Winter's Edge: A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Adventure (Outzone Drifter Series Book 1) (12 page)

But it was the Barrio T, a predominantly Latino neighborhood and the city’s original district, with its defensive high walls, inner
cuadras
, and bustling narrow streets that remained the city’s beating heart.

The sound of Staunton’s voice calling him broke Brogan’s reverie.

“Hey, Frank, can you come in here? We need to talk.”

Brogan stepped back from the window, then closed it. The evening had brought with it a sharp chill in the air. Winter would be here soon.

Staunton lay on his bed, his head propped up against a pillow. He had been watching TV on an old pre-war flat-screen fixed to the far wall. He stared over at Brogan intently. There was a look on his face that Brogan hadn’t observed before.

“What’s up, Dan? You look like a roach just crawled up your ass.”

Staunton swung his legs off the bed and stood up, the tension on his face becoming more pronounced. “There’s something bugging me. Something me and you need to sort out right now.”

“Really?”

“Yeah really. I’m going to ask you a couple of questions and you’re going to give me some honest answers.”

Staunton had walked around his bed and stood a couple of feet away from Brogan. In only his socks and underclothes, Brogan saw how powerfully built he was; the stocky torso, his sinewy forearms, the thick veins bulging in his neck. His demeanor had lost all its previous friendliness.

“Depends on what the question is, buddy.” There was an edge to Brogan’s voice now. He had an idea what this was all about. “It’s not like I owe you anything.”

Staunton’s breath quickened. “You were pretty quick to quiz Steve and Jake before taking them along with us. Not saying you were wrong, ‘cause you weren’t. No such thing as too careful in this town. But now it’s my turn to ask the hard questions. Can you handle that, or not?”

Brogan checked his emotions before this turned into a brawl. Staunton had a tough no-nonsense personality he appreciated. He didn’t want their newfound friendship to sour so soon.

“Alright, Dan. What is it? What do you want to know?”

“Same no bullshit rule applies, okay?”

“I hear you. No bullshit. Shoot.”

Staunton took a deep breath. “For a guy who’s never been here before, you sure know how to handle yourself around these parts. You sure you haven’t been…trained for this?”

Back at the terminal, Brogan had told Staunton he was a carpenter. Apparently his friend wasn’t buying it. If Brogan got accused of being an undercover NIA agent, it would be dangerous for anyone too closely associated with him, say someone he shared a room with. It had Staunton rattled.

For a moment, Brogan regretted not having disengaged his cop persona like John Cole had told him to. Wishing that he’d kept his mouth shut the moment he had walked into the Scangate terminal, turned a deaf ear to the sound of shooting on the bus. But where would the two Halleck women be right now if he had done that? He shuddered to think.

“Because if you’re here on some kind of mission,” Staunton continued, “sorry fellah, you ain’t using me as cover.”

Brogan held Staunton’s gaze. “Dan, I hear what you’re saying, but I’m starting fresh here, just like you. I had a good contact back in the State. A cop. I made sure to find out how everything works over here. That’s all.”

“How about you. Are you a cop?”

Brogan shook his head firmly. “No. I’m no cop. I swear to you.”
Not anymore, and never will be again.

Staunton still wasn’t buying it. “It’s not only what you know. It’s how you act. Come on, Frank, I saw how you handled yourself today. How you organized everybody on the bus. Steve told me he saw you shoot three people stone cold dead in less than a minute. Two of them moving targets.” Staunton’s eyes narrowed. “Only cops and soldiers know how to shoot like that.”

“Sure, that’s true. During the war I was in special ops. That’s the shit I used to do. Shit you don’t forget in a hurry.”

Staunton’s gaze softened. Brogan could see he wanted to believe him.

“The Global War has been over seven years now, the civil war five,” Staunton said, still some doubt lingering in his voice. “I know I was rusty as hell when I picked up your rifle. I sure didn’t kill three people, not even in ten minutes. Back in the war I was a damned good shooter too.”

Brogan shrugged. “My friend took me out on the range a couple of times before I left. It doesn’t take long to get your eye back in again. Look, Dan, I’ll be leaving the city soon. In a couple of days, none of this is going to matter. If you like, you never have to see me again.”

Staunton raised an eyebrow. “Leaving so soon…really?”

Brogan nodded.

Staunton sighed, and his shoulders relaxed. “Okay, Frank, I believe you. I guess what you tell me adds up.” He put out his hand. “Sorry for the grilling, pal. I had to know.”

“That’s alright. I’d have done the same,” Brogan replied, shaking his hand. “Like you say, you can’t be too careful in this town.”

He slapped Staunton on the shoulder. “How about you watch our gear and I’ll go out and get us all a bite to eat. Don’t know about you, but I’m starving. It’s been a long time since any of us have eaten.”

It took a while for Brogan to get to sleep that night. He lay in bed staring at the ceiling, replaying the day’s events in his mind.

On the whole, things had gone as well as he could have expected, and he felt good about being able to help the two Halleck women. The one thing that rankled him was his conversation with Staunton. Although strictly speaking he hadn’t lied to him, he had certainly misled him. He consoled himself with knowing that in a couple of days he would be gone, as soon as he contacted Cole and got the latest update on the three perps. It would be best for all concerned.

At eight a.m. the following morning, Brogan and Staunton breakfasted together in the dining room of the Valiente. Situated on the ground floor at the back of the hotel, it was a small, unheated room with bare plastered walls and an assortment of plastic tables and chairs that didn’t match. But the breakfast was good: two eggs, toast, and jam served with brewed coffee, a little muddy, but more than passable.

“Can’t say much for the decor, because there isn’t any,” Brogan said dryly, pouring out more coffee for the two of them from a flask on the table. “But gotta say, the food’s alright.”

“Sure is,” Staunton mumbled through a mouth full of toast. “Though a couple of slices of bacon sure would be nice.”

Brogan smiled at him. “I’m sorry, sir. That comes with the executive suite. You need to upgrade for that.”

After eating, the two returned to their room to get themselves ready, then called in on the Hallecks. The previous evening, Karen Halleck had told Brogan how anxious she was to find someplace safe to store her money. With her husband dead, Brogan understood how vulnerable she felt, and had promised to help her right away.

Inside the Hallecks’ room, Brogan took out a simple map of the city he had hand-drawn from memory that morning. He placed it on a small side table in the corner of the room and the others gathered around him.

“Here’s a map I’ve made. It’s based on one a friend gave me back in the State,” he said, glancing quickly over at Staunton to gauge his reaction, and was relieved to see none. “This is where we are now…”

On the map, Brogan had clearly marked the Plaza de Mentirosas, a few blocks west of 6
^th
Street—
La Sexta—
one of the busiest streets in the Barrio T. He traced out a route with his finger. “And this is where we’re heading to, right here…” Farther north, at a street named Guerrero, he jabbed his finger on a circle he’d marked with a “Z.”

“What is that?” Karen asked curiously, squinting at the letter scrawled on the map.

“That’s a Zhiglov exchange house, the largest asset dealer in town,” Brogan replied. He gazed at her puzzled expression. “It’s where we’re going to park our money this morning. It’s our safest option until we decide how to put it to use.”

“Looks no more than a fifteen minute walk,” Staunton said, staring down at the map.

“That’s plenty of time to get ourselves killed. Remember, there’s people out there that’ll be stepping over each other to relieve a few greenhorns of their money,” Brogan warned him. “We’ve survived the first day here. Today, it’s just as crucial we remain alert and focused. Let’s do this right.”

A short time later, the four left the hotel. Staunton stepped out onto the street accompanied by the two women, his Sig Sauer in the pocket of his coat, safety off, finger curled around the trigger guard like Brogan had showed him. Across, on the far side of the road, Brogan followed ten feet behind, one Glock in the holster by his waist, the second in a shoulder rig under his jacket.

He had left his rifle behind, stowed under the bed with the two Fletcher brothers guarding their room while they were gone. While the rifle might have made a better deterrent on their run to the asset house, only the city’s gang members carried rifles openly on the streets. Unless you were affiliated, it wasn’t such a smart idea to carry one.

They made their way toward 6
^th
Street. At the corner of an alleyway, Brogan spotted a drunk totter out the door of an early-morning drinking house, the stench of stale beer hanging in the air as he passed by. The drunk gazed blearily at him, then walked unsteadily down the lane. A moment later, Brogan heard the sound of retching from behind.

Fancy neighborhood. No doubt about it
.

Like most streets in the city, 6
^th
Street was unpaved and had no sidewalks. Turning onto the street, it hummed with activity and the group had to stick close to the edge of the road as a swarm of motorbikes and tricycles buzzed past them.

They passed various fruit and vegetable stalls, a general store, a butcher’s shop, a cell phone repair store, and a couple of one-roomed cafes where, through smoke-grimed windows, Brogan made out customers sitting at wooden trestle tables, slouched over their breakfasts. Other buildings they passed had names printed above the doorways or windows, and he had no idea what was going on inside.

On the higher floors, as he had noted the previous day, laundry hung out from balcony windows. He looked up at the skyline. There were no crawler bots on the rooftops, no hoverdrones in the skies. Their absence would take some getting used to.

Up ahead, amid the busy traffic, Brogan spotted a horse and cart. Behind it, a mule followed, carrying large saddlebags laden with vegetables. John Cole had told him that in the West Valley, on the far side of the Reclamation Area, were the many farms that served the city. Farther north there were other farms too, running all the way to the lower slopes of Wolf Mountain. The city of Winter’s Edge wasn’t short on food.

Fifteen minutes later they made it to Guerrero without incident. On the northeast corner, two burly men in black woolen coats and wearing
ushankas
—traditional Russian hats—stood guard under the awning of a detached two-story building.

The group crossed over the road. Approaching the asset house, Brogan spotted pistols hanging in holsters by each guard’s waist and, across their chests with muzzles slanting downward, both clutched US military-issue M9 carbines that hung from their straps. Somewhere above on the second floor, Brogan was sure at least one other bull stood guard.

The Russian warlord, Sergei Zhiglov, was one the most powerful men in Winter’s Edge, and his
bratva
—or brotherhood—his loyal and well-trained militia, kept the peace. During his briefing, Cole had shown Brogan several reconnaissance photographs of the Zhiglov compound situated in the Little Russia district to the northwest of the city.

Surrounded by a high perimeter wall, it was the Outzone’s version of Fort Knox. Behind the walls, dozens of heavily-armed men guarded concrete bunkers, patrolled metal walkways, or stared out through binoculars from watchtowers. Cole told him that below ground, stored in underground vaults, were the hard assets that backed the one hundred cents to each and every Zhiglov Dollar. For those willing to pay the extra premium, this was the currency to own.

The
bratva
also did a nice line in the Outzone’s energy complex. In the photographs, stacked next to each other in a yard within the compound were several large storage tanks. They contained diesel, kerosene, and natural gas. Each day they were transferred into smaller containers and sold at various outlets around the city. The fuels were transported down the perilous route from the Canadian border by mule train. Only someone with Zhiglov’s power and influence could control the entire supply chain like that.

In front of the asset house was a cement platform. Brogan stepped up onto it and informed the nearest guard they had come to do business. He nodded curtly at Brogan, then opened a thick steel door and ushered the four inside.

The doorway led into a small anteroom where another steel door faced them, identical to the one they had just come through. After they had all stepped in off the street, the remaining guard outside pulled the door shut and locked it.

Inside, the guard pointed at the Glock in Brogan’s holster. “You carrying anything else?” he asked with a thick Slavic accent.

“Yeah, I got another piece.”

The guard motioned with his hand. Brogan pulled the Glock from its holster and gave it to him, then took out the second one from inside his jacket and handed that to him as well.

Opening a steel locker fixed to the wall, the Russian took out a couple of plastic numbered tags. He attached them to both weapons and put them inside the locker, then gave Brogan a corresponding numbered disk for each pistol.

“You,” he said, indicating to Staunton. “Next.”

Neither of the Halleck women were armed. After processing Staunton’s Sig Sauer, the guard frisked all four of them thoroughly, then gave the all-clear sign to a CCTV camera mounted on the ceiling. The door was unlocked from the other side. A moment later, it pulled slowly open and another guard on the far side motioned them inside.

Brogan stepped through first. Glancing around, he saw he was in a medium-sized windowless room, lit by bare light bulbs dangling from the ceiling.