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

  “Over here.” Emile patted the seat of an empty chair on his right. His black beard reached down to his belly, which had shrunk during the lean years but never disappeared. As Tevy sat, Emile leaned over to whisper in his ear—loudly enough that probably everyone at the table heard. “Good work yesterday, kid.” Stale beer from Emile’s breath turned Tevy’s stomach. He tried his first shine just a month ago and spent the next day nauseated and useless. Since then, he had stayed far from alcohol.

  Bobs took her seat at the head of the table, directly opposite Bishop Alvarez, who now wore his simple black cassock. Salt-and-pepper gray laced through the curling locks of his hair, but Alvarez always seemed the same age to Tevy as the day he had received his first communion, the month after his parents had been murdered. Alvarez, even before Bobs appointed him bishop, had baptized all of the Brat Pack as they arrived at St. Mike’s, making them all part of the new Chicago Catholic Church. Since the pope was a ripper the last time anything had been heard from Italy, Bobs and Alvarez had remade the Chicago diocese into their new church.

  “Tevy,” began Bishop Alvarez as if instructing at Sunday school. “We have a challenge—”

  But Bobs cut him off. “Let’s save time. How much did you hear while you were listening in?”

  There was a murmur of disapproval, and several of the elders cast suspicions glares in his direction.

  “Relax, people,” said Bobs. “This guy’s eavesdropping fetish is why we have as much info as we do. So, Tevy, you get that we’re in a spot, right?”

  Tevy looked around at all the old timers, many of them as old as fifty, many of them veterans of battles with the rippers. “Gonna be a fight—big one,” he said. “They got all these guys up from California. You can tell ’em by their red shirts and their skin, all tanned-like. Word is there may even be some from like the east, too. They’re harder to pick out.”

  “Whose word?” asked Alvarez.

  Tevy shrugged. “Soldiers, rippers, and I can count. Lots more troops, and they got Bradleys, too. I hear the engines every morning when they turn ’em on to keep them from seizing up.”

  “Jesus Christ,” said one man, Simon Gonsalves, who reminded Tevy of his long-lost school principle, because he was tall. He was one of the Companions that had fought Vlad the Scourge. “It’s time to reconsider an alliance with the Ericsians. They’ve got numbers and they’re well organized.”

  “No.” Bishop Alvarez shook his head and tapped one finger on the oak table for emphasis. “They are sinners who have turned their backs on Christ. They are only the last resort if all else fails. And I don’t like you calling them Ericsians. It makes them sound like Christians, but they are a cult. They are the Erics cult, plain and simple.”

  Bobs spoke before anyone else. “There’s plenty of alliances we can make before going down that road. That’s why I called in Tevy here. We need Joyce’s Raiders to come back to Chicago.”

  Several started talking at once, but Emile’s booming voice cut through all of them. “Not frigging likely. They’re settled up there. Barry and Martin got their families up there. Joyce and Jeff seem cozy, maybe even married by now. They’re not gonna risk everything to come back on a chancy fight. I tried to talk ’em into coming down last fall by the radio, but no how. They got their own fights up there and they ain’t budging from that fortress.”

  “I think they will if we send the right person. That’s why I’m going to send Tevy.”

  Simon spoke up again. “Why not someone Joyce knows—like me or Julia or Emile?”

  “I can’t spare my top people. Besides that, you guys might get up there and see how cozy everything is and not come back.” Bobs’ smile didn’t belie her words, but it softened them. Everyone could pretend it was a joke. “But Tevy, he’s my city mouse. Besides, he knows Joyce too. She saved his life way back at the beginning and brought him to live here. She needs to be reminded that there are people down here who depend on her.”

  Tevy considered reminding Bobs that it was Bertrand Allan himself who opened that closet door and saved his life, but he had the sense that he was to speak only when called upon. This was a company of greatness, and he was an orphan from the Brat Pack.

  Another woman spoke up, someone Tevy knew was also from Joyce’s original raiders, also a Companion, an Asian woman who had to be way older than him but still looked young and hot—Chen, that was her name. Julia Chen. “It’d be great to have them all back,” she said, “but we’re talking less than two hundred people, here. What’s that going to get us?”

  “I know, I know,” said Bobs. “We need serious numbers and serious gear. I’m launching talks with all the other cantonments, all the churches, the mosques, the synagogues, everybody.”

  “Everyone who’s not with the Erics,” muttered Emile.

  Alvarez waved his finger at him. “I will consent to working even with them, Emile. I simply advise that we gather all those who believe in God before we start appealing to apostates.”

  “All due respect, Padre,” said Emile. “We got about a month or so before we start crawling in panic on our knees to apostates, let alone appealing.”

  “But if this is all true and not just crap,” said Simon, “the boy here won’t even be halfway to Barry’s Keep before we’re all ripper cocktails. What’s the point in even sending him?”

  “He’ll be there before you know it.” Bobs looked Tevy straight in the eye. “Ready for adventure? You’re gonna fly.”

  Four - Flight to the North

  Tevy’s parents took him to Disney World when he was nine, just a year before they died, and he’d loved flying. The jet was so space-age, the in-flight movie magical, and all the food was a luxury he only appreciated years later. When pressed into his seat by the acceleration at take-off, he whooped with delight and was shushed by his dad. Tevy just loved big jets.

  The plane on the Kennedy Expressway was a disappointment.

  “I didn’t know they made them this small,” he said to Helen and Emile.

  “That’s a fine plane.” Emile placed a heavy hand on Tevy’s shoulder while they waited for the pilot to finish fueling from the small tanker truck of aviation fuel that Bobs sent. Fuel was precious, so this largess demonstrated the importance of the mission. “That’s a Cessna 172, a very reliable little plane.”

  “I’d forgotten about propeller planes. I mean, I thought they usually had two on the wings.” Tevy pointed with some distrust at the one propeller on the nose of the plane. “What if the engine conks out?”

  “Trust me,” said Emile. “You’re better off with this just for that very reason. Good pilot like Novak here can set this thing down anywhere, so you’re safer in that than one with two engines that needs more runway.”

  The Kennedy was not designed to be a runway, but Midway and O’Hare airports had been pounded by Colonel Webb’s bombers from Malmstrom years before to prevent the government rippers from flying in supplies or landing their own planes for refueling.

  But Bobs’ needed an airport, so she hired a guy to spend months with a tow truck clearing abandoned cars off the highway, siphoning each for precious gas and draining them of oil first, of course. He wasted nothing, and even now the cars were neatly lined up on the shoulders on either side, perpendicular to the highway’s direction, as if waiting to be sold, as if one day the inert rusting hulks would find new owners and new life. Of course, anyone who wanted a car could have one. Tevy had picked out three that he liked—it was fuel that was prohibitively expensive.

  Helen reached up and seized him in a hug. “You watch your butt up there, my little man.” She patted his back as if he were still ten and shaking with the memory of his parents’ deaths. “Don’t go charging straight into trouble shouting and shooting. Think first.” She gave his shoulders a shake, as if that could drive sense into his head.

  Tevy turned to Emile, unsure what to do: shake hands? Knock knuckles like he always did with Elliot and the gang? To his relief, Emile was holding out a shotgun
.

  “Glock’s okay as back up, but I thought you should take something with more stopping power.” He passed Tevy the gun, which had a pistol grip instead of a stock, and its barrel carefully sawed short. “This here is a Winchester 1200 Defender just like the one Bert took into the mountain on that last day. Takes seven magnum rounds, but eight regulars. I don’t think you need the magnums cause you’re always so effing close to them when you kill ’em.”

  “That’s...that’s fantastic. Thanks so much. I promise to put it to good use,” Tevy said. He looked up to Helen and Emile, and for the first time he understood that he had adopted them. He had unthinkingly relied on them as if it were their duty to shelter and raise him, a presumption usually reserved for parents. “I didn’t get you anything. I’m so sorry.”

  “You’re going to get Joyce’s Raiders for us,” said Helen. “That’s a fine gift.”

  “Show her the shotgun.” Emile cleared his throat, and for a moment Tevy panicked, thinking the big man might cry. “It’ll bring back memories for her, ’cause it’s just like Bert’s.” Emile shook his head and looked up at the blue sky for a second, blinking rapidly and composing himself, much to Tevy’s relief. “But you know what’s totally weird? You are a lot like Bertrand. I think that’s really why Bobs picked you to go. You’re really gonna stir up some memories.”

  Helen scoffed and shoved Emile’s shoulder, catching him at just the right moment so that, small and old as she was, Emile tipped off balance and had to stagger a step to steady himself. “Enough of your nonsense you drunken lout. You’ll start talking about the 1000 Souls next and get the bishop all pissed off.”

  Emile was still chuckling when the pilot called to get their attention.

  “Ready to go young man? We’re burning our daylight here.”

  The tanker-truck driver had finished winding the fuel hose back into its reel, and the pilot was standing by the propeller, inspecting his plane before the flight.

  “Ready!” Tevy shouldered his pack, still awkwardly holding the shotgun in one hand while he tried to figure out how to store it.

  Helen passed him a leather pouch with straps. “You carry it in this—no, not on the plane. I mean when you’re walking or hunting. It’s like a holster, but for your back. That way if you need it, you can reach over your shoulder and draw it real fast. Now get the hell out of here and bring back my people.”

  Tevy hurried over to the little plane, ducking under the wing and handing his pack to the pilot, who stowed it on the back seat. The plane was crowded with packages and crates, deliveries for the city of Duluth, their first stop along the way.

  Novak, the pilot, was old, maybe forty or even fifty. He had shaved his sharp jaw a few days ago, but now a grizzle of gray coated his chin. The hair that wasn’t hidden by his cap was still black, though, so he couldn’t be too old. For a moment Tevy saw himself in the man’s sunglasses: a scrawny, underfed runt who had shaved once and was still waiting for the peach fuzz to grow back. Tevy also wondered if his short sleeves and ammo vest would be warm enough, because the pilot wore a heavy jacket with a collar of dense sheepskin, indicating that the jacket was well-insulated.

  “Should I put on a coat?” said Tevy.

  “This depends on whether you want to freeze. I’m having trouble with the heater.” Tevy only knew that the accent was Czech because Emile had told him a bit about the pilot, a man who had started life in the air force of another country before immigrating to America to get away from all the weirdness that was going on in Europe, only to find that it eventually reached here, too. The rippers were worldwide. Novak spoke English with the precision of a second language well-learned.

  Tevy looked after his pack in hopes of putting on all his warm clothes, but Novak smiled and said, “Here.” He yanked a down jacket from the back seat and shoved it into Tevy’s hands. It may have once been a light blue, but coffee stains, grease smudges, and years had aged it to a grimy brown. “I reasoned you would come dressed for summer.”

  Thankful, Tevy put it on and climbed in, but for a moment he thought he’d got in the wrong side, for there was a steering control on in front of the passenger seat, although most of the dials and controls were clearly for the pilot on the left side of the plane. His seat must be for a copilot, or perhaps someone training. He did up the seat belt and prepared himself for that powerful acceleration he had experienced on the way to and from Disney World. The engine fired up, coughing and complaining before settling down to a steady drone. Tevy waved to Helen and Emile, wondering what things would be like tonight as the Brat Pack settled down for bed on the boys’ side. Would Elliot tell one of his crazy ghost stories? Would he try sneaking over to the girls’ side so that he and Amanda could have a grope game and some necking?

  Suddenly it felt wrong. Elliot should be with him on this adventure. They’d always made a good team when it came to fighting rather than sneaking. There was nowhere in the cramped plane, of course, and there was no way Bobs would trade the food or ammunition required to purchase a seat for Elliot.

  It was a full ten minutes before the pilot turned the plane to aim north down the highway. “Name is Milan Novak!” he shouted. “Just so that you know who to curse if we crash. Here we go!”

  Tevy gave a last wave to Emile and Helen and braced himself for thrill of acceleration, only to be disappointed. This wasn’t like a jet at all. They simply rolled up to a speed not much faster than a car, but suddenly the plane lurched up, pressing his bum into the seat. He grabbed the sides of his seat to fight the vertigo. They were high in a way you didn’t get a sense of in passenger jets, because they flew too high for the ground to be real. From this height, not much higher than a tall office building, the houses and streets looked like a little model city, albeit one that had been damaged by an angry child stomping with muddy feet.

  “You can see everything up here.” Tevy pointed to the highway and the abandoned suburbs. “I bet you could even track the rippers at night!”

  “Back when there were street lights, maybe.” Milan ignored Tevy and the ground and concentrated on his instruments and the horizon. “But I don’t fly at night anymore, unless there is an emergency. You cannot see anything below in the dark, and unless someone on the ground helps, you cannot land. Unless it’s a full moon, I could fly straight in the Hancock building and not know it until my asshole passed through my brain.”

  They flew in silence while the plane climbed until they were so high that Tevy relaxed. The ground, the houses and streets, the trees, and now even Lake Michigan on their right, were so far below that Tevy’s vertigo, his sense of helplessness, faded. The earth wasn’t real anymore and instead a distant toy.

  Milan leveled the plane. “Okay my ladies and gentlemen. We’ve reached our cruising altitude of 13,000 feet, which we’ll stay at unless the head gasket blows, in which case we will land very quickly, probably nose first. The in-flight movie today is called Sky and Ground, and will hopefully feature more sky than ground. The weather forecast is who the hell knows, but I do see some clouds off to our left that I’m not happy about, and I’ll decide when we reach Duluth whether we park for the night or go on to our destination. Please be advised that there’s an emergency exit on your right called a door. Don’t open it unless you are planning to jump out and die. In the unlikely event of a water landing, you will definitely drown.”

  Milan reached behind Tevy’s seat and hefted up a small pack, which he thrust into Tevy’s lap. “Our in-flight meal today is chicken or beef sandwich, courtesy of Helen, and warm beer courtesy of Emile. Very nice of him. They must like you. Be sure to drink plenty of water, too, because it is very dry up here. You will dehydrate quickly. Did I mention that you are the flight attendant? Open one of those beers for me, please.”

  There were only four brown bottles in the bottom of the pack, underneath sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. Tevy pulled one out and tried to figure out how he could open it. He knew that bottles used to be twist tops, but he couldn’t get t
his cap to turn.

  “Wait just a moment.” Milan rummaged in a pocket and pulled out a bottle opener. “They’re too old to work like they used too. The caps are sticky.”

  Tevy opened it and passed the bottle to Milan.

  “Ah that is very amazing. Chateau 2012 I bet, and not at all skunky. This must be from Emile’s private reserve. What a guy.” Milan looked over. “Come on, young man. Don’t make me drink all these myself. It doesn’t make me a better pilot.”

  Tevy reluctantly opened a bottle and sipped at it, discovering that it was nothing like the hooch that had made him so sick during his first experience with alcohol. The beer was even a little chill, which gave him a clue as to the location of Emile’s cache. The basement of his blockhouse was cool and damp, and one spring it had flooded a foot deep, which would explain why the labels were missing.

  “So, would you be willing to tell me exactly why Bobs is willing to rush you all the way to St. John’s on short notice?”

  How to handle this without offending his pilot? Bobs had sworn him to secrecy during his last briefing.

  “I don’t want everyone panicking and running for the hills,” she had said. “So you keep your mouth shut about all these new traitors and this fricking asshole who says he’s Vlad back from the dead.”

  Tevy understood better than Bobs knew. It wasn’t just losing troops that was the danger, but if everyone scattered to the countryside, the rippers would be able to go after them one small farmhouse at a time. Humanity, at least in Illinois, would be wiped out or enslaved.

  “Just supposed to go see how things are going up there,” Tevy said. “What’s up and stuff. The general is worried about them.” Bobs was the general.