It, Vegas thought and sighed, unable to hold his head up with everything hanging over him. He softly swore to himself yet again, unsure if Tisha even heard it.
“Listen to me,” he said as quietly as he could in the hard breeze. “When I come back, you be ready to go, got it? One bag, baby, and I mean it, cool?”
“You’ll come back to me?”
“I’ll come back for you, babe.”
“You’re good to me, Vegas,” she said. “It’s good when it’s you an’ me.”
Latisha grabbed him in a hug and for some reason Vegas fought back tears too.
*
IT WAS A twenty-minute trek to the Bastion gates and it still wasn’t sun-up. Vegas was careful picking his way through the empty, restless streets, the dwellings and the very walls around him pregnant with whoever survived among the City’s thousands of souls. He kept his eyes and his ears sharp, cautious of safety yet glad to be living in the now, rather than beneath his traitorous nerves which threatened to overpower him. If he blinked more, licked his lips, adjusted the straightness of his cornrows a little too much, he begrudged it. Reassurance came in the Glock digging into his hip and the weight of the small tomahawk he’d recently filched.
Still, when he cleared the barricades and the last shanty homes, and stepped from the shelter of the old Columbus buildings overlooking the cleared concourse now a muddy slope to the Bastion’s gates, he started imagining a dozen different terrifying scenarios as he set eyes on the bored-looking sentry and the machine-gun turret surveying the whole approach.
Vegas bulled his shoulders instead and set out towards the broad gate, one hand raised, head and eyes down. The helmeted gate guard swept at him with a policeman’s gaze and a soldier’s threat, throwing Vegas to life before the Fall.
He halted a fair distance from the gate. Night’s gloom still clung to the scene, lightening just a fraction in the minutes to come.
“Hold up!” he called out, no need to do it loudly with the guard watching him from ten yards up in the air. “I need to speak to Councilor Wilhelm.”
“It’s not even six,” the sentry said. “Come back later.”
“I need to speak to him as soon as I can.”
The white trooper studied him and said nothing and it drew out for a few seconds. Vegas checked back the way he’d come, giving himself something to do as the pause elongated, wishing he’d brought a water bottle, his housemate’s blood spurting across his legs every time he dared close his eyes, even when he blinked.
“We’re closed,” the trooper called back finally. “Go home.”
Vegas cleared his throat with difficulty. Whether it was the name he uttered which choked him, or the last-second panic he felt in playing the card, he couldn’t tell.
“It’s about Tom Vanicek,” Vegas said. “He’ll want to know.”
The trooper eyed him shrewdly, then nodded slowly.
“Let me call back-up, then we’ll bring you through.”
Consent somehow took Vegas by surprise, but he nodded his understanding and compliance, and felt every inch the lackey dog he’d lectured his comrades from becoming.
Then, at last, Vegas felt the stirred coals of anger, and he gave a slow, low growl that wouldn’t carry to any guards behind the wide Bastion gate. He refastened the grip on his pack, feeling the spines of books digging into him as he willed himself back into that nourishing, self-righteous sense of vengeance. The more he focused, the more self-evident it became. In the five minutes the troopers worked behind the scenes making their adjustments, Vegas grasped hold of his understandable fury and fashioned it into a blade, invisible in his hand, but as tangible to him as Tom Vanicek’s longsword hacking down repeatedly into his friend.
“Fuck Tom Vanicek,” he hissed.
The gate cracked ajar and the same trooper or some other well-fed white boy stepped into the pass and checked him up and down at a spot where two more hard-faced turds had negligent aim of twin AR15s, their backs sheltered by the compound fence. Righteous as Vegas felt – fighting back against the imprint of his life as a black man in old America the whole time – he lowered his eyes and allowed their scrutiny as just one more means to an end.
Presenting no danger once they’d taken all his gear, he waited with the patience of an impatient man as the trio conferred and several more guards offscreen played their part. The gate guard finally coughed and motioned for him to follow and led Vegas through.
It was more than the late season making the inside of the old Enclave look so skeletal and bare. The old tent city was stripped from the gigantic interlocking courtyards between the brick tenement blocks, and all but a few paths remained of the ugly old concrete pavers. Naked garden beds now awaited further work between the slabbed sidewalks.
The gate guard led Vegas along one of the paths, marching the visitor needlessly down the central aisle with a hand clutching the sleeve of the newcomer’s shirt. Vegas allowed that, too, with an unpleasant sneer, the face of a man dicked around before an important appointment rather than the supplicant he was, tail between his legs, maybe, seeking the succor of the leader of the pack.
*
THE SLAMMING DOOR snapped him awake with a start. Every part of Vegas ached as he unfolded from the hard wooden bench seat and registered the growing daylight cascading in now through the tall windows lining the fourth-floor corridor. A door which last closed in darkness and the promise of swift return now revealed a tall, sandy-bearded security guard in khaki, a holstered pistol strapped to one leg.
“Councilor’s ready for you.”
Vegas stood to his full height and resisted the stretch.
“Cool.” About time.
“You OK?”
The trooper wasn’t asking after his welfare, and Vegas got that. So he grunted in assent and sniffed impatient eyes into the room beyond.
“He in there?”
“This way.”
The trooper left his back exposed as he led Vegas into and through one room and then out another, meeting tables and then a corporate lounge, everything tastefully done. His guide then pushed through a pair of big paneled doors leading deeper into the building and Vegas caught the merest glimpse of a stairwell. They approached another guarded door, which opened into another meeting room where Wilhelm abruptly stood up at the table’s end.
A third trooper with a slung M16 fronted a door on the far side of a room otherwise empty but for the two of them and Vegas’ escort. His guide took up a position against the door behind them, and the move sent a ripple of discomfort racing through Vegas’ gut.
“Vegas.”
Wilhelm came on with that bright smile of his and a hand already extended. They shook with Vegas shrugging off his own resentment in case it showed.
“Hey, Wilhelm, thanks for seeing me.”
“Of course,” the Councilor said. “They told me it was urgent.”
“Yeah,” Vegas said down low. “Hope they didn’t get you outta bed.”
“I was already up,” Wilhelm said and kind of beamed. “I do not sleep much.”
“Listen,” Vegas said to him. “Tom Vanicek’s a fuckin’ maniac, brother. I tell you what I tell you, you got to back me up, OK?”
“What do you mean?” Wilhelm asked. “Are you in trouble with Tom Vanicek?”
He did it with a smile, like someone was naughty.
“He killed my friend in cold blood last night,” Vegas snarled. “Just cut him down. Murdered him.”
Wilhelm nodded, chastened maybe, but still disinterested.
“We know Tom Vanicek is a dangerous man,” the Councilor said. “Is that really something you needed to get me out of bed to say? We already know.”
“Thought you was up already?”
Wilhelm made an annoyed face.
“It is a figure of speech,” he replied. “I have a whole City I am trying to hold together here. I am sincerely sorry for your friend –”
“Don’t give me that.”
The Councilor
paused and raised an eyebrow at him.
“Tom Vanicek,” Vegas then said. “It’s kinda like the secret password around here, huh?”
“I do not understand what you mean by that, Vegas.”
“I told your people I had somethin’ on Vanicek and they got you right up.”
“You may have forgotten the time you spent asleep outside.”
Wilhelm chuckled, but didn’t like Vegas’ shrug.
“My Safety people said you had something important I needed to know,” Wilhelm said like it didn’t mean a lot. “We have no secret passwords here, Vegas.”
“Uh huh,” Vegas replied. “OK.”
“So is there something more you wanted to tell me?”
“You’re pretty keen to know, right?” Vegas replied instead.
The Councilor dropped his smile with a look to show the effort it was taking him, fixing a disapproving eye on Vegas and perhaps resisting a check on the two guards watching on.
“I made an effort to see you as soon as I could,” Wilhelm said. “I was already in another meeting and I have one after this. We can do this another time.”
He was already upright, but Wilhelm made like getting ready to move.
Vegas let him bluff it out. The Councilor paused instead, checking back at him with a cheeky, you-really-sure-about-this look on his glossy black showman’s face.
“Vegas. . . .”
“I didn’t have no beef with Tom Vanicek until last night,” Vegas said. “I don’t care what your problem’s with him. Guy’s a fuckin’ killer, man. We got no use for that here. Why you think I split with Burroughs’ crew?”
“Funny you should say that,” Wilhelm said, then added a secret smile.
“What?”
“Where is Vanicek now?”
“Are you gonna back me up?”
“If you can help,” Wilhelm said.
“Then what was that little secret smug shit I jus’ saw on your dial?”
The Councilor looked back in denial.
“Vanicek?” he asked again instead.
Vegas narrowed his gaze. Then it was his turn to check on the two guards.
“You remember where you come from, Ernest?”
Vegas tried to hold his eyes. Wilhelm chuckled.
“I somehow do not think you mean the Air Force Base.”
“You forgot what it was like, before, for our people,” Vegas said. “We have to stick tight, brother.”
The Councilor fired back a sarcastic chuckle.
“I remember it fine, thank you,” Wilhelm said. “I had a good life.” He motioned to include the security goons. “I still do.”
“Yeah,” Vegas said slowly. “Maybe you’ve had it too good here for too long. Makes a man forgetful.”
“If we are going to get a search underway for your friend’s killer, I need you to tell me where he might be.”
Wilhelm held out his hand as if he expected something handwritten. Vegas slowly shook his head, eyes lifting from the hand to meet the Councilor’s.
“Winter’s coming, yo,” he said. “You need me and the people I can bring across. I’ll tell you what I can, but you’ve got to cut us in. Your City Council’s just another racket, brother. I know that. Deal me in.”
For once, he couldn’t read the Councilor’s reaction. Wilhelm stood assaying him, speculative fingers wreathing towards his chin before he finally snapped his eyes to the security detail and back again.
“I am afraid there will be a problem with that,” he said.
“Oh yeah?” Vegas replied. “What’s that?”
“The table is already full.”
Wilhelm motioned towards the bearded sentry.
“You can answer Trooper Rothwell’s questions if you will not answer mine.”
“Wait,” Vegas said.
Now Wilhelm strode away for real.
“Wait,” Vegas called out with rising panic. “We’re in this together, Wilhelm. What’s one more seat at the table?”
The Councilor nodded to the other trooper as he reached the far exit, and then turned back towards Vegas looking sorrowful.
“Because no one else wants you there.”
Wilhelm didn’t say anything else. Instead, he stood aside as the door opened and several more troopers sauntered into the room.
Vegas recognized his ex-Brotherhood comrades Sandler, Romano and Zardoz – and the smiles on their faces too.
*
SHOCK AT WILHELM’S betrayal ran a long second behind the urgency which gripped Vegas bodily as he pounced on the tall guard between him and the door they’d come in through.
The trooper beside Wilhelm stupidly went for his rifle, and though the blonde-bearded guard had a few inches on Vegas, he was gangly in comparison. Vegas grabbed the trooper’s shirt front and hauled him around to block the three Brotherhood stooges. Then Vegas opened the door and slammed it into the trooper before backing out, leaving him in a tangle blocking the way.
The three Brotherhood men piled out the door after Vegas as if each was slightly more careful than the last, which gave Vegas a lead as he sprinted for the stairs with Romano, then Zardoz, then Sandler coming after. The other two armed troopers followed behind.
Vegas shrunk down at the expected gunfire as he ran through the offices, but one of the men yelled caution and then it was just Vegas and them and their pounding boots and breaths.
He came alongside the rails at the top of the stairwell and astonished his pursuers by vaulting up one-footed and then stepping off, disappearing from sight as he leaped down and across to the far opposite side of the stairs as if he’d been doing it his whole life. Just as briskly, Vegas rose from his crouched landing and grabbed the next closest rail, and he swung himself over that edge too, landing on his sneakers on the far rail, diagonally below, keeping his momentum fluid, and then streaking a further half-flight down before even the first of the men started down from the top.
Wilhelm’s private guards now led the chase, exchanging loud frantic professional questions as they lagged behind Vegas’ parkour moves. Bootfalls crashed down from nearly two flights above.
Vegas hurtled groundwards – and then came the first gunshot. It echoed painfully in the concrete stairwell and Vegas took the chance as he ducked out of sight to dive over and roll into the next landing, and from there then slithered on fast-moving hands and feet around the corner, tucked up with his back to the wall holding his breath and ready to leap back into action in case the rampaging Safety officers failed to continue on past.
He could afford a single shaky breath as he strained, frozen, as the booted feet crashed down the laminate stairs and then continuing on for the building’s ground floor below.
He didn’t have time to spare. Various options and strategies duked it out for supremacy in his thoughts as Vegas got back to his feet as quietly as he could and started scampering along the next corridor scanning for another exit.
It was Sneaky-fucking-Sandler in his risk-avoidant rearguard role who checked each landing on the way down and caught the back of him as Vegas hurried to the corridor’s end. And like the coward he was, Sandler yelled to the others rather than follow himself.
Vegas checked the closest door handle, but it was locked.
“Don’t fucking move!” Sandler yelled.
The narrow-faced man swept his pistol at Vegas, a moving target back-lit by the tall windows at the hallway’s end. Vegas ducked and threw himself at the last door on the other side, committed to the act only for the micro-seconds it took to feel that handle locked as well.
Zardoz charged in from behind Sandler whose trigger finger hesitated just a fraction.
Survival instinct alone drove Vegas twisting for the nearest window, but he fumbled the grab at the window’s latch, and continued on with his momentum into and through it. The best Vegas could do was heft one brawny shoulder, turning his face as glass exploded into the daylight to reveal a metal fire escape he crashed hard down into.
Pain like a ruptur
ed spleen lit through him, but Vegas was too afraid to pause as the glass rained and clattered around and off him. He grabbed the rusted metal scaffold, and hurled himself on a fresh vector down the side of the building with hands covered in blood. He was halfway down to ground level before the sliver of broken window frame jutting out of his side caught his attention when it tore free, catching on a passing strut as Vegas stumbled out and onto the street circling the rear of the tenement along the southern face of the Enclave.
Just above the hip where his Glock should’ve been, Vegas instead grasped a bleeding wound. A distressing amount of blood ran from it, soaking his cargo pants and close-fitting shirt.
The Bastion had his gun and his ax and his backpack and his five favorite books.
And Wilhelm’d betrayed him to the City’s white elites just like he was one of them.
Anger at himself for not expecting Wilhelm’s betrayal was the only thing left to Vegas apart from fear for his life. He steadied himself with a bloody hand print against the outside wall and heard a commotion somewhere out of sight. He would’ve started running then and there if only a Humvee didn’t barrel around the corner of the access road and gun the engine towards him.
Broad daylight cast Vegas in a role he’d long hoped left behind.
The armored vehicle grunted forward in spurts from the gas. Still clutching his side, Vegas forcefully exhaled, demanding the adrenalin obey him, rather than make him its bitch. Instead, he judged the Humvee’s speed and trajectory as it hammered towards him.
Vegas ran – but towards the vehicle, not away from it.
There was no time to scan their wider surrounds or the view towards the front gates or any other security measures deploying against him – nor anything else but focus on the military vehicle as it slowed a little, anticipating the cut-off maybe as it veered onto the tenement’s crumbling sidewalk as Vegas came at it down the middle of the road.
He and the driver locked eyes. The Humvee’s tires chewed the dirt and roared forward and Vegas gathered all his strength and leaped up with a foot towards the vehicle’s bull bar.
The jeep came on hard in the last instants and the windshield caught Vegas’ foot as he launched off the bar towards the roof, and the force of the clip flipped him spinning onto the hard-packed ground as the vehicle’s tore through.
After The Apocalypse Season 2 Box Set [Books 4-6] Page 63