The 1000 Souls (Book 2): Generation Apocalypse Read online

  The Brat Pack the old folks called them, but Tevy knew that in this world, his world, he was an adult. He sometimes tried to imagine what it would have been like if the rippers hadn’t come into being, if they hadn’t killed his parents and left him an orphan to be raised in the basement of St. Mike’s with the other kids who’d survived their parents’ bloody murders. Adults just five years older told him stories about high school, which is where he would be now if the world hadn’t ended. They said that they used to hang out, study books a bit, and get drunk and smoke weed and fornicate. Father Alvarez and Helen often warned them about the dangers of fornication, how a girl could get preggers and be a burden to everyone, her runt joining the Brat Pack as like as not. Some of the younger kids didn’t think the Brat Pack was that bad, but Tevy was old enough to remember his parents, to remember living in a house where he had his own warm room and all the food and love and attention he desired. Not that Helen didn’t love them all and feed them when there was food to go around, but she was getting pretty old and tired, and she couldn’t spread her love that far.

  Voices. Tevy slid down. He hated the cubicle dividers when he was scrounging because they could hide so many enemies, but he loved them when he was the hunted. He pulled out his Glock, which was already cocked and ready for action. Some kids had trouble getting enough ammunition, but Bobs liked him, liked the fact that he brought her back the information she craved, liked the fact the he would sneak deep into Chicago’s old downtown just before dawn, when the ripper slaves were still in shelter and the rippers were just heading for their lairs to hide from the sun.

  It was risky, sure, but it was a calculated risk. The hard part, really, was getting out before sunset. The humans, the ripper slaves, hunted during the day for offerings for their masters, knowing that each sacrifice of an entire human body meant many less blood donations from their own ranks. There were more and more ripper slaves every day, coming from all over, offering their servitude and donations in exchange for food and relative safety. They called people like Tevy rebels, but he called them bloody traitors.

  Glass crunched under someone’s foot. They were on his floor.

  Quiet as a mouse. That was what Tevy was best at, although the few times he’d been on a raid, he’d loved to attack, too. He craved to throw himself straight into a fight, charging at the rippers, shooting and slashing and shouting. It was always such a relief. He hated tension. But today even he knew that attack made no sense, that it would result in useless death. He was right in the middle of the Loop, and there would be hundreds of ripper slaves watching the streets for a reb like him, asking him to repeat back today’s code word, which he didn’t know—yet. Besides, they were still human, even if they were traitors, and Bishop Alvarez had warned the congregation of St. Mike’s many times that killing a human was a ticket straight to hell. Only rippers could be killed without need of confession, absolution, and remorse. So unless there was no choice, Tevy would prefer to save his soul over his body.

  He eased across the aisle, careful to stay low, careful not to crunch or kick glass, and slipped under a desk, his knees curled up, his buttocks pressing into the damp carpet, his Glock pointing out. Unless they had a dog with them, he was pretty safe. He listened.

  “Oh for Christ’s sake, there’s nobody here.” A man’s voice, older. Tevy labeled him ‘A’ for his report to Bobs.

  “I know, I know.” Younger woman—‘B.’ “Have a smoke and a coke and we’ll tell them we searched the whole floor. Who’ll know?”

  A lighter clicked and soon marijuana smoke teased Tevy’s nostrils.

  “What’s got everybody so freaked out anyway?” A asked.

  “An evolved got killed this morning, right in the Loop not a couple of blocks from here. One of those rebs has got huge balls to come down here at night.” B’s comment sounded genuine, and Tevy tried to picture what she looked like. Maybe she had raven black hair, a nice figure that fit that nice young voice. Would she really like to see his big balls? He pushed the thoughts from his mind, fighting to will the erection down. This was no time for that kind of thinking. He needed to focus.

  He hadn’t felt brave before dawn when the ripper had rounded the corner in front of him. It was too far from sunrise to use the gun—that would’ve drawn rippers from blocks around. Luckily, Tevy saw the ripper first, and this gave him a chance to close the gap between them quickly, drawing his long hunting knife as he charged. The ripper barely had a chance to get a word out when Tevy’s knife went into his throat. As he expected, the ripper, a younger guy and probably new to being a blood drinker, grabbed at Tevy’s right hand, trying to pull the knife out. The ripper never saw the small knife in Tevy’s left hand, the knife that he drove under the sternum and up into the ripper’s heart. It was over in seconds, Tevy’s heart still pounding as he wiped the polluted blood off the knives with the ripper’s sleeve.

  “So what’s with all the new rations?” said the woman with the young voice - ‘B.’ “I haven’t eaten this well in over a year. Are we being fattened up for something?” She was trying to sound tough and flippant, but Tevy could sense the tension.

  “Not for donating, if that’s what you’re worried about” A’s gruff voice failed to hide his own doubts. “Word is we’re finally going on the big push. Units coming from all over next month to hit all the rebel posts up north, especially that bitch at St. Mike’s.”

  “Like you would know.” But she sounded interested.

  “I do know. I got a quarter-master buddy. He’s says the warehouses have never been so full—food, ammunition, guns. Even you must’a noticed all these new troops around, the ones with the red shirts with the lightning bolt. They come up from as far away as California. Just talk to them and you’ll see cause they all sound like surfer dudes. This ain’t the mayor running things anymore, not even the governor, not even the president. They say he’s back. Vlad himself.”

  Tevy had often wondered why Bobs’ kept sending him back into the Loop. Some of the Brat Pack said she was trying to get him killed, but he never believed that. She liked him, always said he reminded her of the man who had saved her life.

  “Soldiers talk,” Bobs had said. “Just keep listening and one day you’ll hear something really valuable, something that’ll change the world.”

  And she was right. Vlad is back. Could that really be true? Bertrand, the Savior of Chicago, had killed Vlad at the Battle of the Mountain. Could this ripper above all other rippers have survived that fire? Even if this was some imposter or some impossible rumor, the news of a big offensive sounded very true, and it fit with everything else Tevy had seen in the last few weeks. Now he just had to get back to St. Mike’s with the news, without getting killed.

  Boots clumped down the far stairwell and a door creaked, the debris that blocked it toppling with a metal bang and a smash of breaking glass.

  “Blood dawn! Blood dawn!” shouted A and B together.

  “Red sunset,” replied a man’s deep voice. “Put your guns down. Have you searched this floor?”

  Tevy decided that this guy was a commander. The tone of his voice was arrogant and sure.

  “Yeah,” said B, her tone deferential. “Nobody here.”

  “Then move on, Sergeant. Head down to the third floor and continue your sweep, and don’t let me catch you smoking pot again and looking for somewhere to screw. They need full supply donors at the tower.”

  The boots clumped back into the stairwell, A and B’s footsteps following close behind. But Tevy wasn’t fooled. He waited, listening with great attention to every sound, interpreting, measuring. Outside, troops marched in a column, maybe a hundred. In the distance a tank engine revved for a minute and shut down. Just running the engine to keep it from seizing up. A bustle rose from the city, busier than he’d ever heard it. There were way more people in Chicago’s old downtown compared to last week.

  A crunch of broken glass underfoot. That always gave them away. Who had snuck back onto his floor? Tevy guessed
the commander, who wisely knew the floor hadn’t really been thoroughly searched and was hoping to catch him unawares. Paper rustled and soft footfalls on moldy carpet teased Tevy’s ears. Were these sounds real or imagined? Tevy held his breath. He wasn’t here. He wasn’t here. That was his mantra, his way of quelling the hero that wanted to charge out shooting, to kill the traitor and then run for the river.

  Suddenly the boots pounded across the room, stopping at the far stairwell. This commander was good, trying to frighten Tevy out into the open. More silence, probably as the commander listened himself.

  “Aw, fuck this.”

  The boots clumped down the stairwell, but still Tevy stayed put and dozed through the afternoon until his stomach growled—dinnertime. He crept out from under the desk and very carefully holstered his Glock. He was going to pose as a traitor, and traitors didn’t walk around their own territory expecting a fight. He headed down the stairs.

  Now was not the time for stealth. Tevy strode out into the late afternoon sunlight as if he owned the city, heading right down the middle of the sidewalk, fearlessly walking out into the street if smashed bricks or other debris from a burnt out building blocked the way. He had to dodge a few cars, and cops on motorbikes that still patrolled, but no one spoke to him. Troops in red shirts, the Daylight Brigades, marched down the center of the street in four lines, looking far too tanned for early June in Chicago. Tevy counted as he walked past in the opposite direction. You could sense their urgency. All these humans had to be safely secured by sunset, because not all rippers obeyed the commands of their central authority, even one as powerful as Vlad—if it really was Vlad the Scourge.

  After sunset, rippers would flood out into the city, many hungry, especially those that shunned the cold blood donations organized for them by their government. They would surge out of the Loop in all directions, looking for humans foolish enough to be out after dark. Sometimes the rippers would even group together to attack a rebel blockhouse if it looked weak. Tevy had found one that went down, far out in the suburbs where no help could reach, a McMansion converted to a fort, the houses nearby bulldozed to create clear fields of fire. He and Elliot had counted thirty-five corpses in the noonday sun, some burnt to skeletons with the house, most killed on the wide lawns as they tried to flee in the night. No one had been converted. They’d all been bled out.

  Tevy headed for the river and escape. Now for the hard part, to get past the bridge guards and out into the ruins of no man’s land between the ripper forces and the rebels that had rejected the authority of the city hall, the state, and the federal government after every level had become corrupted with rippers.

  The rusting steel of the Wells Street Bridge promised the best chance, because the traitors rarely bothered to guard the second deck that had once carried the ‘L’ trains, probably because a lot of people were uncomfortable up there, walking on ties. One old timer had also put it this way: “It used to be death to go up there. The third rail could fry you with a touch. Bam! Kentucky Fried Chicken! And trains came very fast and very often. Even now I can’t get that out of my head, and I’m always looking over my shoulder when I’m on the ‘L’.”

  Tevy did vaguely remember the ‘L’ trains, had even ridden them with his mother and father before the rippers appeared, but to him the tracks had almost always been just a rusting network of paths above ground. Sure, they were exposed to view from the buildings around them, but it was a calculated risk.

  He stopped long before Wacker St.—Bobs had insisted he learn all the street names so that his reports were accurate—and shinnied up one of the steel I-beams that support the ‘L’ line, his feet braced on one side of the beam and his hands gripping the other. He could climb like a monkey, and heights didn’t scare him. The hard part was just under the tracks, because the builders hadn’t left any way to get from under to above, but Tevy knew this area well, and he knew of a gap in some planks that had once supported a walkway for transit workers. He squeezed through and stood. He preferred these pathways at night, because in the dark no one from the tall buildings that surrounded him could see him. He set his sights on the hulking Merchandise Mart across the river, a gray building with its four towers anchoring each corner. The bottom three floors were all bricked in with new concrete block—a ripper fortress if ever there was one. In fact, it was the only ripper stronghold north of the river.

  Tevy started his walk, again projecting confidence and authority. There would be humans in the upper floors of the Merchandise Mart, but how closely would they check out a lone man waking along the tracks? Their masters were downstairs, sleeping or eating. Did rippers fornicate? They would need attention either way.

  But luck was not with Tevy that day. While his concern had been about eyes above, it was eyes below that caught him. The guards at the checkpoint just before the bridge rarely looked up, but Tevy’s shadow on the pavement must have caught their attention.

  “Hey!” came the shout from below the tracks. “Get down from there! No one crosses the river today without going through us first!”

  Tevy squatted down and looked between the ties. “Blood Dawn! Blood Dawn!”

  He could see the guards, four or five of them in the red shirts with the yellow lightning bolt. The Californian traitors.

  “Red Sunset,” said one tall man, his hair shaved to a short bristle, a captain by the strip on his shoulder. He had the paunch of middle age that had been starved away, the skin of his belly hanging loosely over his trouser belt. “That’s all very nice that you know the password. Now get your ass down here so that I can see your papers and you can explain why you’re trying to end run around us.”

  “I’m to report to the boss right away,” shouted Tevy, trying to look hurried. He pointed toward the Merchandise Mart.

  Several guns suddenly pointed up at him. Uh-oh. Wrong answer. The boss must be downtown.

  “Then why are you heading across the river instead of for the tower?” asked the captain.

  Tevy had one hand on his Glock, but he’d never killed a human before, only rippers and only at night. Somehow it just didn’t seem right to murder under the sun, and besides, he couldn’t kill them all and still have the element of surprise when he ran, for right now they thought they had him, they thought they were in control. But he could run.

  He sprinted down the plank siding, eyes on the boards ahead in case any looked rotten or loose. Gunshots snapped out, but even though his path was perfectly predictable, their shots came too late to catch him, and that was while they could easily see his outline above. Now, as they pursued along the metal deck of the bridge below, they had to contend with beams and piers that blocked their view up to the walkway, and even that only provided information by way of his shadow on the spaces between the planks.

  The raw stink of the river filled his nostrils, but to Tevy it was the scent of freedom. He glanced up at the Merchandise Mart with its gothic proportions, but no one appeared at the windows, drawn by the gunfire. Maybe humans didn’t go there at all, which, if true, presented an opportunity for a daytime raid on the rippers. Tevy filed that away for his report. That and the fact that the boss was at the tower. The Willis Tower?

  He easily outran the humans on the deck below, not just because he was younger, but because he had never been forced to donate blood to the rippers. It was no secret that they commonly drained far more from their traitor slaves than was medically safe.

  Tevy glanced up at the glass and red-brick building across from the Merchandise Mart, which had many of the windows smashed out during the chaos that followed the death of Vlad the Scourge over seven years ago. A young man’s form stood in an empty window just two floors above the level of the ‘L.’ He had a rifle shouldered, the sight to his eye, aiming. Tevy felt a moment of panic. This guy could kill him, had a clear bead on him, and it was too soon for Tevy to try and go below the deck and down to the ground. The station was still fifty feet away.

  Tevy forced the fear from his brain, remembe
ring Bobs’ instructions about how panic impaired cool thought. The sun moved from behind a cloud and splashed light onto the teen’s red hair. Thank God. Elliot, one of Tevy’s fellow Brat Packers, the same age. They’d been friends since Elliot arrived in the basement of St. Mike’s the night after Tevy.

  Elliot had wanted to come with him into Loop that night but had been ordered not to by Bobs. She knew Tevy had a better chance alone. But Elliot had come almost as far as the river and had obviously ignored Tevy’s instructions to return home. Now he was glad that Elliot had waited.

  The rifle cracked out, Elliot having aimed at the traitors on the bridge deck, hopefully forcing them back, but he was also making himself a target at the same time. Tevy wondered for a second why Elliot was standing up rather than lying down, but the sharp down-angle of the M16 made it obvious that it was the only way he could get a shot.

  “Good enough!” shouted Tevy. “Go! Go!” The crazy idiot was going to get himself killed, and Tevy now owed him big time. Elliot may have even saved his life. He turned and vanished into the darkness of the office building and not a moment too soon. Wild gunfire from below put bullet holes into the surviving windows around Elliot’s position.

  Tevy rushed onto the platform at the Merchandise Mart ‘L’ station, now able to run free on the concrete, just watching for obstacles like overturned benches and footing hazards like shattered glass from the office building above the station. He didn’t look back as he charged down the stairs and hopped the turnstiles, slamming out of the station door at full tilt.