Mutated - 04 (17 page)
Authors: Joe McKinney
And then he saw the soldiers from Ken Stoler’s compound. It was a squad of five. They were dressed in the familiar gray T-shirts and black BDU pants, each of them armed with rifles. Richardson watched the man in charge of the squad, saw his head swiveling as he scanned the crowd.
“Sylvia,” he said.
The soldier’s eyes swept over Ben, then came back to him. He squinted at Ben, his mouth turning down at the corners. Three women carrying chickens in birdcages crossed the path between them, and the soldier craned his neck to look over the women.
“I see them,” Sylvia said. “Ben, we have to get out of here.”
“Over there,” Richardson said, and pushed Sylvia and Avery between a pair of tents. Nate was right behind him. They pushed their way to the back of the tents, where they butted up against a brick wall. There was nowhere to go. “Damn it,” he said.
He heard a commotion behind them, people being pushed out of the way.
“Hey,” said the soldier. He and his squad were working their way back between the tents. “Get out here. Now.”
“Ben,” Sylvia said, “what we do?”
Richardson could hear the soldiers coming. Damn, there wasn’t time. “Here,” he said, lifting the skirt of a tent. “Get under here.”
“What are you gonna do, Ben?”
He took a water bottle and splashed some against the brick wall, then he handed the bottle and his backpack full of weapons to Sylvia. “Just get under there, both of you.”
“Hey,” the soldier barked again.
“Hurry, Sylvia.”
She and Avery got down on their bellies and worked their way under the tent flap.
Nate tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Dude, here they come.”
“Got it. Come on, whip out your dick.”
“What?”
“Hurry.” And before Nate could protest further, Richardson unzipped his fly and pulled out his penis and pointed it at the wall. “Do it,” he said to Nate. “Come on, hurry.”
Nodding slowly, Nate did the same right as the soldiers came around the corner of the tent.
“You two,” the soldier said, “turn around. Slowly.”
“Oh man,” Richardson said, feigning surprise. He turned toward the soldier, still holding his penis in his fingers. “You scared me, man.”
The soldier—his rifle was leveled at Richardson—glanced down at Richardson’s penis, then to the wet spot on the wall. His face wrinkled in disgust.
“Ah,” he groaned. “Put that away.”
Richardson did as he was told.
“How come you didn’t answer me?” the soldier said.
“Were you calling me?” Richardson said. “Wow, I’m sorry. I really had to go.” He rubbed the hand he’d been holding his dick with on his pants and stuck it out to the soldier. “I’m Ben Richardson,” he said. “If you were calling me, I’m sorry. I couldn’t hear you.”
The man lowered his rifle. “I’m not shaking your hand,” he said. He pushed his way past Richardson and glanced up and down the alley behind the tents. The rest of his squad was waiting in the gap between the tents. “You guys double back,” he said to his squad. “Search in between the tents.” He turned back to Richardson. “Where you from?”
“Well, gosh. All over,” Richardson said, scratching his head. “This is my first time here in Herculaneum, but I’ve been all over. Mostly, I’ve been up in the northwest. That’s where I met Nate here. We’ve been going around together about two years now.”
“You talk?” the soldier said to Nate.
“He can talk fine,” Richardson said. “But most of what he says just tends to get us in trouble where there was no trouble before. You know what I mean? He’s got a little problem understanding social cues. It ain’t his fault. He fell off a two-story balcony one night when we almost got cornered by some infected and he ain’t been the same since. We go around together. I watch out for him.”
The soldier studied them, nodding slowly. And then, much to Richardson’s relief, he turned and went back to the crowd at the front of the tents.
Watching him go, Richardson let out the breath he was holding.
“That was close,” he muttered.
“What was that about me falling from a balcony?” Nate said.
“You ever read Steinbeck’s
Of Mice and Men
, Nate?”
Of Mice and Men
, Nate?”
“Huh?”
Richardson smiled. “Well, that guy hasn’t, either, apparently. Good thing.”
“They gone?”
Richardson glanced down at the tent flap. Sylvia was looking up at him. She looked frightened.
“Yeah, they’re gone.” He knelt down next to her and spoke in a whisper. “Sylvia, this isn’t going to work. We’re gonna have to split up.”
“I know. What do you want to do?”
“Nate and I will find us a boat. Can you and Avery make it down to the docks on your own?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Okay. We’ll find somebody. You guys should probably take most of the weapons, too. We need to keep those out of sight. Meet us up at Ferry Street Point.”
“Good luck,” she said.
“Yeah, thanks.”
Nate gawked at all the stuff. He saw vendors with carts full of vegetables and tools and canned goods and jerry cans of gasoline. There were carts loaded down with pornography and dried beef and sacks of flour and nuts and sugar and even one guy selling marijuana. The smell of it caught Nate like a fishhook in his nose and he stopped to stare at the buds hanging from the roof of the vendor’s cart, mouth agape. The buds were so dark in color they almost looked brown, and they were practically dripping with resin. Some of them were as fat as a leg of mutton. The old hippie behind the cart sat puffing on a small brass pipe, his face wreathed in smoke. He gave Nate a knowing smile and a nod.
“Come on,” Richardson said, pulling him away by the arm.
“Dude,” Nate said, “did you see the size of those buds? I ain’t seen weed like that since before the outbreak.”
“And what are you gonna trade for it?” Richardson said.
Nate’s smile slid off his face.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Come on.”
Richardson led him toward the river and into a maze of tents packed together as densely as a hive. They were interconnected, giving total coverage to the patrons inside, shrouding them in shadows. Right away Nate could see they were in some kind of bar. A still was cooking off to his right and the air was thick with the smell of tobacco and wood smoke and stale liquor.
“I don’t see any soldiers,” Nate said.
“Shhh,” Richardson said. “We’ve been lucky so far. But keep your head on straight, okay? These are rough people. Don’t say anything about yourself or what we’re doing here. Just try to be invisible.”
“You sound like Doc Kellogg.”
Richardson gave him a sidelong glance. “Yeah,” he said. “Well, it’s good advice most of the time. Just watch yourself, okay?”
Nate sniffed at the tobacco smoke in the air, his mouth watering. Everywhere he looked people were smoking and drinking, whispering to each other. They glanced up at him as he and Richardson walked into the tents.
“I’m going over there,” Richardson said, and pointed to a pair of old, heavyset women off at one corner of the tents. “Just try to stay out of trouble, okay?”
“Sure,” Nate said. He watched Richardson approach the women. Their expressions grew hard as soon as he started speaking, and a moment later one of the women picked up her drink and walked away. The other stayed, though, frowning while she listened.
Richardson’s advice to try to be invisible felt like a joke to him now that he was on his own. He felt like every eye in the place was watching him, but he tried to look like he belonged as he quietly scanned the crowd. Most had gone back to their conversations, though a few weren’t even trying to hide the fact that they were staring at him.
“You’re not from around here, are you?”
Startled, Nate turned and saw a girl of about seventeen leaning against a counter to his right. She was smiling at him, her dark eyes sparkling with reflected candlelight. Her dress was open at the neck, and he could see right down the front of it.
“Hi,” he said, his voice cracking as he spoke.
Jesus, he thought, she’s not wearing a bra.
She didn’t say anything. She leaned forward a little more and put her chin in her hand, her elbow on the bar. In the shadows just beyond her face Nate could see her hips swishing back and forth.
“What’s your name, sweetie?”
“Nate,” he said, and swallowed nervously.
Her gaze drifted down his frame, then back up to his face. Her expression seemed to suggest that she liked what she saw.
“Where you from, Nate?”
“Up north,” he said. His throat suddenly felt dry. The girl was giving off vibes that he felt down in his groin.
“They have girls up north, Nate?”
“Girls?” he repeated. Then, regaining some of his self-control, “Yeah, sure, they got girls.”
“You got a girlfriend?”
“A girl—no,” he said, laughing. “I’m a lone wolf, you know?” He glanced behind him and saw Richardson sitting on what looked like a roll of carpet, talking in confidential whispers with the older, heavyset woman. She was smoking a cigar now, not speaking, staring at Richardson through the smoke.
When he looked back the girl had come out from around the counter. She was very close to his right shoulder now, close enough to whisper in his ear.
“A girl gets awful lonely around here, Nate. All these old men. Wanna go out back with me and smoke a joint?”
“You bet,” he said, wincing at the desperate note of enthusiasm in his voice.
She winked at him. “Follow me, Nate.”
She took him by the hand and led him to the back of the maze of tents, where she slipped through the seam.
“Come on, Nate.” Her voice was smooth as ice cream.
He glanced back at Richardson for just a moment, then at the girl, her breasts rising and falling slightly with each breath, her dress clinging to her erect nipples. He swallowed the lump in his throat and followed her.
But no sooner had he made it through the flap when something heavy hit him at the bundle of nerves at the base of his neck. His legs turned to water beneath him and he slumped to the ground, looking up in shock at the two men who had materialized out of nowhere. He tried to raise a feeble hand to stop the second blow, but it did no good. His vision turned purple, then black.
When he came to there were hands all over him, jerking his body from side to side as they dug into his pockets.
“Hey,” he groaned. But he was unable to move. Somebody’s knee was in his back.
The girl stuck a knife in his face. It was old and rusty, a double-edged stiletto with the handle wrapped up in duct tape. Nate had seen a lot of knives in a lot of hands while living on the road these last six years or so, and he doubted she knew how to use it. But of course that didn’t matter. The blade was only inches from his eyes and he couldn’t move his arms. He was a Thanksgiving turkey about to be carved.
“Please,” he said, hoarsely.
“Fuck you, sweetie,” she said. Her teeth were grinding together, her lips flecked with spit. The come-on he had seen in the bar was replaced by viciousness now. She looked like a hungry dog, ready to fight for its dinner.
He felt the knife dig into the soft flesh of his cheek and a scream welled up in his chest. He was about to let it loose when the tent flap behind him snapped open. The two men grunted as they stumbled over Nate. In the confusion, Nate scrambled away from the blade and sat against a tentpole a few feet away. Richardson was standing at the tent flap. One of the men who had jumped Nate climbed to his feet just as Richardson reached into the waistband of his jeans and pulled out a black leather blackjack.
The man let out a honking noise like an angry goose as he charged Richardson. But he never finished his attack. Richardson cuffed a backhanded swing across the man’s face, catching him in the chin with a noise halfway between a slap and the clink of heavy beer mugs knocking together.
The man sank into unconsciousness.
The other man watched his partner fall. When he looked back at Richardson, the blackjack was already connecting with his groin. He doubled over with a rush of air, falling to his knees. Richardson followed the blow with a downward slap to the back of the man’s head that put him flat on his face.
“Fucking asshole!” the girl shouted.
She charged Richardson, the knife waving wildly in front of her.
It did her no good. Richardson punched her in the face with his blackjack and she sank to her knees, her hands cupped over the bloody bloom that had been her nose just a moment before.
“Youth fucking bathtard,” she said.
The blood was pouring out between her fingers, her face ruined.
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