We Had Flags (Toxic World Book 3) (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

OK. All you have to do is make it through the day.

The Doctor pressed his forehead against the door leading out of his private quarters. Beyond that door lay the world. The horrible, fucked up world that only he could keep together. There was a food shortage waiting for him out there, and more enemies than he could count. There was failing equipment and dwindling supplies of biofuel and citizens’ complaints and the usual bullshit coming from the Burbs.

Oh God, the fucking Burbs. Make a rival government, why don’t you? Take my best nurse and put him on the council, why don’t you? Send your bitch of a sheriff to ask for more and more and more. Turn half of civilization against me!

Ungrateful bastards.

Come on, get it together. You have things to do.

The Doctor turned away from the door, passed through the examination room and back into the security of his living room. He paced back and forth, his couch beckoning. What he wouldn’t give to turn on his old stereo and listen to music all day long, alone. He glanced across the room at the open doorway to his bedroom, where a photo of Lucas smiled at him. The Doctor winced and turned away.

I can’t do this anymore. I can’t. I just want to die.

Shut up. Shut up. Shut UP!

OK. Come on.

He turned back towards the door, took a step, stopped.

Put on the face, get out there, and do the job. You took an oath.

The Doctor squared his shoulders and strode for the door. Within three paces his features had hardened to stone. He came to the door, slid the bolt, swung it open, and walked out.

A pair of guards carrying M16s flanked the door. The Doctor locked it behind him.

“Roger, stay here. Kent, you’re with me.”

Kent hurried to fall in behind him. In a few long strides, The Doctor made it to the front room. Marcus Callahan, his assistant mayor, got up from the couch on which he had been sitting. Nearby, a lanky teenager named Emanuel sat at a desk listening to Radio Hope and transcribing the broadcast.

“To make a splint for a broken bone,” a female announcer said, “first you must carve several straight sticks…”

“Anything interesting on the air?” The Doctor asked Marcus without slowing. Emanuel didn’t even look up. He’d trained a group of teenagers to write down everything the mysterious radio station broadcast for a book he was compiling. The information came in handy, and training a group of kids to focus on one thing for hours on end could prove useful.

“Morning, Doc. Just the usual stuff. They’re broadcasting the Friday morning medical and food gathering shows like always.”

“It’s Friday? Like it makes any difference. What’s on the agenda?”

The Doctor and Marcus walked along an echoing concrete hall that led to the stairs. Kent came two steps behind, his M16 at the ready. His guards never slung their arms.

“I already talked to Clyde and he reports all clear through the night,” Marcus said, trying to keep up. “No medical cases at the gate this morning. Ahmed reports a few injuries from fights in the Burbs but he took care of them. You need to see him?”

“I never need to see him,” The Doctor grunted.

“Oh come on, Doc, he’s—”

“What’s next on the agenda?”

“Annette wants to see you, Philip wants to see you, and there’s a late scavenger who needs to show you her trade. Want me to take care of that?”

“No, I’ll do it. Delays the inevitable with Annette. What does Philip want?”

“Dunno. Something about the solar panels, I think.”

“Great,” The Doctor sighed as he clattered his way down the metal stairs to the ground floor of the old concrete warehouse that contained his offices, New City’s cache of food and supplies, and a few private homes and machine shops.

“That scavenger ready?” he asked.

“Waiting at the gate.”

“We’ll get her out of the way first. Will you please keep up?”

Marcus was struggling to get down the stairs behind him. “Sorry, Doc. It’s my sciatica.”

The Doctor waited at the foot of the stairs as Marcus followed. His expert eye looked over his oldest and closest friend. Sciatica wasn’t his only problem. Marcus was even older than he was. He must be pushing seventy. The spryness that had been second nature to him was fading fast. His hair had long since fallen out except for a gray fringe that was turning bone white. Marcus had become an old man and somehow he hadn’t noticed it until now. When he made it to the bottom of the stairs, waving off Kent’s offer of assistance, The Doctor put a hand on his shoulder.

“Come to my office after the day’s work is done. I want to give you a checkup.”

“I’m fine.”

“Doctor’s orders.”

Marcus smiled. “Oh all right. Just don’t stick your finger up my ass, you old pervert. My prostate is just fine.”

The Doctor grinned. “I wouldn’t go there for ten solar panels and a thousand kilos of clean wheat. That’s Rosie’s job.”

A middle-aged man hurried up to him, his bare, muscled arms grimy with grease. “Doc, I need to talk to you.”

“What is it, Kevin?”

“It’s about getting the Hummer back from Weissman.”

The Doctor rolled his eyes. “We’ve been through this.”

“He doesn’t know how to take care of it! It will deteriorate. What if he leaves it out in the rain?”

“He’s smart enough to keep it sheltered.”

“We need to offer him some trade to get it back.”

The Doctor frowned. “Trade with the enemy? I don’t think so.”

“His people can’t fix it! It’s useless to him. He’ll trade it cheap.”

“No. We have enough vehicles.”

“But Doc—”

The Doctor took two steps forward, making the bigger man cringe and step back. “I told you twice goddammit NO!”

Kevin flung up his hands and hurried away. The Doctor strode out of the warehouse, Marcus and the guard following at a discreet distance.

He found his trading table set up where it should be just outside the warehouse. To his right and left spread New City, a collection of frame houses and Quonset huts on a spit of land surrounded on three sides by sea and cut off from the mainland by a wall made of steel plates, concrete cinderblocks, and old buses. A heavy steel gate stood open before him, and beyond that spread the shantytown called the Burbs.

When he sat with Marcus at his side and Kent standing behind, the guards at the gate took that as a signal to let a young Asian woman through. She looked like a typical scavenger, hard-eyed and lean.

She came up to the table. “Good morning.”

“You’re late in the season,” The Doctor said.

“From what I hear that’s a good thing,” the scavenger said as she took off a bulging pack.

“Oh hey, I know you!” Marcus said, giving her a friendly smile. “You’re that artist’s gal. How’s he doing?”

The scavenger smiled at him. “My name’s Song Yu-jin. Randy’s doing fine.”

“Randy, that’s right. He did a fine portrait of me and my wife Rosie—”

“Can we get on with it?” The Doctor snapped.

Marcus shrugged. “OK, Doc. Just making conversation.”

The scavenger started unloading her goods on the table. The Doctor fell into his familiar routine. “The rules are the same as last year. If you have any medical supplies you are required to trade but I have to give you a fair deal. If you have anything New City needs I get first bid, but you don’t have to trade. You need a market stall? There are some available.”

The scavenger shook her head. “I don’t need a stall. I work at the pottery kiln with Randy in the winter. And I don’t have any medical supplies. I hardly ever find anything like that anymore.”

She spread out her goods. The Doctor looked through them. There wasn’t much. Trade got worse and worse every year as the scavengers picked everything clean. She had some wiring she’d stripped from an old machine, a collection of electrical switches that looked ten years dead, a few light bulbs, some copper tubing, a car part he couldn’t identify, and a cracked magnifying glass.

The last thing she took out caught his eye—a pair of Blue Cans, those preserved foods from the Old Times that never went bad. One still had its label, which was a rarity. Holding it this way and that, he couldn’t quite make out the faded lettering. The picture looked like peaches, though.

God, when was the last time I had peaches? Must have been when North Cape still was a city-state and not a heap of ashes.

“Marcus, go get Kevin to look at this car part. No, wait, he’ll still be in a sulk, Go get Rachel.”

“She’ll be in a sulk too. They’re like peas in a pod,” Marcus said as he hobbled off.

The Doctor looked at his uneven gait with a trace of worry, then turned back to the scavenger. “Well, Ms. Yu-jin, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a Blue Can with a label. It’s usually pot luck with them.”

“Song.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“My family name is Song. We put our family names first.”

“My apologies, Ms. Song. I forgot Koreans do that.”

The trace of an expression flickered across her broad face, disappearing almost before he noticed it. What was that? He hadn’t been able to build New City out of the wreckage of a fallen civilization without being able to read people. Something in his words had affected her.

Not that it mattered. She was just a scavenger. And now even the scavengers were organizing because of that weirdo who called himself The Giver. Everyone was against him these days.

“How much you want for this?” he asked, holding up the can of peaches.

Song Yu-jin smiled and studied him. “It’s a Blue Can.”

“I know what it is. I’ll take two of the light bulbs and this tubing as well.”

“Ten kilos of flour.”

The Doctor shook his head. “Crops were bad this year, and we got a nasty toxic rain a few weeks back so crops will probably be bad next year too. Price of flour has gone up. I’ll give you six kilos.”

“Nine. I saw your eyes when you figured out it was peaches.”

“Have you ever had peaches?”

Song Yu-jin shook her head. “Do I look that old? My parents told me about them, though.”

Another flicker of emotion. Sadness this time. Her parents were dead. He wondered if they had been slaughtered by those religious lunatics.

“They’re not bad,” he said.

“They’re heavenly,” Yu-jin said, leaning close. The Doctor noticed she had a little silver cross dangling from a chain around her neck. “My father said that once you tasted them, no other fruit ever tasted as good. ‘Sweet, soft heaven,’ that’s what he called them. So you grew up eating peaches? That must have been wonderful. You must really miss them.”

He shifted in his seat. “You drive a hard bargain, Ms. Song. I’ll give you seven kilos.”

“Eight kilos or I’ll eat those peaches right in front of you.”

The Doctor laughed, his voice ringing out and making the guards at the gate turn and look. “Just for that I’ll give you nine kilos, but I get three light bulbs.”

“Deal,” Yu-jin said with a smile.

Marcus came back with a mechanic named Rachel, who was even more covered in grease than her husband Kevin.

“Got any use for this?” The Doctor asked, tapping the strange car part.

“Huh, a perfectly good muffler,” the woman said as she turned it over in her hands.

“What’s a muffler?” Yu-jin asked.

“It stops most of the noise from coming out of an engine,” Rachel explained. “Without one a vehicle is really loud. This isn’t made for any of our vehicles, however.”

“Damn, that thing’s heavy. I hauled it all the way here for nothing?”

“Not quite. One of our ATVs is in bad need of a muffler. I could adapt this.”

“You can adapt anything,” The Doctor said. “But if it’s not an essential part we don’t need it.”

Rachel lowered her voice. “If we don’t get a muffler for the ATV, we can’t use it if we ever want to, you know, drive somewhere.”

You mean to Weissberg to teach those sons of bitches a lesson? You haven’t forgiven them for shooting at your husband, have you? Well, neither have I.

“An unessential part that needs to be adapted doesn’t command good trade, I’m afraid,” The Doctor said aloud.

“Your machine shop makes good arrowheads, better than I can make myself,” the scavenger said. “Give me twenty. You don’t have to make the shafts or the fletching, I can do that better than anyone.”

“The machine shop is a private business. I’d have to make a deal with them, which cuts into my profit,” The Doctor said. “I’ll give you ten arrowheads.”

“Sixteen.”

“Fifteen.”

“Sixteen.”

The Doctor cocked his head. He liked this one. “All right, sixteen.”

They shook hands to close the deal. The Doctor turned to Marcus. “Make a note of it. We also owe her nine kilos of flour. Take five of them out of my personal stock. I made a private deal for this Blue Can.”