Hellifax (19 page)

Amy settled back into the couch. “Six total. There were seven, but one guy got himself killed. Man, I wish the water worked in this place.”

“Sorry. Did you know him?”

“As well as I know you.”

Scott hesitated and decided to change the subject. “I came from Annapolis before this. The guy I knew there had running water.”

“No way!”

“Yeah. I even got to take a bath.”

“Oh man, are you
serious?
I don’t want to sound gross, especially after telling you about the ear thing, but I can’t remember the last time I had a bath.”

“Hot water, too.”

“How?”

“The place he’s got has solar panels, so when the power grid failed and the lights went off, his stayed on.”

“Wow.” Amy shook her head, impressed. “And you left all that?”

“I did.”

“Hope you find your killer,” Amy said, making herself comfortable. She stretched out her legs, covered in denim, and placed two sock-covered feet against the glass.

“We need that coffee table.”

“I can get that.” Scott stood and lifted the piece of furniture around the sofa so that she could set her feet on it. Once in place, he stepped over her legs and sat down on the opposite end, catching a lingering whiff of blood.

“You’re useful,” Amy said, eyeing him.

“Yeah, that’s me,” Scott replied, scratching at his growing beard. It was really starting to itch.

They sat and quietly gazed out over Halifax Harbour, the sun lashing the sky in swathes of red and gold. There were warships a little farther up in the harbor, shadowy, cold, and dead-looking. Amy got up and left and Scott followed her with his eyes, settling on the frumpy ass of her jeans for the briefest of moments, as if he were touching a reddening stove burner. She came back ten minutes later. She carried a stack of thick quilts, half of which she gave to Scott. They got underneath the blankets at opposite ends of the sofa. It felt good to relax, to get away from the dead.

“You know,” Amy said softly, “if it weren’t for the fact that Moe was right below outside, I’d say this was any other winter day.”

“Well, let’s just pretend it is.”

“Good idea.”

They became quite for a moment.

“Where’s this place you guys are heading?” Scott finally asked. The warmth of the blankets and the softness of the sofa leeched the tension from him and made him weary.

“Big Tancook.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s an island off of Blandford. Small population. Easy to get rid of Moe.”

“An island,” Scott whispered. “How far off?”

“A few kilometers off the mainland.

“That’s a long boat ride.”

“Longer when you’re rowing, but we have that covered.”

“How so?” Scott looked at her.

Amy met his inquiring gaze with a steady one of her own, her blue eyes locking with his, and Scott thought for a split second that she wasn’t going to say anything. “We met up with a group from Antigonish who were on their way to Tancook. We got along and figured it was in both groups’ best interests to join up. Repopulate the earth, y’know?”

Repopulate the earth for the Lord!
a voice cried out in Scott’s head, reminding him of the priest who had barricaded himself in an underground bunker with fifty women.

“There’re about twenty-five of us. Seven of us decided to head into Halifax since it was on the way, while the others went to Blandford to try and secure a boat or something to carry us all across. We thought about going to PEI, but decided against it.”

“Why?” Scott asked. “Better farming there.”

“Bigger population as well. We’d exhaust ourselves trying to clear Moe outta the place. One of the smaller islands was decided upon, but not
too
small. Big Tancook was it. Only about a hundred people living on it. Or lived on it, I should say. We just wanted to see if we could find enough seeds to give us a chance. And if there were any more people around. We really… weren’t expecting to find anyone.”

“An island.”

“Sounds good, eh?”

It did. “A few kilometers off the coast?”

“Yep. And Moe can’t swim. And he sure as hell can’t walk the bottom to the island. Currents will see to that. Fish’ll probably eat ’em, too. At least we can hope. Once we’re there and it’s cleared, we should be safe.”

“Should be? Do I detect a twinge of doubt?”

Amy scratched her brunette head with a pale hand, and her sleeve fell down a bit to reveal an even paler wrist. When she was done, she smoothed her hair into place. “Anything can happen. I’ve learned not to get my hopes up.”

“Would be something,” Scott finally said.

“What?”

“Seeing Moe swim.”

“That would be. Would be,” she said, pursing her lips. A strand of hair fell into her eyes, and she blew it away. Scott hesitated a second before looking back to the window and the darkening sky.

“Can you swim?” he asked.

“Yeah, a little freestyle. How about you?”

“Just doggie style.”

Amy paused and regarded him with a question on her face.

Scott’s eyes widened. “I mean dog style. Paddle. Dog paddle.” He felt his face turn hot. Both hands fluttered before him to get his meaning across. “Dog paddle. I can… I can do that. Swim. I didn’t mean anything else. Uh… sorry.”

But Amy only looked at him, face unreadable. Scott cleared his throat in the suddenly uncomfortable silence.

“You okay?” she asked pointedly. “Look like you’re about to choke.”

Scott nodded, but didn’t dare glance in her direction. He felt her shift on her end of the sofa.

Neither of them said another word until it was dark and time to sleep.

They rose the next morning from their separate sleeping quarters and met at the kitchen table. They ate the last of the food in Scott’s pack: a can of ravioli.

“Don’t worry, we’re almost back,” Amy told him when they finished the food. “We have plenty to eat in the box.”

Scott didn’t know what that was, but he trusted her. That thought stuck with him for a moment.

“You okay?” she asked him.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I’m fine. Let’s get moving.”

Amy eyed him for a moment before moving to the tub where they had stored their outerwear, ponchos, and hoods. Scott followed. They got into their gear, then the bloody garments that kept them alive. Amy sniffed at her poncho and screwed up her face.

“What?” Scott asked.

“Not so pungent anymore.”

“Is that bad?”

Amy’s head see-sawed with uncertainty. “We should be okay for today, but we’ll need to soak these things again first chance we get. Just to be on the safe side.”

“Will they smell us?”

“I don’t know. We never gave them the chance before. Just be careful out there. And stay close.”

“Yeah,” Scott said, intending to do just that.

“One more thing. When you see me lift my arms, you do the same, okay? Nice and slow.”

“Why?”

“Because if you don’t, someone might blow your head off. They didn’t have any weapons when I left, but they might have found some since. Just put your arms up when I do.”

Being so close to safety only to be gunned down was an image Scott didn’t need.

Once fully ready, they slipped out the door and downstairs. Upon entering the garage, they heard the dismal cries cut the air outside, breaking the spell of all being well with the world. They went into zombie mode and exited the building the same way they had come in, crawling under the garage door. Getting to their feet, they started to walk along the street. Scott noted that it wasn’t as full of gimps as it had been a day earlier, but there were still enough spotting the hard-packed snow to keep him nervous. He suddenly wished Amy hadn’t told him of the potential lessening of their disguises. That didn’t do anything for his confidence.

Nor did the image of her ass in frumpy jeans, and he stashed that thought away, feeling suddenly guilty.
Doggie style
, he scolded himself. Where the hell had
that
come from?

He glanced up and saw a tower of jade and broken glass in the distance, seemingly at the head of the harbor. They walked toward it, following the road and leaving the deadheads behind. More apartment buildings stood high on their right, their windows smashed and blackened by fire. The road rose up in a gentle slope, and prominent signs displaying
Scotiabank
and the
Delta
came into view. The signs were punctured and wrecked, with holes large enough to drive a truck through, and Scott wondered what the hell had been used on the structures to devastate them so.

The road split to the left and right. On the right, it rose and ran on, while to the left, it sunk to a pedestrian walkway that loomed over the road. The glass panes were smashed out, and sandbags were stacked up like battlements. Scott’s jaw hung open. He saw machine guns up there, unmanned. Underneath, metal barriers with slots for weaponry crisscrossed the street; behind that, metro buses had been tipped over to further block the road, making one long, massive, and intimidating barrier. More sandbags were piled up to fill obvious gaps in the defensive wall. More G-Wagons with flat tires and half-open doors. Long spools of razor wire stuck up in places like the guts of a broken toy, mashed to the ground by unmoving bodies.

Scott’s jaw dropped.

Hundreds of gimps coated in snow lay in the road some fifty meters before the defenses. Automatic gunfire had ripped their bodies into shreds and exploded their heads, leaving skulls resembling half-broken crockery pots. Several bodies didn’t possess any heads at all, and Scott realized with dawning horror that the shards he began feeling underfoot weren’t ice. They were jagged fragments of bone. The machine guns had ripped Moe several new assholes, and then some.

Amy walked toward the barricades, slowly raising her arms.

From the pedway above the street, a figure rose above one of the rows of sandbags and waved her through.

Following a path through the swaths of death and razor wire, Amy kept her hands up and walked toward the buses.

Taking a breath, Scott raised his arms above his head and followed.

An aluminum ladder dropped down from the belly of the pedway, right in front of the overturned bus. Scott kept his arms over his head, watching as Amy dropped the zombie walk once under the pedway and started climbing. He reached the base of the ladder just as she slipped between the gap separating the pedway and the bus, disappearing in a flutter of legs.

Scott looked back. There were deadheads far behind, but none moving in his direction. He took hold of the ladder and crawled up, one hand more than full because of his bat.

“Watch yerself now, watch it,” a man’s gravelly voice informed him. Scott spotted him through the gap. He was black, with grey in his short-cut hair and beard. The man stood back and allowed Scott to get above the street on his own power. This new individual was short, dressed in a dark snowmobile suit like Amy, with a body as thick as a wall. Once Scott was up and standing on iron sheets that covered the metro buses windows, the shorter man got about pulling up the ladder. Scott made to help, but was waved away.

With the ladder on top of the bus, the brick of a man straightened and sized up Scott.

“Jesus, yer a big one. Jesus, Jesus. Yer gonna haveta feed this one, Amy,” he said, in a gruff voice that might have inhaled far too much cigarette smoke over the years. “Scott,” Amy introduced him in her own scratchy voice, “Donny Buckle.”

“Buckle,” he corrected and nodded at Scott. “This one seems to insist on callin’ me by me first name.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Amy asked him.

“Don’t like it. Never did. Shitty.”

Amy rolled her eyes. “Donny is not a shitty name. Is it a shitty name?” she asked Scott.

“Uh…”

“Not much of a talker,” Buckle said. “Where’d ye find him?”

Newfoundland
. Scott finally placed the accent. Buckle was from Newfoundland. Or Cape Breton.

“Out yonder,” Amy said, taking the mask from her head and making a face of disgust. “He followed me home. Can we keep him?”

Buckle scowled at Scott. “He probably shits all over the place.”

Scott blinked at the short stocky man and noted there was a weird gleam in his eye. Newfoundlanders were, on the whole, a hard bunch. Drinkers. Quick to befriend and quick to fight.

“Look, Donny, where’s Vick?” Amy asked.

“Over yonder,” Buckle growled, tipping his head in the direction of the building the pedway was connected to. “Taking inventory, no doubt.”

“The others there?”

“I think,” Buckle stated. “Joe’s over on the other end, keepin’ watch. I’ll get him if it’s important.” Buckle pronounced the word im
part
ant.

“Yeah. Please. I think we’ll need everyone about.”

“Right-o. Hey,” Buckle directed at Scott. “Don’t shit the bed while you’re here.”

Scott looked questioningly at Amy. Buckle turned and picked up a nasty-looking length of steel bar, with a wedge resembling a hammer’s claw on one end and another flat wedge and curved pick on the other. Scott had seen them before and knew it to be a firefighter’s Halligan tool. With this fearsome weapon, the Newfoundlander walked off to the end of the pedway toward a set of stairs leading to street level.

“You come with me,” Amy said, jumping up to the pedway. The glass that had once protected pedestrians from the elements had been mostly shattered. The sandbags were piled high enough on the walkway to conceal Scott from his chest down. Amy probably couldn’t be seen at all from street level. They walked past the machine gun emplacements, all of which were obviously ruined by the weather.

“Yeah, we already checked,” Amy said, glancing back at him. “But this place is still a good base with all the walls. And Purdy’s Wharf here still has a few offices intact. The Forces stockpiled supplies on the third floor and barricaded the base.”

Scott realized they were walking toward the building seemingly built of jade and broken glass, which he’d seen when walking along Barrington. The building stood tall against a backdrop of sea and ice.

“What is this place?” he asked.

“Downtown area business section. The historical part is right over there. Not much left there, though. Army shot the hell out of it. But Purdy’s managed to keep most of her windows. On this side, anyway.”