After The Apocalypse Season 2 Box Set [Books 4-6]

by Hately, Warren

  “I thought you had Dkembe for that?”

  “I do,” Tom said and gestured with subdued ferocity at the empty corridor, and by implication, Luke’s departed friend. “And we have to talk about Kevin, OK?”

  To Tom’s surprise, Lucas made a violent hushing motion. Undeterred, but even more quietly, Tom hissed back, “He can’t just keep coming and going as he pleases, and sure as fuck not carrying a weapon. Is he even ten years old, son?”

  A shuffling figure in the corridor silenced them, but it was Kent’s wife. She smiled at them apologetically, and Tom tried to maintain a smile and not make it too obvious as he gestured to Lucas, expecting his son to follow him out into the nursery. Luke followed with a look like he was dragged there by chains, but Tom only raised an uninvited eyebrow at the charade.

  “Come on, Luke,” he said.

  The boy couldn’t keep up the act. He dropped his head like an act of surrender and the breath spilled out of him as if he’d just vanquished his own ghost. Tom watched him standing so dejected and felt sympathy overwhelm him like an intruder from within. He crossed hard to hug his son and just as abruptly pulled up as Lucas lifted his arm with annoyance.

  “No,” the boy said.

  Frustrated tears started dribbling down his face.

  “What you don’t get, dad, is Kevin doesn’t need me,” Lucas said. “He’s strong. I’m the one who needs Kevin. He’s . . . he’s my only friend. He’s saved me more times than I’ve ever . . . ever helped him.”

  Tom blinked.

  “‘Saved’?” he repeated slowly. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m telling you I’m a fucking weakling, dad!”

  The rage erupted in the boy like nothing before seen and Lucas hurled himself at his father with fists battering down. Tom took the blows on his arms, then grabbed Luke’s wrists, dragging the fuming, frustrated, bewildered boy into a tight embrace that Lucas fought at once. Tom let go, almost sort of pushed his son away just to make sure he didn’t charge back amid his berserkergang and make things worse.

  “Lucas, stop.”

  The deadly quiet insistence in Tom’s voice would make bigger men think twice, but the rage gripping his boy’s face like a hateful mask now gave Tom pause. He backed off, trying to de-escalate Luke’s fury.

  The shakes overtook the boy and Lucas backed away too, almost leaning himself against the outside doorframe as he spluttered and avoided his dad’s look and didn’t know where else to direct his troubled gaze as he tried valiantly and failed to stop his emotions overcoming him. Then Lucas started bawling like the child he hated to be, clear in his expression as he almost warned his father off again, then imitated him perfectly by taking a slow, deliberate turn around the nursery forecourt as he brought himself under control breathing heavily.

  “Jesus.” Tom said it quietly, sympathetic.

  Lucas dared an eye at him.

  “You OK?”

  Maybe it was a stupid question, but those were often the best ones to ask, in Tom’s experience.

  “No,” Luke said and had to fight his own mouth to say anything more. “You didn’t let me go on the first patrol, the other day, and now you want to keep me locked up in here to stay safe?”

  “Son, you’re not even quite twelve yet.”

  “That’s not it, and now I know it.”

  His tears returned, and Lucas begrudged every one of them running silently down his face. The freckles across his nose, the slight roundness of his cheeks, and the way his sun-faded brown hair fell above his tearful eyes only conspired to remind him of his youth. Tom also saw his son’s pallor, the dark rings beneath his eyes from stress and malnutrition – thinner, too, than when they first reached Columbus.

  “It’s because I’m weak,” Lucas said.

  He dropped his eyes and stood there lame.

  “That’s not –”

  “It is true,” Lucas snapped. “Kevin is strong. And I have to be protected. Kept safe.”

  “You’re scared from the other night,” Tom said.

  “You don’t know a fucking thing about the other night!”

  The yell took Tom by surprise, and alarm and caution warred within him as he simply kept his son in check with steady eye contact, even as he felt his throat tighten and dry.

  “What about the other night?”

  Lucas’ whole face was a mess now, and before any outright blubbering could begin, the boy turned and hurried away through the freshly-remade garden tubs with Tom moving to follow. They came out from under the greenhouse netting into the back corner turn, the brick-walled building continuing on their left with an asphalt pad a car’s width between it and the ten-foot, razor-wired back metal fence. A rusting sea container half-filled the corner, left forever open thanks to its doors re-employed elsewhere in the compound. Lucas stopped there as if glaring in blame at Ortega’s remaining horticultural supplies.

  “Tell me what’s going on, Lucas.”

  The boy glanced up – checking on the upper floor windows, Tom realized – and then quietly shook his head, turning back the other way as if to brush past him. Tom stopped him with a hand, sliding it up behind his son’s head to grasp him in a sincere hold.

  “It’s you and me, Lucas, forever,” he said.

  His son started to cry, a different character in it. Tom made an approving noise.

  “Forever’s as long as I can make it,” he said just as quietly. “There’s no way on this fucking planet I take you for a weakling, and goddammit son, I may not be perfect, but there’s no way I’d let you be a weakling, understood?”

  Luke hung his head and Tom eased off the hold, though he turned the boy into him and gave him a hug as long as Luke wanted, briefly resting his chin atop the boy’s head.

  “I might not’ve done the best job of it,” Tom said. “It’s hard to know what’s normal. I thought things would be safer here, and now I know it’s not. The alternatives aren’t too appealing either though, not after everything we’ve been through.”

  Lucas eased back and Tom nodded, seriousness restored.

  “What happened the other night?”

  The boy wiped his face a moment and looked elsewhere.

  “You’re right, the other night made me afraid,” he said.

  He chanced a quick look at Tom’s patiently unwavering stare. A clattering noise came from within the house that they both ignored.

  “What really made me afraid, though,” Lucas went on, “was learning I’m not as tough as I thought. I shouldn’t be on patrols. I can’t . . . can’t protect myself. . . .”

  “OK, you’re officially scaring the fuck out of me now,” Tom said. “What happened?”

  “Kevin and I got. . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t know what to call it,” Lucas said. “But Beau saved us.” He paused a second. “Or he saved me, anyway. The . . . the man got Kevin.”

  “Jesus Christ Lucas will you tell me what happened?”

  Luke checked one last time his father wasn’t about to go into a rage of his own.

  “We were . . . we went outside the sanctuary zone,” he said. “I know . . . I know you’re going to be super furious with me and –”

  “We’ll worry about my fury later,” Tom said. “I would kill for you, boy. I already have. You know that.”

  “But I couldn’t. . . .”

  “Couldn’t what?”

  “Kill.”

  “You have to tell me. . . .”

  And so Lucas did.

  After a minute, Tom had to sit.

  *

  HIS LACK OF reaction emboldened Luke as the boy told the story, hurrying through it as his pace and confidence grew that Tom was perhaps too overwhelmed by the testimony to do anything except stare aghast at him in horror and take a seat atop the stack of remaining fertilizer sacks.

  “Beau was incredible, dad,” Lucas said. “I mean, the Gray Hood. You can’t tell anyone though, OK? Those two guys never stood a chance. We were just tryi
ng to scavenge for trade items, you know, to go back to Edgelords, but now I understand what I should be doing. You said you could do a better job, and I want that training. Dad? That’s what I want to do. It took . . . it took everything that happened for me to understand it, and thanks to Beau. You always did that stuff, lifting, and we had weights back home . . . and Beau’s strong too. But flexible. He was . . . there was nothing those two old fucking perverts could do.”

  Tom held his hand up for pause and fought off the urge for tears of his own.

  “But what about Kevin, son?”

  Lucas looked away. He channeled Tom’s tears instead.

  “I know,” he said. “I was so weak. I could’ve cut them, but –”

  “Holy shit, Lucas!”

  Tom cupped his own face a second and then thought better of it. He stood. His son watched cautiously.

  “This is . . . nuts, boy,” Tom said. “You nearly got killed, or worse . . . or something . . . and that something happened to your friend. And then you didn’t fucking tell me?”

  Exhaustion depleted his anger, which was just as well. He held his horrified gaze on his son like a pair of interrogation lamps. And Lucas knew he was guilty as charged.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Man, that just . . . that just makes me feel fucking terrible.”

  Tom sighed and wiped his face and decided it was time to cut back on the expletives, as well as the sullen burning insulted anger within him casting its delusions over far more rational choices needing to be made. He turned his eyes back on his son and exhaled shabbily, head shaking, wordless, though with some of the hard blaming gone. Lucas noticeably relaxed.

  “This can’t ever happen again,” Tom said.

  “No.”

  “We have to trust each other completely,” Tom continued. “Life’s too short for worrying about whether I’m going to be angry at you. I’ll be angry beyond anything you can imagine if I find you dead, do you understand that? This isn’t a Get Out Of Jail card, but I’d rather hear anything from you than face that, understood?”

  Lucas nodded, dejected in his own shame.

  “And we do need to start some kind of training for you,” Tom said.

  The boy brightened, then caught himself doing it and knowing it was too soon.

  “Really?”

  “You’re right about that,” Tom said. “It’s not just about handling weapons. I trusted you with the old M14, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But you’re coming into your manhood,” Tom said more evenly. “It’s time you developed your strength . . . and I don’t just mean your body, got it?”

  He gave a final stabbing glance at Lucas as the gate set back down the courtyard behind them started rattling ajar and the tall figure of Kent appeared offering a wave.

  “I’m talking about discipline,” Tom said to his son in case he needed to be ultra-fucking-clear. “And knowing who you can trust, OK?”

  The gate bobbled open squeakily as Kent entered, his long shadow butting into the sun-dappled work area beneath the nets. Tom eased up, and Lucas moved for the doorway to the kitchen, taking advantage of the small interlude to get clear.

  Tom nodded to Kent as he approached, and then cast eyes back at his son.

  “Lucas?” he said as quietly as he could, brows furrowing with intent. “We have to talk about Kevin, OK? Tomorrow.”

  Lucas nodded solemnly, turned, and left.

  *

  THE BIG MAN lingered with his usual good-natured smile. Tom let go a mighty sigh, met Kent’s eyes for a moment, and then gave an exhausted jackal’s laugh as if to wordlessly explain. Kent rolled with it, nodding despite having no clue, one big thumb in the baldric of the longsword he wore bisecting his chest like an old-fashioned seatbelt. The Islander watched Lucas’ departure and turned back to Tom with the same easy smile.

  “It’s hard raising a family,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey,” Kent said. “There’s something I wanted to show you, if you got the time?”

  “Sure.”

  Something about the grin on the bigger man’s face colored Tom intrigued. He followed as Kent crossed the workspace and continued behind the corner of the nursery created by the weapons locker and the work benches to where a metal pole came down and the different lines of overhanging nets and shade cloths met. Beyond it was an industrial water storage tank, which sat exposed to the elements beneath the compound’s western boundary. The ground around the tank sat exposed to the elements, filled with broken old crates, rotting sack cloth, and torn packs of old cement hardened into gray crags. Ortega’s crew used the no-go zone as a dumping ground for anything surplus to use, and despite Karla grumbling about it while working on the water system the other day, clearing out that section was a low priority.

  “Seen this?”

  Kent asked the question as he bent over, grinning still, and lifted a couple of the old cement bags turned into quasi-military defenses through exposure to the elements. Moved aside, they revealed a nest of dust-covered propane bottles.

  Tom blinked. “Empties?”

  “One of them at least,” Kent said with a grin.

  He hauled the canister out one-handed and swung it to the ground at Tom’s feet where the single bullet hole in the steel told an astonishing tale.

  “Jeez,” he said.

  “The hole’s recent,” Kent said. “Been a little gunfire around here, eh?”

  “Yeah,” Tom said and snickered even though it wasn’t funny. “That could be . . . one of mine, I suppose.”

  “Lucky you didn’t blow the whole place sky high with you, eh?”

  “What are you, a fuckin’ Canadian already?”

  A midafternoon confrontation with his own mortality and the dumb luck it sometimes took to preserve it wasn’t anything Tom wanted to contemplate, fresh on the heels of his equally lucky son’s sorry tale. That difficulty he had swallowing returned, and it was only Kent’s genial good humor that kept Tom focused.

  “You came through here all guns blazin’, Tommy-Gun?”

  “I’m not sure it was all as John Woo as that.”

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “The good news, these other two tanks are full.”

  Tom eyeballed the canisters as Kent wrestled them free.

  “I was poking around, when I was on night watch last night.”

  “Good find,” Tom replied. “Hot showers tonight? For you and your kids.”

  “Only if it’s for everyone,” Kent said.

  “Of course.”

  “Let me know when you want one hooked up to the generator,” Kent said. “I’m on night duty again tonight, giving your man Attila a rest.”

  “Are you sure?” Tom asked. “Your family. . . .”

  “We’re safer here than anywhere else,” Kent said. “I have to thank you for that.”

  “Not at all,” Tom said. “We should all get together tomorrow to talk security, and a few other things looking ahead. I’ll want everyone’s input.”

  “No problem.”

  The thought of a hot shower was almost too much to contemplate. Tom smiled, cleared his throat as if awkwardly, and told Kent he could hook up the power supply now.

  *

  THE TREAT WAS welcomed with such unbridled enthusiasm that even Kevin seemed to grin, coming out of hiding as the news spread through the beleaguered household and the generator started up its subdued chugging outside amid the prospect of warm showers, electric light slowly blooming within the complex. As the advancing hour brought darkness, various small globes and lamps spread a wholesome gentility.

  With the heat on, Kent’s wife Ming almost pained them with her insistence on taking charge of the evening meal. Yet she cast a shrewd eye over the contents of the Vanicek pantry, brought out a few small items she’d smuggled in with her, and when Dkembe returned with thick cuts of meat wrapped in a worn-out old tracksuit top, the aroma of delicious food soon a
dded its warmth to the convivial air.

  Tom felt utterly shattered, but there was a drunken good cheer in him as he managed his way up the internal stairs, little Momo and Bazooka playing together in the area beneath. He passed Karla and Ionia at the top of the landing. Graceful Ionia and her equally hard-faced companion wore pilfered bathrobes, freshly-wet hair wrapped in towels. Karla clutched Tom’s shoulders in laughter as they passed.

  “A hot shower!” she chuckled. “I could almost kiss you!”

  Her girlfriend snickered.

  “He’d probably like that.”

  Tom moved aside for the women, transfixed by their merriment, a rueful look on his face as Ionia eyed him coolly, trailing her lover back to their room. He chuckled, still almost too tired for it, and drew his towel down over one shoulder like it was a heavy nautical rope.

  The battered upstairs bathroom was tiled to the roof, which had given everyone including the home’s current guests the excuse to do nothing about the mold and grime gathered all through it, several of the bigger tiles shattered, but still glued in place amid the odd missing piece. The tiled floor had a drain, but old fabrics smelling of mildew and the worst kinds of sea life were a perpetual carpet for wet feet. A few fat-looking slugs clung to the wall beside a rust-spotted mirror. Tom idly plucked one free as he shut the bathroom door, then stood looking at the thing for so long he wondered if he should eat it. Instead, he tossed it and two others out the old sliding glass window propped open with a book, offering a view over the moonlit back compound’s fence. The waterlogged copy of Alice in Wonderland sprouted tiny fungal growths questing for the night air.

  The pipes came on with a judder. Tom luxuriated in taking his time to peel off his jacket, grimacing with pain and discomfort as he followed with his button-up shirt. The water chugged out, splashing into the stained tub with reluctance as Tom eased onto the seat of the toilet they’d all agreed was not fit for use, groaning as he loosened the ties on his boots and took them and his socks off.