The Beam: Season Two (16 page)

Across the room, Nicolai listened to the drunken chortling as it circled the fire. They hadn’t found alcohol in months, but somehow they always sounded drunk.
 

Nicolai pulled his crossbow closer, feeling to make sure the bolts were still there, secured to the frame.
 

Then he closed his eyes, deepened his breathing, and pretended to sleep.
 

The bounty of food in their new home was more than the crew had seen in months, much of it fresh and in need of immediate consumption. It only took another hour or so for the men to retire and fall, satisfied, into pleasant comas. A half hour later, the room was filled with echoing snores that Nicolai thought could have woken the former occupants stacked in the corner.
 

Nicolai waited through what felt like another twenty or thirty minutes before rolling over, sitting up, and looking around. He stepped carefully to a window and looked out, noting the moon’s spot in the sky. Most had lost their true concept of time, but time seemed moot with no schedules to keep. Now and again, they’d run into a group of travelers with a running watch amongst them, but once the group was dead, Greggie would pocket the timepiece as a trophy without so much as looking at the hands.
 

The moon had nearly reached the peak of its arc, based on what Nicolai had seen in the sky as they’d marched through the previous weeks. He had no idea what time it was, but it mattered only that it was late enough for the crew to be out for the night.

After tiptoeing silently around the room using panther-like skills perfected during years of wandering, Nicolai knelt next to Val Sparks. There were several members of the crew who could arguably be second in command to Greggie, but the others were too tightly clustered. Val, on the other hand, had made his nest in a corner, far enough from the others to suit Nicolai’s needs.

He held the tip of Val’s sharpest knife over the back of Val’s hand as the man slept, setting the tip against his skin and waiting to see if he’d stir. When he didn’t, Nicolai took one last look around then slammed the heel of his own hand against the hilt, driving the blade through Val’s flesh. The tip sank into the soft pine floor underneath with dull thud.
 

Val tried to scream, but Nicolai had already shoved a wad of socks into his open, snoring mouth. That had been tricky, but Val was a heavy sleeper. Nicolai had known for months that he’d need to be on his way and had been testing Val nightly since, seeing how far the sleeping man could be nudged without waking.
 

Val bolted awake at once, thrust rudely back into the world.

“Mmmm!”

The scream was pure shock blended with agony. His jaws tried to bite down, but Nicolai, hands free, shoved the sock in farther, leaving no room in his mouth for anything else.
 

“Shhhh…” Nicolai said. He leaned closer, back in the corner and eyes peering up at the other sleepers. “Val, how would you like your own crew?”
 

“Mmm! Mmmmmm!”
He jerked at his pinned hand, but the blade was so sharp that his struggles merely deepened the wound. A crimson puddle, looking like ocher in the dim room, pooled across the moonlit wooden floor. When Val’s palm tipped up, it looked like he’d been finger-painting. Nicolai had already shifted his weight, pinning Val’s other hand to the wood underfoot.
 

Nicolai shrugged his crossbow higher up onto his back on its strap then slipped his own knife from its sheath at his side and held the blade against Val’s throat. The edge had been honed by many boring hours sitting with the crew, running a stone back and forth across the metal. A dark bead of blood formed under the cutting surface and ran down the man’s stubbly neck.
 

“I can ask one of the other guys if you don’t cooperate.”
 

“Mmm!”
 

Nicolai pivoted in a blink, striking Val hard in the temple with the elbow connected to his knife hand. The bandit rocked like a bobblehead.
 

“I really want to give you a chance here, Val,” Nicolai whispered into his ear. Snoring echoed through the room was like a roar. The sounds Nicolai and Val were making were inconsequential by comparison. “You’re the most levelheaded of the guys worth listening to. I’ll kill you and ask Will if I have to, but you’re my first choice.”

Nicolai shifted to get a good look at Val’s eyes. His foot was still on one hand, the knife upright and lodged in the other. Val’s hair had fallen into his face when Nicolai had struck him, but after a moment of effort, he seemed to focus. Nicolai saw an encouraging species of truth dawn inside them. Val wasn’t going to challenge Nicolai or try to maintain his manly pride. He knew the crew’s quietest member had turned out to be a sleeper, and that the choices were to do what he said or die.
 

“Nod if you agree to listen,” said Nicolai.
 

Val nodded, trying to swallow around the sock. His face was filthy, and a tear of pain had streaked through the dirt, leaving a single moonlit track.

“I’m going to leave this group. I have already killed Greggie. You will find him over there, facedown, stuck through the back of the neck and pinned to the floor in a pool of blood. I used your knife — the one with the carved handle. The one you pick your teeth with. Do you understand why?”
 

Val nodded vigorously. Of course he understood. It was exactly how Greggie had claimed his place with the crew, by dispatching the former leader with a knife through the back of the neck. It wasn’t an efficient way to kill someone. Nicolai would have preferred to quietly slit his throat and slash his larynx so he couldn’t yell out, but symbolism mattered. So he’d stuffed a sock in Greggie’s mouth as he had for Val, slashed just his larynx to mute him further, then pinned him flat by sitting on his body. The rest took less than a minute.
 

“You will have two choices when you get up. You can tell the others that I killed Greggie and try to rally the crew to pursue me, but I don’t think it will work. They’ll see your knife and decide you’re a coward and liar. Will or one of the others will rally their own cliques to hold you down and cut you to pieces. Your other option — and this is what I’d choose myself — is to say that
you
killed Greggie and are claiming the crew for yourself. I advise you to do it confidently. Say that I woke up and saw you do it. Tell them I ran. They’ll believe that of me. They think I’m a coward.”
 

Val blinked.

“But I’m
not
a coward, Val.” Nicolai reached down and twisted the knife in the man’s hand. Val exhaled hard, trying to scream. His eyes watered. “I’m not, and I’m very,
very
good with this crossbow.” Nicolai shrugged to rattle the bow on his back. “Maybe you remember the time Greggie thought it’d be funny to base my audition for his crew on shooting an apple off of your head. It’s a fun memory we’ll cherish forever. Do you remember, Val?”
 

Val nodded. Nicolai released the knife handle.

“Maybe you remember how you didn’t flush me out when I met your crew. Maybe you remember how I walked right up to all of you while you were eating lunch. I’d been following you for weeks, trying to decide if you would suit my needs as I made my way north. Do you get the picture, Val?”
 

Val nodded again.
 

“I’ll be out the door before you can get your hand unpinned. It wouldn’t be smart to chase me. Get free then announce your kill however you’d like. If you want to cover your story and not make yourself look like a liar, wrap your hand first and tell the others that Greggie got in a stab before dying. When everyone’s awake, tell them you’re taking the crew south, out of the city. Amsterdam was a bust. You’re heading into Germany. You will not wait. You will not go on your errand tomorrow morning, as discussed around tonight’s fire. If you decide to ignore my advice and go on your little raping party as planned, I will be watching. You will not see me, but my sights will be trained on you. Not Will, not Perry.
You
. If you have any question about whether or not I can put a bolt through your eye before you see it coming, I’ll prove your doubt unfounded. Are we on the same page?”
 

Val nodded again. Nicolai looked toward the door, toward the forest of sleeping men, then toward their leader’s body, a knife hilt visible at the back of his neck. Val was sensible, not brave. He’d do as Nicolai said. There were other stores to raid, other women to rape. In time, Will or one of the other alphas might see the ruse and take the reins from Val, but dust took time to settle. Until then, they’d do as their new leader said.

Nicolai looked toward the knife pinning Val’s hand to the floor. In one swift motion, he slammed it hard with his palm, embedding it another half inch into the wood. Val tried to scream, but the socks in his mouth ate what the room’s loud snores didn’t.

“I’ll be watching,” said Nicolai. Then he turned and ran, quietly, choosing his steps like an animal, and was out the door in seconds.
 

He
wouldn’t
be watching, but Val would think that he might be and would follow his orders.

As for Nicolai, he had places to go.
 

Nicolai left Amsterdam on foot, feeling the target on his back. His old crew was far from the only one in the city. Before the last of the networks had died, the RadioFi bulletins had been alive with rumors that Amsterdam’s airstrip was still active and ferrying motivated groups not just out of the area, but possibly out of the country. Like most rumors in desperate times, that one had turned out to be a total fabrication, but dozens of groups had homed in on its scent anyway. As they’d arrived, Amsterdam had become a perilous game of King of the Hill, with hoards of men killing for their chance at the brass ring.
 

Fortunately, the few groups Nicolai passed on his way out (hiding and seeking, staying low) were distracted enough by their pursuits that he was able to stay out of their way. Traveling alone, if he was caught, was extremely dangerous. The Netherlands, like pretty much every area Nicolai had caught wind of on the old network (and today through the rumor mill) hadn’t produced new supplies for at least five years, maybe more. There were no factories building automobiles or baking bread. There were no running sewage treatment plants or functioning city water lines. Much of Europe still ran on hybrid engines, but the gasoline had mostly gone bad. Batteries of all sizes, for use in all of the appliances no longer being built, were like gold. Crews had developed a predictable reaction to wandering singletons: they saw them as mobile refueling depots, rich with desperately needed provisions, and they never hesitated to take what they felt providence had offered.

Nicolai was carrying decent supplies in his pack, but his crossbow was the grand prize that greedy comers would want. Guns were as rare as batteries, and bullets were even rarer. That made a projectile weapon with reusable ammo immeasurably better than gold. So Nicolai hid, knowing that despite his boasts to Val, he could never take on a crew. Sure, he could pick people off from a distance one at a time but never quickly and never in numbers greater than a few. If a crew saw him and came running, he’d be sunk.
 

But once he made it out of the city, things became easier. Without buildings in his way, Nicolai could see farther around him. He moved slowly, watching for approaching groups and vehicles, staying out of obvious sight. He had a tough journey ahead, yes, but he’d made it this far. He could make the English Channel — and if not, he could die trying. Nicolai was tired of this life. The world’s barbarians had adapted to it, but he never truly had. He’d been a chameleon, adopting their behavior and speech in pursuit of the trust, support, and protection required for survival, but deep down he’d never really stopped being the quiet, thoughtful boy in a classroom from a forever before the chaos, eyes and hair dark, giving life to the stereotype of the brooding individualist. The artist. The man who’d grow up tall, dark, and handsome. The kind of man that people would whisper about, wondering what gave breath to his soul. The kind of man about whom people would say, “Still waters run deep.”
 

Nicolai was tired of killing. He was tired of being afraid then hiding his fear. He was tired of setting morality aside for survival. This latest wasn’t the first rape raid he’d ruined, and he didn’t have a perfect record of stopping bad things from happening by a long shot. He’d seen plenty, and he’d done plenty. The blood on his hands would, he thought, haunt him forever. He couldn’t take much more. If he was taken down by a Rake Squad on his way to the Channel, so be it. If he had to starve, so be it. He wasn’t meant to be a barbarian. He was meant to be something else. Something more.
 

He found a car that looked like it might be able to take him a few hundred miles if he could find gas or power (highly unlikely, but he’d been lucky before) and crouched behind it to fish his battered Doodad from his pack. He’d found the thing over two years ago. At first, he’d assumed it was dead (there was no way anymore to charge them, after all), but it had sparked to life the moment he’d touched the power button. A full year later, the device still worked. Nicolai tried to conserve its power because it couldn’t last forever, but although he only used it for seconds at a time, it should still have died long ago. And yet it hadn’t.

The screen lit, and Nicolai exhaled. Looking down, he said, “Thank God, you magic little box, you.”