“We’ll have to call in re-enforcement from Bossier’s guard!” the Humvee’s driver complained.
“Captain says we’ll need to call in the Marines!” The truck driver replied having to shriek over the engines and confusion.
Dexter couldn’t be bothered to care if this were the end of the World. It wouldn’t be worth saving if she didn’t make it.
“Hey?!” He shook her shoulders. Her eyelids fluttered and she turned to look at him.
“Hey…” He was astonished. Her voice dishwater weak but entirely lucid. They were strapping her into all kinds of portable equipment. They unpacked a small portable EKG and hooked her to it. The line that indicated her pulse was faintly vibrating.
“Leona tried to buy us off with gifts from Kelley Pharmaceutical Enterprises. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, even if it comes from the Devil’s stables. We’ve got the newest finest tech of any of the Armories in the surrounding counties. Now we can stick it to her with class. We can save her.” Mickey glared defiantly into Dexter’s eyes. He nodded with a tiny smile.
“Hey, Jane.” Dexter took her hand. He was surprised to feel her clutching his hand in return.
“Did they get out? Did I stall her?”
Dexter felt like crying but bit his lip. This was no time to break down. He refused to accept that this was the end for her. She would live through this today. She was going to make it so she’d have to go into protective custody with him. Face the press conferences and the angry backlash from Leona’s exposed posse of crazed female gangsters. She had to because she was the strong one. He couldn’t do this on his own.
“The kids are alright.” He winked. This was an inside joke between them that had come out of Kingsley’s reign of terror.
Jane grinned and sent cracks through the blood caked around her mouth.
“You’ll be okay…” She swept a shaking hand over his shoulder.
“Don’t… Don’t talk like you’re saying goodbye. You’ve got to live. I can’t do this without you, Jane.” Dexter laid a shaking hand on her face.
Her moment of despair passed as quickly as it came. She coughed up a blood clot and shook her head.
“Cowboy up, dude! I’m not cashing out that easily…” She broke into a coughing fit.
“She’s the real army of one.” Mickey smiled, running a hand over Jane’s head to smooth down her wild blonde hair.
There was an engine’s sudden roaring gaining ground on the Humvees back bumper. A banshee’s voice was screaming at the top of her lungs.
Dexter spun on his heels. His eyes met Annie’s rage crazed eyes. She was gunning for as many soldiers she could drop to avenge Libby’s sudden death.
“Not out of the woods yet, ladies and gents. Take over for me, Dexter?” Mickey rolled head over heels to the Humvee’s bumper training a Remington bolt action tactical to the Jaguar’s front wheels.
“This could get messy…” She pulled back the bolt and held her breath.
*****
Chapter 25
The fire in Shreveport was caught on satellite cameras before the rest of the world knew what was happening. The evening news was lighting up with the unexplained panic that Shreveport suffered in silence as its citizen-soldiers tried to keep Leona’s criminal cancer from metastasizing to the rest of Louisiana.
Captain Matheson and Sergeant Manson rode one of the Humvees to a quaint neighborhood and popped out.
“Let’s move, guys.” The Sergeant motioned for Harrison and Joseph to pile out.
“You can walk all right on your own, yeah?” Joseph laid a hand on Harrison’s shoulder.
“I’ll get back to you on that, Gramps.” His eyes crossed still stunned to be alive. His head swiveled around to look at Captain Manson.
“What are we doing?” Harrison was obviously terrified. As long as Leona was free, he could never rest easy.
“Standard issue vehicles aren’t safe. Kelley’s expecting us to be in one, so she’ll blow 10. The only way to go toe to toe with a beast like this Hellcat is to meet her on her own turf.” Captain Matheson’s eyes darted about the neighborhood as though he expected the shadows to march at her command.
Sergeant Manson ran to a rundown shanty. He dove into a toolshed for a few minutes, letting the doors swing wide open. An electric blue Corvette emerged.
“Get in!” He still held the MG3 in his free hand.
They all piled in. Sergeant Manson pressed the machine gun into the Captain’s hands.
“Might as well take the guns, Captain. You can use my chest as a sight. I trust you not to burn my eyebrows.” The Sergeant shrugged as though it didn’t matter either way.
“If I do you can shave them and then paint yourself up like a geisha.” The Captain’s teasing didn’t hide the massive stress he was under.
They tore out of Manson’s driveway spinning mud into the air. The Porsche Spyders that had pursued Kingsley before closed in on them moving in cyclone motions through the streets.
“They’re just a diversion. Double back to the Shelby crash sight. We’ll start from there and sweep out. Leona’s good but she’s not a goddess. If she escaped on foot, which is the most likely, then she couldn’t have gotten more than two miles from there in this length of time. If she escaped in the back of another car, she might have shot 10-15 miles easily by now. For that reason, we’ll go wide and circle the next 30.” The Captain loaded a fresh clip into the machine gun and leaned over the Sergeant’s chest warily watching the streets.
Joseph looked at Harrison. His hair was tossed about in an unheard gale force. Over the street war’s clamor, a newscast helicopter had neared the scene.
“The cavalry! You’ve got a tactical radio in this thing, right, Sarge?”
“Roger that, sir. Time to make contact with civilization.” Sarge twisted the dials. There was static as suddenly the reporter’s voice broke over the channels like an angel of mercy.
“Do you copy?” The Captain snatched up the mic practically pleading for contact. His responsibility was more than any man should ever have to shoulder.
“Hello? Er, sorry, roger that. This is Kendra Reagan with Hot News Channel 16. Your voice is being played across live television. Would you tell me your name, first, and then what you’re seeing down there on the ground, please?”
“This is Captain Derek Matheson. Currently, I’m witnessing the overrun of Shreveport by a piracy syndicate controlled by Leona Kelley of Kelley Pharmaceutical Enterprises.” Matheson squeezed his eyes shut. When he said it aloud, this situation sounded utterly ridiculous.
“That’s an, um… steep accusation. But one founded by the evidence of a burning city that’s descended into pandemonium. Could you color in the gray areas for me? What’s going on down there, Captain? Why is everything catching fire? How many people have been injured or killed? The world hasn’t been this scared for Louisiana since Hurricane Katrina.” Kendra Reagan’s voice cracked. The world had been seared by Shreveport’s flames.
“Honestly, the full body count is not yet known. We had confirmed that the entire police force was strategically assassinated before the Guard actually converged on the scene. There are two stations within my general locale that have been incinerated with their victims inside. The fire continues to spread as the Shreveport Fire Department has been compromised. We have teams converging to liberate the firefighter staff currently, but the evac is a slow process as there is an outbreak of guerilla tactics on the street. Shreveport has been overrun by what appears to be an entirely female criminal organization in possession of a fleet of vintage stock cars. You’re looking a nightmare version of rogue streetcar racers. The situation has been compounded by the confirmed fact that most of the medical service in the city have been infiltrated by these female gangsters doubling as registered nurses and medical assistants. Hospitals are a hot zone.” Captain Matheson juggled the walkie and the machine gun.
“Could you please elaborate for me what the cause of the conflict is?”
> “It’s an illegal drug war, ma’am. Leona Kelley has allegedly stolen, syndicated, and means to mass-produce chemical research that was labeled contraband by the FDA. I’m not at liberty to expose further details. A word of warning to the civilian soldiers throughout the state. I’d send a more official message, but my team and I are currently in pursuit of Kelley, who has escaped. Louisiana is under quarantine from the rest of the Union until this situation is under control. If this cancer spreads over the state line, it will metastasize up the Eastern Seaboard. Our national security is forfeit if Kelley’s syndicate spreads to Washington.”
Captain Matheson never got to finish his statement. The helicopter’s news camera had zoomed in on the Corvette they’d traced the radio signal too. It was spinning in the center of the street, shedding its doors and tires in a shower of molten rubber and steel.
A single figure stood at the head of the street. She had a Bazooka on her shoulder. The Corvette had begun to spin in roasting donuts when she’d shot the gas station several hundred yards behind it. A cry of terror went up into the night as people from the surrounding neighborhood began to flee the scene.
“Good evening, Kendra Reagan. My name is Leona Kelley. I’m ready for my interview.”
The entire world bristled as her metallic voice tuned into the news cast.
*****
Chapter 26
The Corvette rolled out of control. Joseph coughed convulsively. They say that when some people die they see their lives flashing before their eyes. That wasn’t exactly the case for Joseph Kingsley. He saw only glimpses in reverse. His life in the present and many years’ worth of failures as a father that had led to Shreveport’s demise. Leona Kelley was only fire. It had been Lucien Kingsley that had ignited that tinder box.
Where would this end? The chemicals that Leona now had in her possession could cause a global catastrophe. Used in the right way, it could cripple any government by decimating its leadership, either by transforming them into the walking dead or making them the dead’s victims.
Joseph wasn’t thinking clearly. He was certain that this was death and this strange ringing in his ears was his adjustment to the dimension he’d passed into. In all his life of medical science, he’d never thought to consider the world beyond this one.
The doors had been torn off in the explosion. The Sergeant came tearing through the rubble. His clothes were on fire. He was screaming words Joseph couldn’t understand. Joseph couldn’t move. He felt Sergeant Manson bow over the back seat and haul him free of his blazing seat belt.
They ran into the street where Harrison had rolled over onto his knees and was staring with gritted teeth.
Captain Matheson had scooped up the Sergeant’s discarded machine gun. He stood at the edge of the blaze with the gun trained to Leona Kelley. She continued to speak to the news crew via a headset.
“What you are witnessing, Miss Reagan is the venerable Captain Derek Matheson attempting to draw me away from civilian Shreveport. It is the simple ploy of bating a cat by posing as a canary. I must applaud him as feigned vulnerability is military strategy extraordinaire. It would have worked with lesser of my kind.” Kelley tossed her head, defiantly.
“What kind would that be? What about you sets you apart from the rest of them?” Reagan was the narrator for the first of many society-altering horrors.
“I am one of the dreamers. Those the foolish masses called tyrants, dictators, extremists. One of the curious innovators of society. And I am not alone.”
She snapped her fingers. Out of the blazes they came, dragging their rusting chains behind them.
Now they could see the darker side of this medical enterprise. Now they saw Leona Kelley for all that which made her the scourge of the Underworld.
Though obviously female, the warriors that emerged from the flames had been viciously and strategically mutilated. Without extensive medical research that would leap centuries into the future in understanding the human body, no one could explain what had been done to them. They appeared to be suffering from something like extreme Harlequin Ichthyosis; their skin had bubbled up in hard patches like scales and the blood vessels around their eyes had swollen bright red and even burst.
This had no doubt been generated by one of her wonder drugs. Their eyes were milky and smoking as they too suffered symptoms of the debatable Spontaneous Human Combustion. They’d been dressed in costumes much like antique Raggedy Ann dolls. Behind themselves, they dragged huge rusting log chains that were woven with shrunken human heads and extremities. Some of the bodies they drug behind themselves were only partially decomposed. The bones had been fitted with brass piercings that turned their sharp sides outward. It was clear that Leona had crafted these weapons. To bludgeon, someone with the corpse of their deceased was a means of exercising psychological control.
The TV-watching world sat transfixed as the high-definition cameras captured the full depravity of this situation, the local station now broadcasting to every major station in North America and most of the world. It had become all too clear how society had failed. These young girls had been deformed and coerced in a terrorism campaign not by military powers but by a trusted and trending corporation. The affinity for things that shined had allowed for this atrocity to fester even in sleepy Shreveport, where Harrison Kelley had expanded his pharmaceutical empire outside the usual centers of power.
Leona reveled in her role as arch-villain, declaring herself guilty of everything and anything she might ever be tried for. “Tonight I shall gather the first of my tributes. I will expect many more. I am building my own personal kingdom out of your business empire, Mr. Kelley. Also, I’d like to inform you that I’d like a divorce. You are currently the only thing standing between me and my official rise to power. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I didn’t need to only make a spectacle of you. I needed to eliminate you because you were too righteous. You wanted to pioneer the biochemical market without getting your hands dirty? I must eliminate my only competition. The reformed and magnanimous Harrison Kelley!” Leona swung her hand again. Drone fiddles began to hum from unseen corners of the night. The Dolls began to sing Pie Jesu in unison. History unfolded as a street lit opera.
There was no time to react to the ridiculous scene. The Captain was distracted just long enough for Leona to hold out her hand for one of her dolls to hand her a Medieval lance that was an obvious prop of this extravagant show.
Before the eyes of God and Hot News Channel 16 Leona impaled Captain Matheson through his shoulder. His screams of pain echoed throughout the whole tuned-in world.
The Sergeant shrieked a curse and bolted towards her. She shouldered the one pole that Matheson writhed on and held out her free hand for another. Sergeant Manson anticipated he’d share a mutual fate and sidestepped her as she thrust it forward. She giggled and stepped on the handle of one that had laid unseen by her foot. The force of the upward thrust and his onslaught cause him to accidentally impale himself through the collar bone and out his shoulder. She hoisted him into the air as he coiled his legs around the lance to keep himself from dangling and hurting himself more.
The two soldiers shrieked over the pious song. Leona’s Dolls wailed bitterly despising their anthem as if it was battery acid in their teeth. They swung the chains clumsily like whips and beat the soldiers where they hung. Bits of human flesh, their own and that of the dead, stuck to them along with bones and brass piercings.
“That’s all we had time for, folks! Enjoy the refreshments and expect more to come!” Leona touched the two lances together and performed a tight bow.
As if on cue, the Humvee that Jane was being transported in came rolling into the street trying to evade Annie’s Jaguar as it barreled to its crashing stop. In the chaos that had ensued since Annie’s initial attack, Mickey had shot her between the eyes. She’d slumped forward and had pressed the gas petal to the floor. The car swiveled without direction but with continued acceleration after Jane and her friends.
The Humvee came skidding towards Harrison, who now stood aghast watching Leona’s escape. Joseph hauled himself to Harrison’s side.
Harrison shook himself. What was he doing? He’d given Leona Kelley the keys to the Kingdom of Biological Warfare. It was time to take action!”
“Lady, you’ve got a radio, right?” He waved Mickey down as she knelt in the Humvee checking Jane, Dexter, and the other medics to be sure they were okay.
Mickey looked up and wordlessly tossed him one. He dialed into the radio channel again.
“Hello, this is Kendra Reagan occupying the chopper above you. Could you identify yourself for me, sir?”
“My name is Harrison Kelley. I’m the owner of a pharmaceutical enterprise my psychopathic wife swindled from me and converted into an organization devoted to terror. I’m the victim of her murder at the hand of a crackpot doctor and I’ve seen a lot of good people die without being able to intervene. I’m not going to take this lying down! You can help me take action, too.”
“How’s that, Mr. Kelley?” The chopper circled around him like a vulture in the air.
“You’re the only eyes on the skies presently on the scene. The commanding officer of this unit has been detained by Leona Kelley, which gives me the incentive to pick up the slack he let off and give Washington a ring for air and ground support. Meanwhile, there’s a girl that has been the victim of a brutal biochemical attack and the subject of a successful medical breakthrough that will be indispensable to Leona’s campaign. I would like to propose you accept her onboard and cut the broadcast short for emergency medical evac to a hospital not overrun by human and drug trafficking modern pirates.”
The chopper descended without hesitation.
*****
Chapter 27
Miss Reagan appeared at the hatch with a phone in her hand.
The Good Death Box Set: A Hard SciFi Science Fiction Series Page 10