Fireside Read online

  Veronica accepted the explanation. Besides the few years that she spent in Austin where she met Aeric, she’d lived her entire life in San Angelo. Admittedly, the world was entirely different than when she was a child, but she didn’t know that places like the Barrio could exist here. “Alright, fine. Let’s get this over with.”

  In a rare display of deference, Aeric looked to Joseph for approval. The Shooter nodded and said, “It’s morning, so most people are at their jobs. We’ll have to watch out for the kids, though. There are a few street gangs that run the place while the adults aren’t around. Most of the time, they’re harmless and just want to be recognized as equals to anyone who enters. To get their attention, though, we may have to kill one of them.”

  Veronica looked at him in shock. “What?”

  “If you kill one of ‘em, that usually shuts them up and they scurry off to their holes,” Joseph said with a shrug of his shoulders.

  She turned to her husband, “Aeric, what’s he talking about?”

  He held up his hands at waist level and patted downwards. “We’re not going to kill anyone.”

  After thirty years together, she knew her husband intimately and the daggers of warning that his stare sent towards Joseph meant that they’d talked about this beforehand. He knew about the killing of street children and kept it from her. It was unconscionable that he’d allow murders to happen inside the city walls without sending the police force in to put an end to it.

  “The Barrio is…different,” Aeric stated. “They are forced to do things that we don’t like, and quite frankly, sometimes don’t even understand.”

  “Then get some of Ted’s equipment and bulldoze the walls!” she exclaimed while pointing angrily at the barricade. “Increase the police presence, provide incentive to the residents to follow the established rules of our society, educate the children about what’s acceptable in a civilized city….”

  “We’ve tried,” Aeric replied. “They keep coming back. The best thing that we’ve found so far is to let them have their semi-autonomous neighborhood. They all contribute to the defense of the city and work in their jobs like everyone else. This is one of those things that we just have to let go. Trust me, Veronica.”

  She glanced back to Joseph, who nodded. “It works. It’s what we—what they—want,” he corrected himself. “There’s enough opportunity to leave if someone chooses to leave. Nobody is forcing them to stay.”

  It went against everything she’d allowed herself to believe about her city. She thought that out of all the death and destruction, they stood separate and apart from it all, the proverbial shining beacon of society in a post-nuclear war world. Her perceptions had been false. Of all people, her husband had helped to perpetrate the myth. What was real and what was an intricate lie to keep the masses in check, she wondered.

  FIVE

  They left the path that they’d followed and trailed behind Joseph. He led the way around the perimeter of the Barrio until they came to an opening in the pile of garbage. Two kids, Veronica thought they were no older than thirteen, guarded the entrance with spears made out of old copper plumbing and kitchen knives. If their weapons hadn’t looked so threatening, she’d have laughed at the absurdity of the children pretending to be soldiers.

  “What you want, Joe?” the larger of the two asked. He ducked his head and acknowledged Aeric’s presence. “Traxx.”

  “We’re here to see Maria,” the Shooter answered.

  “She not here. You give ammo, you maybe see her,” he said, holding out his grubby hand.

  Veronica wondered about the pattern of the boy’s speech. She hadn’t ever picked up on the children at the soup kitchen talking like the boy at the entrance to the Barrio. Then again, she’d never seen either of these two before. She wondered if they didn’t go to the daily communal meals that helped to cement the San Angelians together. At the very least, she should have seen them getting food to bring back here.

  “I don’t have any ammo to give you except for a bullet in the brain, Fish. Where is Maria?” Joe asked menacingly.

  The boy sniffed and then rubbed the snot that dripped from his nose with his palm. “Don’t gotta be fuckin’ asshole, Joe. We tryin’ to get more bullets for protection.”

  “We don’t have time for it. Which rat hole is she staying in today?”

  “No rats left. We ate them all,” he answered matter-of-factly.

  Veronica’s mouth opened to protest that even in the darkest of days, she’d never served rat in the kitchen. She snapped it shut quickly when Aeric’s hand gripped her wrist. He shook his head slightly, telling her to keep quiet.

  “Yeah, I know,” Joseph said. He sniffed and continued, “What are you cooking now, Fish?”

  The boy grinned and wobbled his hand. “Little of this, little of that, Joe. You know how life in Barrio is.”

  “Where’s the girl, Fish?”

  “She in the old store. Little bitch bit Claw’s dick off yesterday.”

  Joseph laughed out loud, startling Veronica. “She did? Good for her! That dirty, raping bastard deserves it.”

  The boy bristled at Joe’s words. His partner placed a restraining hand on Fish’s arm. He hadn’t spoken until then, “She gotta go, man. If Claw lives, he gonna kill her. Make her pay first, though. Girl can’t stay here no more, no matter what Mr. Edward say.”

  “We’ll take her with us,” Aeric stated.

  The older boy turned to him threateningly. “Not talkin’ to you, Traxx. You—” He was cut off by Aeric’s fist smashing into his nose. Veronica yelped louder than the child that her husband punched.

  “I’m not gonna take shit from some Barrio trash,” Aeric scowled. “I’m done being nice. Either take us to Maria or I’m gonna let Joe start murdering you little fucks.”

  “Okay, okay, Traxx. You know we like you. You good guy,” Fish replied in between glances at his partner’s ruined face. “Don’t know woman. Who she?”

  “Veronica,” Aeric answered. “Maria is going to live with her.”

  Veronica waved timidly and wondered at Aeric’s choice of words. He purposefully left out that she was his wife, why was that?

  Fish grabbed his crotch and rubbed it suggestively, “Wanna trade your woman for Maria? We take good care of her. Real good care.”

  She stepped back away from the degenerate in time to see the end of Joe’s rifle slam into Fish’s abdomen.

  The boy bent over in pain and slapped at his bloody partner’s leg. “Flame take you to Maria, man,” Fish coughed.

  Aeric smiled, “Don’t try to double cross us once we’re inside.”

  “You good, Traxx. No problem with Slashers.”

  Flame, the boy whom Aeric had punched in the face gestured for them to follow him inside the Barrio. Joseph led the way while Veronica fell into step beside her husband several paces behind the other two. “What was that back there?” she whispered.

  “Violence is about the only thing that these kids understand,” Aeric replied.

  “Or maybe we could change that and try kindness.”

  He sighed and her temper spiked. If he dared to say something like she didn’t truly understand the world that they lived in, then she would scream at him. It was an old argument between them. She’d never been out in the wastes besides the initial trip when her father brought her back to San Angelo from Austin. She’d heard plenty of stories from her famous husband and Tyler about the dangers outside the city walls. All three of her boys had followed in Aeric’s footsteps and become members of the Gathering Squad as well, so she had enough knowledge about the outside world to inform her statement. These people were inside the city walls, it didn’t have to be like this.

  “You saw that…that urchin, Fish,” Aeric continued in a hushed tone. “If given the opportunity, he’d rape you and then slash your throat or maybe vice versa. There’s no saving those types of people. Times are tough all over—more so in the Barrio. That doesn’t give the street gangs the right to be thugs
and murderers, though. Like I said, violence is the only thing those kids understand. They respect people who are more powerful than them.”

  “Then why not go in and clear them out; empty the Barrio of the street gangs?”

  “Now you want me to kill the kids? It would cause a massive uprising from their parents and leave the community in a state of fear over who’s next to be wiped out.” Aeric waved to a few dirty children playing with ancient toys beside an old ice cooler at a convenience store. He reached over behind her and placed his hand in the small of her back as they walked and continued, “The kids band together and do horrible things when they’re trying to get through a tough period in their lives. You remember how awkward those years were back when we had everything in the world at our fingertips. Imagine how these kids are, their future is bleak at best. They grow out of it, for the most part. Joseph was a gang kid before joining the Shooters.”

  “What about the ones who don’t grow out of it?” Veronica asked.

  “We have a program for them.”

  She stopped and twisted away from his hand. “What program?”

  “The ones who don’t change their ways after they become adults work in the sewers under guard.”

  “You force people to clean up the filth of everyone in the city?”

  “All that piss and shit has to go somewhere,” he answered and began walking again. “It’s not a job that anyone is going to volunteer for, so we take the degenerates down there and they spend ten hours a day scooping refuse into buckets and hauling it through the sewers out to the south side of town. So far we’ve only had one person who hasn’t reformed and seen the error of his ways after a couple of weeks.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He’s in charge of the Barrio.”

  “What?”

  Aeric shrugged, “He still works down there, hauling shit every day. Has been for more than twenty years. But the residents of the Barrio love him and have elected him as their spokesperson.”

  She blanched at the idea of someone being in that filth without the convenience of showers. “You’ve had people down there for twenty years?”

  Aeric shrugged, “Edward Huerta is a degenerate who hasn’t done enough to be banished into the wastes. It seems like every time we allow him to come up, he does something else and gets thrown back down there. Petty theft, vandalism, drug production and sales, that sort of stuff.”

  “If he runs the Barrio and these street kids do whatever he says, why does he keep getting in trouble, not one of them?”

  She could tell that her husband had never thought of it that way before. “I don’t know.”

  “Have you been down in the tunnels to see what’s going on down there?”

  “Sure. I mean, not all of them. There are miles of crisscrossing sewers, but I’ve been along the main routes.”

  “Maybe there’s something else going on and that’s why he keeps going down in there,” she proposed. How in the hell has he not wondered what’s going on in the tunnels that keeps this guy down there?

  “You’re probably right, babe. I’ll send some of the police force or maybe borrow a few more of Lorelei’s Shooters to go down there.”

  “I don’t know, it seems like—”

  He cut her off, “We can talk about it later. We’re coming up on the old grocery store where Maria lives.”

  She nodded and walked slowly beside her husband. It was probably best to discontinue the conversation anyways. There seemed to be a feeling of being watched inside the Barrio, so there was no telling who was listening to her tell Aeric that Huerta’s actions seemed shady and needed to be investigated.

  They passed by a rough-looking group of young men lounging around a fire pit in an open area near the trail through the garbage. These boys were also about the same age as the kids at the entrance, but a few were older, fifteen or so—maybe. Veronica swore that they might have been the vilest group that she’d ever seen. They wore ragged clothing of various styles with a square of bright green cloth sewn onto their shirts above the left breast.

  Veronica had seen the cloth sewn on clothing before at the community soup kitchen, never really thinking anything of it. Now that she saw it displayed on ten boys all at the same time, she knew that it was their gang symbol. The boy at the gate didn’t have the green cloth sewn on his clothes, but he was clearly in a gang according to Aeric and Joseph. They must be rivals, she concluded.

  Some type of animal, about the size of a medium dog sat on a spit over the fire. The cooking meat smelled wonderful, making her wonder what type of ration they’d been given. One of the boys stood up and closed the distance between them.

  “What you doin’, Flame?” the boy asked the rival gang member, ignoring the adults that he led.

  “Traxx needs to talk at Maria,” Flame stated.

  The boy with the green cloth sewn on his shirt looked over at Traxx. “That true? Why you want my girl?”

  Aeric sighed. “Seriously, kid. I know she’s not your girl. And I’ll talk to whomever the hell I want.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “I’ve about had enough of you little shitheads!” Veronica screamed, causing everyone—including Aeric—to flinch involuntarily. “We need to have an important discussion with her and all of you think that you’re bigshots in this little shithole. You’re not; you’re just a bunch of wannabe gang banger thugs. Now, where the hell is Maria?”

  The boy puffed up his chest and pointed to himself with a thumb. “I’m leader here, not Traxx. He don’t give orders.”

  “Stand down, Bull,” Joe said as he leveled his rifle at the gang leader’s midsection. “You know I ain’t got no problem shooting you.”

  The boy stepped back with his hands up. “This ain’t over, Traxx. You allowed in the Barrio one time a month, ten days after meat ration. You early.”

  “Don’t make me confiscate your illegal meat, kid,” Aeric threatened.

  “That our meat. Touch it, you die.”

  Aeric brought his own weapon around. The ancient lever-action 30-30 had been with him from that night in Austin when Veronica first met him and Tyler. “Threaten me again and you’re the one that will be buried, little man.”

  Bull seemed to consider his words carefully before replying, “Fine, take bitch. We sick of fucking her anyway.” He made an exaggerated circle with his hands. “She all stretched out after we done with her.” Then he turned and went back to the fire.

  Aeric gripped Veronica’s elbow lightly and steered her towards the large structure looming in front of them. “Let’s go,” he muttered quietly. “They scare off easily enough. Unfortunately, their own inexperience allows them to get over their fear quickly. Better to be inside when they figure out that they outnumber us three-to-one.”

  The relative closeness of the Barrio seemed like wide open grasslands compared to the dark and damp that greeted her inside the grocery store. The walls bore the signs of thirty years’ worth of habitation. Dirt, graffiti…blood, it was all there. The lack of the original overhead lighting made it nearly impossible to see since the discolored skylights above were caked with smoke film. Filthy children of all ages sat alone or played in small groups among hundreds of individual family campsites. It was the most depressing thing that Veronica had ever seen.

  Obviously, she’d become accustomed to things being generally more run down and dirty since the days of her youth. However, the conditions in the supermarket took everything to an entirely different level. It seemed to her that the residents were content to merely survive and not improve their situation at all. She immediately identified several quick fixes that would have been easy to do and likely increase morale, primarily cleaning, increasing the lighting and opening the skylights above to allow the smoke to escape.

  “Maria lives on row one three,” Flame stated. “Leaving now.” The boy didn’t wait for Aeric to answer before turning to leave quickly.

  “What the hell was that about?” Veronica asked as she hugg
ed herself tight in an effort to shrink away from the grime in the building.

  “They don’t like her,” Joseph replied. “She scares them.”

  “That hasn’t stopped them from raping her,” Veronica scoffed.

  “Eh, I doubt they’ve actually done it. Lots of talk from little boys who want to be big men,” Joe countered. “The girl has the Gift, so she knows when they’re going to try something. Besides, you heard what Fish said about her biting Claw’s uh…er….”

  “His dick,” Veronica offered. “I had three boys, Joseph. I’ve heard it all.”

  He nodded and continued, “Yeah, she did that to him. So she knows how to defend herself.”

  “Good point.” She stared over at the smeared sign above the aisles indicating that row thirteen used to contain charcoal and paper products. The little girl had survived on her own in the wasteland before coming to San Angelo. Maybe she really can predict the future and she’s learned to avoid trouble, Veronica thought.

  “Okay, we came all this way,” Aeric interrupted her thoughts. “Let’s go over and talk to her. If what Joseph says is right, she already knows that we’re coming anyways.”

  They walked slowly, exaggerating their efforts to not inadvertently step on someone sleeping in the piled up blankets and heaps of discarded clothing. At the end of row thirteen, it became immediately apparent to Veronica where Maria lived. Each aisle they’d passed had been filled from one end to the other with the personal belongings of the row’s residents. Aisle thirteen had a noticeable vacancy between the end of one family’s area to a small “camp” in the middle of the aisle and then another empty space on the other side between the camp and another family. A small bundle sat hunched over in the center of the blankets. Obviously, the residents had chosen to shun her instead of help her.

  “That’s gotta be her,” Aeric mumbled as they followed Joseph down the row. Veronica watched where he put his feet and carefully placed her foot where the Shooter’s had previously been. It certainly wouldn’t do for her to step on someone or to break one of the few possessions that these people owned.