by Jim Heskett
Near a rest stop along I-70 outside of Hayes, something happened. Gunshots spurted up near the front of the troops. The effect rippled from the front to the back, conversations spreading and weapons being readied.
George had been speaking with a demolitions expert, in mid-conversation, when the first shot broke out. Alma and Hector, who had been twenty feet in front, raced back to find George.
“Was that one of ours?” Alma said.
“I don’t know,” George said. “The blast came from up there.”
He pointed toward a rest stop off to the side of the highway, a stone structure with two bathrooms and a tiny visitors center flanked by picnic tables.
“Who are we shooting at?” Alma asked.
George didn’t wait to answer. No point in sitting here, waiting for someone else to deal with it. He raced forward, dodging soldiers. Sometimes, whenever the adrenaline took over, he’d forget he was forty pounds overweight. He’d pay for it later in wheezes and chest pains.
They needed to get out in front of this situation, in case it was some mutinous squabble between two soldiers who didn’t like each other. They’d seen enough of that already. If a Kansas City Eighteener took a disliking to a Houston Eighteener for whatever silly reason, it could rattle the collective cages of thousands of them. Or, if they had run into another group of Red Streets, or Infinity, that would be even worse. The troops were drained from the last battle in Topeka. Tired people with guns did stupid things.
George drew within a few hundred yards of the rest stop on the left to see two figures standing on top of the visitors center.
Two familiar figures, as crazy as that seemed.
George’s eyes weren’t what they once had been, and he’d been known to become confused from time to time, but he could have sworn he was looking at Connor White and Kellen Richter standing only a few hundred feet away. One was a grunt who had betrayed George and abruptly left his employ to help Kellen escape. Kellen, the Soothsayer… George had a much more complicated history with that man. Their story went all the way back to working on Senator LaVey’s reelection campaign, before this whole messy business began.
It couldn’t be White and Kellen. Couldn’t be. But the two who were now racing back toward the rear of the roof as shots peppered the building, looked exactly like what George remembered.
His mouth dropped open. “Lincoln!”
His assistant came trotting up from behind him, dirty red hair matted to his head. The kid hadn’t showered in days. “Yessir?”
It couldn’t be them.
Could it?
Chapter 11
Quentin - Nederland
He leaned back and stretched until the chair had almost tipped over. The tension in the council room was reaching a ridiculous level. In the rear of the husk of the hardware store, Quentin, Farrah, Coyle, and four other members of this community would decide its fate. As the others argued, he fiddled with an aging Rubik’s Cube that still had a good number of the stickers on it. He had most of the yellow side completed, except for one stubborn green piece in the corner.
“If we leave,” he said as he set the cube on the table, “we’re giving up the bunker forever. Coming back will require a lot more the second time around.”
“There’s no reason to think they even know about the bunker,” Farrah said. “The one we captured said nothing about it, no matter what we did to him.”
“Doesn’t matter what bullshit he spouted,” Coyle said. “How could they not know? You saw that scouting party. They came down over the mountains. That means they risked tripping all the landmines to get a closer look. They could have raided anywhere. There are other mountain towns like this one that provide a natural protection. Other towns with mountain streams for fresh water and good land for farming. Other towns with no residents they’d have to uproot to make it their own. But, they’re coming here. It has to be for the bunker.”
Farrah sighed as she stuffed her hands into her jacket pockets. She cocked her head to the side and pulled out a Nintendo Game Boy, seemingly surprised to find it there. Quentin grinned. Their son Willam must have slipped it into her jacket as a reminder to get more batteries from storage. It was a miracle that the old handheld gaming thing even still worked. Like the Rubik’s Cube, Quentin had inherited it from his oldest brother, and had lugged them both around for years from Austin to Chicago and now here, for no good reason at all.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Let’s say they know about the bunker. If they have the numbers their man claimed, there’s no way we can defend ourselves. It’ll be a bloodbath, and I can’t condemn everyone here to die.”
“And what are we supposed to do?” Coyle said, waving his hands in the air. “Go west, into Eighteener land? Or go east where Helen Rappaport and her army are laying waste to the country to fight the Infinity?”
“Seems like ‘Eighteener land’ isn’t so west anymore,” said Quentin. “But Coyle is right. There’s nowhere we can run. Not with the number of people we’ve amassed in this community over the last decade or so. We can’t move by stealth. We can’t move with a convincing force either, because we don’t have enough guns to arm everyone.”
“Kellen and White might be returning with help,” Farrah said.
Coyle grumbled. “Or they might return too late to make a difference, or they might not return at all. Say they come back with an army ready to fight, but we still have to evacuate before the town turns into a war zone. What about the sick and the old? Do we uproot them?”
Quentin looked from one to the other. He wasn’t even sure who was arguing which side anymore.
Farrah gritted her teeth. As council leader, she could always put her foot down, but she’d been consistent about allowing the council to arrive at decisions democratically. That’s why no one had ever challenged her for the top spot; she excelled at it, and no one else wanted it.
“If we stay, many will die,” she said.
“Same if we go,” Quentin said. His hands needed to move, so he reached again for the Rubik’s Cube. Fiddled with it so hard his thumbs ached within seconds.
Farrah checked the expressions of each person at the council meeting. Many were staring at the table, long-faced and silent. It wasn’t hard to detect the indecision on their faces.
Something outside rumbled.
“What was that?” Coyle said.
Another rumble.
“Sounds like an avalanche,” Farrah said.
But Quentin already knew the interruption was no avalanche. Another blast came, and then the clear sound of gunfire. At first only a few shots, then the crackling of automated weapons fire.
He jumped up from his seat and rushed for the door into the main area of the hardware store. The Rubik’s Cube thunked onto the floor as it slipped from his hands. Through the glass front doors, he could see the explosions in the foothills around town.
The collective council raced out of the room and out into the parking lot of the hardware store.
“Looks like the decision’s been made,” Coyle said.
Quentin shuddered as he squinted at the spaces between the trees of the surrounding mountains. At the sights and sounds of thousands of men in white bandannas descending upon their town.
Chapter 12
Kellen - Topeka
On a cloudy afternoon at the edge of Topeka, Kellen paused to gawk. He hadn’t been through this town in years, but he recalled it as being in much better shape. Unlike most of the larger cities, Topeka hadn’t fallen to the bombs and missile attacks orchestrated by Beth Fortner and her Infinity cult. No, Topeka had fallen for the same reason the other small towns fell… crime, lack of stable currency, looting and pillaging, the never-ending squabbles between local powers.
Four years ago, maybe five, Kellen had traveled this way and had stopped here. A loosely connected guild of merchants had set up shop in the remains of an apartment complex, and Kellen had stayed with them for a few days. He’d experienced little resistance. Hadn�
��t had to take out his pistol once while passing through the series of mostly intact buildings.
But this town was now in shambles. Smoke rose from a dozen places in town. Half of it had degraded to piles of ash.
“Topeka is a Red Streets city, right?” White said as he piloted through the suburbs.
“Was a Red Streets city.”
White nodded grimly and swerved to avoid a sofa in the middle of the road. “Fair point.”
“There,” Kellen said, pointing at a grassy spot next to a parking lot. “I see something.”
White pulled over, and they left the car to examine what Kellen figured were the recent remains of a campsite. Depressions in the ground encircled a small, burned area. Campfire. Bits of debris scattered everywhere.
White wandered off in one direction, then whistled for Kellen’s attention. Kellen joined him as White knelt next to a steel drum used as a trashcan. He pointed at what looked like a collection of empty soup cans and bits of paper. Examined closer, the paper were the butts of home-rolled cigarettes. He lifted a soup can that was half-full and gave it a sniff. Reeked of some awful moonshine. Something made from a bit of liquor and leftover motor oil, probably. But no mold or maggots inside, so it had been used recently.
“I know what happened,” Kellen said as he set the can on the ground.
“Enlighten me.”
“Eighteeners. The ones we came upon at the rest stop, must have come from this direction.”
The Eighteeners had swept through here, probably a day or two before the unfortunate meeting at the rest stop in western Kansas. Kellen and White had been objectively lucky that the roving army of gang members had not commandeered their car or pursued them further into the valley.
“If they’re rolling west,” White said, “they’re trying to pick up support along the way. Collecting up all the little groups of Eighteener bangers to absorb them.”
That name he’d heard, Alma, played in Kellen’s mind. Was she a charismatic figure who could somehow unite all of these disparate gangs into one army? Would they then have enough power to take on all the opposing gangs, and if they succeeded, would they try to form a government?
Would they be a good government?
Likely not.
Not far past the bits of debris, two bloody bodies were resting against a brick building, maybe breathing, but probably not. The building was short and riddled with bullet holes across the brick. Looked like a car wash.
White drew his gun, but Kellen placed a hand on top of it. “No need. They’re dead. I can see it from here.”
He and White crossed the parking lot to get a better look at the bodies. A man and a woman, mid-twenties. They’d been stripped of their clothes, but Kellen felt sure they were Red Streets. Their bloated and mangled bodies had been sport for the nomadic Eighteener army that had passed through here. No doubt.
Kellen had faced the onslaught of armies before. He’d seen enough devastation for several lifetimes. But something about what this cluster of gang bangers was doing deeply troubled him. These dead people sprawled against the car wash hadn’t only been tortured. They’d been carved up for sport. It was worse than anything he’d seen the Infinity do to their victims.
White squeezed Kellen’s shoulder, to let him know he was still there. “Let’s push on and find Rappaport’s people. Can’t do anything about this now.”
They returned to the car. White hit the gas and navigated over a bridge to enter the town proper. The streets were a maze of abandoned cars, oceans of broken glass, the occasional dead body. Some fresh corpses, some skeletal with wisps of skin still clinging like they didn’t want to leave.
Once they’d hit downtown, Kellen sat up. “There.” A man in a leather jacket with a black bandanna was huddled, sitting on top of a car, rocking back and forth. A Red Street. “It’s a live one.”
White parked the car a few hundred feet down in the middle of the tall buildings. “I don’t like this. Too many windows in these buildings and too many entrance points to this street. We won’t see them coming.”
Kellen reached in the back, pulled out their two pistols, and then handed one to White. “This is a ghost town. Anyone the Eighteeners left alive is going to be like this guy, or worse. We’ll be fine.”
Down the street, the gang banger noticed them, but he did not try to move or flee. Only sat there, breathing, looking ready to slide off the hood of the car and crumple into a heap.
“What do you want to accomplish?” White said.
“The army we met yesterday. I want to find out what they’re doing.”
White sighed and cocked his pistol as they left the car. Weapons lowered, eyes up as they eased down the street. The Red Streets gang banger barely looked up as they neared within a few feet of the car he was sitting on. Still didn’t flee.
“Hey,” Kellen said.
The man finally moved, but only to scoot back up the hood a few inches. His aged face was a bloodied mess. One of his eyes was scarred shut. “I don’t have anything. If I did, I’d give it to you. I’m going to die, anyway.”
Kellen squinted as the sun peeked through a break in the clouds above. “We’re not here to rob you.”
“Are you here to put me out of my misery?”
“Maybe,” White said. “If that’s what you want.”
The gang member didn’t seem to know how to take this. Altruism, or a trick. After a few seconds, he shook his head. “I don’t think I’m ready to go yet.”
“Okay, so will you talk to us?”
“Fine,” the man said. “What do you want?”
“Just to ask you some questions about what happened here,” White said.
Kellen shoved his pistol in the back of his pants. “Did the Eighteeners come through here? Is that who destroyed this town?”
The Red Street nodded. “But there’s a lot more to it than that.”
Chapter 13
Lincoln - Topeka
Lincoln rolled the tooth between his fingertips and sighed. It was a fine tooth, almost no cracks or splinters at all. If he could find a workable rotary saw, he could probably even carve into it.
From behind the wheel of his aging Ford Mustang, he raised the binoculars and watched two men strut out of their car to explore the grassy area next to the parking lot. On their knees, picking through bits of rubble and debris like two detectives working a case.
They were hunting through an area Alma and her troops had used for a campsite. Lincoln hadn’t stayed here, but he knew some of the soldiers who had. They’d brutalized a couple of wandering people, and had bragged about it for days.
Next, the two travelers wandered over to the Red Streets corpses next to the car wash. Lincoln wasn’t sure what they were hoping to accomplish. These two were already dead. Lincoln could see it all the way back here, almost a block away. Probably the same unlucky bastards the Eighteeners had been bragging about.
He shifted in the car seat, biting his lower lip. What were they doing? People could be so confusing, sometimes.
But, it didn’t matter what he thought of their goals. Lincoln’s orders—direct from George Grant himself—were to tail these two, find out where they were going, and then execute them as painfully as possible.
Lincoln planned to get some information first.
The skinny one was supposedly Kellen Richter, the man who’d once gone by the name of Soothsayer. The author of the blog that tried to expose the Five Suns just before the world went to hell. Lincoln had only been a child when all that had happened, but he remembered reading a printout of the blog post… printouts were all that existed since the internet had fizzled and died not long after that post had gone live. He had vague memories of websites and social media, but it was as murky as his memories of television and the books his parents used to read to him at his bedside.
Lincoln thought he might like to have a spirited discussion with the Soothsayer first, before plucking his teeth and gouging his eyes out to bring them back to George Gra
nt. What could it hurt? George wouldn’t have to know about it. And Lincoln might finally talk to someone who would tell him what the world was like before it all collapsed in on itself. No one seemed to know, or else they didn’t want to talk about it.
After they’d finished inspecting the two bodies, they returned to their car and drove toward downtown Topeka.
Something about the bodies by the car wash drew Lincoln in. He had to go see them.
He navigated to that parking lot and wandered over to the fresh corpses. Someone had some fun with these two Red Streets. Turned it into a show.
When it came to this struggle for power, Lincoln had no interest in any of the players. He was interested in whatever George said was important, and they were attaching their hopes to the Eighteeners. At least for the short-term. The Eighteeners had the numbers and the guns to crush everyone. They had the crazy bitch Alma to lead them. Seemed like a no-brainer.
Lincoln removed his knife and pried open the mouth of the male corpse. He had a rotten set of teeth. Lots of crowns and fillings. But the woman, hers were perfect. Lincoln dug out her molars and two of her incisors. They would need to be polished and cleaned, but this was a great find. Most bodies, the teeth decayed and rotted after only a few weeks. Made them easier to remove, but it also made them brittle. Capturing a pristine tooth gave Lincoln that sense of pride he couldn’t find anywhere else.
He stowed his new tooth trophies inside his hip bag and returned to the car. Couldn’t let his targets get too far ahead of him. If he lost both of them in this podunk town, he’d have to mope back to George with his tail between his legs, admitting defeat. And he didn’t want to admit defeat.