by Schow, Ryan
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 Eighty
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 animo
sity. 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. Tell 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 Eighty-One
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.”
The archer set a rather brisk pace; Maria kept up easily, but Macy began to struggle. Indigo slowed just a touch.
Maria said, “You getting tired?”
“No,” Indigo replied.
“Well then pick up the pace.”
“Macy needs to slow for a second or two, catch her breath.”
“I’m fine,” Macy said, slightly winded.
“While you’re breaking stride for blondie, your father might be in trouble. Those guys aren’t immortal, you know.”
“My dad’s in there, too,” Macy said.
“Well then get the lead out of your ass,” she snapped. “Because right now you’re the weakest link.”
“Calm your tits,” Indigo said. Then to Macy, “You okay?”
“I’m good,” Macy said, picking up the pace. “Ready for a jog, actually.”
“Look who finally showed up for the big game,” Maria grumbled as they broke into a light run.
They jogged most of the way up Lincoln, the road bordering the Golden Gate Park. The moon slid behind the clouds, shedding some of its light. There were shadows of dead cars, abandoned and burnt down homes, buildings destroyed, collapsed and crumbled into the streets. The morning air was cool, a touch chilly, and eerily still.
Indigo had traveled these streets before, both by car (God, she missed the Cutlass) and on foot. The biggest dangers came from the people in the park but usually only during the day. There were predators at night, coyotes and humans alike. This knowledge helped her keep her pace.
They finally reached Kezar Dr. cutting though the corner of the park, which took them to Fell and the start of the Panhandle. On Fell, Macy pulled to a stop, walking and holding her ribs. “I have a stitch in my side.”
“Figures,” Maria said, stopping.
Indigo slowed to a walk, both Macy and Indigo ignoring Maria’s comment.
“I like a girl like you,” Maria finally told Indigo. “If there’s ever anyone who should lead from the front, it’s you.”
“I’m not a leader,” Indigo said, seemingly unappreciative of the remark. “I’m a survivor.”
“And she’s about to be a mother,” Macy added.
“Tell me about these people we’re going after,” Maria said.
Indigo gave her the short version, telling her about the flaming corpses they catapulted into the courtyard, the buildings they blew up in some twisted attempt to close them off from the rest of the city, the Molotov Cocktails they launched in their final attack.
By then they’d reached Ashbury and could smell the smoke in the air. The building was a smoldering inferno by the time they reached it.
“That was our community,” Macy said, an unmistakable heaviness to her words.
“I’m sorry for this,” Maria said, her voice lacking any feeling at all.
“Are you sure?” Macy asked.
Indi
go left the comment alone, and Maria took a moment to respond. It was clear Macy and Maria were getting off on the wrong foot.
“We aren’t the buildings we live in,” Maria said, “as much as we’re the community we form.”
“People matter, and they can be their best selves when they feel safe, when they have the things they need and when they have a purpose,” Macy replied. “Building the community was our purpose, and we had safety and security before those mental midgets decided to go commando on our home.”
“Well then we should gut them like hogs,” Maria said with actual feeling.
“You have more emotion when you talk about killing than you do when you talk about anything else,” Indigo said.
“What can I say?” Maria replied. “I’m prepping for war. You should do the same.”
“I stay ready so I don’t have to get ready,” Indigo said.
Macy snickered and Maria said, “Did you just make that up?”
“No I didn’t,” Indigo said, monotone. “I stole it from someone famous whose name I’ve already forgotten.”
The orange glow of the burning college cast shadows all around. The smoke and destruction had them holding their noses, squinting their eyes and running up Ashbury. On the other side of Grove Street, there was a veritable massacre.
“Well this is a bloody affair,” Maria said when she saw what the carnage in the streets.
“Hold on for a minute or two,” Indigo she said as she pulled a couple of her arrows from the bodies.
She hadn’t had the time to do that before, but now she yanked the many of them free, shook the blood and flesh off the tips, then shoved them back in her quiver.
“Okay, I’m ready.”
They resumed their jog up Ashbury, went right on Fulton then left on Masonic. When they reached Turk, they walked the first two blocks slowly to catch their breaths, then a little more briskly until they reached the USF staircase where they could enter the Lone Mountain campus via the gorgeous split stairway. Indigo figured the cover of the multilayered stairs would be better there. A lot better than walking up the long, open drive.