“I’m OK too,” Iwa replied, as if that’s how they were going to play it.
The détente sat uneasily between them. Peripheral echoes of their last intimate conversation played through Tom’s thoughts, and he turned the slow-motion exchange into a quiet study of the scarred-but-beautiful doctor’s secretive porcelain visage. It was more than a touch ironic Tom’s thoughts were filled with nothing else all morning than Iwa Swarovsky’s departure, and now his ears pricked at Councilor Wilhelm’s parting remarks and what it might adumbrate for the days to come.
“Are you still angry at me, Tom?”
The question bitch-slapped him back into the present moment, and he countered with an uncharacteristically nervous laugh, glancing off into the crowds as if he might find the right reply out there. Instead, he shrugged, forcing his eyes back upon her.
“You were the one who seemed angry.”
“You think?”
“That’s why I said it.”
“Oh Tom,” Iwa said, mustering just the requisite tone of feminine disappointment to keep his therapist busy, if Tom had one. “What did you think was going to happen?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “Something other than this.”
“I wanted to go with the Confederates,” she said. “I told you that.”
“After they signed up David Hamilton.”
“And after you put his name forward to your new . . . friends.”
Tom had to admit to that. Unconscious or otherwise – and it was mostly otherwise – he’d thought his fears defused in sending the damaged Professor with Colin Freestone’s entourage. The reality of the moment, and all the moments since, told him he was wrong.
“I like you, Tom,” Iwa said more softly, now the one dipping out of their eye contact. “And our time together was sweet, but . . . I want in on this. I’m sorry.”
“You could be headed into danger.”
“I know that.”
“Part of the appeal?”
“No,” the doctor replied. “I don’t know why you’d think that.”
“Because you had the choice to stay.”
“And move in with you?”
“That wasn’t . . . you didn’t have to –”
“I know,” she cut in on his stumbling in a show of mercy. “It just . . . I don’t know if it was ever going to happen, Tom.”
For his part, Tom kept his jaw wired shut, resisting the urge to call her on all the shit-testing mind games leading up to their brief tryst. Not only did he not know what he was getting upset about exactly, he also couldn’t tell if he was truly upset about Iwa’s departure anyway. Honesty first and foremost, he knew he’d miss the lithe woman in his bed – and knew he’d never expected to be pining over a woman given the horrors of the past five years. He had the thought that he should be grateful for the reprieve. Life in the City was complicated enough.
Iwa shivered, which made Tom smile – or at least he took it as the chance to show no hard feelings.
“Cold?”
“Yes.”
“Only going to get colder.”
“I’ll miss having you to keep me warm Tom,” Iwa said. “Sorry.”
Now she kissed him on the cheek in a sexless way that fired Tom’s resentment once again, to think or at least imagine in her mind, a warm body was all he’d ever been.
But he was willing to leave it at that, choosing Stoicism over the far worse option of her last impression of him that of a bleating, lovesick male.
Iwa’s fingers trailed down his arm and over his hand without catching his grip, turning instead as she retreated back to where the convoy had final preparations underway.
*
THE NEWSPAPER EDITOR Delroy Earle almost had to be physically removed before the Greenland convoy of two vehicles could get going. Apparently the mission included his spunkier offsider Melina Martelle. Despite the non-tearful send-off, the older reporter had zeroed in on the father-daughter couple who volunteered to act as the mission’s guides. There were still people living in the Columbus environs who hadn’t committed to the City, or were skeptical about its aims. The older of the pair was starting to get rangy with age, his blonde hair thinned to a white snow, the muscle of his athletic frame likewise grown sparse, the sixty-year-old moving with a stilted pace favoring one hip. The daughter was a shrewd-looking woman in her indeterminate thirties with thick dark hair constrained by a broad headband once popular among the lentil-eating types and now made direly practical, keeping the woman’s brown-eyed vision clear, and managed by her stern, watchful look. Seeing them, Tom had a slight pang of sympathy, suddenly feeling the years in his own bones, ridiculous as some might think it, and the incoming sense of loss at Lilianna’s apparent destiny within what the reigning Administration had cleverly retitled the Bastion, trying to shed its pre-Uprising links, and maybe also the admission it was Councilor Wilhelm’s secret back-up if the City sank under the weight of its many challenges.
Lilianna was on her way to the Enclave now, and Iwa Swarovsky gestured something like a wave to Tom as the two vehicles rattled out through the opened gates. Tom refused to let himself likewise sink into his sadness. The task was made easier for Earle, heading straight for him through the slowly-dispersing crowd.
“Did you hear about Burroughs?” the newspaper editor asked without preamble.
Tom made clear he had not, and thrust a glance back to where Ernest Wilhelm stood grave-faced twenty yards away as Denny Greerson addressed him.
“He’s dead,” the broadly froglike Earle said, enthusiasm for the tale easily misread as bemused elation. “Found in the street at dawn, just another overnight killing.”
“Surely not ‘just another’,” Tom said.
“No,” Earle agreed. “That’s a sloppy way of me putting it. There’s been a murder every night since St Mary’s. People are working out their grievances.”
Tom acknowledged the remark with a thoughtful nod. Iwa’s wave to him still hovered in his vision, but the implications of Edward Burroughs’ murder hauled Tom back into the conversation.
“I don’t know anything about it, or what it means,” he said. “The last week, it defeated the Leftanders, and left a handful of them still at large, maybe. Maybe,” he stressed. “And thanks to Burroughs, the Brotherhood’s been supporting the Council with security, as best they’re able, not that it’s my job to do their PR for them.”
“There will be forces within the Brotherhood not keen on Burroughs’ co-operation,” Earle said.
“I thought,” Tom said, and then corrected him. “I hoped St Mary’s would put factional warfare to rest.”
“The Council was decimated,” Earle said in a return to his unconscious glee. “Wilhelm tells me he’s dragged in department managers for stability.”
The newspaper editor gave Tom a chiding look.
“Lowenstein wants to hold elections,” he said.
The way the editor regarded him – Earle with his fixed smile in place – made Tom itch all the way down to his ass. His brow furrowed in a slight concession.
“What is it?”
“Your name has come up in discussion about candidates.”
“‘Candidates’?”
“For election,” Earle grinned.
“For Council?”
“That’s what I hear.”
Wilhelm’s previous remark came rushing back to haunt Tom, but a quick glance instead revealed the Councilor trudging back towards them with a defeated look he failed several times to shrug away.
“You heard about Burroughs,” he said and deliberately didn’t inflect it as a question.
Earle couldn’t resist his look of professional smugness. Wilhelm’s worried expression briefly passed across Tom, but didn’t see him.
“The Brotherhood’s withdrawn its volunteer troopers,” Wilhelm said instead. Then his gaze did switch back to Tom – almost like he expected Tom to do something about it.
Tom threw up his hands, not exactly smiling as he took a t
heatrical step back.
“I’ve got enough to keep me busy bringing in this cattle,” Tom said. “And that includes any stupid idea you’re getting that you can get me on your Council.”
Wilhelm’s expression faltered, and he threw an accusatory look at Earle.
“You told him?”
“Not in as many words. . . .”
The editor’s polite smile of apology achieved nothing. Wilhelm motioned back at the man with renewed energy.
“And did you tell Tom it was your idea?”
Now Tom turned his grimace back onto the heavyset newspaper man, and Earle held up his hands in contrition far too practiced to mean anything by it.
“Admit it, Tom –”
“I’m not admitting anything,” Tom fired back. He thought to say more, but irritation welled up in him and he looked around for the eject button. “This is bullshit,” he muttered, then stabbed a finger at Wilhelm as Tom prepared to depart. “Keep me out of your political games.”
“Do you think I have anything to do with this?” the Councilor barked.
Tom growled in frustration for still being stuck in the conversation he dearly wanted to exit. His eyes found the First Gates as they started closing again, the expedition vehicles already out of sight. Someone on a horse had taken the chance to re-enter the City and Tom was momentarily transfixed by a woman with an artificial leg hopping down from the skinny beast draped with about a dozen animal carcasses. At least two of them were dogs.
“The cattle arrangement with the Confederates is just another reason to have you on the Council,” Earle said. It was Tom’s fault for leaving dead air. “The Traders Alliance is sending representatives. You’ll have department managers, directors, helping steer the process.”
“I thought you didn’t want elections,” Tom said to Wilhelm.
“Our President thinks it’s better to have the City factions fighting democratic elections than with guns in the street,” he said. “I’m not sure we are ready for democracy, after the past eight days.”
Tom saw Earle was on the same page as the City Council man, and Tom was again momentarily appalled to have the people around him constantly changing alliances. Tom preferred it back when Wilhelm entertained a healthy degree of skepticism towards the Herald team, even if that did put him and Wilhelm on the same page instead. The Councilor was in no confusion about Tom’s ambivalence towards him.
And under it all, Tom wasn’t even sure he agreed that vote battles were better than gun battles, which he declined to question given his company.
Tom turned away with a ripe show of final disgust . . .
And right into the four troopers advancing straight towards him.
*
TOM PAUSED LONG enough to eye back at Wilhelm and confirm yet another guilty conscience as the Councilor winced under Tom’s scrutiny, and Earle turned straight onto the elected official to explain. But instead it was the burliest of the four troopers who spoke.
“Tom Vanicek?”
“The one and same,” Tom answered humorlessly.
“We need to talk to you about an incident the day before yesterday.”
Something prescient within him guided Tom’s fears back to his adrenalin moment with Finnegan Locke, and his heart rate adjusted accordingly.
“What?”
“A Citizen is claiming you assaulted and in fact tried to kill him.”
The lead trooper had his routine down well. Maybe he was former law enforcement. A bland yet steely look kept the man locked on Tom’s reaction – a cross between florid annoyance and surrender.
“What?” Tom said more forcefully, incredulous.
“There’s a list of Rules inside your ration book –”
“I know that.”
“Every Citizen in the sanctuary zone is making a fresh start,” the trooper said.
The other three men in his squad held their rifles lowered. Watchful.
“I’m really surprised – with everything else going on in the City – that you’ve got the time and resources to chase me up for something like this,” Tom said. “And so quickly, too.”
The squad leader glanced at Wilhelm, and Tom caught the inference at once as the dark-whiskered trooper said, “We were told it was a matter of some priority.”
“Seriously? There’s people knifing each other in the streets overnight –”
“That’s what the victim –”
“The victim?”
“The alleged victim has alleged,” the trooper said, wrinkling his nose at his own awkward sentence. More gravely, he added, “The complainant said you grappled him trying to break his neck or suffocate him.”
“Is this true, Tom?”
It was utterly inappropriate for Wilhelm to ask the question, though he did it anyway. It was clear, for whatever reason, he wanted the matter resolved at once. Tom was thankful Delroy Earle said nothing, but the reporter stood watching like he was waiting for the popcorn, and the editor withdrew a battered notepad and started scribbling furiously.
“I’m not doing this here, nor in front of him,” Tom said with an exasperated growl. He locked eyes with Wilhelm, then almost thought better of it before he barked, “You told them to take this up with me as a priority?”
“The President can’t put forward an alleged murderer for election, Tom.”
Tom’s left hand balled into a fist and the troopers saw it. The other three stowed their rifles for the sake of having hands free to restrain him. One drew a sawed-off baseball bat on a lanyard. Tom laughed and relaxed instead, eyes still with the Councilor.
“Haven’t we always elected murderers?”
“That is a bit harsh, Tom,” Wilhelm said.
Tom returned his hawkish gaze to Earle and tried not to scowl.
“Give me a break,” he said. “Go find something actually in the public interest, will you?”
The editor glanced back at his shorthand, cognizant despite his unprofessional curiosity he was at risk of impeding a criminal investigation if his malingering meant Tom clammed up. Earle grunted assent.
“The father and daughter with the convoy,” he said. “They’re a fascinating couple. And I mean that, Tom. A couple.”
Tom narrowed his eye at the newspaper man, then clenched his teeth shut.
Earle nodded, bowed, and withdrew, though he took his time about it, eyes casting back over the scene he was quitting as if he might pick out one or two final details crucial to understanding what was going on.
Tom wished he had a similar chance himself.
*
“FINNEGAN LOCKE IS a piece of shit and your City’s better off without him,” Tom scowled once the reporter had left.
“That’s no excuse to kill a man, Tom.”
“I didn’t kill anyone,” Tom growled at Wilhelm. “And you can talk, asshole. What do you think you’re doing? I didn’t think you had police investigations here. Is that why you’re acting like you’ve got any right to question me?”
“Precisely that,” Wilhelm said. His nostrils flared in that way Tom had only seen infrequently, and each time before spates of violence the Councilor handled as well as any other survivor.
“We are not in a democracy yet, Tom,” Wilhelm snarled and stabbed at him with a finger he looked likely to lose in the near future. “Best you remember that.”
“Funny,” Tom said. “I can’t work out if you’re trying to clear my name or incriminate me.”
Wilhelm calmed a little, snorted.
“We cannot have Citizens thinking the Rules apply to some people more than others.”
“So it’s just the sanctioned killings I can get away with, huh?”
The unavoidable logic of the remark was a slap to Wilhelm’s face.
Tom took the interlude to simply walk away. The troopers watched him go, uncertain now in their authority thanks to the Councilor’s intervention. Tom only smirked – and curled his hands into fists once more.
Chapter 4
LILIANNA BURST
HAPPILY into the dormitory and kept her wide smile frozen as she realized the six-bed room was empty. She slowly moved towards her bunk and eased the sports bow and quiver off her shoulder, glancing around, tasting the unusual flavor of disappointment at none of her new friends inside. Her fake smile slipped at last as she unburdened herself of her daypack and sat on the edge of the bed, trying to resist deflation as a noise like someone hammering an anvil sounded from the sheltered Enclave courtyard outside.
Each of the dorms in the stately, repurposed six-floor building offered twin tall windows through which the morning light seemed to evade the glass, nothing to do with the black-out curtains pinned back, a row of plants in the box outside one of the other women’s pet project once, and now just a collection of sticks and dead stalks. Lilianna arose, peering outside, standing there self-conscious knowing she was just one of the profiles like the ones she’d eyeballed when first walking into the place at the end of the past month, fluttering with excitement she tried to suppress in the name of the maturity she feigned without knowing she already possessed it.
And she deflated another notch.
Thievery, sadly, wasn’t unknown, even within the protected zone, so she did her due diligence locking her weapons into one of the tall metal lockers she and the other women shared. There were strict rules around firearms that the Administration didn’t seem to observe when it came to Lila’s archery gear, and that served her well. A tiny smug smirk played across her aquiline features, freckles dusting her sixteen-year-old face, shrewd blue eyes somehow mirrored in the cynicism that soon returned to her smile as she finished her quick reconnoiter of the empty bedchamber and turned to the passing footfalls and conversations in the corridor outside.
Minutes later, Lilianna bounced her way down four flights of stairs, nodding to other juniors like herself whom she didn’t yet know. At ground level, the smell from the kitchens reached her and her smile deepened even further, astonished as always at the promise of three square meals per day offered to everyone selected for the Administration program. The blue zip-tie on her wrist was already a distant memory, though the habit of clutching and massaging herself there remained.
After The Apocalypse Season 2 Box Set [Books 4-6] Page 6