Those Who Lived: Fallen World Stories (7 page)

“Michael didn’t say anything about that,” he said. “We’ve already been spreading the word—people are crazy for the vaccine—it could get uglier than it needs to if we tell them they’ve got to give even more.”

“I’m glad you brought that up,” Nathan said, still smiling. Then with a flick of his wrist, his switchblade was open in his hand, arcing out to slash across Tyler’s face. Tyler flinched, too slow to avoid it. He stumbled back, clutching his chin, a few drops of blood seeping from beneath his fingers to patter onto the floor.

“You can listen to Michael, who’s hundreds of miles away, or you can listen to the guy who’s right in front of you, who can do that or worse if he wants,” Nathan said. He held the knife casually, waggling the handle. “
I
decide what needs to happen. And I think I’m deciding that your vaccination can be put off a few days.” He glanced around the room. “Any more complaints?”

Tyler’s face clenched, as if he was considering taking a lunge at Nathan, but his gaze seemed to catch on the light glinting off the blade. Janelle had straightened up, her frown deepened, but she didn’t speak either. Everyone just eyed Nathan warily. Violence was a power everyone here understood.

What he’d just said, it sounded too much like what I’d said to him in the car—the comment he’d bitten my head off over. Had I given him that idea? That wasn’t the direction I’d meant to push him in.

No, the way he’d been talking even before then, he’d planned to assert his authority from the start. I had a lot of work ahead of me.

Janelle cleared her throat. “There’s something else we need to talk about,” she said. “A group of locals has set up their own little outfit, gathering supplies, policing the neighborhood they’re settled in. We had an issue with them early on, but after we showed how easily we could massacre them, the ones we didn’t cut down have been kowtowing. Michael told us to let them keep on like that as long as they didn’t make another move on us—we’ve been able to use them a few times when we’ve needed something big done. They’ve been angling for priority on the vaccine.”

Nathan guffawed. “And give our competition a step up? We’d be better off if the virus got them. They can get in line with everyone else—and I want them paying double.”

Janelle’s eyebrows rose. Nathan flicked his switchblade in and out of its handle. “Is there a problem with that?” he inquired when she didn’t immediately speak. “Your people here
can
keep this outfit under control, can’t they? I expected a solid operation here.”

“We can handle them just fine,” Janelle said, but when he turned away, she glowered at him.

So we had another group of thugs who’d be looking to take out their frustrations on us. That was just great. And if the truce fell apart, Michael wasn’t going to restrict blame to Nathan.

I could at least make sure we were solid here. “I guess we should get everyone started on their shots so they can get to work,” I said to Nathan, trying to sound as if I was supporting him, not directing.

“Sure, sure,” Nathan said. “Get yourselves inoculated and then get on it. You have your marching orders.” He pointed to Tyler. “Except you. Let’s see how I feel about your ‘performance’ by tomorrow.”

He spun on his heel and strode out of the room.

Our payments started arriving later that morning: dry and canned food, basic medications, electronics we could still make use of, and of course the gas and the guns. Nathan prowled the common room as people trickled in through the entry hall. He wanted the extra fuel and weaponry set aside so he could stow them elsewhere.

“Where do you think you’re going with that?” he barked at a Warden who looked younger than Kaelyn, who’d been carting a couple jugs of diesel through the common room.

“Putting the stuff away,” the girl said, looking puzzled.

Nathan reached out and grasped a hunk of her hair, twisting it with a yank until she cried out. “Next time you screw up it’s coming right out,” he said, drawing his arm back and wiping his hand on his jacket. He pointed to the room that held his personal stash. “That ‘stuff’ goes over
there
.”

No one else said anything as the girl hustled off, but the tension in the air made the hair on the back of my neck rise.

He sent me off on the second day with a personal assignment: “You lived here,” he said. “Find me a secure storage space.”

I thought it’d be a relief to leave the fire station for a while. But leaving, I had to pass the stragglers lingering outside, empty-handed or with bundles of goods deemed not quite enough payment to be accepted. An old man was sitting in the courtyard sobbing. A mother was trying to corral her two scrawny little kids while begging everyone who approached to spare something for her so she could pay for their shots. “Please,” she said, extending her hand to me, and I automatically shook my head and muttered, “Sorry.” The moment squeezed around my gut like a clenched fist as I walked on.

I’d spent most of my teens exploring these streets in the five years Dad’s job had transplanted us here. Weaving through them now stirred up memories of a person I’d let myself forget. I’d rallied in this square with hundreds of other protesters, shouting and brandishing my poster board. I’d stood by this statue wheedling passersby into signing a petition. Mom used to say that I’d always been a crusader—even when the only injustice I was trying to defeat was the fact that Kaelyn had gotten a slightly bigger piece of my fifth birthday cake, a story she’d never gotten tired of telling—but it was in this city that I’d really woken up to the world beyond the island. To what sort of people I wanted to kiss and date, and how many other people had a problem with that. To the privilege allotted to me because I could be mistaken for a white guy with a dark tan, and how many walls could go up when I wasn’t.

I had ranted and raged, and looking back I had the feeling I’d been an exceptionally difficult kid to live with. But it had been important. I’d wanted to set things
right
.

Now I was nineteen, not a kid anymore, and I wasn’t sure where that kid had gone. Zack had encouraged me to keep my head down, with no idea I used to be the kind of guy who’d call out people who just looked the other way.

It wasn’t that
world
anymore. I was still trying to set things right, I just... couldn’t approach it the same way. Taking a stand on my own would have gotten me killed. I’d needed a platform to work from, and I’d gotten myself one by insinuating myself with Michael—as far as that had taken me. I’d saved Kaelyn’s life more than once, helped her get the vaccine to the CDC.

But even Michael didn’t like the way we were running things, apparently, and looking around me, I could understand it. Most of the people we were ruling over didn’t need brutality to keep them in line. They were already crushed. The Wardens
could
ease back—we could be guardians here instead of tyrants, earning respect instead of spreading fear, without losing one bit of the hold we’d gained. We could be helping rebuild this city instead of terrorizing it.

I could imagine that, but I couldn’t imagine how to maneuver Nathan into going for it. I did know the person I’d used to be wouldn’t have been content to slowly nudge the situation in that direction from behind the scenes. That kid would have been furious at the way Nathan was exploiting the survivors who needed the vaccine, at the suffering the Wardens were prolonging right outside the walls of the building that kept me secure, not pretending to be okay with it.

Maybe I was furious, under that twist of guilt. Maybe I’d just gotten too good at stifling any emotions I’d have to hide. The fire I’d used to have was in there somewhere.

I wanted it back.

I returned to the station with Nathan’s assignment accomplished and my own wires in better order. Enough tiptoeing around. It was time to push Nate harder.

“I think you’ll approve,” I said to him when we arrived at the place I’d picked out: what had once been a clothing shop just a few blocks from the station. The building was an older construction, boards and nails instead of bars and concrete, but sturdy. The idea that his stash wouldn’t be totally inaccessible had given me a particle of reassurance.

I pointed to the front windows. “Those shutters are steel, so no one’s going to break in that way. And both the front door and the delivery entrance at the back are reinforced. You can drop things off around back without anyone on the street noticing, so chances are good no one’s even going to realize there’s any point in trying to break in.” I motioned to the FOR RENT sign. “The business must have gone under before the flu—their inventory’s cleared out, so there’s plenty of room.”

“It’s close to the freeway too,” Nathan murmured to himself as we headed down the back alley to the delivery entrance. Was he planning on taking off somewhere with his stash? He’d suggested that control of this city was just the start—it could be he was thinking he could swallow up more and more of Michael’s territory until he had the means to take on what remained of Michael’s operation directly.

How did I steer him away from that? What was his point of leverage? To really move a person, you had to know where they were coming from.

“So what did you do, before all this?” I asked, aiming for a conversational tone, as Nathan hauled open the garage-like door. I considered his suit: today, sleek navy. “Some kind of business exec thing?”

Nathan chuckled. “Something like that.”

“You must miss it.”

He scanned the inner space of the inventory area, and then shot me a narrow look. “Is this supposed to be a heart-to-heart? Save that for your boyfriend.” He stepped out, glanced up and down the alley, and grinned. “I don’t miss anything.”

Because it was easier to grab power now that it all relied on who had the biggest knife and the fastest draw?

Nathan yanked down the door and prodded the edges. I was considering what angle to take that wouldn’t end in a conversation with his switchblade when he nodded, said, “It’ll do,” and stalked back to his convertible without so much as a backward glance. No praise, no thank you. No further opening. He was pulling away from the curb as I followed him out of the alley.

Well, that hadn’t gotten me very far. At least it was only five minutes to the station. I preferred the walk to his company.

I’d made it two blocks, stewing over possible overtures, when a different car pulled up alongside me: a dark blue BMW sedan. I paused, keeping a careful distance from both the car and the buildings beside me, in case this was some kind of ambush. I’d been carrying the pistol in my jacket—
Just in case
, like I’d said to Zack—and a pocket knife in my jeans. In a hand-to-hand struggle I’d probably have better luck with the knife. I dropped my hand to rest over the pocket.

The car’s front passenger window rolled down and a tall, ropey-muscled guy with a mane of tangled black hair leaned his arm out. I relaxed slightly. I’d seen him in the station, arguing with Janelle—Trang, she’d called him. He was someone higher up in that local gang she’d told us about. The Strikers, they went by, for whatever reason.

“I hear you can speak for Michael,” Trang said in a reedy voice that sounded odd coming from such a hulking figure. The guy in the driver’s seat peered past him at me.

“To some extent,” I said.

He motioned to the driver, who cut the gas. Trang stepped out and propped himself against the side of the car with the door still open. Leaving the driver a clear shot at me if he needed it? Nice.

“We’ve gone along with the way you people want to run things,” Trang said. “We’ve helped out when asked. Now the new boss in town is insulting our people to their faces, demanding we hand over more than anyone else in the city to get that vaccine? Maybe you can tell me what message Michael is trying to pass on. Because if it’s the one we’re getting, I know what we’re going to say back. And we’ll be using more than our words.”

“I heard that approach didn’t go so well for you last time,” I said, keeping my voice even.

“Maybe we backed down too soon,” Trang said. “Maybe we’re thinking we’d rather take some of you with us than bow down just to be ground under some jerk-off’s heel.”

At a glance, his stance against the car would have looked casual, but tension was coiled through his posture, the angle of his shoulders, the flexing of his arms. I believed the threat. But they’d bowed down this long. They had some kind of a survival instinct.

“Look,” I said. “The attitude, the pricing—that’s all Nathan. He and Michael have some... differences of opinion that we’re in the process of sorting out. If you give it a little more time for words to work, we’ll all come out better off, don’t you think?”

Trang studied me for a long moment. “You don’t talk like the rest of them,” he said.

“I’m not like the rest of them,” I replied. “That’s why Michael sent me.”

After another few seconds, he inclined his head and swung back into the car. “All right,” he said. “But don’t make us wait too long.”

I had to work faster. But Nathan wasn’t making it easy. I went to the store with him twice over the next few days to unload the small delivery van he was having the Wardens pack his gas and guns into now, but he made me drive the van while he took the convertible—“Waste of our gas,” I overheard Janelle muttering, but Nate seemed to think it made a necessary statement—and while I was hefting the boxes he scrawled numbers on them and on the wall of the storage area with chalk, murmuring to himself. He snapped at me when I attempted conversation. It looked like he was tallying up his haul, but there were other, larger numbers on the wall next to them. His goals?

“That’s my job; focus on yours,” he said when I asked.

Other than that, I barely saw him. He’d started taking his meals at odd times when no one else was likely to be in the kitchen, and the one time I happened to walk in while he taking a bowl out of the microwave, he immediately sauntered out with it. He left in his convertible for an hour or two at a time a few times a day, without saying where he was going. But we were never really free of him either. He lurked, popping into the common room unexpectedly to watch the Wardens on duty truck off vaccine payments and to announce changes to the patrol schedule at a moment’s notice.