Pursuit of the Apocalypse (16 page)

Chewy sat down in front of him and offered absolutely no help in unraveling the mystery of the missing morons.

“You’re no help. At least Scooby Doo would find me a sandwich.”

Chewy wagged her tail at the thought of food. This created a distinct jingle as the dog wiggled back and forth across the concrete. It sounded like an ordinary collar. But this was Tolerance and there were no collars allowed.

Jerry stood up and examined the ground behind the dog. He picked up the brass casing Chewy had sent rolling with her tail and smelled it. The pungent odor of freshly spent powder confirmed his suspicion. A quick search of the alley turned up nine more casings. He sat back down and tossed the brass case across the alley. “I must have really been out. How does someone sleep through an entire gunfight?”

Chewy barked and it hurt every idea in his head.

He closed his eyes and grunted, “Did you find anything besides food?”

Chewy dropped her eyes and put her head down on the ground.

The Librarian scratched the dog’s head as he thought about Erica and her captor. “He couldn’t have gotten far. He might still be here. Somewhere.” He looked at his watch and tried to determine how much time had passed.

Chewy moved forward and put her head under the outstretched hand.

“I get it. You’re not giving up. And neither am I. We’ve chased him this far. We’ll catch him soon. But first I think I need to throw up a little bit.”

Fifteen minutes and a few hurls later he was back on his feet with reasonable stability. His steadiness returned as the pair walked out of the alley and made their way back to the marketplace at the center of the campus.

The crowd had thinned considerably and taken a lot of the emotional overreacting with it. Of those that remained in the square, the panicked screams had turned to a muted sobbing. The counselor brigade was still out, but there were fewer members than there had been initially. Those that remained sat and rocked the ones hardest hit by the day’s excitement as the plush animals soaked up the remaining moans, tears, and snot.

Freedom Enforcement Officers continued to take statements from witnesses and Jerry watched a pair of the constables shoving a man down one of the pathways. One officer held a black leather jacket in his hand. The patch on the back was unmistakably a screeching eagle with an iron beak.

This put a brief hesitation in Jerry’s step, but he hid it well and kept his stride. He moved toward one of the administration buildings and stepped into the nook of a stairwell. Suddenly he desperately wanted a wall at his back.

That was definitely one of the bikers that had attacked him on the road to Tolerance. Had they followed him here? Those two morons from Amarillo had. They were here somewhere.

He watched as another biker was stripped of his jacket and escorted through the courtyard in cuffs.

The gang’s presence in town might explain the shell casings in the alleyway, but it didn’t explain why he had been able to wake up without being dead. They were all looking to collect the bounty on his head just like everybody else. He was lucky to still have it.

He knelt as if to tie his shoe and, after pushing Chewy’s tongue away from his face, searched the courtyard. On the other side of the clearing, a Freedom Officer sat on a low brick wall with a bloody arm as another official from the town worked from a first aid kit to dress it.

Not far from this scene a biker lay dead or really, really sleepy. Either way, he wasn’t getting up, and a couple of townspeople stood over him kicking at his head to make sure.

The cops were on alert. Mr. Christopher was probably in town somewhere getting stitched up. The gang was here to collect the bounty. And the morons were likely somewhere plotting another ridiculous booby trap. He hated himself for falling for their stupid trick. He was outnumbered and had let himself become reckless in his pursuit of Mr. Christopher. It was a stupidly dangerous combination.

He took a deep breath and vowed to be more discreet. He swore to move with more caution. He took off running across the square as the man in the stupid white suit stepped into view on the other side of the market.

It was Christopher. He knew it. Jerry could see his face and it needed to be punched immediately.

He closed the distance to the market in no time and leapt over a table scattering jars of beard oil and mustache wax across the campus grounds as the owner of the Face Place dove out of the way.

The Librarian slid across another table breaking records at the Deep Cuts booth and sent a stack of flannel shirts into the air at the Plaidipus as the owners shouted for the authorities.

The shouts drew the attention of nearby officers, but Jerry kept running. He knocked over a booth full of knit hats, scarves, and cardigans as the shopkeeper of Knit Shit tried to stab him with a pair of needles.

He cleared the market, leaving shouts from the authorities, vendors, and counselors behind, and closed in on Mr. Christopher who was deep in a shouting match of his own with a small, obviously angry woman on the steps of the former English building.

From what Jerry could tell, the woman was winning the match. She yelled so loud that Jerry was on the steps before they saw him. Mr. Christopher barely had time to turn before Jerry tackled him through the glass door and knocked the stupid white hat from his head.

The two men spilled into a hall of higher learning and slid across the marble floor in a mosaic of broken glass.

Jerry could feel the cuts on his hands but smiled knowing that Christopher had gotten it worse. He landed on top of the bounty hunter and punched him right in the eye. “Where is she?”

Mr. Christopher said nothing.

The Librarian had begun to punch again when the small, angry woman grabbed his arm and tried to pull him off the bounty hunter.

She screamed, “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Determined to punch Christopher in the face again, Jerry followed through with the swing.

The woman refused to let go and flew across the foyer, swearing the entire way.

Mr. Christopher drove the heel of his palm in to Jerry’s chin.

Jerry backed away from the strike, but it gave the pinned man enough leverage to wriggle free. The Librarian fell away and caught a foot in the chest that sent him back into a pile of broken glass.

Mr. Christopher ran and the Librarian followed. The woman swore at both of them and called for the police all in a single breath.

Jerry caught a handful of the white jacket as his prey rounded a corner. “Where is she?”

The weasel slipped from his jacket but twisted himself off balance doing so. He careened off the wall, ducked into a lecture room, and slammed the door shut behind him.

Jerry dropped the jacket and crashed into the door. And instantly bounced back. Locked against him, he threw his shoulder into the door twice more and did little more than bruise his shoulder in two places.

A stream of swearing erupted from the other end of the hall where the small woman was getting back to her feet. The war had wiped away countless cities, lives, and social norms, and it was true that swearing seemed more prevalent than ever before after the world blew up, but the string of obscenities from the woman’s mouth was enough to draw his attention away from the door. She composed a string of profanity that was both obscene and strangely beautiful. Like an undisputable master of art, one could find objection to her work but they could not deny her genius at that craft. She said terrible things. Horrible things. Sexually impossible things, but she did it all with a love of her craft that had to be applauded.

A crash drew his attention back to the door. A window had shattered on the other side and Mr. Christopher was making a break for the outside. The Librarian surrendered to the classroom door and rushed for the exit doors a little farther down the hall.

Exploding from the doors, he sped down the steps as Mr. Christopher landed outside the window and tripped over the desk he’d put through it.

An arm closed around Jerry’s throat and began dragging him backwards. He grabbed the hand and spun. Lifting the attacker’s arm over his head, he wrenched the wrist back before punching the Freedom Officer right in the beard.

Mr. Christopher made the most of the attack and ran off into the campus grounds towards the front gate.

Jerry released the officer’s broken wrist and pursued. The fuzziness in his head had faded with rage and he gained quickly on the bounty hunter. He caught him quickly in a small commons dominated by a massive sculpture that had been in place before the end of the world.

Steel girders implanted in the ground looked less like intentional art and more like an industrial accident. Abandoned and left to rust, they would have been a liability lawsuit in waiting, but they had been painted red and given the name “Aspiration” so it was art instead.

The people of Tolerance had co-opted the space to create their own artistic displays. Banners strung between the girders declared “peace will rule” and “violence is not the answer.” On the ground, they flew the same flags that welcomed people to their town.

The Librarian dove and caught Mr. Christopher by the ankle, sending the bounty hunter stumbling through a flag and eventually to the ground wrapped in a banner bearing a dead cow that stated, “I’m not loving it!”

Jerry scrambled back to his feet as Christopher untangled himself from the fabric and grabbed the broken flagpole from the ground.

The bounty hunter charged, splintered end first, towards the Librarian, screaming as he came.

Jerry jumped behind a “Love will set us free” flag and intercepted the thrust with the fabric. He wrapped the flag around the end of the makeshift staff and struck at Mr. Christopher with a right cross.

The man in white tried to pull away from the punch, but with his arm entangled in the flag, he caught it with his shoulder and twisted to the ground. Rolling away, he freed himself from the banner and got to his feet before grabbing a “Nothing is stronger than love” flag and snapping the post into a replacement weapon.

He came at the Librarian again swinging broad strokes that Jerry managed to dodge several times as he backed away farther into the field of flags.

Jerry pulled a “hugs are the strongest weapon” flag post from the ground and swung back.

Hugs and Love collided in a flurry of strikes and blocks, and it was quickly apparent that Mr. Christopher hid behind others as a matter of convenience instead of necessity. The man was quicker and more capable than Jerry had assumed. In every encounter with Mr. Christopher, the man had been surrounded by hired muscle. It was easy to think the man was a coward and incapable of fighting his own fights, but that wasn’t the case at all.

Jerry intercepted an overhead swing and swept Christopher’s legs out from under him. The man might be good with a club, but, excepting a tremendous coincidence, he knew the bounty hunter had not spent several months swinging a broomstick around a library’s fallout shelter out of pure boredom.

The battle continued, and it wasn’t long before Jerry’s knuckles were bloodied, his arms were bruised, and the two combatants were surrounded.

“They’re desecrating the Pavilion of Peace!” the small angry woman screamed. “Get those motherfuckers. I want them in the cage.”

Several Freedom Enforcement Officers responded to the swearing and rushed into the flag garden with outstretched hands.

Jerry blocked a strike from Mr. Christopher, backed away, struck one officer in the neck and sent another to the ground with a twist of the Hugs stick.

Mr. Christopher took the opening and knocked Jerry off-balance. He followed through with a shove that sent the Librarian to the ground and raised the Love stick above his head to strike.

One of the officers stepped in front of the man from Alasis and ordered him to stop.

The flagpole shattered over the officer’s head and knocked the man to the ground on top of the Librarian.

With his opponent pinned, Mr. Christopher pointed the shaft at the Librarian’s throat and whispered, “Finally!” He raised the stick above his head with both hands and prepared to spear his bounty when an officer dove into him at full speed. Two more rushed in to help subdue the man in white while three more jumped on the Librarian and forced his hands into cuffs.

TWENTY-ONE

Erica’s scream faded when she realized the three bears were seated at a large wooden table in the center of the cabin around a woman with unkempt gray hair who didn’t seem to be freaking out at all. All four were staring at Erica, but not one of the bears, or the woman, made any attempt to maul her.

“Hello, dear,” the older woman spoke with a soft British accent. “Is everything all right?”

Erica gasped for breath while she thought of where to begin. Her story of her kidnapping, her escape and the chase through the woods seemed to pale in comparison to the fact that she was now in a wood cabin with three bears and a woman who didn’t seem in the least bit phased to be in a cabin with three bears.

Erica began to answer the question and quickly derailed. “I was kinda—I got—there was a bear—now there are three bears—why are there bears here? How are you not being eaten by bears?”

“Oh, my poor thing.” The woman stood from the table. The bear on her right began to get up as well. This caught the woman’s attention. “No, Paddington. Stay.” She rattled a silver bowl in front of the bear. “Eat.”

Erica gasped as the bear settled back into place at the table.

The older woman walked around the table. She grabbed a throw hanging on the back of an empty chair as she went. “You seem agitated. Please come in and have a seat. Are you in trouble?”

“There’re three bears here.”

“Yes, dear.” She placed the throw over Erica’s shoulder and guided her to an easy chair near a wood stove. “Sit here and I’ll get you something warm to drink.”

The cabin had only one room, but it was larger than it had appeared from the outside. She tried to look around the cabin, but it was hard not to focus on the bears. It wasn’t until she sat down that she realized they were all wearing some article of clothing. One had a hat, one had a vest, and the other had a flower on its chest. For their part, the bears seemed disinterested in her. They remained focused on the food before them.