The Coalition: Part II The Lord Of The Living (COALITON OF THE LIVING Book 2) (13 page)

It only took them a few minutes to make their way to the base of the Trust Building. It
towered high above them—taller than any other building in town. Sometimes Cutter and the others had to stop and stare up at it, wondering if men would ever again construct such things. Or wondering even if these existing skyscrapers could be saved from the dissolution that was destroying everything else.

“Look!” Jean grabbed Ron’s shoulder and was pointing off to the east. Familiar tendrils of smoke were
rising high into the still chilly sky, the warmer air of fires taking the dark towers of soot high and straight into the Carolina blue vastness.

“The last of the old neighborhoods,” Ron said. “I think they called it ‘Dilworth’,” he told her.

Over the previous three weeks, the fires that had been slowly consuming the old communities around the city center had increased in number and frequency. Ron had lost almost all of his old safe houses in the conflagrations. But he was at last convinced that it was the Colonel and his lot who were at the base of the fires, although he’d never once seen how they’d been started or who any of the arsonists had been. It just had the Colonel’s fingerprints all over it. Jean and Oliver agreed with him, and over the days, his suspicions of the foreigner and his people had grown among all three of them.

“We need to get some answers once and for all,” he said. Jean and Ron had discussed going to what appeared to be the Colonel’s headquarters in the makeshift hospital. But they had decided not to put themselves in harm’s way, amidst so many people who might not have their best interests at heart.

And so, now, this seemed to be the best solution---catching the Colonel and his men at large, even if they were outnumbered by more than three-to-one. It was still something that seemed less dangerous.

On the wind they could smell smoke. But the fires were always so well constructed that there had never been a threat that they would spread into the city. Backfires always flared up and burned out the fuel needed to reach the city proper. Even the outskirts of the flames never went beyond a great rough path that had come now to encircle the downtown area like a great collar of carbon. For now
, they were not worried that the flames could threaten them. And for now, Ron was not afraid of the Colonel and his men. He’d never known them to kill the living, and the city was definitely a safer place since the man’s influence and practices had grown. He just wanted some freaking answers, and he was going to get them. Now.

At the base of the Trust Building, at that solid steel door that so resembled the one that led up to his own redoubt, he saw a pair of heavily armed men standing. They were obviously guarding that door, but were not standing at attention, and did not seem to be at all tense or anxious. The guys were about as relaxed as any people he had seen on the dead streets of Charlotte.

“To Hell with it,” Ron said. “I’m just going to walk out there and talk to them. Y’all come with me,” he told his little family. He was taking a certain chance, he knew, but these men, despite their guns and personal armor, did not give off any of the vibes that had warned him away from other men over the months since the dead had come to replace the living.

He called out to the pair as he and the others came out of the shadows. One of the men tapped the other on the shoulder and they stood, stiffening just a little, but then relaxed again as they saw Ron and the others as a family unit. Drawing close, Ron could make out the two and saw that it was not two men, but rather two women very well dressed against possible attack by the dead. Like everyone these days, they wore clothing in layers to protect against possible bite wounds. Their bodies bristled with weaponry; firearms and bludgeons and blades. Both carried AK47s which remained at their backs. Their hands, however relaxed, still managed to hover over holsters that
held pistols—a .38 on the hip of the smaller of the two women—a redhead he saw as he drew up to her, and a 9mm Glock on the belt of the heavier woman, whose raven hair which was cut very short stuck out from beneath her baseball cap. ‘Charlotte Knights’ it read on a tattered patch on the front.

Before he could say anything else, the brunette woman spoke to him.

“You’re Ron Cutter,” she said.

Neither Cutter nor Jean could hide the surprise at the words.

“The Colonel told us you might show up,” the smaller woman said, her voice high and very much like the girl they could see she was now that they were close to her. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen years old, at the oldest.

“I…we need to speak to him,” Ron said.

And with that, the larger, heavier woman reached out and rapped on the door she was guarding. It opened without a sound to reveal an armed man standing just inside.

“They want to go up,” the brunette said.
“To talk to the Colonel.”

“OK, then,” came the reply from the hulk-like figure standing in the doorway. He was dark-skinned, a hue almost ebony. He was, in fact, the blackest man Ron had ever seen. “Come on in and go up the stairs.” He smiled. “You’re going to be climbing thirty floors. And the staircase is really steep. I’m not an engineer, so I can’t say why they made the damned thing that way. You’ll bust a lung going up, if you don’t pace yourself.”

Jean and Ron just looked at one another, then shrugged. No one asked for their weapons. No one asked for any of their party to wait behind. The man at the door just motioned for them to come inside, and they did just that.

The black guy at the bottom of the stairs nodded politely to them and they began to climb.

**

“I haven’t done anything this stupid since the last day,” Ron said. He stopped at the landing on what they saw was the 16
th
Floor.

“And what stupid thing was that?” Jean asked.

Oliver just looked up at the man who had become his father. He couldn’t imagine him having done anything stupid. He had long since grown to love both Ron and Jean and could not think of them in critical terms.

“The day things finally fell apart.
When the dead overwhelmed us.” They stood together on the small square of concrete and steel, peering up the impossibly steep staircase. The place was well lit with fluorescent lighting. They could feel cool air all around them and realized that the place was air conditioned. Oliver had already mentioned as much.

“I had been trying to get my wife and daughter to be with me,” he continued. “You both know I’ve talked about that before. But she had started divorce proceedings months before and…she wouldn’t discuss it. She believed it when the government said they were going to put things right and protect everyone.” He sighed. “Anyway…that last day, when the office was overrun and the streets were full of
deaders…I decided to go there, to rescue them.”

“A lot of people did stuff like that,” Oliver reminded him. “That wasn’t so dumb.”

“Yeah, but I did some crazy shit. I had bought my daughter a teddy bear. Her birthday was coming up. I was so stupid that I went back to my apartment and grabbed it and took the damned thing with me across town. I almost got myself killed taking that stupid toy to give to my little girl.” He looked off into space, thinking of her, that small nose like his mother’s, her big eyes and brown hair like his.

“They weren’t there, though, were they?” Oliver
asked.

“No. They weren’t. The door was unlocked. The car wa
sn’t gone. No gas in it. But they weren’t in the house. For some reason, I thought that they might come back so I locked the door behind me and holed up there for a couple of days waiting for them. But they never came back. Last thing I did was put that damned Teddy bear on the kitchen table and close up the house behind me. Just in case my little girl did come back with her mom. At least they’d know that I had been there.”

Ron stared up the stairwell again. He could hear the muffled sound of footsteps and voices from above them.

“Let’s keep climbing,” Jean said, anxious to break the moment.

Several minutes later
, they arrived at the 30
th
Floor.  Another guard was at that landing waiting for them, a small two-way radio in his gloved fist. He spoke into it. A simple “They’re here.” And then he smiled at them.

“They’re waiting for you,” he said, his face looking not unlike some of the surfer types Ron had met on a trip to California years before. His features were young and unmarked, his skin ruddy, hair blond where it showed beneath his helmet. The kid was wearing a bright yellow climbing helmet, and Ron wished he had one just like it.

And without another word, the kid opened the door for them and the trio walked onto the 30
th
Floor of the Trust Building.

“Damn,” Oliver said.

“Good God,” Jean added.

The place w
as well lit, not just by the sunlight streaming in through the big windows that were in every office, but by the electric lights that were illuminating even the most isolated corners. Floors were covered in carpeting; walls were bright and painted; the rooms were filled with furniture unmarked by the passing of time or the creep of moisture that had not been allowed to enter the place.

“It looks the way things used to look,” Oliver said.

“They have electric power,” Ron muttered. “How in the hell?”

Suddenly, his
steps muffled by the carpeting, Colonel Alastair Dale was striding toward them from the far end of the hallway. His hand was out long before he got to them and he took their hands, one after the other, in succession.

“Good to see you, Ron.” The Colonel introduced himself to Jean, whom he had never met. And he bent at the waist like a gentleman to address Oliver. “And you, too, Oliver. It’s been a while.”

“Yessir,” Oliver replied. “A long time.”

“Well, then,” he said to them all. “Let’s go sit down and have an early lunch. I know you have some questions.”

So Ron, Jean, and their adopted son followed the soldier down the hall until they came to a makeshift dining room. Seated at a long table of polished mahogany was the rest of the armed crew they had seen moving efficiently down the street that morning. They were a mix of men and women, young and old, of three races, at least. They were sitting, relaxing, eating food Ron had thought he might never see again.

The smells met them at the door.

“Is that steak?” Jean asked.

“Are those fresh vegetables?” Oliver was wide-eyed at what he was seeing.

“Yes, that’s steak, and no those are not fresh vegetables, but frozen. We do have fresh vegetables now and again, but those are frozen, I’m afraid.” The Colonel ushered them in as the people inside stood and spoke up. Time passed as they were all introduced, one to the other.

When, at last, Ron could speak, the first thing he asked was about the frozen food. “How do you keep frozen food? That…well, that would take a huge generating capacity. Something far beyond what I’ve seen people do around here.” He looked up, feeling the push of co
oled air on his head and face. He could scarcely believe what he was experiencing.

“Well, it’s this building only,” the Colonel admitted. “This place has quite the diesel generator.
Powers everything that’s needed here. Lights. Air conditioning. Freezers. As long as the diesel holds out, this place remains fully powered. And there’s enough diesel to keep the system running for at least another six months.” He indicated that they should take their seats. “And we’re hoping it won’t take that long, at all. Maybe another few weeks, at most. Then we can make use of the fuel for other things,” he added.

One of the women with the Colonel put plates overflowing with food before Ron and his company. There were generous steaks, home fries, green beans, baby corn, and yeast rolls with melted butter. “I’m sorry there’s no variety, but we’re all having the same thing,” the Colonel said with barely a jot of sarcasm.

“My God,” Ron said. The three of them dug in, all but shoveling the food into their faces. As they savored the flavors, they turned to one another from time to time, their eyes locking. Oliver was grinning from ear to ear between bites of steak and vegetables. The boy was so intent on consuming the food that he never even noticed that there were bottles of catsup and steak sauce sitting on the table in front of him.

Despite his best intentions to remain aloof about what he was witnessing, Ron could not stop himself from digging into the meal. He sliced the meat and savored each bite of it. The steaks had all been cooked to medium rare and while that was his preferred method of cooking
, he wasn’t sure if that’s the way Jean and Oliver liked their meat. His eyes glanced their way and he found that it really didn’t matter at all as they both attacked the meals with as much lust as Ron.

As they finished off their plates, Oliver sweeping the china for errant bits of gravy, the three looked up to see the Colonel approaching them. He had a tray in his hands, and on the tray were big dishes of ice cream.

“Motherfucker,” Jean whispered. “It can’t be real.”

“Oh, it’s real,” Dale said, placing the big tray down before them. We only have the basic three, he said. Each bowl was filled with a trio of generous scoops: chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry.

Oliver was first to draw one of the bowls close. He stared down at it for a second, seeing vapor rising in little wisps from the balls of cream. Then he dug at the frosty chocolate and put the spoon in his mouth. There was a moment of silence and then his shoulders began to shake as he cried.