The 1000 Souls (Book 1): Apocalypse Revolution (11 page)

"Thank you, Nicholas," said the man, his accent rich, more French than anything else, but not quite. Was there a hint of Eastern Europe? "Return to your work."

The bartender nodded and put up the shotgun, hurrying away, his chain trailing like a tale. That left Bertrand and Joyce alone now, and they no longer stood back-to-back but shoulder-to-shoulder facing this new threat. The man clearly terrified the crowd, and Bertrand sensed that his and Joyce's fate rested with the boss's judgment.

"You're very brave to come in here. Did you come for pleasure or for understanding?"

Bertrand beat Joyce to the reply. "We came for information about the Chicago Ripper. We came to find out if there is a cult of murderers." He glanced at Joyce, who nodded her agreement. Bertrand had decided to go with the truth. This was the kind of man who would sniff out a lie and be angered by it.

"And what have you learned?"

"That this place is full of sickos and murderers, and that I should never come here again with anything less than an army." Bertrand knew he should be afraid, but the urge to fight hadn't left him. Here was the king of enemies, even though he had made no threatening gestures. Bertrand was sure of it, and he could barely restrain himself from snatching Joyce's Taser and charging despite the odds.

"They are disgusting, aren't they?" The man gestured at the crowd. "These men and women, they're not like you. They live for themselves and their own gratification. They would never make a sacrifice for the greater good. They would never risk their miserable lives." He pointed a gloved finger at Bertrand. "Not like you."

"But you're their boss." Joyce pointed the Taser in the man's direction.

"In my country I was always a man of God. I would have executed people like this just for their lewd attire, let alone their lascivious behaviors. But I must work with what I can to do God's work, and I doubt you are the kind of man who would be seduced by the rewards that have ensnared them."

Bertrand decided this wasn't the time to point out the man's chauvinism. Joyce was there too.

"God's work doesn't involve murder," Bertrand said instead.

"The life of Noah would tell us otherwise. Sometimes a scourge is required to cleanse the world of evil. It is time for you to go."

The man pointed at the woman, the dancer with the knife who had intended to cut open Bertrand's throat. A flick of his finger in the direction of the bar was enough command. Two big men from the entourage rushed in and grabbed her.

"No!" she screamed. "No. I'll never do it again, I swear!"

They dragged her, kicking and screaming, from sight.

The boss turned away without another word and followed his men.

"Okay, Bert. We better get out."

The crowd had opened up a path to the stairs, an invitation Joyce accepted immediately, lowering her Taser and pulling on Bertrand's arm. At the bottom, the door was opened by the doorman, who had one hand to his walkie-talkie earpiece, nodding as he received his instructions. He looked up and delivered his message.

"The boss says you're never to return, with an army or without."

Bertrand nodded and they fled into the night.

Bertrand stood in front of the North Chicago Gun Exchange, looking up and down the street as if he feared being observed entering the store. This little retail strip—far north of his own neighborhood—sat close to the parked cars of the street, the sidewalk narrow but with a roof that reached to the curb to keep the snows of winter at bay.

Bertrand's parents had been committed pacifists, and his grandparents had marched against the Vietnam War, so Bertrand had absolutely no experience with guns. He was surprised when Jeff had confessed to belonging to a gun club, but relieved that he had someone besides Nolan to turn to for advice on matters concerning self-defense. Nolan had suggested that Bertrand could borrow his tommy gun with the hundred-round drum, the type of weapon that Al Capone probably owned at some point in his career.

"You need to defend your home," Nolan had said. "As long as you're there between sunset and sunrise, you'll be safe if you have enough firepower."

But Bertrand didn't agree. He remembered what the woman from Colorado Springs had said about people being burned out of their homes. Bertrand's house was made of wood, and the bars on his basement windows couldn't hold back flames.

Jeff had a different outlook.

"You want a Glock," he had said. "Something that you can keep with you at all the times, day and night. Think how useful that could've been at Goth Knights."

Jeff had absorbed Bertrand's tale about his near murder at Goth Knights with jaw dropping belief. He, Bertrand and Joyce had taken the unusual step of skipping their workout and driving there before dark in Jeff's Xterra SUV, but the door to the club had been replaced with a four-by-eight sheet of plywood, and a "Power of Sale" notice from a bank was stapled in the center.

They had spent a week trying to learn more, but the club had been owned by a numbered company that had leased the building. This window on the underworld had closed forever. Malcolm lamented its loss, unaware that Bertrand had been there for its last night of decadence. Neither Jeff nor Bertrand trusted Malcolm enough to share the details of that experience.

Jeff had promised that the gun store would be open on Saturday, and a neon
open
sign behind the bars in the windows proved him correct, but Bertrand found himself reluctant to take the next step, to open the door and admit that the world had changed forever. In the old world he had relied on the police and the government to protect him, with just a little dab of street sense required on his part.

Bertrand looked up and down the sidewalk again, noting that a sad little flower shop—its window displays oddly sparse but neat—sat next door, a sandwich board on the sidewalk stating that all the flowers were half-price until Monday.

The contrast between the shops had more to do with security than flower power versus fire power. The flower shop had no need for bars inside the glass display windows, and the gun shop also had heavy rolling metal doors, which Bertrand guessed came down each night to turn the shop into a fortress, impregnable at least to smash-and-grab thieves. Apparently the criminal types in the neighborhood had no use for flowers.

Bertrand at last opened the door to the gun shop, causing an electronic chime to alert the owner that his perimeter had been breached. A heavy man sat on a stool behind counter at the back of the shop, his newspaper obscuring his face. The man didn't look up when he spoke. "Wondered when you'd find the balls to come in." He must have noticed Bertrand standing in front of his shop for so long.

"My balls are there when I need them."

The newspaper folded down; the man behind it had red cheeks, puffed from alcohol and food, his beard and mustache short and black, not so much trimmed as looking like he'd forgotten to shave for a week.

"No bullshit guy. Okay, let me guess: you've never owned a gun. Your parents are pinko-commies, and they've always told you that no one needs to own a gun, but now you want a gun."

Bertrand stopped in front of the display case under the glass countertop. Handguns of many types were arranged haphazardly, some missing as if recently purchased and not replaced. Above and behind the owner, racks of weapons rested vertically so as to allow maximum storage. The sidewalls of the shop displayed photos of hunters and fishermen—and a calendar with a buxom woman in a pink bikini washing a car with lots of foamy soap. "Yes, yes, yes and yes."

The owner took a sip of coffee from a huge plastic mug, capped to prevent spilling or wasting heat. "So what do your parents think of your newfound desire to own a self-defense device?"

"They're dead."

The owner put his coffee down and stood, holding out his hand to shake.

"Lake," he said. "Emile Lake. Sorry about your folks. You're hardly growed up. What happened? Was it recent?"

"Nope. It was a couple of years ago—car accident. I'm told it was probably quick." Probably, unless they were still breathing when the fire took hold.

"Right. Bummer, but at least they don't have to put up with all the crazy shit that's happening now."

"What do you mean?"

"Come on! I thought you were a no bullshit guy. What brings a yuppie like you into my shop looking for a gun? Do you know how many shirt-and-tie types—who probably all wanted total gun bans last year—have come flooding into my shop in the last month, all looking for a little self-defense? I have to rush order to keep me in handguns." He tapped the glass of the counter with a heavy finger to draw Bertrand's attention to the empty spots.

"Okay, I admit, totally weird shit's happening out there. I just wanted to know what you've heard, 'cause it's not in the news anymore."

"People are dying." Emile studied him in challenge, daring him to disagree. "Lots of people."

"And it's not on the news."

"Because the government's in on it."

Bertrand realized too late that he'd rolled his eyes, the sudden anger on Emile's face proving that he'd communicated disbelief.

"Come on!" Emile picked up his newspaper for evidence, turning it so that Bertrand could see. "What is this crap doing on the front page?" A photo-op showed men in suits—one recognizably the mayor—cutting a fat ribbon at a recently constructed school. Bertrand leaned in and read the caption, discovering that the other men were local congressional and senate incumbents.

"Since when," Emile said, "do three levels of government show up to open a school at night. What is this crap? What's a senator have to do with a kiddie school? And at night? No wonder there's hardly any kids in the shot: their parents are too smart to let them out after dark."

"They're not vampires," said Bertrand. "They're something else."

Emile folded the newspaper, calm now that he was believed. "Whatever they are, they're in on it."

"It's like some kind of cult." Bertrand looked back at the front window of the shop to see if anyone was about to enter and overhear his crazy talk. "They drink blood, but not like vampires. They use knives to open your throat."

Emile stared at him for ten seconds. "That's even crazier than my theories," he said at last. "But the Chicago Ripper was cutting people's throats open. You're right about that. I thought it was a plague."

"Rippers." Bertrand looked down at the guns, trying to figure out what would be comfortable in his hands. "There's more than one Chicago Ripper. I think there's dozens."

"Buddy, this isn't happening just in Chicago. I got a buddy in New Hampshire and he says it's happening there."

"I think it's happening in a lot of cities, but I tell you I've met these rippers—one tried to open my throat last week—and I was only saved by some kind of cult leader. They just called him 'the boss' and said something about no evolutions in his club."

Again Emile regarded him for a moment—judging. "I think it's a plague that they're trying to cover up," he said. His furrowed brow spoke otherwise, showing the concentration of a man sorting through a particularly challenging puzzle. "But you know, even though you talk weirder than a crackhead who sidelines in meth ... there is something to your ripper thing."

"All I know is that some kind of Judgment Day is coming. The east coast has had three black outs in the last two weeks. Before this summer, they'd had one in my entire life. At first they said it was because absenteeism had shut down a nuke plant. Now they don't even say why. It just happens."

Emile's fist pounded the counter. "Now that's what I'm talking about. All this absenteeism. People just aren't off sick, they're not coming back to work at all."

"Some of them are." Bertrand was thinking about Malcolm, but decided not to bring up that he only came in for the night shift these days. That kind of statement would bring them back around to vampires, and that wasn't the kind of nonsense he wanted to argue.

"Not enough men coming in to work to keep the lights on though." Emile noted Bertrand's gaze into the handgun display. "What's your pleasure?"

"A friend says I should get a Glock."

"Who's your friend?" Emile pulled a set of keys from his belt, held there on a retractable cable, and waddled toward the far end of the counter to open a sliding panel on his side.

"Jeff Aubert. I think you guys are in the same gun club."

"Jeff! Tall Jeff?" Emile held one hand in the air to indicate six feet. "Jeff with the Ruger Super Redhawk? Why didn't you say so? Now there's a guy who can shoot, and when that baby goes off it's deafening even with ears." He pulled a black handgun out and slapped it on the counter.

Bertrand picked it up with all the comfort of a librarian who had been handed a tarantula, moving it from one hand to the next while trying to figure out what a prospective buyer should be judging about the weapon.

It was Emile's turn to roll his eyes. He snatched the gun from Bertrand.

"First, it's not loaded, but you should never handle a gun without checking for yourself. Eject the mag here and inspect that it's empty. See? Pull back the slide here and check the breach to make sure it's clear. See?"

Emile's hand motions were fast and practiced, but Bertrand got the idea and repeated the maneuvers with only a few extra instructions from Emile.

"Okay. I'll take it," said Bertrand.

Emile took the gun back and studied Bertrand for the third time.

"You're not a cop." It was a statement rather than a question.

"No. Why?"

"Another thing that hasn't been in the news lately is that they passed a new gun law extending the cooling off period. You buy it now—pay for it I mean—and you'll have to wait six months before I can hand it over to you."

"But that's ridiculous. This is all gonna come to a head in less than six months. It's getting worse at an exponential rate."

"At a what rate? Never mind. Look, I'm not gonna sell you this gun." He slapped it down on the counter and slid it across to Bertrand. "I'm going to give it to you." He held up one meaty finger. "But I got two conditions: first is don't tell anyone, second is you gotta come down to my range in the basement every couple of days, starting today, and learn to shoot so that you don't blow your own fucking head off."