by Schow, Ryan
“Don’t make yourself a target,” Marcus had said to Nick a week ago when he was trying to help him prepare for combat shooting. “Guys like you, if they get caught in the thick of it and they don’t know what they’re doing, they plant their feet and stay put, shooting, hoping to God they hit their target before their target hits them. If you’re going to do that, just eat a bullet and get it over with.”
So Nick moved constantly, his aim decent, his confidence climbing. He followed Marcus’s training because it was spot on, and as much as he and Marcus picked at each other, the man was in his element and Nick was better off for listening.
When the six started hearing the click, click, clicking of their enemies running out of rounds, Marcus said, “This ain’t no video game,” meaning when they were out of ammo, you didn’t press X to reload, or whatever.
Their almost reckless barrage of gunfire, matched by the precise and almost accurate shots of the invading six produced a tremendous amount of dead bodies.
“Where the hell do they keep coming from?” Nick finally asked under his breath.
“Just stay on them,” Rider growled.
Rider’s group must have taken out sixty or seventy of these paper tigers. Adult babies who didn’t know how to shoot a real gun, much less hit anything but walls and the outsides of a few shoulders and arms.
“Anyone hit?” Jagger asked.
“Yeah,” Rex said. “Grazed. Nothing solid.”
“Nick?” Marcus asked.
“Got Sherwood Forrest stuck in my face, but other than that I’m golden.”
No one else spoke up. As Rider stood there in the dim light watching this never ending pack of morons close in on them, he took a deep breath, readied himself for the next phase.
“Who’s out of ammo?” Rider said.
Everyone grunted and still there were twenty or thirty more men out there. Fortunately it looked like they were out of ammo, too. Rider stepped out from behind his cover into the dim lamp-lit foyer and stood there. He wondered, who’s going to shoot first? He knew there would be five guns on the first clown to pop off a round, but was there even a round left between them? Was the threat of guns officially over?
Marcus followed Rider’s lead. He stepped out into the foyer and not a single shot was fired. Both men dropped their guns, unsheathed their blades and let this clan of fools see it. The foyer was littered with the woes of the dying and the dead. Their pitiful dying. Their dead.
The six still stood.
All those eyes, Rider thought. Angry eyes, scared eyes, eyes with so many emotions running through them. These were boys against men. Would the numbers really matter? They might.
But if they played things right, they might not…
Several of Lone Mountain’s defenders inched forward with different weapons, many of them makeshift, all of them lethal by the looks of it. As the anxious masses stepped around the bodies, through the gore and began to close in around them, Nick stepped into the arena, cracked his knuckles and made them into fists.
Jagger, Rex and Stanton were there, too, all with knives at their sides.
“Never bring fists to a knife fight,” Jagger mumbled. He tucked a blade into Nick’s hand and Nick quietly thanked them.
Then it was on again: round two.
All new weapons.
The first few attackers rushed in, followed by seven or eight more and they all fell to blades. Rider’s six half-mooned their defensive position. After that, guys started coming in with do-it-yourself shields and metal pipes heavily wrapped in duct tape; one guy even had a sword, which he managed to stick in Stanton’s leg when everyone rushed in at once.
Stanton stepped wrong, saw the blade now stuck in his thigh and the look of surprise on the kid’s face. The ex-broker was no slouch though, and he wasn’t slow. He yanked his leg back, stepped in and sent the kid to meet his maker. When he was done, Stanton fended off two more guys, then snatched up the sword and pushed forward into the masses, his gait awkward, but his aim true. He was stabbing anyone who got close.
The clan eventually converged on them, getting past the six’s defenses enough for Jagger to fall, Rex to fall, Nick to fall, Stanton to fall, then finally for Rider to fall.
Marcus was the last of them. He was still standing, still fighting.
Struck mercilessly with swinging metal pipes and jabbing, cracking bats, Marcus’s irritation grew. Taking deep breaths, he assessed each strike against him on the fly, categorizing it in microseconds as either potentially lethal or as non-lethal. So far, in the frenzy, most shots hit his shoulders, his arms, his sides. These were all non-lethal, and he was no stranger to pain. But being clubbed in the fingers, on the wrists, cracked on the elbows and on the head…these once manageable strikes were now taking a toll.
His fists were blocks of steel though. His arms light, but ferocious. The KA-BAR blade he held was an extension of his arm and it continued to swing, to slice, to kill. Faces were trenched open, necks rented and turned into red fountains, arms sundered, fingers notched.
He saw the numbers dwindling as he tripped over bodies, slipped in blood slicks, fended off haphazard advances and the constant rush of attackers.
Time, however, was a merciless foe. It sapped his energy, drained his optimism. His arms and legs turned to rubber, his breath coming fast, too shallow. The fight in him was waning against what was once a boundless will and there weren’t enough stores of anger to push through it.
Seeing his swift decline, the pipes and bats came in harder and faster, his response time slowing. He fought with the last of his vigor to hold his balance, but one misstep, one big slip in a pond of blood cost him everything.
He went down on one knee, his energy nearly exhausted trying to keep his balance.
He was now being attacked on the half-beat, all his responses off. His hand was cracked, the big blade dropping, and when he drew his arms up to stave off the flurry of weapons, he felt the relentless beating of his arms, his knuckles and eventually his head. Soon he, too, was overwhelmed by the masses, and for the first time in his life, Marcus Torrino fell.
Chapter One Hundred Sixty-Three
The college’s soaring gothic ceilings and bare walls echoed the hollow, animated sounds of groaning, sobbing and pain-filled screeching.
Bullets had done a number on the clan. In addition to the scores of dead, stray bullets pocked the walls, tore apart the ornate woodwork, splintered doors, trenched out the hardwood floors and shattered glass.
Then came the blades.
Between the bullets and the blades, the clan realized what it meant to be paper tigers. These video game warriors didn’t stand a chance against true mercenaries, and they didn’t stand a chance against the damage done to them. They didn’t know squat about tending to gunshot wounds in the field, let alone how to apply a life-saving tourniquet.
Guys who’d been shot were laying in swamps of their own blood, pansy hands pressed against bullet holes, viscous fluid bubbling up from the wounds, leaking through their fingers. Some of these same crybaby fools were wearing belts they could’ve used to compress all these opened vessels, not knowing they might have been able to save their own lives.
But war was a man’s game. No place for paper tigers.
Those who survived were trying to assess the horrifying situation. They had no clue what to do. Their friends were dying and there wasn’t a doctor among them. The three year med student they’d been using for a clan doctor, he was lying in the corner, six bullets in his chest, his face slack, a line of red drizzling down his chin. He didn’t make it.
Anyone with open wounds, they wouldn’t make it either.
What happened was there were a couple of dozen guys wandering around in oceans of gore, shell shocked and pale, unable to understand the grisly, the macabre, the appalling nature of their now dire circumstances.
A couple of the guys slipped in the carnage and fell. A couple more sat down against a wall, pulled their knees up to their chests and
cried in the dark. More still grabbed their possessions and disappeared into the night, not wanting the retribution from Lisandro that would certainly follow, or the responsibility of cleaning up such a mess.
“Lisandro will want them in his office,” someone with some sense of authority announced after he got done clubbing the last of the six assailants in the head.
His name was Sparkler, a nickname he got in grade school that stuck with him. Sparkler was never anyone special. Just a guy who survived. Sparkler was speaking to Alex Reed, though, and Alex was certainly someone. An old friend of Lisandro. A twenty-something with little compunction and no respect for the lives of anyone he called enemy. People only looked up to him because they didn’t want to be beaten down by him. The kid was a thug, a bully, and he was dangerous.
Alex looked down at the six men and said, “Let’s drag them down to Lisandro, see what he wants to do with them.” Looking up for what felt like the first time, assessing the situation from a position of power, he barked, “How the hell did six guys kill almost every last one of us?!”
Those zombies wandering around the hallway, they stopped what they were doing when the junior enforcer’s voice echoed through the foyer and down the long hallways.
He waved everyone over, then said, “I need eleven volunteers. One guy for each arm including Sparkler.”
Following Alex, the twelve volunteers dragged the clubbed, stabbed, beaten bodies of the six downed men to Lisandro’s office.
Lisandro and his father, Gunderson, had been arguing. There was a loaded gun sitting on Alex’s desk. The naked girls in the cage were pressed to the back, tucked away in the shadows, silent, or hesitant perhaps.
When Lisandro learned his men were less than victorious in the attack, the eighteen year old was horrified.
“Why weren’t you out there with us?” Alex said, cautious at first, his anger sitting just behind his words, his hands becoming fists. He flashed a look at Gunderson, then let his heated gaze settle back on his friend and boss.
“Because I told him not to be,” Gunderson snapped. Alex’s attention flicked back to Gunderson.
Lisandro’s face mirrored Alex’s already incensed face. He looked at Gunderson, his face turning red, his jaw flicking.
“And why would you say that?!” Lisandro boomed at his father.
Gunderson zeroed in on his son and screamed, “These foolish kids work for you! This is what they do! They insulate you. Protect you. What place do they have to ask you anything?!”
Alex’s gun was out lightening quick, but Gunderson ripped it from his hand even quicker, startling him. Gunderson then spun the gun and pistol-whipped the kid four times on the head until he staggered back a few steps, wobbled, then collapsed in an unconscious heap. Turning to Lisandro, he said, “Very rarely does a king go into battle.”
“I know many kings who’ve gone into battle,” Lisandro argued.
“Personally?” Gunderson snapped.
He rolled his eyes, then through gritted teeth said, “No, not personally.”
There were eleven men standing there looking at Alex in a heap on the floor with the other six men who were also laid out on the floor before Lisandro. None of the eleven said anything. They were just realizing that being in the king’s chambers was not all it was cracked up to be.
“Well then I’m not a king,” Lisandro said, waving a dismissive hand.
“No,” Gunderson replied, “you’re still a boy trying to play a king, and this is no time for it.”
“I should’ve been out there,” he mumbled.
Gunderson turned to the eleven and said, “How many of your friends are dead out there?”
No one said anything.
“SPEAK!” Gunderson roared.
“Most of them,” one of the kids squeaked out.
Gunderson turned to his son and said, “You would surely be among them with all your teenage bravado and your testosterone fueled stupidity!”
Now there was another gun in the room. It was in Lisandro’s hand and it was aimed at Gunderson. “I whipped your ass before and I’ll do it again!”
Gunderson took a step forward, then said, “I let you win because you’re my son.”
“So you say,” Lisandro hissed, thrusting the pistol at his father for emphasis.
“But then you did something stupid. You made it clear I’m only your father on paper. That the world of fathers and sons no longer exists. Why would you say that?”
“Because it’s true!”
“You are an ignorant mutt,” Gunderson growled, stepping forward and swatting the gun away.
His upper cheek quivering with rage in the light of a dozen candles, Lisandro whipped the gun back up, yanked back the slide and chambered a round. Something cruel entered his eyes. Something like animosity. Or retribution. His jaw flicked. The air in the room suddenly felt stuffier than it was.
At that moment, one of the eleven boys leaked out the back, then another. The remaining nine stood paralyzed, not sure what to make of this power struggle.
With the real possibility of a change of guard taking place, those same nine boys were smart enough to stand in service of their boss (whomever that may be) rather than be known as cowards who tucked tail and ran.
“Are you going to be a man for once in your life?” Gunderson said, his voice raw from yelling, his hands rocked with violent tremors.
“Stop being so condescending,” Lisandro grumbled, eyes on his father, his proverbial balls ready to drop.
“You need to correct this situation,” Gunderson said, ignoring the gun. “You need to do it now!”
“Oh? And how do you propose I do that?” Lisandro said, the barrel sagging under the weight of his father’s suggestion.
Gunderson looked over at the three naked girls still in a cage and said, “Start by getting those girls into some clothes and out of that damned cage. They’re not animals! My God, have some decency!”
Lisandro glanced over at them, in their oversized aviary, tucked away in the shadows of the room. The nine boys did not look at them. They knew the rules. The girls were there for Lisandro’s pleasure, and not for anyone else’s. To look upon Lisandro’s girls meant severe beatings, exile, or even death, if he was in a mood.
One of the girls cleared her throat. A skinny Asian girl with small breasts on a boyish frame. Standing at the edge of the shadows, her delicate little fingers wrapping around the bars, she said, “Excuse me Mr. Gunderson, but we like it in here.”
Gunderson blinked back the girl’s statement like he’d somehow gotten dust in his eyes.
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t look at them,” Lisandro said.
The boy was chewing on his rage, but if he told his father not to look at them and the old man did anyway, Lisandro would lose his grip on control.
“Shut up,” Gunderson snapped.
“Yeah,” the blonde girl said, stepping up. She was running her hand down the Asian girl’s back seductively, trailing a finger over her butt cheek. “We like it in here.”
“Aren’t you cold?” he asked, his eyes on her eyes.
“We’re just as we need to be,” the Asian girl said, pressing her chest seductively through the bars.
Gunderson looked past the two girls to the third, a severely underage girl who said, “I want out.”
Lisandro glanced from his father to the girls, specifically to the one who was not happy, and then over to the nine boys still standing there working hard not to look.
“You will STAY!” Lisandro roared at the trio of girls. When he heard the slight whimper, Lisandro stood, walked past his father to the cage and emptied the entire magazine into all three girls.
No one moved. Not one of them even blinked.
“That was unnecessary,” Gunderson finally said, calmly as his enraged child returned to his desk and changed out mags.
Looking at the boys, then pointing down at the six bodies before him, Lisandro said, “Tell me these are the last of them. T
ell me that stupid school of theirs burnt to the ground! Somebody please, make this clear to me so we can end this!”
No one spoke.
He shot the first boy he saw. The kid with the stupid nickname. Sparkler fell down dead while the remaining eight stood frozen, their friend’s blood all over them.
“I think the school is burning,” someone reported in a very small, very timid voice, “but no one that went there came back.”
“Not even Bear?”
The boy sadly shook his head.
“Who’s got the fastest legs?” Lisandro said, his voice faltering.
“I do, sir.” Same kid, same voice.
“Good, thank you. I want you to run down to the school, give me a situation report, then triple-time it back, are we clear?”
“Yes sir. Perfectly clear, sir.”
“Good, now will someone wake up any of these clowns that aren’t dead? Starting with Alex.”
Chapter One Hundred Sixty-Four
For a mile or so, Indigo stalked through a darkness illuminated only by the light of the moon through the clouds. She heard Maria and Macy behind her, so she didn’t slow her pace. Being the early hours of the morning, they didn’t encounter much in the way of trouble. A stray dog here and there. A pack of coyotes trotting down the street like they owned it.
“I didn’t know we had coyotes,” Macy said.
“There were about a hundred or so last year, fifteen the year before that,” Maria said. “They hide in Golden Gate Park and in pockets of the surrounding areas.”
“Well aren’t you just a walking encyclopedia,” Macy said.
“As a matter of fact, I am. I have a photographic memory and I read a lot. My database is pretty full of fun facts that will be useful almost never.”
Macy laughed, but Indigo wasn’t amused.
“Where did you say you were from?” Indigo asked.
“Palo Alto.”