Radio Hope (Toxic World Book 1) (21 page)

“Did you see him blowing away those bastards?” a scavenger nearby shouted. “Emptied a whole pistol right into the crowd.”

“I was next to him when he did it,” Marcus told him. “Got one with every shot.”

“One with every shot?” the scavenger said in wonder. “Hey everybody, you hear that? One with every shot!”

Marcus smiled. A little fib was forgivable at a time like this. He looked back up at the catwalk and saw Clyde ushering The Doctor back inside. The dead and wounded had been carried away, and the dead cultists had been chucked over the edge to lie with their own kind. A haze of foul-smelling smoke hung over everything but no thick columns rose up from outside the walls. Roy’s clever idea had burnt itself out. He wished the bartender had had time to brew some more.

Everything looked OK here for the moment. He needed to make the rounds and see how the rest of the city was doing. Wincing at every step, he headed to the Merchants Association compound first.

He found it well guarded. Hobbling up to one of the barbed wire and sandbag barricades that blocked a space between two buildings, he was greeted with a suspicious look from the civilian posted there. Angela Mackey, one of big landladies of the Burbs, not that she lived there. He was beginning to notice just how much these people controlled.

“Where’s Abe?” he demanded.

Angela looked down at the gun in his hand.

“You’re lucky I know you,” she said. “Lots of strangers in town right now and I got order
s to shoot anyone who comes close.”

“Yeah, I’ve already seen the results of your orders. Go get Abe.”

Abe made him wait. After a few minutes Marcus got tired of waiting.

“I got things to do,” he told Angela.

“Abe’s very busy right now.”

“Heck with this,” Marcus grumbled. He tucked the revolver in his belt and started climbing the barricade, careful to avoid the razor wire.

“Hey! You can’t come in here.”

“I’m acting mayor and I’ll do what I like.”

Abe’s arrogant voice cut into their argument. “You sound like an ornery old man. Careful on there, you’ll rip your trousers.”

Marcus realized he must look ridiculous straddling a barricade and shouting at a woman young enough to be his daughter. He scowled at Abe, who stood outside one of the houses with a casual air.

“We nearly lost the battle because of you,” Marcus snapped as he eased himself over the rest of the barricade.

“From I hear we saved you.”

“And killed off a lot of innocent people!”

Abe shook his head, his mouth upturned in a sardonic smile. “Scavengers, Marcus, just scavengers.”

“The Righteous Horde is getting ready for another attack,” Marcus shouted loud enough for everyone to hear. “It’s every citizen’s responsibility to help in New City’s defense, and here you are hiding in your houses. You’re endangering the entire community. If you don’t come with me right now I’ll see to it that you are all stripped of your citizenship.”

Marcus started climbing back over the barricade. Abe laughed.

“Oh, open it up for him,” Abe told Angela.

The woman pulled aside a section of steel fence. Marcus hopped
down, was treated to a twinge from his sciatica, and walked out.

He wheeled about and glared at the men and women of the Merchants Association. “Come with me now or you’ll all lose your citizenship.”

Abe let out a mocking laugh and shook his head. “Really Marcus, all of us? You’d let New City lose all those food stores, all those weapons, all that farmland? No. You need us. But expulsion isn’t a half-bad idea. We could always create our own settlement. . .”

Marcus looked him in the eye. “This isn’t over.”

He continued his rounds and passed a young girl who should have been hiding at home. Probably a scavenger kid with no home to hide in. He sent her to ask Clyde for an update. Marcus found the scavengers had set up patrols by the water on all three sides of the peninsula. There was no movement out on the cove but small groups of cultists were stationed every few hundred yards along the shore as far as he could see in either direction. He hobbled over to the warehouse and found Ahmed and a couple of medics elbow deep in blood. Dozens of wounded men and women lay on the floor, some past all help.

“Doc got hit,” Marcus told him.

“Yeah I heard,” Ahmed said, not looking up from the tourniquet he was wrapping around a man’s nearly severed arm. “Is he alive?”

“He patched himself up but you should look at him.”

“When I have time,” Ahmed said, still focused on his work.

Marcus stood and looked at him for a moment. When the nurse said nothing more, Marcus turned and left.

The girl met him at the door.

“Clyde says the Righteous Horde is still hiding in the Burbs. Looks like they’re aren’t planning to attack anytime soon.”

“Good,” Marcus said, giving her an affectionate pat. Blood smeared on her blonde hair. Marcus blinked and stared, then shuffled away.

He should get back to the wall, get back to Doc, but first he had to check on Rosie and the kids.

Someone else’s kids
,
Marcus reminded himself.

As he approached his house Rosie burst out the front door and gave him a big hug. The barrel of the rifle strapped to her back clonked him on the forehead. He didn’t care. He gave her a big squeeze and smiled.

“Thank God you’re alive!” Rosie said. “The firing sounded so terrible.”

“It was bad but we made it through OK. There will be more. How’s everything here?”

Rosie’s face fell.

“What’s the matter?” Marcus asked.

“Pablo didn’t get out of bed this morning. It’s that flu that’s going around. He’s burning up. He can’t eat; he can hardly even talk.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“You little son of a bitch.”

Mitch glared at Jackson from where he knelt on the ground. Jackson kept a bead on him.

“Drop that rifle,” Jackson ordered
. “And your AK too.”

Mit
ch’s eyes narrowed. Jackson slowly shook his head.

“Don’t try it, you won’t make it.”

Mitch grimaced. “Nah, I guess I wouldn’t. You were smart not to try and take me in a fair fight.”

“I would have lost,” Jackson conceded. “Drop those guns.”

Mitch did as he was told. Both weapons clattered to the ground. He stood up. Jackson kept his rifle trained at Mitch’s heart.

“The ammo too.”

Mitch grumbled something under his breath and emptied his pockets of the ammo he’d looted from the cultists. He stood and faced Jackson.

“Now what, Blamer?”

“You were going to use Radio Hope for your personal gain. I don’t know what you were planning. Rob them? Threaten to reveal their location unless they gave you whatever Abe wants? It doesn’t matter. You are a class traitor, a traitor to all humanity. For the good of society you must die.”

Mitch’s face went through a rapid transformation. His hard look collapsed into one of abject panic, but quickly reassembled itself into defiance.
If Jackson had blinked he would have missed it.

Jackson
’s rifle lowered an inch.

“So you’re going to do it just like that?
” Mitch asked, unable to keep a shrill note out of his voice. “Gun me down like some tweaker that’s gone on a rampage?”

“I’ll say you got killed by the cultists. I’ll give your stuff
to whoever you want except Abe. You got family? A girlfriend maybe?”

That concession didn’t assuage the twisting in Jackson’s chest like he had hoped
it would.

The corners of Mitch’s mouth fell. “Nah, I don’t have anyone.”

Get this done
,
Jackson told himself.

He aimed for Mitch’s heart.
His finger started squeezing the trigger, then froze.

For the second time that day Jackson found himself unable to do something he thought necessary. He could no more move his finger another half inch than he could move across that broken bridge.

Jackson lowered his rifle.

“Go on,” he jerked his head in the direction of the road. “Get out of here. Go back to New City and make up whatever story you want. Just get out of here.”

Mitch looked at him wide-eyed, and then without a word ran down the valley toward the road.

Jackson let out a d
eep sigh and watched him go.

What would Father
have thought of me letting a class traitor go? Well, Father’s dead, as are thousands of other revolutionaries and the people they killed. No good ever came from their deaths.

No good is going to come from leaving Mitch alive, either
.

Jackson picked up the two firearms and slung them over his back. The
second rifle was superfluous, the AK-47 was empty, and the extra weight would make walking uncomfortable, but no one left useable weapons behind in the wildlands. He walked along the stream, making sure to leave tracks before getting out of sight around a turn in the valley. He settled behind a rock and waited.

If he follows me, I’ll shoot him
,
Jackson tried to convince himself.

After about ten minutes without Mitch showing up, Jackson went back down the valley. Abe’s flunky was nowhere to be seen.

“Not as dumb as he seems,” Jackson muttered.

He looked around. How to get to the right valle
y? He didn’t want to return to the highway and retrace his steps. He might meet the cultists again. They’d probably head back to the road once they realized they weren’t surrounded anymore. That would be bad news for Mitch. At least his death wouldn’t be on his conscience.

Their presence brought up some troubling possibilities. If they were scouts coming ahead of the Righteous Horde that would mean thousands of people would be passing within a mile of Radio Hope. Wait, no, passing twice. They could never get
an army over that bridge. And once they turned back, they’d be getting worried about food and would send out foraging parties to either side. What if they found Radio Hope? What if they found him? He had to stay away from the road.

But this mountain
side was riven with countless little streams that cut a maze of valleys along its slopes. Just trying to get a couple of valleys over risked getting him lost. But what else to do? Shaking his head in resignation, he turned in what he hoped was the right direction.

He didn’t get far. A shout rang out across the mountainside.

“Hold it right there or we’ll blow you away.”

Jackson froze. The cultists
appeared from a nearby ridge. Two kept their rifles trained on him as the others moved forward.

Jackson looked around for nearby cover and found none. He was a sitting duck. He cursed himself for being so unaware. Misery weighed him down like a heavy stone as he realized that again and again on this trip he had shown
that he wasn’t cut out to be a fighting man.

“Drop your rifle!” one of the approaching men ordered.

Jackson did as he was told.

“And the spares too!”

He let his newly won prizes clatter to the ground.

The cultists drew closer.
Jackson counted only five. One lagged behind, clutching a bleeding shoulder. Jackson felt grim satisfaction to see how few were left of the dozen they had met on the bridge.

“Brett, why aren’t we ridding the land of this tainted one?” one asked another.

Brett walked a little ahead. He had the best rifle and an air of command.

“
He ain’t tainted as far as I can see, and I got some questions for him first,” Brett replied.

“He’s a scout for New City, what else do we need to know? They are enemies of the faith and need to be cleansed from the land.”

“Shut up,” Brett snapped. He gestured his weapon at Jackson. “You, what are you doing here?”

“Scouting for New City, like
the man says,” Jackson replied.

Brett shook his head. “Naw, there’s something more going on here. You were on the bridge. I recognize you from that gray coat. Your friends left you and then you came after them, but by then they’d split up.”

“I froze on the bridge, too high,” Jackson admitted, shame washing over him.

“If you had faith you would fear nothing,” said the man with the shoulder wound, his eyes wild.

Bet you fear bleeding to death
,
Jackson thought.

He held his tongue. Life was too sweet.

Brett narrowed his eyes, “Maybe you did freeze, but why did your friends split up? And why did you come after them? We kinda forgot about you. Figured you had run away. When you came up behind us, we thought you were another patrol. Gave us a scare.”

“I thought the faithful
weren’t scared of anything,” Jackson couldn’t help saying.

“Watch it. Now I want some answers. You saved your friend and now I see you got his AK. We didn’t kill him, so how did you end up with his gun?”

“But you did kill him. You got him with your last shot. He bled out,” Jackson said, giving a significant glance at the wounded zealot. The man paled.

Brett shook his head. “Naw
. You iced him, or at least disarmed him. You marched all the way here with that guy and did that. Why?”

He
jabbed the barrel of his gun into Jackson’s belly to emphasize his question.

“He left me on the bridge,” Jackson said.

Brett snorted. “Then why save him?”

Jackson had no response to that. One of the other cultists retrieved his guns while another patted him down and to
ok his pack. He pulled the clasp knife out of his pocket.

“
Hey, this was Aaron’s!”

“So?” Brett asked. “Who doesn’t loot a body in the wildlands?”

Jackson cocked his head and studied the scout party’s leader.

“You were a scavenger before you joined the Righteous Horde, weren’t you?” he asked.

Brett appeared surprised by the question. “Yeah.”

“Why did you join?” Jackson was curious, but he had another reason for turning
around the conversation. If he was asking the questions, he wasn’t the one being asked.

“I joined to purify the land and herald a new day for man,” Brett recited.

“And get as much pussy as he can grab!” one of the other cultists laughed.

Brett turned to him. “I’m just as faithful as anyone!”

Jackson wasn’t convinced. The others didn’t look convinced either. The wounded man raised his eyes heavenward.

“An avenging Lord will smite the unbelievers and all those who pretend to believe but have impurity in their hearts.”

“Shut up,” Brett told him a second time. He turned to Jackson and gestured with his rifle. “Back to you. What are you looking for up here?”

“We’re scouts from New City, seeing if you guys were coming through this pass,” Jackson repeated.

Once again Brett shook his head. “Naw. You would have pulled back as soon as you saw us and gone home to warn everyone. You’re up here looking for something.”

“We had orders to wipe out any patrols.”

Brett cocked his head. “What’s that on your face?”

Jackson
self-consciously touched the brand on his cheek.

“Something a bandit did to me,” Jackson lied.

One of the other cultists spoke up. “No, I’ve seen those a couple of times when I’ve been to the Burbs to trade, back before I joined up. It’s a brand they put on Blamers.”

“Blamers?” Brett asked.

“They have a law against saying whose fault the wars were,” the cultist told him.

The patrol leader studied Jackson with renewed interest. “So who did you blame?”

“The rich,” Jackson said. “All those who profited from the wars and the pollution and the oppression of the working class. They’re the reason for all this.”

“Greed is a form of impurity,” the wounded man nodded.

Brett glanced at him and turned back to Jackson. “Whatever. Now let’s get back to the point. Why are you here?”

“I told you,” Jackson said, exasperated.

Brett slung his rifle and pulled out a Bowie knife. Jackson’s heart turned to ice.

“Now I could start cutting you to get the answer and I’d probably get it, but it would take time and your screams might attract your friends, or your enemies, or whoever the hell they are.”

“Do not use tainted words!” the wounded man exclaimed.

Brett turned to him. “Shut. Up.”

Turning back to Jackson, he continued. “Besides, if I start cutting, you’ll probably give me some bullshit you think I want to hear. I’m good at this. I can cut through the bullshit, and I do mean cut, but it takes time. So I ain’t gonna cut you, not yet. We’re going to walk the way you were walking and see what we come to.”

They started down the valley Jackson had been headed into. The w
ounded man lagged behind. His wound leaked blood in a steady trickle through the man’s fingers. His entire right side was soaked in blood and he was growing paler by the minute.

“Aren’t you going to patch your friend up? I think that bullet h
it an artery.” Jackson asked. That might buy some time, although time for what he had no idea.

“The Lord decides who lives and dies,” the wounded man said.

Brett wore a tight little smile as he said, “You are a good man, Graham, and the Lord will reward you. I am still a sinner, it is true, and I must continue in the path of the Righteous Horde through many trials to have the Lord smile the same upon me as he does upon you.”

He hadn’t turned around, and
the wounded man didn’t see his smile.

“I pray for your true purific
ation, brother,” Graham said in all faith.

A couple of his companions shot him worried looks but said nothing.

Lunatics
,
Jackson thought
.
Absolute fucking lunatics.

A prick in his
side woke Jackson from his thoughts. Brett was beside him, the Bowie knife in his hand. There was a drop of blood on the tip. Jackson rubbed his side and shifted away.

“Don’t suppose you’ll tell us where we’re headed?” Brett asked.

Jackson said nothing.

“I’ll take out that tongue if it doesn’t
get moving soon,” Brett grinned, brandishing the knife. He motioned to the others. “Let’s hump up that ridge and see what we can see. Graham, you can rest here.”

“Call me if I am needed,” Graham
said, sitting down hard on a rock. He swayed a moment before righting himself.