by Michael Todd
Holly looked at Paula. “She replied.”
The other woman looked over her shoulder and wrinkled her nose. “What does it say?”
She nodded with relief. “It says she will be here in three days.”
Billie found the shipping container information at the main check-in at the port. She snuck out the back door, pilfered a hard hat and vest, and put them on. After a quick glance around her, she hurried through the different stacks and finally found the place where her weapons had been stashed by a contact. As she turned toward them, though, she noticed that the lid to one of the boxes was up. She slowed her steps as it shut to reveal a group of men—obviously criminals—who stood behind it.
One man, whom she guessed was the leader, smiled and walked forward. “Well, well. I assume you came looking for these?”
She looked at each one in turn. “That’s right. Those are mine. So, why don’t you guys go on and get out of here?”
He chuckled, his teeth blackened from too many cigars. “I don’t think so. I think finders’ keepers.”
Billie shook her head. “I can tell you right now, you don’t want to take this shipment. It is for a very special purpose and you taking it could lead to a lot of people dying.”
The man expression hardened, and he walked up to her while he chewed on a toothpick. “I don’t think you realize who the fuck you’re dealing with here. I can promise you, if you cause a problem, I will hunt down every single one of your friends and family and make sure that they never see the light of day again. Babies, adults, old fuckers—I don’t care. I’ll fucking bury them right after I throw your fucking body in the water.”
She drew a deep breath and chuckled quietly. While she didn’t have any family, one thing was for sure—friends were off limits. She’d gone long enough without any to put their lives in danger now. It seemed that she really had no other choice but to kill these goons, and when she was done, she had to cut the head off the snake to be sure.
Hickok whipped her head up and looked at the man before she rolled her eyes. “This is so damned annoying.”
Thankfully, she had the daggers she had hidden in the back of her pants and her martial arts skills. Without warning, she flipped and kicked her way through the group to slit throats and break necks so fast they barely had a chance to fight back. When only two were left, she leapt onto one of the boxes and roundhouse kicked one of the men in the face. Without pause, she launched onto the other’s shoulders, grabbed his head, and twisted until it snapped, then rode him down to the ground.
The other man raised his shaking hands. “I won’t touch you. I don’t want no trouble.”
Billie grabbed him by the back of the neck and threw him down behind the boxes. “Tell me who your boss is.”
He shook his head. “I can’t. He’ll kill me. He’ll kill my family.”
She stabbed her dagger into his side, far enough be painful but not deep enough to reach any major organs. “I’ll fucking kill you. I need to know who this motherfucker is, and you will tell me.”
The man groaned and saliva dripped off his lip. His bravery quickly resurfaced, however, and he looked at her and spat. “Fuck you.”
Billie sighed. “I guess you like torture, then.”
She straddled him, grabbed his hand, and sat on his chest while she carefully carved a finger off his hand. It didn’t take long for him to cave. He cried out around deep, rasping breaths, “All right. All right. I’ll tell you. Fuck. Just stop.”
Hickok paused and looked at him. “And?”
He took a deep breath in through his nose. “Draconi. My boss is the head of the Draconi family.”
She grabbed the bloody nub and squeezed. “And where do I find this motherfucker?”
The man screamed until she loosened her grip. “On the east side where the rich foreigners live. 566 Mallard. Big house—you can’t miss it.”
Billie wiped her knife on her pants and stood as she drew a gun from her waistband. “See, that wasn’t so hard. Tell your buddies in hell they messed with the wrong fucking bitch.”
His eyes went wide as she aimed the pistol and pulled the trigger. The bullet struck him in the center of his forehead. She rolled her shoulders and turned to break into her own weapons stash and retrieve her new armor before she loaded several guns. From the sound of it, her new target was a real big deal, and she could only imagine how many men she might have to face to get to him. Hopefully, stealth would work, but if not, she would be locked, loaded, and ready.
She rolled the bodies into the water in case someone discovered them and sealed the crates once more. After a decisive smack of her palm on the top one, she whirled and threaded her way through the port to locate a car in the parking lot. She hotwired a truck deftly and accelerated away to speed toward the East Side. There was no time to waste. She needed to return to the Zoo to help JB and get their gear there.
Hickok drove the vehicle to within a block of the house, donned her suit, and moved on foot the rest of the way through the shadows. After a furtive glance at her surroundings, she climbed the tall brick wall and looked down. The only security he had in place were three outside cameras that faced the front of the house and a handful of guards. She shifted cautiously along on top of the wall and made her way to the back. There, she waited until the guards had moved off in opposite directions, armed her suit with reflective technology, and climbed down. It was dark out so it would be easy to blend in.
She moved quickly through the grass, reached the back door, and carefully opened it enough to slip inside. The room she’d entered was unlit, but she could hear the sound of a man singing a room away. Her senses on high alert, she crept through the shadows and followed the sound of the voice to the lounge, where the boss lay on the couch with headphones on and sang opera at the top of his lungs.
Billie rolled her eyes and crept up behind him as she screwed the suppressor onto her gun. Normally, she hated to shoot an unarmed person from behind, but from the look of the man, she was willing to make an exception. She pursed her lips, raised the pistol, and squeezed the trigger. The slug blew all the way through his brain and out the other side to lodge in a stone column near the door. She put her gun away and shook her head before she took his hand and examined the huge gold rings on his fingers.
“Fucking mob boss.” She dropped his hands and scoffed.
Across the room, a large mahogany desk stood with a laptop and several other items on top. She opened her bag and shoveled what she could inside—his computer, a stack of fake IDs and passports, and anything else that was easy to grab. As an afterthought, she finished her stash with three of his rings. She wanted it to look like a robbery so there would be no real investigation.
Her work complete, she withdrew a box wired to explosives. She set the timer and moved quietly through the house and outside. As the guards passed, she hid behind the grill and turned her reflective technology on once they were out of sight. In seconds, she made it across the yard and up the side of the stone wall. With a quick glance at her watch as she reached the top, she dove over the edge. She had barely cleared it when the house exploded to send fire and debris rocketing into the wall where she had stood only moments before.
All the guards who had survived raced away. Billie shook her head and patted one or two tiny embers on her suit. “Well, that was fucking exciting.”
“I’ll give you fifteen out the door, cash. And I’ll throw in an under-the-table five grand if you let me leave without insurance,” Billie told the car salesman.
The man cleared his throat and looked hastily around him. “I still gotta register it. I can’t get away with not doing that. Insurance, I can fake.”
She nodded. “Go to it. I need to get the hell out of here.”
Hickok handed him a fake ID that she had selected from the stack at the mobster’s house and walked outside while he completed the paperwork. She ran her hand over the side of the four-by-four and smiled. “You will get me home.”
Th
e dealer worked his magic in minutes and took the cash as promised. Billie had no time to waste and collected her crates hastily from the port before she headed out. The drive wouldn’t take too long, but she had to make sure that security didn’t give her a hard time at the gates. She headed out and around through the desert until she reached the French side at Wall Two. When they looked at her, all they saw was a dealer with an ID that identified her as Frederika Monroe and a license she had forged to make the delivery.
She chuckled as they waved her through, actually surprised that it worked. “These guys are as dumb as shit,” she muttered to herself as she glanced at them in her rearview mirror.
Billie drove the vehicle directly to Amanda’s shop and parked, jumped out, and headed inside.
Amanda glanced up and waved as she walked into the garage. “I’ll be with you in a minute. If you have a drop-off, leave it at the front.”
Hickok chuckled when she realized that between her youthful look and her new hairdo, the woman didn’t recognize her. “I think you should take a look at this shipment. It’s much bigger than you thought.”
The armorer put her tools down and narrowed her eyes as she walked slowly toward her. “Who are you?”
Billie laughed and put her hands out. “Am I that different? It’s Billie.”
Amanda stopped, turned her head, and narrowed her eyes. “I don’t believe you. I see similarities but you are way younger than Billie.”
She groaned and fumbled in her back pocket to retrieve her old Wild Bill ID. “It’s me. I had the serum, remember? Apparently, it makes you young or some shit like that. Come on, you fixed my super black ops armor. You took me to see Salinger.”
The other woman looked at the ID and back at her. “Holy fuck. It is you.”
Hickok chuckled. “It is, and I don’t have time to talk. I have a shipment for the company—ammo, guns, armor—in the back of the truck parked out front. I need you to stash it here or in a safe location.”
Amanda’s mouth curled into a smile. “Hell yeah. I’ve waited for the goods, bitch!”
Chapter Ten
Holly stopped at the front of the shop, scowled, and stared at the four-by-four parked there, half of it on the curb. “Who the hell could that be?”
Out in the Zoo, you saw a lot of Jeeps and military grade Humvees, but you didn’t see trucks unless someone made a delivery. She shrugged and decided it was maybe someone from Heavy Metal or that Amanda had bought some new equipment for the shop. It was late, though, so it was strange for it to still be there.
The armorer had gone, her garage dark and locked up, so Holly couldn’t see anything that might have been inside. She trekked upstairs, more than a little exhausted. For days, she had been mentally stretched with everything that needed to happen in the whole JB situation. Not to mention the fact that she still hadn’t managed to wrap her mind around the idea that she’d truly discovered the Elixir of Life—with all its additional previously unimagined miracle properties.
When she reached the top of the steps, she opened the door and tossed her keys in the bowl. She shut and locked the door behind her and started forward but stopped in her tracks. A woman sat in her desk chair and rolled it back and forth. Holly reached instinctively to her back but remembered that she hadn’t carried her gun out with her.
She drew in a sharp breath and stormed forward. “Who the fuck do you think you are? Breaking into my apartment? What the fuck do you want?”
The intruder laughed and shook her head. “Seriously, I know I look younger and different, but really?”
Holly narrowed her eyes and walked closer, her forehead wrinkled in disbelief. “Billie? What did you do to your hair?”
Hickok bellowed and threw her hair back. The left side had been shaved at about a three. “I thought it might be fun to have some easy air conditioning out in the desert, you know?”
She simply shook her head at the woman’s perverse humor. “I can see the serum worked on you too. You look about my age.”
Her friend scoffed. “Bitch, I look way younger than you. I hate to break it to you. You’re the old one of the group now. I assume JB had the same thing happen?”
Holly sighed. “Yeah. And it’s at the point where we have to kill him off too and start over. You guys are like fucking vampires. So, how did your thing go?”
Billie shrugged. “Okay, I guess. I killed and reincarnated my friend, but I don’t think he’ll join the team right now. He’s a little skittish about the Zoo.”
“So, you are in? Like fully in?”
Hickok slapped her hands against her legs. “I am. I’m here to partner with you and create a future that works for me as well as others.”
Holly released a deep breath. “Good, because I can use all the help I can get at this point.”
Her companion drummed her fingers against the desk as she looked at her research. “I assume this is for the company.”
She nodded. “Yeah, and then I’m done with them. We lost Trigger and Aki in the last trip into the Zoo. I won’t ever put my team up for money like that again.”
Holly sat on the edge of the desk. “I want to figure out how to create serums and other stuff from the Zoo that could help humanity when the aliens return. We have to accept that they will—that the fucking missile they launched was simply a sneaky way to take over the earth before they arrive. Otherwise, why would they go to all that effort to get the goop here? I want more than simply this Elixir of Life. I don’t know if everyone should have it. But that doesn’t mean we can’t use the incredible powers of the serum to make other healing tonics.”
There was a long silence in which her companion simply stared in befuddlement. “Aliens, huh? Shit.” Billie pursed her lips. “I can agree with that. So this serum is a huge thing. A powerful thing. Like they gave us a secret weapon, I guess.”
She snorted and fixed her gaze on her hands. “I know. It’s all I’ve thought about since I walked into JB’s office and saw him standing there with young skin, six-pack abs, and a leg that tried to grow back.”
“Limb regeneration. That’s impressive.” Her friend was openly surprised.
Holly looked off into the distance. “It is. I don’t know what happens once you reach peak but that seems to be the goal of the serum—to get you to your healthiest point. Who knows? Maybe you live forever after that.”
Billie sneered. “You know, until I left the organization, I would have hated the thought of that. Death was one of those things that we agents looked forward to. It was like our version of retirement. But now, I don’t think I’ll mind too much being around long enough to see humans completely self-destruct, because that’s what we’ll do.”
She chuckled. “Well, hopefully somewhere in there, we can change all that. But we have to be careful and selective. Can you imagine if we gave a bunch of powerful assholes the ability to live forever?”
The ex-operative immediately thought about the bosses. “Yeah, that would be really, really bad. I think we should make a pact.”
Holly raised an eyebrow. “Do I need to spit in my palm and shake your hand?”
Billie laughed. “No. Merely an agreement between the two of us right here. A historical moment where we agree that we will work together to do something really badass for mankind and make a shitload of money in the process.”
She grinned and stuck out her hand. “I think I can get on board with that.”
They shook and the other woman stood and stretched her arms over her head. “Good, because there is no need to be poor. That does not make us any more amazing at what we will do.”
Holly thought about it for a second, then smiled widely and nodded. “I’m down. As long as money doesn’t motivate us to make the wrong decisions. It will be nice to be comfortable while we save the world and humanity.”
Billie rubbed her hands together quickly and grinned. “Perfect. Besides, we need better equipment and that shit is fucking expensive. Money does not grow on trees or terrible humans w
hom I have to take down to make it. I’d like to limit that kind of work to sheer emergencies.”
Holly was afraid to ask so she didn’t. “I think, from now on, anything I’m afraid to ask about should be cut out of the picture.”
Hickok snickered. “Don’t cut out all my fun.”
JB stood in the shower and allowed the water to wash over his head. The warmth of it helped the pain in his leg, especially since his current fake leg was now too tight on his stump. He opened his eyes and looked down. All the makeup he’d worn had run off his face and now swirled around the drain. He hadn’t yet made his appearance, but Paula needed to practice to achieve perfection. In fact, she had practiced for hours and hours.
Between the preparation, the thought of dying, and the issues they faced going forward, it had been a very long day. In fact, the last week had been full of incredibly long days. He couldn’t lie. The truth was that he looked forward to becoming his nephew so that maybe, he could relax for a few days. Perhaps have a drink and shoot the shit with the guys. He raised his head and rubbed his hand down his face. In that moment, he realized that he would have to re-introduce himself to everyone he knew. He would have to remember that. Otherwise, he could blow his cover very quickly.
He shook his head and added the thought to the laundry list of things in his mind he would have to remember. He turned the shower off and pulled the curtain back to step out onto the bath mat. As he reached for his towel, a woman’s voice scared the hell out of him.
“Damn, she was right. You look young enough to cause a woman to go to jail.” The woman grinned.
JB gritted his teeth and stared at someone who stood in the doorway so the shadows concealed her face. Her body was tight and her breasts large and perky. He snatched the towel from the counter, wrapped it around his waist, and ignored the sigh of disappointment from her.