The bus changed gears, idling down as it pulled onto an off ramp, and suddenly Kayla could see all of Chicago’s downtown, and for just a moment in the bright sun, she could pretend that it was ten years ago, the first time she’d seen those immensely high office buildings shining in the distance. She wanted to believe they were still full of people pushing paper, making phone calls, and tapping away at their keyboards.
But even from this distance, she could tell that the windows were dull with grime, that some were missing, and several buildings had holes with blackened edges from artillery or rockets. Some buildings had the office windows bricked in: ripper strongholds. The Willis Tower rose above all, so high that it looked immune from the destruction, but Kayla knew from Tevy that this was the center of ripper control, deep in the no-go zone. Except that he went. What was that like?
Margaret marched down the aisle of the bus, not like a child running to play, but one sent on a mission. She climbed into Kayla’s lap and gave her a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. “Hi, Mommy,” she said very loudly while looking at Tevy to judge his reaction. She leaned in close to Kayla’s ear and whispered, “Mommy told me to say that.”
Kayla could see Joyce and Jeff standing near the front of the bus looking back their way. She wanted to raise her eyebrows and shake her head to indicate that this wasn’t a good idea, but the last thing she needed to do was draw more attention from Tevy. She looked over but he was staring out the window, apparently oblivious to the charade put on for his benefit.
Margaret slipped off Kayla’s lap and headed back up the bus to Joyce, leaving Radu and Kayla to exchange a glance, Radu’s eyes raised high in disbelief. Kayla could tell he knew this wouldn’t fool anyone who could remember their mother, but what about an orphan raised in a pack of kids? The other problem was that too many people were in on the secret. How long before someone from St. John’s made an incautious comment?
“Must’ve been tough.” Tevy’s gaze stayed with the city streets as they rolled by, a retail area before the end, now a lot of smashed windows, the sidewalks liberally sprinkled with crystalline shards.
Kayla wished she understood this strange young man. Sometimes he spoke as if completing a conversation in his own head, one that she was somehow supposed to have been party too. “What?” she asked.
“Being pregnant at the end. Having to fight the rippers with a big belly.” Tevy looked away from the window and met Kayla’s eyes, and she fought to keep the panic from her face. She wasn’t good at lying.
“Oh, my friend Rachel took good care of me.” Kayla rewrote history as best she good, taking Rachel’s experiences from last year and trying to imagine them as her own from eight years ago. “I hated it, though, hated having to stay behind the walls as if I was some fragile princess while everyone else went on ripper raids. That really bummed me out, especially ’cause I was sick just all the time.”
Tevy studied her so closely that Kayla had trouble not blushing. This made her angry and that could help.
“Who was the father?”
Kayla let the anger surface, and it came naturally. “None of your fucking business.” But she thought of Ted, the young Ojibwa man who had saved her life, first by giving her a ride to Sioux Lookout in his battered Jeep, and a second time by insisting on giving her another lift back to Atherley. She often wondered what became of him after he flew with his tribe to the high lakes, and she often caught herself looking across the fields in the early morning as if he might come wandering in to join her at St. John’s. She would take him to be the father of her child if she were ever to have one. In this imaginary world she was building for Tevy, she pretended that she and Ted made the mistake of having a passionate encounter on the couch at his gran’s before they parted forever.
Tevy still frowned at Kayla, but her blush was gone, to be replaced with an angry frown. Surely that would carry the lie? Kayla was spared further scrutiny when the bus pulled up to another medieval-like gate, except that it was constructed with poured concrete rather than stone and anchored at each end by older buildings that might have once been retail stores or early twentieth-century apartments. Now their windows on the ground floor were bricked in, and circular razor wire hung between the first and second floors to make it difficult for rippers to scale the walls.
Radu leaned down so that he could look up through the window as they passed under the wall. “Does this go all the way around?”
Tevy shook his head. “We wish. We just got the main roads like this covered, but everything else on the perimeter is just row houses and whatever got bulldozed. They cleared some good fields of fire around the St. Mike’s cantonment just after I joined the Brat Pack. Rippers can get into Old Town all right, just not with cars. Tanks, though, that’s what I worry about. Some of the streets are just blocked with piles of stuff from the bulldozing. Tanks can climb piles.”
The bus stopped in a large square in front of a gothic church, it’s bell tower rising high. Kayla stepped into the afternoon sunlight, stretching in relief and staring up at the church. It was old world, for sure, but given that it was the center of humans in Chicago, given its huge reputation, she had been expecting something more like St. Peter’s in Rome. This brick edifice, while grand in a regular urban neighborhood, was not as large or imposing. She knew the history from Joyce, that it had been built by German immigrants before the Great Chicago Fire and then rebuilt even better after the fire. Their passion showed in the ornate flourishes, yet the brown brick was local and practical.
Joyce had said that before Vlad it was a twelve hour drive to St. John’s. They had taken nearly a week, although most of that was clearing the highway of ripper roadblocks down to International Falls. There were only a few between there and Duluth, and the closer they came to Chicago, the faster the trip. General Roberts, the leader Tevy called Bobs, had been clearing the way for them.
Kayla looked up in awe at the church, not so much because of the architecture, but because of what St. Mike’s represented. This was the center of resistance to the rippers in the early days of Vlad. This was where Bertrand Allan had planned the Battle of the Mountain. In this square, one of the first riots against ripper police took place, and she recognized it even now from the grainy YouTube videos that she had seen so many years before, back when people were just discovering that the rippers existed, let alone that they had infiltrated the governments first.
On the far side of the square stood the white statue of St. Michael, but near where the buses stopped was a new and larger monument: a tall pillar of stone on top of which sat a stone triangle, the symbol of the mountain and the memorial to Bertrand Allan for his sacrifice for humanity. Kayla stared up at it now, thinking of the man she met in the basement of Atherley College. What did he think of this monument to his passing?
“Better watch your daughter.” Tevy had come to stand beside Kayla and look at the monument, but now he pointed to where Margaret ran ahead of Joyce toward the statue of St. Michael.
“Oh, she’s okay with her aunt Joyce.” But Kayla felt the blush returning to her cheeks. How could she end up having to fake the role of mother? She wasn’t one and wasn’t the least interested in being one.
“You’re very trusting,” Tevy said. “My mother wouldn’t have let me out of her sight for a second in a strange new place.”
“Well, I’m not your mother.”
Tevy shrugged and turned to their bus, which now had its luggage bays open, to retrieve his small pack from the pile before others could start crowding around on the same mission. He had already put his back holster on and stowed his shotgun so that the pistol grip was handy by his shoulder. He turned and stood awkwardly in front of Kayla, as if suffering some internal debate.
“They’ll clear a blockhouse for you guys, maybe Emile’s.” He pointed to a four-story brick building that faced St. Mike’s head on across the square. “I guess I’ll be seeing you around.”
“Wait.” Kayla suddenly didn’t want him to go, and it bothe
red her. Sure he was cute and all, but he was just a teenager. Why should she be disappointed at no longer having to watch over him, even spy on him.
“Listen,” she said, awkwardly sticking out her hand to shake. “Thanks for your help and all on the way down. You’re a frigging good fighter.”
It was Tevy’s turn to blush, and seeing him look vulnerable somehow pleased Kayla. So he did have emotions, this strange, serious, and underfed man.
“So are you—a damn good fighter.” He started to turn away but then stopped, his eyes up on the monument and his top teeth coming out to bit at his lower lip while he thought.
Kayla held her breath, for she sensed that he had something very important to tell her, something she should hear, and that he needed a moment to find the words.
“You’re a really great fighter,” he said again, turning his blue eyes to meet her gaze. “But you’re a lousy liar.”
Eleven - Among the Believers
Tevy ran down the stairs to the church basement, desperately hoping to find some of the Brat Pack around. He wasn’t disappointed. He’d hardly rounded the corner into the common area when a shout went up from Elliot.
“There he is!”
A bunch of the smaller children, the five- to ten-year olds, had been sitting in a circle on the gray carpet, one he and Elliot had proudly liberated from a Home Depot several years before and lugged back to cover the concrete floor in the common area. Subsequent raids carpeted the whole basement, even the dorms. Tevy hardly had time to take in the room, the heavy wood shutters open to let in the light, with the bars throwing shadows across the floor. The gray office dividers that separated the dorms from the common area had new art on them, indicating that Helen must have found someone to scrounge an art store or a school for fresh paper and paints. Talented children had been busy.
The younger children now charged Tevy, and he swung several into the air to squeals of delight. Some of the older kids, the ten plus, came over to knock knuckles and admire the new shotgun and holster. Elliot came over last, and Tevy had to resist the urge to give him an undignified, back-pounding hug. The unruly red hair, the freckles, and the big grin with the crooked teeth were all such a welcome sight. Tevy settled for a high five and a knuckle knock.
“Dude,” Tevy said as he waded through children, heading for the boys’ dorm and his cot. “Good to see you.”
Elliot grinned and shook his head, putting out a hand to stop him from passing the curtain into the dorm. “You sinner. Didn’t you know we’re not allowed to say ‘dude’ anymore?” Some of the smaller children giggled as if Elliot had made a fart joke.
“What?”
Elliot nodded and couldn’t contain himself. “Should I?”
Several of the older boys nodded, and the children all huddle into a circle around him.
“These are the words we must never say, for fear of angering God.” His smile belied the seriousness of this statement. Elliot began a string of profanity, the usual like the f-word coming first, followed by body parts and combinations—these Bishop Alvarez had punished them for since the formation of the Brat Pack. But then Elliot launch into ones that were new to Tevy: blood, stinking blood, Vald’s blood, Bertrand’s blood, and finally yo and dude.
Elliot finished this litany of profanity with a devilish wave, his hands rising as if he were a ripper with claws, ready to pounce. The kids broke into laughter and scattered to run screaming in circles around the common room, except for one small girl, Mia, who fell out of the crowd, weeping, curling in the fetal position to bawl.
Tevy pick her up and sat in a cracked La-Z-Boy, cradling her on his lap. He remembered when her parents died on a raid, how the other families in their blockhouse brought her to the church, saying they had no food to spare for orphans. Tevy had rocked her many times in that same chair then, too. It had been two years ago, and she had just turned four.
“Make him stop,” she said. “The bishop says saying those words is like calling Vlad to send rippers up from hell.”
Tevy almost said, “Dude,” in accusation to Elliot, but he caught himself just in time.
“It’s hard, isn’t it,” said Elliot with a grin.
“But why that word? It’s totally harmless.”
Elliot sat on a stool next to the La-Z-Boy. “Little ears might not want to hear.” He nodded down at Mia. The other children had settled down from the screaming and gathered around and the questions started to fly.
“Did you kill any rippers, Tev?”
“I heard you flew a plane.”
“Why do they live up there? Are they sinners?”
“How many rippers did you kill?”
“Did any get close? Did you see anyone die?”
Tevy gave Mia a hug and he whispered in her ear, “I’ll never let the rippers anywhere near you. I swear I’ll keep you safe.”
He was about to respond to the questions when Helen’s voice called over the hubbub. “Let the man speak!”
The kids parted way for her, and she arrived smelling of stale tobacco and looking smaller and more bent than even two weeks ago. Tevy deposited Mia on Elliot’s lap and gave Helen a warm hug.
“Good boy,” she said as if he were still ten. “You brought yourself back and you brought my friends, too. Very good work.”
“But did you kill any rippers, Tev?” persisted one boy’s voice from the back of the crowd.
“Yes. I killed eight for certain, maybe more.”
The room erupted in cheers, and some of the younger ones again started running in circles screaming.
“That’s quite enough!” shouted Helen, her arms out like Moses preparing to part the waves. “Time to wash up for dinner.”
It took the help of several of the teenage children to quiet the younger ones, but when they were all upstairs and outside to use the latrines, Tevy sat with Amanda and Elliot and several other teenage members of the Brat Pack in the common room to get caught up. Elliot passed around a flask of strong hooch.
“It’s all about the traitors,” Elliot said. “They caught a bunch of them on a scouting patrol one day over in the west end and they were all ‘dude’ this and ‘yo’ that. It’s how they talk in California I guess.”
Tevy shook his head to clear it from the fumes of the hooch. “But that’s how we talk.”
“Sort of, but different. There was more of it and more slang that I didn’t even know.” Elliot took his hooch flask back from Amanda. “Anyway, the bishop added those words to the list. I think it’s really because if we don’t use them and the traitors do, they’ll be easier to catch. Just have to listen to them to know they’re traitors and not Loyalists. That’s what we’re supposed to call ourselves now, Loyalists to humanity and God.”
Helen hurried back into the common room and stormed right up to Elliot, snatching the metal flask from his hand. “Jesus boy. Don’t be passing around Emile’s hooch so late in the afternoon. You should be saving this for dawn.” She took a long drink and passed the flask back to him. “You,” she pointed a finger at Tevy. “I hope your head is still clear, because Bobs and the bishop want to see you right away.”
Tevy left his pack of dirty laundry on the floor and headed for the staircase with Helen, who despite her age was able to climb at a careful pace. Tevy matched her slow progress so they could chat.
“It’s not just me that’s glad you’re back, boy,” she said when she paused for breath at the landing. “A lot of the younger kids have ears, and the rumors are frightening. They took you being gone as a bad sign, because you’re their fighting hero, their protector. The one who stands between them and the rippers.”
Tevy felt the weight of being one of the oldest members of the Brat Pack. There had been few orphans older than him in the last days of Vlad, because any teenagers simply joined a blockhouse. There had been a few eleven- and twelve-year olds, but some died while scrounging for food, making the mistake of going into a basement without the backup of someone like Elliot or Amanda. Others marr
ied into a blockhouse by sixteen as a way of getting out of the confined dorms of the church basement, some even being forced out by the bishop if a new influx of orphans required space.
Tevy had been allowed to stay because he was Bobs’ scout, but that could only last so long. He and Elliot had been conspiring with some of the other teens to start their own blockhouse, but the only way the bishop would allow them to share it with the girls would be if marriages took place. That meant choosing a mate. Courting and competition was complicated in the confines of the dorms.
Helen renewed her assault on the stairs, shoving away Tevy’s hand when he reached out to take her arm. “I’m not dead yet.” But her smile proved that she wasn’t angry. “You need to watch out for yourself. If you died it would strike terror into the hearts of some of the little ones. Knowing you’re out their killing rippers makes them feel safe.”
Tevy knew she was right and it pricked a nerve. “Believe me, I want to live, too.”
They reached the top of the stairs and Helen caught his arm, not for support, but to get his attention. “Then don’t always charge straight at the rippers when you see them.” She poked a finger at his forehead. “Think.” She looked into his eyes to see if her point had sunk in, but she shook her head. “You’re so like him. It’s freaky.”
“Like who?” But Helen pushed through the heavy wooden door into the church.
The late afternoon sun streamed through the upper stained glass windows, the lower ones having been bricked up during the days of Vlad the Scourge. Tevy thought he noted a few new bullet holes high up, which could only mean that rippers were sending a message of intimidation and invitation, since those shots couldn’t have hit people. They were meant to lure out a patrol to ambush.
The 1000 Souls (Book 2): Generation Apocalypse Page 13