The Fire and the Free City

by Eric Wood

  "Oh, relax," Sam said. "No one is going to kill you." Roach looked at Abigail skeptically. "I promise no one is going to kill you," Sam added. "Right, Abigail?"

  "If I was going to kill you, you'd already be dead," Abigail said. Though I'm still not convinced I shouldn't have. The girl was still a Ravager, regardless of what had been done to her. And she had been one of Deacon's Ravagers, no less. The fact that he was alive — or at least alive-ish, depending on what sort of strange science Solomon had worked on him — changed their dynamic when it came to Roach. Abigail would have to keep a close eye on her; as far as she was concerned, Roach was capable of anything.

  "Well alright then," Jacinta said. "One big happy family. Shall we?"

  Jacinta led their group out of her tavern and back past the walls of the market district, away from the city's main gates. As they continued to walk further from the market, the walled districts of Madame Ki to the east and Roosevelt's to the west began receding into the distance. Similarly, the skeletons of the Old World commercial buildings gave way to the remains of what were once residential neighborhoods.

  "Most of the city's more affluent people keep to one or the other of the bosses' districts," Jacinta said. "The rich in Roosevelt's so-called luxury condos, the more rough-and-tumble in Ki's penthouses. The poorest keep to those areas too, mostly Ki's, seeing as that's where the drugs are, but also in the darker corners of Roosevelt's nice, orderly, slightly fascist streets. The middle parts of the city — the market, the warrens, the crop-lands — that's where us regular folk call home. It's not easy, but it beats living outside the walls. That's for damned sure."

  "What about the Shadow Market?" Sam asked.

  "Ki took you down there, huh?" Jacinta said, shaking her head. "I wonder if she was trying to scare you or intrigue you. Judging by the tone of your question, it sounds like intrigue won out. Well, let me give you a piece of advice, no charge: stay out of the Shadow Market. Nothing but misfits and criminals down there. Though I suppose there are plenty of both up here, too."

  There's more to it than that, Abigail thought. She had recognized the smell down there.

  "It's not just cut-purses and crazies," she said. "There's Infected below." It hadn't just been the mines that stank of Infected. There were Ravagers, and probably Howlers too, in the Shadow Market, she was certain of it.

  "Well, you can believe what you want," Jacinta said. "But if you do insist on going back down there, don't say I didn't warn you. I always maintain there ain't much difference between being beaten to death by a person or a Ravager. You end up just as dead in the end."

  "If there are Ravagers in the city, they would have already taken over," Roach said from the back of their group. "Or burned this whole place down."

  Jacinta laughed. "You would think so, wouldn't you? On their own though, those things aren't so tough. In fact —"

  Just ahead of them, a shadow detached itself from the half-collapsed bulk of a ranch-style house. "Now just what the hell is this?" Jacinta growled, interrupting herself.

  Abigail knew what it was before the rest of the group. Or rather who it was.

  Elena.

  She felt her lip curling into a sneer as she balled her hands into fists. Elena, who had left Sam for dead back at Roosevelt's while saving her own skin.

  I've been meaning to have a little talk with her about that, Abigail thought.

  28

  "I don't know what you think you're doing, Elena —" Jacinta began. She stopped when Elena pulled a pistol from her leg holster and pointed it at Sam.

  "We'll just be a minute, love," Elena said. "Me and Sam here have to get a few things straight."

  Abigail counted three other gunmen scattered around them. One was leaning around the corner of the derelict house Elena had come from, another in its crooked second story window; the last emerged from an alleyway behind them. Like Elena, each of them was carrying a firearm.

  "Weren't you at the same meeting we were just at?" Sam asked. "I thought your boss told you to leave us —"

  Elena grabbed him by the collar, turned, and slammed him up against the house's wall. Dust and drywall, shaken loose by the impact, rained down on their heads. Abigail could hear the entire structure groan.

  "Well, see, there is 'leave you alone,' and there is 'leave you alone,'" Elena said. "Ki sent me to deliver a message to you."

  Abigail was long past done with this. Silently, she moved toward Elena, tensing to deliver a blow to the back of her neck. That should put the treacherous eel out of their collective misery.

  Without looking away from Sam, Elena swung her pistol around in a flash, fixing the muzzle dead on Abigail’s forehead. "That's far enough, love," she said. "Take a few steps back; there's no reason this has to get red."

  Abigail chuckled and put her hands up in frustrated surrender. "That's better," Elena said, glancing at her over her shoulder. Now, two steps —"

  Abigail ducked her head to the right, grabbed the weapon, and wrenched it at a sharp upward angle, breaking Elena's grip (and hopefully a finger or two). Before Elena could react, Abigail had the pistol in one hand and Elena's neck in the other. With a step forward, she slammed the operative into the wall next to Sam.

  "Maybe it's me that needs to send a message to Madame Ki," Abigail growled. "Do you think breaking your neck is a strong enough message?"

  Elena croaked out a laugh but didn't fight back against Abigail's grip. "Would you please relax," she said. "The gun was just to make things look good, in case Roosevelt's people are watching. Spoiler alert: they definitely are. I really am just bringing you a message."

  "Convenient," Sam said, straightening his shirt. "You haven't done a whole lot to earn our trust, Elena. Why would we believe anything you have to say now?"

  "Well, you haven't been shot full of holes, for starters," Elena said. "If Ki wanted you dead, holding me hostage wouldn't stop the rest of her people from opening fire. And hey, let's not forget who abandoned whom back at Roosevelt's little gun party. I'd love to know how you got out of there, by the way."

  "I could say the same to you," Sam said.

  "Why don't you just say whatever you came to say," Abigail growled, squeezing Elena’s neck just a bit tighter.

  "Maybe if you...loosen that grip a little. Look, just keep the gun on me so it looks good."

  Abigail glanced at Sam, who shrugged.

  "For heaven's sake, girl," Jacinta said, moving to stand just behind Abigail. "Let the snake loose. She's not lying about Ki's intentions."

  Abigail sighed and let Elena go.

  "Ahh, that's better." Elena straightened and rolled her head around, loosening her neck. "Now, despite what was said in the meeting today, Madame Ki would very much like to continue working with both of you. Cheyenne will be under siege soon, and you have a certain...unique history with the Ravager leader. According to Ki at least: I myself am skeptical of the stories. Though, after feeling that grip..."

  "Why would we possibly want to continue working with Ki after how she's treated us so far?" Abigail asked. She kept the pistol trained over Elena's heart, continuing to watch for even the slightest hint of threatening movement.

  "Are you kidding me?" Elena said with a bark of laughter. "You think Ki's treated you poorly? You really don't know her very well. You two have practically gotten the full VIP package. Believe me, if Ki starts being hard on you, you'll know it."

  "So what does she want from us?" Sam asked.

  "For now, you both just keep an open mind. Beyond that, she'll be in touch. We still need to get access to Roosevelt's passwords, one way or another — otherwise we’ll be roasting over some Ravager's cookfire in a few weeks, if not days. Know that Roosevelt's people will probably try to contact you, and —"

  "And they're not to be trusted, right?" Sam said. "That's starting to become a theme."

  "Yeah, you got it," Elena said. "Between you and me, Roosevelt's losing it. Ki doesn't want to come out and say it, but he's as much a threat to this
city as any Ravager army. Be sure you stay on the right side of this thing."

  Sam glowered. "The right side, huh? As far as I can tell, there isn't a right side. And, what are these passwords everyone keeps blabbering about? Something to do with drones and a military base? You can't expect me to believe there is some great Old World tech stash around here, just waiting for someone to boot it up."

  "How little you know. Why do you think the Company maintains such a presence in this town? Warren Air Force Base housed one of Old America's military nerve centers. It’s full of experimental weaponry, computer networks, and all sorts of other high-tech shit that was completely worthless against a massive viral outbreak. This city, the one with the walls, not the old, soft Cheyenne that the Horsemen Virus ran over, was founded by officers from that base. Of course, those same officers didn't trust each other, so they went behind each other's backs and locked each other out of the base. Fast forward twenty years: those various codes have changed hands hundreds of times, been consolidated, split up, and consolidated again. Roughly half of them have ended up in Madame Ki’s possession; Roosevelt, of course, has the other half."

  "You know an awful lot about all of this," Abigail said. Elena was too quick with her answers, and too comfortable by half, considering she had a gun pointed at her chest. She was playing at something more here, Abigail was sure of it, though she hadn’t the slightest idea what kind of game it was. Another recurrent theme.

  Elena shrugged. "Everyone in this city knows the story. Ask her if you don't believe me," she said, pointing at Jacinta.

  "She's right," Jacinta said. "That's what people say, at least. Who knows what the truth really is. Roosevelt and Ki sure seem to believe it, which is all that matters these days." She turned her head and spat into the cracked, dirt-and-ancient asphalt road.

  "There you go," Elena said. "People can talk a big game about uniting against the Ravagers, but without the base's weapons it won’t make a damn bit of difference. And, who controls those weapons will rule this city. Just keep an open mind, Sammie." She leaned in toward him, Abigail's gun pressing into the bottom of her ribs. "You'd much rather us be in charge than Roosevelt, believe me," she whispered. She straightened and smiled a mocking smile at Abigail. "Keep the gun, love. I've got plenty of them." She winked at her, then turned on her heel and strode away. As one, the other gunmen lowered their weapons and ducked out of sight.

  "She seems...nice," Rend said.

  "Shut up," Abigail snapped, casting him a furious look. To Jacinta she said, "Don't we have somewhere to be? Let's get moving."

  The far walls of the city stood like a fat horizontal stripe of silver in the distance. They cut across the remnants of the old city with little regard for layout or design. In the space between the walls and where they stood, maybe one in ten of the old houses still remained, their now-ancient pastel siding reinforced with patchwork paneling of wood and rusty metal. The rest of the Old World homes had been razed and replaced with food-bearing plants of all varieties. Corn, beans, squash, and a dozen other crops grew in patches of squares and circles around the makeshift farmhouses, intersected here and there by brick-lined paths and whitewashed wooden fences.

  It looked like something out a particularly strange storybook, Sam thought. Half-post-apocalyptic, half-frontier homestead prairie town. He immediately loved it.

  "We're just up ahead," Jacinta said. "That big square one on the right."

  Jacinta's home was originally a small apartment building: eight units, Sam guessed by counting the doors. All but three of them — one on the ground level, two on the upper level — had been boarded up and painted a sky blue, matching the rest of the building. Crops of different varieties encircled the building in a checkerboard pattern, and a tall windmill drove what appeared to be a grain mill built up against one of its walls. A small pen of pigs stood on the far side of the building, and a block of chicken coops lay beyond that.

  "Looks like you managed to snag the biggest of the farms," Roach said.

  Jacinta shrugged. "My wife was one of the first to recognize we needed to grow our food inside the walls. Her family lived in that building, before the Horsemen and everything after. Once the old city emptied out, she sort of took over the rest of the building. Be glad we have the extra room, or you four would have had to make do with considerably worse accommodations."

  "I hope you don't expect us to pitch in with chores," Roach said. "I'm not much for manual labor."

  "No, just burning things down," Sam muttered. Roach scowled at him, but looked quickly away when he met her eyes. Strange, he thought. But, no stranger than anything else about her since that day at Deacon's base. He was intensely interested in what she had to say about all of that.

  "With those arms," Jacinta said, "you look like you’d be better suited to manual labor than just about anyone I've met. But, don't worry about it. I doubt Michelle will want any of you outsiders messing in her garden."

  A tall and sturdily built woman wearing a floppy canvas hat stood by a fence at the edge of the home's inner yard, watching them approach. When they got closer, she removed the hat, revealing a cascade of rust-red hair, and wiped her brow with the back of her hand. "'Bout time you showed up," she shouted. Sam imagined this was Michelle.

  "I live to fight another day," Jacinta said. She crossed through the fence's gate and embraced the other woman, exchanging a quick kiss with her.

  "I see you brought home some strays," Michelle said, looking over Sam and the rest of the group. "I was kind of hoping you would be wrong about that."

  "I know Ki, and I know Roosevelt," Jacinta said. "I figured they'd be too short-sighted to see past their own rivalry, and I figured right."

  "If Mars invaded tomorrow, they'd still insist on fighting each other," Michelle said, shaking her head. "These four are really going to save us from an army of Ravagers?"

  Sam wondered how Michelle already knew about the Ravager army. He didn't wonder too hard, because despite the simple, homespun appearance Jacinta tried to project, she seemed as dialed into the information around here as anyone.

  Jacinta spit. "I doubt it, but we're still better off with them than without them. Besides, all things being equal, I'd rather not see four teenagers killed just because those two are having another pissing match. How is the upstairs?"

  Michelle shrugged. "As good as the last ones left it. Clean, but still...spartan, as you like to describe it."

  "Well, I never promised anyone the Hilton," Jacinta said.

  "There's something else," Michelle said, looking suddenly uneasy.

  "Great, now what?" Jacinta asked.

  "Someone arrived a bit before you, insisted they talk to someone named Sam when he arrived. I assume that's one of these two boys."

  Jacinta cursed under her breath. "If it's another one of Ki's creatures, I swear I'll shoot them myself."

  Michelle shook her head. "It's not. It's one of Roosevelt's people – his computer kid. He came by himself, which I wasn't quite sure what to make of, either. In any case, he insisted on waiting upstairs. Things being how they are, I wasn’t quite sure if it was a good idea to turn anyone out, so I just told him to go on in and sit tight."

  Sam gritted his teeth. Of course there was another one. Another agent, another threat, another empty promise. He'd had enough.

  "Give me the gun," he said.

  After their conversation with Elena, Sam wasn't eager to repeat the whole process with the other side. Worse, though, was that he didn't know if Roosevelt suspected he had told Ki about the booby-trapped data drive he had brought her. If Roosevelt suspected, things could get real dicey real quick. But then again, the computer kid didn't exactly have the look of a hit man.

  Still, he wasn't going to disappear if Sam just ignored him. He looked to Jacinta, then gestured toward the apartments with his head, silently asking permission to go up there and meet Roosevelt's young maybe-assassin.

  29

  "Give me the gun."

  Sa
m held his hand out to Abigail, his expression devoid of any of his normal good cheer.

  "Now this I'd like to see," Roach said.

  "Maybe shooting him isn't the right way to play this," Abigail said. She pulled the gun from her waistband slowly, unsure if she should really hand the thing over.

  "Come on," Sam said. "I'm not going to shoot the guy." He flashed her an unconvincing smile. "I'm just going to scare him a little bit."

  "Don't you get any blood in that apartment," Jacinta said. "We've just got that place livable again."

  "Tell that to the one upstairs," Roach said. "It sounds like it's going to be his blood making the mess."

  Sam motioned for everyone to calm down. "I won't screw up your place, Jacinta," he assured their host. He gestured to Roach. "And you, stay back; let me do the talking." He paused, then added, "And try not to look too scary. That's my job."

  "I hope I'm not going to regret this, Sam," Abigail said. She flipped the pistol around in her hand and held it out to him.

  "Relax. What's the worst that could happen?" He took the gun, gave her another smile and headed upstairs toward the apartment and Roosevelt's agent.

  Abigail sighed. Gesturing for Roach and Rend to come along, she followed Sam up to the door.

  Sam took a deep breath, collecting himself: then he threw open the door. He stepped inside, cocking the gun and pointed it ahead of him.

  Abigail entered the apartment in time to see the startled agent throw up his hands, his eyes wide. He looked like he was about to ruin his pants.

  "Hands up," Sam shouted, moving closer. "Up where I can see them!"

  "They're already up!" the young man stammered. "I'll put them up higher if you want, just don't shoot!"

  Abigail recognized him from the meeting: it was the young one, the one with the computer. Up close, he looked even younger than she had earlier thought. He couldn't have been older than thirteen. Fourteen maybe.