The engine of another tank caught her attention, so she risked going up onto the ‘L’ platform again and running toward the river. The station seemed vaguely familiar, and the Merchandise Mart had been enough of a tourist attraction that she wondered if she had stood on that platform in happier times with her parents on their only trip to Chicago.
The column of black smoke from the dead tank bent to the east, although enough washed her way to carry the scent of burning oil. But the engine noise of another tank seemed close to the dead tank. Was Tevy alive? Were they going to get the second tank and what if they didn’t? What if it crossed the bridge just as she was forming up her troops to assault the Mart? Perhaps a truck sideways across the road could slow it down if Tevy failed. She was about to go and order Mabruke to pull one of the five-tons under the station to block the road, when the scream of another rocket slammed her ears. This time she saw flashes of sympathetic detonations as rounds inside the tank exploded, but she couldn’t see the tank itself because of the ‘L’ tracks. A new column of black smoke rose beside the first, the two blending together and twisting away to the east. Tevy had done it, Kayla was sure. The bridge was blocked for now to tanks. But not troops.
Kayla hurried down the station platform, the machine gunners still battling between the buildings above her head, each using short bursts. Did Mabruke’s guys know to keep relocating to up their chances of catching the traitor gunners exposed? She hurried down the stairs to find Mabruke about to run up.
“We’re just about ready,” he said.
“Get two of those platoons to either side of the bridge on this side. If you can, get some of those sand bags and build nests for machine gunners. Don’t let the traitor soldiers across the bridge. Keep your guys under the station for cover.” He started to turn away to issue these orders, but she caught his arm. “And get a machine gun crew into that other building on the east side, the one Tevy said is in front of the office building. They can fire down on anyone crossing the bridge.”
Until they ran out of ammunition. If only she’d had a chance to get to know Mabruke’s army, understand on whom she could depend, take stock of their ammunition. Train with them.
The runner she sent to Joyce came flying down the street without his backpack. From the excited grin on his face, you’d think he’d hit a triple and was racing for home plate.
“I got through,” he said breathlessly, giving the hasty fist at shoulder height salute that the Ericsians preferred. “I talked to Jeff himself! It was amazing. He totally got it right away, and he brought me to Joyce herself. Joyce! She said I did great and to tell you they’d attack the Mart at 6:30.”
Kayla looked at her watch: 6:15. Thank God she remembered to wind it this morning. Thank God she had been able to salvage a winding watch. The batteries in her old watch died years ago, which was why she started searching dresser drawers in abandoned houses until she found this one, obviously designed as a man’s watch.
“Mabruke,” she called. “We’ve got to go through the walls in fifteen minutes. I want to speak to your platoon leaders. What do you call them anyway? Captains, Lieutenants?”
Mabruke turned from shouting instructions. “They’re all hosts of a portion of the Captain Soul, like me.”
Why did she outrank them because she hosted a portion of the Angry Captain? She filed that question away for later. “Whatever, get your captains assembled back behind that truck.” She pointed to a battered white five-ton that said EXPRESS DELIVERY on the side. “But not the captains from the platoons defending the bridge. I’m going to check on them right now.”
She ran down the side of the street under the rusting steel girders of the station, the ‘L’ tracks filtering the afternoon sunlight where not in shadow from the Mart, the smoke from the burning tanks more pungent, drying her nostrils but not thick enough to prompt coughing. A 4x4 raced past her, stacked dangerously high with sand bags. These Ericsians thought of everything. What was their history? They fought a lot of rippers, Kayla was sure of that, but where and when? This obviously wasn’t their first canoe trip.
She reached the steel of the bridge, rising up out of the sidewalks on either side to support the ‘L’ train tracks above. She found many men and women taking shelter behind the girders. Four figures ran along the east sidewalk toward them. Tevy’s form was unmistakable, and Elliot’s thick red hair was just as obvious.
“Hold your fire,” she yelled to Mabruke’s troops. “Friendlies, Friendlies!” Kayla pushed down the panic that she was about to see Tevy shot and ran out to meet them.
“The 1000 Live On, but they sure as hell won’t,” shouted Elliot. “It was great!”
Kayla could see the burning tanks sitting on the metal-grate deck of the drawbridge. But as she turned she also caught a muzzle flash from the fifth story of the Mart, reminding her that this was no time for heartfelt congratulations or warm reunions.
“Let’s go! Let’s go!” Kayla aimed her Uzi down the sidewalk in case any traitors were in hot pursuit, but too much smoke obscured the far side of the bridge. She hurried after Tevy even as others unloaded the 4x4 of sandbags, building positions for guns on each sidewalk.
She had to sprint to keep up with Tevy and Elliot and the two rocket men, who still carried the M72 LAWS, even though they had been fired and were now useless. Tevy slowed as they approached the intersection at Kinzie and looked to Kayla for direction. She led him behind the EXPRESS DELIVERY truck, where a dozen men and women, the Captain Souls, waited with Mabruke.
Kayla checked her watch: five minutes. Not enough time for a real briefing, not enough time for much planning.
“After we blow the holes, you’ll need to go in right away while they’re still dazed. This is the ripper part of the building, so make sure you tap the brain of any ripper you bring down. The torso should be your first target, sure, but don’t assume it’s dead if it takes a shot to the chest.”
“We know.” Mabruke wasn’t arguing, just stating a fact.
“Great. They’ll be heading for the basement like crazy to get away from the light. It’ll be dusty at first, like yesterday. Just watch for the friendly fire. Remember the St. John’s people will be in there too, coming from the other side. Okay, let’s go.”
Mabruke stopped her even as his captains hurried to their platoons. “Here.” He opened a small pack and tossed her a grenade, then another when she was ready. He tossed two at Tevy and Elliot as well. “The 1000 Live On!” He gave the should-high fist salute.
Kayla returned it. “See you in the morning.” She turned to Tevy and Elliot. “We three stick together. Let’s go in over there.”
They sheltered across the street behind one of the rusting girders that supported the station. A demolitions man crouched there, wiring up to a small box.
“How do you set them off?” asked Kayla.
“Electricity to the detonator.” He finished tightening the terminals and flipped up the red protective cover over a toggle switch. “We got rechargeable batteries and juiced them last night. They mostly work.” He gave a wry smile and made a circle with one finger, the Ericsian equivalent of the Sign of the Cross.
Kayla checked her watch. The second hand still had thirty seconds to go until 6:30, but an explosion from the direction of Joyce’s Raiders forced Kayla to move. No one had synchronized watches.
“Do it!” she shouted, not just for their man but for all the others. She covered her ears just in time.
The girder shook and shards of glass and stinging sand flew across the street. Even though they were crouched in a line behind the girder, Kayla’s cheek stung as a something sliced a deep cut. That was going to leave a mark.
“Go! Go! Go!” Kayla charged across the street, Tevy and Elliot close behind. She reached the far side and discovered that some of the sand bags were piled on the sidewalk to give an attacker a hill up to the window, saving her from having to pull herself up. She should’ve thought of that! Thank God Mabruke’s troops did. She charged up the
sandbags and through a rough hole in the blocks, crouching to fit under the blocks above that still held.
It was a gray and choking world, the concrete powder clogging her nostrils and stinging her eyes. Before the apocalypse she would have worried about lung cancer. Now all she cared about was surviving the next hour. She dodged right to make room for others and moved deeper into the room, turned sideways and expecting gunfire at any second.
A dark form rushed away and Kayla fired after it.
“They’re heading for the basements!” she yelled.
She sprinted after the ripper but had to slow, because so much debris, mostly fractured concrete block, littered the floor. Tevy caught up on her left and Elliot on her right. The figure led them through the remains of a store, complete with manikins dressed in what would forever be the latest fashions.
They almost missed the door to the stairwell, but Elliot saw the sign and pointed. They pushed in and discovered that here, too, the rippers had electric light for their lairs. The three of them rushed down the stairs, and Kayla expected the resistance to begin at any moment, but all she could see ahead was that running figure. Others from the Ericsians had followed, so they had a squad-sized unit when they bottomed out in a service hallway lit by bare bulbs. Here, as in the high school, the rippers had shunned the existing electrical system and strung their own line outside the finished walls.
A muzzle flash lit the hall far from them. The building was so impossibly big that it was hard to tell if the gun was even aimed at them or some closer target. Several male forms, most likely rippers judging by their gaunt forms, emerged from side rooms and ran away from them down the corridor. Kayla was about to charge toward them shooting, but one of the rippers turned toward them, running the opposite direction of all the others, his hands on his head in surrender.
“Don’t shoot! Do not shoot!” That Romanian accent was distinctive, but with all the adrenaline it was impossible to stop everyone. A gun went off and the ripper clutched his stomach as he fell.
“Kayla!” There was panic in that call.
She rushed up, flanked by Tevy, who was now also shouting, “Don’t shoot. Stop shooting.”
Kayla bent over Radu, who had flipped to face up and still held his stomach.
“Kayla! Don’t shoot! It’s me, Radu! Thanks God I find you.”
Radu looked paler than yesterday morning, and his eyes had a strange sparkle, just a little crazy.
“Radu.” She stopped above of him, heaving for breath and wondering what to say. Good to see you? How’s death?
“It’s a trap. You have to get out.”
Tevy knelt beside him, but the Ericsians continued in pursuit down the hall. “What do you mean?” he asked. “We’ve got them on the run. Their tanks are burning on the bridge.”
Radu shook his head. “No, no! The tanks are just to distract. They do not need these tanks. The whole city has tunnels. Deep, old tunnels. They have train lines but no trains, but they are big and easy to travel.”
“Subways?” asked Kayla.
“Those are close to the surface. Those are there, too, but these are much older tunnels. Much deeper and much older. Who builds these tunnels, I don’t know. And they’re full of rippers. Many, many rippers. One ends right in the basement of this building. There are many others. They go under the river. That is why they don’t need bridges.”
“What the hell?” Kayla struggled to understand, the adrenaline inhibiting clear thought.
“The tanks lure you here, all along the river, all your armies. But tonight the rippers leave these tunnels and get behind you, trap you against the river and kill you all. You must get out before sunset. You must run. Forget tanks. Forget everything. Go to secure forts.”
Kayla understood. That’s why the rippers didn’t oppose them as they poured into the Mart. Somewhere down here in this maze waited hundreds, maybe thousands of rippers, and they weren’t trapped or surprised. They could bring in reserves and fresh ammo. They would be well dug in around the tunnel entrance, maybe a whole floor of the basement. Perhaps Radu could show them the entrance to this tunnel, but what of the others? What other buildings were they in? It was nearly seven o’clock.
Radu reached up and took her by the shoulders, and Tevy placed his shotgun to Radu’s chest just in case he was about to sit up and rip into her neck. But he was only trying to make her understand. His breath reeked of blood and his desperation was catching.
“They are coming for you.”
Twenty - Falling Back
Tevy had never run so much in his life. A few of the St. Mike’s troops had working walkie-talkies, but the only way to get word of the ambush to everyone else had been with runners, and when Kayla looked up from Radu and said, “go,” he knew exactly what she meant.
He ran back up the stairs to find thirteen-year-old Connor, the blue-eyed boy from the Brat Pack that had fallen asleep at Tevy’s feet last night, waiting just outside the Mart, a gun in one hand as he looked desperately into the building. Clearly, he wanted to join the attack.
Tevy sent Connor east to warn Simon Gonzales and Julia Chen, two of Bertrand’s former companions who always led St. Mike’s troops. Tevy ran back through the haze of dust in the Mart to find Joyce. He got to the far side and was nearly shot by one of the Raiders before several others recognized him and shouted for a ceasefire.
Jeff received the message with disbelief. “But the traitors up stairs have laid down arms,” he said. “We’ve won the Mart.”
“We’ve won the day,” Tevy had shouted. “But we’ll be massacred tonight.”
The rest of the evening, as the sun dipped into the west, Tevy spent running. He went up and down the whole line from Lake Michigan to the river, ensuring that Connor was believed, that the message had gotten through. He never even paused to wonder if Bobs would be angry that Kayla had given the order to withdraw on the basis of one ripper.
Later, when they had withdrawn into the St. Mike’s cantonment, he was pulled off the barricade for an interview. She’d grilled him at length and then looked at her map.
“I thought this was too damned convenient. Starting up their Bradleys and moving so fucking slow up to the river, just giving me lots of time to get everybody there to fight.”
In fury she swept all of the toy soldiers and trucks that represented her forces off the table. But her anger stopped there, and after one deep breath, she was as composed as if in church.
“This Kayla, she’s smart and she saved our collective ass. Stay close to her and the Ericsians. But I don’t want them acting independently this way again. It worked last night, but it might have backfired. Keep me posted on what they’re up to. I’ll see if I can get you a walkie, but in the meantime keep Connor or some of the other Brat Pack kids as runners.”
But that wasn’t the end of Tevy’s running for the night. He and Elliot and the older Brat Pack kids fanned out south of the cantonment after dark, probing down toward the Loop. It was a new moon night, a moonless night, and it would have been impossible to navigate but for flashlights that Emile had loaned. Even then they used them sparingly. It wasn’t long before Radu’s warning proved correct. Thousands of rippers flooded into the streets well north of the river, and even Tevy might have been trapped, except that this was his territory. He was the rat that knew every nook and cranny, every burned-out building and hidden alley or connecting rooftop—the latter were the best, giving the safest vantage.
The dark forms mustered in the streets and began to march north, only to stop and turn south again in confusion, shouting commands and questions at one another, pushing and shoving in the streets in their disappointment. Tevy heard them more often than he saw them, but even the rippers needed a bit of light, and the few torches and flashlights gave them away. Tevy decided that they were starving for blood, that Vlad Who Bleeds may have withheld donations so that they would fight more recklessly, crazed by their hunger.
Bobs was in conference in her war room in the rectory whe
n Tevy returned with the news that the rippers were flooding back into the Loop, but he had to wait for Helen to finish with her story. She sat relaxed at the conference table, a place Tevy rarely saw her, and her easy way with Bobs reminded him that Helen was one of the first Companions of Bertrand.
“You kids are too young to remember the flood,” she said, lighting a cigarette. Rippers didn’t smoke, and the corner stores were overstocked right until the apocalypse. “That’s no ripper work down there, although I imagine they might have dug a few new exits up into basements.”
She looked old and tired, her white hair under a kerchief tonight, her fingers yellow from the tobacco. Every year she seemed to shrink, and at first Tevy just thought it was because he was growing. Now he had to admit that it might not be long before the Brat Pack needed a new mother. It had never occurred to him before that Helen could grow old.
“Well who the hell built these tunnels?” asked Bobs.
“Oh, way back. They were built to bring goods into downtown underground back in early Chicago, before prohibition even. Trains ran through those tunnels. The bridges used to go up a lot for shipping in the early days, and that made getting into the Loop a traffic nightmare, so this really helped. But times changed, and they stopped using them in the fifties, and everybody pretty much forgot about them. Then came the flood.”
Joyce sat up in her chair. “Wait a minute. I remember my dad talking about this. It was in the eighties, wasn’t it, some accident?”
Helen nodded. “Part right. I remember it was in the early nineties because I had my flower shop just new and open for business. Someone with a drill or something punched a hole through the river into one of the tunnels and it flooded basements all over the Loop. The Merchandise Mart was one of the first to have its basement flood. Even city hall got it. All kinds of buildings saw their basements turn into swimming pools, because their owners didn’t even know they were still connected to the tunnels. They might have walled them off and stuff, but bricks and mortar aren’t waterproof, and drywall makes a lousy dam. Had to shut the Loop down for weeks.”
The 1000 Souls (Book 2): Generation Apocalypse Page 22