Surviving the Dead (Book 7): The Killing Line (25 page)

“This ain’t my first rodeo.” 

“What do you have to offer in consideration?”

“Consideration? That word implies a contract, Major. Something tells me we’re going to be keeping things off the record.”

Santino made a flipping motion with one hand. “What would you like to call it then?”

“A bribe. Because that’s what it is.”

“I don’t care for that term.”

I let out a slow breath and rubbed my forehead. “Sure. Whatever. How much?”

“What do you have?”

“Tell me what you want, and I’ll tell you what I can do.”

The negotiation lasted perhaps five minutes. We settled on half a pound of sugar, a pound of dried beans, and a liter of Mike Stall’s moonshine. It was far more than what I would have paid under normal circumstances, especially considering I was spending Elizabeth’s trade, but we did not have much leverage to bargain with. With Liz’s permission, I accepted the deal. We agreed to deliver the goods via third-party courier the day the convoy left. Santino tried to push for half in advance, but I refused flatly, telling him I wouldn’t hand over a crumb until my gear was stowed in a truck, my livestock were loaded in a trailer, and I had personally confirmed all our names and possessions were listed correctly and in detail on an official cargo manifest with the proper seal. Santino said it would be difficult to get all that in writing. I told him I had faith in him. He smugly suggested his original designation of the bribe as consideration was accurate after all. I told him a bribe was a bribe, even with a pretty coating of semantic gloss.

“Are we all settled then?” Elizabeth interjected. She knew well my innate distaste for corrupt officials, even when I am the beneficiary of said corruption. The last thing we needed here was for me to start an argument. Knowing this did not make me want to start one any less.

“I believe so,” Major Santino said. He stood and offered a hand. I shook it even though I didn’t want to. Sabrina and Elizabeth did the same.

“Sergeant Thonberg will take you back to the caravan district.”

I nodded once and we left.

The streets began coming to life as we bumped and creaked over the broken pavement of Dodge City. Sergeant Thornberg was much more talkative now that his official duties were concluded. At Elizabeth’s prompting, he gave us a rough idea of the situation in Dodge. I had to admire the way Liz milked information out of the burly sergeant. She was pretty, and polite, and smiled in all the right places, and it was obvious Thornberg liked what he saw.

“So the military doesn’t actually control this place?” Elizabeth said.

“No. We’re not a safe zone or an FOB. Just a regular town.”

“Could have fooled me with all the security,” I said.

“We’re on the biggest trade route going east out of the Springs. What you might call a high-value target. The joint chiefs designated the area as vital to economic recovery.”

“So here you are.”

“Here we are.”

“If this place is so important,” Elizabeth said, “where is everybody? We have the caravan district to ourselves.”

“It’s still early spring,” Thornberg said. “You’re in the off-season. In a month, this place will be a zoo.”

“So if the military isn’t in charge,” Sabrina asked, “who is?”

“There’s a mayor and a city council.”

“Police?” I asked.

“Yeah. Chief is elected by the city council every four years.”

“So you’ve had exactly one chief of police.”

“Yes.”

“Cops any good?”

“All right, I guess. Good as can be expected.”

“What does that mean?” Elizabeth said.

“Let’s just say the local business interests wield a lot of influence over what goes on around here.”

The Humvee hit a particularly large bump that caused me to bite the tip of my tongue. I cursed softly and watched a man emerge from the doorway of a sporting goods store pushing a food cart. A gaggle of scrawny children dressed in rags turned a corner and went by at a dead sprint. One of them stopped to pick up a rock and throw it at the Humvee. The rock bounced off the driver’s door with a resounding
whack
. Thornberg did not seem to notice.

“Vice?” Elizabeth asked. “Racketeering?”

“Probably,” Thornberg said.

“And you don’t try to stop it?”

“Listen, I’m a soldier, not a cop. It’s not my job to police the civilians. Not without orders from on high, anyway. Our job is physical security. The Army doesn’t get involved in local affairs unless the locals disturb the flow of trade.”

“That ever happened?” I asked.

“Once.”

“What did the Army do?”

Thornberg grinned over his shoulder. The curl of his thin lips over bare teeth had a nasty brutality about it. “We laid the fucking hammer down,” he said.

The Humvee rolled to a halt in front of the caravan district. The only three buildings across the street that did not look like they were about to collapse were now occupied. I was able to determine by the wares on display that one was a bar and grill, one sold weapons and ammunition, and one was a brothel. Charming.

“Your kind of place, huh?” Sabrina nudged me with her elbow and tilted her head toward the whorehouse. I glanced at the underfed women slouching on the building’s stoop with their crudely painted faces and tired, cynical eyes. Compared to Allison they looked like a gaggle of cow flops.

“Not even in the wild days of my youth.”

“Hate to tell you,” Thornberg said. “But the caravan district gave rise to sort of a red light district around here. The peddlers can’t go through the gate—it’s one of the few places we do control—but it’s a short walk for anyone interested.”

“Duly noted,” I said.

As I got out of the Humvee, Thornberg rolled down his window. “Take a word of advice?”

“Sure.”

He motioned me closer. “You want to get out of the caravan district. Ain’t safe outside the gate after dark. I know a guy runs a tight business. Warehouse, livery, hotel, everything you need. He’s not cheap, but you get what you pay for around here.” 

“I’m new in town. Got directions?”

He gave them to me and said, “Ask for Ross. Tell him I sent you.”

I thanked Sergeant Thornberg and watched him drive away.

“If you think for one second that fucker isn’t getting kickbacks,” Sabrina said, “you’re an idiot.”

“I’d be amazed if he wasn’t. Makes me wonder what other graft the Army has going on around here.”

Elizabeth began walking toward the gate. “Let’s hope we don’t have to find out.”

*****

Ross was a tall black man with a shaved head, graying goatee, and eyes just slightly less merciful than those of a great white shark. His face was smooth and unlined, and his age could have been anywhere from thirty to sixty. I told him Sergeant Thornberg had sent me. He nodded, finished polishing the glass in his hand, and sat down on a stool behind the bar. At the moment, the lobby of his hotel, which doubled as a restaurant and watering hole, was mostly empty. A couple of old men sat at a table in a corner playing cards and slowly sipping grain alcohol. A prostitute slouched in a chair near the stairway leading to the rooms upstairs. The place was newly constructed from raw wood and had a distinctly Old West feel to it. The only thing missing was a pair of batwing doors at the entrance.

“Have a seat.” Ross waved a hand at row of bar stools. His voice was deep and resonant with a southern drawl that could only have originated in the Mississippi Delta. I glanced out the front window to make sure no one was bothering Liz and Sabrina. They stood alone at the hitch rail with the livestock, people passing by indifferently on the street behind them. I took a seat.

“Care for a drink?” Ross asked.

“Sure. What do you have?”

“Anything you want, long as it’s moonshine.”

“Moonshine it is.”

He poured me a drink. I took a sip. It wasn’t as good as Mike Stall’s, but it wouldn’t blind me either.

“Not bad,” I said.

He gave a slow nod and fixed the empty eyes on me. “What you need?”

“Room, laundry, stables, and a safe place to store my trade.”

“Doin’ business in town?”

“Not presently, no.”

He glanced out the window and looked meaningfully at Liz and Sabrina. “You sure about that? Some good lookin’ women with you.”

The old familiar coldness rose in my chest and I felt myself go still. “They’re not merchandise.”

Ross smiled with all the warmth of an ice cube. There were a couple of teeth missing on the left side of his face.

“Don’t be too sure,” he said. “Every woman got a price.”

“Anyone bothers them, it’s their fucking life. How’s that for a price?”

Another slow nod. The grin faded. “Pretty steep.”

“Can you help me or not?”

He stood up and slowly wandered over to a cloth covered in wet, heavy-bottomed glasses, picked one up, and began drying it with a yellow towel. “Sure. What you got for trade?”

A negotiation ensued. I bought the three of us a room for a week, laundry service, stables for the horses and oxen, and a spot on the floor of a nearby warehouse. The price was much less than I would have expected. Maybe Thornberg had been telling the truth about this being the off season for Dodge City.

“I’ll need to check out the warehouse before I render payment,” I said. “Make sure the security is up to snuff.”

“Sure. How ‘bout you pay for the first night now, the rest when you’re satisfied?”

“Fair enough.”

Ross took a keyring out of his pocket, unlocked a panel behind the bar, and removed a room key.

“Number sixteen. Go upstairs and take your first left. Third door on your right.”

I took the key. It was small, brass, and looked like the kind that opened a padlock. I dug four packets of instant coffee from a shirt pocket and dropped them on the bar. 

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Ross continued drying glasses, holding each one up to the light through the window to assess its cleanliness. I stood up and walked toward the door.

“Hey,” Ross called as I touched the door handle. I looked over my shoulder.

“Yeah?”

“You change your mind about them women, you let me know.”

I stared at him for a long moment. Grown men had trembled under the weight of that stare, but Ross did not seem affected. I felt a strong urge to cross the room and back up the stare by putting a gun barrel under his chin, but didn’t. Ross did not strike me as the kind of man who would be impressed by threats.

“Don’t hold your breath,” I said, and went out the door.

Room sixteen at the Sky River Hotel had two single beds, a dresser topped with a plastic pitcher, a large stainless steel bowl that would have been great for applying Buffalo sauce to chicken wings, and a small bathroom. The toilet was a crudely made wooden box containing a bucket of very dry dirt to which a cushioned seat had been attached. A smaller bucket with more dirt sat nearby. Sabrina peeked over my shoulder.

“I think we’d be better off shitting in a hole in the ground,” she said. “At least then we could get away from the stink.”

I glanced around the small room. “Sabrina, your eloquence and delicate mastery of expression never ceases to humble and astonish me.”

“Fuck you.”

“I supposed you and Liz will be taking the beds?”

“Yep.”

“Good thing I have a well-equipped bedroll.”

Liz smiled at me from one of the beds. She sat on it with her legs crossed, leaning back on a pillow propped against the headboard, a paperback copy of
A Farewell to Arms
in her hands.

“Just think what Allison would say if she knew you made one of us sleep on the floor,” she said.

The mention of my wife sent a sharp jolt of pain through me. Her distance from me had been like a bone spur in the back of my mind, constantly grating, but until that moment I had kept it compartmentalized. Hearing her name, however, made the longing for her roar to life as sharp and merciless as a stomach cramp. I wanted to be close to my wife. I wanted to hold my son. It felt like a lifetime had passed since I had last kissed the little guy’s face. I had been trying not to think of him, but now his absence was a physical thing, a pressure in my chest threatening to choke me. My jaw clenched and I felt the muscles along my cheek working under the skin.

“Hey,” Elizabeth said. “I’m sorry. That was stupid of me.”

I cleared my throat so I could speak. “I know.”

“That I’m stupid or that I’m sorry?”

“You’re not stupid, Liz.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No worries. I’m headed out. Walk the perimeter, look for trouble.”

Liz did not speak for a few seconds, then said, “Be careful.”

“Stay here. Both of you. Don’t open the door for anyone but me.” I looked at Sabrina. “You armed?”

She looked at me like I was an idiot. “Who the fuck are you talking to?”

“I withdraw the question. Be back soon.”

Before I shut the door I stopped and leaned back into the room. “Hey Liz?”

“Yes?”

“The English nurse dies at the end.”

She closed one of Hemingway’s most distinguished works and threw it to the floor. “Asshole.”

“Now we’re even.”

*****

The part of town I walked through was, according to the signs, the central business district.

Most of the place was a crumbling wreck, but some buildings had been repaired, others bulldozed and replaced with new construction. The streets were mostly clear of debris, and the most unstable areas had been cordoned off with signs and crude rope fences. By the inflow of people from the north and east, I surmised those directions harbored Dodge City’s residential areas.

On the street I walked were two empty auction houses that had once been strip malls, the parking lots empty now, the gutted brick buildings uninhabited, the crudely-fenced livestock pens full of growing grass that would turn to shit-crusted mud when the caravan season started again. In the meantime, they looked disused and uncared for.

I passed the warehouse where I had stowed our trade and, upon assessment, agreed with Ross that it was highly secure. The building had once been a mixed-use office complex, but now the windows were boarded over and all but one entrance had been sealed with bricks and mortar. The only way in or out was a single garage door in the back manned by heavily armed guards who all appeared to have been born without a sense of humor.

The streets themselves were cracked and broken like all pavement was anymore. Plants pushed through here and there where feet and hooves had not trampled them to death. Scorch marks and rust-brown streaks abounded, a mute testament to the scores of infected that once populated the town. And beneath the scents of living beings—wood smoke, dung, urine, rotting vegetables, and sweat—lay the unmistakable cloying scent of death. I wondered how long it would take for human habitation and the elements to cleanse the place.

A few filthy-looking restaurants served unappetizing food to grim faced customers, all of whom appeared to be locals. Everyone I saw was armed. They all seemed to know each other. And they didn’t know me, a fact which became more acutely obvious the longer I walked the streets. The weight of the nine-millimeter pistol on my hip was comforting, as was the revolver against the small of my back, the fighting knife on my left leg, and the MK 9 ghoul-chopper strapped to my back. I kept my face blank and did my best to look like the kind of man one did not want to fuck with. I must have pulled it off, because no one did. But I got lots of looks.

As I walked back toward my hotel, I spotted a group of three men watching me. They were rough looking, like everyone else on the street, but there was a quiet menace in them I had not seen in any others. They sat in one of the few crowded bars lining the business district with no one close to them, a ring of empty tables insulating them from the rest of the crowd. I scanned their side of the street, not letting my eyes rest on the men for more than a moment. Two were bearded white men, very young. The third was older and had the kind of dark brown skin and sharp features that could have originated anywhere from southern Texas to Patagonia. By their posture, I could tell the two young white guys deferred to the dark-skinned older man. One of them leaned over and whispered something. The older man nodded once, his eyes steady on me.

One of the many talents I have developed since the Outbreak is the ability to tell the difference between casual distrust and outright hostility. There is a difference in the way a person looks at you when they mean you harm. It is a weight in the eyes, a stillness of the face, a tightness in the line of the jaw. And I saw it in the faces of the three thugs as they stared at me.

“Just what I fucking need,” I muttered.

It occurred to me to avoid the hotel, but I decided doing so in a place like this was pointless. A simple inquiry would tell the three hardcases where I was holed up. If they wanted to make a run at me, they would. All I could do was remain vigilant, which was exactly what I was going to do anyway.

Back in my room, I informed Sabrina and Elizabeth of my findings. Liz looked worried. Sabrina looked angry.

“I told you we shouldn’t have come here,” Sabrina said.

“A few street toughs is nothing to get in a ruffle about,” I said.

“What you saw is no indication of how many there actually are. Place like this, there’s probably a syndicate running things. And here we are, a bunch of jackasses with plenty of trade and no backup. Sitting fucking ducks.”

“You’re making assumptions. Three guys in a bar gave me the mean mug. That doesn’t mean we’re about to be descended upon by an army of murderers.”

Sabrina’s eyes flashed. She never looked more like her father than when she was angry. “It doesn’t mean they’re coming by with flowers and fucking smiles either. They marked you. They’re going to come for us. It’s how things work on the road.”

I sat down cross-legged on my bedroll and drew my pistol. Checked the chamber. Dropped the mag and popped it against my hand a couple of times. The rounds were seated. The gun was clean. I drew my dagger and checked the edge. It was just as sharp as the last time I’d tested it. I looked out the window at the tops of shattered buildings stretching into the distance under a cloudy gray sky. If they caught us in our room, we were done for. The only way to win was to ambush the ambushers.

“You’re right,” I said. “We need backup.”

Elizabeth’s gaze became very sharp. “What are you thinking?”

“Stay here.”

I stood up, holstered my weapons, and headed downstairs.