Savages, page 16
part #5 of Surviving the Dead Series
“Look alive,” Gabe whispered. “We’re getting close.”
We trudged along, pushing our cart with hundreds of other tired, filthy people. There were mutters of sullen conversation, grunted curses as carts jolted over potholes, and the snort and bray and stench of horses, mules, goats, sheep, and pigs.
Ahead of us, a woman pulled a small wooden cart loaded with chickens. Rather than transport them in cages, the woman had bound the chickens with lengths of vine and stacked them like cord wood. Their little heads gyrated and clucked, eyes bulging in desperation. An efficient method of transport, if not terribly humane.
Despite the multitude, I heard no laughter, no singing, no calling of friend to friend. Surely, I thought, these people must know each other. Walk the same path to work long enough, and you get to know everybody. At least that’s the way it was in Hollow Rock. The morning commute—which is to say, foot traffic—was a jovial time. Back home there would have been conversation, jokes, people sharing gossip, and everyone complaining about their husbands and wives and lazy kids. Here, there was a feeling of dull drudgery and a heavy sense of muted foreboding. It reminded me of driving to work when I used to crunch numbers for the hated, long-dead mega bank. I still shudder when I think about that place.
A bell sounded ahead. One hour until lockdown. Our intel was the gates were only open twice a day: two hours after sunrise, and two hours before sunset. We would make it. I hoped the others entering through separate gates would as well. As per the intelligence asset, we avoided the west gate. It would have been nice to know why.
I called to mind the city data for this place. There were close to eight thousand souls living inside the wall, and another ten to fifteen thousand in the surrounding area. Three quarters of the population within the wall were free citizens and one quarter were slaves. More than half the slaves were owned by the government. They swept the streets, cleaned up garbage, maintained the landscaping, collected buckets of piss and shit for fertilizer production, distributed daily water rations, conducted repairs and routine maintenance, and did just about everything else that made life livable for the people enslaving them.
The slaves’ every movement was watched over by the city guard. Any guardsman could punish a slave for even the slightest infraction, real or otherwise. The only restrictions were the guards could not inflict mechanical injury, impregnate a slave (without authorization), or kill them. The city wanted its slaves functional. Beyond that, they did not care.
The rest of the slaves were privately owned and performed a variety of tasks according to their abilities. Treatment varied from owner to owner. Sexual abuse was epidemic. Disobedience was punished harshly. Attempting to escape could result in anything from flogging to execution; it was up to the owner. Slaves had no rights of any kind, meaning a slave owner could do with a slave as he or she pleased. They were, in the truest sense of the phrase, nothing more than property.
I looked again at the people walking toward the gate with me. Many of them had been up since before dawn and had walked hours to get here. When their work was done for the day, they would walk those same weary miles back, and tomorrow, do it all again. I wondered what they thought of the slave trade. In its absence, many of them would have been employed by the city or by citizens that owned slaves privately. They could have lived within the wall, their families protected, and enjoyed a decent, dignified living. Instead, they had … whatever the hell this was.
The line bottlenecked at the gate. There was no order. The guards picked someone out of the crowd, pointed at them, and ordered them forward. Then came a quick inspection for bites and signs of infection, a pat down, and on they went.
“They might not like that we’re armed,” I said.
Great Hawk spoke without turning his head. “It will be fine.”
We waited in the midst of a grumpy, sweaty, stinking press and slowly inched toward the entrance. The gates were wide enough to allow a cart through, but no more. Two guards with scoped rifles looked down from watchtowers while four others conducted inspections. Half the guards were short, wiry, and quite obviously Asian. They wore combat fatigues, old-fashioned load bearing harnesses, and carried their AK-47s with practiced ease. They spoke only among themselves, and only in their native language. The American guards ignored them, but I noticed the looks sent their way by passing civilians. Hostility, fear, and naked hatred. It seemed pretty clear the North Koreans were not well liked. By the evil glares on the foreign troops’ faces, I surmised the feeling was mutual.
A watch captain—non-North Korean—stood atop a raised platform observing the morning indignities with bored eyes and a dispassionate bearing. The proceedings beneath his boots held as much interest for him as a slug crawling across a rock. Overhead, the sky was cloudless and bleak, the hot sun beating down without mercy. I was glad I had remembered to wear a hat. It was straw, and it was ugly, but it was better than nothing.
Ahead of us, the woman with the chickens approached at a signal from the guards. They searched her, groping as they did. If the treatment affected her, she gave no sign. Her expression did not change throughout the process.
Good for you. Don’t give them the satisfaction.
The guards then sorted through her cart, took one of her chickens, and sent her through. She walked out of sight and the guards turned their attention to us.
“You four,” one of them said. “Park it over there.” He walked through a gap in the highway dividers and beckoned us closer. We obeyed. He told us to stop and eyed us up and down.
“You’re armed.”
“Yes, we are.” Great Hawk said.
“You the one in charge?”
“Something like that.”
“Let me see your rifle.” Great Hawk handed it to him. He looked it over, compared it to his own, and said, “Where’d you get this?”
“Traded for it at Dead Crow Station. Municipal auction, same as all our weapons.”
The guard asked to inspect them. We let him. He said, “First time here?”
“Yes.”
“Where you coming from?”
“Missouri. Trading salvage from outside Jefferson City.”
“You got balls to be salvaging out there. Heard the place is crawling with Rot.”
“There are many infected, but we know how to handle them.”
The guard handed Caleb his rifle back, his manner now relaxed. “Yeah. You shoot the fuckers in the head.”
The guard gestured for Gabe to peel back the tarp covering our cart. We watched as he dug around, pulled items out of boxes, and generally made a mess of things. He took a bag of dried fish, an ancient box of condoms, and a jar of homemade peach jam.
“All right,” he called to his fellow guards. “They’re good.”
As we turned to leave, he said, “You can keep your ammo, but you’ll have to turn your guns in at the armory. You’ll get a voucher for them in case you want to trade or gamble them or whatever. Guns aren’t allowed in town, so don’t get let a guard find you with one. It’s worth ten lashes in the city square and a month’s hard labor.”
Gabe pointed to the stag-horn handle of his bowie knife. “What about these?”
“Knives are fine, just don’t kill anybody with it. And if you do, don’t make a fucking mess, get rid of the fucking body, and don’t leave any fucking witnesses. Too much goddamn paperwork.”
With that, the guard walked back to his post. The way opened and we walked into Carbondale, capital city of the Midwestern Alliance.
*****
“I hope he uses those condoms,” Caleb said. “And I hope he catches the clap.”
We had rented a room two blocks away from the restaurant where we planned to meet the intelligence asset after nightfall. The building had once been mixed-use office space, but had been converted into what passed for a luxury hotel. Some attempt had been made to improve the décor—scarlet curtains on the windows, single beds with clean mattresses and laundered sheets, a highboy with a wash basin, soap, and a large pitcher of water, and a complimentary bottle of moonshine—but the carpet was the same cheap, shitty crud all office buildings seem to have.
“Why do you care?” I said. “It’s not like that stuff is worth anything to us. We’re leaving it all behind.”
Our room was large. By its shape and dimensions, it had probably once been a conference room. Two beds on one wall, two on the other, and a narrow walkway between. Small tables next to each bed with large beeswax candles in brass holders. Dressers and wardrobes in the middle, one of each per bed. At the far end by the door stood the highboy. I walked over to it and poured some water in the basin, washed my face and hands, and dried off with a small white towel.
“It’s the principle of it,” Caleb said. He had taken off his boots and was lying on a bed with his hat over his eyes. “Folks getting robbed just going to work in the morning.”
There were four expensive crystal tumblers on a shelf above the washbasin. I took one down and opened the bottle of moonshine. By the smell, it was of post-Outbreak vintage. I tasted it. It wasn’t bad.
“You want a drink?”
“That shit any good?”
“It won’t kill you. Other than that, no promises.”
“Sure. Got nothing better to do.”
I poured two and handed Caleb his. “To victory.”
“To victory.”
We clinked tumblers and drank. I walked over to the two large windows facing the street and opened them. The windows were new, probably placed there by whoever owned the hotel. If the building had been like most office buildings, the windows on the upper floors probably did not open when the proprietor bought this place. Not a problem in the winter, but damned hot and stuffy in the summer. Hard to run a luxury hotel if your guests keep dying of heat stroke. Hence the windows.
The breeze felt good. It did not smell good, but the movement of air against my skin cooled me a bit. The windows looked down on the front entrance of the hotel, so I leaned my palms on the sill, stuck my head outside, and took in the scene.
People bustled by in both directions while scantily clad whores worked the corners with bored eyes and empty smiles. A kid wearing a poster board sign advertising a casino walked by shouting invitations and puffery to an indifferent audience. The bar across the street was doing brisk business. A food vendor rounded the corner with a steaming cart. I smelled charcoal. The old vendor stopped under my window and sold a man some kind of meat and vegetable matter folded in a large piece of bread. The man paid with coins.
Currency? Interesting.
The scent of roasted pork, onions, and peppers wafted up to me. My mouth watered and my stomach rumbled. I took a sip of the moonshine and wished like hell I had some ice.
“See the others anywhere?”
I shook my head. “No. Might not be back for a while.”
Gabe and Great Hawk had gone to put the cart in storage, make contact with the rest of the team, and buy us all something to eat. We still had rations left over, but fresh food beats preserved road food any day of the week.
I took off my boots and lay down on one of the beds. My vest and other equipment rested against the wall within arm’s reach. Upon arriving at the hotel, Great Hawk had distracted the manager and his staff with questions and requests while the rest of us unloaded the government-issue weapons and equipment and smuggled it all up to the room in overnight bags. Once behind a locked door, we cleaned and reassembled the weapons and stowed them in bureau drawers. A suppressor-equipped Berretta waited under my pillow in case we had any uninvited guests. Caleb had one as well. My beloved Kel-Tec resided in my rucksack, along with its ammo. The .22 magnum was great for dealing with the undead, but there is no substitute for stopping power when fighting the living. Ergo, the Beretta.
I still had the backup revolver. The guards had not found it when they searched me. Amateurs.
My fighting dagger lay on the table. I picked it up, unsheathed it, and thumbed the edge. Still sharp enough to shave with. No blood stains. Vague scent of alcohol from when I had cleaned it the night before after plunging it into several ghouls’ eye sockets.
I thought about Stewart. I wondered what would happen to his body, how long it would take his corpse to decay. I wondered how his fellow soldiers were taking his death. I searched myself and tried to find a scrap of feeling for the lost man, but found only coldness.
I stared at the ceiling, thumb flicking along the blade of my knife, and wondered how long it would be until I lay on the ground as Stewart had, torn and bleeding and breathing my last. I hoped, on that day, I would not be alone. I hoped I would not lay abandoned where I fell, dead eyes staring like dull glass into that final, unending night. I remembered Anderson’s hand slowly pressing Stewart’s eyes shut. I remembered the somber voices speaking in low tones as they stripped his gear. I remembered calloused hands wiping away tears on the way back to camp.
At least Stewart died among friends. Not that such things mattered to him anymore.
*****
After leaving the abandoned chicken farm the previous day, we had set a hard pace to reach Carbondale. Unfortunately, by the time we arrived, the gate was closed for the night. Tired and dejected, we’d backtracked a couple of miles until we found a suitable clearing next to the road. We circled the carts, ate a cold meal, set a watch, and bedded down for the night. No fire. Too warm for it, and we did not want to attract attention.
Stewart and Taylor took the first watch. I unrolled my bed in the grass and was out in seconds.
I dreamed of my childhood, my mother and father sitting in lawn chairs on the shores of the Outer Banks. Ocracoke, I think it was. I played in the sand and collected seashells in a bucket. My mother’s blond hair blew in the breeze, her sky-colored eyes hidden behind a pair of Chanel sunglasses. A man with my face but dark hair and eyes sat next to her, tall, handsome, a dimpled smile. His white teeth flashed below a pair of Ray Bans while he watched me.
The sun was warm overhead and the sea breeze whipped against my skin. I splashed in the shallows and let the balmy Atlantic water pull my ankles as spent waves rolled under the breakers. There was a sense of disorientation while I watched the tide roll out, as though the retreating foam wanted me to follow it. Maybe it did. Maybe it wanted to feed me to its sea creatures.
Outgoing waves suctioned sand from under my feet, making it coarser until I stood upon the shattered fragments of seashells. A new wave came in, buried me to my shins, and tried to knock me over. I kicked free and ran laughing up the beach.
A voice called behind me in a pleasant tenor. I turned and saw my father waving a tanned arm for me to return. I sprinted back, anxious to show him my bucket and its bounty. But when I arrived, my father was no longer smiling. The face so much like mine was different. The straight nose was not straight anymore. It had a bend in the middle, like a small knuckle. I stared at it; my father’s nose had never been broken, not like mine. Where did that bend come from?
“What will you do now?” he asked.
“What?” My voice was not the voice of a child. Too harsh. Too grating. Too damaged from shouting over gunfire and explosions.
Mom looked over and removed the sunglasses. My own irises stared at me, skin the same golden pallor I obtained when I spent too much time in the sun. “You’ve made it this far, Eric. What will you do now?”
“I don’t know. What should I do?”
“Only you can answer that,” Dad said. Michael. His name was Michael.
“Any suggestions?”
“We can’t do that, baby,” Mom said. Julia. Never forget. Julia Marie Boisseau Riordan. Born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, July 12th 1960. Died November 22nd 20-
“Your uncle is still alive.” Dad said.
I shook my head to clear it. “Roger?”
“Yes.”
“I barely know him.”
“He remembers you. Go to him.”
“Where is he?”
“You’ll find him. Just look.”
“How …”
“Honey.” My mother. I looked at her.
“Yes?”
“Does Allison know your middle name?”
I shook my head. “No. I haven’t told her.”
“Where you went to college? Grad school?”
“No.”
“Does she know our names?”
I shook my head again.
“What about her parents?”
Another shake.
“You know her father.” A statement, not a question.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Okay.”
“Ask her. Tell her the things she doesn’t know.”
A change in the light made me look up. The afternoon shifted quickly, the sun plummeting and giving way to harshly glaring stars. The light of the moon was absent in the empty sky. I struggled to make out the figures of my parents in the oppressive darkness.
“That’s what you live for now,” Dad said. “Go back to Allison. Do as your mother and I say. It will start you on the path.”
I heard a pop and listened as fireworks boomed and red lights lit up the ink-colored beach. More pops. More flashes. My father’s face alternated red and black. I said, “What path?”
“The only one that matters.”
More pops. I was being pulled away, pulled upward and downward at the same time. The world spun, the waves took me under, I struggled to breathe, felt water pour down my throat and then …
“Riordan!”
I awoke. Gunfire. Moans. Infected.
“Riordan, you awake?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m awake.” The hand on my shoulder stopped shaking me. “We under attack?”
The voice above me belonged to Anderson. “Yes. Grab your rifle and follow me.”
I sat up. Unlike my dream, the moon above was just past full, still plenty bright. Now that my night vision had kicked in, I could see well enough to move around. I grabbed my rifle and sprinted after Anderson.
