Those Who Lived: Fallen World Stories Page 6

  “It’s close to the freeway too,” Nathan murmured to himself as we headed down the back alley to the delivery entrance. Was he planning on taking off somewhere with his stash? He’d suggested that control of this city was just the start—it could be he was thinking he could swallow up more and more of Michael’s territory until he had the means to take on what remained of Michael’s operation directly.

  How did I steer him away from that? What was his point of leverage? To really move a person, you had to know where they were coming from.

  “So what did you do, before all this?” I asked, aiming for a conversational tone, as Nathan hauled open the garage-like door. I considered his suit: today, sleek navy. “Some kind of business exec thing?”

  Nathan chuckled. “Something like that.”

  “You must miss it.”

  He scanned the inner space of the inventory area, and then shot me a narrow look. “Is this supposed to be a heart-to-heart? Save that for your boyfriend.” He stepped out, glanced up and down the alley, and grinned. “I don’t miss anything.”

  Because it was easier to grab power now that it all relied on who had the biggest knife and the fastest draw?

  Nathan yanked down the door and prodded the edges. I was considering what angle to take that wouldn’t end in a conversation with his switchblade when he nodded, said, “It’ll do,” and stalked back to his convertible without so much as a backward glance. No praise, no thank you. No further opening. He was pulling away from the curb as I followed him out of the alley.

  Well, that hadn’t gotten me very far. At least it was only five minutes to the station. I preferred the walk to his company.

  I’d made it two blocks, stewing over possible overtures, when a different car pulled up alongside me: a dark blue BMW sedan. I paused, keeping a careful distance from both the car and the buildings beside me, in case this was some kind of ambush. I’d been carrying the pistol in my jacket—Just in case, like I’d said to Zack—and a pocket knife in my jeans. In a hand-to-hand struggle I’d probably have better luck with the knife. I dropped my hand to rest over the pocket.

  The car’s front passenger window rolled down and a tall, ropey-muscled guy with a mane of tangled black hair leaned his arm out. I relaxed slightly. I’d seen him in the station, arguing with Janelle—Trang, she’d called him. He was someone higher up in that local gang she’d told us about. The Strikers, they went by, for whatever reason.

  “I hear you can speak for Michael,” Trang said in a reedy voice that sounded odd coming from such a hulking figure. The guy in the driver’s seat peered past him at me.

  “To some extent,” I said.

  He motioned to the driver, who cut the gas. Trang stepped out and propped himself against the side of the car with the door still open. Leaving the driver a clear shot at me if he needed it? Nice.

  “We’ve gone along with the way you people want to run things,” Trang said. “We’ve helped out when asked. Now the new boss in town is insulting our people to their faces, demanding we hand over more than anyone else in the city to get that vaccine? Maybe you can tell me what message Michael is trying to pass on. Because if it’s the one we’re getting, I know what we’re going to say back. And we’ll be using more than our words.”

  “I heard that approach didn’t go so well for you last time,” I said, keeping my voice even.

  “Maybe we backed down too soon,” Trang said. “Maybe we’re thinking we’d rather take some of you with us than bow down just to be ground under some jerk-off’s heel.”

  At a glance, his stance against the car would have looked casual, but tension was coiled through his posture, the angle of his shoulders, the flexing of his arms. I believed the threat. But they’d bowed down this long. They had some kind of a survival instinct.

  “Look,” I said. “The attitude, the pricing—that’s all Nathan. He and Michael have some... differences of opinion that we’re in the process of sorting out. If you give it a little more time for words to work, we’ll all come out better off, don’t you think?”

  Trang studied me for a long moment. “You don’t talk like the rest of them,” he said.

  “I’m not like the rest of them,” I replied. “That’s why Michael sent me.”

  After another few seconds, he inclined his head and swung back into the car. “All right,” he said. “But don’t make us wait too long.”

  I had to work faster. But Nathan wasn’t making it easy. I went to the store with him twice over the next few days to unload the small delivery van he was having the Wardens pack his gas and guns into now, but he made me drive the van while he took the convertible—“Waste of our gas,” I overheard Janelle muttering, but Nate seemed to think it made a necessary statement—and while I was hefting the boxes he scrawled numbers on them and on the wall of the storage area with chalk, murmuring to himself. He snapped at me when I attempted conversation. It looked like he was tallying up his haul, but there were other, larger numbers on the wall next to them. His goals?

  “That’s my job; focus on yours,” he said when I asked.

  Other than that, I barely saw him. He’d started taking his meals at odd times when no one else was likely to be in the kitchen, and the one time I happened to walk in while he taking a bowl out of the microwave, he immediately sauntered out with it. He left in his convertible for an hour or two at a time a few times a day, without saying where he was going. But we were never really free of him either. He lurked, popping into the common room unexpectedly to watch the Wardens on duty truck off vaccine payments and to announce changes to the patrol schedule at a moment’s notice.

  We’d been in the city six days when I was heading up to the dormitory and heard hushed voices at the top of the stairwell. I paused just before the bend.

  “I didn’t do anything,” a young man’s voice was saying, choked up with anger. “He comes barging in, saying I let that tank leak all over—it’s not my fault the idiot who paid with it didn’t screw the cap on properly.”

  “So check them more carefully from now on,” Janelle’s voice responded. Then it softened slightly. “He shouldn’t have done that.”

  “I should take his whole ear off,” the guy she was talking to said. “Both of them.”

  “Devon, you know you have to—”

  She halted when I came around the bend and continued up. Devon was holding a rag to the side of his head. A bloody rag.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Devon said, and skulked off. I glanced at Janelle.

  “Nathan cut his earlobe off,” she said flatly, and then she walked away too.

  They didn’t trust me enough to criticize him in front of me. Why should they? Michael had sent us together. Of course they’d assume I was Nate’s lackey. I hadn’t done much to prove otherwise.

  The next morning I came down to grab breakfast and found Tyler appealing to Nathan outside the radio room.

  “Our supply’s almost gone,” he was saying, keeping his voice quiet and his head low. “I wanted to ask if you’d reconsidered—”

  “Look at you,” Nathan interrupted with a sneer. “I don’t know why I’d want someone like you in my outfit anyway. Maybe if you can survive long enough for the second shipment to get in.”

  Tyler paled even as his eyes narrowed. “Just tell me what you want me to do,” he said.

  “I want you to wait,” Nathan said, and noticed me watching. “Yes, Drew?”

  I didn’t see any point in continuing to withhold Tyler’s shot, other than whatever malicious pleasure Nathan got out of the power trip. The guy hadn’t made a peep of protest since that first day, to Nate or me, and from what I’d seen he handled himself efficiently in the radio room. But Nathan had edged his question like a knife. In the space of my hesitation, I couldn’t find a way to express my disagreement that I didn’t think would just set Nate even more firmly in his tracks—and set back any progress I’d made in earning his trust.

  “Just passing through
,” I said, and ducked into the kitchen biting my tongue.

  I didn’t look at Tyler when he stalked in a minute later and banged a mug down on the counter, but I was aware of him on my periphery as I gulped down the oatmeal the guy on morning meal duty had cooked up. I still couldn’t think of how I could have handled Nathan better just now. So much for my “smarts.” How could I get a foothold with him when he was keeping himself too removed to even touch?

  How would I have tackled a figure like him in my former life?

  I turned that idea over as I finished my bowl. Someone at the top of the food chain, a CEO or politician, I’d never have aimed at straight on. I’d have known there was no point and focused on rallying other people until there were enough of us to force a change.

  The Wardens were already unhappy. If I had their loyalty, if they’d stand behind me in standing up to Nate... Michael had never said I couldn’t simply displace him.

  I washed the bowl, chucked it on the rack, and turned to face Tyler. “Come with me,” I said.

  He eyed me over the top of his mug. When I tilted my head toward the door, he got up. I led the way to the vaccination table, where the doctors were passing a creased entertainment magazine back and forth while waiting for our next customer.

  “It’s his turn,” I said, in a tone I hoped conveyed sufficient authority, as I jerked my thumb toward Tyler.

  They looked from me to him and back again. Tyler just stared at me.

  “From what I heard, the guy in charge—” one started, and I cut him off.

  “Sometimes the guy in charge needs a little help taking the right course. That’s what second in commands are for. Give him the shot.”

  My heart was thumping so hard I crossed my arms over my chest not just for emphasis but also to make sure my hands didn’t tremble. If Nate walked in now, I’d lose more than an earlobe. But he didn’t. The doctor got out a syringe and gave Tyler his vaccination, and Tyler let out a sharp laugh of relief.

  “If anyone asks, you’re still waiting,” I told him while the doctors could hear. My safety was assured in the fact that any of them would be in just as much trouble as me if Nathan found out. Tyler nodded, look-ing at me with a keenness that hadn’t been there before.

  I smiled, the fading surge of adrenaline leaving me energized. I could build on this. A spark of an idea lit in my head.

  “Grab a few of the people around and meet me back here as quickly as you can,” I said. “I’ve got a job for us to take care of.”

  Twenty minutes later, Tyler, three of the other Wardens, and one of the doctors stopped with me outside the three-story row house I’d noticed the woman with the two kids disappearing into a few days ago. I’d kept an eye on it during my wanderings as I’d re-familiarized myself with the neighborhood in its flu-altered state. At least one other family with young kids was holed up in there—I’d seen a white-haired man who might have been a grandfather ushering a little girl inside while cradling a baby in his arms.

  This “job” didn’t technically require anyone except me, the doctor, and the case of filled syringes I’d told her to bring along, but I wanted an audience, and I wanted to observe how that audience responded.

  I knocked on the door, the others shuffling their feet on the sidewalk behind me. It was the older man who answered, opening it just a crack.

  “We’re making a house call,” I said. “Limited time special offer. Any kids here under thirteen can get a shot payment-free. Can we come in?”

  Someone behind me snorted, maybe thinking we didn’t need to bother asking. Not an attitude I planned to encourage. The man’s gaze slid from me to the doctor to the case in her hands. He backed up, opening the door wider.

  We ended up in the cluttered first floor living room—no one had been keeping the place neat, and crumpled food packaging bags and cartons lay strewn around the sagging couch and heaped along the walls. The old man, who still hadn’t said anything to us, brought the little girl and her baby brother in. The woman I’d seen begging outside the station peeked in with her two boys, and a girl who looked to be about ten crept in just as we were finishing with those four. Thankfully, that was it, because I’d only had the doctor bring five doses.

  Tyler and the others slouched by the doorway as the doctor did her work. I’d have gotten more satisfaction out of seeing the anxiety on the kids’ faces giving way to hope if I hadn’t sensed skepticism in my colleagues every time I glanced their way.

  “What about us?” the woman said after we were done.

  “What about us?” one of the Wardens mocked in a singsong voice, and she cringed.

  I shot him a pointed look, and he just grinned. “You should be able to scavenge up something,” I said. “This was just for the kids who can’t fend for themselves—be glad we offered that.”

  I wanted to add that I was going to try to cut down the payments, that none of this had been my idea in the first place, but that might encourage them to start arguing down at the station where they could draw Nathan’s attention—and irritation.

  “You give a little, they want everything,” one of my colleagues said as we headed back. “What a bunch of freeloaders.”

  “It’d get Nathan’s goat if he knew, though,” the guy who’d done the mocking earlier said, and high-fived Tyler. Then he turned to me. “What else do you have in mind?”

  So that’s what they assumed this was about—sticking it to Nathan?

  “There’s no reason anyone in this city needs to die from the friendly flu now that the vaccine’s being made,” I said. “And it doesn’t cost us anything to give it to people who couldn’t pay us anyway.”

  The woman arched an eyebrow, and Tyler laughed, as if he thought I was making a joke. “I guess it’s good to make sure we have a good pool of grunts to do the heavy lifting down the line,” the other guy remarked. “They’ll be able to pay their way later on, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said, playing to that attitude with a growing queasiness. “Worse for us if the kids get sick, too—parents can go kind of crazy trying to save them.”

  What kind of future did they envision here? A world where the Wardens lorded our power over everyone else for as long as we could, until there wasn’t anything left to scavenge or stockpile and our own stores ran out—and then what?

  I wasn’t sure they were bothering to think that far. Looking at them right now, I wasn’t sure they cared what happened to anyone else as long as they were living in comfort. Maybe I’d been naive to think it might be otherwise. Even in their former lives, most of the Wardens had been surviving by screwing over whomever they could. Anyone who did have some compassion, some desire to see us form something that resembled an actual society again... they’d have learned to bury those impulses just like I had.

  Whatever approval I’d earned just now, it was because I’d gone against a guy they hated, not because I’d demonstrated a better way of ruling. That might be enough to inspire them to turn on Nathan, but it wasn’t going to convince them to bow to me in his place. What could I do that they’d respect, that didn’t involve treating Nathan just as brutally as he was treating the rest of them?

  This was Michael’s real problem. It wasn’t our “subjects” he was hesitant to back off on. It was his own supporters. If after everything he’d accomplished, he wasn’t sure he could ease off, show a little kindness, without the Wardens jumping on that as a weakness, what hope in hell did I have?

  “If I need you again, I’ll know I can call on you,” I told the others as the station came into view. I watched them saunter on ahead, feeling just as uncertain as before.

  The knock on my dorm room door came early the next morning, just after I’d gotten up.

  “Yeah?” I said, tugging my shirt the rest of the way over my head.

  Nathan peered inside. My skin prickled at the idea of him coming into this tight space, but I gave him the respectful nod I knew he expected. He looked calm enough. Probably he just wanted me to haul another load of gas
and guns for him. He left the door ajar as he stepped inside, which reassured me further. I should have known better.

  “You’ve made yourself at home,” he said breezily, glancing at my sparse assortment of clothes hung on the wall hooks, the crate I was using as a bedside table with a couple books I’d unofficially borrowed from the neighborhood library.

  “Seems like we’re going to be here a while,” I said.

  “Hmmm,” he said, cocking his head. Then he lunged.

  His forearm socked me across the chest, elbow to the ribs, slamming me into the wall. I choked on my breath as the cool edge of his switchblade touched my throat. I pressed my head back, away from it, instinctively.

  Nathan leaned in, his eyes flat. My heart pounded. I had a few inches on him, and he was nearly as thin as I was—I probably could have thrown him off if it’d been a fair fight. If I hadn’t felt the bite of metal nicking my skin when I swallowed.

  “I hear you’ve been telling the troops it’s really you calling the shots,” he said, so close a fleck of spit hit my cheek.

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. Technically I wasn’t even lying. I hadn’t said that in so many words. And if he was focused on that, that probably meant no one had spilled the details of what I’d orchestrated behind his back.

  “Why would I be telling them lies?” I hurried on. “Even if I wanted to, I’d know it’d get back to you. And I don’t want to be calling the shots.”

  “You keep your eyes open and your mouth shut, and you do what I say,” Nathan said as if he hadn’t heard a single word. “That’s your only job here. Michael’s hardly kept these cretins in line as it is.”