Fireside (15 page)

The old man popped the scab into his mouth and Aeric cringed. “Take us to your radio. Now,” he ordered.

Judd looked hurt emotionally, not physically. “You two are mean-spirited. If the nurses were still here, they’d put you in solitary for being so rude.”

“Talk and walk, Judd,” Aeric sighed again. Judd was wearing on his nerves.

“Huh? Oh yeah, you want to see my radio. This way!” He turned sideways and slid through the chain link fence and limped off into the compound.

They followed him across the courtyard and into a building marked
CELLBLOCK B
, then through a dark, smelly hallway. Cells lined both sides, their occupants long dead. Some of the cells had bones scattered around like they’d been torn apart by animals who couldn’t fit the bones through the bars, while others had complete skeletons, resting peacefully on their beds. Aeric had seen these same prisoners decades ago when they were here and guessed that the locks wouldn’t open after the power went out and everyone in the cellblock starved to death. What a shitty way to die.

Just before the stairs to the second floor, they came across something truly disturbing. Giant birds, presumably vultures, were painted on the cinder block walls. The paint was mostly a dull, light brown color, sometimes dark brown where the fluids had pooled heavily. Aeric stepped closer and saw bloody rags along the base of the wall and a knife.

“Judd, did you cut yourself to create these?”

He unwrapped his hand and held it up. A partially-healed scab covered the injury where his index finger had been chopped away at the closest joint to his palm and a fresh wound indicated a more recent removal of his middle finger at the first joint. “Paint! We needed paint! We learned after the first time,” he grinned as he pointed at the nub where his index finger used to be. “Oh yes, we learned. This one was too far, too much gone! Now, when we need more paint… Just the tip! Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!”

“You sound—”

“Shut up! He’ll hit you again.”

“Both of you, shut up,” Aeric told Judd. “So, you painted these giant birds, why?”

“
Vultures!
They are vultures! The master will be pleased when he sees them.”

“Your master, when was the last time you saw him?”

Judd’s face fell. The joy and elation at showing off his masterpiece drained away from him. “It’s been forever. What’s it been?”

“At least ten years.”

“More like fifteen, you idiot.”

Aeric held up his hands to quiet them down. “Okay, it’s been a long time. It’s a dangerous world out there, are you sure that your master is even alive anymore?”

Without warning, Judd sprang at Aeric. He landed on his chest, knocking him backwards. As they fell, Judd beat weakly at Aeric’s face screaming, “The master loves me! He said he’d reward me for telling him when the Jello soldiers returned. They know! The Vultures are going to kill the Jello people.”

Aeric hit the ground hard, then rolled to the side. Judd scrambled after him and Aeric kicked out with his boot, catching the insane watcher squarely on the chin. He dropped, out cold.

“Where the hell were you?” Aeric asked Joseph.

“I was in shock that the… Holy shit, you should’ve… You should’ve…” Joseph started laughing uncontrollably. “That little old crippled man just attacked you. Oh god, that was funny.”

“He could have had a knife and that ‘little old crippled man’ could have killed me as quick as a demonbroc, Joe.”

The Shooter sobered and wiped his eyes, “Yeah, you’re right. I’m sorry, Traxx. I didn’t think about it like that.”

Aeric grinned at him “Okay, you’ve got me. It
was
a little funny. We need to be careful out here, though. We’re not in the San Angelo defensive area anymore. We have to assume that everyone we meet out here is a killer. They’d have to be to survive this long.”

“So what do we do with him?” Joe asked, pointing towards Judd with his chin.

“Let’s tie him up. Here, cover him, while I grab a bedsheet.”

Judd sat up groggily and stared into the barrel of Joseph’s rifle while Aeric went to the nearest cell and reached inside. “What are you doing?” Judd screamed.

“Relax, he’s only going to get a sheet. You need to have your hands tied.”

Aeric pulled hard on the sheet he’d grasped, sending the skeleton clattering to the floor. Behind him, Judd let out a godawful high-pitched keening sound. “Jake! You’ve killed Jake! Oh my god. Oh my god.
Jake!
”

“Who the hell is Jake?” Aeric asked, walking up carrying the bed sheet.

Judd sobbed on the floor. “You bastards! Jake didn’t do anything to you. He was my only real friend in here. And you killed him.”

He looked at the sheet in his hands and then thought about the skeleton that had lain atop it for thirty-four years. Had the old man been a prisoner here who’d somehow been outside of his jail cell when the power went out? “I… Uh, I’m sorry, Judd. I saw an old skeleton lying on the bed. I didn’t think anything of it.”

“What? What are you talking about? Jake was just there this morning!” Judd started crawling towards the cell. Aeric and Joseph stood by, watching him.

He made it to the cell and used the bars to pull himself up. Judd stared inside the small room for several long seconds before whirling away to look up and down the hallway. “Jake! Jake you old sneak! How’d you get out this time? Where are you, buddy?”

Joseph leaned over and whispered, “Traxx, this guy is absolutely insane. We gotta watch out for him.”

“That’s what I tried to tell you a minute ago when you were laughing at him for jumping on me,” Aeric retorted. He looked back at Judd and called, “Hey, Judd! Hey, I think I saw Jake run upstairs to the radio room.”

Aeric could almost see the light turn on above Judd’s head. “Oh, you’re probably right. He likes girls and that Starr sure sounds like a good-looking woman.”

The old man limped quickly past them. Aeric reached out to stop him. “Hold on, Judd. We need to tie you up. I don’t want you attacking us again.”

Judd stopped and stared at his hands before holding them out. “You’re right, sir. I’m sorry that I acted like that.”

The constant flip-flopping of personalities was exhausting to Aeric. The old man was as inconsistent as the weather back in Missouri when he was a kid. The weather would turn from hot and sunny to chilly and rainy, then back again, all within a few hours in the spring and fall. Preparing for a day outside was mentally draining, just like speaking with Judd.

He tied Judd’s hands in front of him and they followed the man up the stairs. He couldn’t put all of his bodyweight on the leg with the destroyed joint, so he negotiated the stairs by sitting backwards and hopping up each one. Aeric briefly wondered about the ladder to the watch tower; with enough arm strength, anything was possible.

At the top of the stairs, Judd pulled himself up with the help of the railing and hobbled down the hallway towards an open doorway. They allowed him to enter as he called out for Jake, choosing to stay back out of the room in case there really was someone in there. Satisfied that they were alone, they went into the room.

Sitting on the desk was a military style radio, like what Lorelei’s Army Humvees used to have before the damn things finally crapped out. Aeric remembered that it was called a SINCGARs radio; hell if he knew what the acronym stood for, though. This one looked like it was brand new. There weren’t any chips in the green paint and all the numbers on the keypad could clearly be read.

“How long have you had this radio, Judd?”

“Hmm? Oh, I don’t know… Kendrick gave it to me when he was here last time.”

The floor dropped out from underneath Aeric and he had to put a hand on the desk to steady himself. “What is it, Traxx?” Joseph asked in alarm.

His heart beat loudly and the edges of Aeric’s vision started to close in on him. Kendrick? Had the crazy old fool said that
Kendrick
gave him the radio? Was it the same person? Was his son still alive? Did he come here before going on to Austin? If he went to Austin, that meant he was a Vulture, which meant….

“You said Kendrick,” he gasped, fighting off the nausea that threatened to make his breakfast of oatmeal rise out of his stomach. “What do you mean?”

“Kendrick. He’s the master!” Judd exclaimed, clapping his hands wildly.

“These people don’t listen to a word you say, Judd. Let’s go find Jake.”

“Dammit, Lawrence, you’re supposed to keep silent!”

“Shut up! All of you!” Aeric roared and stood straight to his full height. “Do you know the master’s last name?”

“Last name? Hmm, the last time I saw him, he had the same name,” Judd said in confusion.

“No, like his family name. I’m Aeric Traxx, he’s Joseph Purvell. Traxx and Purvell are our last names.”

“Oh! The
second
name, you mean,” Judd giggled. “Of course I know it. Don’t you think it would be silly for me to work for the master if I didn’t know his second name?”

Aeric pounded his hand on the desk. “Okay, what is Kendrick’s
second
name, you crazy fucker?” His head was pounding as loudly as his fist had sounded against the wood.

Judd looked properly admonished and mumbled, “It’s Rustwood. Kendrick Rustwood, the master of the Vultures. Duh.”

Aeric sat heavily in the seat across from the desk and put his face in his hands.
How had this happened?

“Who is this Kendrick Rustwood, Traxx?” Joseph asked.

The missing pieces of the puzzle that Maria had presented him with fell into place. Kendrick had helped Ted design the walls, so theoretically, he could know of a way to breach them. Maria said that they’d “fall down,” to a child a hole in a wall could look like they fell down. Kendrick planned to bring the Vultures to San Angelo and use his knowledge of the city’s defenses to destroy their only real protection.

The girl had also said that the destruction of the city and the murder of its inhabitants would be Aeric’s fault. When Maria told him that his son was going to kill him, he’d thought she meant one of the boys that he and Veronica had together. Until this moment, he’d thought that Kendrick had died when he disappeared almost fifteen years ago. Kendrick planned to attack San Angelo in retaliation for his real father’s death at the hands of Kate, who’d killed him trying to help Aeric escape.

“Traxx, who’s Kendrick?” Joseph repeated, more forcefully this time. He wouldn’t have heard of the Rustwood boy before; Joseph had been too young when he ran away.

“He’s the
master
of the Vultures, haven’t you people been listening?” Judd said.

Aeric looked up at the young Shooter with red-rimmed eyes, “Kendrick Rustwood is my son.”

ELEVEN

The sound of his boots echoed across the old, yet clean, marble floor. When he’d arrived here all those years ago, Kendrick found his father’s palace in Austin in poor repair. After he’d killed that idiot, Captain Sanders, and took his rightful place as the leader of the Vultures, he made it his mission to clean up the inhabited parts of the city. Call it a lesson that he’d learned while he lived in San Angelo. If you let the garbage and filth build up, then disease was surely not far behind. It was a small point of pride for him that there hadn’t been a major outbreak of disease since he’d taken charge of the Vultures.

Not that he particularly cared for the residents of Austin. It was simple really, he needed an army to defeat Traxx and sick people couldn’t fight. The city of San Angelo was a fortress in every sense of the word. That bitch, Griffith, had taken her experiences in the Middle East and been involved in every step of the fortification process with old Ted. They’d collapsed the perimeter to a much smaller and defendable area that encircled the city, systematically removing the structures outside of the walls to give them greater stand-off distance. It had been years since he’d personally seen their progress; his observers had told him that everything was gone now.

Luckily, he’d been able to add a few special touches to a sizable portion of the southern section of the new wall. Once the Vultures were in sight of the walls, the alarm raised by the defenders would signal his man on the inside to start the fires. The heat would ignite the fuses on the dynamite and blow the wall apart. It wasn’t a fool-proof plan, but it was a pretty good one.

He’d waited his entire life for revenge. He’d pretended to be one of the San Angelians as a child for as long as he could stomach. Then he’d left without a trace and returned to Austin, declaring himself the rightful leader of the Vultures. Sure, he’d had to fight that fat, bloated bastard that had stepped in after his father died, but the man had been easy to defeat in hand-to-hand combat.

Two decades of subjugation under the oppressive Sanders had quickly brought the population over to his side. He introduced farming to the Austinites to offset their total reliance on the Vultures for food in exchange for their promise that at least one member from every family would join the fight when he called upon them. The people really had no choice except to agree to his terms once he stopped providing food for them. It was a win for him on two counts. He got to save the precious little pre-war food remaining and he was able to guarantee himself a full army while only employing a relatively small group of people full time.

Kendrick sighed as he stepped lightly up the stairs to his bedchamber on the third floor of the palace. His father had set up the suite in the north wing and then Sanders had ruined it so he had to have it repaired. He finally felt at home in Austin, more so than he could ever have felt living among the enemy. The time was drawing near, though, that he would have to leave the city and go into the field with his troops.

The watcher at the prison in Eden had finally called to let him know that Traxx and his people were once again patrolling the surrounding area. It meant that they felt themselves secure enough in San Angelo to leave the safety of their walls to conduct routine patrols. That false sense of security would be their undoing. He’d crush them; make them regret the day that they’d taken his father away from him.

“Mmm, lover. What’s wrong? You seem so tense.”

Kendrick looked up to see Starr standing at the top of the stairs. He’d been so engrossed in plotting the death of Traxx and his people that he hadn’t realized he’d stopped on the landing before the final flight of stairs to the third floor. His breath caught in his throat at the sight of the beautiful, yet ruthless woman.

Starr Munoz was, quite simply, a young man’s dream. She was tall, for a woman—maybe five-ten—which complimented Kendrick’s six foot frame perfectly. She had an athletic build with dark, black hair that framed her face. Her chin was slightly pointed, without being severe or giving her the appearance of an elf, while her cheekbones where high and strong. The shape of her dark brown eyes hinted at her Japanese ancestry several generations before and the olive skin gave away the Hispanic heritage of her recent relations. Like her height, everything about Starr paired well with Kendrick, whose own creamy skin darkened considerably in the sun underneath his sandy blonde hair.

Her intoxicating visual appearance was renowned throughout the city. So was her sadistic nature. No one who’d ever crossed her had survived. She was well-known for having rivals skinned alive or slowly tortured by her servants, something that Rustwood found stimulating. Starr would go to any lengths to please him—and to make sure that she was the only woman who crossed his mind.

“I’m fine,” he answered. “I’m just irritated that the preparations for the army aren’t going as well as they should be.”

Starr nodded her head in understanding. He was the only person that she lowered her voice for, the only one to whom she’d offer deference e towards and the only one who she would ever attempt to comfort. She grasped his forearm and tugged gently while saying, “Come to the bedchamber, let me help you relax.”

His feet carried him behind her as he inhaled deeply of her fragrance. She always had a supply of scented soaps and shampoos, even after all these decades when no one was producing anything new. He wondered idly how she continued to procure the goods.
Some questions were better left unasked
, he thought.

Kendrick saluted the guards awkwardly, being dragged the way that he was. He thought he saw a twitch at the corner of one of the men’s mouth, causing him to stop short and jerk his arm away from Starr. “Do you think something is funny?” he screamed, spittle flying across the short distance between them.

“No, sir! No, I—”

His attempt at an explanation was cut short by a hand clamped across his mouth. “I’ll take him out back and discipline him, sir,” the captain of the palace guard stated. The man had materialized out of the shadows, which was highly disconcerting.

The heat and rage that threatened to burst out of Kendrick receded gradually. He took a deep breath and nodded to the captain, “Thank you, Quellan. I want him to remember that I am the master of this city. The Vultures answer to me and any who mock me will suffer the consequences of my wrath!”

“He will be properly disciplined, my lord.”

Kendrick’s eyes blazed for a moment longer and then he turned to follow his woman through the doors into the bedchamber. He ruled the city with an iron fist and everyone knew not to cross him. The fact that one of his Vultures had smirked at him when he was about to make love to Starr made him want to cut the man’s eyes out and then piss into the empty holes. He smiled at the thought. Maybe he
should
do that to the guard, and let him wander the halls of the palace as a beggar, to remind the others that he was the master here.

Starr’s hand splayed open on his shoulder and spun him around to face her. She held a knife low, ready to stab into his stomach. Kendrick’s heart raced at the anticipation of what she would do as she shoved him roughly back onto the bed. She walked over to him and glared down at him as he unbuckled his pistol belt and then unsnapped the buttons that held his military-style cargo pants closed.

She kneeled before him and took him in her mouth while she slid the knife softly along the top of his thigh, leaving a trail of crimson behind. The blade crossed over multiple dried lines of the same kind, causing him to wince in pain and writhe in pleasure at her tongue on his penis. The combination of the two sensations made him finish quickly into her mouth and she slid along his body to kiss him roughly.

“Better, my lord?” she purred.

“Yeah. You know exactly what I need.”

Her fingers trailed down his stomach to fondle his drained testicles. “What has you so worked up?”

He jabbed a finger towards the windows. “Those damn peasants. They love me when I give them seeds to grow crops, provide them with goats for milk and chickens for eggs. But when I tell them that it’s time to repay my generosity, that the army is being stood up and they must fulfill their part of the bargain, they cry out and make every excuse in the book.

“I would murder them all if I could. I would rip open their chests and eat their hearts while they watched me do it. As soon as we’re rid of Traxx and that meddler, Tyler, then we’ll come back here and cleanse the city.”

Starr squeezed her hand tightly, causing his breath to catch in his throat and an uncomfortable pain to spread across his stomach. “Your father initiated the first cleanse. It’s only fitting that you carry on his work. This is your city; the people live and die by your command. If they’ve outlived their usefulness, then get rid of them.”

A smile spread across his face. “Yes! We need a purge to clean out all the malcontents and worthless freeloaders. We’ll do it after I burn San Angelo and bring Traxx back here in a cage. Then we’ll have an old-fashioned pig roast here in Austin.”

The look of confusion on her face made him realize once again that she was much younger than him. While he hadn’t seen them himself, he’d heard plenty of stories about pigs and how to cook them growing up. “It was an animal that lived before the Reset,” he said, using the term that his father had coined to describe the war that he’d initiated.

“Oh. Did they all die out?”

“Probably. Filthy animals I’m told. Anyways, they ran a stick from their asshole through their mouth and then cooked them over a fire.” He hated the need to stop his rant to explain things to her. “
That’s
what we’re going to do to the people who piss me off after we destroy San Angelo.”

“You’re the smartest man alive, Rustwood” she demurred. “Wanna fuck now?”

He pushed upwards, throwing her roughly across to the other side of the bed and descended upon her giggling form. Of course he wanted to fuck; it was the only thing that sated his thirst for revenge against Traxx.

Unbeknownst to Kendrick, it was a trait that he shared with his father.

*****

After breaking Judd’s radio and antenna, Aeric and Joseph traveled down the old highway towards Austin. It took them a few more days than they’d planned due to the encroachment of Mother Nature upon the pavement as well as increased activity as they got closer to the city. Mechanical monstrosities that were US Army tanks at one time or another tore up the ground and blocked the main roads, causing them to divert towards the lakes and travel down back roads. The Vultures were preparing to move.

They approached Austin from the west. The last several miles had been brutal on their thighs and hamstrings as they traversed the ups and downs of the hills on that side of the city. Once they topped the final rise and were barely able to see the downtown area, they made their way to the Vandegrift High School which sat on the top of a hill overlooking the city. The sign out front still had the phrase, “Go Vipers!” plastered across it, making the place appear both abandoned and pathetic.

The odds were that the place was empty. They didn’t take any chances, though, and they approached cautiously. As they neared the school, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, so they went through the front doors, long since broken and shattered. Their boots crunched across the broken glass as they searched for a way onto the roof. A thick layer of dust, probably heavy with radioactive fallout, covered everything, which they took as a good sign that no one had been in the building in a long time.

They found a stairway leading to the roof. They had to jimmy open the door with a small crowbar from Joseph’s pack, praying that the noise didn’t attract any unwanted attention. Once they got up on top of the school, they had good three hundred and sixty degree views for security. More importantly, they could see the downtown area about five or six miles away.

Aeric was shocked. It had been a long time since he’d seen the city—the day he finally escaped with Katie and Tyler was the last time he saw it—but the skyline had changed drastically. He slid the 30.06 off of his shoulder and used the powerful scope to get a better view.

When he first returned to Austin and was captured by the Vultures, he’d been utterly surprised at the transformation; they’d apparently continued their wrecking spree in the intervening years. There were less than a handful of high-rises now, and those had clearly fallen into disrepair beyond the normal wear and tear of neglect. Even from this far away, he could see holes in the sides of the remaining buildings. He cursed under his breath, for him to be able to see those holes from this distance, they must have been large, probably hits from the tank ammunition that the Vultures had.

It made no sense to him for the high-rises to get knocked down. What was the point? If anything, hundreds, if not thousands of people could have lived in those buildings…all up against one another in the cramped space, without proper cleaning or ventilation.
Actually, maybe it was a good thing that they knocked them down
, he thought. They probably didn’t want people getting sick and then spreading the disease to the rest of the population.

He shifted the focus of the scope and could see what looked like green fields all over the place in between buildings and the truth hit him. They wanted the people to live in houses so they could farm the yards. People who lived in a high-rise building didn’t have a lawn and would likely have relied on others to provide their food. This way, people were now responsible for their own food supply. It was a smart move on their part and the spark of a plan began to form in the back of his mind.