by Pike, JJ
The closer they got to the front doors, the more confused she was. She didn’t recognize the tune. Did the song even have a tune or had Triple-H discovered a channel run by whackos who were on his wavelength and cared more about “free expression” than “holding a tune in a bucket” or “understanding tempo” or “basic rhythm?” It was like being assaulted by a herd of drunk chipmunks or humans who’d sucked down a lungful of helium.
Dominic pushed her ahead of him. She stumbled through the door.
The antechamber the other side of sick bay was filled with kids. Triple-H had done a Pied Piper and brought the children of Wolfjaw Down to his unsealing party. He’d said he’d only bring the “most loyal” and “those who won’t stab you in the back,” and in a sense he’d made good on that promise, but he had to be out of his ever-loving mind. They were going to war. No matter how you sliced this thing—whether she got her way, Abbie prevailed, or Jeff stormed the barricades—whoever stepped outside that door was going to be exposed to MELT. What had he been thinking?
Jacinta backed up against the gun even harder. The kids didn’t need to see this. She had to get them out of there and back to their parents. Charis Erlichman, the head of the elementary school, was in the corner with her charges. She had a book open and facing the children who were huddled around her feet and was pointing at a picture of a mouse in a tutu.
“There’s a mouse in my house…” She turned the page slowly, her eyes deliberately wide and her mouth in an expectant O. The kids made mouse whiskers with their fingers on the sides of their faces. “There are ants in my pants.” Another page, another exaggerated facial contortion, another big gasp. The kids responded by turning their hands into ants, skittering across the floor. She’d trained them well. “There are bees in my bonnet and they chew and itch and sting.”
She laughed and the children laughed with her.
“There are bats in the belfry…”
A hand shot up. This was surreal. They were in an antechamber that reeked of molten metal, death was the other side of the door, a madman had a gun tapping at her spine, and Charis was reading to a bunch of little kids.
“Yes, Anthony?”
“What’s a belfry?”
“Good question.” Charis closed the book and rested her elbows on top of it on her knees. “Does anyone know what a belfry is?”
More hands shot up. Charis smiled and picked someone out of the gaggle to answer Anthony’s question.
Triple-H had mentioned Charis coming to his rooms. Were they an item? A less likely pair Jacinta could barely imagine. He was a burly giant, a few marbles short of a loaf (as he himself freely admitted) and she was this petite doll who loved all kiddies, no matter how bratty or snot-nosed. Had she come here willingly? Surely she had to know how dangerous this operation was.
Triple-H, his blowtorch blazing, turned and grinned in Jacinta’s direction. “The lady herself. Jacinta Baule, woman of the hour. Triple-H wasn’t sure she was going to make it before he cracked the door.” He was decked out in shiny goggles, leather gloves, and one of Neil’s leather aprons. “I know what you’re thinking.” He put his blowtorch down, adjusted the fuel so there was no chance of a random kid burning the place down, and pulled off his gloves. “Hey, Dominic, glad to have you on board.” He ambled toward Jacinta and Dominic, children clinging to his legs and begging him to swing them over his shoulder. “I know what you’re thinking, boss…”
He didn’t.
“You’re thinking this is no place for children.”
Okay, he did know what she was thinking but he was still as mad as a box of rocks.
“Charis agrees with me.” The two of them made moon-eyes at each other across the room. “Triple-H wants the children of Wolfjaw Down to understand that this is living history. Jacinta Baule need not worry. Triple-H and his gal who…” His voice dropped to a whisper which wasn’t a whisper but a breathy confession that bounced off the walls. “The gal who Triple-H hopes will agree to become Mrs. H. very, very soon.” Again with the goo-goo eyes at each other. “Triple-H and Charis Mrs-H-to-be will send them away before we crack the door, but Triple-H wanted these children to know that as long as Jacinta Baule was in charge, they were in safe hands.” He grabbed Theo Prosser, Abbie’s eldest son, by both wrists and swung him idly at his side, Theo’s shoes happily scuffing away at the floor.
Theo was far too big to be swung—he was almost a teenager, if Jacinta remembered right—but he held on to Triple-H and Triple-H held on to him and the two of them had a grand old time of it.
“Triple-H wants everyone to know Jacinta is going to do her best for Wolfjaw Down, even if it means putting herself in danger.”
The kids were still singing their private song, but Triple-H’s eyes narrowed for a second before he lifted Theo high and shouted, “Down, Down, Down. Boogey on down. We all love Down and so we get down, down, down...” He wiggled his hips, a move Jacinta had never expected to witness.
All around them, the children twisted their way into crouching positions. Not one of them hesitated. It had to be a game they knew. There was a lot of giggling, but the song continued.
“Who can stay down the longest, I wonder?” Triple-H locked eyes with Charis. No smiling this time. Just a nod. Then back to the song. “Down, down, down we go in Down. We’re all wriggly worms, on our bellies, in the dirt, finding lots of yumminess and scrumminess and things that go in our tumminess…” He swung Theo, slower this time. There was something about the angle. It had changed. “Down, down, down,” went the sing-song voice, “we all lie down.”
It was a signal. Jacinta got it at the very last second. She ducked as Triple-H swung Theo behind his back in one smooth arc, deposited him in a writhing mass of recumbent children, then brought his fist up to meet Dominic Casey’s jaw.
The gun went off.
The children, already pretending to be worms, ducked their heads under their arms. It was Wolfjaw’s form of duck-and-cover. They’d rehearsed it with Alistair in case of invasions. Practice makes perfect. Jacinta couldn’t see a single face. They were “timid turtles, safe in the sand.” She could hear her old boss’ voice so clearly he might as well have been in the room with them.
Over to her right, Charis used her body as a shield, protecting the smallest of her charges from a bullet that had already left the chamber.
Jacinta threw herself toward the children closest to her without much thought about where she’d land. She wanted them to be safe, like she’d been safe, though she could never give that to them. Her brain was working on three different levels. She was in the room, watching a brutal slugfest; she was back at home with her parents fussing and tutting and loving her in ways she’d never appreciated when it was happening; and she was three minutes in the future wondering what on Earth could make her open those doors. Abbie was right. Death was outside. The children were inside. The flood might or might not come, but MELT meant certain death…
H’s foot was close to her face. She tucked her head, like the kids around her, and prayed for peace. The feet receded. She pulled her head out of the crook of her arm for a second and looked up.
Triple-H had Dominic against the wall, his forearm squeezing Dominic’s trachea. The gun went off a second time.
Jacinta found her feet. They were at the end of her legs where she’d always kept them but they’d momentarily been transformed into wet spaghetti that wouldn’t bear her weight. She was on top of Theo, though she had no recollection of crawling to his position or using her body to cover him. She pushed herself onto all fours. Her wrist was bent at an angle not normally seen in Nature, but she didn’t feel the pain.
Her focus had narrowed to the essentials. All that existed in the world was her, the children, Charis, the door. Those things needed to come together in a plan while Hunter Hensworth Higgs took care of Dominic Casey.
What instruction did Charis use? “Form a caterpillar,” Jacinta shouted. “Find your buddy and link hands.”
The kids wer
e on autopilot and did what they were told, one hand in the hand of their buddy, the other on the shoulder of the child in front of them. The drills Alistair had made everyone practice were paying off big time, now.
“Heads down, tucked tight, no looking left or right.” She’d done this how many times and thought it cruel? But it wasn’t. It was necessary. “Stay low. Here we go. Nice and slow. All aglow.” She had no idea what it meant, to be “aglow” in this instance, but the children chanted with her. It was supposed to keep them focused or make it like a game or something. What was the next line? Could she remember?
Theo slid his hand into hers. “Out the door,” he said.
“That’s right. Good job, Theo. Come on everyone. Out the door, on the floor…”
H and Dominic were locked in a gruesome, grunting wrestling match. Someone’s blood—she couldn’t tell whose it was—had made the whole thing slick and gross.
Eyes forward. Get the kids out. Where was Charis? They had to get the smallest ones all the way across the room and past the gunman. Where was the gun? On the floor? Good. Yes. On the floor. Not in anyone’s hand. No bullets flying anymore. “Theo, you keep everyone going. Just walk with your head down and don’t look back.”
As the children filed past her, Jacinta edged back into the room. She kicked Dominic’s gun away from the wrestlers then regretted it immediately. Why hadn’t she picked it up? She needed a weapon. She could stop this thing. She took two steps away from the melee, then caught sight of Charis.
Little Anthony was crouched beside his teacher, not on his belly like the wiggly worm he was supposed to be. The blood pooled out from under her and seeped into his shorts.
“Make a caterpillar. Make a caterpillar. Anthony, do what the nice lady says…” Charis had her hand on her side where the bullet had ripped into her flesh. She was trying to hide the fact that she’d been wounded from the children. Failing, but trying. “Do as Jacinta says. Hold…” Her face was pale, her eyelids fluttering. She couldn’t leave while Triple-H was locked in mortal combat with Dominic. She was supposed to marry the crazyman and make babies or whatever madcap life they’d been planning. She opened her eyes wide. “Get them out.”
Jacinta grabbed Anthony and pulled him away from his teacher. “Caterpillar…” The word squeaked out of her.
Anthony let go of Jacinta, bent down, and kissed Charis on the cheek. “Get better, Miss Erlichman.”
Behind her, Hunter and Dominic crashed into the walls, neither of them giving an inch. She couldn’t leave Charis there. She had a nurse in the very next room. She could get the teacher to safety, see her bandaged up, make sure everyone lived.
Theo had come back into the antechamber without the older children. He walked past the struggling men without a single glance, took Anthony’s hand and led the procession of infants out through the open archway. He didn’t chant or bark orders. He just did what Jacinta had been trying to do for eight months: He led.
The teacher at Jacinta’s feet leaked blood all over the floor. It was meant to stay inside on a continuous loop, not jet out into the open air with no chance of it making it back to its regular channels. The floor was slick with it, the iron heavy in the air, the hemoglobin bright and brash and utterly out of place.
Jacinta crouched down where Anthony had been keeping guard over his beloved teacher, looped her hands under Charis’ shoulders and pulled but the adrenalin was wearing off and the pain from her mangled wrist threatened to take her out. She was one-armed. That was all she had. She grabbed Charis by the belt and dragged her into her lap. She’d use her legs if her arms were out of order. They were going to frog their way out of the room. She held Charis’ belt fast and used her left leg to push off from the bench. They moved an inch or less, her foot slipping on the bloody rock.
The gun went off again. She closed her eyes. If Triple-H and Charis died here, when all they were trying to do was help her…
She forced herself to look.
Patrice stood over the two men, gun in hand. “Next shot takes one of you out.”
Triple-H gripped Dominic by the lapels of his coat. Dominic had his hand on H’s windpipe. The men panted hard and heavy.
Then H saw Charis in her lap.
He dropped Dominic like a bag of basmati that the mice had ruined. Dominic was an afterthought. A nothing. Trash. He scooped Charis off the floor, muttering and moaning. Jacinta didn’t know who was saying what.
“Don’t leave me.”
“It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s all going to be fine.”
“Patrice is right here. She can patch you up.”
“I love you, my little butterfly. Don’t leave me.”
Charis was still in the game, her arms loose around his neck, her head on his chest.
He reached for the gun and pried it out of Patrice’s hand.
Jacinta couldn’t believe he’d do it. Then again, Dominic had wounded his true love. If he pulled the trigger there would be those that would say he had every right.
H handed the gun to Jacinta. “I need the nurse. You keep him in check.” He kept talking as he exited to the sick bay. “Whatever you’ve said in confidence he’s carried to that worm-boss-traitor, Jeff. Expect Steckle’s men to be here soon. They won’t wait until tomorrow. I was wrong.”
His voice faded.
Jacinta was on the floor, swimming in Charis’ blood, the gun jittering in her good hand, and a man with three times her strength looking down at her with a curled lip. If he came at her, she’d lose. No question.
“You move and I’ll wing you.” The gun shook so hard she feared it would spring out of her hand.
“You don’t have it in you.” Dominic didn’t sound like himself. She’d relied on him for guidance and advice but all along he’d been carrying her plans to Jeff. How could she have been so wrong about the people around her? If she’d have guessed anyone was a double-agent it would have been Jon. And maybe he had been. Who knew? Was anyone solidly on her side? Abbie. Abbie, whom she’d handed off to be muzzled. What a loser of a leader she was. Dominic shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“Last warning,” she said. Sweat ran from her forehead into her eyes.
Dominic stepped away from the wall. Jacinta aimed at his kneecap, but she didn’t have a second hand to steady the gun and the recoil took it high and wide and the slug buried itself in the wall beside him.
He laughed. “Ineffectual to the end.”
She used her mangled wrist to hold the gun roughly in place and pulled the trigger a second time.
He spun. Like they do in the movies. Slow-mo and blood spray and a surprised look on his face. She thought he cursed her name, but that could have been part of her hallucination because she passed out before she slumped in an inglorious heap on the floor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
MARCH 2022
“Jellyfish fly…” Sean was feverish. Babbling. His eyes rolling around like marbles on a playground. “Sky, sky. Got to fly. Go bye-bye. Wonder why.”
“Is he coming round?” Hedwig hovered over Barb who had already fed her patient a “natural sedative.” It wasn’t strong enough. They needed real drugs. Pharmaceuticals.
No matter how Hedwig fussed and fretted, Barb’s instructions never wavered. Hedwig was to leave Sean with her and go to the drug meet. He was concussed. He needed time to heal. She wouldn’t let him come to any harm. Hedwig and Stuart were to go on ahead. Cautiously. Death had a plan. Their job was to avoid crossing paths with him. If they didn’t, Barb was quite clear, they’d pay.
Stuart, the soldier-not-soldier, was already booted and suited and ready to roll. He’d claimed Sean’s backpack and boots as his own. He waited for her outside the door.
“Can I trust him?” she whispered.
“Put your trust in Him, always.” Barb kissed her cheek and waved her away.
The dogs had arranged themselves around Sean’s sickbed. They watched the two women, eyes wide and bright, tongues out, ears up. Apart from L
exie, who lay on her own blanket and yawned while her puppies suckled. Barb had said one of Lexie’s pups would save her, but they were nothing more than squirming, eyeless, handfuls of pink and pudge. Hedwig drew her finger along the fat little belly of the cutie closest to her. Lexie raised her head and eyed Hedwig but didn’t protest. If one of those pups was destined to save her she was going to have to live at least a few more months. They wouldn’t be able to do much of anything other than roll around, eat, and clamber over each other for a while.
Hedwig stood and tousled KC’s enormous head. “Look after her for me. Don’t let anyone hurt her. You hear me?”
Barb laughed. “You should have seen her when those military types came through here. She made at least one of them soil his drawers. She won’t let them take me. You’re fine. Now, shoo. You go and do your part and I’ll do mine. Shoo.”
Before she exited Barb’s wooden tent, Hedwig felt for the gun in the back of her trousers. She couldn’t very well march Stuart at gunpoint from here to the other side of the quarry.
But…
Yeah…
She needed both hands (in case she fell or had to engage in hand to hand combat), but she needed her gun close to hand (Pig potential was heavy with this one). The sensor in her gut hadn’t stopped blaring warnings at her. He wasn’t one of the good guys. She shouldn’t trust him.
The guy upstairs, yes. The guy outside the door, no. Him, yes; him, no.
She grabbed a length of Barb’s bark-stripped rope and made herself a thigh-holster. Not elegant, but very practical. She strapped her .45 to her leg, good and snug, then practiced drawing her weapon a couple of times. It was going to get snagged if she didn’t pull hard, but it was definitely faster than having it in the small of her back.