Radio Hope (Toxic World Book 1) (10 page)

“Shit.”

“What?” Annette asked dancing from one foot to another as Mitch took an agonizingly long time to find the damn iodine.

“More coming,” Ha-Ram said.

Mitch pulled the iodine out of the pack. “Look, we need to—”

Annette snatched the iodine from him. “Fuck you. I’m not getting whatever that tweaker had.”

She tore of the cap and started pouring it onto her face. The sting burned into every line of the scratch marks.

“Not like that, let me,” Jackson said. He took the iodine and turned to Mitch. “Got some clean wool for that?”

Mitch tossed him a ball of wool from his medical pack.
“For fuck’s sake hurry up!”

Ha-Ram started firing out the window. Mitch gave Annette and Jackson a furious look and started reloading his magazine.

Jackson poured some iodine on the ball of wool and started dabbing her face. An instant later she pushed him aside, blew away a tweaker who appeared at the door, then told him to continue.

Ha-Ram burned through his clip and started reloading. Mitch finished loading his
own magazine and snapped it into place. He glanced out the window.

“Holy crap. We gotta g
o
no
w
.”

“There’s a million of them!” Ha-Ram said.

Jackson finished up, gave the iodine and wool back to Mitch, and peered out the door. He turned back to Annette.

“I’m out of ammo.”

Annette pulled the half a dozen bullets from her gun belt and handed them to him.

“Just how long are we going to hang around here?” Mitch demanded.

“I got to load,” Jackson said.

“Lo
ad as we go,” Mitch said, shoving past him out the door with Ha-Ram close behind.

As the four of them got into the hallway Annette pointed. “Look, another hallway. It probably goes to a back entrance.”

Ha-Ram stopped. “We have to go back downstairs and get my pack.”

“Fuck your pack,” Annette said.

Ha-Ram looked uncertain. “We need it.”

“Why?” Jackson demanded.

Mitch drew Ha-Ram to his side.

“We just need it, is all,” Mitch said. “We’re going downstairs to get it. You coming or not?”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“What do you mean you want to come in?”

Marcus faced the crowd of scavengers. The newcomer with the broken nose cocked his head and studied him.

“Exactly what I said. Danger’s coming and we want to move inside the walls.”

“Your children will get to stay inside,” Marcus said, gesturing toward his daughter. “That’s always been the deal.”

“
That was fine when it was only a few bandits,” another scavenger spoke up. Marcus recognized him as one of the regulars who had been coming for years. “We could scatter to the wildlands and wait them out. But this time there’s thousands of them. Word is they’re sweeping the whole countryside.”

“The only safe place is behind those walls,” the scavenger with the broken nose said, jabbing a finger
toward the barricade.

“What’s your name, anyway?” Marcus asked him.

“My name’s my business.”

“You won’t even give me your name and you want to come into my city?”

The regular chimed in again. “This is our city too. We’ve built it same as you. You think you could have created all you have without our trades?”

Marcus looked at him. “We’ve always given you fair trades, not to mention free medical treatment and a refuge for your children.”

The man wavered. Marcus felt a pang of guilt. He didn’t want to be arguing with these people. While he didn’t like scavengers in general, not all were bad. This one, he knew, was a family man. Twice now his children had stayed inside during raids while his wife and he went into hiding until the danger had passed.

Plus
he had a point. New City couldn’t exist without the scavengers, and the scavengers would have a tough life without New City.

But what did these people expect him to do, open the gates to a few thousand strangers?

The scavenger who wouldn’t give his name wasn’t cowed by Marcus’ words.

“You can’t stand alone against the Righteous Horde. Several people
here have seen them. They’re practically an army like in the Old Times.”

Marcus scoffed. “What, they have tanks and jets now?”

The scavenger glowered at him from over his bandage. “You know what I mean. They don’t need the equipment when they got the numbers. If we spread out into the wildlands they’ll hunt us down like dogs, and they’ll break right through that wall you’re so proud of and enslave the lot of you.”

“We’ve fought off all other attacks before,” Marcus said uncertainly.

“We’d add a thousand fighters to your force, at least a quarter of who got guns. You need us. We need you. Let us in.”

Marcus didn’t say anything for the moment. “I’ll ask The Doctor. We’ll have a citizens meeting.”

The scavenger nodded. “You do that. And be quick about it. There ain’t much time and if the horde comes near, we’ll come back. And next time we won’t be asking.”

Several hard cases behind him let out a little cheer. Many of the others, regulars mostly, looked uncertain.

The man with the broken nose turned and stormed off, motioning for the others to follow. Far too many did.

When Marcus returned to The Doctor’s quarters he found him stretched out on a sofa, apparently
asleep. A half-eaten sandwich sat on a plate on the floor next to him. Marcus was about to tiptoe away when The Doctor’s eyes opened.

“How are you feeling?” Marcus asked him.

“Never mind me, what happened out there?”

“The scavengers want to camp inside.”

The Doctor got up on one elbow. “Not a chance!”

“I tried explaining it to them but they wouldn’t listen. That guy who brought the radios is acting as a sort of a leader.”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “Something off about him.”

Marcus nodded. “I think so too. Comes out of nowhere, Roy said he acted like a madman in $87,953, brings a bunch of newly made radios he claims he just happened upon, and now he’s set himself up as some sort of authority.
When I asked him his name he basically told me to go to hell.”

“Those radios are sure popular,” The Doctor said.

“Yeah,” Marcus agreed. They were all over the Burbs and even some citizens had picked them up. From what he’d heard, the scavenger was practically giving them away.

Neither spoke for a moment.

“So what do you think he’s up to?” Marcus said at last.

The Doctor simply shook his head.

“Do you think he knows where Radio Hope is? You think he might be one of them?” Marcus asked.

“I don’t know. He
doesn’t strike me as the kind of person we hear on the air telling us how to make preserves.”

“No he doesn’t, but seeing as we don’t know a thing about that station. . .”

Marcus left his sentence unfinished.

“I shouldn
’t authorize them to come in without a citizens meeting,” The Doctor said.

“That’s what he wants done.”

“I’ll call one for tomorrow, but I’m not looking forward to it.”

Marcus let out a bitter laugh, “Neither am I.”

“Oh, and there’s another thing,” The Doctor reached over to a side table and picked up a bundle of wires and little electronic parts. After a moment Marcus recognized it as one of the scavenger’s crystal radios. Someone had taken it apart.

“I had a couple of the techs look at this,” The Doctor said. “Like we thought, the casing and electronics are newly made. Pretty simple to do. Any one of a dozen people inside the walls could make one. But there’s more. The earpiece is newly made too.”

Marcus’ brow furrowed. “And that’s not so simple?”

“It isn’t something you could just slap together from spare parts. This is advanced electronics. You need a proper electronics factory to build one of these.”

Marcus cocked his head and looked at it. “Are they sure it’s newly made?”

“No serial number. Everything electronic during the Old Times had a serial number.
There was a law.”

“Maybe during the
Plague Years? The City-State Wars?”

“Maybe, but why would they be
making crystal radios at a time like that? That’s all these earpieces are really good for. The techs tell me you need a really sensitive earpiece to boost the signal from the crystal. Regular radios and sound equipment have an electrical boost, so you don’t need earpieces like this. And besides, the techs tell me this is recycled plastic. Even during the City-State Wars they still had plastics factories.”

Marcus said nothing for a moment while it sank in.

“So Radio Hope isn’t just broadcasting helpful information for free, they’re rebuilding the industrial sector?”

The Doctor nodded slowly.

“But why don’t we know where they are? You can’t just hide a factory. Why hasn’t one of the scavengers stumbled upon it?”

The Doctor met his gaze. “Who’s to say one hasn’t?”

Marcus let out a low whistle. “I think we need to sit down and have a chat with this man.”

The Doctor gave a curt nod. He played with the
electronics in his hand. “Yes we do. But we have to bring something to the table first. We can’t concede to all his demands, Abe and Clyde and a bunch of the others will never agree to them, and I don’t want to agree to them either, but we can meet him halfway.”

“He doesn’t strike
me as a halfway kind of guy,” Marcus said.

“Announce a citizens meeting for an hour before the gates
open, and send word to this scavenger that we’ll meet with him at noon tomorrow.”

“Right.”

The Doctor looked at him. “You better go home. Rosie’s going to be mad at me for making you late for lunch.”

“Aw, she’s so happy to have Annette Cruz’s kid around the house she probably won’t even notice I’m gone. Want to come over?”

The Doctor waved him away. “No, you go on. I need to go to the lab and cut up some willow bark to make aspirin. Ahmed reported another two flu cases today.”

Marcus came home to find Pablo and a couple
of citizen children tossing a baseball around in front of his house. Like before, Rosie stood at the window watching. When Marcus came up she made a show of washing some dishes.

“Hey guys!” Marcus called out.

“My ad spot was on the radio again!” Pablo called out.

“Yeah, I heard it,” Marcus fibbed.

Pablo tossed him the ball and Marcus surprised himself by catching it. He looked down at the ball, its fine leather and regulation stitching, and wondered when was the last time he’d held one.

“Good throw, but it’s better to bring your hand to the side, like this,” he threw the ball back at Pablo, who dove and caught it, rising from the ground with a dusty grin.

Pablo tossed it to one of his new friends, who tossed it to the third boy before it went back to Pablo.

“Here,” Marcus said. “Let me show you.”

He got behind Pablo. “Now line up your body like this. And take your hand like this. Let’s do it slow motion.”

Marcus guided his hand.

“Now try it for real.”

Marcus threw the ball and it whizzed past one of the boys, who ran after it laughing.

“Nice one! See? Better already,” Marcus said.

A grumble from his stomach reminded him of why he was here. Pablo must have heard it too because he said, “We ate already but Aunt Rosie is keeping some warm for you.”

Aunt Rosie?

He turned and saw his wife had stopped washing the dishes and was watching them both with a big grin on her face.

Well, why not? Doesn’t she deserve to be happy for a little while? Pretty soon none of us will be grinning.

The Citizens C
ouncil met in the upper story of the warehouse, in the vast, all-but-empty room in front of The Doctor’s quarters. Seats had been set up and a low wooden platform stood at one end, on which sat The Doctor and Marcus. An empty chair stood next to them. In the rows of seats in front of the stage, Abe Weissman and the other members of the Merchants Association sat front and center. The rest of the room was taken up with almost every adult citizen who could get away from their work. Even Roy had come in from the Burbs, as had several of the farmers who lived close by. Marcus estimated some four hundred people were there.

The Doctor stood up and raised his hands for silence. The buzz from the room fell to a low murmur.

“Now I’m sure you’ve all heard why we’re here. The scavengers and associates are all scared of this new cult, The Righteous Horde. Word is they number in the thousands. While I’m not sure that’s true, the point is the people outside the wall don’t think they can scatter and hide like during a usual siege. They’re not content with leaving their children here. They want to come in too.”

An angry cacophony filled the room as several people t
ried to complain all at once. Abe stood up and asked for the floor. Marcus shifted in his seat. He knew what was going to come next. The Doctor motioned for him to begin.

“This is insane!” the head of the Merchants Association said. “We can’t let a bunch of scavengers inside the walls. The walls are there to separate us from them. You want to turn the city into the Burbs?”

“Yeah, how can I protect my family and property?” someone called out.

A chorus of angry approval rose up and dr
owned out Abe’s next words. The Doctor raised his hands for silence again and the noise ebbed away. Abe looked around with more confidence now that he saw most people agreed with him. After a moment he went on.

“I care about the people of the Burbs just as much as you—” Marcus suppressed a derisive snort—“but we have to be practical. Sure, we know some of the regulars, even trust a few of them, but most of these people are strangers. New City has survived because we keep the gates shut to strangers. In my personal opinion we shouldn’t let scavengers in
even for screening goods and medical treatment.”

The Doctor cut him off. “Those rules were established years ago and I’m keeping them.”

Abe raised a calming hand. Marcus wondered whether Abe felt he had gone too far or hadn’t gone far enough.

“Now Doctor, you have always served the community well. And we appreciate that. We understand why you want an open-door policy. But these are times of war. We have to put New City first. The scavengers have to be made to understand that.”

Marcus spoke up. “That’s all well and good but you didn’t talk to them. They’re not going to take no for an answer.”

“They’ll have to!” Abe replied.

“Not if they think it’s a choice between getting in or getting killed,” The Doctor said.

“So what?” another member of the Merchants Association chimed in. “You saying we should open the gates to everybody?”

“I’m saying we need to seriously consider it, at least for those we know personally,” The Doctor replied.

The room rose up in an angry babble and the crowd descended into dozens of individual arguments. Abe huddled with the other members of the Merchants Association.