Don’t tell him about the backdoor or the generator or the mine or anything else. You never know who’s going to end up a ripper, whether they’re the type or not.”

  “Got it. I ride by him and isolate him.”

  But Joyce wasn’t satisfied. “Especially,” she said, skewering Kayla with her glare, “don’t tell him about the man you met in the bottom of Atherley College.”

  Now Kayla was confused, because she didn’t recall meeting a man who wasn’t from the Keep, but as she reviewed those crazy moments in the fight, she suddenly understood and she whispered his name. “You mean Bertrand Allan.”

  Jeff whistled, and Barry turned away for a moment to look up at his Keep and mutter, “Jesus Christ, she knows.”

  “At least she had enough sense to whisper.” Jeff’s own voice was so low that it was barely above a whisper.

  Joyce looked like she wanted to rend her limb by limb, and Kayla involuntarily clutched her Uzi close to her stomach.

  Joyce pointed a finger right between Kayla’s eyes, less that an inch from her head. “That is our deepest secret. No one must know, ever, about him. Let Bobs have her fantasy hero. Let her have her martyr.” Her voice rose into a strangled crescendo. “Do you understand?”

  Jeff reached out and pulled down Joyce’s h
and. “Whoa, dude. I think she gets the point. Give her some credit.”

  “So much rides on this.” Joyce still looked furious. “We can’t control him and now this.”

  Suddenly, Kayla understood that she wasn’t the main problem. “Look,” she said. “My lips are sealed and the last bullet’s for my brain, so you don’t have to worry about me passing secrets to rippers.” She held up the Uzi, aimed for the sky, and pointed to the full magazine for emphasis.

  Joyce nodded. “Remember that promise.”

  She looked like she wanted to say more, but at that moment Alison St. John, her belly showing every month of her pregnancy, chased Margaret up to Joyce. Alison was there to take Margaret back into the Keep for breakfast, but she didn’t want to go. More importantly, she wanted very much to go on the bus with her mother. Kayla used the resulting tears and screams as an excuse to withdraw, and she headed along the line of the buses looking for Tevy.

  A little flutter of arousal surprised her when she saw him leaning one shoulder on a bus while he stuffed a sandwich into his mouth. Barry had given him a free card for the cafeteria, and Kayla had been surprised to find Tevy there on many occasions over the last five days, usually raving about how much more food there was up here. Rachel’s husband also mentioned that Tevy had taken a long shower every evening, marveling about the hot running water. His hair looked spiky and damp, presumably because he’d just had a farewell shower and toweled quickly before running for the cafeteria.

  His shotgun’s pistol grip stuck up over his right shoulder, and Kayla walked past with other people while pretending she hadn’t noticed him, wondering if he would call out, but he didn’t see her go by, because he was staring up at the Keep, apparently in awe.

  Kayla turned around and headed back to him in order to get a look from behind at how he had rigged the shotgun. Someone had sewed an unusual holster for it in heavy leather so that he could carry it on his back, ready to draw as fast as a handgun. Her glance went to the Glock at his hip and then his narrow hips and his cute behind in those patched blue jeans. No man had caught her attention this way in years, had made her wonder what it would be like to touch and maybe even hold him, to let her hands wander down to cup those firm buttocks while they embraced.

  She shook off this image, for the last thing she needed now was clouded judgment, although the thought of stopping beside him and slipping her arm around his waist teased at the edges of her awareness, thoughts of what it would be like to be a couple, to be casually comfortable with touching.

  “Hey,” she said, stopping and crossing her arms under her breasts as if she too just wanted to take one last look up at the black steel and gleaming windows of the Keep. “Pretty amazing, isn’t it?”

  Tevy licked the last of his breakfast off his fingers. “It’s a bit weird. It’s like time travel or something, like someone took an old world office building and a chunk of 2014, then just dropped it here in the middle of nowhere.”

  “That’s pretty much what happened. It was supposed to be a student residence and built less than a kilometer from campus, but St. John built it over here instead. The administration was all rippers and didn’t really care what he was doing or said. Never came to site meetings, just accepted photos of progress. Never occurred to them that he wasn’t building it where he was supposed to.”

  “Weird.”

  “Assholes were too busy snacking on my roommates at night to go looking at new construction.”

  Tevy picked up the pack at his feet. “You picked out a bus yet?”

  Kayla prayed she wasn’t blushing, didn’t show that she was happy that he’d essentially asked to sit with her. It was what Barry wanted, of course, but suddenly she knew that she wanted it, too, wanted to get to know this strange teenager who chased rippers into the woods at night.

  “Naw.” Kayla made an effort to sound non-committal, as if this was all no big deal. “I was thinking maybe this heap.” She tilted her head in the general direction of the bus beside them.

  “Great, we can sit together.” He tossed his pack into the belly of the bus on top of the pile of luggage that had already been loaded. “I’ll save you a seat.” He headed for the door without looking back.

  It was a relaxed maneuver, so confidant, perhaps even arrogant, that Kayla wanted to go to another bus. She never said she’d sit with him, just that she’d be on the same bus. The cheek to assume. Yet, she had orders, but what made her angrier was that she did want to sit with him.

  She went and got her backpack from where she’d left it lying on the road when Rachel had insisted she hold the baby. It was the same bag she’d packed to go to college, a pack she had hoped she would one day use for a long post-grad trip to Europe. That was never going to happen now. Who knew if it was even possible to get a boat to Europe, and it had been years since she’d seen jet contrails. As she tossed her luggage onto the pile beside Tevy’s, it did occur to her that this was a much more exciting trip than wandering around Europe, photographing churches and drinking at youth hostels.

  She gave one last look up at the black tower of the Keep, promising to herself that she would return, and she climbed onto the bus to find Tevy.

  *

  Tevy didn’t seem to mind that Kayla didn’t want to talk much about life at the Keep. Instead, as the bus rolled down the highway toward the Mattagami, he chatted about his life, telling her about growing up under St. Mike’s, about the Brat Pack and Chicago. He described the Loop downtown and told her which areas had to be avoided because of flooding after the sewers clogged.

  He described his adventures with a matter-of-factness that Kayla found refreshing. He didn’t brag so much as he seemed unaware of how crazy it was that he liked to raid into ripper territory, that he liked to spy and listen to gain advantage. The first half hour to the Mattagami bridge passed quickly, with the only problem being that the usual suspects who tried to get into Kayla’s pants every Saturday night stood in the aisle and hung over the seat. At first she thought they were hanging around for her, and she did sense that sexual tension, but soon it was obvious Tevy’s stories of Chicago were a draw. How many of these guys had ever seen Chicago? Even if they were from there, they were desperate for information as to how it had changed.

  It wasn’t long after the river that they had their first halt.

  “What is it?” asked Tevy, half standing in an effort to see up the bus, but everyone else stood as well, blocking his view.

  Radu, a guy who’d asked Kayla out many times to no avail, stood tall in the aisle. “A truck. A very big truck.” His very slight Romanian accent, somewhere between French and Eastern European, was a little more evident than usual. “It blocks the road, turned on its side.” Kayla knew Radu’s story, for he’d told her many times. He came over from Romania before the end, studying at Lakehead University and hoping to get landed immigrant status in Canada. He was visiting friends at Atherley College when the invitation to go take shelter from the rippers in the Keep had arrived. He accepted, but many times since, he expressed his desire to return to Romania. Some blamed him for Vlad the Scourge, since most believed he was connected somehow to Vlad Tepes, the prince of Wallachia in Romania and the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Many had whispered about Radu’s accent, the same as that of Vlad the Scourge. Kayla liked his thick hair and his sun-darkened complexion that spoke of Roma heritage, but something about his body didn’t attract her, the sense that, while he was slim now, a chubby, lazy man would appear in middle age.

  The bus driver’s voice cut above the hubbub. “Taking a break folks. This is a good time to use the forest.”

  Tevy sat while they waited for the bus to empty. “Do you we have a bulldozer or something?”

  Kayla shook her head. “We’ve got a big tow truck, one that can move big rigs even if it means dragging them. We’ve done this before, you know. For a long time, we tried to keep the highway open but the rippers keep blocking it at night, trying to catch people driving up from away.”


  Tevy did know, for a favorite tactic of the rippers in the early days was to get their human slaves to stall cars on the highways, creating huge traffic jams that lasted until dark. The carnage after sunset taught people pretty quickly that it was better to abandon a car and go to ground in someone’s house as far from the road as possible than to wait for the rippers.

  The drive continued that way all day: the convoy pausing, the tow truck clearing—in one case a barricade of old-growth trees—and another half hour of driving until the next blockage. By mid-afternoon everyone knew they wouldn’t reach the relative safety of International Falls. People began cleaning and loading guns.

  “There can’t be many rippers up here in the forest, can there?” Tevy asked.

  Kayla had a hard time not frowning at him. “The forest isn’t the problem. The highway is, and that’s where we’ll be spending the night. Look at the crap they block the road with. They’ve been catching people out here for years, even if it has slowed to a trickle lately. And they’re not deaf. They make their hidey-holes close to the road, and believe me they’ve all heard our buses pass today. Every ripper for forty miles will be coming for us tonight.”

  As soon as the bus stopped in the late afternoon, Kayla headed for the luggage bay, deciding she wanted to carry a couple more spare clips for her Glock. The luggage had shifted a fair bit, and she had to toss first one bag and then another out of the way, digging deep to find her backpack. But just as she saw it, the big hockey bag to the right shifted of its own accord. Kayla startled and leapt back, a superstitious dread rising in her gut until the warm sunlight on her back convinced her that it couldn’t be a ripper. But maybe an animal?

  She raised her Uzi and leaned forward, intending to prod the bag with the barrel, but then the zipper began to descend, pulled by something or someone in the bag. Kayla stepped back now, ready to shoot. It had been years since she had seen a raccoon, but what other creature could perform this trick? A person could never fit in that hockey bag.