Refugees from the Righteous Horde (Toxic World Book 2) (4 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

The guards gave them back their shoes the next morning. Abe Weissman told Susanna and the other porters it had been for their own safety. They had been part of the Righteous Horde, and while Abe and his friends wanted to help, they had to make sure they wouldn’t try anything.

Susanna wasn’t sure what she and the others would have tried exactly. Attack healthy men and women bearing guns? Susanna wondered if taking their shoes had been to keep them from running away.

Run where?

After breakfast they had another long day of walking toward the mountains. Susanna was able to stay on her feet for a time but soon needed to lie back on the stretcher. At about noon they met another column of New City residents, leading another ragged bunch of former porters. The two columns sat down together for lunch.

A familiar face in the other group made Susanna walk over.

“Donna, good to see you’re alive,” she said.

The woman looked up, sunken black-rimmed eyes sparking in recognition. “Susanna!”

They embraced.

“So these people picked you up too?” Susanna asked, sitting down next to her friend from the porter’s column.

Donna nodded. “Some machete men took our food and we were just wandering around the wildlands not knowing what to do. These people saved our lives.”

Susanna dropped her voice to a whisper. “Yes, but what for?”

Donna whispered back, “Last night they took our shoes.”

“They did the same to us. I think they want to keep us for something.”

The citizens of New City—Susanna couldn’t help but think of them as guards—moved around the group handing out food.

“At least we’re eating,” Donna said.

One of the guards came over to them and handed them each a corn cake and some dried apricots.

“Fruit! How long has it been?” Donna said, tears coming to her eyes.

The guard smiled. “Got to keep your strength up.”

Donna smiled back. Susanna didn’t.

“Why are you helping us?” Susanna asked.

The man’s face grew cautious. Before he could respond Abe’s voice carried over from a few yards away.

“Because we know you aren’t enemies. You were slaves to that madman who dressed himself up like Jesus. We don’t blame you for the attack.”

Susanna looked at him with his gold-wire glasses and his soft hands and his paunch.

“Where are you taking us?” she asked.

“Don’t cause trouble,” Donna whispered.

I was a slave once.
I’m not going to be one again
,
Susanna thought.

Abe strolled over, an easy smile on his lips that wasn’t reflected in his eyes.

“We’re taking you to one of my farms. It’s dangerous to stay out here, as you know. We’ll take you to a place where you’ll be safe and it will be easier to feed you.”

“And then what?” Susanna asked. Donna elbowed her in the ribs.

Abe smiled. “Then I’m going to give you a job.”

Two hours after lunch they made it to the foothills. Susanna managed to walk most of the way. Her body soaked up the nutrients from her modest meal and she was amazed at how much more energy that gave her. She still felt weak and lightheaded, yet she had far more strength than she had even during the march with the Righteous Horde. Then they had been given less food and forced to march with heavy packs for long hours without a break. Those who fell by the wayside were cut to pieces by the machete men. Those who tried to run were shot by the Elect.

Susanna got the feeling that these New City people wouldn’t hurt her, but she didn’t know what to think of them. They seemed to be offering something for nothing. Nobody did that, so obviously they were saving them for their own reasons. For now, at least, she would stay with them. They had food.

It had grown colder and the snowline on the mountains was lower than on the previous day. They came to a tangle of foothills. Cresting a low ridge, they saw a path leading into a gorge between two hills. The ridge hid the path and Susanna didn’t spot it until they were almost upon it.

The gorge took a sharp, blind turn before opening up into a valley about a mile across. Right away Susanna could tell this was a good spot. A broad mountain stream flowed through the center. The valley floor was carpeted with grass, still green even in winter. Shrubs and trees grew plentifully along the stream and here and there across the valley. Further up the slope of a large hill on the side closest to the mountains, tall, healthy trees grew in abundance.

“It’s beautiful!” Susanna cried.

“You like it?” Abe smiled. “It’s been untouched for years and completely unknown to the scavengers. My men stumbled upon it about a year ago. A good place for a new start.”

“I’ve never seen a place like this.”

Abe nodded. “It never got hit by industrialization or toxins as far as I can tell.”

Susanna looked more closely at the surrounding hills and saw watchmen on some of the peaks. As the column continued into the valley they came to a field where a large herd of cows grazed. Beyond that opened up several fields, now fallow for the winter. At the end of the valley, just before the large hill with the trees, stood a small, conical hill with steep sides. At its top stood a log palisade.

Abe swept out his arms wide. “Welcome to your new home, ladies and gentlemen, a little place I like to call Weissberg!”

A winding path took them up to a wooden gate flanked by a pair of guards. They entered the village and saw about twenty newly constructed log buildings clustered to one side. A work crew was busy sawing logs for another building. Much of the interior remained open, with a pigsty in one corner and a large henhouse next to that. In another corner stood a large, well-appointed house with a covered porch. Susanna didn’t need to ask whose house that was.

They were led to a long, low structure with no windows but for two small apertures high up on each end. High enough, Susanna noticed, that it would be hard to climb up to them, and small enough that even as thin as she was she couldn’t squeeze through. The door had a bolt on the outside.

“You’re going to lock us up like prisoners?” Susanna asked.

Abe gave a dismissive laugh. “Not prisoners. Employees on a probationary period. You’re from the army that almost overwhelmed our city.”

Not your city
,
Susanna thought
.
Your city is right here.

The rest of the column trudged dutifully into the barracks. Only a few glanced around nervously. Susanna looked at them with contempt. They were broken, willing to go anywhere and do anything for their next meal. Anything to take away that gnawing hunger. They’d followed The Pure One across hundreds of miles of wildlands, lain exhausted in the cold and the rain. The promise of shelter and a bit of food was all they required to give their total compliance.

And herself? Wasn’t she going along with this too?

What choice did she have?

No choice for now. Once I get my strength back it will be a different story.

She entered the barracks. In the dim light she could see rows of wooden bunk beds, each with a straw mattress and a coarsely woven blanket. A single squat toilet lay open to view in one corner. There were no other furnishings.

“Make yourselves at home,” Abe said. “Dinner will be in the evening. We’ll let you out then so you can stretch your legs. In the meantime leave your shoes outside the door.”

Everyone meekly complied. Susanna ground her teeth and did the same.

Once everyone was inside, the guard shut the door. The wooden bolt clattered into place and they were left alone.

The men and women from the Righteous Horde collapsed into the beds. Many fell asleep in an instant. Susanna picked a bunk just above Donna’s. Her friend was too weak to climb into the upper bunk so she took it.

Susanna sat on her bed and looked at the others. A few wore worried expressions. Most simply sat or lay there dumbly, wrapped in the thin blankets and waiting for their next meal and next set of instructions.

Cattle
,
Susanna thought
.
We’ve become cattle.

She jumped down from the bunk and began to pace. The long day, half of which she had spent on her feet, soon tired her. She leaned against the bunk listening to the snores of her companions and looking up at the square of sunlight streaming through the high window.

OK, Abraham Weissman, I may be a cow, but you’ll find that cows have horns.

CHAPTER FIVE

Annette decided that on her first day as sheriff she’d visit her least favorite person. Actually, her second-least favorite person. Abe Weissman had left some time ago with some of his Merchants Association cronies to check on their farms, which put Fly Daddy Bradley in the number one spot.

Fly Daddy Bradley called himself a pimp, a word that Annette had otherwise only heard in old books and movies. He kept the only whorehouse in the Burbs, a large Quonset hut on the edge of town that usually had six to ten women working in it. She was tempted to send Frank or Jackson to do this but that might be seen as weak, so instead she endured some male snickering from across the street as she walked up to the building and knocked on the front door.

A sleepy-eyed teenager answered. Annette caught a whiff of rosewater and stale beer.

“I’d like to see Mr. Bradley, please.”

“Fly Daddy’s having breakfast,” the girl said, rubbing her eyes and giving Annette a bored expression.

“Do I care?” Annette asked.

The girl shrugged and led her down a narrow hallway past a series of doors. One was open and Annette glanced in. A double bed nearly filled the small cubicle. A half-dressed woman sat at the edge lighting a pipe. Annette hurried to catch up to the girl, who was just opening a door at the end.

Annette wasn’t surprised to see that Fly Daddy’s office was also his bedroom. A bed covered with rumpled sheets of red silk stood in one corner. A couple of lounge chairs and a clawfoot bathtub took up the other side of the room. A large table of carved wood stood at the center. Quite a collection of luxuries from the Old Times. Annette tried to figure out how much all this stuff would cost in trade and couldn’t. On the table a couple of plates were heaped with scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast.

Fly Daddy Bradley was the fattest man in the Burbs. While there wasn’t much competition, he was fat even compared with the people she saw in pictures from the Old Times. A heavyset frame swelled grossly at the middle into a blob of flesh that pushed against his purple silk pajamas and curled around the ridiculously small wicker chair that he had for some reason chosen for himself. Stubby hands groped for toast to swirl around bacon grease before popping into a wide mouth on a sweaty face. Beady eyes studied Annette. Fly Daddy didn’t say hello and didn’t stop eating.

“Yes, I’d love to sit down, thank you,” Annette said, grabbing a chair from the other side of the room and dragging it with a loud scrape along to floor to the table.

Annette sat. Fly Daddy stared at her breasts as he licked his fingers one by one, cocked his head, and asked, “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit from such a fine looking woman?”

“I’m the new sheriff.”

“I heard.”

Briefly Annette wondered who he had voted for. Pushing that thought aside, she said, “I just wanted to tell you about a new regulation I’m imposing. From now on there will be no propositioning in the market or on the main road from New City gates to the market.”

Fly Daddy shifted his bulk. The whicker chair squealed in protest.

“That’s going to hurt business.”

“No it won’t. Everyone knows you’re here. I want to keep it out of sight, though. Kids play and work in the market and their parents don’t want them to see your ladies doing their thing.”

“We provide a service. When scavengers come in from the wildlands they have needs and—”

“Yeah right, a service. Next you’re going to tell me it helps keep the rape numbers down.”

Fly Daddy’s jowls wobbled as he shook his head.

“No. People come here for sex. Rapists pull women into dark alleys for violence.”

Annette raised an eyebrow. She hadn’t expected him to say something like that. Fly Daddy went on.

“But anyway, if that’s the law that’s the law. I always keep within the law, sheriff.” His tone carried an undercurrent of mockery.

“You’d be smart to,” Annette said. “There’s another thing I want to talk to you about. One of the independent working girls got attacked just before the Righteous Horde arrived. Nobody had time to investigate it until now. You know anything about that?”

Fly Daddy shrugged. “It’s dangerous to hustle on the streets. All my girls are warm and safe. She should have worked for me.”

Yeah, I bet you told her that just before you cut up her face
,
Annette thought.

“She isn’t the first independent prostitute to get hurt,” she said.

“Did she say who did it?” Daddy Fly asked. Annette marveled at his composure. Not only did he keep from acting nervous, he also kept from acting innocent, like most guilty people would try to do.

“She says she didn’t see her attacker. Won’t talk about it beyond that.”

“The poor thing’s scared,” Fly Daddy said.

“Yeah, scared,” Annette rose from her seat. “Well, I hope there are no more problems with prostitutes getting hurt. Might have to ban prostitution.”

Fly Daddy let his gaze linger on Annette’s body.

“Well that would be a shame, because after your term as sheriff ends I was going to offer you a job. You’re mighty fine. You and I could get rich together, baby.”

Insulting the new sheriff? That’s dumb. Oh, it was supposed to be humiliating. Sorry, asshole, but guys a lot scarier than you have tried to humiliate me and they’re all lying in unmarked graves out in the wildlands.

“See you around,” Annette waved as she passed out the door.

“Oooo, you look very nice walking away. Very nice indeed.”

Annette’s next appointment was to meet up with her two deputies and visit The Doctor in his off
ice in New City. She met Jackson and Frank in front of the gate. A guard asked them to hand in their weapons.

“You kidding me?” Annette asked him. “Do you know who we are?”

The guard shrugged. “Orders are orders. Only citizens can carry guns into the city and I haven’t been told you’re an exception.”

Annette seethed as she handed over her weapons.

“Looks like our jurisdiction ends here,” Jackson said under his breath.

“Yeah,” Annette grumbled. They headed to the warehouse where The Doctor had his medical pr
actice and home.

“How did the meeting with Fly Daddy Bradley go?” Jackson asked.

“About as you’d expect,” Annette replied.

“She’s not going to testify, you know.”

Annette sighed. “I know.”

“Why does he call himself a fly, anyway? I’ve never gotten that,” Frank said.

“Old Times slang,” Annette said.

“For what? Someone who eats shit?” Jackson snapped. “We should shut him down. He’s exploiting those women.”

“He’s too powerful to shut down and it won’t stop the problem,” Annette said. She was beginning to hate this job already.

They came to the warehouse, where at the door another guard frisked them before they entered a huge room subdivided into workshops, storage, a garage, and even a few homes. They ascended a clattering metal stair into a room where a fourt
een-year-old girl named Catherine sat listening to Radio Hope.

“Boiling is a good method for killing bacteria and other pathogens in water. Water should be brought to a rolling boil for one minute. Water is at a rolling boil when a large number of bubbles
are coming to the surface and don’t disappear when you stir the liquid. At high altitudes. . .”

Annette waved. Catherine smiled and waved back before hunching over a notebook and continuing to write. She was the daughter of Kevin and Rachel, the city’s mechanics, and part of a group of teenagers assigned to write down all of Radio Hope’s broadcasts to be filed and organized into a book. It was one of The Doctor’s many projects. Catherine hung out at Marcus’ house and she’d become one of Pablo’s surrogate
big sisters.

Annette bit her lip. Marcus was almost family to her and Pablo, but she had seriously pissed him off with this election and naming Jackson as her deputy. Well, from what she’d heard families fought a lot. Maybe surrogate families were the sam
e.

They found The Doctor in his medical office changing Kelly Blackwell’s dressing. New City’s best plumber had been on the wall when one of the Righteous Horde’s riflemen shot her right through the jaw. Tears welled up in her eyes as The Doctor carefully
redressed the wound. He glanced up, treated Annette and her deputies to a cold stare, and went back to work.

The Doctor was a great man. Everyone admired him. He and a few other survivors from North Cape had come here almost forty years ago and started a n
ew community. Although Annette didn’t know much about the early years, she knew The Doctor had always been in charge, not just for his obvious charisma and his vital medical knowledge but because he healed people for free. Always had and always would. When some scavenger got a broken bone set or an open sore swabbed he’d be given some advice on taking care of himself and sent on his way. Those who tried to pay were kindly refused. Gifts left at his door were given away. In a world of people scrounging and fighting over scraps, doing everything they could to get more for themselves, The Doctor was one of the few true givers left.

He was also a Grade-A asshole.

The Doctor did not wear his status lightly. While he did not wield absolute power, he treated any opposition as if he was some Old Times dictator. Too often she had seen him turn his back on friends who had stood up to him. Even Ahmed, his understudy and the man who saved his life with the medicines she and Jackson had delivered from Radio Hope, even he was all but an exile in the Burbs now.

So Ahmed had become a member of the Burb Council, a political body The Doctor was trying very hard not to recognize. They hadn’t talked since.

So many divisions, so many factions. She had never seen them so clearly before.

And now she was right in the middle of it.

It made her want to return to being nothing but a bouncer at $87,953. Cracking heads was so much simpler than this stuff.

The Doctor finished with Kelly. He gave her some marijuana for the pain and told her
to come back in two days for another checkup and to get her bandages changed. Only after she had left the room did The Doctor turn to look at them.

“So, the newly elected sheriff and her appointees.” His words came out bitter.

“I thought it best to have an election,” Annette found herself explaining. “Proving my legitimacy will make it easier for me to do my job.”

The Doctor leveled his gaze at her. He looked far healthier than the cadaver he had resembled two weeks ago. That medicine had worked wonders. He
was still skeletally thin, though. Seeing such vitality in someone so fragile was surreal.

“And what do you see as your job?” The Doctor asked.

“Keep the peace, pursue fugitives. . .”

“Like The Pure One?”

Annette nodded. “That would be a good start.”

“And I agree,” he said, getting up and stowing away the tools of his trade in tidy drawers. “Clyde has some scouts trailing the Righteous Horde. They’ve gone back through the South Pass and are now on the plains on the other side of the mountains. The last report said the army is much reduced. Lots of them are deserting. There are gunshots in their camp almost every night. Unfortunately now that the scouts are on the other side of the mountains they’re out of radio contact so we’ll have to wait a while to g
et another update.”

“We can set out immediately,” Annette said.

The Doctor raised a hand. “Not so fast. I haven’t authorized this mission yet. I think it’s a good idea, but we have problems closer to home. First off, the Burbs are still their usual mess, plus there are deserters and stragglers all over the countryside.”

“If we wait too long, the Righteous Horde is going to get too far away to catch up to them,” Frank said.

The Doctor nodded. “True, but maybe they’ll stop being a problem at that point. If they couldn’t beat us at full strength, they won’t be able to beat us the way they are now.”

“We can’t let them lay waste to the wildlands!” Annette said. “We need to take out that lunatic. Once he’s gone, the whole movement will fall apart.”

“The wildlands aren’t my problem,” The Doctor snapped. “My duty is to keep this community together. That’s your duty too and don’t you forget it. Now about your choice of deputy. . .”

The Doctor glared at Jackson, who glared back. Annette glanced between the two. It had been The Doctor who had found Jackson guilty of Blame. Jackson had been stripped of his citizenship and branded. Yet just two weeks ago, The Doctor had sponsored Olivia, Jackson’s fiancée, for associate status.

So many factions, so many divisions, and I understand so little about them all.

A knock at the door made everyone turn. Clyde poked his head in.

“Sorry to interrupt but this is urgent. Two scavengers got in a knife fight and one ended up dead. The murderer hightailed it into the wildlands.”

“Typical,
” The Doctor snorted. “Well, sheriff, looks like you have your first fugitive to chase. Consider it a practice run.”