What Came After (6 page)

Weller took in the room more closely. A bunker, steeped in the cold closeness of anything underground, jammed with enough supplies to last a school full of children a month or a single man the rest of his life. Everything packed solid, as if the contents themselves were meant as reinforcement. Pallet after pallet of canned and boxed food arranged floor to ceiling. Water in barrels. Cases labeled Survival Crackers, which he guessed meant hardtack. All of that plus piled up medical kits and tightly folded blankets and cardboard cartons printed with mysterious letters and numbers by some government office. Everything neat and square and sharp, policed as if someone important might be coming to inspect at any moment. Including the handful of personal belongings on the upended crate.
Personal belongings.
They stood out, like this was a prison cell or a barracks.

He looked steadily at the old man and asked him straight. “Are you with Black Rose, or what?”

The old man stiffened. Prideful in spite of himself. “You could say that.” He smiled just a quarter of an inch. Disappearing behind Weller’s back to hide it.

“I didn’t know they were out here anymore.”

“They’re not. But once you’re Black Rose, you’re always Black Rose.” Opening a locker or a cabinet back there. Fussing with something.

“That’s what I’ve heard.” Half turning, as if maybe they’d found something to talk about and he could use it to his advantage.

“Don’t get any ideas.”

“I won’t.”

“The girl either.”

“She won’t.” She was sitting up against her father rockstill. Frozen like some prey animal intent on making itself invisible. Her hands still folded and her eyes bigger than they had ever been in all her short life. Weller wanted to put his hand on her shoulder or give her some other small comfort but he didn’t quite dare, and then he did it anyway.

The old man left off what he was doing and came back around. He stood opposite them at the table and kept his cigarette between his teeth and poked one thick finger deep into the ashtray. Dug around. Separating things. Ash and butts from some other heavier objects that had sunken to the bottom. Little metallic pieces that made scraping noises against the glass. “I probably ought to keep these in a jar or something,” he said. “If I had a jar.” Pushing the ashtray forward so that Weller could see. A dozen or so little metal lozenges and cubes and bulbs, none of them more than a quarter of an inch long, most of them shiny and gleaming in spite of the ash but some brushed down to a matte finish and some not entirely metal but made partly of plastic or rubber with one or two little knobs or protrusions jutting out. Six or eight different configurations altogether. “These are where the money is,” he said. Tapping his ashy finger on the tabletop. An old prospector done with his panning. “I don’t mean these particular ones. They’ve been scanned off clean. Once they’ve been scanned off they’ve got no value except as souvenirs.”

“Souvenirs.”

“Like how the Indians used to take your scalp. Counting coup.”

“Those are brands, then.”

“Yes sir.” The old man picked out a rectangular slab with a narrow black stripe. “This one’s AmeriBank,” he said. Alongside it was a tiny one not much larger than a ball bearing, perfectly round. “Mutual Electric.” A glistening square with a metal prongs like antennas mounted in rubber on either side. “Black Rose.” He tapped at the side of his own throat. “Extremely rare.”

“I’ll bet it is.”

“Extremely hard to come by.” He tapped ashes over the little metal bits. Drew on the cigarette one last time and stabbed it out and stabbed it out again just to be sure and began circling the table. “What happens is people come around. People with different ideas about how a man might make a dollar. As a rule they’re Management types like you, slumming in the Zone. Got some deal they’re running when they ought to be minding their company’s business.”

“I’m not Management.”

The old man winked. “Sure. Sure. None of the other fellows are, either. Just so you know.”

“I’m not Management. Honest.”

“Time will tell,” he said. “Anyway, you know what I’m talking about. Black markets. Gray markets. Every kind of market there is.” He kept walking around the table. Behind Weller now. The sound of that locker opening again. “Contraband and so forth. Situations develop where the companies that pay for my services just aren’t getting their fair share of certain transactions.”

Weller turned to see what the man was up to in the locker. He was opening a brown bottle and he was soaking a rag with what was in it, and the air was choked all of a sudden with the high smell of a chemical solvent, and before Weller could move the old man was on him and he had the wet rag tight over his mouth with that solvent smell intolerably strong and he was out. He didn’t even hear his own daughter scream.

*

He awoke on the cold floor with adhesive tape around his wrists and a sick feeling in his stomach and a slit in his throat that wouldn’t quit bleeding. Crumpled on the floor in the corner, picking at the sticky tape and wanting to vomit but not knowing where. Feeling blood run down his neck. A little warm trickle of it dripping slow, with his heartbeat behind it.

He came up to his elbows and saw the old man bent over the table. The back of him, working at something. Holding his breath and letting it out and drawing it in again hard, and then letting it out with a curse on it. The girl’s blond hair spilling.

He got to his feet and nearly toppled but didn’t. He tried to go noiselessly but his feet went any way they wanted. He reached the table and picked up the big glass ashtray and the old man looked up at him without really looking, and he raised the ashtray and swung it but missed. Miscalculated. Threw himself off balance and the ash tray smashed on the concrete floor. Ash and glass and old brands everywhere. The old man ducking and a scalpel in his hand snagging Weller’s forearm, drawing more blood. The girl on the table wasn’t taped down like her father had been. She was just lying there limp. A narrow cut in her throat gaping a little, and blood smeared around it, and the old man’s index finger red to the first knuckle.

“Go easy there,” said the old man. Dropping the scalpel. Raising up his hands and stepping back to let Weller reach his daughter, who was even then coming around. “No harm done.”

Weller gathered himself over his daughter and held her close and wanted to stay there with his arms around her forever. Just putting himself between her and the world. He bent there breathing hard and sick with the girl waking up and beginning to get sick herself a couple of minutes behind him. The girl gasping and turning her head to the side and her father helping her turn it and the sickness coming unstoppable and her father thinking it served the old man right. Let her finish. Let her purge herself of the old man’s poison. Let her give it all back to him. Wiping her mouth with his shirt when she finished and picking her up and holding her close. Wishing he could kill the old man but still too dizzy to step clear of the table where he leaned and fearful of putting his daughter down anyway. Leaving her unprotected.

The old man sat on the cot, smoking a cigarette and watching them. Looking exhausted the way an old man will, an old man who’s been through something miserable and come out the other side. Even something of his own making. The stoppered brown bottle stood on the crate with the water glass and a different clear bottle stood with it. The gun on the pile of magazines. The cigarette in a fist in between his knees, the white of it stained red. “There’s rubbing alcohol if you want to clean up those cuts,” he said. “I’d recommend it. Never know what you might catch.” He raised the cigarette and pulled in smoke through the residue of their bleeding. “It’s your call, though.”

Weller kept himself between Penny and the old man. Letting his mind clear. Looking at him over his shoulder. His child just breathing, which was enough. “You didn’t find anything,” he said.

“No sir, I did not.”

“I told you.”

“They all tell me. They all lie.” He blew smoke at the glass bottle. “Alcohol’s right here if you want it. Cotton balls and so forth. Bandaids in the locker.”

Weller imagined the sting of the alcohol and turned away and drew Penny tighter if that were possible. Thinking of what he’d have to do. How it would hurt his child again and how he had to do it. “Soon,” he said. Bouncing her a little. “Soon.” And then looking back at the old man. “I’ve got a little money if you didn’t take it already.”

“I don’t want your money.”

“It’ll make up for what you didn’t get.”

“I don’t want it. I start doing a cash business, where does that end? What kind of people have I got to deal with then? I’ll stick to credits, if you don’t mind.”

“Then let us be on our way.”

“On your way.”
He said it like it was a joke. “On your way to where, is what I can’t figure.”

“That’s my problem, isn’t it.”

“There’s nothing out there. Just more of what you came from.”

“Let us go, then.”

“Absolutely,” said the old man. “Go on and good riddance. I won’t stand in your way.”

“All right.”

“You’ve wasted enough of my time as it is. You’re a total loss already.”

The girl had begun to cry. Great deep sobs. Weller looked at the old man and the gun on the crate. He said he was going to gather up their things.

“Fine by me. I’d use that alcohol pretty soon, though. Just from a medical point of view.”

Weller didn’t want to put her down. Keeping an eye on the old man and the gun he went to where they’d dropped their packs and kneeled and picked them both up with one hand. Coming back to a standing position. Drawing breath. “We’re going now.”

“Bye bye.”

The girl sobbed.

Her father carried her through the doorway out of the cold bunker and into the bluelit stairwell. The girl risking a look back over his shoulder.

“You take good care of that kitty cat, now.”

Weller had never climbed faster. The girl howling all of a sudden and both of them bleeding still and his clothes stinking of her sickness. Up the concrete steps and through the blue tarpaulin and into the heat and the sun as if the heat and the sun were cures for everything. The alleyway cut into the school building was bright and the space beyond it was brighter still. Hot as noon. A playground off to one side partly wrecked but mostly just abandoned. A splintered see-saw weathered back into a plank. He sat Penny on the long end of it and she didn’t want to let go of him so he picked her up and held onto her longer. Tried again and this time it took. He asked her if she knew what this plank was, knowing she didn’t. He told her to watch. He put down the packs and he stepped away and she called him back and then he stepped away again and this time she let him. Went to the other end of the plank and pushed it down and took her for a little ride. Just lifted her up a foot or two into the air. Into a kind of heaven.

She laughed.

It was a lever, a thing with which a person could move the world, and in different circumstances he would have described that possibility but he didn’t do that now. He just let her down slowly and lifted her up again a few more times and then he said honey we’ll do lots more of this in a minute. Just you wait. I forgot something we need. He backed away and she let him. Sitting on the end of the plank, certain he’d come back to lift her up again. The sun working on her and brightening things and helping bring her back.

He entered the little alley and pulled open the tarp and went back down the stairs.

Found the old man sitting right where he’d been. Looking disgusted and weary but not entirely unsurprised. Tipping his head toward the bottle of alcohol and saying, “I knew you’d come for it.”

Weller asked about the locker with the bandaids and he told him where it was. Helped himself to all there were and a spool of adhesive tape too and some gauze pads and a little tube of antibiotic ointment. Loaded his pockets with these rarities. Things that were only rumors out in the Zone. He noticed the flashlight and pocketed that as well. He left the locker and came to where the old man was sitting and took the alcohol. Cotton balls and a rag that was there too.

The old man said, “You can have the rag or the cotton but you can’t have both.” A cigarette between his lips. Picking up the lighter and flicking the top open with is thumb.

“Don’t,” Weller said. “Wait on that a little.”

The old man saying why not. It’s a free country. Just choose one and go. Don’t try telling me what to do. The old man acting ornery and tired and maybe a little sick of what he’d done. Saying go on clean up that little girl of yours.

Weller put down the rag and that seemed to satisfy the old man, who turned away and studied the table and the mess on the floor with a look in his eyes that said he regretted that he’d have to clean it up sometime soon. Weller took the rag again while he wasn’t looking and put down the bottle and took up the other bottle, the brown bottle full of ether. He opened it and doused the rag in one motion and he fell upon the old man. Knocking him backwards and pressing the rag to his face. Saying don’t smoke around this stuff unless you want us both getting killed. But the old man was already out.

He had a brand in his neck all right, that little square with two metal prongs mounted in rubber. Once Black Rose, always Black Rose. Weller took the lighter and worked the bottom part of it open and put the brand inside, in with the soaked cotton wadding. Pushing it deep, burying it there for safekeeping. The lighter fluid cleaning the blood from his fingers. He draped the rag over the old man’s face and dribbled some more ether onto it and capped the bottle, not knowing what the end of that would be and not caring. How much ether could a person breathe before it killed him. Then he slid the lighter into his pocket and went out to the bluelit stairs and back to the playground.