Fire

by Jim Heskett

  Diego didn't feel bad for Zan. He was an idiota of a man, and he deserved this end.

  As Diego jogged down the stairs to exit the brothel via the kitchen back door, he checked himself for injuries. Some cuts and scrapes, a few small pieces of glass lodged into his forehead, but nothing too terrible. That was good because Diego had a lunch date with his father in three hours.

  By the time his lunch date with his father rolled around, Diego had been feeling much sorer than he had after the attack. The dining table falling on his thighs, for example, had produced serious bruises that made him limp. A constant, creeping ache from his hips to his knees.

  He felt a bit stupid, too, since he’d dropped his communicator on the floor somewhere. A quick stop on Colfax Avenue to pick up some powdery medicine helped lift his spirits, though.

  Even though his legs were gimpy, his arms worked fine. He could feel the knife in its sheath in his boot as he sat in the car, waiting for a glimpse of Laertes. He shifted his torso and practiced dipping his hand down a couple of times. A steady thrum in his chest pulsed with each heartbeat, and he took deep breaths to maintain his outward calm. The next few minutes would be big. Some of the biggest of his life.

  The knife sheathing practice was cut short when he saw the older man crossing the street toward the restaurant. A messenger bag slung across his chest. Diego opened the door and lifted a hand out the side to flag his father down. “Here.”

  Laertes looked in his direction and smiled. He jogged over to the car and rounded to the passenger side. Diego unlocked it, and Laertes got in.

  The older man pivoted in the seat to smile at his son. "Good morning. You're early."

  "So are you."

  “Did you want to talk before we have lunch? Why are we here?”

  “Yes. We need to talk.”

  “That reminds me.” Laertes reached into his bag and pulled out a frayed stack of pages. Diego tilted his head to read the title, printed on the cover. A brief history of the decline of The United States of America by James Eppstein, Ph.D.

  “What’s that?”

  “I found this,” Laertes said. “It’s very eye-opening. Some of it I knew, some I didn’t know.” He held out the pages. “I thought you should have it. We should all know where we come from. Both the good and the bad.”

  He set it in Diego’s lap and gave his son an expectant look as if he intended for Diego to read it right now. He had no intention of doing anything like that, now or ever. Whatever this “history” contained, it was surely propaganda, just like everything else that had ever come out of his father’s mouth.

  Laertes tilted his head and screwed up his face. "What's that look for?"

  “Did you ever resent that I took mom’s maiden name, instead of your last name?”

  Laertes looked confused. “No, not at all. Jimenez is a great family name. A proud lineage. I don’t mind it. Never have.”

  Diego decided to get right to it without wasting any more time, ignoring the manuscript in his lap. “Have you been lying to me about my brother?"

  "Oh," Laertes said, blowing out a forceful sigh. "It's been so long since you've brought this up, I thought you had decided to let it go."

  "No. I haven’t let go of anything.”

  “What do you remember about him?”

  “I remember a young child with brown hair and eyes who was around when I would come home from school. Franco. And, I remember you telling me Franco died in a car accident in Colorado when I was away. I remember Mom crying.”

  Laertes studied Diego's face, perhaps looking for weakness or a lack of resolve. Diego showed neither. After a pause, Laertes said, "Your mother never cried. That part, you invented to fit your idea of the story.”

  Diego’s jaw tensed. “What story?”

  “Your little brother left us when he was so young, and you are away, so we didn't know what to tell you. You'd only ever even met him a handful of times, anyway. Barely even like brothers. You probably don’t remember, but you were jealous of him. Sometimes, we had the neighbors babysit him when you would visit.”

  “But no car accident killed him.”

  “Yes, there was one.”

  Diego sneered, his mouth drying as his heart rate climbed another notch. "Stop making excuses and tell me what happened.”

  "I'm trying. It’s been so long… your mother and I were in a difficult situation. The truth is… we sold him to Lord Wybert."

  Diego slid his hand down to his boot, but he did not draw the blade yet. "Wybert? I was at the plantación with him? You had so many chances to tell me, and you never did. How could you think that was okay?"

  "I know," Laertes said, nodding. “It's just that, back then, we were scrambling to find people to fight against the king. It wasn’t organized like it is today. There were dozens or maybe even hundreds of separate groups. Your mother and I worked to unite the Frenchies and the sun worshipers and all the other gangs within a thousand kilometers to form an alliance. Not an easy one, but an alliance that’s gotten so much stronger since then. Wybert was a terrible man, but we needed him. He had technology no one else had. We were trying to convince him to share it.”

  Now, Laertes looked at Diego, desperate. “I’m sorry. If I could go back and do it over again, maybe things would be different now.”

  “None of this explains why you lied to me.”

  “You were young, too. We thought you wouldn’t remember him when you got older.”

  “Is his real name Yorick?" Diego asked.

  Laertes nodded. “He was born as Franco Ortega, but Wybert gave him that new name.”

  Something inside Diego broke. He could almost feel it happening. Like a light flipping from off to on, in one jarring motion.

  He drew the blade and threw the manuscript into the back seat. Pages went flying, fluttering and then settling at various places around the car. "By order of the king, you've been sentenced to death for treason."

  Diego stabbed his father in the neck before he could get another traitorous word out of his mouth.

  Chapter Forty

  Yorick opened his eyes to find a ten-kilo weight sitting on his chest. Before he had time to lift it, a sunburned face appeared across the room. A sun worshipper, holding a massive rifle, shuffling through the rubble of the exercise room. A low cloud of smoke obscured the bottom half of his body as he walked.

  Glass crinkled under his feet. The sun worshipper paused, lifted the rifle, and pointed it at Yorick. Behind his head, wires hung down from the ceiling, with sparks crackling from the ends.

  Yorick raised one hand in surrender as he reached into his back pocket and drew the white bandanna. He held it out. “Wait. I’m with you.”

  The sun worshipper’s lips swished back and forth, but he didn’t pull the trigger, so that was a good sign. Yorick hadn’t been sure it would work, but it had been all he could think of at the moment.

  The sun worshipper relaxed his trigger finger, then he swept the gun to the right. His path landed on Hamon, face bloodied, sitting on a weight bench. His eyes were half open.

  “He’s with me too,” Yorick shouted. “Don’t shoot.”

  “This painted puta is a friend of yours?”

  “He is. Please, we’re on your side.”

  The sun worshipper grunted, then he turned and fled from the room. Yorick blinked a few times, trying to stop the room from spinning. Smoke everywhere. His lungs seized as he tried to catch his breath.

  Yorick pushed the weight off and sat up, the limp bandanna in his hand. He looked out through the doors of the exercise room. He and Hamon were the only two in here, but he could see a few people out on the mezzanine. Putas, brothel workers, sun worshippers. Stray gunshots here and there. Chaos as the living struggled to flee.

  Yorick leaned onto his hands and knees and scrambled forward, across the room. He pushed aside bits of glass and ceiling tile as he moved.

  “Are you okay?” he asked Hamon when he reached him.

  “I got a… I t
hink my…” he said, pointing at his head. Yorick noted a cut above his temple, blood streaming down his face. A large knot right above it, already starting to swell with a purplish hue.

  “Can you see?” Yorick asked.

  Hamon nodded. “My head… I’m foggy, but okay.”

  Yorick took Hamon’s hand and helped his former team leader to his feet. “I think you might have a concussion.”

  “If you say so. Did you see the bomb?”

  Yorick shook his head. “No bomb,” he said, and then he realized he couldn’t tell if he was shouting or not. His ears buzzed. His lips felt numb. “That was rockets from launchers. Trust me, I know what they can do.”

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t worry about it. We need to escape. We find Rosia and get out of here before this building collapses in on itself.”

  Yorick guided Hamon toward the door, and Rosia appeared from around the corner, knife drawn, out of breath. She had a few cuts along her face, but otherwise, seemed okay.

  “Diego was here,” she said. “He got away. I came to you as fast as I could.”

  “Sun worshippers. They did this.”

  She nodded and pulled the bandanna from her back pocket. “Looks like this time, Tenney wasn’t able to…” she drifted off.

  He could see the worry about Tenney in her eyes. But, there was nothing they could do about it at the moment. Yorick turned back toward the lockers, but she grabbed his arm. “The keycards were a trap. Diego was watching from the restaurant, and there are probably soldados nearby. Don’t bother.”

  A little smile creased his lips. These terrorist sun worshippers had actually saved his life. As soon as the thought crossed his mind, Yorick felt guilty for considering such a thing. His eyes trailed over the mezzanine railing, down to the courtyard. Sunlight poured in from a giant hole in the side of the building. A few bodies were strewn about, a couple of small fires here and there. One section of the mezzanine near the big hole had disintegrated, with bits of wood and metal and marble collapsing in chunks.

  If Diego was still here, they could search the place for him. Even with soldados on their way, it would be worth the risk.

  Rosia must’ve seen the plan in his eyes. “He’s gone. He was out of the restaurant before I even had a chance to see which way he went.”

  Yorick looked out at the injured in the courtyard below. They needed to catch up to Diego. They were too short on time to continue playing these spy games with him. If they couldn’t steal his keycards, they would have to take them by force.

  But, the people in this building also required help. The sun worshippers were already evacuating. The injured needed assistance getting out of the rubble.

  “We need to help the ones who can move. Maybe out the back, so the soldados don’t find us.”

  “Yes,” she said, then pointed at Hamon, swaying on his feet, his lids heavy. “Is he okay? Are you okay?”

  “Little woozy,” Hamon said. “I’ll be fine. If we’re going to do this, we need to…” his eyes shut for a moment, and he steadied himself against the nearby wall. “We need to get moving.”

  Yorick put a hand on Rosia’s shoulder. ”We’ll get Diego. He’s in the city somewhere.”

  Rosia nodded. “I know. I know how to find him.” She drew a small communicator out of her back pocket. “He dropped this. I know exactly where he’s going to be in a few hours.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Before Yorick and Rosia went after Diego, they found a spot to let Hamon rest. A children’s playground a block from the brothel. His head was jumbled after something had hit him during the attack. He’d been rambling about the king, about how, no matter what, the fat idiota needed to die.

  They had taken rifles from two dead security guards inside the brothel. No one seemed to care about them walking down the street, fully armed. Something in the air was different. Like a storm about to darken the sky, the city had changed.

  “I’m fine,” Hamon said as he plopped down in the shade underneath a plastic slide. “Just need a little bit of rest.”

  “Did you see Zan?” Rosia asked.

  Both Hamon and Yorick shook their heads.

  “He took a bullet. I saw it happen.”

  Yorick said nothing, but Hamon put on a grim smile. “Good. He wasn’t much better than the king.” Hamon paused for a moment to sway in place and to fight his eyes closing. “It’s all ending now, isn’t it?”

  “Looks that way,” Rosia said.

  Hamon beamed at the two of them. “I’m glad we’re here together. I’m sorry your friend Tenney isn’t here to do this with us.”

  “We’ll find him,” Yorick said. “And we’re glad you’re here with us, too.”

  “We’ll come back as soon as we find Diego and deal with him,” Rosia said.

  Yorick took out the other white bandanna and tied it atop Hamon’s head. The bleeding had stopped, but the bump on his forehead jutted out, now a deep shade of purple.

  Hamon nodded and leaned against the slide. Eyes closed.

  Rosia pulled out Diego’s communicator and checked the time. They’d spent a good portion of the last two hours helping people out of the brothel. And, they’d had to do it via the rear of the building. The soldados stormed onto the scene shortly after the attack and arrested people. They actually arrested the victims of the terrorist attack. Anyone they found who was well enough to stand left the building in handcuffs. Yorick and Rosia moved out two dozen injured, then the soldados saw them, and they had to flee.

  “This way,” she said, pointing east. She and Yorick followed the road until the map led them to a restaurant, close to Cherry Creek.

  Diego was sitting in a car parked along the curb. Yorick’s father sat in the car with him.

  When Yorick saw Laertes, his chest constricted. The man who had twice sold him into slavery. Part of Yorick felt a primal rage so deep, he didn’t know how to process it. And part of him felt a juvenile and irrational fear. The sense of going up against an immovable object.

  His dad, the terror. The monster. Something about him didn’t even seem real.

  Before Yorick and Rosia could do anything to stop it, Diego flipped a bunch of yellowed pages into the air and then stabbed Laertes in the throat. It happened so fast, like one swift motion. A blur and then blood.

  Rosia gasped. Yorick’s arms fell to his side. For a moment, he couldn’t believe the scene before his eyes. The hilt of the blade jutting from his father’s neck. Blood gushing out, turning his neck red. The older man’s hands trying to swat at the blade. His eyes bugging out, unbelieving.

  Diego, lips in a sneer, watching Laertes die.

  “Now,” Yorick said as his paralysis ended. He and Rosia lifted their rifles. There were a few pedestrians out on this street, but Yorick didn’t care about that. When the guns came up, a handful of the people in the vicinity ran or shouted. But some didn’t even flinch at the sight of the guns.

  Yorick and Rosia spit shots at Diego’s car. They punched holes in the windshield as he ducked. The two front tires hissed as bullets deflated them. Yorick tried a few controlled bursts, aiming directly at Diego’s spot. The car didn’t appear to have armor, but Yorick couldn’t see if anything was landing home.

  A second later, the door opened, and he rolled out, into the street.

  Yorick aimed his rifle to kill Diego as he struggled to rise to his feet, but a shout came from his right. A trio of soldados, weapons raised, hurtling toward them. Yorick and Rosia turned their weapons toward the soldados and cut them down. Their body armor didn’t protect them from whatever high-powered bullets were in these weapons. They punched through their chest plates like a stone tossed into water.

  Killing soldados in the street? A few days ago, they wouldn’t have dreamed of doing such an audacious thing. But now, today, the whole world seemed different. Yorick and Rosia kept firing until the three soldados had hit the ground and didn’t try to get up.

  When they looked back toward Diego, he was go
ne. Yorick’s eyes flittered around the street. He didn’t see any blood on the sidewalk or the road, but some of the bullets had to have hit him. Had to. Yorick had emptied a full magazine into the car.

  “Which way?” he asked.

  “I’m on him,” Rosia said, and she raced toward the last spot they had seen Diego. There was only one realistic way to escape from here: down the decline toward the subterranean bike path alongside Cherry Creek. Yorick hustled in that direction as he popped in a fresh magazine, with Rosia shoulder to shoulder as they pounded the ground. They descended the path next to the violent creek. It seemed even higher and faster than before, even though it had rained only once since they had come to Denver. Yorick couldn’t hear himself think over the rushing of the water.

  He saw Diego up ahead, shuffling on the concrete path. A limp keeping him at a reasonable distance ahead. Black hair swishing left and right in the breeze. He took a hard left to ascend the ramp up to the street level, and Yorick gripped the rifle and bore down, pushing his legs as hard as they would go. No blood trailed Diego’s stomping feet.

  “Up!” he shouted to Rosia, and she nodded at him. They climbed, now closing within ten meters of Diego. His legs burned with effort as they pushed up the incline.

  Their target reached the street level and turned right to double back across a bridge over the water. Still several meters out in front of them.

  An explosion nearby made Yorick wince, but he didn’t have time to check it out. Feet hustling, trying to narrow the distance.

  But Diego was too fast on his feet. Yorick had to make a choice. He halted, forcing himself to come to a stop. He raised the rifle sight to eye level and wrapped his finger around the trigger. Heart pumping, chest heaving, he had trouble steadying his aim. Above all, he did not want to kill Diego. But, he had to incapacitate him. He aimed low, toward his brother’s knees.

  Yorick took the shot. The blast cracked across the distance between them. Diego yelped and stumbled. At his breakneck speed, inertia made him roll over several times before he came to a stop.