Apocalypticon (6 page)

By the time they reached Washington, he was sick of carrying Patrick’s dead weight. “Come on, you idiot,” he said, easing himself out from under his companion’s arm, “walk yourself.”

“Ben!” he hissed. “I did it!” He pumped a shaking fist straight into the air. “I snorted coffee!”

“You did. And it was hilarious,” Ben admitted. “But now I need you to walk, because if I have to carry you one more step, I’m probably going to just hit you with the bat and leave you to die.”

“Eh, that’s okay,” Patrick said, straightening up and smoothing down his shirt. “The effects wore off three blocks ago. You really stuck it out there for a good couple hundred yards, though. You’re a great friend.” He raised his hand to high five.

“I hate you,” Ben muttered.

“Yeah, well, you made me snort soggy coffee grounds, so we’re even.”

“Yeah, and that got us across the bridge, so you owe me.”

“Yeah, but with my help, you were able to have a conversation with a pretty girl, so we’re even.”

“Speaking of...what’s her deal?” Ben asked. “What the hell was all that ‘do you have an appointment’ shit?”

“Benny Boy, I have no friggin’ idea. But I’ve long since learned that when you’re dealing with the crazies, it’s best to just play along.”

“Smart.”

“Yeah. Marriage taught me that one.”

“Hiyo!” This time, Ben returned the high five. “Hey. Look over there.” He nodded toward a small group of heavily armed men dressed in all black up ahead. They milled around at one of the ramps leading down to Lower Wacker. Violet raised a hand in greeting as they approached.

“How is everything today, Captain?” she asked one of the men, who had a red bandana tied around one bicep.

“No problems, Miss Boland. Everything’s quiet.”

“Had a little skirmish earlier, but nothing to be worried about,” piped up a younger looking kid on the other side of the ramp.

Violet frowned. A skirmish could mean just a little dust-up. It could also mean a bomb threat. “What kind of skirmish?”

“Nothing big,” said the captain, his voice nonchalant. “A few bums tried the ramp.”

“They got wood instead!” the younger kid boasted, hefting the wooden club in his hand.

“You men are heroes. Keep up the good work,” Violet said as she reached out and touched the captain’s muscled arm. “What is it about a man in a Lower Wacker Guard uniform?” she winked. The captain blushed, and they were off.

“So wait, is she a concierge, or a prostitute?” Patrick murmured once they’d put a bit of distance between themselves and their escort.

“A constitute?” Ben suggested.

“Ah, yes. The elusive constitute. A favorite among post-apocalyptic skeezes.” 

When they reached the Civic Opera House, Violet and Simon Phoenix’s doppelganger stopped short. “Wait here,” she said.

“Why? Where are you going?” Ben asked.

“To get your Units,” she said, “as promised.”

“Oh! We’ll take coffee. Ben, tell her to bring coffee!” Patrick said, jumping up and down.

“Coffee? Is that his word for drugs?” she asked. Ben nodded. “Hm. He’s pretty far gone.”

“Croke ain’t no joke,” Ben said solemnly. Patrick exploded with a laugh and covered it with a cough.

“I’ll be right back. Don’t move.” She went in through the revolving door, leaving the man with the dyed blonde Mohawk to watch them. But he grew immediately bored with that task and wandered off to go talk to a group of Lower Wacker Guards, leaving Patrick and Ben alone under the massive Opera House overhang.

“What was all that ‘Bradford’ stuff?” Patrick asked.

“You think I’m gonna give her my real name? Are you nuts?”

“What was she going to do, write it on a voodoo doll and stick needles in your junk?”

Ben’s face grew serious. “You never know.”

“
Pffft
.”

“How about you stop worrying about my self-preservation and start worrying about how we’re gonna manage our way onto that train?”

“I imagine we’ll climb the steps.”

“Har, har. We’re gonna be climbin’ the stairs to Nowheresville if we don’t figure out how to pay our way.”

“Nowheresville? Is that walkable? Is it south? We’re headed south.”

“Don’t think I won’t kill you. I will, I’ll kill you.”

“Relax. We’re going to be fine.”

“How do you know?”

“Because we have something to trade for passage.”

“What’s that?” Ben asked.

“A white slave,” Patrick said.

Ben opened his mouth to speak, but stopped. Had he heard that correctly? “I’m sorry, did you say a
white slave?
”

“Hmm?” Patrick asked.

“Did you just say we would trade a white slave?”

“Just now?”

“Yes. Just now.”

“Is that what you think I said?”

“Yeah, it is.”

Patrick shook his head and cleared the tension with his hands. “Look, I don’t want you to worry about this. I have a plan, and all I need from you is trust. Which you’re contractually obligated to give me, since I am, in fact, in charge.”

“That’s true, you’re in charge,” Ben conceded, “but if you recall, I’m the one who got us across the bridge.”

“Yeah, and in doing so, you lost us my coffee, didn’t you?” Patrick demanded.

“I don’t think you can call that coffee anymore. Chemically speaking.”

Patrick sighed and placed a hand on Ben’s shoulder. “You’ve proven to me that, if all else fails, I can rely on you to come up with a somewhat mediocre plan. That’s a skill that may come in handy before we’re done, but until I give you the sign, just leave the plans to me.”

“What’s the sign?”

“You’ll know it when you see it,” Patrick said. “But it’ll most likely involve screaming and running, and probably the flailing of limbs.”

Just then, the revolving door spun, and Violet reappeared holding a paper bag. “Gentlemen, your Units.” Patrick snickered. Violet rolled her eyes. She pulled out a fifth of Smirnov vodka. “20 Units.”

Ben grabbed the bottle and inspected it sadly. “No Grey Goose?”

“And 15 Units,” she said, ignoring him completely. She reached into the bag and produced a one-pound bag of ground Sumatra. “
Actual
coffee.” Patrick instantly burst into tears.

“Oh my God!” he blubbered. “How did you--you can’t possibly even--I don’t know how to--oh my God, coffee!” He sank to his knees and lurched forward, grasping for the bag. Violet, startled by his sudden, awkward movements, dropped it. It fell to the sidewalk and burst open at the corner, sending coffee spilling across the cement. Patrick fell to his face and began scooping the coffee into his mouth, rubbing it into his gums.

“My God,” Violet breathed. “I’ve never seen someone so far gone! Does he realize it’s not even croke?”

“It’s hard to know
what
he realizes,” Ben said. “Listen, I don’t want to be a girl about this, but I’m pretty sure your menu said a pound of coffee was six Units. Not fifteen.”

Violet frowned, her face turning an angry shade of red. “That was for Folger’s. This is Kona. Take it or leave it.” She snapped her fingers, and her fellow escort trotted back over toward them.

Ben glanced down at his companion, who was patting the spilled coffee grounds onto his tongue. “Looks like we’re taking it.”

“Good choice. Well, gentlemen. We hope you enjoyed your brief stay in the Loop.”

“Aren’t you escorting us to the train?” Ben asked. “That was the deal.”

“Cumo will see you the rest of the way. I’ll be taking my leave here. The next block is the Mercantile Exchange. Those Day Traders give me the creeps.”

•

Patrick literally could not be happier. Maybe it was their quick progress, maybe it was the three grams of snorted coffee grounds setting off his brain cells like Pop Rocks, but everything felt right with the world. He had fresh coffee in his mouth and half a plan in his head. He was going to get them on that train, and while he had started the day gravely concerned about the missing half of that plan, his fear was melting away like nuclear snow on a smoking pile of rubble. Nothing would stop them now.

Then he got smacked in the head by a rock.

“Ow!
What the shit?
” he screamed, plastering a hand to his temple. Blood began oozing through his fingers. “What was that?”

“Oh my God,” Ben said, pointing to a building on the right. His eyes grew wide in horror. “Patrick. Look. It’s douche bags.”

Patrick whirled around and squinted through the fog. Sure enough, up ahead, a few dozen twenty-something men and women in once-trendy (but now torn and ratty) business suits hung from the windows of a pair of massive towers. The men all wore their hair spiked up in front with some sort of stiff but pliable product, and some of them appeared to be wearing brown shoes with black suits. Most of the women seemed to be clad in tight skirt suits and thick-rimmed black glasses. Ben was right. These people were douche bags. “Day Traders,” he muttered.

Word of the Day Traders had spread north some time ago; Patrick had first heard about them just a few months after M-Day. Rumor had it they had once been hot-blooded up-and-comers on the financial floor, once considered demigods among their own kind, but they were now disillusioned husks who still clung desperately to the old ways. One of the stories said that they had a generator in the CME building that they used to watch
Boiler Room
on loop, a very
Clockwork Orange
ian practice that had twisted their perceptions of reality in untold, dangerous ways. Money was their deity, despite the reality that legal tender was now worth less than the paper it was printed on. Supposedly they hassled everyone who walked through their turf for money, but they weren’t beggars. If you had cash, they didn’t ask you for it, and they didn’t murder you to get it. If you had money, they
worshipped
you. They brought you into their towers and made you their king. They begged you to toss them some leads, tried to impress you with their cold calls. But if you were broke, you were less than nothing to them. You were target practice.

Clearly, Patrick and Ben weren’t even being given the benefit of the ask. The Traders were just assuming that they were penniless, probably going off the way they were dressed. The Traders
always
judged someone by the way he was dressed. Confirmation of their opinions came in the form of a second rock, which went whizzing only inches from Ben’s nose.

“Wesley Snipes! Do something!” Patrick hissed.

The large man only turned and shrugged. “I got no beef with the Traders,” was all he said. The feeling was reciprocal. A flurry of stones flew toward them, but only at the
them
. Cumo just watched from a safe distance, looking bored.

“You’re supposed to protect us,” Ben said, shielding his face with his hands.

Cumo shrugged again. “They’re not
murderers
. They ain’t gonna
kill
you,” he said, as a small piece of concrete pinged off Ben’s shoulder.

Patrick let loose a string of expletives and dove for shelter behind a piece of building rubble lying in the middle of the road. Ben followed suit, diving headfirst over the concrete pylon as rocks pelted it from the west. “Well, fearless leader?” he said, scrabbling back toward the cover of the cement, his gigantic knapsack making him look like a turtle who had survived a horrible, mutating nuclear accident. “Got a plan?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Patrick said. “Let’s just hope I can still speak the language.” He peered over the rubble and waited for an opening in the rock barrage. When it came, he jumped up, threw up his hands in surrender, and shouted, “If you’re not inside, you’re outside!” Every Trader with a rock froze, wondering if they’d heard him right. They mumbled to each other up there in the windows. “It’s working,” he whispered down to Ben. “Keep your mouth shut and follow me.” He took a step away from the concrete shield, hands still raised, and shouted, “I look at a hundred deals a day! I choose one!” The mumbling overhead increased, and some of the Traders started nodding their heads. Patrick continued. “I mean, it’s easy to get in. It’s hard to get out. Am I right?” A few of the Traders shouted their agreement. Patrick took a few more steps down the road. Ben followed closely behind, using Patrick as a human shield. Cumo followed at a distance, amused. “’Cause money is a bitch that never sleeps!” Patrick cried. A couple of soft cheers went up in the windows. He was on a roll. “Bulls make money! Bears make money! Pigs? They get slaughtered! And parents are the...the...what are they? The...oh! Bone on which children sharpen their teeth! Huh? Huh?” One of the women on the third floor shouted, “It’s true! Only the strong understand!” Several of her fellows agreed.

Patrick and Ben were almost down to the halfway point between the two towers. There was still half a city block to go. “That’s the one thing you have to remember about WASPs. They love money and hate people! Hell, I don’t throw darts at a board. I bet on sure things! Read Sun-Tzu,
The Art of War
. Every battle is won before it’s ever fought. A fool and his money are lucky enough to get together in the first place. Because what’s worth doing is worth doing for money! It’s a zero sum game! Money itself isn’t lost or made, it’s simply transferred from one perception to another!” Random cheers of “Yeah!” and “He’s right, he’s right!” echoed along the otherwise empty street. Farther and farther down the block they crept, Patrick now pumping his fists in the air triumphantly. He was screaming the words now. “
I’m talking about liquid! Rich enough to have your own jet! Rich enough not to waste time! Fifty, a hundred million dollars, buddy. A player, or nothing! Because greed captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed is right, greed works! The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good!
” The entire Chicago Mercantile Exchange burst into wild applause. The men high-fived in excitement, the women fanned themselves with phone message sheets. The roar of the Traders was deafening. Patrick had never felt such a rush. Now they weren’t throwing stones, they were throwing money,
their
money. “Teach me how to spot a ripe IPO!” “Show me impressive returns!” “Help me roll my IRA!” “Take me down to nothing and rebuild me!“ The cries of delight and need fell upon them, on and on, until Patrick and Ben reached the next block. Then they turned tail and ran like hell, Cumo ambling casually after them.