A roar brought me back to reality. The gang-bangers had finally decided what to do. A truck, large enough to carry several heavy containers, was being moved around so that its rear pointed directly towards the barricade. It was packed with boxes of all shapes and sizes, including several that looked as if they would fall out at any moment, and I had to bite back a laugh when I realised what they were. The gang-bangers had been looting, all right, but they hadn’t been looting food. They’d been looting museums and jewellery stores! They’d probably been robbing banks as well.
I heard suppressed chuckles running up and down the line as my men made the same realisation. No wonder the gang-bangers all qualified for the Darwin awards. I wasn’t sure of what was going on beyond my horizons, which had shrunk badly to Ingalls, the Stonewall prison and a few miles beyond, but I was sure that money was equally useless. A person’s weight in gold – unless you’re really fat – isn’t actually that much, and at the moment, most rational people would have preferred their weight in food instead. Greenbacks would be more useful as toilet paper than hard currency.
But the gang-bangers weren't all stupid, I realised, as the truck revved its engine and moved towards us, tail first. If the barricade had only been what was visible, hitting it with a moving vehicle might have pushed it out the way, allowing them to charge through the breech. As it was, it was about to get hairy. I cursed under my breath. The vehicle would run over the second set of mines and everything would go up into the air.
“Patty, take out that thing’s wheels,” I ordered. An AT round would have stopped it dead in its tracks, but I didn’t want to waste one. If we had a clear shot at the driver, we would have taken it, but we didn’t have a shot. The gang-banger was clearly not as suicidal as some of the insurgents we’d encountered. I barely heard her shots over the noise of the engine, but as the tyres deflated, the truck just kept on coming. It had been designed for rougher treatment than that. Maybe we were going to have to take it out…
My hesitation nearly proved fatal. I will admit that. Before I could order the AT team to engage it, the truck ran over the second set of mines and exploded in an almighty fireball. The strange colours within the flames suggested, in hindsight, that rare paintings had been included among the gang-bangers’ loot, but at the time we didn’t time to worry. The explosion lashed at the barricade and sent parts of it teetering over, on fire.
“Get the reserves up now,” I snapped, as I drew my pistol. I shouldn’t have been anywhere near now that we had a breech, or the beginnings of one, but I wasn’t going to run. “Get that hole sealed, now!”
The gang-bangers yelled and advanced again, running towards the breech as quickly as they could move. The landscape had been partly redesigned to make that difficult, but we hadn’t had the time to make a real impact, not yet. I’d been intending to use the prisoners to make additional defences, but I hadn’t wanted them to get a look at the interior defences. Paranoia, when Law and Order had broken down so completely, was definitely a survival tool. They looked more determined now, more intent on victory…and, seeing the breech in the barricades, lunged forward, suddenly confident of victory. They were a gang, after all, feared by ordinary citizens and protected by an establishment more intent on looking good than tackling the root causes of inner-city decay. What did they have to fear from us now that the barricade had tumbled?
They’d learned, as well. This time, they were firing quick bursts towards the two snipers – or, at least, towards their rough location. Patty and Stacy duelled with them, taking shots at the gunmen when they had a chance, but they couldn’t suppress them in time. The mines had been used in the first attack, they thought, but when they reached the break, they realised that we were hardly broken. We greeted them with a hail of fire.
It’s not easy to aim a handgun precisely, no matter what the movies say, but I’m sure I hit at least two of them personally. I carried the Desert Eagle for its stopping power, not for the macho man image that came with it, and I’m sure that if I hit one of the gang-bangers, I killed him. I felt no remorse at the time, or later. Ingalls was my home now and they wanted to loot, rape and burn their way through my town. I wasn't going to let that happen.
The gang-bangers wavered and broke under our fire, falling back in disarray towards their vehicles. This time, everything was different; Mac and his merry men were assaulting from the other side, slipping up under cover of our fire and attacking the remaining gang-bangers from the rear. They panicked, caught between two fires, and attempted to fight back, but we had the advantage now and we used it mercilessly. A handful of gang-bangers attempted to run and we shot them in the back, while several more tried to surrender, throwing their weapons down and begging for mercy. We weren't gentle. Those that offered to surrender were knocked to the ground and brutally cuffed. They just looked happy to be alive.
I took a second section down to the vehicles and we started to search them, one by one. We lost a pair of men then as a gang-banger, hidden in one of the trucks, screamed something incoherent at them and fired a Uzi into their faces. Mac killed him a second later, but they were well beyond even Doctor Nelson’s skill to save. Another gang-banger, trying to escape, started to try to move the school bus, only to have it riddled with bullets when he started the engine. He flopped down into the seat and lay still.
Brent led the team into the bus personally, but found almost nothing, beyond a handful of weapons and suddenly-worthless examples of the gang-bangers’ greed. I followed, relieved to discover that there were no kids in the bus, when I realised that I hadn’t seen the hostage at all. The final vehicle, parked at the rear, hadn’t been searched and so Brent led the way over there. I wanted to lead the team personally, but Mac held me back firmly.
“You really shouldn’t be risking your life,” he said, seriously. The old me would have considered that an insult, what Texas used to call fighting words. The new me realised his point, even as I chaffed against the restrictions high rank brought in its wake. “Seriously, Ed, let Brent take point.”
Brent opened the rear hatch and was promptly smashed in the face by a bare foot, sending him staggering backwards onto the ground. A black figure – for a moment, I thought that it was wearing a camouflage uniform for night operations – had kicked him and was desperately trying to kick another man in the groin. He raised his weapon, ready to fire, but I called him back. The girl – it had been hard to tell earlier, because she had been moving so fast – was not only naked, but her hands were firmly cuffed behind her back. Like the others in the group, she looked half-starved and her eyes were those of a desperate animal. I somehow doubted that she was a gang-banger.
“It’s all right,” I said, even though it wasn't. Brent would probably need surgery for his nose, but luckily it wasn't serious. If that kick had been a couple of inches lower she might well have crushed his throat. “We’re friends. You’re all right now. Really.”
We helped her out of the truck and removed her handcuffs, before looking further into the van. The man I’d spoken to earlier was there, but he didn’t call out to me…and it only took me a moment to realise why. Someone had drawn a knife across his throat, and that of a fat woman who’d been cuffed beside him. His wife, I realised, feeling sick. I’d seen worse, but this was something awful. The two girls – they were just barely entering their teens – were staring at their parents bodies, while a third girl, a teenager with a vapid blank expression on her face, showed no reaction at all. She didn’t even look at us. Like the first girl, she was naked.
“Shit,” Mac said, as we realised what the children had just seen. They’d seen their own parents killed in front of them. I hoped – prayed – that the gang-bangers hadn’t seen fit to rape them, but even if they had spared them that, they had still traumatized them for life. “Damn it, Ed, we can’t let that go.”
“We’re not going to,” I said, and climbed down to the first girl. I’d dealt with rape victims before and them still fighting, however it was expressed
, was a good sign. “Listen,” I said. “My name is Ed. Can you talk now?”
She started to talk, slowly, but calmly…
And when she had finished her tale, I had to physically restrain Jackson from walking over to the gang-bangers we’d taken prisoner and blowing their brains out. I had thought I’d known how bad it would become, but I hadn’t even been close.
The cities were falling into a nightmare of madness and death.
Chapter Thirteen
We do not discount the seriousness of rape as a crime. It is highly reprehensible, both in a moral sense and in its almost total contempt for the personal integrity and autonomy of the female victim and for the latter's privilege of choosing those with whom intimate relationships are to be established. Short of homicide, it is the “ultimate violation of self.”
-Supreme Court of the United States, Coker v. Georgia
Her name was Roshanda and she had been a cop.
We listened to her story in growing disbelief and horror. She’d pulled herself out of the ghetto through luck, smarts and a parent who had refused to allow her to sink into prostitution and drug abuse, like so many other girls from her background. She’d aced school and managed to get herself into one of the better High Schools, before going on to join the police force as a young trainee. She’d graduated and had had two years service under her belt when the war came and her police station was knocked down by the blast.
She’d pulled herself – and two male policemen – out of the wreckage when the gang-bangers arrived, keen to salvage what they could from the ruins of the police station. I wondered, judging by her confused state of mind, if the police station had actually been attacked, rather than just been too close to a nuclear detonation, but there was no way to know. The gang-bangers had fallen on the three cops and beaten the two men to death…and they had been the lucky ones. Roshanda had been beaten, cuffed with her own cuffs, and then raped repeatedly. She’d expected to die any second, but she’d never stopped fighting, even though it was hopeless. The gang-bangers had found it funny.
They’d taken her with them as the struggle for survival broke out. At first, several gangs allied together to take what they could, before law and order was restored. They’d go out and hit banks, or stores, before coming back and celebrating their victory with Roshanda and a handful of other girl prisoners. The next few days had taught them the folly of taking valuables that were no longer valuable after the War and they’d turned to taking food, only to discover that most of the food supplies were drying out. A gang – or maybe a volunteer association – had taken control of most of the food supplies remaining in the city and the gang-bangers hadn’t been welcome. Some of them had fallen to cannibalism, eating the dead bodies from the streets, only to become gravely ill. The remainder had fled.
And they’d taken Roshanda with them. She had tried to fight, every time, but hunger and misery had ground her down. She’d been almost pathetically grateful for what scraps of food they’d served her, when they’d had food to spare, but she’d been in terrible pain. They’d known better than to let her free, even beaten and badly abused, and her body had suffered. The bouts of blankness had been growing longer and longer and she’d feared that one day soon she’d just lose it completely, like the Zombie Girl. It had become almost a desired state for her.
The gang had commandeered a few vehicles and headed out of the city towards the farms. They’d run into trouble already with a biker gang that had had the same idea and exchanged shots with them before coming to an arrangement, trading a pair of girls from the convoy for food and directions. The bikers had cheated them, although no one was sure if they’d done it on purpose, because they’d found themselves redirected towards a town that had barricaded itself up, like Ingalls had. They’d been driven away from the town in disarray and their only relief had come from locating a store of foodstuffs in an abandoned truck. They’d pressed on, terrified of fallout and suspected that it had been what had killed their fellows, and finally reached Ingalls.
As I had summarised, they’d been weak and on the verge of collapse. They’d snatched up their representative and his family partly because they could – and to have a little fun with his wife, if not his two daughters – and partly as a food source. The leader – the bastard the two snipers had killed – had kept them together, somehow, but they’d known that they were on the verge of collapse. Once hunger caught up with them, they would be dead. They’d had no time to do anything, but launch a frontal attack on Ingalls and hope.
I looked over at Rose as Roshanda finished speaking. “Rose, take her and the other prisoners to Kit and tell him to treat them as soon as possible,” I ordered. Rose had given Roshanda her jacket, which the former cop now clung to like a baby’s blanket. “Try and keep them separate from any of the men for the moment.”
“Yes, sir,” Rose said. She paused. “Can I suggest bringing in one of the nurses from Stonewall? Any of them would have more experience with rape trauma and they’d have the advantage of being women.”
I doubted the first point – Doctor Kit Nelson had a history that made mine look ordinary – but acknowledged the second. “See to it,” I added, and watched as the women were escorted back towards Ingalls. Kit would see them just past the barricades. The Zombie girl – the first Zombies we had seen – looked completely out of it, as if she’d been blown right out of her mind. I had never seen a state of walking catatonia before, but I was sure I was looking at it now. “Jackson, the prisoners…”
They sat on the ground, shaking, all nine of them. The defiance and vicious determination that they’d hoped would make up for lack of training or planning had vanished, replaced by fear and a certain knowledge that none of us had any reason to show them mercy. Jackson had taken the step of piling up the dead bodies in their view, just as a reminder that we were prepared to kill them if they failed to convince us otherwise, while seven men kept their weapons firmly pointed right at them. If they had started anything, it would have ended really quickly.
Two of them, I noticed with some surprise, were women. They might have been pretty once, like Roshanda had been, but hard wearing had been unkind to them. I wondered briefly if they’d been innocent victims, but we’d seen them shooting at us, freely taking part in an act of aggression. I wasn't inclined to be merciful to any of them, but if any of them were spared, it would be the women. I allowed my gaze to drift across the men and smiled coldly. Like the prisoners from Stonewall, they would be easy to break.
Of the seven men, four were black, almost traditional gang-bangers. Two were Chinese, from their appearance, and a third was white, making it a surprisingly racially-integrated gang. I amused myself with a wry thought. The PC thugs who had insisted on racially-diverse communities would have horrified to discover what had happened in their name, or perhaps they would have viewed it as vindication. Crime, after all, is colour-blind.
I stared at them coldly until they were all looking back at me. “Which one of you fucks is in charge?” I demanded. “Who’s the leader here?”
They said nothing, until one of the Chinese thugs nodded towards one of the dead bodies. “You killed him,” he said, in a voice flavoured with Mainland China. I guessed his story easily enough. He, or his parents, had been an illegal immigrant from China. Despite the Chinese Government’s long-standing complaints about us, the Chinese still thought that America was a good place to live. The Final War had proved them wrong. “I’m sorry and…”
I caught him and pulled him upright. Cuffed, he could offer no resistance. “You’re sorry?” I demanded, angrily. “You’re sorry? You come here, you attack my people, intent on stealing our food and supplies, and you’re sorry? Some of my people are dead because of you! Are you sorry about that too?”
Up close, he smelt bad, like a boy who had remained unwashed for weeks. It wouldn’t surprise me if that were indeed the case. Ingalls had a fairly modern sewage system, but maintaining it without parts from outside was pure hell. Ray Thompson h
ad warned that if we didn’t modify the system soon enough, we might have real problems keeping it running past the next year. It was bad enough dealing with the local water, which had to be filtered carefully because of all the past mining, but the sewers were a real point failure source.
“You’re sorry,” I repeated. “Can you bring the dead back to life?”
I threw him to the ground and glared down at them all. “You’re going to be fucking sorry all right,” I snapped. It was easy to sound intimidating. It would have been easy to just draw my pistol and blow their heads off and they had to know it. They knew, also, that I wanted to kill them. “You’re going to be working for us now, got that?”
We’re going to need labour, I reminded myself, as they seemed to shrink inwards. They’d never been treated like that in their lives. They had always been the big men on the streets, the ones the law couldn’t touch, defended by an army of lawyers and civil liberties advocates if there was just a single touch more violence used than absolutely necessary…and the uncrowned kings of their world. It was a delusion, but none the less real for all that; the men who’d brought them into that world had died, and their courage had died with them. They knew I’d killed them.
The Living Will Envy The Dead Page 12