“Yeah, I know,” Joseph said. He sniffed and continued, “What are you cooking now, Fish?”
The boy grinned and wobbled his hand. “Little of this, little of that, Joe. You know how life in Barrio is.”
“Where’s the girl, Fish?”
“She in the old store. Little bitch bit Claw’s dick off yesterday.”
Joseph laughed out loud, startling Veronica. “She did? Good for her! That dirty, raping bastard deserves it.”
The boy bristled at Joe’s words. His partner placed a restraining hand on Fish’s arm. He hadn’t spoken until then, “She gotta go, man. If Claw lives, he gonna kill her. Make her pay first, though. Girl can’t stay here no more, no matter what Mr. Edward say.”
“We’ll take her with us,” Aeric stated.
The older boy turned to him threateningly. “Not talkin’ to you, Traxx. You—” He was cut off by Aeric’s fist smashing into his nose. Veronica yelped louder than the child that her husband punched.
“I’m not gonna take shit from some Barrio trash,” Aeric scowled. “I’m done being nice. Either take us to Maria or I’m gonna let Joe start murdering you little fucks.”
“Okay, okay, Traxx. You know we like you. You good guy,” Fish replied in between glances at his partner’s ruined face. “Don’t know woman. Who she?”
“Veronica,” Aeric answered. “Maria is going to live with her.”
Veronica waved timidly and wondered at Aeric’s choice of words. He purposefully left out that she was his wife, why was that?
Fish grabbed his crotch and rubbed it suggestively, “Wanna trade your woman for Maria? We take good care of her. Real good care.”
She stepped back away from the degenerate in time to see the end of Joe’s rifle slam into Fish’s abdomen.
The boy bent over in pain and slapped at his bloody partner’s leg. “Flame take you to Maria, man,” Fish coughed.
Aeric smiled, “Don’t try to double cross us once we’re inside.”
“You good, Traxx. No problem with Slashers.”
Flame, the boy whom Aeric had punched in the face gestured for them to follow him inside the Barrio. Joseph led the way while Veronica fell into step beside her husband several paces behind the other two. “What was that back there?” she whispered.
“Violence is about the only thing that these kids understand,” Aeric replied.
“Or maybe we could change that and try kindness.”
He sighed and her temper spiked. If he dared to say something like she didn’t truly understand the world that they lived in, then she would scream at him. It was an old argument between them. She’d never been out in the wastes besides the initial trip when her father brought her back to San Angelo from Austin. She’d heard plenty of stories from her famous husband and Tyler about the dangers outside the city walls. All three of her boys had followed in Aeric’s footsteps and become members of the Gathering Squad as well, so she had enough knowledge about the outside world to inform her statement. These people were inside the city walls, it didn’t have to be like this.
“You saw that…that urchin, Fish,” Aeric continued in a hushed tone. “If given the opportunity, he’d rape you and then slash your throat or maybe vice versa. There’s no saving those types of people. Times are tough all over—more so in the Barrio. That doesn’t give the street gangs the right to be thugs and murderers, though. Like I said, violence is the only thing those kids understand. They respect people who are more powerful than them.”
“Then why not go in and clear them out; empty the Barrio of the street gangs?”
“Now you want me to kill the kids? It would cause a massive uprising from their parents and leave the community in a state of fear over who’s next to be wiped out.” Aeric waved to a few dirty children playing with ancient toys beside an old ice cooler at a convenience store. He reached over behind her and placed his hand in the small of her back as they walked and continued, “The kids band together and do horrible things when they’re trying to get through a tough period in their lives. You remember how awkward those years were back when we had everything in the world at our fingertips. Imagine how these kids are, their future is bleak at best. They grow out of it, for the most part. Joseph was a gang kid before joining the Shooters.”
“What about the ones who don’t grow out of it?” Veronica asked.
“We have a program for them.”
She stopped and twisted away from his hand. “What program?”
“The ones who don’t change their ways after they become adults work in the sewers under guard.”
“You force people to clean up the filth of everyone in the city?”
“All that piss and shit has to go somewhere,” he answered and began walking again. “It’s not a job that anyone is going to volunteer for, so we take the degenerates down there and they spend ten hours a day scooping refuse into buckets and hauling it through the sewers out to the south side of town. So far we’ve only had one person who hasn’t reformed and seen the error of his ways after a couple of weeks.”
“What happened to him?”
“He’s in charge of the Barrio.”
“What?”
Aeric shrugged, “He still works down there, hauling shit every day. Has been for more than twenty years. But the residents of the Barrio love him and have elected him as their spokesperson.”
She blanched at the idea of someone being in that filth without the convenience of showers. “You’ve had people down there for twenty years?”
Aeric shrugged, “Edward Huerta is a degenerate who hasn’t done enough to be banished into the wastes. It seems like every time we allow him to come up, he does something else and gets thrown back down there. Petty theft, vandalism, drug production and sales, that sort of stuff.”
“If he runs the Barrio and these street kids do whatever he says, why does he keep getting in trouble, not one of them?”
She could tell that her husband had never thought of it that way before. “I don’t know.”
“Have you been down in the tunnels to see what’s going on down there?”
“Sure. I mean, not all of them. There are miles of crisscrossing sewers, but I’ve been along the main routes.”
“Maybe there’s something else going on and that’s why he keeps going down in there,” she proposed. How in the hell has he not wondered what’s going on in the tunnels that keeps this guy down there?
“You’re probably right, babe. I’ll send some of the police force or maybe borrow a few more of Lorelei’s Shooters to go down there.”
“I don’t know, it seems like—”
He cut her off, “We can talk about it later. We’re coming up on the old grocery store where Maria lives.”
She nodded and walked slowly beside her husband. It was probably best to discontinue the conversation anyways. There seemed to be a feeling of being watched inside the Barrio, so there was no telling who was listening to her tell Aeric that Huerta’s actions seemed shady and needed to be investigated.
They passed by a rough-looking group of young men lounging around a fire pit in an open area near the trail through the garbage. These boys were also about the same age as the kids at the entrance, but a few were older, fifteen or so—maybe. Veronica swore that they might have been the vilest group that she’d ever seen. They wore ragged clothing of various styles with a square of bright green cloth sewn onto their shirts above the left breast.
Veronica had seen the cloth sewn on clothing before at the community soup kitchen, never really thinking anything of it. Now that she saw it displayed on ten boys all at the same time, she knew that it was their gang symbol. The boy at the gate didn’t have the green cloth sewn on his clothes, but he was clearly in a gang according to Aeric and Joseph. They must be rivals, she concluded.
Some type of animal, about the size of a medium dog sat on a spit over the fire. The cooking meat smelled wonderful, making her wonder what type of ration they’d been given. One of the boys stood up an
d closed the distance between them.
“What you doin’, Flame?” the boy asked the rival gang member, ignoring the adults that he led.
“Traxx needs to talk at Maria,” Flame stated.
The boy with the green cloth sewn on his shirt looked over at Traxx. “That true? Why you want my girl?”
Aeric sighed. “Seriously, kid. I know she’s not your girl. And I’ll talk to whomever the hell I want.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I’ve about had enough of you little shitheads!” Veronica screamed, causing everyone—including Aeric—to flinch involuntarily. “We need to have an important discussion with her and all of you think that you’re bigshots in this little shithole. You’re not; you’re just a bunch of wannabe gang banger thugs. Now, where the hell is Maria?”
The boy puffed up his chest and pointed to himself with a thumb. “I’m leader here, not Traxx. He don’t give orders.”
“Stand down, Bull,” Joe said as he leveled his rifle at the gang leader’s midsection. “You know I ain’t got no problem shooting you.”
The boy stepped back with his hands up. “This ain’t over, Traxx. You allowed in the Barrio one time a month, ten days after meat ration. You early.”
“Don’t make me confiscate your illegal meat, kid,” Aeric threatened.
“That our meat. Touch it, you die.”
Aeric brought his own weapon around. The ancient lever-action 30-30 had been with him from that night in Austin when Veronica first met him and Tyler. “Threaten me again and you’re the one that will be buried, little man.”
Bull seemed to consider his words carefully before replying, “Fine, take bitch. We sick of fucking her anyway.” He made an exaggerated circle with his hands. “She all stretched out after we done with her.” Then he turned and went back to the fire.
Aeric gripped Veronica’s elbow lightly and steered her towards the large structure looming in front of them. “Let’s go,” he muttered quietly. “They scare off easily enough. Unfortunately, their own inexperience allows them to get over their fear quickly. Better to be inside when they figure out that they outnumber us three-to-one.”
The relative closeness of the Barrio seemed like wide open grasslands compared to the dark and damp that greeted her inside the grocery store. The walls bore the signs of thirty years’ worth of habitation. Dirt, graffiti…blood, it was all there. The lack of the original overhead lighting made it nearly impossible to see since the discolored skylights above were caked with smoke film. Filthy children of all ages sat alone or played in small groups among hundreds of individual family campsites. It was the most depressing thing that Veronica had ever seen.
Obviously, she’d become accustomed to things being generally more run down and dirty since the days of her youth. However, the conditions in the supermarket took everything to an entirely different level. It seemed to her that the residents were content to merely survive and not improve their situation at all. She immediately identified several quick fixes that would have been easy to do and likely increase morale, primarily cleaning, increasing the lighting and opening the skylights above to allow the smoke to escape.
“Maria lives on row one three,” Flame stated. “Leaving now.” The boy didn’t wait for Aeric to answer before turning to leave quickly.
“What the hell was that about?” Veronica asked as she hugged herself tight in an effort to shrink away from the grime in the building.
“They don’t like her,” Joseph replied. “She scares them.”
“That hasn’t stopped them from raping her,” Veronica scoffed.
“Eh, I doubt they’ve actually done it. Lots of talk from little boys who want to be big men,” Joe countered. “The girl has the Gift, so she knows when they’re going to try something. Besides, you heard what Fish said about her biting Claw’s uh…er….”
“His dick,” Veronica offered. “I had three boys, Joseph. I’ve heard it all.”
He nodded and continued, “Yeah, she did that to him. So she knows how to defend herself.”
“Good point.” She stared over at the smeared sign above the aisles indicating that row thirteen used to contain charcoal and paper products. The little girl had survived on her own in the wasteland before coming to San Angelo. Maybe she really can predict the future and she’s learned to avoid trouble, Veronica thought.
“Okay, we came all this way,” Aeric interrupted her thoughts. “Let’s go over and talk to her. If what Joseph says is right, she already knows that we’re coming anyways.”
They walked slowly, exaggerating their efforts to not inadvertently step on someone sleeping in the piled up blankets and heaps of discarded clothing. At the end of row thirteen, it became immediately apparent to Veronica where Maria lived. Each aisle they’d passed had been filled from one end to the other with the personal belongings of the row’s residents. Aisle thirteen had a noticeable vacancy between the end of one family’s area to a small “camp” in the middle of the aisle and then another empty space on the other side between the camp and another family. A small bundle sat hunched over in the center of the blankets. Obviously, the residents had chosen to shun her instead of help her.
“That’s gotta be her,” Aeric mumbled as they followed Joseph down the row. Veronica watched where he put his feet and carefully placed her foot where the Shooter’s had previously been. It certainly wouldn’t do for her to step on someone or to break one of the few possessions that these people owned.
“Hello, sister,” a frail child’s voice drifted from the blanket when the group neared her.
“Uh… Hello?” Veronica answered. “Are you Maria?”
“Yes. I am. I’ve been waiting for you and the masked man to come.”
Veronica was already beginning to get freaked out. She’d scared herself with the dreams that she’d been having. What really made her skin crawl was that the girl hadn’t looked up from underneath the blanket and she knew that Aeric Traxx was there. Surely, the “masked man” was her husband. The scars that disfigured his face could certainly resemble a mask to a child who’d never seen him before.
“Uh… Hello, Maria. My name is Veronica.”
“Oh, I know who you are,” the girl replied, still hidden in the blankets. “You run the food kitchen for the city. I’ve seen you surrounded by death, it’s not pretty.”
“Jesus!” Aeric exclaimed as he stepped over to the blanket. He snatched it off of the girl’s head and admonished, “I know you like to be mysterious and creepy, but you don’t open a conversation with how someone is going to die.”
The girl blinked up at him. Her dirty face was framed by stringy, black hair that likely hadn’t seen soap in months, if ever. Up close, Veronica could see that she was probably closer to eleven than the nine that she’d originally thought. The girl was just skin and bones, although it was hard to tell with the way she was huddled up. She seemed entirely ordinary except for her eyes. They were the strangest shade of blue, almost like she wore purple contact lenses like the girls at the university used to wear before the end of the old world.
“I didn’t say that she was going to die,” Maria corrected him. “Death follows closely beside her.”
“Maria, we came to talk to you about—”
The girl’s face snapped back towards Veronica. “You’ve been having them too, haven’t you?”
“What are you—”
“The visions. Death. Destruction. Torture,” she intoned. “The city is going to fall and everyone living here will die.”
Aeric looked to his wife and mouthed, What the fuck? Veronica squinted and made the face that her children knew well. She was silently telling Aeric to get control of the situation and do it quickly.
“Maria,” Aeric tried to get the girl’s attention.
“You’re all dead! You’ve stayed too long.” Maria began to thrash about in the blankets. She was going to hurt herself.
“Maria, stop!” Aeric’s voice boomed across the grocery store. Several tiny hea
ds peeked around the corner at the edge of Veronica’s peripheral vision. They had to get this under control before the other children started to panic.
“They’re going to eat us and use our skin as coats. You!” she pointed at Aeric. “You’re the masked man that caused all of this. It’s your fault! Everyone will die because of you. The walls will fall and the city will burn. Everyone who survives the fire will become the playthings of the giant birds!”
Veronica had heard enough. That didn’t take long, she thought. They’d come to discuss her dreams, but that wasn’t going to happen. Maria was clearly disturbed and incoherent. She could pity the girl, but they weren’t going to get anything useful out of that little head.
“Aeric, this has to stop,” Veronica ordered. “She’s scaring the other children and their parents are all at work. We should just go.”
He nodded and stepped in close to stop her crazy rant. Maria avoided him by standing up quickly and backing against the vacant shelving unit. She twisted her head back and forth and then lunged towards Aeric, grabbing both of his wrists.
“But wait!” Maria yelled. “The colossus can save one of the tribes if he chooses to abandon you!”
“One of the tribes?” Aeric asked.
“The Birds!” Maria screamed, changing her grip to grasp his forearm. “The Birds are coming!”
As she finished yelling, she collapsed against Aeric. He caught her to keep her from falling. “What the hell was that?” he muttered as he held the limp figure in his hands.
“She’s gotta go, Traxx,” Joseph stated. “I doubt that she’s been screaming like that around the others. If she did, you can bet that they’d beat her to death for it. The Barrio is no longer safe for her.”
Aeric’s eyes searched his wife’s face for a clue as to what they should do. She certainly didn’t want the responsibility of caring for this crazy person. She was probably going to have night terrors and interrupt their way of life. Then, Veronica’s heart softened. Maria was just a little girl and she needed help; help that they could give her.
The Path of Ashes [Omnibus Edition] Page 34