Lexington, Kentucky | Late Fall, 2008
5 years after outbreak
Joel Miller. All I had was a name and a vague description; ‘tall man, dark hair, dark eyes, probably scowling’. Great, I thought. Just great.
I looked around the square. I saw a man fitting that description leaning against the brick building, his arms crossed over his chest. He was solid looking, about 40 or so, and he was indeed scowling.
I crossed the square, trying to look as if I had no purpose. I looked through several of the vendor carts, pretending to be interested in boot laces and scrap metal before I joined the scowling man at the wall.
“I wish these FEDRA asshats would open up the river border,” I said carefully. “I bet the fish would really be biting today,” I went on, using the code phrase Paul had given me.
The scowling man didn’t look at me. Instead, he just said:
“Probably all trout, though.” A pause. “Still, it’s good eating.”
He wanted to trade. I nodded, and counted to five. Then, I made my way back through the square, pausing again to look at a cart of old t-shirts before disappearing down an alleyway.
30 seconds later, the scowling man came around the corner, and the two of us slipped through a loose plank in a wooden fence, and then through a creaky door into the back of the old warehouses. As far as FEDRA knew, these buildings were condemned and unfit for use. So one by one,black market sellers moved in.
“You’re not Tiffany,” the scowling man said as we crept through the shadows into the building Paul and his crew had claimed.
“No, I’m not,” I replied. I turned to him. “You got the cards?”
He looked surprised.
“Yeah,” he said as he handed me a stack of colorful paper, the currency of the QZ.
I counted them quickly.
“The deal was eight hundred,” I told him. I tried to keep my voice from shaking.
“I’ll give you five.”
“Eight.”
“Six.”
“Eight.”
“Don’t you know how to negotiate?” Beneath his irritation, there was mild amusement.
“I wasn’t told to negotiate. I was told that I was facilitating an exchange, with a set payment.”
“And I’m sure you always do what you’re told,” he grumbled, digging in his pocket and pulling out the rest of the cards.
“I do when it’s coming from Paul,” I muttered, holding out my hand for the money. If he noticed that I was shaking like a leaf, he didn’t say anything about it. Finally, the scowling man nodded, handing over the cards, and then I led him back through the labyrinth of hallways to where the items for the deal were stored.
He looked over the cache of weapons and food items, and then nodded.
“We’re good,” he said to me.
“Great, these items need to be gone by sunup,” I said. “And I don’t need to tell you to be discreet, I’m sure.”
“No,” he replied dryly.
“Pleasure doing business with you. Paul told me to tell you that next month he’s expecting a shipment of-”
“Tell Paul this is our last deal.”
“What?” Paul was not going to be happy to hear that one of his best customers didn’t want to trade anymore. “Why?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“Paul will want to know. Especially if you’re dealing with a competitor.”
“You can tell him it’s none of his damn business either.”
I turned to look at him, unable to disguise my feelings. Paul did not like hearing things like that. An anxious knot formed in the pit of my stomach.
“Please,” I said, unable to keep the note of begging desperation from my voice. “He’s not going to like hearing this, at least give me a reason.”
He looked at me for a long moment, and then I saw something soften behind his eyes.
“I’m leaving the QZ,” he said. “Permanently.”
My eyes widened, and my stomach flipped. It brought back a memory of the first drop of the roller coaster at the state fair, a sensation from a lifetime ago.
“To go where?”
He considers this for a moment.
“East,” he replied, a touch of finality in his tone.
Now or Never, I thought.
“Take me with you,” I blurted out.
“What?”
“If you’re leaving the QZ, take me with you.”
“No.”
“Please,” I said. “Please, I have to get out of here.”
He looked me up and down.
“No,” he said again. “It’s too dangerous.”
“I can handle myself against infected. I made it here from Chattanooga.” I had been with Paul and his crew, but I left that part out.
“There’s worse than infected out there.”
“And there’s worse than infected in here,” I muttered darkly. “Look, I have… I have to get out of here,” I went on. “If I don’t, I… He’ll kill me.”
“What?”
“Paul… He… Why do you think Tiffany isn’t here?” I said, trying to keep the unhinged, desperate edge from my voice. “You think Paul gives his girls sick days? No. She had a trade go bad,and instead of going after the guy who ripped him off, Paul had his goons…” I trailed off, unwilling to say. “She’ll be alright… Eventually… but the next girl he sends out might not be so lucky.” I looked at him, beseeching any humanity that might be lurking underneath his scowl. “Please,” I begged.
“What’s in it for me?”
“I know where Paul keeps his stashes hidden. Not just in the QZ. On The Ratline, too.”
“How do you know that?” He asked.
“Don’t worry about it, I just do,” I said. “Get me out of the QZ, and you’ll have enough supplies to get across the country twice.”
“And where are you going to go once you leave the QZ? Do you have a plan?”
I bit my lip.
“I’ll go west. There’s a commune outside of Wichita. Sheep farm.”
“That’s a pipe dream, probably made up by slavers to lure naive people out there.”
“Please,” I begged again. “I have to get out of here.”
He looked at me for a long time.
“You’re going to get killed if you leave the QZ.”
“I’ll die if I stay, too…” I said. “Please,” I begged again in a whisper. “I have to get out of here.”
“Take me to a cache, here in the city.”
“What, right now?”
“Yeah,” he said. “If you really know where they are, take me to one.”
I pondered this statement, deciding which cache would be the safest to go to in broad daylight.
“Fine, follow me,” I said. I led him through the maze of warehouse spaces and dilapidated buildings until we were in the heart of Old Lexington. Most of the buildings had been bombed by the US Army in the early days of the outbreak, but one small building had survived, and stood among the rubble. I looked around, but few people ventured this deep into the old city anymore. It wasn’t any good for shelter, and it had already been picked over for supplies… But inside the small building that was nestled among the rubble of its taller neighbors, there was an old bookcase.
“Help me,” I nodded towards the bookcase.
He looked surprised, and together, we slid the bookcase over. It hid a doorway that led down to the basement of the building. Paul thought it was incredibly clever.
“It’s like Sherlock Holmes,” he’d told me as I helped push the bookcase across the room in front of the doorway. Nevermind that anyone paying attention could see the disturbance of dust on the floor and would know the bookcase had been moved… But if I voiced that opinion, Paul wouldn’t hesitate to retort… With the back of his hand, generally.
We moved the bookcase in front of the door once we were on the other side, and then I led him down the stairs, into the basement.
“He uses this for dry goods, it doesn’t get too hot or too cold down here,” I said, and I turned on my flashlight. I shined it at the racks of shelves on the wall. There were rows and rows of MREs that had been stolen from FEDRA, ration boxes from old military bases, and other non-perishable foods that he found god knows where.
He whistled appreciatively.
“You know where more of these are?”
“I know where every single storehouse is on the Ratline,” I assured him. “Get me out of here, and I’ll tell you all of them.”
“Look,” he said. “I’m not making it up, its dangerous out there. You don’t even know where you’re going. That place in Wichita isn’t real. If it was, no one would be talking about it, because they’d keep it a secret, to keep it safe. So put that idea right out of your mind. Where are you going to go? You can’t survive out there on your own.”
“And you can?”
“I’ve got experience.”
“Where’s the closet QZ?”
“Pittsburg maybe.”
“Then take me there.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Please,” I said. “I don’t care where I’m going… I just… I have to get away.” Desperation clung to my voice.
He looked at the shelves of goods in the cache for a long while.
“You got a name?”
“Amber,” I said.
“Joel,” he said, almost automatically. “Where does the Ratline run?” He asked me.
“East to Charleston, then north up through Baltimore, and Philly, up into New York. Underground, mostly… hence the name.”
“How do you know about it?”
I bit my lip.
“Paul trusts me.”
“Yeah, but why?”
“What’s that matter?”
“Because if I’m smuggling you out of the QZ, I don’t want any heat,” he said. “If you’re someone important in his network, he might come looking for you, and I’m not keen to have that kind of trouble.”
“I’m nobody important,” I said. “I just… I’m good at logistics… That’s why I know.”
He studied me for a long moment.
“He doesn’t send people who are important to him on trade runs,” I assured him. “Only expendables.”
Unless of course he was out of expendables on that particular day, but I wasn’t about to jeopardize my chance to escape.
“I could tell him what you’re up to,” he said. “Probably get a nice reward.”
“You could,” I relented. “But whatever he would give you would be a drop in the ocean compared to what you’d have access to on the Ratline.”
“How many caches?”
“Two dozen, all at least as well stocked as this, some with munitions and weapons, but most with food and other supplies, clothing, medicine, all that.”
“Unguarded?”
“No, they are guarded. But not very heavily. You could pick them off at a distance if you had a rifle, probably.
“Cold blooded,” he said, looking me up and down again.
“You would be, too.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Paul is a monster,” I finally whispered. “And I have to get away.”
I watched him considering it. He turned to look over his shoulder, rubbing the back of his neck as he took the site of the supplies all around us.
“I have conditions.”
“Naturally.”
“I’m leaving tonight, at dusk,” he said. “If you’re not there, I’m not waiting.”
“Noted.”
“You do what I say, when I say it, no back talk, no arguing. The second you do, you’re on your own.”
“Of course.”
“I’ll get you to Pittsburg, and you’ll give me the location of every cache and all the information you have on every single one of them.”
“Yes,” I nodded.
“I reserve the right to alter the terms of this arrangement at any time.”
I nodded again.
“And lastly, let me make this very clear: This is a business transaction. We are not friends. We don’t need to make small talk, or get to know one another. We don’t need to talk at all, as far as I’m concerned, except about the matter at hand.”
“Got it,” I said, trying not to show my elation that he was considering the deal.
“If we run into trouble, you are on your own. I’m not going to protect you. You have to take care of yourself. And if you get bit, I will put a bullet in your skull with zero hesitation.”
I swallowed hard, but I nodded a third time.
“Of course,” I said, trying to make my voice sound neutral and even.
“All right,” he said. “Get whatever you can’t live without, but I’m warning you, I travel fast, rough and light. So plan accordingly.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Meet me at the old clock tower,” he said. “6:30.”
“You said you were leaving at dusk.”
“I am, but I want you at the clock tower at 6:30.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t trust you.” He shrugged. “Be there at 6:30, alone. If you’re not alone, if anything feels even the slightest bit off, then there’s no deal, got it? If you really want to leave here, on your own head be it. But I’m not putting myself in danger for you.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to. I just need to know the way out.”
He looked at me for a long time, assessing me, and I knew he thought I must be crazy. Maybe I was. But I couldn’t stomach another second with Paul. Not when there was a way out right here.
“All right, 6:30, the clock tower.”
“6:30, the clock tower,” I repeated. I left Joel Miller there in the cache, hoping he’d bother to put the bookcase back when he was done, but then realizing that after tonight, what happened to this cache wasn’t my problem anymore.
I flew back to the apartment building Paul and his people had taken over. As far as FEDRA was concerned, we were just a displaced group from Tennessee that wanted to stay together… Not a Black Market syndicate trying to take hold.
The apartment I shared with Paul was one of the bigger ones in the building, as befit his imagined station. Paul considered himself to be a Vito Corleone type, but he was more like Fredo in my eyes. Impulsive. Easily manipulated. Quick to anger.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous.
Paul wasn’t there when I arrived, and I tried not to think about what would happen if he found out what I was up to.
I put the cards Joel Miller had given me in exchange for the trade deal in the old coffee can Paul stored his money in. For one moment, I thought about taking everything in there, but I knew that outside the QZ they were worth less than the cardstock they were printed on. It would enrage Paul, though, and that idea made it almost worth it… But instead, I just put the can back in the cupboard… On a different shelf than I normally did. The end of the word might have changed a lot of things, but it hadn’t changed the way that some men suffered from a lack of Object permanence, and the momentary frustration it would cause him made me giggle to myself.
I grabbed my backpack from the closet.
Travel light, I thought. I grabbed a few changes of underwear and rolled them up tight. As many socks as I dared, knowing that having dry socks would be paramount. A sleeping bag. A couple of ration boxes and MREs from our private stash. I layered on clothes for warmth, but also not to take up space in my bag. Finally I looked at the small carved wooden box that I kept on my bedside table. I swallowed hard. I should leave it behind. It was a waste of space. It wasn’t essential.
I tucked it into the bottom of my bag, wedging it between two MRE cases so that the lid wouldn’t fall open during our excursion of the QZ. I wasn’t sure what the route would entail, but I could imagine it wouldn’t be a walk in the park.
Once my bag was packed, I snuck down to the first floor of the apartment building, and slipped through the door. I took the bag across the alley, into another empty building and hid it behind some abandoned storage containers. I’d grab it when I left this evening.
I went back to the apartment and started to clean up. I piled up laundry in the laundry basket, so if Paul noticed any of my clothes were missing, he would assume they were in there. I doubted he would notice, though. Paul rarely paid much attention to anything that didn’t directly affect him. I made dinner, like the dutiful girlfriend Paul tried to make me be.
I wasn’t sure if he would show up before I was supposed to meet Joel, and I decided not to wait around to find out.
“Gone to check on Tiffany, be back before dark, dinner in the oven,” I scrawled on a piece of paper and taped it to the mirror by the door.
Tiffany’s apartment was in another building. It was a good excuse, even if I wasn’t going to see her before I left.
She answered a few seconds after I knocked.
Tiffany was a little older than I was, and she’d been working for Paul’s smuggling ring since the beginning. It was a pretty shit way to repay her for something that wasn’t her fault.
“You filled in for me today,” she said. It was hard to look at her face.
“Yeah, just one drop,” I said. “Joel Miller.”
“Not a bad one. He always pays. No bullshit.” I nodded.
“Can I get you anything? Bring you anything?” I asked her after a moment.
She shook her head.
“Have you seen Lita?” She asked, a tinge of sorrow in her voice. The three of us, Lita, Tiffany and myself, had all come from Birmingham together, as part of Paul’s crew. We were friends, or as close to friends as the strange circumstances of our lives would allow.
“Last night,” I said.
She nods.
“He’s giving her my route.”
“Just like that?”
“He said I can’t be trusted anymore.”
“It’s not your fault you got ripped off. Paul ought to send protection out with droppers. This shit is going to keep happening.” I was angry on her behalf. She turned to look at me. The eye that wasn’t swollen shut was full of tears.
“How am I going to feed my kids?”
“I… I don’t know…” I said, suddenly wishing I had stolen those cards and brought them to Tiffany… But I knew that was just as likely to put her in danger as it was to help her.
I stayed with her a little longer, trying to make myself useful. I cleaned up her apartment, but after a while, Tiffany took me by the arm and said:
“Please just leave. I want to be alone.”
I gave her a long look, and then I hugged her. I couldn’t tell her I was leaving. She’d beg me to take her with me, and I knew Joel wouldn’t agree to that. I knew that leaving her behind was selfish. But I had to.
After a moment, she hugged me back, but she dropped her arms almost as quickly. I left, hoping that something happened, something to help her and her kids… And I hated Paul even more than I did already.
I still had time to kill before I needed to leave to meet Joel. I wasn’t about to risk going back to the apartment I shared with Paul, for fear he wouldn’t let me go back out. Instead, I found myself looking for Lita.
I found her at the Market. She joined me pretending to look through a basket of old denim.
“I saw Tiff,” I told her in a low voice.
“She tell you what happened?”
“I could guess. Paul’s a piece of shit.”
“He’s getting worse. The guy ripped her off, beat her up, took the money, took the goods. Then when Paul found her, he had Evan beat her again.”
Rage colored my vision.
“What?”
“I’m scared, Amber, these guys are getting bold. They are doing this shit in daylight, with witnesses. They don’t care, and FEDRA won’t do shit, and even if they would, we’d all get hanged for illegal trade.”
“Paul needs to do something,” I said. “He needs to send protection with his droppers.” I repeated.
“He’d listen to you.”
“No, he won’t. I’ve begged him to do it for months, since the first time it happened.” I sighed. “I had to do Tiff’s drop this morning because he didn’t have anyone else,” I said. He can’t keep treating people like they are disposable and expect others to join up, I thought.
“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know,” Lita said. “Look, I’ll help Tiff financially until she gets something else, but you have to try to convince Paul to change how he’s doing things,” she said. “Otherwise we’re all going to wind up like her.”
“He doesn’t listen to me, Lita.”
“Make him,” she said. A twinge of guilt radiated out through me.
“I’ll try,” I lied. I looked at my watch. 6:15. “Look, I have to get back… but… Be careful, okay?” Take care of Tiff, I wanted to say, but that would give away too much. I just gave her a long, searching look. “I mean it. Stay safe.”
“Yeah, you too,” Lita laughed dismissively. “See you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow,” I echoed, hoping my voice didn’t sound as false to her as it did to me.
I ran to where I stashed my things and then I pulled the hood of my sweatshirt over my hair before shouldering my pack. I moved purposefully and quickly, my head down, and my eyes on the street in front of me. I took a longer route, doubling back to make sure no one was following me. I didn’t think anyone would, I hadn’t been gone long enough for Paul to be suspicious. He wouldn’t start to get worried until after dark, and by then, I would be outside the walls. Out of his grasp.
I arrived at the old clock tower with two minutes to spare.
A low hiss caught my attention. I looked around, and saw Joel tucked back into the growing shadows in the alley behind the clocktower. I looked around one last time, and then darted over to him.
“Were you followed?”
“No,” I said. “I made sure, I doubled back.”
“Okay,” he said, looking over my shoulder at the empty plaza. “Follow me.”
I followed him through a door, down a flight of stairs into a basement, and through another set of doors. I realized that we were in the access tunnels. They ran under all the government buildings in the city.
After about 30 minutes of the winding labyrinth of tunnels, he led me up an access ladder, and I was surprised to find us in the lobby of an old hotel. I looked out the window, and realized we were a breath away from the wall that separated the QZ from the outside world.
“We’ll wait here until dark,” Joel said. “Shouldn’t be much longer.”
I nodded, and we stood there, watching the shadows grow longer as the sun sank below the wall. As the deepening twilight unfurled across the sky, Joel nodded for me to follow him.
“Stay low,” he said. “Stay close. Don’t stop unless I do.” It was pitch black and hard to see. There were no FEDRA security lights on this side of the QZ.
Instinctively, I put my hand on his shoulder so it would be easier to follow him. He stiffened for a moment, and then he stepped forward, into the darkness. We went through an old sewer tunnel, and despite the fact that this half of the city had been uninhabited for nearly 5 years, the stench was unimaginable.
“If you’re going to be sick,” Joel said gruffly. “Aim away from me.”
“I’m fine,” I said, even as I gagged on the putrid air.
At long last, we made our way up another access ladder. He paused at the top, carefully sliding a cover of some sort out of the way. He paused again, tilting his left ear up towards the opening, straining to hear.
“Okay,” he said in a low voice. “Quickly.”
He pushed the cover the rest of the way aside and I rushed up the ladder. He extended a hand to pull me up, then he quickly replaced the cover over the access hole. I looked around. In the distance, I could see the FEDRA security lights back towards the QZ walls. We were about half a mile outside now. In open country. I swallowed hard.
“Come on,” Joel said in a low, gruff voice. “There’s a building about a half mile east of here, we’ll stay there tonight and get started at first light.”
“Is it safe?”
“Safer than sleeping out in the open,” he said. “It’s not safe to travel at night, but that’s the only time you can get out of the QZ without being seen.”
I nodded, and again, I fell into step behind him. The moon was rising and it was bright enough to see a little, so I didn’t need to hold on to him. I tried not to let my nerves get the better of me. I had not stepped foot outside the QZ in almost 2 years. I didn’t know what the world looked like now. I was terrified of what I might find.
But I was also elated. Because for the first time since the world went to shit, Paul didn’t have any control over me. I was free.