CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE POLITICIAN

 

 

CADE LOOKED BACK at the boy, sizing him up. The boy looked right back at him and snarled like a stray dog. He’d heard what Strong had said – didn’t like it much. Cade figured this would probably be a test for the boy as much as for him. If Cade didn’t kill the boy and get eating, the boy was going to try and kill him, and he’d probably have an even chance. He’d have killed already – if he was being used as bait to lure suckers or other cannibals in, he was most likely trained to kill fast if he had to. Cade had killed his first man at age eight. He knew how easy it was once you’d started, kid or no kid.

Even if Cade managed to put the kid down without killing him, he’d fail the test and the cannibals would come back for him, and Cade knew he wasn’t going to be able to beat them all. This wasn’t a crowd of normal folks – they were crazy as rabid dogs. They weren’t going to hold back or try to avoid getting injured. They were just going to bury him and then tear him to pieces.

That’s unless he killed the kid. Cade wasn’t comfortable killing children.

But Cade wasn’t exactly in his comfort zone.

He looked around the BART station at the men and women in their stained, dust-covered clothing, their rotten teeth. He was right out of options – he wasn’t getting through that crowd unless he turned cannibal himself.

He shot Strong a look.

“Got a question.”

Strong grinned, and the diamond flashed. “You got a meal to eat, Mister Cade. Call it an hors d’ouvre that must be obeyed.”

Cade didn’t move. “Got a question. How come you’re in charge?”

Strong looked at Cade for a moment, then at the boy. The boy hunched like an animal, readying himself to pounce, his teeth bared. Strong shook his head.

The boy backed down, slowly.

“That ain’t the question you were suggestin’, Mister Cade. What you want to ask ain’t why am I in charge. It’s why should I be in charge of you – if I’m a product that’s safe to invest in.” He smiled again. “Let me ease your mind. I’m in charge because I have what it takes, Mister Cade. When the plague hit, a whole lot of the survivors – the movers and shakers and money takers in my particular circle – they looked around and they panicked. They thought they weren’t going to make it in this new economic scenario. No more TV, no more internet, no more phones, everything falling to pieces. The only way forward was to maximise your survival potential, and that’s where I stepped in. Washington Strong, the man with the million-dollar smile. The man who can tell you just what to do.”

Cade kept his eye on that flashing diamond. He figured if he looked at the boy, the boy might see it as a challenge. Better to keep Strong talking.

Cade figured Strong was going to.

Strong chuckled. “If they ever bring TV back, you should try getting on it, Cade. You don’t have to know much... you just talk like you do. You got authority, you set the priority. When you tell people to jump, they don’t ask why, they ask how high. They were used to following me, even after all the scandal. They wanted to put their money where my mouth was.” The chuckle became a laugh, the light dancing as the lamp in his hand shook.

“So... people were panicking. A few people were looting, but a lot were just breaking what they could find, burning things, running wild... they needed someone to tell them what to do, and I happened to be there. I told them the truth. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, Mister Cade, and there are luxuries you need to set aside to abide. All those things you don’t need to feed... like a conscience. Morality. Laws. All the things that stop you just taking what you want. And it’s easy to take what you want when you’re up against weaklings who won’t, Cade. People who don’t go that extra mile to live in style. My people already knew that – hell, they’d been feeding off folks for years. They didn’t take much convincing.” He smirked, and that gold tooth of his sparkled. “All I’m doing now, my hesitating, procrastinating brother, is feeding off people literally instead of metaphorically. And if you’re on my team, you can live the dream. Eat like a king, live like a predator, do all the things you always wanted to do but didn’t want to get caught doing. There’s nobody to catch you any more, Cade, nobody but you.”

His smile vanished.

“So go ahead. Hold back. Make out you’re better than us. It’ll last just long enough for you to die. And then we’ll forget you were ever anything but the main course.”

Cade nodded.

“So. You’re in charge ’cause you’re the biggest bastard here.”

“That’s right,” said Strong, smiling. “Now, you gonna eat the boy? Or is the boy gonna eat you?”

Cade shrugged.

“Neither.”

Then he moved.

Strong was still smiling right up until the lamp crashed to the floor, lighting everything up like a horror movie and throwing dark shadows onto the walls. He tried to bring his hands up, but they weren’t quick enough. Cade’s teeth were already in his neck, biting into the jugular.

Cade snapped his head back. There was a tearing sound that made the people skulking by the walls lean forward, anticipating.

Strong couldn’t quite believe it. He kept not believing it when Cade starting ripping chunks of flesh out his throat and chest with his fingers, using the switchblade in his pocket to carve. He died not believing it.

The last thing he saw was Cade chewing on his meat.

Cade swallowed. It didn’t taste too good, but he figured he needed to eat plenty if he wanted to make an impression, so he cut off a little more. Strong hadn’t expected that. He’d spent a little too long with folks who either took orders or died quick. He’d starting thinking he was as invulnerable as his own image. The man was a sucker for his own hype.

Bad mistake for a man to make.

Cade tossed a chunk of meat to the boy. “Eat up.” The boy looked at him for a second, then tore into the scrap. Cade figured there was more where that came from if he needed it, and it’d stop the boy doing anything stupid for the minute. Right now he had other fish to fry.

He stood up and turned to look at the cannibals. There were more coming now – trickling in to see what the fuss was. Some of Strong’s blood had got on the lamp, drenching Cade in red light. He tore into another strip of flesh with his teeth, and the hot iron taste of Strong’s blood made his head swim. Hell of a thing.

Half of them were shrinking back against the wall, trying to take in what had happened. These had been people, but they’d given Strong everything they had, right down to their humanity, just to survive. Cade figured they’d be easy work.

It was the others that he didn’t like the looks of. The ones who were leaning forward, eyes narrowed, almost salivating. Animals had a habit of challenging the alpha male for pack dominance – or Cade had heard something like that on Discovery, anyhow. He figured if he wanted this lot on his side, he was going to need to apply a little carrot-and-stick.

He looked each of them in the eye, one by one. Then he growled, deep in his throat.

“I’m in charge now.”

He kept looking, looking for the challenge, looking for the eye-fuck. There was a big one, long hair, biker tattoos, matted beard – he’d muscled his way to the front. His teeth weren’t just rotten, they were black, most missing. This one hadn’t come into it out of fear. He’d come into it because he liked the idea.

This was going to be the one. Cade locked eyes, eye-fucking him right back, then spat. If the biker backed down now, he was a coward. Cade was hoping he wouldn’t.

He needed some stick to go with his carrot.

The biker charged, lanching himself forward, letting out an animal roar. Cade stepped to the side, catching the biker’s head in his hands and twisting. There was a loud crack, like a branch breaking, and the biker’s body stumbled forward to crash onto the tile floor.

Cade looked back at the crowd. Some of the eager ones were leaning back, mistrustful, weighing it up. They knew that what happened to the biker was probably going to happen to them, and that was the lesson Cade wanted them to take away.

Time for lesson two.

He leant down, using his skull-handled switchblade to cut a fat strip of meat off the biker’s calf. Then he tossed it to the furthest man forward. Then he did that again, carving up the biker, tossing scraps of meat to the crowd. The growls turned to mutters of satisfaction – occasionally even gratitude. Once or twice, Cade heard human words.

A couple of the cannibals still didn’t get the message. Any time one of them got within a couple of feet, Cade slit him across the throat with the switchblade and then opened up his belly. Then he used their meat to feed the rest. The message was pretty simple. I’m in charge. Act up, you die. Toe the line, you live and get fed.

Cade might have been cynical about politics, but he was pretty good at it.

Eventually, the ragged people in the BART station all had meat in their hands and in their mouths, and Cade was a mess, coated with clotting blood. Occasionally he still chewed on a piece of Strong, just to keep the illusion up.

He was the leader now.

Time to lead.

“Okay. Round here’s deserted. Nobody left to eat. You been following bullshit.” He wasn’t used to making speeches, but he didn’t have to say much. They were already looking at him with heads cocked, curious, like dogs following the stick before you threw it.

“Head north – up Van Ness, up Franklin, towards Marina Boulevard. Big Safeway – that’s where the meat is. Meat in cans” – there was a rumble of discontent; he was losing them – “Raw meat. On the hoof. Human meat. Weak meat. Use kids as bait, you’ll starve. You got to hunt.”

He stopped, and looked at them. They blinked back at him, unsure.

Cade growled. He’d drawn them a goddamned map. What the hell more did they need?

“Git!”

They got.

As the throng of barely-human, half-naked things scuttled and scuffled up the steps towards the failing light, Cade noticed Fuel-Air standing in the light, shaking his head. On an impulse, Cade put his hand on one of the cannibals – one who looked a little more like he knew what was going on.

“No women, no kids. Someone eats a woman or a kid, I kill ten of you for every one that falls.” The cannibal looked at him, opening his rotted mouth. “I will do it. Git.”

The cannibal scurried into the shifting crowd, passing the word on in halting, broken English. Cade looked to Fuel-Air, but Fuel-Air was gone.

Cade wondered if he’d have thought of that on his own. He wondered if he’d have cared one way or another.

He looked at the marks on the wall and mused for a second on just how people – human beings, bankers and stockbrokers, CEOs, educated folk – could fall so far in just a couple of years. Then he shook his head, figuring himself for a damn fool.

Hard part wasn’t falling. Falling was easy as hell.

Hard part was standing up in the first place.

Pretty soon they were all gone and it was just Cade – and the boy, gnawing on a piece of tattooed skin, looking at him with narrowed eyes. Questioning. Cade turned to look at him.

No point in sending him out to die with the rest of them. The Pastor’s men were going to take a hell of a hit, but they had at least a couple of sniping rifles and a hell of a lot of other weapons. Cade figured the cannibals were going to knock his cosy paradise for a loop, maybe shake the faithful up a little bit. Make things harder.

Then when Cade came back, the Pastor’s paradise might just be open for a coup. Worth trying, anyhow.

Cade would’ve made a hell of a politician.

He nodded at the boy. “You. Go get me my knife. I think I left it in a fella out there.”

The boy looked at him warily for a second, then vanished. He was back a couple of minutes later with Cade’s knife.

Cade took it from him, slotted it into his belt, and saluted. “I’m abdicating. Rule wisely now.”

The boy looked uncomprehendingly at him as he climbed the steps. Cade figured he was better off alone than he had been with the rest of them. And he was a hell of a lot safer in a deserted BART station with a couple of dead folks than he would’ve been with Cade.

What the fuck was that shit? A salute? You growing a sense of humour in your old age, dog?

Fuel-Air was sitting under a tree with a porno mag and an open can of coffee granules. Cade nodded to him, then set off down Market Street, heading for the intersection with Oak. “Sure.”

About fuckin’ time, man. Shit, you look like all ten fuckin’ Jason movies. You planning on washing some of that shit off before you meet the fuckin’ hippies? They’re gonna think you’re Charles Manson or some shit, dog... fuckin’ helter skelter n’ shit, right?

Cade narrowed his eyes for a second, wondering what Fuel-Air knew. There was something about Fuel-Air that Cade was starting to find troubling, beyond the fact that he was a sure sign Cade was going nuts.

Hell with it. He needed to wash off the blood and find a change of clothes. Fuel-Air was right about that, at least. Cade nodded towards him.

“You coming?”

Fuel-Air flashed his usual shit-eating grin. Cade noticed he’d gotten a gold tooth from somewhere. With a diamond lodged in it.

Thought you’d never ask, my meat-chuckin’, Pastor-fuckin’ brother. Thought you’d never fuckin’ ask.

Cade scowled, picking at the dried blood on his arm.

Goddamn Fuel-Air never could take anything seriously.