Gods of the Dead (Rising Book 1) (10 page)

Chapter Eleven

Vin – Twenty Two Years Old

“Where are you goin’, baby?” she whispers sleepily, her eyes still closed.

I pull my shirt on over my head. “I got a fight today.”

“Against who?”

“Some guy from a new gang. The Westies.” I sit down on the edge of the bed to tie my shoes. “I don’t know him. He’s a wildcard.”

“Are you gonna win?”

“I always win.”

“You’re so conceited,” she laughs.

“I’m not conceited,” I correct with a smile. I shrug into my moto jacket, my body filling it more completely than it ever has before. It’s the fighting. The sparring in the ring for money and control. “I’m confident.”

“To-ma-to, to-mah-to. Label it how you want, it’s still the same vegetable and you’re still a jerk.”

“Then why do you keep asking me here?”

“Because,” she laments dramatically, batting her brown eyes at me, “I love vegetables.”

“You’re in the minority.” I yank open the heavy steel door, turning to look back at her still lying in the bed. “I’ll see you later.”

“Tonight?”

“No.”

“Where will you be?”

“Out,” I answer evasively.

“Fine,” she groans, giving up. “Whatever. See you later.”

I head into the hall, letting the door slam shut behind me. It’s dark when it’s closed. The light at the end is the only way to see and I follow it out onto the football field, taking the tunnel that the players used to take before they all went insane and ate each other. That’s one zombie I wouldn’t want to face off with. Three hundred pounds of fury, speed, and sure hands.

We took the football stadium by the water a couple years ago, just like Marlow wanted. I thought it was a pretty baller move when I heard he wanted to do it but the reality was a little bit of a letdown. No one was here, no one has ever tried to take it from us, and once we had the gates locked it was unquestionably ours. ‘Taking’ the stadium couldn’t have been more boring than if we’d gotten a high interest loan and bought the damn thing.

We spent the first year bringing in dirt and good soil from all over the city to spread over the fields and convert them to farmland. We raided every home improvement and gardening store we could find. Once we had thick grass growing we brought in the animals. Sheep, goats, cows, chickens. Our herd has been growing with the number of people we take in. A number that has skyrocketed in the last year. Word has gotten out about us. About how safe we are, how well taken care of, and if you’re willing to work for your keep Marlow is willing to let you inside. For people not accustomed to fighting it’s a better deal than living outside in the wild with the zombies.

It’s been three years and they’re still a problem. I’m part of a patrol that goes outside the gates three times a week with one purpose – dropping infected. They make supply runs nearly impossible and we’ve exhausted the resources close to us. We need to branch out but the infected make it tough.

Other gangs help with the patrol, the people who join earning a chance to fight for money in the Underground. No one out there has our numbers, though. Most gangs have under ten members, women and children included, while we’re sitting in the stadium with close to a hundred head. It’s an impressive empire Marlow has built, one I’m lucky to have gotten in on the ground floor of. I like being top dog and if I got the chance I’d take—

“Vincent!”

Marlow and his guard are coming toward me from the sidelines of the field. His long hair is tied back smoothly in his signature ponytail, the temples going gray and showing his age, and his smile highlights the lines in his skin.

He’s making the rounds to mingle with the people. Shaking hands and kissing babies the way he likes to do to stay visible and in everyone’s minds. He’s friendly and smiling but everyone knows what he used to be, where he came from. All disputes go through him and what he says goes – no question. There is no prison here, we can’t spare the resources, so if you step out of line you’re out the door. Easy as that. No weapons, no supplies. It’s as much a death sentence as a bullet to the face and Marlow isn’t afraid to pull that trigger. Some people resent living under that kind of system, but they don’t hate it more than having their brains cooked out of their skulls by the infection so they’re still here.

“I didn’t see you at breakfast this morning,” Marlow comments. “Where were you?”

“Squeezing in a workout.”

He grins knowingly. “Nora?”

“She’s a good trainer.”

“So I hear.”

I let the jab go unanswered. I know I’m not the only guy Nora sees. Ordinarily that shit would piss me off but considering she’s young, hot, and fixed, I’m willing to look past it. Not surprisingly, I take a lot of issue with ditching a kid and the guarantee that I’m not putting one inside anybody is golden. A lot of guys don’t care. They look the other way and figure it’s the chick’s problem if she gets knocked up, not theirs, but that’s not me. That can never be me.

“Looking into the shortage?” I ask, gesturing to the fields around us.

He nods, leading me forward. “I’ve been through the books with the gardeners and the cooks. Everything is accounted for.”

“So then how are we coming up short every meal?”

“That’s the million dollar question. One I hope I’ll find the answer to when the head count is finished.”

“Another one? We just did one three months ago.”

“And it was high. I won’t be surprised to find this count high too.”

“What are you thinking?” I ask in a hushed tone. “Smuggling?”

“That’s my guess,” he agrees solemnly. “Guard members running side operations. Trading a blind eye at the gate for a little extra coin in their pocket. We’ll flush them out, correct the errors, but in the meantime we’ll have to up the harvest and the farmers tell me that means a strain on the soil and the water supply and about a billion other things that will hurt us in the long run.”

“We need more land to farm.”

“Yes, we do.”

I stop walking, forcing him to turn to face me. I try to keep my voice even and my face blank, but when he turns to look at me I can tell he knows exactly what I want. “The baseball stadium. We’re finally making a play for it?”

“Do you think it’s time?” he asks, but he doesn’t care what I think. He already knows what he’s going to do.

And still I have to play along. If I want to ever run a game of my own, I have to play his first.

After seeing how easy it was to own the CenturyLink Field I told Marlow we should secure the Mariners baseball field too, but he didn’t want to. I get it, it was a lot to take on and defend with the small numbers we had at the time. Just him, myself, my piece of shit dad who wouldn’t stop shadowing me, and about ten other guys. Not exactly a strong army. But then our numbers started to grow and so did our confidence. Ever since then I’ve been practically begging him to let us march on Safeco Field. It’s a stone’s throw away from CenturyLink and the people living in it are a lot like us – sustaining life inside through farming and security. They’re smaller, though, or they are for now. In a year or two who knows? Maybe they’ll be larger and we’ll have to worry about them coming after us.

If we took them now, Marlow wouldn’t be able to oversee both areas. He’d have to hand one over to someone else. Someone he trusts. Someone he knew before the fall. Someone like me.

And I’m itching to be the head of my own house.

“Yeah,” I tell him. “I think it’s past time we took it.”

“The people inside have been good neighbors. They won’t be happy to see us come kicking down their door.”

“Fuck ‘em.”

Marlow chuckles. “Eloquently put.”

“Are we doing it? Are we taking the other stadium?”

He looks behind me at the crops in the field and the homes built over the bleachers. It’s not crowded. We have plenty of space to grow, but do we want more?

Doesn’t everyone always want more?

“I hate gardening,” Marlow says suddenly. “My nana loved it. She tried to get me to help her in her vegetable garden when I was a kid but I never stayed. I wanted to be out running and playing. Do you know what my favorite game was?”

“Capture the flag.”

He looks at me in surprise. “How did you know that?”

“Because you’ve told me before.”

Three times,
I think mockingly.

“You liked it because it was a game of strategy,” I continue, “like chess. Intelligence won over brute force.”

He chuckles. “I really have told you this before.”

“Your mind is slipping, old man,” I smirk. “Better get that checked out.”

“Thank God you’re here to watch after me in my dotage.”

I look away, annoyed by the word ‘dotage’. I don’t know what it means and I’m sure that’s why he used it. I’ll always be younger than him, always better looking, better liked, but I’ll never be smarter. He was taught to read at a young age by a grandmother who loved him. She cared about his future. She made sure he did well in school and paid for him to go to college, and even though he used all of that knowledge to run a gambling operation for the biggest thug in Seattle he still has it. He’s still pumped full of things I’ll never know.

“As much as I hate it, these gardens are important,” he explains, his words a thoughtful drawl. “They give people hope. They’re a physical manifestation of their labor. They work hard, they get results. They think the world is dead and gone, but here come new buds. New fruit, new life. It keeps going and when they look at the gardens, whether they know it or not, that’s what they see. Life and hope.”

“Hope for what?”

“The future. Themselves. Their kids.” He waves his hand dismissively. “It doesn’t matter. It makes them happy and happy people are more productive. They’re easier to manage. The garden keeps them focused and docile, so whatever’s happening with the crops we need to straighten it out. If they start to worry they’ll go hungry they’ll get loud. They’ll get ideas and that’s not something I want to deal with.”

“So the baseball stadium,” I say leadingly, bringing us back around.

He waves me away. “We’ll discuss it after the head count. We’ll do a little weeding out before we take on anything else.”

“But when we take it you’ll let me have it. You’ll let me run it.”

“Like I said,” he replies amiably, “we’ll discuss it after the head count. In the meantime I have more meetings and you have a fight to get to. Who are you going up against today?”

“Some guy from the Westies.”

“Should I bet on you?”

“You’d be stupid not to.”

He laughs as he waves toward Mike, one of his guards. “Head down to the theater. Put in a marker for me on Vincent to win.”

“How much?” Mike asks.

“That’s a good question. How much, Vincent?” Marlow asks me. “How much should I stake in you?”

He’s gauging me. Asking me to set my own worth. Too high and I’m an overconfident, hot-headed kid who can’t be trusted. Too low and I don’t trust myself.

I should tell him to put down fifty. It’s higher than the average bet, even for a man like Marlow, but it’s not too high. It’s a safe answer.

“A Benjamin,” I tell Mike. “One hundred dollars to win.”

He stares at me blankly, obviously not sure if I’m joking or insane. He looks to Marlow hesitantly but the boss gives him nothing. He just watches me, unmoved. Finally Mike nods his head and backs away, heading for the exit and the theater. He’ll place the bet and if Marlow wins, he stands to win big.

But if he loses – if
I
lose – both Mike and I are in some serious shit.

“Good luck today, Vincent,” Marlow tells me with a satisfied smile. “Be sure to give us all a good show.”

***

The Underground used to be the WAMU Theater – an event center sitting between the ballpark and the football stadium. It’s a big empty space not good for much anymore. You definitely wouldn’t want to try to live here. Not unless you like the dark because when the torches aren’t lit, that’s all this windowless cave is. All it’s good for now are the fights and the market.

I cruise through the doors, nodding to the guys standing guard and scanning the crowd. It’s a good turnout. The old lobby is full of vendors setting up shop. They range from clothes to food to booze. A rare few even sell skin, the women from their gangs dressed in next to nothing walking up and down the line of makeshift shops and doing business in dark corners or busted up bathrooms.

I’ve built this thing from the ground up. It started out as me and some guys from other gangs sparring to stay sharp and in shape, but then it grew and I encouraged it to keep on growing. We started lining up fights and placing bets. People showed up just to watch, then to bet, then they started to bargain and trade until the market sprung up in the lobby, the only place where the daylight can get in.

Once the vendors started coming, more people started to show. Now other gangs in the area come in droves every week to get in on the action and make connections, and every vendor who sets up shop, no matter what he’s selling, pays me a fee.