Our Home is Nowhere (The Borrowed Land, Book 1) (14 page)

‘Is he the leader?’

‘There is no leader. We’ve seen what power can do to people. We all try to stay on equal footing. To tell the truth, I don’t know how much longer we can last down here. I keep telling Faith that we should leave the sewers, head somewhere north that isn’t as affected. In our group we’ve got farmers who know how to work the land, carpenters who could teach us how to build houses.’ Dan looked down at his feet, his eyes trailing the sewer floor. ‘They say they want to wait until it all blows over, like they’ve become so accustomed to being down here that they’re afraid of leaving. This was never supposed to be a permanent measure.’

At the sewer exit, moonlight slotted in through the gutter, falling on the ground in a silver rectangle. Joe mounted the rope ladder. Just before he left, Dan asked, ‘How’s Zeb been doing since the accident?’

Joe paused halfway up the ladder. ‘What accident?’

Dan’s eyebrows furrowed as he slung Joe’s backpack off his shoulder and shoved the pistol into its main pocket. ‘When his brother died. The entire bridge collapsed.’

Joe took the backpack from Dan and pushed it out of the sewer into the alleyway. ‘Zeb never told me about any accident.’

‘Oh. Well, it’s not something I’d want to talk about either if it happened to me. I’d tell you to let him know that Daniel said hi, but you never met me, remember? Have a good night.’ Dan retreated into the darkness of the sewers, and soon the barely audible patter of his feet vanished.

Joe squeezed out through the gutter, rolling onto his back in the alleyway beside his bag. He lay there for several minutes watching the black sky churn between the skyscrapers, his mind reeling with his discovery. He understood the logic behind Ronald’s and Faith’s seclusion: in the sewers, they were more or less the masters of their fate; they could live
untouched by Slummers and gangs and poverty. But they were missing out on the world, on living, no matter how brutal it had become. Joe understood the desire to escape violence and war, but he wasn’t prepared to give up altogether. The human race might be doomed, as Ronald claimed, but Joe wasn’t going to sit idly by and watch its demise.

22

The night before last, Joe had met Dan at the gutter to pick up the list of supplies he needed to deliver on their next meeting. Dan seemed to enjoy the company of someone other than his usual crew. He told Joe he used to live across the river—the ruins of his old home could be seen from Zeb’s shop. Joe figured Dan must have been a bachelor before moving underground. He never mentioned any kids or a wife, before or after the war. He sensed restlessness in Dan—a desire to live above the ground again, even if it had to be among the Slummers and gangs.

As Joe walked back to Zeb’s from lunch, he pulled the list from his pocket and looked over the words scrawled on the creased paper: Band-Aids, flour, bacon, hammer, rope. He read through the list several times, trying to think where he could find the items. The rope and hammer could be scavenged, but the bacon and flour would be difficult. If the market did sell bacon, it would likely be sold out within the hour. An entrepreneur had set up a makeshift pharmacy on the bottom floor of his apartment building that he could check for Band-Aids. The quality wouldn’t be top-notch, but it would at least be something.

Joe folded up the list and stuffed it into his back pocket. He checked his jacket pocket, felt the indention of Zeb’s new pack of cigarettes that he’d picked up for him. He was up to a pack and a half a day now, creating a constant haze of smoke that lingered inside the shop and had worked its way outside onto the deck where it never seemed to dissipate.

Joe reached the sidewalk that ran along the banks of the river. He looked out over the expanse of water at the dilapidated bridge, vaguely aware of a car cruising unobtrusively behind him, recalling what Dan had said about Zeb’s brother. But when the car didn’t overtake him, Joe began to get nervous. He walked a little faster, wishing he hadn’t left his pistol at the shop two blocks up. The car continued its slow pace, making sure to stay behind Joe. He glanced over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of a red truck. Suddenly, its driver mashed down on the gas pedal, spinning the tires and flinging dirt into the air, and charged forward. Joe lunged behind a streetlight just as the truck mounted the sidewalk where he had been before swinging haphazardly into the side of a skyscraper.

Joe spun. The faces of both rapists stared at him through the windshield, blurred like two horrific oil paintings. They fumbled with the door handles and tumbled out of the truck. The one with the knee brace pulled a large rusted Bowie knife from his thigh holster while the other grabbed the tire iron—the one Joe had used on them—from the truck’s bed.

‘Told ya that was the little shit,’ one of them cursed.

Joe took off along the sidewalk, weaving between broken kiosks and shattered beer bottles. The men screamed threats behind him. The one with the knee brace couldn’t keep up, his club foot swinging back and forth, back and forth; the other man was faster than he looked, and the gap between him and Joe closed with every step.

At last Joe reached the shop. Skidding onto the walkway, almost tripping on the loose sand, Joe ran past the chain-link fence and barreled through the shop’s front door. Just when he crossed the threshold, pain erupted through his chest as the tire iron dug
in between his shoulders. He toppled over and sprawled onto his stomach, hitting his head on the floor. Then he was flipped around onto his back, the pain searing through him. The rapist stood over him, shafts of light filtering from under his armpits and through his tattered shirt. With his fuzzy vision, Joe noticed the shaved spot on the man’s head, the scraggly black twine stitched into his flesh.

Pain shifted from Joe’s back and filled his mouth as the man’s knuckles cracked against his jaw. Blinded by fear, he grabbed his assailant by the collar and tried to push him away. But the attempt was met with a twisted laugh and a quick jab to the stomach. Joe heaved, tasting for the first time sticky blood on his lips.
Is this how I’m going to die? On the floor of an auto shop, murdered by rapists.
An image of his weeping mom flashed through his mind.

The door creaked open and the rapist with the Bowie knife hobbled inside. ‘Lemme have a go at the sonofabitch,’ he growled.

The pressure on Joe’s windpipe lessened as a knee was lifted from his chest. He peeled his eyes open and saw the knee brace next to his head, the Bowie knife hovering a couple inches from his face. ‘I ain’t never gonna walk right ’cause o’you. Lemme tell you what: I’m gonna cut your throat nice’n’slow. See how well you do with a hole in your neck.’

‘Don’t kill him too quick,’ said the other man. ‘I ain’t done with him yet.’

Then, from the far corner of the room, a pump-action shotgun was cocked. ‘I think you’re done with him.’

Joe tilted his head painfully to the side. Zeb stood calmly behind the counter, the shotgun aimed directly at the rapists. The fan chugged above him, throwing black shadows over his face at intervals.

‘This’s got nothin’ to do with you,’ snarled the one wearing the knee brace. The knife remained poised over Joe’s face.

‘When you try to kill someone in my shop, it becomes my business. Besides, I happen to like that kid. Now get the hell outta here, or would you like to see how well you do with a hole in your head?’

‘Do you have any idea who we are?’ the other man asked. ‘When we come back we won’t just be comin’ for him. Let us leave with the boy right now and this will all be over.’

‘That’s
not gonna happen.’

The man who was stooped over Joe roared and spewed spit into the air. The knife trembled almost uncontrollably over Joe’s face. His partner sensed his friend’s volatility and took him by the arm, hoisting him up. ‘C’mon. It’s not worth it. Not yet.’ He pushed open the front door and light flooded in. The rapist with the knee brace ambled outside, spitting and cursing, his hand still shaking as if he were having a seizure.

Just as the other man was leaving, he said to Zeb, ‘You must like this kid an awful lot. We’re gonna come back and we’re gonna kill you both. If you hide, we’ll tear this city apart lookin’ for you.’

The door slammed shut and the men’s voices jostled together out to the sidewalk,
then vanished as they made their way back to the truck.

Zeb dead-bolted the front door and, setting the shotgun to one side, kneeled down beside Joe. He put a hand under his head and lifted it up to get a better look.

‘Thanks,’ Joe said and attempted a smile through his blood-coated lips.

‘Don’t thank me yet. I’m gonna regret not killing them later.’

Joe winced as Zeb pressed on the bruises forming over his eye and jaw. ‘Nothing’s broken. Luckily.’

He grabbed Joe’s arm and helped him to his feet; he was light-headed and wobbly with adrenaline. Putting a hand on the wall for support, Joe took several deep breaths, each more painful than the last, and wandered over to the sink to wash off the blood. Zeb began stuffing supplies into a duffle bag.

‘We’re gonna have to stay at your place for a while,’ Zeb said. ‘The shop’s done.’

Joe rinsed his mouth with water. He’d bitten a deep gash into his tongue that he examined in the mirror. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said after spitting out a mouthful of bloody water.

They both loaded the boxes full of tools into the truck bed as quickly as possible. Joe grabbed his backpack and shoved the pistol in his belt. ‘You can follow me,’ he said, mounting his motorcycle.

Zeb, tying a tarp down over the boxes, looked up at him. ‘We should only take one vehicle. My truck makes the most sense.’

‘I can’t leave my bike for them to destroy!’

Zeb paused for a moment. But when he opened his mouth to speak, Joe cut him off: ‘It was my dad’s bike. I won’t leave it.’

Zeb finished tying down the tarp and jumped off the truck’s bed. He made a quick inspection to make sure the tarp would hold, before pausing a moment to take what he knew was a last look at his shop.

Joe, seated on his bike, looked from Zeb to the shop, weighed down by guilt. If he’d just driven past that rest stop, none of this would have happened. The woman died anyway, so what did he accomplish with his heroics? Thinking back, he couldn’t even recall why he’d stopped there in the first place. The problem, Joe thought, was that he’d only halfway dealt with the situation. He should have either killed them both, or left well enough alone. He didn’t finish the job, and it had come back to bite him in the ass.

But Zeb allowed him no more time for regrets. ‘Let’s get the hell outta here,’ he said.

.........

Joe leaned against the wall beside the window, fidgeting with the pistol, peering through the closed blinds at the Slummers and members of the Arm wandering past on the sidewalk. He had a good view of the alley leading to the Guttermen’s sewer entrance and wished he could leave a message for them, explain he was now on the lam, and that showing his face in daylight would be suicide. For the third time, he checked the pistol’s chamber and switched the safety from on to off. Zeb sat on the edge of the bed with the shotgun draped over his knees. ‘Doing that won’t make more bullets magically appear. It’s not a lamp.’

‘What time is it?’

Zeb checked his watch. ‘Seven ten. Gonna get dark in an hour. Then they’ll be looking for us.’

Joe shifted his position against the wall and sighed, watching the sun fall behind a skyscraper through a slit in the blinds. ‘You think they’re gonna look for us all night?’

‘Probably.’ Zeb ran a hand over the barrel of his shotgun. ‘Fellas like that can’t exactly be reasoned with.’

‘Did you have a brother?’ Joe asked, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he could stop them.

Zeb stopped polishing the shotgun’s barrel and glanced up at him. ‘Why?’

‘Someone said something about your brother, but I’ve never heard you mention him.’

‘He died,’ Zeb said simply, and went back to working on his shotgun.

Joe returned to the window and watched a skinny, shirtless man chase a male Slummer from the alleyway a few blocks down, slashing at his back with a chain, eventually bringing him to the ground in the middle of the street where someone else bludgeoned him with a fist wrapped in barbed wire.

It was when night fell that the rioting began. The skyscraper opposite Joe’s building erupted into life. Bullets and rocks shattered its windows, then a carpet of flame crept along its walls and up each story. Fire gushed from random spots in the building, and soon, every building was alight. Slummers, some aflame, leapt from the burning skyscrapers, screeching as they tumbled through the air, colliding with the streets in a fiery mass of blood, bone, and cinder. Gunshots ate away at the night. Two men scaled the nearby lampposts and bashed in the bulbs, throwing the street in to almost pure darkness. After that, the only time Joe could get a good view of anything was when a gun went off, illuminating the darkness with a flash of yellow light.

He heard the door to his building open and slam shut. Shouts of men out for blood followed. Joe backed away from the window and stood in the center of the room, listening to them running along the floor below, checking the rooms and dragging out anyone unlucky enough to be found. They were going to reach his room in a matter of minutes.

‘Help me block the door,’ Joe said, grabbing the side of the moldy fridge with both hands and scraping it across the carpet. Zeb pushed it from the back, coughing through the clouds of dust that lifted with it. With a monumental crash, the fridge toppled over in front of the door.

‘Well, if they didn’t know we were here already…’ Zeb said, picking up his shotgun and setting it on top of the fridge.

Joe stuffed all his belongings in his backpack, then slung it on, buckling the strap across his chest. Zeb lit a cigarette as they waited.

Shouts rang out along the hallway and Joe ran a thumb nervously over the ridged pistol stock, listening to them scavenging in nearby rooms, throwing doors wide. A woman screamed, chilling Joe’s blood. He took a step towards the door when she screamed again. Zeb held a hand out and shook his head. ‘It’s too late,’ he whispered. The woman’s screams grew fainter as someone dragged her away.

Someone else was still out there, stalking the hall, carefully stepping over broken glass, unsatisfied with their female haul. Joe heard him try the door across the hall. A few seconds later, their door knob jiggled.

Everything was silent except for Zeb’s deep draw on the cigarette. The knob jiggled again, this time with more force; then someone shoulder-charged the door, buckling its center inward. Joe leveled the pistol at the door, wondering if the bullet would go through the wood. He jerked back, his finger fumbling over the trigger, as the sharp edge of an axe sliced through the door directly where he was aiming.

The axe head was wrenched out of the splintered gash and a bloodshot eye appeared. It ricocheted back and forth from Joe to Zeb, then vanished as its owner screamed down the hallway, ‘I found ’em! I found them bastards! Gettup ’ere quick.’

Zeb flicked his cigarette aside and rushed to the door, the shotgun cradled in the crook of his arm. ‘We’ve gotta get out of here before the whole gang shows up.’

They grabbed the side of the fridge and pulled it a couple feet from the door, creating enough space for both of them to fit through. Joe quickly glanced out into the hallway. It wouldn’t be empty for long.