"Boss"

“Oy! Find anything?”

Lucky started. She had nearly forgotten her companion as she waded through overturned tables, loose papers, and broken glass in the dim light.

“Jesus, Backpack, you nearly sent me through the roof!” she hollered back. “This place is looking pretty grim. Whadabout you?”

“Ehh--…”

Lucky could practically hear his brain working from the floor below her, sizing up some trinket or another and calculating its current market value.

“Nah!” He said at last. She thought she could hear him muttering about the “damn goons” who had come through the plantation before them. And it was clear someone had been there before, though the windows and doors had been boarded up upon their arrival. The pair of them made light work of entering with the use of a crowbar, however, and proceeded to help themselves to whatever remaining valuables they could find.

As if on cue, Lucky heard something large land in the wheelbarrow.

“Now what was that?” she shouted hopefully. “Sounds promising!”

“Just some oversized clock piece!” Backpack bellowed. It was their first catch of the night.

“Don’t know who gives a damn about time now that the world’s ended!” Lucky shot back. “But I’m sure some ‘Zonie will buy it. This place looks like it used to be somethin’, back in the day!”

They continued to search as silence stole through the abandoned house. Sweat dripped down her back and saturated her shirt as she picked the lock on the top drawer of an old dresser. A bird tweedled from outside the window and, after a moment, was answered by another. Southern birds, Lucky thought. They never shut up. With a soft “click,” the drawer gave.

“Yes,” she whispered, and slid her bobby pin back into her bun. Adjusting her headlamp, she peered into the dark space in front of her like a pirate opening a long-pursued chest.

The drawer was full of silk undergarments and stockings—maybe some value there. She ran her fingers through the fabric slowly, reveling in the sensation and drifting into memory of life before the disease.

Suddenly, her fingers clasped around a small, metal object on a delicate chain. Jackpot! She thought, and held her prize to the light.

It wasn’t much to look at, really. Just a tarnished silver locket in the shape of a heart with a keyhole at its center. Engraved swirls rippled across its surface in a simple pattern, like circles in a pond.

Eh, better than nothing.

She slipped the locket into the breast pocket of her vest and zipped it closed.

Convincing the Boss to fund tonight’s heist had taken some work, but she was confident it would pay dividends; and she had certainly needed to be, in order to convince the man in charge to splurge the resources and manpower necessary to pull it off.

An involuntary chill ran through her, and a drip of sweat with an entirely different flavor than simple southern heat trailed wickedly down her spine.

“We’ve got to deliver a full ‘barrow tonight, B!” she said, pulling her damp shirt away from her skin in a fanning motion. “We’ve got to show the Boss this was the right move!”

“Hot out, isn’t it?” Backpack shouted, and Lucky knew he was being cheeky.

“Oh, it’s easy to laugh, isn’t it, when it isn’t your ass on the line!” she called back, a nervous laugh thumping hollowly out of her abdomen. “Do you remember air conditioning?”

“Damn ‘Zonies still got it,” he retorted, and a bitter silence filled the air. The pair of them worked without exchanging words after that.

In spite of her worries, and in spite of the fact that the old plantation had clearly been ransacked before, the evening was fruitful. The two of them wheeled the clock, a silver candelabra, several quality linens, a wool blanket, a glut of silk undergarments, several large canteens that they filled with running water from a nearby stream, a hatchet, an old tub of flour, and several cans of a mysterious seafood medley. The Boss will be pleased.

The walk back to the rendezvous point was pitch black and sweaty. Only the squeaking of the now-heavy wheelbarrow broke the silence. Lucky wiped her brow with her forearm and kicked a rock with her foot. Surely this load will be worth a few protein pucks, she thought. What I wouldn’t give for a nice roast with some yellow potatoes…

Suddenly, the battered old Toyota flashed its lights on and off in the darkness.

“Perfect,” Backpack breathed with audible relief. “Let’s get this junk in the truck and jet.”

Lucky felt far from relieved, however. It would all come down to what the Boss made of their haul. They clambered into the truck while Backpack chattered about haunted plantations, wealthy tobacco growers of legendary status, and murdered slaves and familicide.

“That’s all a big bunch of hogwash,” Moustache said with measured syllables. “Dumb stories, told by idle brains. You’d do best to shut your mouth.”

“I’m just saying it’s plausible!” Backpack retorted. “They never found ‘Wild Bill’ Calhoon. He murdered his pregnant wife Louisa and all the hired help before escaping during the chaos of the disease. They say he had millions tucked away someplace secret, and a labyrinth of underground tunnels!”

“I didn’t see these millions in the back of your wheelbarrow,” Moustache drawled, “unless you was keepin’ it someplace secret, too.”

Backpack sat back in his seat, crossing his arms. “I’m just saying,” he grumbled, “it could be any one of these old plantations.” He gestured out the open window and gazed out into the passing darkness sullenly.

“You just run that by the Boss, see where it gets you,” Moustache said. “I’ll be here to drive you back to the man in charge with your tail tucked between your legs.”

Despite the moodiness now accompanying the three of them in the pickup, they made it past the checkpoint without a hitch. Out of the frying pan…Lucky thought, and into the fire.

The Boss seemed unmoved one way or another when they wheeled the night’s spoils to his feet. Lucky could have sworn she saw his face twitch when she proudly handed him the silk garments, but the moment passed as quickly as it had come. He threw the stockings back into the wheelbarrow and walked away.

“I don’t want to see any of this again. Sell it.”

That was all he said.

Lucky took her earned rations as well as a canteen of hooch back to her room, stretching her neck in every direction. Relief flooded through her at the close of the heist, and she took a generous swig of hooch with a wince at its foul taste.

“Knock knock.”

Backpack rapped on her door frame, smiling. It was clear that a few sips of hooch had wiped away his stormy mood. “Got anything needs washing? I’m heading that way.”

“One sec.”

Lucky smiled and closed the door in his face with a click. She shimmied out of her clothes, tossing her tactical vest to her cot as she did so. Throwing her week’s garments in a worn-out pillowcase and slipping into an oversized shirt, she opened the door and handed the bag to her friend.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll do yours next week.”

“No need, m’dear, no need,” Backpack said with a touch of a faux British accent. “Just help me find Bill Hitchcock’s millions so we can start an empire together.” He chuckled heartily at this, his shoulders moving as he did so.

“Deal,” Lucky said, grinning in spite of herself.

With a two fingered salute, he began to saunter away, whistling an old Irish reel as he did so.

Sitting down on her bed with a book in her palms, Lucky hungrily opened the pages to find where she’d left off. Languidly, as if it was in slow motion, her vest slid from her quilt and onto the floor and landed with a gentle tink.

The locket, Lucky thought. I forgot to give Boss the locket!

She wrestled with her conscience a moment before leaping to her feet. With the tarnished silver trinket swinging beneath her fist, she dashed out of her room, down the hall, and—

—straight into the chest of the Boss himself!

Gasping for breath, Lucky held the locket to his face and breathed, “B—Boss, I for—forgot to give—you this—this—”

She was struck dumb, however, by the look on his face. His eyes were fixed on the locket with a mad gleam she had never seen in his generally stoic gaze.

“Get rid of it!” he hissed, never taking his eyes off the locket. “It’s worthless!”

“But I—,” Lucky said.

“Did you hear me?” the Boss thundered. “I don’t want to see that piece of trash again!”

With that, he practically ran down the hall and out of sight.

Well I’ll be, Lucky thought. I’ve never seen the boss say “no” to a dollar…

As she began the walk back to her room, a thought tangled in her hair like a burr. Why had the locket upset the boss?

By the time she’d made it back to her chambers, a dull dread had stolen over her. Clicking the door shut, she immediately pulled the bobby pin from her hair, sat at her bed, and set to opening the locket. Sweat began to bead on her forehead as she fumbled with the lock, and the bobby pin slipped under her moistened fingers. With a small groan of frustration, she threw the bobby pin to the floor and thrust her hand under her pillow, groping for her trusted multitool. Her pulse throbbed in her temples and her heartbeat thundered in her ears as she whittled through its functions one by one, until at last, she heard the metal screech in defeat. Her hands shook as she pulled the silver heart open to reveal a portrait of a wild-eyed young man on the right. On the left were the inscribed words “To my Louisa, with love. -‘Boss’ B. C.”

Lucky’s cheeks flushed as her heart shot into her mouth. There, in her hands, lay a very incriminating portrait of The Boss himself…

It was as though her room had become a portal into a murder scene and she had been handed the bloodied weapon. Fear filled her up to her scalp, prickling her all over her body as though it had become a phantom limb. She leaned over her feet and retched. He’ll know that I know, she thought. He’ll know.

Reaching for her backpack, she threw a few days’ clothes within it as well as a large bottle of potable water and the protein pucks she’d “earned.”

As she packed, resolve flowed through her, and the way forward into the unknown became a little less obscured.

I’m going to find it, she thought. I’m going to find Bill Hitchcock’s millions and start my own colony.

As the rest of the fortress fell into sleep, she shouldered her backpack, set her jaw, and slipped into the black. She had a very long way to walk.