The 1000 Souls (Book 2): Generation Apocalypse (3 page)

After sunset, rippers would flood out into the city, many hungry, especially those that shunned the cold blood donations organized for them by their government. They would surge out of the Loop in all directions, looking for humans foolish enough to be out after dark. Sometimes the rippers would even group together to attack a rebel blockhouse if it looked weak. Tevy had found one that went down, far out in the suburbs where no help could reach, a McMansion converted to a fort, the houses nearby bulldozed to create clear fields of fire. He and Elliot had counted thirty-five corpses in the noonday sun, some burnt to skeletons with the house, most killed on the wide lawns as they tried to flee in the night. No one had been converted. They’d all been bled out.

Tevy headed for the river and escape. Now for the hard part, to get past the bridge guards and out into the ruins of no man’s land between the ripper forces and the rebels that had rejected the authority of the city hall, the state, and the federal government after every level had become corrupted with rippers.

The rusting steel of the Wells Street Bridge promised the best chance, because the traitors rarely bothered to guard the second deck that had once carried the ‘L’ trains, probably because a lot of people were uncomfortable up there, walking on ties. One old timer had also put it this way: “It used to be death to go up there. The third rail could fry you with a touch. Bam! Kentucky Fried Chicken! And trains came very fast and very often. Even now I can’t get that out of my head, and I’m always looking over my shoulder when I’m on the ‘L’.”

Tevy did vaguely remember the ‘L’ trains, had even ridden them with his mother and father before the rippers appeared, but to him the tracks had almost always been just a rusting network of paths above ground. Sure, they were exposed to view from the buildings around them, but it was a calculated risk.

He stopped long before Wacker St.—Bobs had insisted he learn all the street names so that his reports were accurate—and shinnied up one of the steel I-beams that support the ‘L’ line, his feet braced on one side of the beam and his hands gripping the other. He could climb like a monkey, and heights didn’t scare him. The hard part was just under the tracks, because the builders hadn’t left any way to get from under to above, but Tevy knew this area well, and he knew of a gap in some planks that had once supported a walkway for transit workers. He squeezed through and stood. He preferred these pathways at night, because in the dark no one from the tall buildings that surrounded him could see him. He set his sights on the hulking Merchandise Mart across the river, a gray building with its four towers anchoring each corner. The bottom three floors were all bricked in with new concrete block—a ripper fortress if ever there was one. In fact, it was the only ripper stronghold north of the river.

Tevy started his walk, again projecting confidence and authority. There would be humans in the upper floors of the Merchandise Mart, but how closely would they check out a lone man waking along the tracks? Their masters were downstairs, sleeping or eating. Did rippers fornicate? They would need attention either way.

But luck was not with Tevy that day. While his concern had been about eyes above, it was eyes below that caught him. The guards at the checkpoint just before the bridge rarely looked up, but Tevy’s shadow on the pavement must have caught their attention.

“Hey!” came the shout from below the tracks. “Get down from there! No one crosses the river today without going through us first!”

Tevy squatted down and looked between the ties. “Blood Dawn! Blood Dawn!”

He could see the guards, four or five of them in the red shirts with the yellow lightning bolt. The Californian traitors.

“Red Sunset,” said one tall man, his hair shaved to a short bristle, a captain by the strip on his shoulder. He had the paunch of middle age that had been starved away, the skin of his belly hanging loosely over his trouser belt. “That’s all very nice that you know the password. Now get your ass down here so that I can see your papers and you can explain why you’re trying to end run around us.”

“I’m to report to the boss right away,” shouted Tevy, trying to look hurried. He pointed toward the Merchandise Mart.

Several guns suddenly pointed up at him. Uh-oh. Wrong answer. The boss must be downtown.

“Then why are you heading across the river instead of for the tower?” asked the captain.

Tevy had one hand on his Glock, but he’d never killed a human before, only rippers and only at night. Somehow it just didn’t seem right to murder under the sun, and besides, he couldn’t kill them all and still have the element of surprise when he ran, for right now they thought they had him, they thought they were in control. But he could run.

He sprinted down the plank siding, eyes on the boards ahead in case any looked rotten or loose. Gunshots snapped out, but even though his path was perfectly predictable, their shots came too late to catch him, and that was while they could easily see his outline above. Now, as they pursued along the metal deck of the bridge below, they had to contend with beams and piers that blocked their view up to the walkway, and even that only provided information by way of his shadow on the spaces between the planks.

The raw stink of the river filled his nostrils, but to Tevy it was the scent of freedom. He glanced up at the Merchandise Mart with its gothic proportions, but no one appeared at the windows, drawn by the gunfire. Maybe humans didn’t go there at all, which, if true, presented an opportunity for a daytime raid on the rippers. Tevy filed that away for his report. That and the fact that the boss was at the tower. The Willis Tower?

He easily outran the humans on the deck below, not just because he was younger, but because he had never been forced to donate blood to the rippers. It was no secret that they commonly drained far more from their traitor slaves than was medically safe.

Tevy glanced up at the glass and red-brick building across from the Merchandise Mart, which had many of the windows smashed out during the chaos that followed the death of Vlad the Scourge over seven years ago. A young man’s form stood in an empty window just two floors above the level of the ‘L.’ He had a rifle shouldered, the sight to his eye, aiming. Tevy felt a moment of panic. This guy could kill him, had a clear bead on him, and it was too soon for Tevy to try and go below the deck and down to the ground. The station was still fifty feet away.

Tevy forced the fear from his brain, remembering Bobs’ instructions about how panic impaired cool thought. The sun moved from behind a cloud and splashed light onto the teen’s red hair.
Thank God
. Elliot, one of Tevy’s fellow Brat Packers, the same age. They’d been friends since Elliot arrived in the basement of St. Mike’s the night after Tevy.

Elliot had wanted to come with him into Loop that night but had been ordered not to by Bobs. She knew Tevy had a better chance alone. But Elliot had come almost as far as the river and had obviously ignored Tevy’s instructions to return home. Now he was glad that Elliot had waited.

The rifle cracked out, Elliot having aimed at the traitors on the bridge deck, hopefully forcing them back, but he was also making himself a target at the same time. Tevy wondered for a second why Elliot was standing up rather than lying down, but the sharp down-angle of the M16 made it obvious that it was the only way he could get a shot.

“Good enough!” shouted Tevy. “Go! Go!” The crazy idiot was going to get himself killed, and Tevy now owed him big time. Elliot may have even saved his life. He turned and vanished into the darkness of the office building and not a moment too soon. Wild gunfire from below put bullet holes into the surviving windows around Elliot’s position.

Tevy rushed onto the platform at the Merchandise Mart ‘L’ station, now able to run free on the concrete, just watching for obstacles like overturned benches and footing hazards like shattered glass from the office building above the station. He didn’t look back as he charged down the stairs and hopped the turnstiles, slamming out of the station door at full tilt.

He could hear running feet behind him, but Elliot had made all the difference: he’d held the traitors up long enough that they were well behind, and Tevy had turned the corner on Hubbard before they could get a shot off.

Elliot came rushing out of the office building, his red hair flying back and a grin on his face, his long knife slapping at his side, looking like a sword on the short teen. “I think I hit one of the traitors!” he shouted as they joined up, turning at full tilt into an alley between two buildings.

“Good shooting,” said Tevy between short breaths.

Shouts of confusion followed them, the traitors baffled as to where their prey had gone. Tevy and Elliot now giggled as they ran, confidant of their escape because they were brats from the Brat Pack, and every part of Chicago north of the Loop was their warren. They would vanish like rats down a sewer.

As Kayla carefully made her way up through the woods at the top of the ridge, she half expected to see Atherley College down in the bottom of the next valley, still surrounded by green lawns, still intact even though empty of students. In her heart she knew that seven violent years had passed since she and the others had abandoned their dorms for the safety of St John’s Keep. It was unlikely the centerpiece building of the college had been spared the bitter fighting that followed the fall of Vlad and the death of Bertrand Allan. Rachel had warned her that it was a wreck and was only still standing thanks to its 1970s-era concrete construction—Brutalist Architecture, she called it. Rachel had been back to the college many times, hunting for books and tools, but Kayla hadn’t gone back. She had lost her family within three months of starting college, and the two events were inextricably linked for her.

But even though Kayla tried to prepare herself, when she reached edge of a rocky hill, almost a cliff, that allowed her to see over the pines below, she drew in her breath sharply. The lawns were now long grass and weeds, that was no surprise, but the college itself had changed radically. It once swept in a graceful curve back against a granite hillside, as if the concrete structure was an extension of the rock. On this side the main floor used to have high windows along its entire curve. They had provided plenty of natural light into the first and second floor corridors, a precious commodity in the cold Canadian winters.

Now, concrete blocks filled in the windows, the mortar oozing from between the bricks. This change had been added in haste, clearly by inexpert builders concerned only with blocking out the sun from the interior of the college.

Jeff moved up beside her, his bizarre short rifle, an FN F2000, pointing for the sky, his back to a large maple tree far from the edge. Kayla had to remind herself that the short barrel was an illusion, because most of the barrel was hidden inside the gun, which looked more like a weapon from a science fiction film. He had tied his long blond hair back in a tight ponytail. Kayla liked it better when he let it flow, but she understood his need to keep it out of his eyes today. “Not what you remember?” he asked.

Kayla shook her head, careful to hide the awe she felt when in the presence of one of the former Companions of Bertrand Allan. “The front used to be all windows,” she said. For a moment she experienced a huge sense of loss, recalling frosh week and the fun and optimism, when she still expected to receive a great education, find a great career, and develop a great future. The rippers had ruined all hope of a normal life. Now she just existed day-to-day, hunting for food, milking cows, and spurning all potential lovers.

Joyce, their leader and another Companion, moved up beside Kayla, who sheltered behind a young spruce, staring down at her former college through the branches. Joyce had cut her hair short just last week, a style she only adopted in the spring when the summer fighting season approached. Kayla had considered that style but was reluctant to cut off her ponytail, although she had shortened it.

“How many entrances?” Joyce asked Kayla.

“Used to be dozens, but it looks like most of them were sealed off when they bricked in the windows.” Kayla pointed to the south side of the building. “The main entrance is just around the corner there, and there’s a service entrance under the college for deliveries—see that road there coming up from the south? It runs right down to the loading docks in the basement.”

Others had quietly joined them along the top of the hill, keeping back in the trees just in case traitors were on sentry duty below. Martin Morley, who had the distinction of being the first black man that Kayla had ever met in person, had moved close to Joyce and Kayla and had overheard. He was the only other Companion on this raid.

“We don’t want to go in by the main entrance,” he said to Joyce. “My guys have C4 and hammers. Give us ten minutes along that wall, and we’ll fracture some of those blocks and stuff it in. Another five and we’ll blow nice big holes and let in God’s light.”

“The rippers will hear you and head for the basement,” said Jeff.

Kayla was amazed at how clear-headed the man appeared. Last night when she went to the single women’s dorm to get a good night’s sleep before the raid, Jeff was singing off-key in the cafeteria, drunk and still drinking his harsh moonshine.

Joyce nodded. “That’s the plan. I’ve got someone on it, and we’re going to be down there, too. We’ll make use of that basement.”

Jeff raised an eyebrow. “Visitor recently?”

“Let’s not talk about it here.”

Joyce’s glance in her direction was not lost on Kayla. They had secrets, Joyce’s Raiders, and Kayla was reminded once again that she was the newbie, still not trusted.

Martin nodded and pointed to Kayla. “She can come with us and give us a hand clearing the upper floors. How much time do you need to get in place?”

“Give us half an hour and then head down. If you hear Jeff’s horn, get the hell back to the keep and tell Barry to batten down the hatches for an attack.” Joyce focused her attention on Kayla. “Martin is your commander now. You obey him as if he were me.”