“There’s that ‘Mr Locke’ again.”
“Would you prefer Fagin?”
“I don’t use my own name for a reason.”
“Hmmm, and why is that?”
Locke clasped the arms of the wooden chair and it seemed to Wilhelm like the temperature went up a notch, the handsome man across from him chewing on the reply he kept to himself. Wilhelm gave him a moment, but Locke sniffled, a gangster through and through.
“I figured you invited me here because of Vanicek,” he said softly. “Am I close on that?”
Wilhelm’s smile already betrayed him.
“What makes you say that?”
“Let’s not do this,” Locke told him. “Playing games? I imagine Vanicek’s some kind of problem for you.”
“From the trooper report, it sounds like he’s a problem for you.”
“Yeah, he tried to kill me.”
“And you . . . reported that to the City?”
Locke eyed him levelly, now the one playing games.
“That’s my right, isn’t it?” he asked. “As a Citizen?”
“You’ve seen the Rules.”
Locke inclined his head, much better at concealing his smirk. Wilhelm enjoyed the sound of his own voice as he continued.
“I think we can probably rip up the rulebook, now,” the Councilor said. “Seeing what has happened, you understand?”
“Be straight with me.”
“Our winter will look a lot better without Tom Vanicek in it,” Wilhelm said. “I can tell you where he lives.”
Locke sniggered. “I already know where he lives,” he said. “He lives with other people. They have a compound. Security.”
“I thought you said before, I would be surprised the places children can go that we adults cannot, Mr . . . Fagin?”
Wilhelm smiled like the name pained him, but at least he was seated again and could steeple his fingers together dramatically, elbows wide on the polished wood. The noise of a servant setting out cutlery echoed down the hall outside.
Locke stared back steadily, and Wilhelm couldn’t tell if it was thoughtfulness or animosity he saw. The man-shark’s face stayed blank.
“Send my Urchins in there?”
“Under cover of darkness, yes, while everyone is asleep.”
“And his children?”
“It is only the boy,” Wilhelm said. “I have . . . promised the girl to someone else.”
Locke blinked at Wilhelm’s candor, then snorted.
“Nice,” he said. Then he returned his measured study to the Councilor’s eyes. “Sounds like I’d be doing more for you than anything you’ve offered me, so far.”
But Wilhelm only smiled and shook his head.
“Nice try, Fagin,” he said. “But I know you well enough already to know . . . you will do this anyway. I just wanted to let you know you have a clear path.”
And he stood, paused a moment, then offered a businessman’s handshake.
“I promise you, next time, I will not leave the Brotherhood alone with the liquor.”
*
A GIDDY SENSE of urgency drove Wilhelm from the building and into the gathering storm, pulling on his jacket and nearly pulling it over his head as the wind whipped across the vast, half-vacated courtyard. Teams of men and women worked with tools and sheer grit, methodically removing big sections of useless paving already exposed by the disassembly of the Bastion’s long-standing tent city. A heavy vehicle slowly reversed towards one of the crews, premature with a truckload of City-made compost for future vegetable beds.
The Humvee and driver stood waiting for him on the side road. Lopez straightened as the Council man hurried across. Both of them knew this was some seriously shady business, but the young trooper’s belligerent grin as he welcomed the Councilor and even moved around to open the door for him showed it wasn’t troubling his conscience much, if at all.
“The Chief radioed through just now,” the young officer said. “They’re waiting for you.”
“Success?”
“I believe so, Councilor.”
“Good.”
Wilhelm folded himself into the vehicle, always conscious of hitting his head. Lopez jogged back around to the left, the repurposed ethanol Humvee already thrumming with the motor running. Lopez carried himself as brisk and no nonsense as any Uber driver of old, even checking his side mirror before hauling the vehicle around in a tight arc and carrying them at once along the side road around to the front gates. The crews there only needed a glimpse of the Councilor through the smeared windshield and the gates immediately started open.
“Patrols sayin’ there’s people settin’ up in the University district,” Lopez said.
Wilhelm looked across at him like at an exhibit. The unexpected small-talk forced his thoughts back from a million miles away, anticipatory scenes playing such a visceral fantasy in his mind that it was almost a jolt to find himself seated in the slowing Humvee in the awkward pause before the gates fully cleared. The Councilor cleared his throat, restrained flaring nostrils, and nodded vigorously as if that would fill the gap.
“Parasites,” he managed to say.
“Refugees, that’s for sure.”
Lopez adjusted the crank and they started forward and through.
“Refugees from the City, though, you know what I mean, Councilor?”
“Yes.”
Wilhelm inhaled heavily and looked out his window as they trudged up and into the thickening human flotsam crowding the slight ascent from the Bastion. Lopez indicated, as was the custom in the sanctuary zone, window open, half-leaning out and waving as a last resort before needing to yell. He wheeled the vehicle to the west, gunning the chugging Humvee up onto one of the old roads running parallel to The Mile and not quite as crowded. A remaining few pedestrians jumped out of their path.
“That is why I call them parasites,” Wilhelm said as they continued along. “They survive in the shadow of the City, but give nothing back. If that is how they want it, they are very literally not our problem, Miguel.”
“We’re gonna hold firm this winter, Councilor.”
“I know that.”
He looked askance at the young driver and remembered his charm.
“You and me, anyway. And those with us.”
The driver nodded, and looked duly grateful. Wilhelm returned his eyes to the crowded road and Lopez didn’t know to quit when he was ahead. He added, “I was sorry to hear about you and Miss Deschain, sir.”
Wilhelm’s jaw tightened.
“So was I.”
It was only a minute later they sighted The Dirty Vixen.
*
GREERSON’S MAN YUSUF opened the stout drinking den’s door, Ak47 in one hand as he all but ignored Wilhelm and did his job, making sure the approach outside was completely safe and the Councilor came to the venue uncoerced. Lopez gave his fellow trooper a cheery thumbs up, the frosty last minute of the cab ride teaching him nothing. Yusuf saw his comrade and winked, fancying himself the hero of the hour or something as he ushered Wilhelm through and into the dingy light.
Blood dried across one of the table booths, and the stools at the bar were all knocked flat. Other than that, there wasn’t much sign to show forced entry, and the Councilor nursed an almost professional curiosity about how Greerson’s team had done it, despite more pressing matters at hand.
“There’s a keg room, Councilor,” Yusuf said as he resecured the outside door.
Wilhelm merely waited, and once the task was done, the dark-featured man gestured ahead of himself even as he led the way through the warren of the small bar. Greerson’s man Slinky stood eating a handful of ingredients he’d sandwiched together into some kind of ungodly mess, boots wide apart as sauce and condiments dripped onto the floor. Unlike the others of Greerson’s core gang who treated the Councilor with the due deference he expected, the bullish, strangely handsome man only nodded and kept wolfing down his meal as Yusuf chaperoned the Councilor expecting him to ignore the sc
enery in their haste to get through.
He was right. Fantasies and giddy imaginings were colliding at rapid pace with the reality of the present moment as the scuffling, sobbing noises reached Wilhelm as he strode as if carried along on a wave of enchanting perfume, straight on into the utter depravity of Carlotta sweating and gagged and bound and shrieking between the twins Milo and Otis, Greerson with Chesterton and the lone female trooper McGill holding the barkeep Magnus in a similar hold nearby.
Wilhelm’s entrance brought an instant renewing of muffled screams from Carlotta. She writhed in a mix of fury, panic, and disbelief that instantly transported Wilhelm towards his catharsis. Carlotta took one look at his beatific face and her noise cut out at once, mouth agape despite the soaked cloth filling it, eyes glazed and unfocused among pooling ripples of cosmic horror.
“Ernest,” Magnus groaned a bark at him. “Please.”
Wilhelm moved equidistant between the two captives. Magnus hung limp and beaten in the troopers’ hold. Gray-haired arms and the torn-open, cut-open mess of his bloodied shirt showed he had no fight left. He managed to focus his lone unswollen eye.
“Wilhelm. . . .”
“Why isn’t he gagged?”
Greerson frowned.
“I thought you wanted him to. . . ?”
The Chief eyed Carlotta meaningfully. Wilhelm suppressed a growl, aware of his animal nature wishing for dominance, expression, for his totality. He gritted his teeth together to resist it, now so deeply embedded in the moment that it was like nothing had come before, teleported into his revenge fantasy-made-flesh, and he looked between his woman and her lover and all the terrible options spilled across him with the force of revelation.
And Wilhelm started to laugh.
It was neither deep nor sinister, and yet it was both, spiraling outwards in the long ominous moment as he swung this way and that, then finally rounded back towards Carlotta. She was like a stranger to him – more so for the sweat soaking her torn clothes, her hair in disarray, one eye likewise almost shut from the violence visited on her that Wilhelm considered nothing more than a whiff of what he’d imagined.
He tugged his lover’s gag aside.
“Ernest, please. . . .”
She started to beg so hard the effort failed her, collapsing into tears and a horrified wordless stare which faltered then as well, the strength going out of her tepid last resistance, entirely overcome by a cold hard fatalism she couldn’t avoid. Whatever words came next, they were a gasping, spluttering wreck of incoherent syllables which Wilhelm soon forced to a stop. He bent just enough to slap Carlotta to the ground – were she not held tight by the two Kansas farm boys. The twin on Carlotta’s left grunted, struggling with her dead weight. Wilhelm met the younger man’s eye as he stood erect once more, motioning then until either Milo or Otis understood his unspoken demand.
The second twin drew his knife and offered it handle first.
Wilhelm took the blade, nostrils like a dragon’s as he inched mechanically back towards his once-upon-a-time lover. Carlotta’s stammering settled into a steady refrain.
“Please, Ernest, please, baby baby, you know this is too much, honey, please, Ernest, Ernie, please Ernie-baby. . . .”
“You don’t want her gagged?” one of the men asked.
Wilhelm shook his head, not taking his eyes away.
“You were fucking him behind my back?” he asked her in a low, deadly voice.
“I told you already,” Carlotta struggled to answer. “I tried to explain, but you –”
“You thought you were just going to leave?”
The troopers stood, awkward in the moment and spoilt for reasons why, though Wilhelm himself spoke his question in a flat voice, almost businesslike in tone.
And Carlotta had no idea what to say.
“Yes, gag her,” he said at last.
Wilhelm dismissed her for the moment, his attention angling around now to her pathetic choice made manifest in the sagging flesh of the thoroughly beaten and defeated Magnus.
“Him?” he said as if the other man might answer. Then Wilhelm snorted a laugh. “Really, Carlotta?”
“I never chose it, Ernie, you have to understand –”
Wilhelm’s eyes flicked to the twins instead. They finished forcing on Carlotta’s gag. She shook her head even more fiercely than she looked, still pleading, demanding, wishing.
“I know you have to punish him, Ernest, I do . . . but please –”
“Gag her!”
Magnus tried to shout over Wilhelm’s yell, stifled by his own gag. He stared gauntly at Carlotta as they pushed her to the ground and her gag went back into place, one of her captors wrenching her by her hair, the other almost breaking her arm, while the man she’d shared a bed with through four years of hell on the Airforce Base and then eighteen months in Columbus only watched her finally submit.
Fresh tears, were they possible, poured out now as Carlotta mutely blubbered, eyes locked on his at last, as if finding some strength at the same time she surrendered to whatever now lay ahead.
*
THE BLADE WENT forgotten in the aggrieved Council man’s hand as he inspected the room itself, concrete floored, steel-secured high windows, and only the one door. The Dirty Vixen had precious few supplies to justify a keg room. Chesterton and McGill pinned the owner against the farthest brick wall. The outside street sat at their eye level, the subterranean bunker as quiet as any place could be within the heart of the sanctuary zone.
Wilhelm’s interest slowly turned back to the other captive, and he picked up an iron rod last in use when this was a tap house in truth. He checked over the flanged end as he moved across the room as if floating to where Magnus started a renewed effort to shake off the two troopers holding him.
The Councilor swung the rod with a metal crack as it broke the barkeep-philosopher’s leg.
The gagged man gave a throttled scream and Wilhelm nodded to the pair restraining him. Chesterton tugged aside their captive’s gag and Magnus immediately collapsed forward and started to retch emptily onto the floor.
It took a difficult kind of resolve for Wilhelm not to bludgeon him to death then and there.
He backed away instead as a spatter of drool and weak vomit hit the hard, gritty floor. Magnus abandoned holding himself half-upright, collapsing and rolling on the concrete as he clutched his brutalized leg and he twisted about, feverishly checking for his own protection at the same time as Wilhelm circled him, and Carlotta started up again with her own strangled cries.
“Silence her,” he said and motioned without looking.
One of the twins punched Carlotta hard in the stomach and she doubled over, but Wilhelm paid no mind, eyes sparkling with coiled menace. He just as abruptly stabbed downwards with the chisel end of the bar and it punched through Magnus’ hand to conjure another series of wild, bloodcurdling shrieks. Wilhelm kicked the barman in the side of the head, stopping his clamor almost instantly as Magnus’ bloodied eyes tracked with difficulty back around the room.
The Councilor switched efficient looks with Greerson’s handpicked team. Then he glanced towards Carlotta as they hauled her back up to watch again. Nothing could deter those pleading eyes. It was the only play he’d left to her.
Wilhelm beamed, seeing she knew there was no real chance of rescue here.
“I no longer need you, Carlotta,” he said to her. “You are part of an old life.”
She grunted something, squealed. Maybe it was a question. He ignored it.
“The world has changed,” Wilhelm said. “Five years now. It has shaped us both, made us the people we have become . . . and allowed me to become my true self.”
He eyed her more closely and Carlotta went still.
“The strong survive,” he said. “Like the Furies . . . by feeding on the weak.”
He motioned, waited a moment, then impatiently snapped his fingers for Chesterton and McGill to lift Magnus from the ground. Wilhelm then wasted no time taking the borro
wed knife out of his belt and then gutted the struggling barman in three efficient strokes.
The barkeep’s stomach unfurled wet and contagious-looking across the floor.
Carlotta gasped, frozen in that horrible moment of stillness before a truly shocking scream might come as she took in the squirming, life-filled ropes of her lover’s intestines spooling out onto the dusty concrete which drank at the blood and plasm with a thirst. The barkeep’s eyes rolled up into his head. A whispery, almost dog-like howl of abeyance came as agony swept up and through him, and the remnants of his guts succumbed to gravity with awful finality. The life went out of Magnus even if he wasn’t dead yet, and thus hollowed-out, the troopers left him to fall once again to the ground.
Magnus landed in his own squelching remains and twisted autonomously, writhing in a speechless crucifixion. McGill turned away with her palm against her mouth, leaving her freckled offsider Chesterton staring almost equally voiceless at the gruesome catastrophe.
Wilhelm watched keenly as they let Carlotta kneel. The Kansas twins stood over his ex-lover with caution, their focus on security a blessed distraction from the horror at the edge of their sight. Yusuf stood alone near the two steps up to the door, regretting now the curiosity which’d driven him to spectate. Wilhelm glanced to him now and lifted his hand as if he might snap fingers again, even though he still held the knife. He tossed the iron rod clanging onto the floor. Magnus blinked rapidly, eyes shut tight, though his mouth opened and closed like a fish. Carlotta’s sobs renewed as she looked up at Wilhelm, her hands together almost praying, clutching herself for support.
Wilhelm nodded to the farm boys.
“Out.”
The troopers knew their business. They left at once and Yusuf went with them. Greerson stepped closer, moving carefully around the dying barman, retrieving the discarded metal rod and motioning his subordinates to follow the others. Wilhelm remained motionless until the Chief joined him, then together they were last to retreat to the door.
Carlotta looked too stunned to understand what came next. She remembered her gag, and unobstructed, peeled it off, bewildered eyes tracking Wilhelm. First there was hope, her own murder not forthcoming – and then her eyes followed Wilhelm’s dry grin to the twitching cadaver-in-the-making on the fetid ground as Magnus exhaled and then went completely still.
After The Apocalypse Season 2 Box Set [Books 4-6] Page 48