Day of Darkness

by LC Champlin

  No one but Amanda met his glare.

  “It doesn’t matter why I came here. What matters is the present. And right now, we need to hang together or we get fucked together. Is that such a difficult concept? Let go of your idealistic dream world. This is as real as it gets.” He stood trembling with rage, teeth bared, chest heaving. Pain stabbed at every breath, but it only encouraged the fury.

  With a cry of pure maternal rage, Chas’s mother dashed to the Sierra. She leapt, catching the Redwood Shores flag. Her weight tore it from its moorings. With another scream, she flung it at Nathan’s face.

  He snatched it from the air by reflex, bloody hand closing around the center of the white triangle. Red stained the fabric. He gripped it tighter. “This is our flag.” With ceremony, he unfolded it. He displayed it with slick, crimson hands. “Chas gave his life defending this community.” Nathan’s red palm print stood out in the triangle’s center. The Red Hand.

  “I don’t want to be a part of this place.” The mother held up her hands—forgetting that the blood of vengeance against Wong still stained them. She turned back to the boat. And to her dead boy. “I’m taking my son and leaving.”

  Badal and a few of the researchers climbed in to help her with the body. Between them, they dragged the corpse to the street. The other onlookers followed.

  Goth followed at a distance as if sleepwalking. Then, still in a daze, she turned to stare at Nathan. “I thought we could do this. We can’t.” She moved to join her widowed mother and deceased brother.

  Straightening from the corpse, Badal fixed Nathan with a dead gaze. “You disgust me, Nathan Serebus.” Traitorous dumbass, after Nathan had risked his life for the moron’s sister!

  “We’re all getting out of here,” Amanda informed Nathan, voice quiet. “I made the decision when you were gone.”

  “You what?” He closed the distance to loom over her. “You had no right.” Did she think she led the neighborhood? “We should have talked about it,” he added. At least talking gave the semblance of allowing the other party input.

  Meeting his dark eyes, she shook her head. “You would have done what you wanted to do anyway. You, not Albin, can talk people into doing things. I want to follow you, I do, because you’re a good leader.” She laughed as if she couldn’t believe her own words. “But I just . . . I just don’t know anymore. How can I believe anything you say?”

  “Don’t believe my words, believe my actions. Everything I’ve done has been to protect you and your neighbors.”

  Hugging herself, she turned away. “I’m leaving.”

  “How are you leaving?” His pulse roared in his ears; he could barely hear.

  “There’s a ship coming. There are too many cannibals on the ground now. They got past the wall somehow. I can’t stay here anymore. I don’t know where the government will take us, but it’s got to be better than here. We’ll come back after this is all over—when they’ve cleared out the cannibals.” She looked up as she spoke, the horizon representing the dawning of a new day at an undetermined time.

  “Has everyone decided to go?”

  “Yes. It’s mandatory anyway. I don’t know what they would do, but they would probably kill us rather than have us turn into cannibals.”

  Chapter 87

  Circling

  How - The Neighbourhood

  Nathan cleared his throat to prevent his voice from cracking. “When are the rescue teams coming?”

  “In . . .”—phone check—“about ten or twenty minutes.” She looked away, unable to meet his eyes. “They’re going to pick us up in boats and helicopters. It’s all set. Albin helped us with it. He had a satellite phone and could contact the government.”

  A maximum of twenty minutes to salvage everything. Fucking—“But we don’t need them.” Keep a calm tone—“We have the repellent frequency. With it active, the cannibals can’t approach.”

  “Well, that doesn’t seem to be working too well, unless I missed something.” Now she locked glares with him. “We’ve been having cannibals sighted as far up as Marlin Drive.”

  “That shouldn’t be. It’s impossible. It’s—”

  “It’s happening. Do you see now that we have no options? Those things”—expansive gesture toward the west—“are practically in our backyard. And they’re getting worse.”

  Fuck, why did everything have to go wrong now, just as he assembled all the pieces of the machine? He’d double checked the tension of every belt, tightened every bolt, greased every gear. It should work, damn it! Ordo ab chao—order out of chaos. It was his God-given right and destiny.

  “I’ll check the transmission,” he responded.

  “Dennis and the other researchers already tried.” Desperation in her voice as pleading and frustration mingled on her face.

  “It’s a new technology, prone to bugs.” Bugs that might kill them. “Even the government has yet to acquire it.”

  “Then give it to them!” She flung her arms out in frustration. “That’s what Albin told you to do in the first place. Let them improve the technology and use it to help us.”

  “I gave them sufficient research, but what have they done? They sided with LOGOS. They won’t help us.” Why couldn’t these people understand? “They’re not your friends; they’re working with the people who caused this. They’re not here to help you; they only want to keep the peace—by whatever means necessary. Five hours ago, they were throwing you out into the street like an evicted deadbeat. They only want to dominate—”

  “Are you saying that for our good, or because if they take over, you won’t be in charge?” She shouldered up, a foot away.

  For fuck’s sake. He blew a breath through his nostrils, jaw muscles tensing along with his traps. “Where are they evacuating you from? I assume they’ll assemble everyone at the walkway on the southeast side of the water treatment facility, or the northern point by the entrance to the Belmont Slough. They offer the quickest access to the Bay.”

  Hesitation, then—“You’re welcome to come, but I don’t know if that’s what you want. You have the repellent frequency, so you could in theory stay here if it doesn’t fail completely. No one else will be here, though, except the cannibals and . . . your mercenary friends.” The pause betrayed her effort in word selection. An HR minion to the end.

  “They are not my friends. They are my temporary pawns, who have kept the neighborhood safe.”

  “‘Temporary pawns,’ like us?” Anger flared in her face.

  “You’re not pawns.” Not entirely. What dependent wasn’t a pawn to some degree?

  “Albin and his friends are going.” She looked away. “Josephine’s there too; she doesn’t know I’m meeting you here. They’re with the others now, waiting for the first pickup.”

  “Albin?” He raised a brow. “Where is he?” One last chance to deal with the traitorous bastard.

  She turned to leave, then swung around to face him again. “Why? So you can try to blow him up again?”

  “That bastard.” Nathan bared his teeth. “He’s waiting for me, isn’t he. He can’t resist facing me one last time.” Like the mythical Tyr placing his hand in the mouth of Fenrir, Albin would regret trying to reason with the Eater of Worlds.

  Nathan stormed toward the Sierra. A boat engine droned in the north. The government, coming early? No, a speedboat. Other engines joined the first. More boats, some in the yacht class. What the hell did this mean?

  Snapping and popping from above—from red fireworks. Red Chief’s calling card. A pit opened in Nathan’s gut.

  “Amanda, get to the evac site and warn everyone that Red Chief is coming. Have them shelter somewhere fortified. They might be close enough to one of the schools to barricade themselves inside. They should not engage him or his men unless absolutely necessary. I will deal with Esau Seir.”

  Red would soon learn why one should never come between a wolf and its prey.

  ++++++++++++

 
Nathan accelerated up Redwood Shores Parkway. The Glock pressed against his side, but he wouldn’t need it. “You should have left with your life, friend.” Teeth bared, every muscle aching to explode into brutal action. “This time I’ll kill you with my bare hands. Then I’ll slit your throat and put a knife in your chest to make certain.” No more revivals of enemies; Lazarus would remain in the tomb this time. “The same applies to Red.”

  Beepbeepbeep!

  The sat phone. No doubt Lexa wanted a progress report.

  Eyes on the road, he felt for the answer button. “Yes?”

  “Tell me, King of Fools, is the world on your side, or are you going to run and hide?” Kenichi fucking Oshiro. What the—Shit! A jerk of the wheel prevented a collision with a parked car.

  “I thought that you would rue it, and indeed you did!” he sang.

  Amanda said Albin had joined forces with the scheming motherfucker. “It’s too early to gloat. You’ll lose your pawn Albin soon enough.”

  “You say that like I care! No, what amuses me is seeing my prophecy come to pass—my will prevail. I saw the flow of the Tao and knew—”

  “Your prophecy that he would turn on me? The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

  “Come on, you know me better than that. When there’s an opportunity, I don’t hit. It hits for me.”

  “But you create the opportunity.”

  Ahead, vehicles rolled toward the tip of Redwood Shores. Leaving. His people leaving him for the unknown. For the government. Nathan slowed.

  “Not only me. Hah, he was right about you all along! He said from the get-go you’d run the neighborhood into the ground since you were a ‘villainous narcissist.’ Takes one to know one, I guess.”

  “Who?” Cheel? Albin? “Tell me.” You fucking lunatic! Nathan slammed his palm into the wheel.

  “Maybe later. But right now you’ve got a frequency to check and a former friend to meet. I think you’ll be disappointed, though. LOGOS and the twisted sister will be too. The Damned are completely out of control now. The lay-down only made things worse. Soon it will be just like the No-Ne-Kun—the underworld. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  “Dark god or not, Ken, you won’t be in control of them either.” Lose-lose: better than a win for the other side.

  “Oh, don’t write me off yet! Out of the blue—or should I say smog?—that big, bald idiot of Red Chief’s thought I’d be interested in a copy of the files his sheep—sorry, his Goats—found. I couldn’t be rude and say no.”

  Autopilot and reflex guided the Sierra around the vehicles. Sarge set the world record for betrayal—Red, LOGOS, Lexa, Nathan. Machiavelli’s words echoed over Fenrir’s snarl: Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous . . . they have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy.

  “Out of the blue? No. You betrayed us to the Goats. Of course he knew your interest in the files.”

  “True. My will brought him to me. It was a short jump of logic for him. The twisted sister wanted him to snag the ReMOT and files for her from Red on the down-low.”

  “Why? She works for LOGOS. Let me guess: Sarge stealing them for her and from her employers would give her plausible deniability, along with the technology.” A left turn took the Sierra toward Radio Point. “She wanted to block LOGOS’s latest attempt to control the cannibals so she would have more time to develop the files.” Unsurprising but no less disappointing. “My people and I were supposed to help her.”

  Chapter 88

  Trapped

  Angel in Disgrace - The Raven Age

  Albin’s location on the roof of the radio station provided an excellent vantage. Adjusting the compact binoculars, he surveyed the road. The influx of residents who had arrived at the evacuation point provided him with camouflage. The few men Sarge left behind to guard the station paid him little heed. To gain access to the building’s rear and its ladder, he had only needed to appear nonchalant.

  A black pickup truck roared down the road. Nathan Serebus came to defend his territory. It mattered not to him that the people he called subjects no longer wanted him as their king. They waited here and there in groups along the north side of the Silicon Valley Clean Water plant, ranging about their vehicles but remaining close enough to the parkway to make a quick escape if needed.

  “Come, Fenrir, and see what the hunter has in store for you.” Yet even as he spoke, Albin’s heart ached.

  Enough of this. His mind entered neutral territory: into the dunes, where the sand silenced and the night froze.

  Mr. Serebus would see reason, or he would see the inside of a jail cell. Albin had provided the authorities with sufficient testimony to warrant the man’s arrest, if not convict him. Though whether or not the government cared at this point to arrest him remained in question. Surely they would want a scapegoat, if nothing else.

  Even if the government did not act, the hunter would complete his hunt. The Wolf could not resist the bait of what he thought to be justice but what amounted to revenge.

  Bereft of his land and people, perhaps Mr. Serebus would understand he had no choice but to come to his senses. The family he left in New York needed him. His greed and lust for power had blinded him even to that. “And they say there is no power greater than love,” Albin scoffed. “There are a great many powers stronger.”

  A man’s strength was measured by and flowed from his appetites. Given the size of Mr. Serebus’s appetite for power—one indeed fit for Fenrir, the Eater of Worlds—his strength would prove a challenge indeed. But the hunter would prevail. Here, where Mr. Serebus had betrayed them by activating the cannibal-control frequency, he would meet his match.

  ++++++++++++

  “You’re as sharp as ever!” Ken prattled as Nathan closed in on his target. “Making Cheel’s mercenaries look like unreliable screw-ups was a bonus.”

  “Workplace politics?”

  “All issues are political, and politics is a mass of lies, hatred, and schizophrenia.” Lexa and LOGOS endeavored to make lies sound truthful by giving solidity to the wind. But God had spared Nathan from believing their doublespeak. “And speaking of schizophrenia, you were so creative with that cannibal-calling box! I expected nothing less, though.”

  “You left the freq box?” To fuck with his competition at LOGOS, no doubt. Or just to be a troublemaker.

  “Sarge’s guys, to be precise. It was a little toy I amped up from the sample the LOGOS peeps showed me.”

  “I don’t have time for this.” The radio towers loomed ahead, ruling the air with invisible power. “I have a traitor to execute.”

  “Have fun! I’ve really enjoyed our game. It was inevitable that you’d lose, but it was still fun. It will be amusing watching Albin kill you, too. Wave to the satellite when you get out of that monster truck. Say, is that truck compensating for something—”

  Nathan’s thumb dug into the End button. “Fucking madman.”

  Eyes on the sky, he swung into the station’s parking lot. “Don’t blink, Big Brother. Don’t blink.”

  Nathan swung out of the Sierra and approached the mercenary at the main building’s door, where he’d faced another group of mercs just a few days ago. “Are the jamming and repeller transmission working or not?” The false jamming frequency, rather. “Are the generators running?” The machines’ hum answered his question, but it bore asking.

  “It’s all running fine.” The mercenary’s brows drew together and his eyes narrowed, the only parts of his expression visible behind his face-shield mask. “Why? And where’s Sarge?”

  “He left when I did. Move. The cannibals are coming.” Nathan caught him by the front of the vest and shoved him out of the way. Albin had likely infiltrated the radio station and turned off the frequency. He wanted the people here to die, all so Nathan would have no allies. “In case you didn’t know,” he added over h
is shoulder, “Red Chief is about to pay us a visit.”

  “Red?” Fear and anger overrode suspicion in the merc’s voice.

  Through the entry, down the hall, and into the control room. The frequency generator occupied its place in the corner, under a cardboard box. No sense letting the machine stand out for an invader to carry off.

  Nathan tossed the concealment aside. The transmitter’s lights blinked; everything looked functional. “Why the fuck isn’t it working?” Dennis and one of the Redwood Shores residents who had experience in radio broadcasting had shown him the finer points of setting up the generator and using the towers to transmit the signal. The connections looked secure, and power flowed. Unless . . . Had the LOGOS bastards managed to broadcast their signal after all? “Maybe I should have run Lexa’s jamming broadcast just in case? No. That was likely a control frequency.” Fuck, so many variables. He slammed his fist into the desk’s top.

  Wait. Ken had said the cannibals escaped both Lexa’s and LOGOS’s control. The lay-down and the broadcasts were still experimental, per the twisted sister. If Nathan had followed the script, perhaps it would have resulted in a Shakespearian masterpiece rather than a farce. Or perhaps it would have become a tragedy worse even than the present one.

  “Serebus,” his radio crackled with Sarge’s bark. “Do you copy?”

  “I copy. I’m at the radio towers. Where are you? Red Chief is coming. Get your ass up here.”