The Holocaust Engine, page 22
I was guilty, too, working calls late into the night, or sometimes just wanting to sit and watch TV, even though, one mile away, the surf murmured beneath an orange sunset in paradise.
Now, it’s somewhere near 3 AM and I’m awake on my bunk, staring at a blank TV screen that doesn’t work, wondering what’s going on outside, or if Throat is going to call. A candle provides the only light, spraying a flicker of orange light across the walls. I wonder what color the sunset is tonight, or if anyone is even watching.
On the floor beside my mattress lies a dog-eared copy of Fodor’s Guide to Key West. I’d thought about adding notes, maybe re-writing the entries to keep it up to date. Upon realizing I was blacking out more entries than I was adding, it became too depressing. This is not our Key West anymore.
I had a nice time with Angie yesterday. Elizabeth wouldn’t believe how big she’s getting. She would have loved seeing Angie grow up in your city, in our city. I imagine her racing across the same beaches as Elizabeth did, hand-painted six-year-old toes sinking in the same spots that my wife did when she was her age. She might have even built sandcastles in the same spot, the creations boldly proclaiming mastery of the world until the tide rolled in. Our daughter is so beautiful. So beautiful.
June 20
“No reason for the good folks to die for the bad folks. Besides, less people means less mouths, and less mouths means less runs.”
Delarosa never said those words to me, but I’d heard them echoing through the halls. Even in a broken city, rumors ran rampant. The water stations littered around the building buzzed with the latest gossip. We still had controversy and celebrity, including who was sleeping with whom. On a good day, I’d hear about something I’d done right, but most days, I was either incompetent or a heartless, evil son-of-a-bitch. Then they’d add in the part I needed most, “But, he’s gotten us this far.”
The food runs were getting tougher. We all knew that. I’d hoped to keep supply lines running constantly, despite the complaints from my men. We used a much harder approach than I wanted, but things were just now settling down at the less “civilized” confines. As crazy as it may sound, we’d even popped a tear gas canister near The Weston, just to clear the street for us to drop off their food.
After our latest blow-up, Delarosa started wearing his Sheriff’s Deputy badge again, making sure everyone sees him as the proud lawman roaming the streets. I needed his tactical experience and tolerated his input, but he countered my orders twice, pulling folks off maintenance duty and adding them to security details on the runs, even bragging that attrition alone would reduce the demands, while keeping us safe. That doesn’t even account for the bodies that rot in the streets because his teams “did what they had to do.” There might be a place in this world for his black-and-white view of the world. If not, I might have to put him down.
June 21
We still had geography on our side. On an island with only 4.2 miles of land, a few quarter-acre lots of concrete and structure were invaluable. We had a beach and a military base on the north, surrounding several fortified government buildings. We’d even managed to stretch out south across White Street to get to the Chevron and Dion’s QuikMart. Up north, we pushed out to 2nd Street, which got us to Freedom Oil and a Burger King. That gave me control of three of the four gas stations on the island. I didn’t know how much had survived untainted, but it was better than running out. The guys were more excited about the Whopper meat they found in the freezer, which looked like it had reasonably survived the repeating thaws of the rolling blackouts, and the hidden crate of Little Debbie Cakes that Dion always kept locked in his big safe.
The Navy communications slowed, mostly dealing with timing of food drops and brief intel from their daily fly-overs. I hadn’t talked to Tisdale in days. Official communiqués from the United States came addressed to the council, delivered in sealed envelopes from Trumbo Point, my own men serving as couriers. The veterans had been filling me in, but I’d needed them for runs, which left some well-intentioned rookies as my runners. They followed orders better than anyone, which meant my daily “briefing” about the council’s briefing got cut out.
I haven’t been completely in the loop for about two weeks.
I still had the satellite phone, though, and the voice in the middle of the night.
“Please give me good news,” I begged the last time he called.
“They’re moving out of Trumbo—next week, maybe sooner.”
“Thank you. Thank you, Throat.”
“Will you stop calling me that?”
“Of course... just as soon as you stop waking me up at 2:00 in the morning.”
He wanted to know if we’d heard anything on Cauthron’s whereabouts. He said a bunch of other stuff, but that was it—all he really wanted.
I gave him a list of places we’d ruled out.
June 23
I feel like a child exploring my bedroom in the dark. I know where everything on this island should be. I can see it with my eyes closed, yet I still stub my toe on the desk. We’re settling into a routine of intelligence and logistics, mapping boundaries and cataloging supplies. Everything changes daily, but it all seems the same—the same way footsteps get erased by the surf on the beach. All I can do is buy a few hours of “good work” before it gets wiped out by some new dilemma.
The mapping is done courtesy of our perimeter patrols and the Wolves—their name for themselves, not mine. I hate to waste resources, so I gave them a job. It didn’t matter at the time that they were only kids. I needed manpower, and it didn’t matter that none of them qualified as a “man.”
I sent them to raid all the tourist kiosks still standing, to steal handfuls of maps and guidebooks. Their job? Take a tour of the city every few days and build me enough intel to see what was happening. They became my runners, my scouts, my spies who could give me the lay of the land and report back to me with a hand-written update of the entire island. I can’t say I was happy about sending them out at night, but they filled in a need. They seemed to like it, though. A few of them had taken to making wolf tattoos with sharpies, labeling them as part of the pack.
Their work on the maps earned them an extra tub or two of supplies. I skimmed some of the chocolate we’d found in the convenience stores to keep them happy and moving every night. It didn’t matter that the candy had melted into unrecognizable shapes—that just made it more fun to lick the wrapper.
I liked Cade the best, especially as I watched him fish out the peanuts he hated from a deformed Mr. Goodbar, just to get to the sweet chocolate.
June 24
I give regular speeches about loyalty, but as our population ebbs and flows, it feels more hollow. Every day, we scoop up a few new refugees from the confines, only to lose some of our own to places with less restrictive rules, or maybe just a better ideology that fits someone trying to make sense of this.
I really miss Baba Grayson, who’d been a mainstay at the boardwalk as a juggler, but who really found his niche here as an entertainer. His harmonica added a sense of the old to our new world, and he could even get the kids to dance. It wasn’t quite the same to hear him inside the new Republic, surrounded by walls and steel fences rather than the surf, but it didn’t change his ability to reach people when they needed him.
Rumors are that he found religion before leaving for the Grotto. I’m worried something worse might have happened. The people holed-up there had staked claim to some sort of religion, running prayers around the clock, hoping that all that kneeling will provide some sort of deliverance from whatever is going on.
I’m not sure who’s right anymore. It seems like everyone is just grasping at straws, so desperate for some sort of purpose that they’ll follow the first person who makes sense—at least until the person doesn’t, and then they’ll move on to the next. False prophets don’t fare too well in normal times, but it’s much worse to fail during the apocalypse. Then again, false leaders have a long fall, too.
I wonder which one I am.
June 25
Today’s run wasn’t anything special, just another loop around the island to drop off food and supplies to the people. We’d been doing them for weeks, but I had to be on this one. I hid it behind the guise of “seeing the city,” but I just needed to get out.
It would also give Deputy Delarosa and his men some time to cool off. His men had grown more than a little trigger-happy recently, coming back with full food caches, empty gun magazines, and stories about ungrateful wretches that had attacked them. A pair of middle-schoolers “attacked” them outside the high school, so Delarosa dropped them and left them to bleed out on the asphalt.
Wisdom’s response was not unexpected. “Delarosa’s a cancer.”
“Some might say the same about me,” I replied.
“This isn’t about you anymore.”
“He keeps saying he’s the hammer in my tool box.”
“And sometimes, tools need to be put back on the shelf.”
I checked my ammo one more time and slipped an extra handful of .40’s into my pocket.
Llepicka sat in the driver’s seat of the Toyota Tacoma we’d liberated from an empty neighborhood east of the old Annex.
Behind and above me, Mattias Wisdom rode shotgun on our pickup truck, held in place with a pair of industrial tie-downs and a bungee cord. He’d bolted a pair of swivel-mounted AR-15’s onto the roof of the cab, and he tucked a canvas gun case beneath him with an extra pair of pistols and a shotgun, just in case he had to actually shoot something, since we didn’t have any .223 to spare for the rifles. They looked good, though.
Johnny Q earned his rations ten times over, and Navlin had turned out to be pretty useful with the cars too.
We moved out with a four-vehicle convoy. The lead car, a blood- and bullet-stained Impala, had been rebuilt a few times, adding steel mesh over the windshield and stuffing some old Kevlar panels into the door frames. We followed in the pick-up, for command and control. Our treasure, a dozen palettes of food and supplies, was tucked safely in the back of a box truck that used to drop office supplies downtown. Sidula drove the truck, and Koz and Buckley stood inside, ready to raise the rear door, drop supplies, and then get the heck out of Dodge. The last car was our trail car, mostly to cover our rear, but also to evacuate any casualties if things went to hell.
As we pulled away, Wisdom screamed above us. “Yee haw!”
Who says that? My oldest friend does, because Mattias Wisdom’s a bastard.
During the first drop, at the old Shipwreck Museum, I talked to their leader for a while. The Weston hadn’t messed with them, and they had a pretty good spot. I envied the replica “salvage tower,” but they had problems.
Apparently, one of their number was a mom whose daughter went missing a while back. She got it into her head that one of the guys inside the building had taken the kid, and made such a stink that they kicked her out. Problem solved, right?
Wrong. While she wandered around on her own, she managed to get herself infected. Now they keep thinking they can hear her rooting around outside their barricade—always at night, never during the day. A couple of them went after her a few nights ago, and they never came back.
This guy at the museum wanted us to track her and put her down.
It might be worth it to get some good will, but night operations are getting tricky. Still, I took her description.
Our next stop was the corner of White and United. While not officially a confine location, it was close to three of them. This stop went faster. The vehicles didn’t stop, only slowed to about 5 miles per hour, at which point Kyle and Eve shoved the containers out of the truck, sending the plastic caches tumbling down the street.
June 26
The people holed-up in the Sheraton sounded like they had it together, but it was all an act. They had five people serving some kind of leadership role, one of them more popular than the others. The other four resented the hell out of that guy. That’s why no one lived in the center building. The four and their people occupied one side, the popular guy and his people the other. It came to blows a couple of times, and the middle building became a sort of DMZ.
If you had told me what this place was turning into, I never would have believed it.
Never.
June 27
In the past couple of weeks, the Wolves moved full-time into the high school. You couldn’t even tell anyone was there from the outside. I counted about twenty of them inside, including this one dude who used to be a teacher, Leon Eades. I’d known him for a while, even visiting his 11th grade Civics class one spring to talk about law enforcement.
A lot of the talk expressed concerns that his little sanctuary might not survive, or might devolve into a full-on Lord of the Flies refuge, but they had food and a section of the school with secure doors, which could lock from the inside. They boarded-over all the windows in the north wing, and some of the more industrious had been exploiting the vocational shops to build out their security. I’d heard rumors they were even using ham radio to communicate with the mainland.
We tried to get them to move inside with us, but... no way. The whole thing was weird. They put up some shelters in the band room that looked like the kinds of forts that everyone used to build when they were kids—desks with blankets on top, that sort of thing. It gets hot inside, but they had a kiddie pool, which they kept filled with water to cool off. It was salty, probably filled straight from the ponds, and they all looked like they got wet and jumped into a big salt pit, with crusted white hair and eyebrows.
Their calling card is this funny wolf howl. I’ve heard them out the window at night on occasion.
I wish I could say that Eades coordinated the whole thing, taking care of a bunch of orphans out of the goodness of his heart, but I get the funny feeling that’s not it. I know it sounds strange, but I got the feeling that he was their prisoner, as if they had something on him, and he could never leave them, no matter how much he wanted.
Today, when we dropped by with another load, no one came out to meet us, even as we pulled up to the rear delivery bay. As we slowed to a stop, I reached for the door lock, but Llepika stopped me.
“Don’t get out of the truck,” he warned.
I ignored him, stepping out and going to the back of the van to help set the food stores on the ground. I tapped the door and waited for Koz or Buckley to open it.
Just then, the doors to the loading dock burst open. Five of them came out, including Logan, the twelve-year-old who appears to be the one really in charge. The name was an alias—they all had them: Logan, Montrose, Harley. I think each one picked out his own. They stamped it on the leather bracelet on their right arm. The leather bracelets on their left arm were of the fallen, the bracelets carried forward as a reminder.
Prince came right up and started working me for more chocolate. A make-shift slingshot poked out from his back-pocket, making him look like Dennis the Menace’s angrier, more violent cousin. He said they found out who was running things over at the Weston, and could give the goods, for a price.
I had to smile. I’d worked him down to eight Hershey’s and a big bag of Reese’s Pieces when the bullet took him.
[11-second delay]
Then I heard the next report, a trio of rifle rounds fired from the distance in quick succession, more for speed than accuracy. Whoever the shooter, he was scared, but he had a rifle.
I scrambled behind the truck as Buckley started sending rounds into the stands of the football stadium behind the school. I saw a few more muzzle flashes from the bleachers before the next volley, which punched more holes into the van. Wisdom returned fire from the truck as I pushed the kids back into the loading bay.
I shut the door in front of me, sealing them in.
Buckley closed the truck door, and I heard the interior latch slam shut as Sidula screamed at me to get into the van.
Wisdom was still firing, and I could see his bullets ricocheting off the metal bleachers. The orange flashes in response meant that somewhere in that darkness beneath the silver seats, the person who’d killed that boy remained.
“Keep on it,” I screamed at Wisdom. “Keep his head down.” Then I ran.
The bleachers stood about 50 yards off. I ran with pistol in hand, but had too much ground to cover to waste it on wild shots. Halfway there sat a playground with a metal jungle gym the boys had put in. I raced behind the steel slide, planning to take a break to catch my bearings and my breath. On autopilot, I ducked under the slide, then zigzagged through a maze of swings and ladders. Seeing only that boy’s body in my mind, I slipped my rifle off my shoulder, and held it in my left hand as I holstered my pistol.
I skidded to a stop beneath a metal box filled with spinning dials, a plastic rotating abacus, and a toy phone. There, beneath a child’s learning station, I caught up to my body and went to work.
One shadow, just beneath the second row. Pause, breathe in, exhale, hold it. Press the trigger, press, press, press, bang.
When the shooting was over, Llepika drove across the football field to pick me up. We buried Prince behind the metal conch shell, wrapped him in plastic, in a burial plot that looked like a pitcher’s mound, and hoped against a hard rain that might wash him up. We marked it with a cross made from a couple of chair legs.
Logan carefully carved Prince’s name into the wood, then added a hastily scrawled “Fuck you, Death!” beneath it.
Harley slipped Prince’s bracelet on her arm, barely able to keep it above her wrist. He’d been a scrawny kid when he’d worn it, and now a girl of 65 pounds would have to carry his name forward.
We stopped at the football field to check on the shooter. My last shot had taken him right on the bridge of the nose. He was infected, and Sidula and Koz checked the empty airport to see if maybe this had been the same guy taking potshots from the top of the control tower. Looked like he was. He was the first we’d seen who was homicidal from the get-go, and the first one we’d seen that killed a kid. At least we got his rifle.
