Villain

by Michael Grant

  Nevada State Troopers rushed to the city. Cops and EMTs and firefighters from towns and cities as far away as Bakersfield were on the way, but blocked by panicky people who jammed all lanes of traffic on both sides of every road. Vegas was doing its best to empty out, but with a population of six hundred thousand, not to mention at least a hundred thousand tourists, it would take hours. Days.

  Meanwhile police and security were being rushed by mobs that could not be stopped by anything short of death. But the mobs also attacked and murdered shift workers at McDonald’s and In-N-Out, as well as doormen and valets, sanitation workers, and even cocktail waitresses and blackjack dealers.

  It took four hours before the police chief realized that the mobs were focusing on uniforms. Any uniform. Mostly cops and guards, but when they couldn’t find anyone in those categories, the mob would pour into casinos and bite, beat, strangle, stab, and shoot anyone wearing what could be described as a uniform.

  The PC ordered all police to remove their uniforms immediately, with the result that now there were cops in underwear who were safe from attack, but too disorganized to even begin to formulate a strategy. The PC did his best to alert the casino security teams, but communications were overwhelmed, and it wasn’t as if anyone was pausing to check their texts or emails.

  By three a.m., Las Vegas was in lockdown. The casino doors were locked and barricaded with piles of slot machines. Guests still in the casinos were not allowed out, and no one but no one was getting in.

  At least at first.

  In the early morning hours the mob—now minus close to five hundred dead who lay scattered all up and down the Strip alongside hundreds of their victims—began to commandeer the early morning garbage trucks and used them to ram the doors of Treasure Island casino. The Venetian was already in flames; Treasure Island soon followed.

  Tom Peaks had finished Drake’s half bottle of vodka. He stepped outside of Drake’s cave. Peaks did not have a weak stomach, but that place was the heart of evil, and he was sickened by it.

  He fired up his phone. It was a risk, he knew it was a risk. He had swapped out SIM cards, but still, the US government had serious skills when it came to electronic surveillance.

  But he needed contact with reality.

  He tried to check his wife’s Facebook page. She’d shut it down. That hurt. It was not hard to guess at the social media abuse his poor wife had endured. God only knew what his kids were going through. He’d always taught them to be honest and straightforward, to stand up to bullies, but what was the honest and straightforward way to counter, Your dad is a monster! Or, Your dad killed people!

  He considered taking his own life. Drake surely had a gun lying around. A knife or a razor would do the trick as well. Or he could just climb up this very hill, this pile of rocks, take a last look at the stars, and jump.

  Then he came across Shade Darby’s uploaded video of the annihilation of the Ranch.

  That brought some grim satisfaction. DiMarco must be crapping herself. But then, too, many people Peaks had worked with, had hired, had nurtured as employees, were dead. The Ranch—his creation—would never recover.

  The US government was very far from finished, but they would not have their mutant army. They would not have cyborgs. They would have to prevail by more conventional means.

  He was about to shut off his phone when by habit he clicked on the Washington Post and saw the screaming headlines about Las Vegas. And there, in blurry video, his nemesis, his failure: Dekka Talent.

  It did not take a man of Peaks’s intellect and education to see that Vegas would be the center of an epic battle. Government versus mutant versus mutant.

  With DiMarco humiliated, maybe the Pentagon would see that they’d made a mistake casting Peaks aside. Maybe they’d start to see that he was the only one who could lead the fight against the Dekkas and Shades and Knightmares of the world.

  Especially if he turned the tide of battle in favor of the government. But not, he realized, if he was still involved with Drake. People who crucified people in caves were never going to be popular, whereas Dragon . . . well, who didn’t kinda sorta like dragons? And with time he could spin the massacre at the Port of LA as just a case of him trying to stop what’s-his-name, Vincent Vu.

  He had a stolen SUV. And he had . . . he checked his wallet . . . twenty-seven dollars, which should buy him enough gas to make the three-and-a-half-hour drive.

  Dillon had spent a delirious night in the huge, posh VIP box looking out over the now-empty stadium. He still had his Cheerios, all fully armed, though not at all good at actually shooting, as he had discovered when he had them target shoot in the arena, aiming at basketballs he rolled for them. He’d enjoyed himself to the point of exhaustion, with CNN on in the background, the pictures shifting from dramatic overhead chopper shots to wild-eyed street reporters to surveillance cameras inside casinos to gray-faced, worried “experts.”

  Experts, he’d sneered. There was no such thing as an expert in what was happening.

  His only regret was that the news cut away to what was apparently video uploaded to YouTube by the Shade Darby person.

  He watched that over and over again, fascinated by the horrors that had been created there. Fascinated as well by the slaughter. And strangely a bit jealous of Shade. Media coverage should be totally on him, the Charmer, not divided with the creepy girl with the sleek, Plasticine head and the bug legs.

  He slept for a few hours and had himself bathed in the giant whirlpool tub. He tried calling for pizza delivery, but his landline was dead. A cell phone worked, but the phone just rang and rang. No one in Las Vegas was delivering pizza.

  He sent two of the Cheerios down to find food in the hot dog and beer stands, but they never came back. He had ordered them to get food and return, so either the orders were too vague, or impossible to carry out, or . . . or someone had taken out two of his Cheerios.

  Dekka? The bear? Or was Shade Darby here now?

  No need to be afraid, he reassured himself. He had the greatest of all powers. And he had an audience to impress.

  “Now what?” he wondered, and went back to the TV, to exhausted-looking news anchors and . . . Breaking News. The news that was breaking involved amateur video of a tank column. An actual army tank column! It was like something out of the Iraq war.

  “Wow,” Dillon said. “I stirred something up here, didn’t I?”

  One of the cheerleaders, the Asian woman who said her name was Kate, answered. “Yes, you did. A lot of people are going to die.”

  He shot her a look and almost ordered her to bite her tongue off. “If I want criticism, I’ll ask for it. So shut up.”

  But she wasn’t wrong. The UNLV mob had formed into three subgroups, one very large mob of maybe five thousand, and two smaller groups, all wandering up and down the Strip looking for anyone in uniform.

  The Strip itself, and the various walkways between casinos, were all studded with bodies, most dead, some crawling along leaving blood trails on bare concrete.

  “Tanks, huh?” Dillon said, then sang a bit of a ditty—“Tanks for the memories”—which earned a nervous smile from Kate and made him like her a little. He was glad he hadn’t made her mutilate herself. “Two goldfish are in a tank. One says to the other, ‘Hey, how do you drive this thing?’” That got an honest titter.

  Her laughter warmed him, but he was still worried. He had taken on the cops and won. He’d taken on Dekka and Armo and at least survived. But tanks? Yeah, that was going to be tough.

  What he needed, he realized, was to get on nationwide TV, like Saffron had said. Just ten seconds of airtime and he would be able to create millions of obedient slaves.

  “No, Dillon,” he said suddenly, snapping his fingers. “I don’t need TV.”

  He had a Facebook page with seventy-eight “friends.” That would be a start.

  “Hey, Kate. Take my phone. You know how to film video?”

  In the bowels of the National Security Agency, the r
eigning world champions at electronic surveillance, now, in the emergency, allowed to spy openly on what they called “US persons,” a computer pinged.

  An analyst known as Captain Crunch for the box of sugary cereal he kept close at hand turned in his chair in his cubicle and said to the guy in the next cubicle, “Hey, I’ve got a hit on Subject 19.”

  It took twenty minutes of verification and double-checking, by which time half a dozen senior NSA supervisors were huddled around Captain Crunch’s cubicle, and many more eyes watched via computer link.

  It took another hour for the news to make its way up the chain of command. And thirty minutes for orders to reach the Creech Air Force Base just outside Las Vegas.

  From there it took another half hour to arm and launch the drone, and another hour to reach the target. Men and women in dark, air-conditioned trailers parked in the desert sat in padded armchairs facing monitors. They searched high and low for signs of life in the target area. Nothing.

  Good enough.

  A Hellfire missile was launched, coincidentally just as Drake Merwin emerged from his hideout, wondering where the hell Tom Peaks had got to.

  The missile blew Drake into the rocks. Or at least pieces of him. Chunks of Drake—many burning—fell between crevices or splatted against stone. His head was torn in half, with most of his brain, his right eye, and nose a jellied, slow-burning wad of goo.

  The remainder of his head, comprised of his left eye, a bit of nose cartilage, and his mouth, fell, somewhat intact, onto a cactus, where it sat like some demented bird’s nest.

  “Damn,” Drake’s mouth said. “This again?”

  CHAPTER 19

  Ruthlessness: Not Just for Sharks Anymore

  DEKKA AND ARMO managed to catch some sleep and some food in a suite at the barricaded Caesars Palace resort—classier than the Venetian, but still wonderfully gaudy, with facsimiles of Roman architecture and statuary. Though the excellent, life-sized copy of Michelangelo’s David was actually from Renaissance Florence, not Caesar’s Rome, but hey, what was a millennium or two?

  Some bright person at Caesars named Wilkes—newly promoted by virtue of her former boss’s death at Caesars—had recognized the wisdom in giving the two Rockborn a place to crash.

  Dekka woke first and stumbled to draw the curtains open on blazing sunlight. The room faced north, her view encompassing the Linq and Mirage casinos. And across the strip from the Mirage, the Venetian, which burned, with smoke billowing from shattered windows.

  The Strip was almost devoid of cars, aside from those that had crashed or been overturned. Some cars and trucks still smoldered. Bodies were everywhere, little rag dolls dropped in the street, on sidewalks, in fountains.

  An empty police car was still flashing red and blue. Through the thick glass Dekka heard sirens and alarms trilling endlessly.

  Weariness swept through her. Not sleepiness, though she felt that, too, but bone weariness. The bed she had just left called to her. Armo was still asleep on his bed, facedown, so big that he managed to hang over the foot of the bed and both sides simultaneously.

  Dekka found the remote control and turned the TV on.

  A state of barely controlled panic had seized the country, with the news split about evenly between what Shade had done at the Ranch and the growing madness of Las Vegas.

  But, the anchor said, tanks were on the way. Like that was going to be a good thing.

  She opened her phone and WhatsApp, struck by the fact that she was using the favorite app of terrorists.

  Dekka: Shade?

  Shade: Yes?

  Dekka: Coming to Vegas?

  Shade: Yep.

  Dekka: I thought you might be. Come to Caesars Palace. Text when you get here and I’ll have them let you in.

  Shade: Malik says “Avengers assemble?”

  Dekka: Something like that.

  Dekka met Shade, Cruz, and Malik downstairs. “Glad you came,” Dekka said, shaking their hands. “Armo and I were on our way to back you up—which you obviously did not need—and got sidelined here.”

  “Thanks for the thought,” Shade said wearily. “It’s been a rough day.”

  “The days are all rough now,” Cruz said.

  Dekka made eye contact with Shade and subtly inclined her head toward the hallway leading to the bathrooms.

  Shade said, “I have to duck into the ladies’.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Dekka said. “Armo, you mind taking Cruz and Malik up to the room?”

  “My pleasure.”

  Dekka intercepted a look between Malik and Cruz. Neither of them had missed that Dekka wanted to talk to Shade alone. But neither wanted to interfere, either, so they followed Armo toward the elevators.

  Dekka led Shade to an alcove housing landlines and an ATM.

  “What’s up?” Shade asked, unable to conceal a deep weariness identical to Dekka’s own bone-deep exhaustion.

  “You know about the FAYZ? You read the books, saw the movie?”

  Shade nodded.

  “So you know who I mean when I say that Drake is alive. Or what passes as life where he’s concerned.”

  “Whip Hand,” Shade said, suddenly more alert.

  “Whatever you think you know, the reality is worse. Much worse. He’s been living out in the desert, but Tom Peaks brought him to LA. Don’t know where he is now, hopefully back in the far reaches of the Mojave. But even if he is . . .” She exhaled a shaky breath. “He’s obsessed with her.”

  “Astrid Ellison.”

  Dekka nodded. “Sooner or later he’ll go for her. And Sam won’t be able to stop him.” She took a long pause, knowing the gravity of what she was about to ask. “No normal human being will be able to stop him.”

  Shade looked at the floor. “Dekka . . . I . . .” She made a small, bitter laugh. “I’m not real impressed by my own decision making lately, you know? Especially when it comes to the rock. Malik . . . You don’t know what’s happened to him, what he’s become.”

  “It’s a risk, a terrible risk,” Dekka agreed. “But you do have some?”

  Shade nodded so slightly it might almost not have been intentional. But after a moment she spoke. “Yes, Dekka. I have some.”

  Armo was fast asleep by the time Dekka led Shade into the room. Dekka and Shade had picked up some coffee and pastries downstairs, and Dekka now set them out on the coffee table, like she was catering a business meeting.

  But first Cruz and then Shade and then Malik used the shower, and by the time that was done, Armo had yawned and woken up. He sat wearing only boxers, blissfully unaware that Cruz was eyeing him like he was the last donut.

  At six feet in a world that still felt women should be shorter than men, Cruz had few options. But Armo? Armo was massive.

  In a good way.

  “So,” Dekka said.

  “So,” Shade agreed.

  They sipped coffee, each seeming to Cruz to be waiting for the other to announce a plan.

  “Tanks will be here by sundown. And as far as I know that Dillon person is still free,” Dekka said. With an apologetic look, she added, “Sorry. We almost had him.”

  “It’s all over the news, obviously,” Shade said. “It’s shaping up as some kind of showdown. I won’t be surprised if more Rockborn show up. A lot of the . . . people . . . we cut loose at the Ranch . . . I saw Knightmare running for it. God only knows what that starfish kid, whatever he calls himself—”

  “Abaddon,” Cruz supplied. “Vincent Vu.”

  “Yeah. Him. Last seen in LA.”

  “How fast can a giant starfish crawl?” Cruz asked drolly, and was rewarded by a grin from Armo. No surprise, he had perfect teeth and a gorgeous smile.

  “What do we do? That’s the question,” Dekka said, looking at Shade. Then everyone looked at Shade.

  Shade shook her head. “Don’t ask me.” She lowered her gaze and seemed to shrink a bit.

  Dekka let go a snort. “Who are we supposed to ask, then? Look, honey, I’ve seen a lot about
you online, and you’re supposed to be smart as hell.”

  “Yeah, well, guess what? IQ is not the same thing as wisdom. Anyway, you’ve got the experience,” Shade said. “And you didn’t . . .” Her eyes went to Malik. Malik sat, silent, eyes half closed as they often were. Looking just like Malik . . . only not.

  Dekka, irritated, turned to Armo. “What have you got, dude?”

  “I got half a croissant left if anyone wants it.”

  Whether he was dead serious or joking, no one was quite sure. But Cruz smiled.

  Not really the time for that, Cruz chided herself. But she’d only briefly met Armo in the midst of a raging battle, and he’d been rather furry at that point. Cruz had never been even in the same room with someone like Armo. Cruz was transgender, but hetero in her preferences, and it would take a seriously picky straight girl or gay boy not to react to six feet, five inches of smooth, muscular gorgeousness. He might even be better-looking than Malik, for whom she could no longer feel anything but pity and sadness and a sort of sibling love.

  Okay, enough! Once again, she was standing back from decisions that would shape her life. Or end it.

  “I don’t even know who we’re fighting,” Cruz blurted. “Are we fighting this Charmer person, this thought-control Rockborn? Or are we fighting the actual United States freaking Army?”

  “We’re fighting the Dark Watchers,” Malik said, breaking a long silence.

  Every face turned to him.

  “I believe . . . ,” he said, before breaking off and frowning. He shook his head slightly, bedeviled by those very Dark Watchers. “What they want, the Watchers, is to watch. I think we are entertainment. In some ways we are like characters in a movie. I don’t know whether they meant this to be entertainment or it just kind of happened. I don’t know . . . well, anything; it’s all just . . . Look, maybe they were just flipping channels and there we were, visible to them because of some long-forgotten experiment with the rock. I don’t guess it matters. But now that they’re watching, they want the show to be entertaining. And their taste in entertainment runs to the dark, the gruesome.”