The Mother of Exiles, parts III & IV

Outside, the scavenger cats that resided in the nearby alley were screeching and hissing and meowing, no doubt fighting over scraps of food or mating rights or some such feline thing. Gideon had a pet cat named Aldous. More of a best friend and companion, really. Upon hearing the din from the scavenger cats in the alley, Aldous never failed to perk up, shoot wild glances back and forth, and pace about the shack. That was exactly what he was doing now, pausing only now and again to meow and paw at the plywood barrier separating him from them.

It was strange. The living dead never went after the stray cats that populated the city streets. They simply treated them with absolute indifference. Perhaps they didn’t like the taste. Whatever the reason, it wasn’t quite clear. So it was not uncommon for Gideon to let Aldous run about at night, when Gideon was safely behind the walls of his reinforced shack. Certainly one of the most intelligent feline specimens Gideon ever had the extreme pleasure of happening upon, Aldous was quite capable of taking basic instructions. On more than a few occasions Gideon even fit Aldous with a homemade harness with a zipper pouch and had him deliver handwritten notes to other survivors about the city, like Gideon’s best friend Francis. During the day, however, Aldous walked beside Gideon like any other loyal companion would. Every now and then Gideon had to keep Aldous in the shack, depending on where he was heading, as many of the survivors about the city would go mad for a bit of fresh cat meat. Funny, the zombies wouldn’t eat cats, but hungry survivors among the living would put them on a spit over a fire in a heartbeat. Either that or Gideon placed Aldous in his rucksack, where he often curled up and began to snooze.

On the bruise-colored horizon Gideon could see that the sun had risen even more, and the gray clouds around it were suddenly blessed with fiery orange underbellies. Pale and distant, the moon was still visible in the firmament as well, though it appeared as only a fading ghost of its former self, daytime threatening to rob it of its cosmic splendor. But in the winter one could sometimes see the moon all through the day in varying degrees. Each day, too, in observing the sky, one could note how the moon was visible from dawn to twilight, then less visible, then semi-visible, and finally, just when one thought it would sink behind the Earth into complete obscurity, it would be back in full effect, simultaneously both subtle and intense, glowing in all of its celestial albino glory over the ruined city. Still, night was officially over, and it was decidedly time to take advantage of it.

Day's arrival only meant one thing, at least at this particular time, and that was that church was in session. Not church as one might think. Nor was it church in any traditional or conventional sense of the practice. Truth of the matter is, it was not church at all, but the half mad ramblings of a street preaching lunatic aptly named Preacher Man. Almost every morning, Preacher Man set up his platform, from which he delivered his apocalyptic sermons. Heavily bearded, greasy, bespectacled, and as gaunt as a starving ferret, Preacher Man performed his rituals in identical fashion every time, reverently arranging the pages of the good book from which he would read that day, hold his arms outstretched to heaven, mumble unintelligibly, and lovingly smooth his robes and priestly rags in preparation. Rumor was that he took the vestments he now wore off a corpse at a graveyard behind a Catholic Church somewhere in the plague ward, and on a sudden inexplicable impulse reinvented himself as Preacher Man. Of course, Preacher Man wasn't the only person to reinvent himself during these strange, crazy, and dangerous times.

Sometimes Gideon watched and listened to Preacher Man for a few moments here and there as he banged around with his platform, gesticulated wildly, mumbled, and mumbled mumbled mumbled. At some point, between the seemingly random movements and low incoherent speech, Preacher Man, as was common with his sermon, began pointing to signs that he had propped up around his platform, all hand-painted with warnings and proclamations such as: Repent, for thou art sinners, and the Devil makes zombies of sinners! "Let cannibalism be the new sacrament," said the cow, said the chicken, said the head of lettuce, said the cucumber. The living dead haven't any souls---they are not vessels for heavenly energy---and thus they are immortal, damned to walk the earth eternally. Thou shalt not kill (says the new 5th Commandment)...unless thy neighbor be a flesh-crazed and rotting ghoul. Utopia and Eden are the new Sodom and Gomorrah!!! Jesus was a carpenter, not a survival guide of the apocalypse. Never again shall we humans enter through the gates of Heaven or Hell upon death; we have been judged---and look around ye!---we have been punished. Behold, brothers and sisters, the Earth is rotting on the vine of the universe; take up thy guns, take up thy swords, give up thy prayers, for the dead are coming.

Occasionally Preacher Man earned himself a small congregation of listeners, though mostly derelicts and vagabonds with nothing better to do than sip from jugs of alley hooch and stand by the warm flames jumping and licking at the rusty rims of the metal trashcans surrounding the platform. Also, Preacher Man liked to pass around crumbs of old, moldy bread and bottles of cheap wine---that is, if he was able to track any down between sermons---and the survivors were a hungry lot, many of whom would subject themselves to an hour or two of listening to a madman preach the End Time Message, even for such minimal and modest fare. Hell, shitty wine and slightly moldy bread were certainly better than some of the alternatives, to be sure.

Then there was Liam, who Gideon could also hear outside toiling away in the filth of the wasted city. Liam, a young, dirty-faced Irish boy, wandered the streets at all hours, most of the time banging around in trashcans and dumpsters, mostly trying to find discarded aluminum cans. Sometimes he rummaged for whatever hidden items of interest he could find in the towering piles of old and new world garbage. At other times, he was simply searching out his next meal, digging in a desperate frenzy to grab hold of whatever edible scraps might lay beneath the yellowed papers, nameless rotted substances, and miscellaneous debris.

How could Liam go out on such pursuits in a world inhabited by zombies, flesh-eating infected birds, packs of dogs gone wild with the rabies-like symptoms of the plague, roaming bands of mad scavengers, and cut-throat wanderers? Simply put, Liam was a rather sharp youth, surviving by wit and what agility remained after his father, drunk on alley hooch, broke his leg in two places and tore his knee cartilage during a particularly severe beating. Liam had never shared that story with Gideon, though. He was ashamed of his father and the way he behaved when drinking heavily. Hell, Liam’s father wasn’t the most likable character when sober either. And that made Liam’s home life more than a little disagreeable and unpleasant. Thus, the boy took to wandering the streets of Utopia night and day, though mostly during the day since the dead were light-sensitive and chose to hunt mostly during the midnight hours. The strain of the infection that had taken up residence in the birds, however, mutated to accommodate their very specific biological makeup and spared them the light-sensitivity. Dogs and other mammals with similar physiology shared the light-sensitivity of the infected humans. What they all had in common was their ferocity, their need to attack, kill, and feed.

Indeed, if there was in fact a God---and Gideon very much doubted there was---He was like a morbid artist…and His world a canvas of flesh upon which he had painted obscene depictions of carnage and suffering with bucket-loads of blood. And if that was the case, what then would become of him, of Francis, of Aldous, of Liam, and all the other survivors? They were the last and the damned, the entire lot of them. They had been manufactured and distributed throughout the world by the same creating force of nature that had created the permanently dead and the walking dead, only their maker had made the error of forgetting to stamp them with their expiration dates. So death could come at any moment for any one of them. In a way, it was like walking through a thick fog, not being able to see five inches in front of your own face, knowing full well that at any second you could trip on something or bump into something, sending you on your ass or bloodying your nose. There was no point in thinking about the future. There was only the right here and now. And if you walked around in reverie of the tomorrows to come, you could very easily find yourself trying to pull your own intestines, slick with your own blood, out of the hands of the ravenous dead that like to sneak up on such prey, screaming…screaming…screaming. You either died a permanent death or you died to rise again, to hunt and kill and feed. Either way, you rotted.

Liam sported a ratty old baseball cap, a baggy pair of jeans held up by a thin length of rope fed through the belt loops and tied tightly about his thin waist, a pair of combat boots at least two sizes too big for him, and what remained of a horribly frayed army-green sweater. Locks of greasy dark brown hair poked out from around Liam’s cap, and his eyes were the perfect blue of an azure sky. But they were also some of the saddest eyes into which Gideon had ever peered.

“Liam,” Gideon called out. “Hey Liam!”

In his usual limping gait, Liam made his way over to the window of Gideon’s shack. Gideon wondered to himself what could have happened to a boy that young to cause him to limp the way he did. Of course, Gideon had a good idea. After all, he had run into the boy’s father a few times throughout the months, and the man struck him as a cruel, sadistic, and unstable individual. There were scars on the boy’s arms, too, and along his left cheek, from under his eye all the way down to where his chin came to a sort of point. He was a good-natured boy, and Gideon liked him tremendously. In truth, Gideon had assumed a brotherly role in young Liam’s life, which suited them both just fine, for it seemed to satisfy some basic human need within them both, each for his own reasons.

Liam approached the window and offered an out of breath greeting.

“Mornin’," Gideon.

“What’re you up to at this early hour, buddy?”

“Just gatherin’ up some cans n’ scrap metal n’ stuff fer my Dad. He says he knows a feller might give him a fair price for the lot of it.”

“Well, why isn’t your father doing it, then?”

“Oh,” said Liam a bit uneasily, “he’s sick in bed n’ all.”

Gideon knew that meant the old man had been on another of his raging drunks, which was more often than not the case. Or he hadn't been able to score enough drink to feed his acohol-dependent body.

A long moment of silence passed. Aldous pawed at the shack’s reinforced door, purring. He liked Liam.

“You hungry, kid?” Gideon asked Liam.

The boy simply shook his head meekly in way of reply. It was rather obvious that not many people had been kind to Liam in his short time in the world. And that in itself gave a slight tug on the strings attached to the most sensitive meat of Gideon’s heart…that which had not been fitted with a sort of impenetrable shield to spare him the feelings that might one day get him killed. To be sure, the times in which they lived were not kind. These were cruel, merciless, and unforgiving times. The End Times, if one believed the talk that went around among survivors.

“Well then,” said Gideon, “you’d better come on in and have a seat.”

Having heard Gideon remove the padlock from the inside latch, Liam pushed the door open, entered, and took a seat on a stack of red and black milk crates. “Don’t get too comfy there, buddy,” said Gideon. “While I finish up here, go over there in the corner and wash up. The bucket is full of fresh rainwater.”

Favoring his left leg in rising from his seat on the milk crates, Liam limped over to the five-gallon galvanized bucket in the corner. Liam could see his reflection in the crystalline water and observed himself at length. With a small pang of embarrassment, he noted his dirt-streaked face, the build-up of grime under his long fingernails, his greasy and disheveled hair, and his horribly tattered clothes. As he poured a few cupfuls of water into the small basin beside the water bucket, Liam took in his surroundings. He had been a guest at Gideon’s place on more than a few occasions, and each time he marveled at how orderly and well kept it was. The blankets were always folded neatly at the bottom of the mattress; and even though the mattress was on the floor of the shack, it was situated over a cheap, noticeably worn Oriental rug with an intricate pattern of red, green and gold, with tasseled borders. All around the shack, Gideon had fashioned shelves out of cinder blocks and two-by-ten boards, on the surfaces of which sat tins of freeze-dried coffee grounds, miscellaneous canned goods, random knickknacks and bric-a-brac, cookware, pouches of tobacco, candles, and a small bookshelf. Against the back wall by one of the windows there was the passenger seat from an old Ford station wagon, not the finest furniture, certainly, but it was a place to call home. In other words, one was forced to employ what was available, and in doing so one often discovered use in the most seemingly useless things. All in all, Liam found Gideon’s place to be quite clean and comfortable. And had Liam the ability to articulate it, he undoubtedly would have said that Gideon’s personality and disposition matched that of his home in nearly every way. Truth be told, Liam often thought that he would like to stay with Gideon. More than anything, in fact, as Gideon was the man whom he admired and respected more than any other. He also wanted to be where it was clean and comfortable, but above all where it was sane and safe. His home---an abandoned subway car deep in the downtown tunnels, where he and his drunkard of a father resided---was neither clean nor comfortable. Nor was it sane or safe. Besides, he never much cared for being a Subterranean, as they were sometimes referred to. Instead, he wanted to live aboveground, where his friend was, where his stomach didn’t rumble and growl all night long, where it wasn’t always dark, where hordes of vermin didn’t scurry about and shit everywhere, where the zombies didn't wait out the daylight in the damp darkness, and where the blows he suffered from his father’s hands could no longer touch him.

“All washed up and ready eat?” Gideon asked.

Liam looked over at Gideon. He was dishing portions out of a pot onto chipped china plates. Allowing a tiny smile to play at the corners of his mouth, Liam shook his head vigorously to indicate that, yes, he was indeed ready to eat. Gideon handed a plate to Liam after they had both taken a seat on the floor. Then they sat in silence, sharing a simple meal of sweet noodles and sesame bread. Sipping from a gallon of red wine, only partly full, which he had acquired at the same abandoned, ramshackle mansion as he did the plates, Gideon watched Liam hungrily scoop spoonfuls of noodles into his mouth and tear off one mouthful of bread after another. Watching the boy fill his stomach, Gideon sudden felt something akin to normalcy, which, confessedly, was something he hadn’t felt in quite some time. Helping Liam felt good. Having Liam around to keep him company felt good. It reminded him somewhat of a saner, more desirable time. And had it been safe to do so, Gideon would have asked Liam to stay with him. But Gideon never would be completely safe, not then, not ever, and he would be damned before he put Liam in any danger. It just wasn’t the sort of life he lived, the family sort.

After the meal, Gideon lit a cigarette on the smoldering hot coals upon which he had prepared the sweet noodles. He inhaled deeply, then exhaled, blowing out a rather large puff of smoke, which rose upward and across the room like a semi-transparent apparition seeking to escape through the cracks and gaps between plywood and two-by-fours and tarp and sheets of corrugated sheet metal. Having shoveled all of the food on his plate into his mouth, Liam choked it all down with generous gulps of water. A heaping second helping followed. Before Gideon had finished smoking his cigarette, Liam was fast asleep on the milk crates with his back against the wall, the plate still on his lap.

On the bedside table, which Gideon had made from pieces of equally sized petrified wood and a square of two-inch thick fiberboard salvaged from a nearby dumpster, there sat an old clock/radio with a built-in tape deck. He had a few tapes to listen to, but batteries were getting more and more difficult to find.

An Elmore James song came on. Gideon took the volume knob between thumb and forefinger of his right hand and turned the music up a bit louder. He had always been rather fond of the Blues, particularly Delta Blues. He could sit there all day listening to Blind Willie Johnson, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Robert Johnson, and all the other great Blues Masters. Other than for listening to tapes the clock/radio was utterly useless. There hadn’t been a radio broadcast in a very long time. Nor did anyone really kept track of time in the sense that they did in the old world, since there wasn’t much point. All one needed to know was the difference between day and night. The clock/radio/tape player had been a gift from Hubcap Annie---a white-haired, silver-toothed, and horribly wrinkled old hag of a woman, who owned and operated a sort of blackmarket warehouse in the zone between the city limits and the wastelands---for whom Gideon had worked on occasion. During Gideon’s first few weeks working for her, Hubcap Annie noticed him eyeing the clock/radio. After some time had passed, she had given it to him, much to his delight and appreciation. The work had been fairly reasonable. For the most part he had just made deliveries around the city. Hubcap Annie only had two rules to which she expected him to unquestioningly adhere: do not look at the contents of any of the packages entrusted to him for delivery, and never steal from her. Of course it helped matters a good deal that Gideon was undoubtedly one of the most decent young men she had ever met. As a rule, however, Hubcap Annie trusted no one, and so Gideon was sometimes faced with the same scrutiny and skepticism with which she faced everyone else. That is, she was by nature a cynical and distrusting old woman, greedy to the bone, with almost no faith in humanity whatsoever.

A brownish gray had taken ownership of the sky, almost asepia color, while the fiery head of the sun crowned in a golden halo showed itself behind the partial buildings, burned-out structures, and other ruins of Utopia. Gideon put out a cigarette on the windowsill, stood up, and walked over to the part of the shack that served as a sort of kitchen. From a corner shelf he took a tin of coffee grounds, set it on the homemade countertop, spooned out just enough for two cups---in those days, there was never enough of anything to be wasteful---and poured it into the filtered chamber of the old, dented percolator he’d salvaged from a junk heap outside of the city. He then poured two and a half cups of cold rainwater into the percolator, returned the filtered chamber back into the percolator’s dull gray interior, and placed it on the same hot coals upon which he had cooked his breakfast. In fact, it was because of the breakfast he’d shared with Liam that Gideon’s eyes were suddenly heavy-lidded, his midsection warm like a morphine injection, and his limbs as slow and rubbery as if he’d run and jumped and climbed through an obstacle course all day. But he had an appointment to keep, and keep it he would, as Hubcap Annie owed him from the last couple days of deliveries he had done for her…and if there was one thing Gideon had learned by living in that world, it was that you didn’t put anything off for later, for no one was guaranteed that later would come. So he hastily drank down two steaming cups of black coffee and began preparing to go out.

When Gideon had packed his bag and left, Liam was still sleeping soundly on the milk crates, leaned up against the wall.

Early morning was nearly an afterthought on the day’s busy mind when Gideon slipped quietly through the door of his shack so as not to wake the sleeping boy. The sun hung lazily in the sky above, though its rays did little to add warmth to December’s chill. Gideon pulled his thick layers tightly about his cold arms and torso. Then he folded his blue bandanna in half, draped it over the lower half of his face and tied it securely behind his head. Of course, the bandanna was thin and didn’t prevent all of the cold air from passing through to the sensitive skin of his face. If I could grow a beard, thought Gideon, I’d do it. But he couldn’t grow a full beard. Instead his facial hair grew in random patches here and there, mainly high on his cheeks, at the subtle cleft of his chin, and above his upper lip. It must have been some sort of Western European trait passed down through the generations of his family. That’s not to say that he knew much about his family. It was quite to the contrary actually, for time itself had been like a chainsaw to the branches of his family tree, and the changes brought forth by humankind acted collectively like a poison in the soil killing off his roots. Gideon had decided to go through the Market Square on his way through the city to Hubcap Annie’s place. It was more crowded than he remembered it. Darker. More depraved. Decidedly stranger than ever. Every walk of life in the city seemed to be represented in one way or another. Street kids performed in fire shows, twirling flaming rods, swallowing fiery instruments and withdrawing them extinguished, as well as spitting dragon-like streams of flames from their mouths. Tattooed and pierced freaks hung suspended from large hooks fed through the loose flesh of their arms and backs. Apothecaries stood at windows in small booths mixing their herbs and potions with old fashion Mortar and Pestle, while those who claimed to possess otherworldly powers sat at tables to sell spells or read fortunes. Some of the shops sold food, like mystery meat platters, skinned rats barbecued on little spits, baked pigeon, raw fish, and dumplings stuffed with either a new world version of ground beef or dried fruit preserves. When trading for food or eating at one of the Market joints, Gideon as rule only visited the places that advertised with large storefront signs: Absolutely no human meat served at this establishment!!! Another rule to the Marketeateries was: what smelled appetizing didn’t always taste delicious, and that which seemed safest to eat was sometimes that which made one the most ill. It was a crapshoot, really. One simply had to roll the dice and hope they landed on a lucky number. Speaking of craps, there were gambling joints in the Market Square, too, where they bet on cards, dice, numbers, and slots, as well as on-site brawls, rat races, and dog fights. They were dangerous places, however, through the doors of which only the toughest, luckiest, or nothing-to-lose kind of men and women dared set foot.

Further down the Market, where the streets went from asphalt to cobblestone and the buildings redbrick to brownstone, there stood tall buildings with slate roofs, copper gutters, chimneys, and wrought iron balconies---remnants of the old Historical District---which had since become a dark row of whorehouses, black market shops, and drug dens, all owned and operated by Gustave Linard. Gustave Linard was a businessman, simple as that. In the old world, he probably would have been referred to as a gangster or crime boss or worse. But since society had reverted to a state of disorder, there were no laws to uphold. And since there were no longer any laws to follow, one couldn’t very well break them. So…it was survival of the fittest. And the fittest were typically those with either the most brawn or the most brains. Muscle and intelligence went a long way in the city of Utopia, and Linard had a good deal of both. Now, Gideon was as sharp as they came, but he was also a loner, and that could be rather dangerous in Utopia. Because he was a loner was one of the reasons Gideon rarely went through the city by way of the Market Square but instead usually chose to go through the dark alleyways and tunnels and less traveled paths. On that particular day he moved through the Market Square quickly. Not so quickly that he wasn’t able to pick up a new book to read at Wally’s, which was like a massive, semi-organized pile of junk with a proprietor standing in front of it, hence the name: Wally’s Everything Shop. And the old fellow did certainly seem to have nearly everything in one form or another: bicycles, hula hoops, tools, pieces of machinery, miscellaneous odds and ends, animal pelts, weapons, booze, toys, books, art, automobile parts, lanterns, fuel, and a variety of nameless bits and pieces strewn about here and there. The old man liked coffee intensely, and with a bag of coffee grounds from his supply in hand, Gideon could pretty much name his price.

It didn’t take long after the war and plague years for the barter system to go back into effect. Now, whenever anyone did any business, they traded. Money wasn’t good for anything, save perhaps starting a fire, blowing one’s nose, or wiping one’s ass. It was funny how the simplest things, the same things that most human beings took for granted during the high civilization years, had become so meaningful and important…so very precious. It was equally funny---or sad, depending upon one’s personal outlook---how that which had been in abundance for so long had suddenly fallen into utter depletion. Surely there was no better example of those truths than the Market Square itself.

The Market Square was a circus of activity; a neutral zone where every survivor in the city could trade goods and services, everything from tobacco and meat to drugs, booze, weapons, assassins, and sex. The Market Square was also where one could get a meal, where one could socialize with other survivors, where one could gamble, and where one could…well, do just about anything that came to mind. Most importantly, the Market Square was where a person could feel temporarily safe from the horrors that lurked in the shadows of the city, since a large electrical fence ran round the whole perimeter in the shape of a huge square, hence the name of the place, along with armed guards, barbed wire, traps, and various other deterrents. That is not to say that the living dead had never sneaked into the Market. It has happened. And it will no doubt happen again. The first time it happened was the worst, though, probably because nobody really expected it to happen. But it did. And here's how...

In the mouth of the sewers on the North Side of Utopia, beyond the burned and gutted ghetto tenements and rumble of collapsed El tracks, there lived an old man called Shakes. Everyone called him Shakes on account of the fact he was one of those pale, trembling individuals, all hunched and frail-looking, whose voice croaked and shook with each slow, measured syllable. On his way from his sewer hideout to the Market Square, he foolishly took a shortcut through a tunnel---you know, the kind of tunnel that goes under a particularly busy road---where crouching in the dank darkness was one of the dead. Appearances suggested that it had once been a female, though it had been reduced to a naked, gray-fleshed subhumanoid. Only one of its large breasts was intact; the other had been either hacked off or eaten away, and its maggot-infested ribcage showed, yellowing lengths of bone upon which clung chunks of decaying meat. A blackish fluid streamed from its open mouth, and it gnashed its chipped and rotten teeth at Shakes. As it rose to its full height, it unleashed a terrible howl. In that howl Shakes was certain he heard a mixture of insuppressible rage and ravenous hunger. He stood frozen for only a moment, though it seemed to stretch out into several minutes before he reacted. Too late, though. The thing was impossibly quick. Before Shakes knew what was happening, his attacker had already taken him to the ground and was chewing on a hunk of his arm flesh. Instinctively, Shakes pushed his body upward and rolled, pinning his ghoulish attacker’s throat beneath his bloody forearm. Realizing how advantageous his position was, Shakes placed all of his weight on his forearm, crushing the thing’s throat and breaking its neck.

Having gotten to his feet, he started off toward the other end of the tunnel. After a few steps, Shakes took a brief look behind him. It was still moving…crawling laboriously on the strength of its arms, while its legs dragged limply behind. Its head hung in a most unnatural way, looking almost as though it had nothing solid whatsoever connecting it to its shoulders. Despite the obvious damage it had sustained, it still crawled on toward Shakes retreating form. Such was its hunger. Shakes had wrapped his arm in dirty rags before arriving at the Market Square, making his wound undetectable to the gun-toting sentinels at the entryway. Needless to say, they allowed him to enter. It wasn’t long before he began turning. Cell by cell, his body died and continued to die as he strolled the asphalt between each stand, each attraction, each eatery, and so on. At the Square's busy nucleus, Shakes finally succumbed to his condition, vomiting a thick, black substance all over the feet of those around him. After that he fell to the ground, where he convulsed and cried out repeatedly. It wasn’t long before he lunged at the closest person’s leg, taking a big bite out of it. Soon many were running and screaming, and Shakes was no longer a shaking old man but sprinting bestial presence going from person to person, tackling, biting, gnashing, clawing, beating, and shrieking. By the time one of the rooftop snipers took him out with a well-placed bullet, old Shakes had infected half a dozen people, all of who were placed on their knees and subsequently executed by nearby guards.The moral of the story: You were never fully safe in the world as it was then. You always needed to be vigilant and on guard. You had to suspect everyone. Trust nothing. Rely on your instincts and intuition. And always keep your weapons within reach.

Utopia was full of such stories, as Eden no doubt was as well. After all, Utopia and Eden were the last two human cities in the former United States. No one used the term "United States" anymore. There was nothing united about it anymore; each survivor pretty much stood on his or her own. And there were no longer states but vast wastelands spanning the distance between the two cities---Utopia to the northeast, and Eden to the far west. The world was simply the world. It was the way it was. And if you remained, you tried to make it the best you could.

Luckily Gideon knew of a relatively safe shortcut to the Limits---the few miles of wastelands between the line where the city of Utopia ended and the Badlands began. One knew one had reached that area as soon as one began treading on scorched earth rather than cracked asphalt, as soon as one saw ramshackle huts and demolished buildings and structures gutted by long ago fires, and as soon as one started breathing in the foul air all around. Gideon’s shortcut took him straight through the wastelands to Hubcap Annie’s place. In fact, it had been Raven, one of Hubcap Annie’s workers, who showed Gideon the shortcut, as it had always proved the safest route. Usually Raven met Gideon on the path to Hubcap Annie’s. She always somehow sensed that he was close by. But not that day. All was quiet. And no one was in sight.

Something felt wrong.

Hubcap Annie’s was an old Service Station and Auto Repair Shop with hubcaps strung together and hung across the walls in an odd expression of exterior adornment. There was a seemingly perpetual billowing of black smoke from the rooftop chimney. Two flat-faced mongrels with enormous jowls and deep wrinkles about their heads squatted viciously on either side ofthe entrance. They knew Gideon, or at least the scent of him, and always allowed him to pass without so much as a low growl of warning. More often than not, Gideon would crouch down before the beasts and give them a few pats on their huge heads before entering. Seeing that he was about to give them attention, they would instantly let their incredibly long, pink tongues hang from the sides of their foaming mouths, dripping streams of clear drool on to the ground, excitedly wagging the nubs which were their tails in gratitude. All around the property, large predatory carrion birds perched hungrily on the naked limbs of dead trees. They weren’t infected, though. Gideon could tell that much about them. It was in their eyes. Well, that and the fact that they weren’t pecking out his eyeballs right where he stood. Strange symbols were carved into the rotted wood of the doorway, which Hubcap Annie had once told Gideon were for protection. Protection against what, Gideon had asked? To which she had replied, "There are more wicked things than I in this part of the world, young man…and you would do well to keep that in mind."

Upon entering, Gideon ran his hands over the symbols carved into the aged wood. Superstitious old woman, he thought to himself. Briar patches of barbed wire surrounded the property, and large shards of broken glass had been set into the concrete wall which circled it all. It was too quiet. A chill worked its way up the length of Gideon’s spine, causing a slight involuntary shiver to pass through him.

Something was definitely wrong.

On the floor her office, Hubcap Annie lay facedown and motionless in a pool of her own blood. Flecks of crimson stained her white hair. Her clothing seemed even more torn and tattered than usual. And it was obvious to Gideon that there must have been a hell of a struggle, as some of the furniture had been overturned, and a few of her long, yellow fingernails had broken in half, presumably as she attempted to claw her way out of harm’s way. Closer inspection of the horrific spectacle showed Gideon something even more unexpected than having discovered Hubcap Annie’s dead body; not five inches from where her hand had permanently ceased to move, Annie had written a single word in her own blood: Gray.

But she didn’t know Francis Gray. Surely it was he to whom she was referring in her last horrible act, in that crimson scrawl. And Gideon certainly hadn’t shared that part of his life with her in any of the conversations he’d had with her. Another chill worked its way up the length of his spine, but this time, instead of a slight involuntary shiver, he convulsed, bent over, and vomited on the floor beside the body. He had seen a lot of death over the past few years, but this was different. It was cruel and calculated. And what’s more, it was personal. With that, Gideon turned and ran out the door. Annie’s guard dogs stood at attention when he passed by, and a look of extreme disappointment crossed their canine faces when he didn’t stop to so much as pat their heads good-bye. No, he kept running, straight through the wastelands, across the imaginary line which marked the Limits, and back into the mad streets of Utopia.

His mind raced as he sprinted homeward. Hubcap Annie no doubt had quitea few enemies---enemies who probably wanted to see her dead---but to have written the word Gray in blood as her last act on this mortal plane of existence…well, that brought forth a whole new barrage of questions and concerns. Was Francis in danger? If Francis was in fact in danger, then surely Gideon was as well. And had the past finally caughtup with up Francis, at last? Was it time to pay his karmic dept? If so, who had come to collect? Then something else occurred to Gideon. Liam!

Liam was still at his place, probably still fast asleep. What if…

He didn’t even finish the thought. Surely if someone had come to Hubcap Annie’s for information on Francis Gray, they would soon coming knocking on Gideon’s door. It was only a matter of time now. And Gideon did not want Liam, an innocent child, there when it happened. That very thought prompted Gideon to run even faster yet. His lungs burned. His legs ached. And it was all he could do not to fall to his knees and give up entirely.

When Gideon reached his shack, all was quiet and still. Throwing aside the latch and pulling the door open, Gideon stepped inside. Liam was no longer there. Had he woke on his own and let himself out? Or had something else happened? Everything was as he’d left it. There was no sign of trouble. But when Gideon turned to close the door and lock it…

With the dirty, metallic taste of the gun in his mouth, all Gideon could do was concentrate on taming his gag reflex so that he didn’t vomit down the barrel and all over the thug’s itchy trigger finger. From what Gideon could see---and he couldn’t see all that much, as he had been hit repeatedly with the butt of the same gun that had been jammed into his mouth, the last blow having landed across the bridge of his nose---the man was a hulking figure. The pain had been enough to take him to his knees, holding his broken face…that is, until the gun was inserted. Now, any scrapper who has ever taken one to the bridge of his nose will tell you that it is undoubtedly one of the most painful places to take a hit. It causes the eyes to water uncontrollably, reducing one’s vision to a blurry sort of semi-blindness, which was exactly what Gideon was going through at that particular moment. And blood wasn’t just dripping from his nasal passages but running down the back of his throat in a thick, nauseating stream, gathering like a crimson tempest in his gut. In fact, Gideon was eventually unable to tell where the taste of the gun stopped and the taste of the blood began. At any moment, Gideon half expected the thug to pull the trigger, for a bullet to rip through the back of his head, severing his spinal cord and leaving him a pile of useless meat on the cold floor. Death comes for us all, though---that’s one universal and undeniable truth. The uncertainty is just how and when it will happen. Truth be told, Gideon hadn’t given much thought to his own death; that is to say, not since the war, not since the hordes of living dead began wandering the city, and not until it was staring him right in the face yet again…or rather, not until it was shoved into his mouth, as it were. And Gideon never would have imagined his life ending the way it no doubt would at any moment, at least not as up close and personal as it seemed to be taking place. But it was drawing out into a long moment; a moment that allowed for a brief, though perhaps irrational tug of hope from somewhere deep within him. But if there was one thing Gideon had long since come to face with absolute distrust, it was hope. Oh,what an indulgence hope could be. What a fucking sham it was. After all, Gideon had no illusions as to the true gravity of his situation. It was some pretty heavy shit. He was probably going to die in that stark and crumbling world, in his shack with the plywood walls, shadowy corners, and flickering candles. If one thing was for certain, it was that hope could not endure long in such a place.

Having blinked away some of the tears in his eyes, Gideon was able to see some of the thug’s features: the dark eyes, close-cropped hair, and square jaw, as well as the fitted thousand-dollar suit which did very little to conceal his barrel-chested upper torso and muscular arms. The man---a hulking and terrifying presence, to be sure---was half monster, thought Gideon. In fact, he would have been comparable to the thugs in the comic books Gideon read as a small boy if it weren’t for a perceptible intelligence in the man’s eyes and a contemplative brow. But a closer look of the man’s forehead brought into focus an old, nasty scar which ran diagonally from his hairline all the way down and through his eyebrow. A five o’ clock shadow peppered the man’s jaw, which simply gave him the effect of better blending in with the shadows. Finally, the man spoke.

“So?”

Gideon attempted to reply with a question, echoing the same word the thug had just employed. With a gun in one’s mouth, one cannot properly form the necessary syllables to carry on any type of pseudo-sophisticated bit of conversation. Instead he emitted a sort of mumbled attempt at, “So?”

“So…where is Francis Gray?”

It was a question Gideon had expected to hear, but a question he hadn’t an answer to. Even if he’d had an answer, he wouldn’t have given it to him. What came next was a string of unintelligible words spoken around the barrel of a gun.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, let me remove that before you speak,” said the man.

“Why do you want to know where Francis is?”

“You’ve just answered my question with a question. I hate when people do that. Just this once I’ll tolerate it. But if it happens again, I’ll put a bullet through your kneecap. Got it?”

Gideon simply shook his head to signify that, yes, he understood perfectly.

“Ok,” said the man, “let’s start over. Where is…”

“I don’t know where he is,” Gideon snapped, cutting the off the thug's question.

“Yes, you do. Now stop playing stupid. You know very well that I’m looking for Francis, whether you know the reason or not. And since you’re his pal, you’re a tool I need to utilize in order to uncover his whereabouts.”

“Really, I don’t…”

“Think real hard before you finish that sentence, Gideon. It is Gideon, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

"Like in the bible, the Old Testament?"

Gideon shook his head to the affirmative.

“There you go. So where’s Gray?”

“First,” said Gideon, a bit more defiantly than he’d intended, “I don’t know where Francis is. And even if I did know, there’s no way in hell I’d tell you.”

“They all say that,” the man said matter-of-factly, cleaning his gun with his sleeve.

“Do they now?”

“I wasn’t finished,” blurted the man with a slight show of impatience. “What I was saying was…they all say that…until I pound nails through their hands and take a blowtorch to their faces.”

“Well, we can forego the torture routine. Been there, done that. Let’s just skip to the part where you kill me, because I have nothing more to say to you.”

“You’re a tough little fucker,” the man admitted. “They said you would be, though.”

Gideon just knelt there, silent, unmoved, and defiant.

“Look, Gustave Linard wants Francis. Francis owes Linard, and when you owe Linard…well, you do as he says or you end up floating facedown in the river, or worse.”

“That’s got nothing to do with me,” said Gideon.

“Sure it does. You see,” the man explained, “you're a good friend of this Gray character. I work for Linard. Linard wants Gray. As far as those who know Gray’s whereabouts, you, my son, are the most likely candidate.”

“Truth of the matter is,” confessed Gideon, “I have no idea where he is right now.”

“You know I cannot accept that as an answer,” the man said, a half smile playing at the corner of his mouth.

“Well, that’s all you’re gonna get, ‘cause it’s the truth.”

“You’re how old? Twenty-five? Probably fought in the Revolution, huh?”

“Northeast Resistance,” said Gideon, wiping the blood off of his face with the bottom of his shirt.

“No shit!” said the man. “I fought in the Southern Resistance.”

“You’re from Eden,” asked Gideon?

“Yup. I only come to this shithole when the job calls for it.”

“And Francis is the job.”

“Right again, kid.”

“Well,you came to the wrong guy, ‘cause I got nothin’ for you.”

“Look,” the man said earnestly, “I really don’t want to kill a fellow fighter in the Resistance. ‘Course, I will if I have to.”

“And I don’t want to die. But, like I said, I got nothin’ for you. Francis Gray saved my life. And if I can repay him right now with my own, I will gladly do it.”

“Ok. I see. Gotta tell ya, I respect that. One way or another, though, Linard is gonna get his hands on Gray. That’s just the way it is, son. So don’t be stupid and give up your life for no reason.”

“I guess there isn’t anything left to say, then,” said Gideon with a somber finality in his voice.

“Guess not,” said the man.