by Chuck Rogers
They were gearing up for war.
I had one anti-tank grenade back in the bombshelter.
The good news was most of the SOG's new gear couldn't get through the washed-out canyon roads to Malibu, but they had off-road vehicles that could make the same trek I had. If all else failed the SOG could march.
On top of that Ged was training up a cavalry corps.
Hell, I was currrently leading it on its first mission.
Yeah, we were in trouble.
Dickie picked his way down the mountain. It was rougher going downhill but we reached the park floor by midday. Dickie had a topo map and once he found his way over the hill it was easy going. We just took it slow and off trail so as not to be seen. Riding across the park wouldn't take long but I wanted to find the right spot to leave the back door team.
Dickie suddenly froze and pointed.
Did I mention he was good? I'm Force Recon and he saw it before I did.
A thin line of smoke rose in the distance.
I consulted my own mental map and triangulated.
Of course it was the ranger station.
It made sense. It had propane, solar, a water source. The United States park service did not plop down ranger stations at random.
I suspected Malibu had established its first forward base in the park.
I had hoped to hell I would have the team split up before we made any kind of contact. Things were about to get sticky.
Dickie raised an eager eyebrow. "Frame?"
"We rec the shit out of it. Whatever it is."
Belinda spoke up. "It's gotta be the ranger station."
God damn it.
I nodded. "If they've established a forward camp I want to scout the perimeter and check the real estate around it. Then we watch. See who comes and goes. If we're going to take it out we night creep them after dark."
"Fuckin ay." Dickie took out his topo. "Looks like they might be here." His finger traced. "There's a little chain of bigger hills just to the north. Maybe we can get eyes on it from up there."
It would do. I clapped him on the shoulder. "Lead the way."
Dickie took us wide and we spent a good hour and a half making our approach.
I was about to tell Gato to hold the horses while Dickie, Creek and I crept up on foot when a Toyon bush brillliant with red berries spoke to me incredulously.
"Frame?"
I recognized Colin's voice.
God damn it.
Hillbillies and cowboys were apparently better woodsmen than I was. Uncle Jimmy and my recon instructors were spinning in their graves. I was getting old or losing it or both.
I still had my reflexes.
I turned in the saddle and put five rounds through Horse's face. Part of me sickened and died inside. There hadn't been a whole lot of Human Beings before the beam. God only knew how many of us remained.
Now there was one less.
Gato was quick but I had the drop on him and a five round burst in the chest toppled him from his horse.
"God damn you, Frame!" Creek screamed as he tried to bring his weapon to bear. "God damn you! God--"
A very large caliber hunting rifle made a sound like a cannon on the other side of the Toyon bush. The shrub lost all its berries and half its leaves. Creek got God-swatted out of the saddle. Belinda did me the favor of presenting me her back as she tried to spur away. I didn't have to look in her face as I put five rounds between her shoulderblades. Her horse ran out from underneath her and she hit the ground limp.
Dickie was already at full gallop through the trees. He broke hard north for home and hung from saddle using his horse for cover in a way that my ancestors would have nodded in approval at and then turned to me with a scornful 'Why cant you do that?' look.
I spurred headlong after him knowing I was either going to get my head taken off by a tree or my horse was going to break a leg and Dickie and his mount weren't. Dickie presented me mostly a hand holding the saddle horn and one boot hooked over his saddle.
I'd never shot a weapon from horseback in my life.
Then again, a horse was a very large target. I let go of the reins, prayed my horse didn't throw me or pine-clothesline me, and burned the final fifteen rounds in the magazine at Dickie's horse on full auto.
Dickie's mount made a terrible, horse in distress noise. Reloading on a plunging horse was problematic for me at best. I dropped the MP7 on its sling and drew my .45. Dickie broke into a clearing and I put four rounds rapid into the fleeing horse's rump.
Bad move, Frame-o.
I hadn't taken into account that my appaloosa, however beautiful she was, wasn't military trained and did not like having a .45 discharged behind her head. My horse screamed, spun and bucked.
I went flying.
Things went snap, crackle and pop as I pulled a superman through a stand of manzanita. I got my hands up and that saved what there was to save of my face. The tin cloth took the rest of the branch assault like the ancient outdoor armor of kings it was. I rolled to a stop. I lost my .45. The MP7 was still attched to me by the sling. My bladder hurt again but nothing in me seemed broken. I ripped myself free from the demoralized shrubbery and rose.
Dickie's horse staggered like a drunk and screamed. Blood poured out of her from a dozen holes. The horse fell against a tree and went to its knees.
Another stain on my soul.
Dickie was running for his life.
I charged after him and quickly started closing. Dickie might be able to outride me but he couldn't outrun me and cardio clearly wasn't his thing.
A running gunfight through the trees was just my game.
Dickie knew that. He turned as he ran and sprayed wildly behind him. I was a step ahead and put a tree between me and him even as he fired. The second he turned to keep running I came out of cover and gave him a burst. The range was still long and he was a moving target, but I saw the top of his jacket pluck twice and he staggered. "Fuck!"
I came in for the kill.
"Stand down, Dickie! I'll take you prisoner!"
I was lying, and he knew it.
"Fuck you!" He turned and again I was behind cover. He sprayed his magazine empty.
I'd taken the time to reload. I came out from the behind cover and and Dickie jumped behind an oak stump about the size of a Lazy-Boy. I put a burst and then another across the top of the stump to keep him down and honest. Splinters flew. I closed to five meters.
The grenade I had given Dickie looped through the air. It's cotter pin pinged away and it thudded to the the dirt between me and the stump.
"Fuck you, Frame you fucking traitor!"
Giving Dickie a grenade . . .
BAD MOVE FRAM-O.
I high-tailed it like hellfire was on my trail.
It was.
I ran for my life. If Dickie popped up and shot me in the back so be it.
It beat being burned alive.
Dickie thought he was safe behind his stump. He would've been if the grenade had been a frag.
The M15 white phosphorus incindiary grenade has a bursting radius of seventeen meters and if you are within that you need cover, and I mean top cover. The intense heat sends white smoke and burning streamers up into the air like an eruption. The burning phosphorus particles rain down in all directions and I mean rain. They burn for about sixty seconds at five thousand degrees. Dickie was at ground zero, I heard the pop and the whoosh. I felt the heat wash over my back and smelled the brimstone.
I heard Dickie screaming.
"Fuck you, Frame! You fucking traitor. Fuck you! Fuck you, you fuck! Fuck! Fuuuuuuuuck--"
That last fuck rose into the screams of someone burning alive then it suddenly cut off.
You only had to breathe in smoke that hot once and your lungs were gone.
I ran a good forty meters before I looked back.
There wasn't anything to see but swirling, white-hot smoke and trees catching fire.
I heard a shot behind me. It was the pop of a pistol
not the bang of a rifle. I saw Colin rising up from Dickie's motionless horse. His hunting rifle was slung and he held a held a smoking revolver in his hand. Colin gave his pistol the gunfighter spin and holstered it like a magic trick.
What else do you with your Saturday nights, Colin?
Colin took in my mangled face, the vest I was wearing and the forest fire starting behind me. He looked back at the massacred SOG and then just stood there staring at me all laconic cowboy-like. He came from the same staring school as Marshal Miles. Colin stood with his thumb resting on the butt of his pistol and tapped his finger on the grip like he just might draw on me.
God damn it.
His gun hand was shaking a bit.
"First gun fight, Colin?"
"Frame."
"Yeah?"
"What the fuck?"
"I was leading a SOG recconaissance team into Malibu. The woman was going to be inserted as a sleeper agent. Then I saw you and decided to shoot them all."
That was good for a blink.
"I mean, I was going to kill them all anyways, but then you popped up and hastened their demise." I gazed past him. "Any of them still breathing?"
"Not so much."
We stared at each other.
"You know I went in undercover, right?"
"Yup."
I sighed.
"You want me to hand over my weapon?"
"You would?"
"To you?" I shrugged. "Sure."
Colin chewed that over.
"Naw. We're good."
I heard engine noise in the distance.
"Colin?"
"Frame?"
"Want to hear a story?"
"How about I take you to Alice so you don't have to tell it twice."
When did Alice become the Warlord of Malibu?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
No good deed . . .
I TOLD LALLI EVERYTHING, and I mean everything, from slaughtering a whale to meeting Colin and every last thing in between. She didn't shoot me before I got to cannibalism. She didn't ask me any questions. She didn't say a word. Lalli lay against me and listened. Her finger slowly traced the mark of the SOG burned into my arm. It was starting to get light outside when I finished with my murder spree in Malibu State Park.
Long silent moments passed.
I waited for Armageddon.
Lalli sighed and shook her head.
"I do not think I am compatible with this Dez woman."
I was a little shocked. "Uh, no. I don't think you'd like her, and I can only imagine what she'd like to do to you."
Lalli was quiet for more long moments. "You believe if you had told Ged the truth, he would have accepted it."
"You know, I think he would?"
"And you are expected to marry this Dez."
"It's what everyone wants. The SOG doesn't have its culture quite worked out yet, but it's shaping up towards a warrior aristocracy. She's a founding member. I'm their first wunderkind. We're kinda the SOG's first power couple."
"She will be given a territory, and you would be made captain of Ged's praetorian guard."
"Yeah."
"She loves you."
"Yes."
I was grateful she didn't have to ask the other half of that question.
The other unspoken question lay between us.
Lalli answered it.
"So Dez would be your woman. I would be your fuck slave. She would do terrible things to me and I would have pretended to like it."
Jesus.
"You could've lived with that?"
"No, I could not have lived with that."
"So?"
"Dez would have enjoyed abusing my body, but she would have enjoyed my cooking even more. I would have poisoned her, slowly. She would have sickened and died, in the grace of no saint or god. Then you would have made me your wife and I would have born you true sons and daughters of Ged."
Jesus . . .
Lalli had gone full fucking Game of Thrones.
"You want me to confess everything to Ged, beg forgiveness and hand him Malibu and everyone we know on a platter?"
"It is too late for that. He will never forgive you for slaughtering your team."
"You thought of all that, just now?"
"I have listened to you. From what you have said Malibu will not beat the SOG. Even if we can stop them in the canyons it will not be for long. The SOG says you either stand before them as a prospect, kneel as a slave or lay in the ground. They will not be good neighbors. They will keep growing. They will keep getting stronger, and they will never stop. We are isolated. While you were gone Alice brought in the last of the Agoura holdouts. They were but a few hundred and far too many of them women and children and blind. There is no way we can increase our numbers. We cannot afford casualties. Marshal Miles does not have enough officers under arms. I do not think contacting the Men-In Black would be a very good idea."
"Yeah, not so much."
"So we can run, but we know not where. We can fight and most likely we will lose. You had already risen high in the SOG. You would have swiftly become the number two man, and the sword behind Ged's throne. I am not saying you should assassinate him, or I should poison him, but those who are born very large or very small generally do not lead long lives. I see no reason why you should not have succeeded him. Then you would mold the culture of the Sons of Frame."
Jesus . . .
"I wish you had thought of these things and fetched me and Face."
Jesus fucking Christ.
"Do not worry." Lalli took my face in her hand. "It was not in your nature, and if it was, I would not be in love with you."
I looked deep into those great, big dark eyes. I spoke Spanish. "Priestess, what do you want me to do?"
"You must return. You must find a way for us to escape, or you must find a way for Malibu to win." She looked deep into my eyes and I swear I felt the Saint of Death staring through them. "I will not be taken by the SOG. I will never be taken by people like that again."
* * *
WHEN DID ALICE BECOME THE WARLORD OF MALIBU?
Apparently while I was gone. Ted drove me to the meeting. I was a little secretly upset at having missed my vet-comes-home-and-sees-his-dog YouTube moment, but apparently Face was at Cecilia's ranch with her Malibu Schnauzer-Hound littermates getting some pretty intense training.
I watched Malibu pass by.
A lot had changed. The citizens of Malibu had lost their wary 'My home is my castle' attitude and were starting to weld back into a community. There were checkpoints. Lots of people were on the roads, but they mostly walked, or road horses or bicycles. Gasoline was being rationed so when you saw a car or a truck it was loaded with goods or materials going from one point to another. There was construction everywhere, though most of it was people cannibalizing abandoned homes to add to their own. Colin and his dad had made major strides into converting the parkland around the visitor center into a working ranch.
They'd also set up a chicken farm.
Ted told me just about every household had built a chicken coop and put dibs on every new batch of fertilized eggs.
The Hauser boys had also started a pig farm. Jeff had knocked down the sow whose tracks I'd found and had brought back the sounder of piglets. The two surviving Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs of Malibu were in a separate enclosure waiting for the little sows to reach maturity and I was a little shocked to learn this was six months. I couldn't imagine what the mix of a wild boar and a pot-bellied pig would look like but visions of delicious fatty ham danced in my head.
There were lots of horses and I'd brought in eleven more. For cowboys there was a cow shortage but that would change with time. Jeff Hauser waved to me from the back of a camel. Everyone was carrying. The people who had guns were sharing or bartering. News of my return had spread and people waved and whooped and shouted my name as we passed.
"It looks like my speech worked."
"You'd be shocked at how it worked. We really are
becoming a community again."
I gazed upon the progress knowing the SOG was coming for all of it.
90% of these people would end up slaved.
"And you?" Ted grinned. "You are swiftly approaching demi-god status."
I was pretty sure 99% of the citizens of Malibu would betray me like Judas the moment the SOG came boiling out of the park and into their living rooms.
Alice was living at Sophina's place. The ex-mayor had lived with Clarice in a prototypical, 70's era, 'Ladies of the Canyon' Malibu ranch-style. Clarice gave me a great big hug as she let me in. She fondled my face and frowned at the new wounds. "I want to see your sweet ass as soon as possible."
"My sweet ass wishes to be seen."
Clarice led us into the dining room. Alice sat at the head of the table. Mar-J, Jeff, Colin and Keith were there. They all stared at me like a jury as I walked in. Alice steepled her fingers and stared at me in perfect resting bitch poker face.
Ted stepped to one side.
Oh, fuck me.
I had the .45 on my hip. I was pretty sure I could take them all but killing Ted and Mar-J was actually going to hurt my feelings.
I heard footsteps behind me.
Had it really gone Game of Thrones around here?
Would Ged forgive me if I gave him the severed heads of the Malibu City Council?
I didn't see any guns, but I turned real slow.
Cecilia stood in the entryway smiling at a thousand watts.
In her arms Face spasmed at the sight of me and made the most piteous 'my master is back' sounds in the world.
I took a knee.
Cecilia set Face down.
She was huge. She'd gained fifteen pounds since I had seen her. My dog was going to be a monster. Face no longer looked like an abortion of nature. She was losing her salt and pepper puppy coat and coal black was taking over. Her cracked sea-glass, sky-blue eyes no longer looked moronic as they popped out of the black fur eyebrows falling in her face.
My dog was still a puppy and already she was starting to look mad, bad, and dangerous to know.
Face stood there shaking like she would shake apart.