by Jim Heskett
Jarvis’ eyebrows went up, but Alma smiled. “Is that so?” she said.
“You get to Colorado Springs or Denver, you’ll find fifty thousand of us, waiting to tear you apart.”
“Fifty thousand?” She said. “Wow, you’ve been busy recruiting. Such a large number is impressive.”
The captive’s resolve waned. His face was trying to hold it together, but wasn’t convincing anyone.
“Before we arrive to meet our doom in Denver,” she said, “point me to your supply caches. My men are tired and hungry.”
“We don’t have anything,” he said. “We were dying before you got here.”
“Ahh,” she said, drawing the knife from the sheath on her belt. “Then our conversation is done.”
She jabbed the knife into his chest and gave it a rapid quarter-turn. The man yelped and then seized, his body vibrating. He tried to pull back, away from the thrust of the blade, but the men securing his arms stayed firm and wouldn’t let him escape.
The Red Street tried to speak, but when he opened his mouth, only a wheeze of breath whooshed out. He closed his eyes. The men holding him let him slump to the ground.
Alma knelt to wipe the knife on the man’s shirt.
“Think he was telling the truth about Denver?” Jarvis said.
Alma stood up and slid her knife back into its sheath. “Only one way to find out.”
Chapter 17
Kellen - Kansas City
He awoke, hungry, cold, and feeling like he’d only closed his eyes ten minutes ago. They had nestled behind the bar of some barbecue restaurant in a neighborhood in Kansas City. Their car was gone, blown to pieces. Their food, water, and supplies for trading were also gone. All they had were their guns, the ammo in the magazines, and the clothes on their backs.
Kellen rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and shuddered. “Holy God, it’s cold.”
White didn’t echo the sentiment because he wasn’t there. The spot on the floor where he’d slept now felt cold to the touch.
Panic gripped Kellen, but then White materialized through a set of double doors next to the bar. His chattering teeth indicated he wasn’t any warmer than Kellen. As he rubbed his arms up and down his shoulders to create friction, White knelt and kissed him on the cheek.
“Where did you go?” Kellen said.
“Couldn’t sleep. Did some exploring. There’s a set of stairs up through the kitchen that leads off into darkness.”
“Like a cheesy horror movie?”
White nodded. “Could be an apartment with supplies. Door’s locked, but I’ll bet we can find a way in if we poke around a bit.”
Kellen rose to his feet and stretched, then he nodded at his partner. “Is it too much to hope they’ll have a stocked cabinet with Lucky Charms and milk?”
“Probably,” White said as he pointed the way to the kitchen. “Boys can dream, though, can’t we?”
White walked them through the set of double doors and into the grungy kitchen. Tile walls wearing scum like a dark brown sweater. A pile of dishes in the dish pit that festered with maggots. Whoever had last inhabited this place hadn’t seen fit to clean it up. Even though it gave him the desire to gag, Kellen couldn’t blame them.
“I know,” White said as he lifted his shirt up over his nose. “It’s over this way. Let’s be quick.”
A door near the back opened to a dark stairway. Kellen had a small, wind-up LED flashlight in his pocket. He gave it a few dozen cranks to buy him a couple minutes of light, then pointed the beam up the stairs. Wooden door at the top of a set of steep steps.
“It’s locked?”
White nodded. “I haven’t tried to bust it down or anything.”
Kellen held the light low and eased up the steps, testing each one before placing his foot. If he shot his heel through a rotted step and broke his ankle, that injury might be game over. They were on foot until they could find better transportation.
White stayed close behind him. Kellen felt warm breath on the back of his neck. At the top, he tried the knob and found it locked. Shined the light around the wood framing the door. It was old and rotting, so it might not withstand a strong shoulder or the butt of a rifle.
“I think we can kick it down,” he said, and then moved out of the way to give White a chance. With Kellen’s prior ankle injury, he wasn’t much for kicking.
White braced himself against the walls of the stairwell and slammed the heel of his foot into it. His boot sailed right through the wood, releasing a foul smell into the air. Vomit. Death. Rotting flesh. Long-spoiled meat. Could have been one of those or some combination of all four.
Plus, sounds of movement on the other side. Breathing, something crossing what sounded like a wooden floor. Footsteps. Maybe voices, but White’s grunting drowned it out.
“Connor,” Kellen said.
“I hear it.” White tried to pull his leg out of the hole he’d made, but it wouldn’t budge.
The sounds on the other side intensified, then morphed. Not footsteps, but more like clicking. Clattering. Little chirps and growls.
What the hell was over there?
White braced himself again and yanked his foot. As he grunted, the sounds on the other side grew louder, closer.
Kellen’s chest thumped. “Connor.”
“I know, I know,” White said, now pistoning his leg again and again. The wood cried and squeaked, then his foot broke through, and he toppled backward, thudding down the stairs. Spun a few times as he traveled down the set of rickety steps at warp speed.
He came to rest at the bottom, flat on his back. Kellen gasped.
“Fine,” White said, moaning and shifting around on the floor. “I’m fine. I’m okay.”
Kellen attempted to race down the steps, but White motioned him back toward the door. “Don’t worry about me. Find out what’s in there. What is that sound?”
Kellen pointed the flashlight to find a small, furry head poking through the hole White had kicked in the door. Raccoon. The head withdrew, and then a different one appeared in its place. Sinister and beady eyes narrowing.
Kellen knelt down as the second raccoon head disappeared, and he gazed in through the hole to see a cluster of the little beasts rutting around in the kitchen of some tiny apartment. Writhing like a singular organism of a raccoon orgy.
“What is it?” White said, struggling to get to his feet.
Kellen gazed down at the pistol on his hip. If he emptied his magazine through the hole, he could turn all of those raccoons into breakfast. But, he wasn’t willing to use the bullets, and he didn’t know if he was hungry enough to eat raccoon yet.
With a sigh, he turned and thumped down the stairs to help White to his feet. “It’s not people. Not any live ones, anyway. Some rodents have claimed this apartment for their own, probably ate all the food already. There’s nothing in that apartment we’d want.”
“It was worth a try.”
“You okay? Didn’t twist your ankle or anything, did you?”
White grimaced. “No, I’m good. Bumped my back a little, but it’s no big deal. Let’s get out of here. Get moving and find some transportation.”
Kellen led him back through the kitchen and out into the restaurant. He was about to open up the topic of what they might scrounge for breakfast when White grabbed him by the back of the shirt. Dragged him down below the bar where they’d slept last night.
“What?” Kellen said.
White raised a finger to his lips and then pointed toward the front of the restaurant. Then he held up three fingers. Three unexpected guests, nearby.
Kellen eased high enough until he could see an inch above the counter. Beyond the glass doors of the restaurant, two men and a woman were standing, pushing steam into the cold air from their mouths, casting furtive glances in all directions. Waiting for something.
“I don’t think they’re planning on coming inside here,” Kellen whispered as his stomach rumbled.
White swished his lips back and
forth, considering.
Kellen knew what he was thinking. Maybe they had something worth taking. Maybe they were Infinity, waiting to find new recruits they could teach how to maim others and drink their blood. Or maybe they were Red Streets, looking for victims to sell into slavery for food and gasoline. Maybe they were some other brand of freak, looking to dine on the raccoon family living in the apartment upstairs.
Or maybe they were simply regular Kansas City locals, out for an early morning stroll.
Whatever they were, Kellen wanted what they had. And if he wanted it more than they did, he would get it. Nothing could stand in their way of making it out east to connect with Rappaport’s army.
Look at what you’ve become, whispered the voice inside Kellen’s head.
He flicked his head toward the door, and White grimly nodded. He knew what had to be done. They crawled toward the edge of the bar and peered around to study the two men and the woman. They weren’t Infinity, judging by the lack of burned flesh. No white or black bandannas, either, so not likely gang members. That Kellen might rob and possibly kill decent people tugged at him. But he couldn’t think like that. Bigger things were at play here.
Kellen slinked out from behind the bar, and now he noticed a fourth figure, this one on the ground. A knife sticking up out of his chest, blood still pouring out of his body onto the sidewalk. His eyes open, blank stare pointed at the restaurant. And the three others standing over him, not seeming concerned in the slightest at this sight of this dead man.
Kellen didn’t feel so bad anymore. These people weren’t out for a stroll.
He moved from a crawl to a crouch, pistol out, pointed at the door. White was hunched over behind him, creeping at the same pace.
When he was within a few feet of the door, Kellen popped up. Snatched the door and jerked it back. The three streetwalkers all turned their heads.
“Don’t,” Kellen said, eyes on a pistol sticking out of the belt loop of the woman. “Keep your hands back, or I will blow a hole in your head. Not joking.”
The woman and two men all raised their hands, and White reached forward to snatch her pistol.
“What are you doing out here?” White said. “It’s freezing.”
“Waiting for someone,” the woman said, insolence on her face. She couldn’t have been over twenty-five, about the same age as her companions, but with additional miles of weariness on her face.
“We’re going to have to take this gun,” Kellen said, “and any food you have on you. I’m sorry about that, but we need it.” Then, he noticed across the street, a late-model Toyota Camry, one of the last ones made. It was clean, with tread remaining on the tires.
He flicked his head at the car. “That have working gas in it?”
The woman took a breath and then lunged to reclaim the pistol in White’s hand.
“Don’t!” Kellen shouted. Before he could finish the word, White squeezed the trigger and put a bullet in her. It passed through her eye and out the back of her head, making her body twist from the force.
The other two men, when faced with the choice of running or trying to attack, chose to attack. They bore down to race at him, eyes blazing and fists clenched.
Kellen had no choice but to shoot each of them in the chest. Two bullets apiece sent them to the ground.
When the echoes of the gunfire faded, the street was quiet. At an apartment complex across the street, Kellen noted three pairs of eyes peering through a window, four floors up. Three children.
“Damn it,” Kellen said, his mouth curling into a wince. Tears were coming. “You could have walked away,” he said to the dead woman on the ground. “You would have been fine if you’d listened to me.”
White crouched and dug through her pockets, then pulled out a set of car keys.
“Doesn’t matter, babe,” he said. “We have a car now. Let’s get on with it.”
Chapter 18
Alma - Pueblo
Once one of the soldiers had lit the fire for her on the open floor of the former shipping warehouse, Alma dismissed him and asked George and Hector to gather around.
“Times like this, wish we still had beer in a bottle,” George said as he hoisted another log from the pile into the fire.
George had antiquated ways about doing everything. All of them old-world. Old world conventions had gotten everyone into this mess in the first place, so Alma had no interest in abiding by them.
George was giving her that look, the one which meant she should have built the campfire herself. Or, maybe it meant she should have invited her co-General Jarvis to dine with them. Either way, Alma didn’t care. Jarvis was an asshole. Alma didn’t want to spend time with him if she didn’t have to. She’d tried to foster that common ground more than once and had found it a fruitless enterprise. Jarvis’ men had located a real brothel near the edge of town, and she assumed he would rush off to join them.
George and Hector settled in, and they all munched their canned meat and stale bread while they stared at the fire in the middle of this massive, abandoned warehouse. A small collection of trusted guards kept watch at the exits around the building. After they’d cleared the city of stray Red Streets, everything had been quiet. She expected no trouble.
“Tomorrow,” her father said, his voice raspy and barely audible, “we will be ready to move on to Denver.”
“Good,” she said. “I don’t want to wait. From what I understand, the snow is worse in January and February, right?”
George eyed her. “You never been to Colorado before? I thought you were a world traveler.”
“I have traveled some, but not out this way. Dad kept me hidden away in the south for most of my childhood.”
Hector nodded but said nothing. She didn’t begrudge her father for his former protectiveness. If she’d had children, she might feel the same way.
“Where was that?” George said.
“Oklahoma,” she said. “A quiet existence, mostly. I had to have help even crossing the border after the Open Carry laws went into effect.”
George gave Hector a look, maybe thinking about asking him why he’d kept his daughter a secret. But he didn’t say a word about it. Hector wouldn’t have answered. With his throat injury, he chose his words carefully, if he uttered them at all.
“Did you ever meet LaVey and Anders?” George asked.
“No. But I understand they were great men.”
George snickered at this and set down his empty can of meat. Dragged a hand across his bearded face, in lieu of a napkin. “Hardly. Edward LaVey was an idealist of the kind that always had more hope than sense. He was a good politician because he was quick on his feet and people liked him. He had a good smile and knew what to say in awkward situations.”
“A politician,” she said.
“Yeah. And he woulda had a promising future in front of him, were it not for… everything else that happened. But I wouldn’t call him a great man.”
“He was a symbol.”
George chewed on this for a few seconds. “Yep. He was a figurehead.”
“Because of Peter Anders.”
George nodded. “Anders was the brains behind everything. The meteor was his idea. He had the connections to get the fake news out there. Without him, none of this would have ever turned out to be anything. Disconnecting the internet, kidnapping the president… those were all his ideas.”
“Kidnapping?” Alma said. “I thought he was killed.”
With a sigh, George said, “he was. That wasn’t the plan, though. That was all due to Beth. Beth Fortner. She worked her way up the chain of command so quick, we didn’t see it coming. LaVey was enamored with her charisma. You know the saying about the salesman who can sell ice cream to a woman in white gloves?”
Alma shook her head.
“Well, anyway, that was her. Had us all buying truckloads of her bullshit.” George drifted off, his eyes wistful and vacant. “She really hornswaggled us all. And we didn’t even figure it out for years. By th
en, she was already dead, her Infinity cult were dug in like termites, and the military had been crippled. The missiles mostly spent.”
“Except for the ones from Anders’ black box?”
“That’s right,” he said, his face brightening. “How Beth never found out about those, I’ll never know. But we recover that box, and the tide will turn. It won’t be much of a war once we blow Helen Rappaport and her army into the ocean.”
“You make it sound simple.”
George hiked his knees up to his chest and stared into the fire as it crackled. “No, obviously, it’s not. But it’s the best thing we have, as far as a plan. Roving the country and picking up stray gang bangers who think you’re supposed to shoot guns sideways isn’t much of a way to build an army.”
Alma picked up a stray log and stoked the fire. “As long as they’re shooting those guns for me and not at me, I don’t care how they shoot them.”
Chapter 19
Kellen - Lebanon
Past St. Louis, there was no border crossing station to enter Illinois. That was the first sign something significant had changed in the east. He and White passed through and alongside areas that looked like they might have been former Infinity strongholds, judging by the graffiti. Everywhere, they’d see scrawls about the mistress and five suns of lies and destroy false hope and other nonsense.
But none of the burned people.
They saw no one hanging from gallows while the cultists looked on, jeering at the dead and dying. They saw no corpses inside rings of candles, rose stems jabbed into the naked and bloated flesh. Few dead at all, actually. Someone had been cleaning these lands and making them look presentable.
At the edge of the little town of Lebanon in Illinois, Kellen and White stumbled upon the army. Until he’d seen it with his own eyes, part of Kellen hadn’t wanted to believe it. But there they were. At the top of a valley dipping a couple hundred feet, Kellen gazed down to see endless rows of quartered houses, barricades, and men in marching drills. Smoke from contained fires. The sounds of soldiers working.