No turning back, p.20
No Turning Back, page 20
The detective led from the front, setting the pace, with Solomon gamely keeping up. No one followed at the rear. Demarkos never even looked back, and only stopped when she had to shoot the undead. Twice.
Finally, Demarkos braked, just before a cluster of school buses almost blocking the road. She raised the rifle and fired two shots, then a third. Behind the buses, blocked from view, Pete heard a thump.
“Solomon, go check on Zed,” Demarkos said, lowering her weapon, but not turning around.
“Seriously, Leah? Do I have to?” Solomon asked.
“Worst case, he’s alive,” Demarkos said. “Go on.”
“Where are we?” Pete asked.
“The corner of Fourth Avenue and 9th Street,” Olivia said, reading from the road sign.
“Yeah, but where’s that?” Pete asked.
“I want to know why they didn’t barricade this street,” Corrie said, her voice low.
“What do you mean?” Pete asked.
“Didn’t you see all those alleys and side streets?” Corrie asked, gesturing behind them. “Most of them were sealed.”
Pete turned around to look. “Like on Manhattan?”
“More so,” Corrie said.
“No luck,” Solomon said, coming out. “He’s still alive.”
“There you have it, people, Zed’s not dead.” She raised her foot as if to kick off, then changed her mind. “Ah, this’ll do. You lot know where it’s hidden, so bring back some diesel, and bring it back by lunch. You coming, Solomon?”
Demarkos pushed off, cycling back towards the Green Zone. Wobbling as he struggled to keep up, Solomon followed.
“Do we follow them?” Olivia asked.
“Too many witnesses,” Lisa said as the rest of the scavengers, in twos and small groups, peeled off and away.
“Now what?” Pete asked when they were finally alone.
“Hold that thought,” Olivia said. “I want to know who this prisoner is.”
“It’s a zombie,” Lisa said. “They keep a zombie chained up in there so as to know when the outbreak is over. When that zombie dies, others might do the same.”
“That’s sick,” Olivia said. “And smart. But still sick. So what went wrong there, Lisa? We’re on the wrong side of the fence, without our rifles, and without Dewhurst.”
“It’s the inevitable consequence of a barter economy,” Lisa said. “To avoid devaluing their trade goods, scavengers only bring back the smallest quantity of items to trade for what they immediately need. Not wishing to leave the trading post with excess weight, they exchange the rest for services. Especially a hot shower. Thus, when you need to find a scavenger, the best place to wait is outside the shower block, first thing in the morning.”
“That’s not really an answer,” Corrie said.
“But it is context,” Lisa said. “Dewhurst appears to know someone has found diesel. Since it is only purchased by the central authority, the price is fixed. It is thus not worth bringing back to the settlement when other goods could fetch a higher price. Essentially, we scavengers have been told to reveal the location of our fuel stash. Since we didn’t do it back at the settlement, we were punished by being brought out this far.”
“Do you have a diesel stash?” Pete asked.
“No. Nor do I know who does,” Lisa said. “Nor, clearly, does Dewhurst, or he wouldn’t have bothered bringing us out this far.”
“Which will be fun for us to discuss back on the ship with Doc Flo and Leo,” Olivia said. “It feels like we’ve failed, so it’s time to cut our losses and head to Coney Island.”
“When presented with potential failure, I always find it best to redefine the conditions for success,” Lisa said. “I wanted to question Dewhurst, but warning him of Pruitt and Raven Rock is more important. That can still be done by leaving him a message. A video message, along with the video from Raven Rock.”
“Then we’re cycling back to their base?” Olivia asked.
“Ah, could we make one small detour?” Lisa asked. “While I don’t think it will be possible to ask the questions of Dewhurst, we could still go to the source.”
“Do you mean the boat at the pier?” Olivia asked. “You want to take one of the boat people hostage?”
“No, we will simply say we have found a large stash of fuel, and offer them the address. That will provide an opportunity to ask two or three questions. The difficulty now is deciding which will produce the most illuminating answers.”
Chapter 24 - Archangel
Brooklyn, Long Island
This time, as they cycled through Brooklyn, Pete did notice the barricades, the bullet-holes, and the bones. He noticed them even more after they crossed beyond the cleared streets and into the nowhere land behind the improvised walls.
The barricades must have gone up during the early days of the outbreak; the Long Islanders hadn’t wanted the same fate as their neighbours on Manhattan. But their attempts at self-salvation had been counter-productive, dooming even more to a brutal death. The barriers across the side roads were more than just a way of keeping the undead away from community block-fortresses, but of funnelling the roaming infected into a murder-zone. When the ammo ran out, those defences had become a prison. When the undead got in, they became a tomb.
Fleeing rats scampered ahead of the undead lumbering out of alleys and crawling from beneath cars. The Family Guinn swerved left and right, but didn’t stop. Low-rise bodega-basement towers were replaced with high-rise glass and steel apartment-offices. Aspiring or affluent, the plague didn’t care in this city whose streets were paved with bones.
“It’s ahead,” Lisa said, slowing though not stopping.
“We’re here already?” Pete asked, looking back the way they’d come, checking for any of the undead they’d woken during their cycling sprint.
“The pier is just beyond the tank,” Lisa said.
The abandoned Abrams MBT was parked on Furman Street, but its cannon was aimed upward at the eastern tower of the Brooklyn Bridge.
“We’ll leave the bikes by that fire escape,” Lisa whispered. “We’ll go upstairs and inside and take advantage of an elevated position to survey our target before we approach.”
The fire escape belonged to the recent extension of a brownstone. Just as recent was the new gate and thick concrete wall. More recently still, and possibly when that tank made its way to the waterfront, the wall had been knocked over, and now partially blocked the already narrow one-way Doughty Street.
Broken baseball bats and chair legs lay at the base of the fire escape’s metal staircase. There were few bones, though, suggesting they’d not been dropped in battle, but after they’d been proven ineffective weapons against the undead. One of those zombies lay at the top of the stairs, an antique brass candlestick still embedded in an eye socket. The other of that pair of candlesticks lay in the doorway, keeping the fire door ajar.
“Have you been here before?” Corrie whispered, as she pulled the door open. The hinges squeaked louder than her words.
Before Lisa could answer, Olivia tugged on her arm, then Corrie’s, then pointed upwards. Quickly, and as quietly as they could, they stepped inside. The smell of burning tobacco drifted down from above.
They were in a dark, dank hallway. When Lisa turned on her light, Pete counted three doors, and a junction at the far end.
“Sentry on the roof,” Corrie whispered, as she drew her sidearm. Slowly, she affixed the suppressor. “Might have seen our bikes. Stick close. Coney Island’s the rendezvous. Lisa?”
“This way,” she said.
The apartment doors, though pulled closed, had all been forced. At this stage, it was impossible to know who had broken in, or how many times the rooms had been searched. It was a near certainty that the ship-borne newcomers had come hunting for clothes. But had they come looking for beds to sleep in?
At each door, Pete listened, but heard nothing, yet someone had kept that fire door propped ajar. At the end of the corridor, Lisa led them left, and to the last apartment. Like the others, the door had been forced. Unlike the others, it was kept open by a slowly decaying zombie. Its head had been split open either by the dumbbell, the hammer, or the foot-long wooden pulley lying among the decaying putrescence of its corpse.
They entered a broad hallway where the alcove on the left had been repurposed into a galley kitchen. There were only six cupboards, and each was open. On the right of this odd hall, and beyond an antique coat stand, were three doors. Lisa made a beeline for the furthest. Pete followed, while Corrie ducked into the kitchen, taking position by the fridge-freezer where she had a clear shot at the entrance. Behind him, Pete heard Olivia open the door to the bathroom, but when he turned, she motioned him on, so he followed Lisa into the living room.
The apartment’s owner had nautical aspirations but a pedestrian’s budget. Old ships sailed across every wall, though the prints were new and the frames were cheap. The half-height bookcases were filled with second-hand maritime paperbacks, while the battered Civil War globe was a reproduction. The astrolabe was a replica, the barometer was digital, and the ornaments were kitsch. The sofa looked comfortable, and as well-used as the armchairs. The cup-rings on the coffee table, and the stack of board games beneath, suggested frequent visitors. The dust, the damp, and the dead zombie in the doorway suggested no one had lived here for some time.
A tripod stood next to the corner window. Though the telescope had been looted, the window still offered a perfect view of the now-broken bridge, the river, the pier, and the yacht. It was definitely a civilian boat. Twin masts, but with a drinking deck at the rear. Not a racing yacht, nor a fishing boat, but someone’s toy, onto which two people loaded small red fuel cans.
The pier itself was a match for the boat, as much an open-air drinking space for a wood-framed bar-restaurant as a place for sailors to dock. He couldn’t see any signs, or buildings, offering refuelling ship-services. A defensive wall ringed the pier, built out of yellow taxis and parts of the semi-dismantled wooden bar. There were no tables or chairs on the pier close to the ship, so if the crew did come ashore to cook or sit, it would be in the remains of the bar.
“Intriguing, isn’t it?” Lisa said.
“I don’t know what to make of it,” Pete said.
“As I say, intriguing,” Lisa said.
“There’s no one here,” Olivia whispered, joining them in the living room. “This place is the definition of well-looted.”
“I’ll go swap with Corrie,” Pete said, and headed back to the entrance.
“Nothing yet,” Corrie said.
“The ship’s there,” Pete said. “They’re already loading fuel. Go take a look, and I’ll keep watch here.”
He’d barely settled into position by the fridge, when he heard a hiss from Olivia.
“Pete! Come here!”
When he got back into the living room, Corrie wasn’t standing at the window, but sitting on the sofa.
“What is it?” he asked. “Are you okay?”
“It’s the Archangel,” Corrie said. “That’s Mikael’s boat.”
“Are you sure?” Pete asked.
“I’m positive,” Corrie said. “He had a thousand photographs of it. The squares and lines on the side are a stylised form of Cyrillic he invented for himself when he was a child. He used to pray to the Archangel Michael to save him from his life. He’d write out prayers in his made-up language until his father found them. Mikael got a beating. He got a lot of those, until his older sisters stopped their father for good. He gave his boat that name as a reminder that he was his own guardian angel. That’s the story he told me. He certainly loved the ship more than he did his son. The boat was pretty much all he’d happily talk about. But the boat was left in Miami after he was extracted.”
“He was a prisoner within the family,” Lisa said. “An honoured prisoner, and kept away from most of the business, but he knew too much to be allowed any real freedom. His house in Miami was used as a meeting place, and he was used as the host and occasional figurehead.”
“He’s dead,” Corrie said.
“Yet the cartel are clearly here,” Lisa said. “I confess I didn’t recognise the boat, but it is too great a coincidence for it, and Pruitt, to both be here. In fact, I would speculate that she came here because this is where she expected to be collected.” She patted her bag. “No matter. We will stop her.”
“What do you mean?” Olivia asked.
“As I told you, this bag contains my worldly possessions,” Lisa said. “The most burdensome of which are four kilograms of plastic explosive and a remote detonator.”
“You always planned to blow up the ship?” Olivia asked.
“Prepared rather than planned,” Lisa said. “But I did consider it as an eventuality.”
“You and me are going to have a long talk about openness and secrets when we get to the icebreaker,” Olivia said. “But are we agreed we should blow up that boat?”
“Absolutely,” Corrie said.
Pete shrugged. “I’m not voting one way or another until I hear how we get a bomb aboard, and how we’ll get away afterwards. We’ve got a sentry on the roof above us, and there’s one by that taxi-wall, and at least three inside the wall or on the boat.”
“Shh,” Olivia said, pointing towards the far wall.
From outside came the low burr of an engine, rising in volume, approaching from inland.
A small tanker stopped by the barricade. A passenger jumped out, armed with a rifle, and ran to the rear of the vehicle, seemingly aiming at the road down which they had driven. A second passenger climbed out of the cab, waving to the people inside the pier-barricade while the driver climbed out, turned around, but stayed by the door. The passenger now at the rear of the tanker fired a shot. A second. A third.
“Must be zoms,” Olivia said, stepping closer to the window, though staying flush with the wall. “I can’t see them.”
“The woman who just ran to the barricade is Pruitt,” Lisa said.
Pete stepped over to a different window, carefully moving the slatted blind so he could see. She was peculiarly dressed by the standards of any era, wearing a grey pantsuit, combat boots, and a military belt with a sidearm at one side, a long bayonet at the other. Her scissor-cut hair ruffled in the breeze as she gesticulated for people to come help. And they did. Four of them, from inside the bar.
“You said there were sixteen of them on that ship?” Pete asked.
“At least,” Lisa said. “Though I doubt there would be many more. Dewhurst is the tanker driver and… yes, I see her now. Demarkos was the shooter.”
The police officer had walked to the front of the tanker to stand next to Pruitt, her rifle at the low-ready.
“It can’t be diesel in that tanker,” Pete said. “Not so soon. It must be fresh water. And they’re loading some individual fuel cans already, so they’re preparing to leave.”
Using a ladder, a trio of sailors climbed over the barricade, and ran to the rear of the tanker. Now it was their turn to open fire.
“They aren’t short of bullets, are they?” Olivia said.
“If I had a rifle, I could kill Pruitt now,” Corrie said. “I don’t know if I can make the shot with a handgun. What kind of detonator do you have? Maybe we could throw the explosives close enough.”
“We’d have to break the window first,” Lisa said. “Or at least open it. That would give them too much warning. Destroying a water-tanker would slow their departure, but only by a day.”
“Does anyone have binoculars?” Olivia asked. “Quick!”
“I’ve got the optical scope,” Corrie said.
“Thanks,” Olivia said, taking it. She aimed the scope towards the ship. “That’s him! Look! The ratty guy in the red coat, now standing on deck. The one not working.”
“Who?” Lisa asked, taking the scope.
“That’s Herrera,” Olivia said. “The cop from South Bend who burned people alive. That’s him!”
“On Mikael’s boat,” Corrie said, stepping forward.
“Keep back from the window,” Lisa said. “Are you sure it’s him?”
“Absolutely positive,” Olivia said. “Pete, want to give a second opinion?”
He took the scope. “Yep. That’s him.”
“He must be Mikael’s son,” Corrie said. “There’s no other explanation for him being aboard that ship.”
“Lisa, you must have come across him,” Pete said.
“I knew the nephew was being groomed for leadership, but that he’d been sent out to make his own way in the world, to prove himself worthy. As such, he had very little to do with the running of the sisters’ empire, and so wasn’t of major concern to me.”
“If only we had a rifle,” Olivia said. “But we don’t, and he’s on the boat. No one could throw that bag far enough.”
“The gunfire is slowing,” Pete said. “Looks like we’ve got two targets. We can go for Pruitt, or the nephew.”
“Three targets,” Lisa said. “There is still the ship, and it is not impossible the sisters are aboard.”
“It’s only about twenty-five kilometres from here to Great Kills Bay,” Corrie said. “If we can find a working radio, I could call the icebreaker and get them here in a few hours. They could sink the ship.”
“How long should we hunt for a radio?” Lisa asked. “If they are loading water, we can assume they intend to depart as soon as the fuel arrives. If they spy the icebreaker coming, the yacht could put to sea, go north, and disappear up the Hudson River. Even if they can’t outrun your icebreaker, they can go ashore, and disappear in the ruins.”
“There’s a rifle on the roof,” Corrie said. “We kill the sniper, take it, shoot Herrera and Pruitt.”
“We’d get one, not both,” Lisa said. “But I might have an alternative.”
“Does it involve any of us dying?” Olivia asked.
“I hope not,” Lisa said.
Chapter 25 - Ambush
Dumbo Pier, Brooklyn
