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  After The Apocalypse

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  Book 4

  Retaliation

  by Warren Hately

  Contact the author at wereviking @ hotmail.com

  or follow @wereviking on Twitter

  *

  For giveaways and regular updates

  visit warrenhately.com

  Cover by Ryan Schwarz

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Prologue

  HECTOR GRAVES STOOD cautiously at the edge of the loading bay with his black eyes narrowed into the equally impenetrable darkness beyond the edge of the rear access to the old theater, conscious of the numerous voices echoing from the main chamber behind him. The air frosted on his breath as he tugged up the half-armored jacket he’d stolen coming back from his last stint on Forager duty before everything went to shit and he scored this sweet gig.

  Except it wasn’t tasting so sweet anymore. The alkaline unpleasantness of his own nerves choked like an old antacid at the back of Hector’s throat and mouth. And the chill in the September air didn’t stop him sweating either. He felt sure everyone would notice him, right when standing out among the other troopers was the last thing Hector wanted.

  He was backstage for a reason, after all.

  The woman who burst out the back stage door and headed towards him across the open bay inside the back of the Council building almost felt like the fulfilment of his self-imposed prophecy. Immediately, Hector’s chill nerves spiked, and a choking cough escaped him with nowhere else to hide.

  “Hey,” the woman said casually and joined Graves on the dock. She rubbed her bare hands together. “Gettin’ cold, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Hector said.

  His lack of enthusiasm didn’t seem to daunt her and it was all Graves could do to stop questing around the back lot again, waiting for the trucks to arrive. A night vision unit was strapped to the woman’s helm, which only unsettled him further.

  “You’re Graves, right?” the blunt-featured woman said. “I’m Drake. Lydia.”

  She offered a hand. Hector had to acknowledge her, not quite meeting her eyes which were framed in the tan-lined from the mirror shades many of the troopers wore to look the part during daytimes at least. It was too dark out now for that. And like Drake said, getting dark earlier and colder too with every passing day.

  “It’s Graves,” Hector said with emphasis on the Latino twang.

  “Sure,” the woman said. “You were on Dan MacLaren’s crew, weren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” he replied. “Not that crew, though.”

  “You caught a lucky break there,” the woman said.

  Hector dropped his eyes another notch, though he couldn’t help himself the nod.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” he said.

  “So tell me.”

  “Na.”

  “You’re in Safety now?”

  “Yeah,” Hector replied unhurriedly – a roundabout hint for the female trooper to make herself scarce. But she seemed doggedly determined to stay right where she was, passive attentiveness forcing more words out of him as Hector explained, “I was meant to go with Dan on that last trip outside the wire, but I . . . had a bad feeling.”

  “Good feeling, then,” she said. “They were saying Ortega handpicked that crew. You one of his?”

  “Ortega?” Hector choked off a laugh and heard his giddy nervousness in it. “No.”

  “What tipped you off then?”

  Graves swirled his eyes around their bland setting and started at the passing illusion of a truck noise he only imagined in the surge of the crowd from within the theater as an amplified voice addressed the meeting troopers like him were set to guard. When he was sure he was wrong about the persistent lack of the overdue trucks, Hector turned his fraught gaze back to the bland female trooper and strained the adrenalin from his voice, disguised with another milder chuckle.

  “You’ll think I’m stupid. . . .”

  “Go on,” the woman said.

  “Fortune teller on The Mile –”

  “Lady Methuselah?”

  Drake’s astonished agreement took him by surprise. Graves’ feigned humor stalled again.

  “Yeah.”

  “I see her sometimes too,” Drake said and shot him a grin. “You know she slips everyone the Death card most readings because it keeps people comin’ back.”

  Hector’s grin was reedy, his voice thin.

  “You drew the Death card?”

  “Almost every time, dude.”

  Drake’s smile lingered, strangely girlish on her face as she took her time with her bald-faced appraisal of the slender Latino and mistook his aversion for awkwardness rather than anything else, though her smile dropped as Hector returned his eyes to the back entry and the sounds ebbed and flowed in the Council meeting, competing for the lower frequencies he strained to hear presaging the arrival of Gunderson and Hobbes.

  “What?” Drake said to him. “I’m not pretty enough for you? You’re pretty enough for us both.”

  “I thought you were a dyke.”

  “What, because I’m plain looking?”

  It wasn’t quite sarcasm and it sure as hell wasn’t mirth in her voice, touched with a sense of grievance she’d been nursing since long before they’d ever met.

  “Sorry,” Graves said and shrugged.

  His wristwatch showed the trucks were now officially five minutes late. The unwanted woman beside him settled into a stolid pose, arms folded across her flak vest, the AR15 neglected on its strap.

  “Meeting’s started,” Hector said and showed his watch as if that meant anything. “Don’t let me bore you. Go watch the show.”

  “And listen to Wilhelm justify a Council with only two people left on it?” Drake replied. “No thanks. We’ll have elections over his cold dead body”

  “I heard they were serving hot chai.”

  “Ha,” Drake replied with a snort. “That’s not chai, friend, no matter what they tell you. You tryin’ to get rid of me or somethin’? Don’t worry about it.”

  The woman made a dismissive action in reference to her passing flirtation of a moment before. Hector said nothing, lost in the milling words inside his head, none of them of any use. Instead, he parlayed his pained smile into something more like the genuine thing, including Drake in on the twinkle in his eye as he reached into his thigh pouch.

  “Wanna see something cool then?”

  Drake eyed him up with mild caution as if afraid he was about to pull his pecker out, no matter his reluctance to return her casual interest. Drake’s eyes widened, then narrowed instead as she realized the object was the dull matte black tube of a silencer instead.

  “Jesus, what’re you doin’ with that?”

  “There’s a bunch of them in the armory,” Graves said.

  He made a slow show of drawing his Glock and smiled at her, sharing the secret as he screwed the attachment to the barrel aware the woman trooper’s gaze narrowed into even deeper suspicion.

  Before Drake could take a step back, he turned the gun around handle-first and offered it to her.

  “Have a try,” he said.

  He pointed to a stack of forklift pallets on the far side of the loading bay. A high brick wall fenced the yard in. Graves could hear the engines now. His face hardened, counter-point to his relief, as Drake took the weapon.

  “I thought the armory was on pretty solid lockdown,” Drake said. “You know, given everything we just been through.”

  “Guns an’ ammo, yes.”

  He pointed again
at the stack.

  “Don’t waste all my bullets,” he told her.

  Drake did as instructed. Relaxed now, she squeezed off three suppressed shots that filleted the stacked packing timber, the impacts barely visible because of the poor light. She shrugged, seemingly nonplussed, and handed the pistol back to him.

  “Great,” she said. “But what do you need that for anyway? Got some wetwork planned?”

  “Yep.”

  Graves smiled and stepped back as if to holster the whole damned thing.

  Instead, he shot Drake point-blank in the face.

  He was quick enough to catch the woman’s dead weight as she slumped. Her face stayed fixed in a dramatic look of surprise gone goggle-eyed with black syrup at once running down from the hole where her nose’d been, though Drake’s weight was too much for Graves to handle one-handed. Then he really did have to sheathe the gun with the suppressor still attached, casting an anxious look back into the open loading area behind him as a single pair of truck headlights lit up along the back wall and then turned in towards him.

  He dragged the dead trooper off in what would be stage left, dumping her behind a stack of tall empty propane bottles left in the back area so long they were covered in grime and filthy webs. The truck lights missed the bulk of his act, so when Gunderson leapt from the truck door and asked what the hell he was doing, it was understandable.

  “Cleaning up because you’re fucking late, you moron,” the Latino snapped. “Where’s Hobbes?”

  “There was a problem with the other lorry.”

  Gunderson’s English accent forgave him use of the foreign word, but he and Graves had known each other long enough that Hector knew what he meant instead of “truck”. It didn’t excuse the irritable look on Hector’s face. The big, blonde-bearded driver looked every bit the Viking pirate with the black patch covering one eye, an inscrutable, though gently annoyed look passing over his face.

  “I have to reverse it up,” the Englishman said. “Get the doors.”

  “So we’re going without him?”

  “Hobbes?” Gunderson asked. “Yes. The Saint’s already en route.”

  He motioned at the back of the truck’s box and the noise of the occupants sounded through its painted sheet-metal sides bearing the faded livery of the once world-famous cola drink.

  “You know how it is,” Gunderson said. He offered a calm grin at odds with their grisly venture. “Death waits for no men.”

  Graves nodded and moved off to pull in the loading bay’s side doors to create the corral they’d planned, and Gunderson jogged back to get into the idling box truck and bring it around so they could unload its deadly cargo just like they and the other surviving Lefthanders had agreed.

  Emergency Council meeting to address Uprising aftermath

  by Delroy Earle

  SURVIVING Council members will hold an emergency meeting on Wednesday night to outline the City response to last week’s chaotic Uprising which led to dozens of deaths and the capture of dissident Lefthanders leader Madeline Plume.

  Citizens have demanded clear details about last week’s deadly revolt and the reasons behind it after savage gun battles gripped the City.

  They also want to know how the City plans to restore security and guarantee that residents will not face further danger due to simmering political tensions.

  The breakdown in security also triggered numerous unrelated killings, but the City has so far refused or been unable to cite the number of incidents.

  Council President Dana Lowenstein denied rumors the sanctuary zone leadership was now dysfunctional and had plans to abandon the Columbus project.

  “Let me start by saying no one is more shocked than the Council to learn Colonel Rhymes and our Safety Chief were conspiring against the leadership and planned an armed insurrection,” she said.

  “We are shocked, appalled, and saddened at this unprecedented violence.

  “We are also determined that it not happen again,” Cr Lowenstein said.

  “The Colonel and Carlos Ortega were privy to the original plan to mount the sanctuary zone project, and we who are left are still struggling to come to terms with the scale of their treachery.”

  The armed insurrection was sparked by a dissident group called the Lefthanders who believed military rule was needed to govern the City.

  Cr Lowenstein and other Council sources were unable to explain why a violent revolt was justified.

  No details were provided about the testimony of Colonel Rhymes’ lieutenant Plume who remains locked up with the surviving members of the rebellion.

  Cr Ernest Eric Wilhelm III told the Herald the death of elected official Aileen Leng and the immediate retirement of his wife, Cr Carlotta Deschain, had not derailed the City project.

  “It is a terrible time,” he said.

  “I am sorry to ask for calm, or to have to ask for calm, but we are working day and night to maintain City operations, security patrols, and rations allocations.”

  Trooper patrols were bolstered by support from another group known as the Brotherhood, despite the City’s recent incarceration of its leader, Construction manager Edward Burroughs, mistakenly blamed for a string of violent incidents in the lead-up to the Uprising.

  Mr Burroughs has spoken frequently at City Council meetings about the need to enforce a strict gender policy keeping women from work considered better performed by males.

  Colonel Rhymes, Chief Ortega and about 30 insurgents were killed in a City attack on St Mary’s Church which was also destroyed when gunfire struck the Lefthanders’ ammunitions cache.

  The Battle of St Mary’s also saw numerous City Administration officials take up arms against the rebels.

  Cr Wilhelm said the surviving Council and its advisors would detail “where to from here” in a frank discussion starting at 5.30pm on Wednesday.

  Chapter 1

  THE RUBBER WHEELS were about the only silent part of the gate Dkembe rolled aside. Tom actually put a finger in his ear, about all he could do with his wrecked right arm in a light sling and the sack of foodstuffs cradled against his chest. His children Lucas and Lilianna barely noticed the squeakiness of the contraption as they followed their father with a cautious sense of wonder. They knew as much as they ever would, and far more than Tom thought they needed to about exactly what’d gone on at Ortega’s compound the previous week, what Tom still couldn’t stop referring to as “Ortega’s place,” where he nearly lost his life, nearly betrayed the City, and nearly got them the fuck out of the mortal danger they seemed to be continuously skirting here in the new life they’d carved out for themselves – in Tom’s case, carved out quite violently – amid the ruins of the once sedate city of Columbus.

  There was a gaunt, pale, skinny, mawkish-looking Latino guy hanging back, but sticking close to Dkembe all the same, his scraggly thin long black hair as wrinkled as the face he wore, scoured by worry lines, a look of perpetual watchfulness Tom wasn’t sure if he trusted in someone who would be living with them. Tom had trusted Dkembe to bring across a couple of guys he knew from Construction to help get their ill-advised cattle enterprise up and running. He knew he had to trust in that trust – knew he had to trust someone – if he was ever getting the damned thing off the ground, knowing as well his biggest challenge was overcoming his own equally cursed desire to somehow get out of the whole venture while he still could.

  And yet there he was. He didn’t even know if the Confederates would make it back before the snows came, which was equally crucial to the whole “cattle baron” business Tom had inadvertently (and quite metaphorically) bought into.

  The new recruit’s hyper-vigilance bordered on “Kevin-level high alert,” as Lilianna called it. Tom had to force himself to stop watching Gonzales so closely.

  True to form, Kevin angled behind all of them, lingering out on the street where Tom’d nearly been shot on the spot the week before, the feral boy’s eyes and his very body language screaming volumes about his readiness to quit a
nd run on them if things turned feverishly pear-shaped – as they had so many times for the youngster, and indeed all of them, since the world stopped making sense almost six years ago, just before Lucas’ birthday.

  Tom moved them inside with a nod to Dkembe, resisting the urge to shoot a friendly grin at Gonzales knowing the last time he’d tried, Tom looked more like a silverback gorilla baring its teeth to defend his territory rather than setting the fragile wiry man’s spirit at ease. Tom also considered including Kevin in that gaze, but his son’s friend – dwarfed almost, with Lucas coming into his height now it was almost birthday time again – shrank back, eyes dissecting the dusty back garage area with a fevered brightness almost palpable in its intensity. And Tom didn’t begrudge him for it. The newcomer Gonzales hadn’t proven himself yet. Kevin had already shown over and over in the past week that he might be timid, but the boy was ferociously, perhaps almost dangerously sharp. Tom also knew he had his son to temper the other boy, while in Gonzales’ case, that duty fell to Dkembe.

  “You’re really moving in here, dad?” Lilianna asked.

  His blonde-tressed daughter didn’t even try to keep the dainty tone from her voice. Tom’s answer came more like a rebuke.

  “We,” he said with a gruff dullness. “We are moving in here. Yes we are.”

  “It smells.”

  That was Lucas’ contribution. He wrinkled his nose for comedic effect, winning a nervous titter of laughter from his shadow as Kevin entered the garage and gently clutched the edge of Luke’s sleeve. Tom and Lilianna swapped a look, his daughter as versed in the dark arts of keeping her face neutral as her dad, and that alone accounted for the silent mirth that sprang up between them, unnoticed by the others as Tom then flicked his eyes indicatively towards the – let’s face it – somewhat ghoulish-looking Gonzales now stepped in too close even for Dkembe’s liking. The tall black twentysomething moved away in a fug of lucid disdain, shooting an angry glance at his friend, and then rounding back around to Tom and bowing his head in tacit submission.