Positive (9 page)

 

CHAPTER 23

J
ust a little farther on was a massive parking lot, a broad expanse of asphalt that had rippled and buckled under the constant onslaught of weeds but that was still flat enough to host a whole fleet of cars. A ­couple dozen of them were gathered there, and these were clearly the vehicles of other looters.

Some were SUVs, pickup trucks, or military vehicles repainted black or red, with flames on their hoods and laughing skulls on their doors. A few were more outlandish contraptions, wildly curved and tail-­finned cruisers, jalopies with exposed engines and bright upholstery. A whole row of the lot was taken up with motorcycles, which Adare told me only the insane would ride through the wilderness.

“There's a lot of them, though,” I pointed out.

“I didn't say insanity was rare among looters,” he replied, with a hearty laugh.

Most of the vehicles were what Adare called “uparmored,” though the modifications were meant to be equally offensive as defensive. Like Adare's SUV, many of them had barbed wire strung around their windows or doors, to keep zombies from trying to crawl inside. Some sported hubcaps with welded-­on spikes to slash an enemy's tires, or thick steel snowplow blades bolted to their front bumpers so they could ram their way through obstacles. Some of the pickups had machine guns mounted in their beds. I saw one SUV with a full turret mounted on its roof, with a little seat where a child-­sized gunner could sit and fire in any direction.

“Most of that shit's for show,” Adare told me. “In a real fight, look at that—­you see those wheel spikes? Who'd be stupid enough to let that guy get close enough to slash your tires? And all the time they waste on those paint jobs, just to look scary.” He spat in the gravel. “Like zombies get scared.”

The owners of these vehicles were milling about the cars, some repairing damage or tuning engines that roared and belched exhaust, some just standing close to oil drum fires and sharing bottles. They were as varied and as bizarre in appearance as their cars. The men wore either tactical vests and black baseball caps over mirrored sunglasses or expensive suits with immaculate ties and pocket squares. The women were decked out in furs and evening gowns or military uniforms with the insignia ripped off. Both sexes wore piles of flashy if broken jewelry—­wristwatches that had stopped working years before, rings that had lost half their stones, diamond earrings, cloisonné brooches, ruby tie studs. It occurred to me that I knew exactly where they'd gotten all these flashy things. The same places I'd found half-­empty liquor bottles and expired pills. The wealth of an entire continent, all its most gaudy and lavish treasures, lay open to these ­people who were willing to risk the zombies to take what they desired. And apparently what they desired was to wear ridiculous clothes.

“No dress code in the looter camps,” was Adare's opinion on that.

I was to learn he was rare in his relatively mundane appearance. He favored comfortable clothes, because, he said, he had nothing to prove. The other looters preferred to dress up in these outfits as a way of displaying how daring they were, what risks they were willing to take just to look good. “You know what a peacock is?” he asked me.

“No.”

He grunted in frustration. I knew that grunt—­it was a first-­generation grunt, meant to imply that second-­generation kids didn't know a damned thing. Which really just meant we didn't know anything about how they used to live their lives before the crisis. “They were these birds. Used to see them in zoos. You know what a zoo is? Fuck, don't answer that. These birds grew huge long tails, bright blue and purple and green, gorgeous things, but it made it impossible for them to fly. They gave that up for the fancy colors.”

“Why would a bird choose not to fly?” I asked, not understanding where he was going with this.

“For the same reason anybody does anything. To get laid.” A wide smile split his face, but then he relented with a shrug. “Or to, you know. Get attention. Get noticed. The problem is, one guy, maybe one day he shows up in a bright purple shirt and everybody oohs and ahs and think he's hot shit. But he comes back the next day and
every
body's wearing a purple shirt. So he doesn't stand out anymore. He needs a fancy hat to bring to the party. It never ends.”

I shook my head. Someone like me, someone from New York City, would never understand the way fashion works, I decided.

“Ignore 'em, anyway. I don't want you getting mixed up in that crowd. One of them's likely to try to steal you away from me, Stones.”

It sounded fine to me. I wanted nothing to do with these ­people. He drove the car past the crowd, barely acknowledging all the waves and shouts he elicited. His next destination was a big concrete building on the edge of the lot.

About halfway there, my eyes went wide and I had to drop down in my seat, suddenly very anxious
not
to be noticed by the crowd. Adare looked at me funny, but I didn't dare show myself.

I'd seen, among the crowd, one face I'll never forget. I'd seen the woman who ambushed me at the end of the George Washington Bridge. The woman I'd cut with her own knife, the knife I still had in my belt.

I really, really didn't want her to see me there.

 

CHAPTER 24

A
dare parked the car outside the large concrete building, and we all piled out of the SUV. I was at least glad for the opportunity to stretch my legs. We had to completely unload the vehicle—­Adare told me that anything left inside would be stolen by the time we returned in the morning—­and then we all headed inside. The building's interior was stained with smoke, and every possible surface was covered in graffiti. I think it was some kind of office building once, but the looters had turned it into a hostel. He took us up the stairs to a metal door, which he hammered on with one fist. The man who answered was bleary eyed and half dressed, as if he'd been asleep when we showed up. He had tattoos all up and down both arms and a piece of jagged metal shoved through the septum of his nose. His back was ridged with muscle, and he looked pretty dangerous.

He was about a foot shorter than Adare, though, and perhaps half of Adare's weight.

“Adare?” he asked, blinking his eyes.

“This is my spot,” Adare told him.

“What? But I just got here,” the man said.

Adare sighed as if he regretted what was about to happen. Then he wrapped an arm around the man's neck and dragged him through the doorway and over to the top of the stairs. “You want to go down headfirst or feetfirst?” he asked.

“No, no, it's not like that,” the man said. “That spot, it's all yours!”

“Like I said. You got any crap in there you need to clear out? Got a girl in for the night?”

“No, no,” the man replied. “I was just leaving. All packed and everything!”

“Good.”

Adare let him go then, shirtless and with his pants unbuttoned. I must have looked confused, because Kylie whispered to me, “They're all afraid of Adare. He's like a legend around here. He doesn't start fights often, but he ends fights all the time.” It sounded like another slogan that she'd memorized.

Adare pushed open the metal door and led us all inside. Beyond lay a pair of rooms near the back of the building, tiny, cramped spaces full of ancient metal filing cabinets. Mattresses without sheets lay on the floor, and it was clear this was where we were going to sleep. The only light in the room came from a single kerosene lantern that guttered low as if it were nearly out of fuel. Next to it lay the previous tenant's abandoned shirt and a half-­empty can of beans.

“Stones, I'm counting on you to keep my girls safe,” Adare told me, and he put one finger along the side of his nose in a gesture he clearly thought I would understand. I didn't. “I'll be in the next room. If there's real trouble, just holler.”

“Is that likely?” I asked.

“No. But with this crowd, you never know. Not a lot of rule followers, right? Not a one of 'em is like us. You got that knife. You'll be fine.”

I expected him to leave then, but instead he just leaned against the doorframe. The girls laid down their various burdens—­the loot we'd taken from the suburban houses, the water supply, the various gear and tools and weapons from the SUV—­and sank wearily onto the mattresses. None of them looked up or made eye contact with either me or Adare. Kylie went in one corner and squatted down with the youngest of the girls, whose name I'd learned was Addison. She sat in such a way to block Addison from Adare's view.

“Heather,” Adare said.

Heather was maybe thirteen years old, and very skinny. She had hair that might have been red if it was clean. She flinched as if she'd been struck when he called her name, but she didn't protest as he held out his hand toward her. She just went with him, not so much as glancing back.

I closed the door behind them and looked over at Kylie. “What does he want with her?” I asked. “Somebody to wash his clothes, make his food, something like that?”

I was not, of course, that naive. I was merely hopeful.

Kylie looked up at me, but her eyes were blank.

The walls of the office building were quite thin. It was soon obvious what Adare was doing to Heather in the next room over. I don't want to dwell on this. It sickens me just remembering it. But I won't pretend that life in the wilderness was different from how it was.

I crouched down in the corner farthest from the separating wall, though I could still hear everything regardless of the distance. I tried to eat a little something—­we had a bag full of smoked meat and some cans of cut corn—­but I couldn't seem to choke anything down.

“Just—­just pretend it's something else,” I told the girls. “Pretend he's doing exercises in there, or something.”

They looked at me with utter disdain. They were, of course, old hands at this. They'd been listening to those sounds every night since Adare acquired them. There was no doubt in my mind that they all took turns going with him when the day was over, and that they knew exactly what Heather was experiencing in the next room.

“I'm sorry,” I told them. I may have said other things. I may have tried to justify why I was just sitting there, doing nothing. I don't know. Like I said, I don't want to remember this too clearly.

Eventually the kerosene lantern burned out. A trace of moonlight came through the room's single small window. The sounds from the next room had stopped by then. I dozed off, but only for a few minutes.

When I woke with a snort, I looked around, for a moment forgetful of where I was. I saw the gleam of an eye staring at me and saw Addison watching me, watching me like a tiger or a feral dog she'd been locked up with. I tried to smile at her, but she didn't respond. I needed to pee, so I slowly stood up and moved toward the door. It was then I noticed something was missing.

Kylie wasn't in the room. The little window was open, lifted just far enough to let someone her size climb out.

If Adare found out she had run away on my watch, I knew I'd be in serious trouble. I depended on him for everything. I went over to Addison and questioned her, not so gently. She told me nothing.

I went to the window and stared out. There was no sign of Kylie, of course, just the parking lot lit by trash-­can fires and in the distance, the looming white shapes of the tanks.

I wasn't sure what to do. I had to go out and find Kylie. I looked around at the sleeping girls. I couldn't leave them unprotected. Grunting a little, I moved a ­couple filing cabinets in front of the door so no one could break in without some trouble. Then I went over to the window and looked out. I saw plenty of ledges and windowsills below me. Kylie could have easily climbed down, and I figured I could as well. I nearly slipped as I headed down the side of the building. I managed to catch a handhold just in time as my heart raced and my lungs panted for breath. In the end I reached the ground without killing myself.

Where to go next was a big question. I figured Kylie wouldn't have gone over to where the last of the looters was partying in the lot—­alone and without weapons she would have been in real danger there. So I turned instead and headed into the dark, toward a line of high tanks at the edge of the camp.

As I approached them, I saw the silhouette of a slender person perched on top of one of the tanks. It had to be Kylie. I expected her to duck down or run away when she saw me, but she didn't.

She didn't wave or give me any other sign that she wanted to see me, but I didn't expect anything like that from her. A narrow stairway led up around the side of the tank, curving around its massive shape. I hurried up toward her, even though the rusting steps creaked and threatened to give way under my weight. At the top, in the cool night air, I could hear the whole tank singing, a high-­pitched wailing and popping and moaning as the metal corroded beneath me. A single note constantly changing in pitch, distinctly unnerving. As I headed along the catwalk to where Kylie sat. I sat down next to her. She didn't react at all to my presence.

“Are you running away? I wouldn't blame you. Listen, I had no idea that he was using you like this. That he was—­”

I couldn't finish the thought.

“He's a man. We're girls. What part of this surprises you?” she asked. Like a man keeping a harem of underage girls was the most natural thing in the world. This was the wilderness, her tone said. Such things were to be expected.

“I'm not running away,” she said. “I just came out here to be by myself for a while,” she told me.

“Oh,” I said.

“How far could I get on foot? You're an idiot.”

“Yeah,” I said, because I couldn't think of anything else. “Listen. I'm going to Ohio. There's a medical camp there, for ­people like us. I'm not going to live like this.”

There was no response. I might have been talking to the moon.

“Come with me. You're a positive, like me. They'll take care of us there.”

She said nothing.

“Damn it,” I said, nearly shouting. “How can you just accept all this? How can you pretend like this is normal?”

She turned to look at me then, and for the first time I heard real emotion in her voice.

“Are you going to save me, Finnegan? Is that why you left New York? To save me? Or do you just want to fuck me?”

“What?”

“You're a man. That's what men do.” The smile was gone, and with it, her voice fell back into its old flat monotone. “Well, I'm sorry. But I'm spoken for.”