Finally he stood up and held out his arms.
“Hey!” he shouted. “This isn’t about you, this is about me! This is my choice. This is my decision. And it’s already been made.”
Frezzie’s face was contorted in a mask of rage. It shattered as sobs burst from her throat. She covered her mouth and ran into the bathroom, where she slammed the door.
Pippa sat, tears cascading down her cheeks.
Barry shook his head, clearly unhappy with the decision.
Nelson looked stunned, yet he was the first to speak. “Has it come to this?”
Blane nodded. “It has.”
“Why do you have to do this?” Pippa asked, her voice barely audible.
“Because someone has to. Because ever since Mandy was taken instead of me, I’ve felt a need to get back at the Black Bishop and his minions. I can’t just give up. I can’t just not stop it.”
“You don’t seem the type to just give up,” Nelson said.
“I’m not giving up. I’m changing the rules. Just like every terrorist who ever lived changed the rules.”
“But terrorists are evil,” Pippa said.
“We’ve been on the side of the powerful for a long time,” Sebastian began. “We’ve forgotten where we came from. Our founding fathers didn’t strap bombs to their chests, but they did learn to fight in sneaky ways that the English couldn’t counter. Terrorists, including Islamic extremists, have felt it necessary to combat those they see as too powerful using improvised explosive devices. They don’t have tanks. They don’t have aircraft. They don’t have battleships. But they can make a bomb and use it, not only as a weapon of destruction, but a harbinger of things to come, a weapon of fear.”
Blane got up and went to the bathroom and knocked on the door. “Come out, Frezzie.”
“Go away,” she cried.
“Do you really want those to be your last words to me?”
Silence was followed by the door being unlocked.
Blane opened it.
Frezzie was finishing blowing her nose. She tossed the tissue in the wastebasket, then shouldered Blane aside and returned to her seat in the room.
Blane took his seat again. Frezzie wouldn’t make eye contact, but Pippa did, so it was to her he spoke.
“Two things, Pippa. One, I’m not going to blow myself up unless I absolutely have to. I’m going to count on my skills as a blood sorcerer to get close enough to kill either the Black Bishop or Rook or both. The explosive vest is just a backup. I’m also going to ask Barry to drive me,” he glanced at the lone driver who raised his eyebrows. “If I get incapacitated somehow, Barry can finish the mission for me.”
Barry nodded slowly, then faster and faster. “Why hadn’t we thought about this earlier? We’ve been doing it backwards. Having you as a zombie might just work.”
“This change in situation necessitated a change in tactic. What before had never occurred to us now seems the most logical. The only problem is that we don’t have any more blood sorcerers, so either Blane’s mission succeeds, or we never have another chance.”
Everyone was silent while they imagined what success and failure looked like.
“Youonlysaidone,” Frezzie croaked.
Blane turned in his seat. “What’d you say, Frez?”
She cleared her throat. “You said you had two things,” she said, her voice heavy with emotion. “You only gave us one.”
Blane smiled. “That’s right, I did.” He cleared his throat as emotion threatened to overtake him. “And two, if I absolutely have to detonate, I won’t do it if there are any innocent civilians around. I’d rather die ignobly than kill innocents.” He stared at the ground.
“You’ll never be ignoble, Blane,” Frezzie said, shaking her head, a look of loss already living in her eyes.
“Never,” Pippa chimed in.
“Well,” he said, trying to figure out something to say, but nothing came. Nothing that is except tears, followed by deep back bending sobs as he wept for the way things used to be and for the idea that they might never make the Black Bishop pay for his sins.
He felt hands around him and heard the soothing words of Pippa and Frezzie. He bathed in them for a time and when he was empty, he began to prepare for the mission.
“Can I help you, sir?” said a young man wearing the black pants and shirt and white high-tops that distinguished him as one of Rook’s followers.
Blane jerked himself back into the present. Five story barracks had appeared in the place of the tents that had appeared after the blindness. He was on a path walking between them when he’d been approached. He’d hoped this would happen, but he thought he’d get further in.
He wore the same clothes as the other, but there were things they needed to know.
“Greetings, brother,” he said. He kept a hand in his left pocket. In it was a blade poised on his thigh. The internal fabric had been cut away, so he was ready to cast if needed.
The young man stood about the same height as Blane, but was about thirty pounds lighter. His hair was black and his eyes had a slight Asian tilt. “I’m sorry, I don’t know you.”
“I was going to say the same thing about you,” Blane said, testing the waters.
The man’s brow furrowed, then he frowned. “Stay right here,” he said, turning to go. “I’m going to contact security.”
Blane sliced. The blood came, sizzling with power.
“Stop!” he commanded.
The young man froze.
“Turn towards me.”
The young man complied.
“Now act normal and take me to your room.”
“Certainly,” the young man said. “Right this way.”
They began walking towards one of the nearest barracks buildings.
Blane threw a spell so it looked like they were just two guys, heading to the barracks with nothing at all going on.
Chapter Twenty Nine
Desert Hot Springs. Jenkies drove the Tahoe like she stole it because there hadn’t been any cops in decades. Not since the Black Bishop rose to power in the 1970s. Neighborhood watch committees kept the neighborhoods intact. Sometimes they wouldn’t let anyone through without a pass. But that applied to other people. Not Jenkies.
She roared through a place where they’d normally block the road, but they’d seen her coming and had moved the barricades aside. The other side had the Black Bishop. Her side had The Committee, which was all her doing.
She’d been organizing her group since she was fifteen, and now had more than one hundred and eighty members. Their logo was the symbol of a bloody palm, which could either be painted, tattooed, or drawn on a vehicle, or if need be, reproduced on the spot using a blade.
Although the Black Bishop’s power seemed unimaginable, he’d been forced to concentrate his efforts on expansion, rather than domestication. They’d occasionally see a van filled with those creepy monks, but other than that, as long as nothing the population did affected him, he left the population alone.
Which was exactly what Jenkies took advantage of.
She lost both her mother and father to the Black Bishop when she was fourteen. They’d been recruited to join the Cutters Union, then died of exsanguination during a battle somewhere near the southern shore of the Salton Sea. She hadn’t even been allowed to see their bodies. That’s when she formed The Committee. Hidden behind vagueness, she created an online presence for those who’d lost family members to self-mutilation. That presence soon became a video chatroom where thousands of people met and socialized.
Then came the idea to militarize some of them.
She’d personally selected each member of The Committee, interviewing them, ensuring that there were no infiltrators from the camp of her enemies. They had their own private meeting place behind a triple-firewall-protected chatroom and never met in person, which was perhaps the reason they’d gotten as far as they had.
She pulled into the parking lot of an old RV dealer that had gone out of business s
everal years ago. The giant garage door was open, showing Dieter hunched over the top of a UAV.
She parked, got out and approached. “Hey Deets! It’s all up to you now.”
He glanced at her from above his spectacles, which were cradling the tip of his nose. About sixty, bald as a pebble and rail thin, Dieter was a German-trained engineer who’d come out to join the Cutters Union only to discover that the sight of blood made him faint. He’d found his way to her Committee when his lover, Hans, had passed away during cutter training. Since then, he’d provided his considerable technical skills whenever he could.
“What do you mean, it’s all up to me?” he asked, his German accent slight but noticeable.
She pointed to the UAVs. “Those are the only two UAVs we have left.”
“Is that so?” He pushed the glasses up an inch, but they slid right back down. “What happened to the others?”
“Ambushed. Shot down.”
He tsked and shook his head. “So what’s the plan?”
“We have to send one back to the fusiliers to warn them. The other one—let’s just say I think Frankie has a plan for it, so load it up with all the bombs it can carry.” She raised an eyebrow. “You can fix them, jah?”
He grinned, showing a silver tooth. “I can fix them, jah.”
“How long?”
“An hour for this one. Then maybe six or seven for the other.”
She nodded and headed towards the back of the garage. She sat at a desk in what had once been the manager’s office. She opened her laptop. Once it spooled up, she put in her password, logged onto the system, then opened her browser and went to The Committee’s home. Two invitations to private chat awaited her. She recognized both names, but one was unexpected. She went to that one first. She clicked it, the screen went black, then the red palm logo appeared in coalescing pixels. After a moment, it dissolved to leave them in a text chat room. There was an option to video chat. She checked the profile assigned to the name. Pamela Donovan from Flagstaff. Right. She knew her. She’d lost her family to a Sonoran Death Worm and had made her way north, thinking that the Black Bishop could solve her problems. She’d been active in the forums and chatrooms, but then she’d disappeared. Now she’d resurfaced. Jenkies felt a tickle of worry as she clicked on the video button and Pamela Donovan’s face appeared.
“Pam, welcome. We’ve missed you.”
“Jennifer, I—” She looked down and cleared her throat. She looked horrible. Her skin was almost translucently pale. Her hair had been shorn to within a few inches of her head and was ragged rather than uniform. “I’m sorry I’ve been gone.”
“What happened?”
“I’ve—I’ve been sick.”
“Sick? That’s terrible.”
Pam looked down again. “They kept me in a hospital room for weeks. They weren’t sure what I had. They gave me tests, but couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. They finally let me go. I think—I think I might be dying.”
Jenkies frowned. During the entire exchange, Pam had failed to make even a moment’s eye contact. It was as if she was reading from a script. She decided to try something.
“Pamela, do you remember what happened to your family?”
Her face twitched as she looked down first, then at the screen. “They were killed,” she finally said.
“Do you remember how they were killed?”
“Eaten by a worm.” She made eye contact momentarily and Jenkies saw fear in her eyes. Then she looked down. “Jennifer, I need to see you. Can we meet somewhere? I—I need to see you.”
The tingle of worry became a full on rumble. “Why do you need to see me?”
Pam glanced towards something off screen for a moment. Or someone.
“I can give you whatever you need right here, Pam,” Jenkies continued. Then she asked, “Are you alone, Pam?”
Pam suddenly stared into the screen, her eyes imploring and terrified. “Jennifer, run. They know who you are. They tortured me, they—” her face froze, her mouth still open in unspoken confession.
A figure moved behind her. It wore all black. A hand came down and tilted the screen with the embedded camera so it could capture the visage of a Monk of the Western Wind at the top of the screen and Pam’s head just beneath. The monk removed his mask, revealing a face which had been so ritually scarred as to be unrecognizable. When he spoke, his lips opened in four places.
“We know who you are. We know where you live.”
She jerked away from the screen, breathless, unable to speak.
“Come to us. Come and join us. We need you.”
She felt a tingling as if someone were behind her, staring. She fought the urge to turn and look.
“Your committee is over. Your plans are destroyed. You should stop what you are doing.”
The way his lips moved was mesmerizing.
“Your parents want you. Your parents need you.”
She snapped out of whatever had her and said, “My parents are dead.”
“Who told you that?”
“You did? Your people? They came to me and said that they’d died.”
The monk shook his head. “This is untrue. It never happened.”
The tingling sensation had become a full-blown itch.
“Yes it did!” How could this thing say— She laughed. “You don’t know anything,” she said, crossing her arms. The monk had said you should stop what you are doing, which meant they didn’t know what it was. Pam had never been part of the planning. All she had was access.
The monk glared at her.
“And my parents aren’t alive. You would have showed them to me if they were.” She laughed again. “Pathetic. You pathetic blood licker trying to corrupt this universe with your dreams of domination. You can go tell your master that he can go to—”
The monk brought his hand up and on his index finger rested an intricately made metal blade that fit over the finger like a sheath. The moment he touched it to Pam’s neck, her face lost its paralysis. She screamed as the blade sunk deep into her throat and severed it from ear to ear.
As the blood gushed, so did the feeling of unease. Jenkies felt her body stiffen. She watched as the monk dipped his hands onto the blood, then reached to towards the camera. The hands moved close, then they were coming out of her own laptop screen.
Now it was her turn to scream. She reached out and slammed down the laptop screen. At first it wouldn’t move, but then when she put all her weight on it, it managed to slam shut. She jerked out the power and the Ethernet cables. She stood, staring at the laptop, breathing heavy. She reached into the desk drawer and pulled free a 9mm pistol. She fed a round into the chamber, aimed at the laptop, and fired until the clip was empty. Then she tossed the gun on top of the laptop.
Dieter came running.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“The Black Bishop. I think he knows we’re coming.”
“Does he know where we are?”
She shook her head, then shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
He threw up his hands. “It’s not like I can go anywhere. I suppose if they come here then they get me.” He tsked. “I don’t have time for this drama. You deal with it. I have planes to fix.”
She watched him go, fussing like an old grandma. She managed to laugh. Then an image of Pam’s face came to her.
This changed everything.
Chapter Thirty
Twentynine Palms Highway. Sitting in the back of a Deuce and a Half was about as uncomfortable a ride as when the pilgrims came across the Great Plains in Conestoga wagons. There wasn’t much difference between then and now. The Badlands Red Worm was cousin to the Sonoran Death Worm and ate as many of the pilgrims as got past them. Those who managed to make it past the saber-toothed worms then had to make it through the swarms of locusts eager for meat, until eventually getting to the relative safety of the Rockies. Life had certainly been hard back then. Hell, life was still hard. But at least now they had real weapons
to fight the monsters of the earth and not pocketknives and bows and arrows.
Hayes sat all the way forward and grabbed a handful of bench to keep from falling at every bump. Where the others were using micro muscles to keep their bodies upright, Hayes couldn’t do that. His legs just sat there, neither helping nor hurting as he bumped and thumped along a road that hadn’t seen any real repairs in decades.
But as rough as the ride was, it did little to spoil the feeling of excitement ballooning his chest. He was going out on mission and with Special Weapons Platoon, no less. They were traveling by vehicle to the drop-off point before they went to ground. The plan was to drive to Morongo Valley, then dismount, which is why they needed eleven vehicles.
The platoon was divided into four squads. Each squad had ten men. One was the squad leader, then there were three teams of three.
First and second squads were conventional arms. Hayes was assigned to first squad, where Sergeant Foster was both the squad leader and platoon sergeant. His massive machine gun would be deployed primarily in support of the first two squads. Third and fourth squads were filled with special weapons operators.
Each member of third squad controlled a pair of tamed ‘cabras—at least as tame as a ‘cabra could be. Each ‘cabra wore a Kevlar and steel mesh harness. Capable of protecting the beasts against pistol and most rifle rounds, its secondary purpose was to deliver doses of ‘cabra mother hormone into the spine. Seven micro-needles delivered doses dependent on the tameness level and the operator’s discretion. They kept the ‘cabra on an even keel most of the time. Hayes had seen one ignore the doses and turn on its operator. The tear-away mesh facemask had kept him from being mauled, but the claws had almost done him in.
Fourth squad was a truly special squad, and one of a kind as far as Hayes knew. They’d begun operation eight years ago when an entomologist defected from Cal Tech and burrowed beneath the Great California Wall. He’d heard about the Black Bishop and their damnable blood magic and had postulated an entomological solution. Because Cal Tech wouldn’t sponsor him, he’d decided to defect solely to prove his hypothesis and create an entomological weapon. Breeding mosquitos with Africanized killer bees created a hybrid insect capable of targeting blood, while delivering an amped up venom in devastating quantities. The program had been eight years in the making and this mission marked the first deployment of the Skreechers, named after the unearthly sound they made while traveling towards a target.
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