“Yeah, him too.”
Struggling to keep up with all the ill portents, Latisha finally looked ready just to go get her stuff when instead OK Jay’s bedroom door swung open and Dkembe appeared.
“Dkembe?”
Vegas let his eyes boggle, too astonished to know how he even felt.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
The memories of Dkembe and Jay squabbling trying to throw blame at each other in the last seconds before Jay’s murder swept in on him like a thunderstorm and Vegas growled, low and dangerous in his throat, and reached back for the keen-edged tomahawk the Bastion men had taken from him hours ago.
Dkembe understood the subtext without needing an ax blow to the head. He backed away, but the bedroom doorway was blocked with another, more slender figure.
The skinny drab white girl wore Jay’s second favorite hoodie and stared hard at Vegas with unfocused, pink, sleep-deprived eyes. Vegas looked between the girl and Dkembe, and his burning scowl deepened to a whole new level.
“What the fuck is goin’ on here?”
“I thought your place would be empty, man,” Dkembe said. “I’m sorry. Astrid’s tired. We’re both . . . tired.”
Vegas tasted his own loathing and flicked eyes to Latisha.
“Pack now,” he told her.
“OK.”
Latisha left, and Vegas swiveled back on the two runaways as he broke into action, crossing angrily to the bookshelf and snatching Roald Dahl and then several other slim, dog-eared paperbacks while tugging the cotton throw from the room’s only other chair.
“You have to get out of here, it’s not safe,” he told them.
“What are you doing?”
“Packing,” Vegas said. “What’s it look like?”
“We just need somewhere to stay,” Dkembe said. “Just for one night.”
Vegas stood.
“Well here ain’t it,” he said. “I’ve half a mind to let Wilhelm’s men find you instead of me. You deserve it, after what you did.”
“It was Tom who killed Jay –”
“And you led him right here.”
“I didn’t think . . . I didn’t think he was just gonna murder. . . .”
“You serious with me right now, brother?”
Vegas waited until he had Dkembe’s eye contact, then delivered his toughest stare yet. The other man broke in a heartbeat and started blubbering while the pale girl watched on. Vegas watched Dkembe cry for all of two seconds.
“Who’s this?” he snapped at him. “Your girlfriend?”
Dkembe sniffled, wiped his face.
“Why is . . . why is Wilhelm’s people comin’?”
Vegas only glared at him.
“Motherfucker. . . .”
He couldn’t manage the rest. He angrily bundled the books into the cotton throw and bustled away into the kitchen where he armed himself with OK Jay’s carving knife.
“Vegas,” Dkembe said. “What’s going on?”
“I went to Wilhelm,” Vegas said. “Thought I could do something about your buddy Vanicek.” He scanned the empty shelves. “Slimy sack of shit lowlife motherfucker set his dogs on me instead.”
“Dogs?”
A few tinned cans and a chunk of fabric-wrapped meat went in with the books with little regard to hygiene.
“You remember I was tied up with the Brotherhood. . . ?”
Dkembe nodded. “They’re a bunch of racists,” he said.
Vegas chuckled without rancor. “Not all men are created equal,” he said.
“I see that now,” Dkembe said – clearly desperate. He closed the distance to clutch Vegas’ arm. “Wherever you’re goin’, I’ll go with you.”
Vegas shook him off.
“What, you and her?”
Astrid watched mutely from a few yards away, unaware or just too tired to notice she stood in the middle of the drying blood.
Dkembe shot the girl a guilty look.
“I had to help her,” he told Vegas. “They captured her.”
“Who?”
“The Ascended.”
“The butchers?”
Dkembe dropped his eyes. Vegas gave a dry, mysterious laugh, and pushed past Dkembe and then around the girl as he headed into Jay’s bedroom and stood glaring angrily at the freshly-tousled bedclothes. Then he tore off his own filthy shirt and started salvaging more clothes from his dead friend’s belongings, gasping and wincing and feeling maudlin and half-dead. His blood-soaked shirt lay where he’d dumped it on the floor.
Vegas ignored the whispered conversation behind him. He stuffed his bundle tight and twisted the cotton sheet and re-entered the living room to find Dkembe cradling the girl against himself in a move that made Vegas sick.
“You an’ me still might have a reckonin’,” he told Dkembe. “But for now, you want to come with me? You gotta ditch her.”
“No, Vegas, I can’t –”
“You won’t much like it where I have to go, so maybe it’s just as well,” Vegas said.
Latisha arrived carrying a motherfucking suitcase. Tired annoyance swiveled aim back on Dkembe.
“You don’t know where my crib’s at, huh?”
“Jay said you had other guys –”
“Yeah,” Vegas agreed. “Right across the street from your Ascended.”
He looked to Tisha.
“Let’s go.”
Vegas glazed his eyes as he bulled past Dkembe standing shell-shocked with his hands on the shivering young woman’s arms. Only the blonde girl tracked Vegas as he grabbed Latisha’s suitcase, and he and her and it quit the ransacked apartment.
*
THEY HAD TO go deep into the City’s south on foot, and by the time Vegas led Latisha towards the solid three-floor brick factory unit, the afternoon sun had vanished behind thick clouds spreading grayness across the whole of Columbus. Away in the distance from The Mile, fresh black plumes of smoke arose, adding to the sense of doom, the strident winds fanning the newborn blaze so that soon, flames started writhing from the scene as blazing, wind-torn tendrils.
Vegas’ stomach dropped another notch, dull compared to the hastily-treated ache in his side. The encroachments of The Mile didn’t extend to the wider streets in the City’s reclaimed south. Despite the fierce winds, three of the gruesomely-hooded cultists stood armed in the barren street between the Ascended complex, a line of demountable units, and the faded red brickwork of the three-story building opposite – where Vegas was heading. A pair of civilian meat workers clutched weapons too, though they stood only surveying the wreck of a burnt-out truck near the Ascended’s trade entrance.
Latisha dragged the heavy suitcase along by its stupid little wheels clogged thick with City grime. Vegas helped force the baggage along from behind with tired kicks and the occasional shove, eyes darting towards the cultists over the sack of clothes he carried. A man in leather with a beard and moustache didn’t hesitate, striding out to Vegas across the wind-battered intersection as he trudged.
It was still thirty yards to the wire-mesh enclosure of home. The crib gate stood ajar ahead of them, with no one on security duty. Vegas sighed and slowed, making a pained face as he hissed for Latisha to keep moving.
“It’s that gateway up ahead,” he told her. “Don’t look back.”
Vegas set down his things, offering the newcomer a serious, but calm look.
“Help you with somethin’?” he asked into the wind.
The man nodded and closed the distance before offering a paper-dry handshake.
“Martin,” he said.
“They call me Vegas.”
“From there?”
“Nothin’ like that.”
“Uh-huh,” Martin said and dropped it. “We got hit this morning. Ascended lost one of their Anointed. Seen anything?”
“‘Anointed’?” Vegas replied. “What’s that?”
“A girl,” the other man said. “A girl.”
Vegas motioned towards Latisha making slow progress
towards sanctuary.
“You can see, we’re just comin’ back.”
The wind whistled through their conversation, with Martin standing too close.
“We’re looking for a black man,” he said.
The foreman stared at him with such deranged intensity that Vegas crumbled.
“You’re lookin’ for Dkembe,” he said.
“And Tom Vanicek,” Martin said.
“Well, I can’t help you with that,” Vegas said. “But Dkembe was a friend of Jay – Jay who worked for you.”
“He didn’t turn up for work,” Martin said.
“Because he’s dead,” Vegas said bluntly. “Dkembe’s there, at his place. You know it? You’ll find him there.”
Martin’s expression eased and he took a step back and Vegas felt the noose loosen around his throat. The hooded figures across the roadway watched like hawks. Martin cut a vague hand signal and then glanced back to him.
“Thank you.”
“I’ve got no beef with you,” Vegas told him.
Martin stared back. Deadpan.
“Was that a joke?”
“Er, no . . . of course not, man.”
Martin grunted. “Makes it funnier.”
Then he angled away on the heel of one cowboy boot and offered a little salute.
“See you around,” he called.
Now it was Vegas taking a few steps after Martin so his voice could be heard.
“If you’re after Tom Vanicek, you should know he’s the one that killed Jay,” Vegas said. He could hear the desperation now in his voice and hated it. “He’s no friend to me!”
Martin nodded, finished his frozen salute, and went back to his kind.
Vegas sagged as if the life force left him. But he redoubled the grip on his scavenged bundle and hauled it and him along with it up to the gate.
Latisha now stood with two of his homies, Ray Chuck and D-Man, the first of them wearing an idiot’s grin above the chubby thick neck he maintained. D-Man eyed Vegas more cautiously and stepped back, speculative and bright, deferring as Vegas shared a sour look with them.
“Where’s Homo and Spinner?”
“Spinner’s asleep,” Ray Chuck said as he strangled his own mirth. “Holmes and Twenty Six went out for a salvage run.”
Vegas snapped his fingers as he cast a look back down the street, watching the Ascended trio stride off back into their compound with the newfound urgency of a lynch posse. Vegas might’ve cursed them, but only with his voice within. He said nothing else about the matter as he turned back to the other members of his crew instead.
“Wake up Holmes and get everyone else together,” he said to Ray Chuck. Then to D-Man, he added, “Tool up, lock these gates, keep a watch at all times, yeah?”
“We have a roster,” the other man replied.
“Then fuckin’ use it,” Vegas said.
He checked in with Latisha because he could feel her waiting on it, plus it was the right thing to do. He refastened a grip around the suitcase handle.
“We have to fast-track our plans, yo,” he said to D-Man. “Lockdown. Shit outside’s getting weird. Dangerous.”
“You think it’s this weather. . . ?”
“Naw, man,” Vegas told him. “There might be a storm comin’, but it’s not comin’ from the sky. We got problems right here now that’s gonna take everythin’ we got if we’re gonna see this through.”
D-Man stroked his goatee, thoughtful rather than frightened, remaining somehow dignified in his black track suit and trainers. He drew around the Uzi on its strap, concealed behind his narrow back, and nodded once to the darker Vegas before turning to secure the gate.
Vegas found Latisha extending her hand his way with a big smile.
Chapter 7
TOM’S GRIP ON the longbow was hard enough to make the wood complain, if only he could hear it. Instead, the winds tore through the disassembled streets with ever-greater vigor. Tom could barely hear his son’s questions as he trailed behind, Tom marching resolute yet without any idea of where to go; and the questions Tom did hear, he ignored, too much bitterness and anger and confusion and outright panic for his daughter a heady stew like narcotics in his head leaving him feral and restless with murderous intent despite the aches and pains and bruises and possible fractures making it a miracle he stood upright at all. He didn’t give Moira Blaze another thought as he led them away from The Dirty Vixen, no matter how much the handsome woman had hummed and hawed and rolled her eyes to be left behind.
One problem alone consumed Tom Vanicek.
“Dad!” Lucas yelled for something like the fifth time. “What are we going to do?”
“We have to find your sister,” Tom shot back at him as if angry at the kid, too.
But Lucas only returned a defiant, pugilistic look and motioned irately.
“And. . . ?”
Tom scanned the intersection. The two-story brick firmaments of the overarching streetscape cordoned the trash-littered colony between the streets. Several bodies lay out in the open, gathering into mounds of wind-blown garbage, a coil of chicken wire, a bright strip of pink cloth, someone’s abandoned stroller tumbling through and past them and bouncing somehow back onto its wheels as if by invisible strings until a random gust clutched it and the whole thing flew off somewhere beyond where it hurt to look, grit and too much other crap obliterating the view to the south. A man ran low to a doorway with a bundle clutched against himself as if fearing the rising winds might snatch it. A woman with a missing eye watched from the doorway of another hovel. A sharpened tool glinted in her hand.
Lucas held his pistol and the depleted Mp5 Navy hung like a weight from its strap across his narrow frame. Tom dug the spare 9mm clip from his pants and handed it to his son, then felt the empty space where his Colt Python used to live, lost amid their various affrays.
He sighed and looked around. It wasn’t the distraction Tom wanted or really needed, sorely ruing every second that passed. But it was the option he took now as he grunted to his son, no words needed as he veered back the way to their home compound.
It wasn’t until Ortega’s old digs came into view that Lucas questioned him again.
“Dad?” the boy asked. “I know we –”
“Guns and ammo,” his father told him. That was enough.
But the entry gate hung open wide and partly busted as they returned. Midmorning daylight denied any efforts at stealth, exposing them as harsh as the grime-encrusted bricks of the double-floored abode, sunlight catching on the wickerwork of overlapping tarpaulins securing the side rear of the compound.
“Looters?” Lucas whispered as much as he could, still in combat with the wind.
“Maybe,” his father answered. “Stay ready.”
The boy nodded and Tom threaded one of his half-dozen arrows to the bowstring.
The covered entry threw shade across everything. Kent still lay dead, and now with flies buzzing around him. A lo-fi reek of carnage emanated from the house, too. Tom scanned the kitchen doorway and its single step and saw the ghosts of too many dead gathered there, so he threw his attention into their ambitious garden workspace now abandoned for good, and both Tom’s gardeners dead. A tired flush of sorrow coursed through him at memories of Karla and Ionia and the precious few moments in which the two women seemed most at ease, almost happy – all of it amid dreams of a self-sufficient garden, a safe life, civilization reclaimed, useful and doing good work and with the trust of hardy comrades underscoring their shared vision, none of which came true.
“Fuck.”
Tom grunted and kicked aside a wooden stool to orient on the weapons locker at the same moment he saw it completely picked clean – clean, as if from confiscation.
Then his eyes caught the pair of feet amid all the dirt and woodchips further along between the wheeled garden beds.
The girl wore a pair of battered old Cons as red as her namesake.
Kent’s daughter Crimson lay strangled by the black cord used to d
o it, discarded and left there with her, along with a signature chisel-wound to the side of her head which stilled her life for once and all. Further along, one of the huge wooden tubs had burst open. Half-covered in dirt, Attila lay on his back with a look of furious rage resulting in nothing, thanks to the bullet wounds to his shoulder and chest, and a final coup de grace to the head to release him before the dormant Fury within took hold.
“What happened here?” Lucas asked.
“We’re. . . .”
Tom didn’t actually know what to say. He checked back at the side door, the cool slaughterhouse within likely to yield more clues he didn’t want to know about.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered again under his breath.
The screeching of metal sheeting under attack from the storm made his blasphemy a private affair. Tom remembered his parental duties and mastered his scowl well enough to speak to his distraught son.
“They must’ve sent men looking for us here already,” he said. “We need to go, unless they’re still here, inside, or . . . watching for us.”
“The Councilor did this?”
“It seems so.”
“I thought he was your friend?”
Lucas shrugged when Tom made a face, though Tom didn’t really begrudge him the shorthand for Tom’s deal with the anodyne Councilor.
“We can’t talk here,” Tom answered in a harsh rasp. “This storm’s our best cover.”
But Luke’s eyes stayed locked on the girl’s skinny pale corpse.
“Why did they have to strangle her?”
“I don’t know.”
Tom led them back to the open exit.
“And Attila was here?” Lucas asked.
“Maybe he ran?” Tom shrugged, squinting on the return to daylight. “Thought it might be safe, maybe he could . . . maybe thought he could make the City work still.”
Tom shrugged eloquently again to show he didn’t have any real answers.
“Do you think they tortured her?”
Tom gave his son a pained look. He didn’t want to sugar coat it – or talk about it at all, for that matter.
“Maybe,” he said.
“They were looking for us?”
“Wilhelm knows we survived the Urchins,” Tom said. “And by now, he’ll know Locke’s dead too. That fire alone. . . .”
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