After the Dark

by Max Allan Collins

  Still gagged, Bostock wriggled—like a snake, actually—and said something loud and angry, two words, the first one guttural, the second a vowel sound.

  “I'm gonna take that for a no,” Max said.

  She walked over to a tree and withdrew her cell phone and punched in Dix's number, back at Terminal City. She got him on the first ring, and he was excited—relieved and worried—to hear her voice.

  Max settled him down and filled him in, telling him where they were and what she had in mind.

  “When?” he asked.

  “Around midnight,” Max said, and gave him more details. “Can you make it happen?”

  “If we book,” he said.

  “Why don't you, then?”

  “Roger that.”

  And Dix broke the connection.

  For the rest of the day, they maintained their watch. A small basket of cold cuts and canned soda, brought along from the Cale mansion, provided sustenance—a rather grisly picnic, considering the basket had ridden in the trunk with the two corpses. The Manticore-trained soldiers weren't bothered by such trivialities, though, and an eerie calm touched their hilltop camp.

  Alec, returning from his rotation, came up to Max and said, “You better take a look.”

  She joined him from their vantage point and saw a car rolling into the parking lot from that private lane—a black stretch Lincoln. The parking lot was now brimming with vehicles of many varieties—mostly expensive numbers, but not all.

  “I make out license plates from all over the West Coast,” Alec said. “Also, rental vehicles. What do you make of that?”

  Max lowered the binoculars. “We're gonna have a full house of Familiars tonight. Comin' from miles around . . .”

  “Why?”

  She gave the X5 half a smile. “Big night for 'em.”

  “You mean, it's the annual snake-cult Christmas party?”

  “No—it's the End of the World Fling. Comet's comin', remember?”

  “Oh yeah . . . and, the good news is, Jesus is comin' back, right?”

  She nodded. “Only they don't know the bad news: she's pissed.”

  Alec grinned and nodded. Then he looked at the sky. “I think we might have a white Christmas.”

  “Let's hope not much of one.”

  Around dusk a dusting of snow did arrive, but nothing troublesome; and then, after the dark came, its charcoal hand caressing the compound, they made their preparations for the coming battle.

  They would have only one chance to free Logan—and it vexed Max that the fate of the man she loved depended largely on the whim of Ames White. But—though nothing was said, not directly—all of them knew that more than Logan Cale's future was at stake tonight.

  For the cultists below, midnight marked a new future for their own twisted kind, and the beginning of the end for mankind. Whether there was any truth to it, Max couldn't say—what the hell could she do about a comet? On the other hand, the sick bastards below, who longed for the death of all ordinaries, and prayed for the death of transgenics, particularly herself, represented the kind of problem Max and her boys were eminently qualified to correct.

  The transgenics had been bred to be soldiers to protect the United States from enemies foreign and domestic, and tonight, on homeland soil, they were finally going to get the opportunity to put those skills to use for their own country . . . at an insane asylum.

  She watched them prepare now, her offbeat commando squad—Alec casually doing push-ups to burn off excess energy and stay limber; Mole checking the clip from his pistol (the presence of the weapon still troubled her); Joshua sitting on the ground, back to the car, legs straight out in front of him, his mouth yawned open in a silent roar as he slept.

  Funny. They had come so far, the transgenics at Terminal City—their hometown finally accepting them, Alec about to run for city council, the arts and crafts mall revealing an entrepreneurial spirit, and a surprising well of creativity from within creatures trained to fight and to kill. They had come so far . . .

  . . . and they had come far, making it to this hilltop, too. To fight. And to kill.

  About ten minutes before midnight on Christmas Eve, Max stood with her three friends at the edge of the hilltop. The other messiah had three wise men to attend his birth: she had two wiseasses and a not so cowardly lion. Well, she'd take what she could get.

  Nearby were the two corpses—the dead Familiar, rigid with rigor mortis; and the boy wrapped in the white sheet. She spoke to Mole and Joshua, telling them that when they reached the edge of the woods, they were to wait for her signal before emerging with their grim cargo. They nodded somberly.

  Then she went up to Alec, who was tending to Bostock, keeping the gun snugged in the man's side. The private secretary still had not only his mouth but his arms and ankles duct-taped.

  “Ready?” she asked Alec.

  “Ready,” Alec said. “But Max . . . before we do this . . .”

  “Second thoughts? Like maybe you'd hate to see your political career nipped in the bud?”

  “No. I have no second thoughts about helping take these sons of bitches down . . . but Max—consider.” He gestured with his head to the trussed-up Familiar. “If this guy is right . . . if these snake cultists are correct about this heavenly biotoxin . . . your blood is where the vaccine would come from, that would . . . you know.”

  “Save the world?”

  “Something like that. Are you sure you're the person who ought to be walking up to the front gates of Snake City, ready to pick a fight?”

  She didn't say anything for a moment.

  Then she put a hand on Alec's shoulder. “I have considered that. But we're here to save Logan. I'm not prepared to believe anything these wackos say . . . but just in case, I'm putting you in charge of gettin' my carcass on ice, toot sweet.”

  He grinned at her. “Sure you wanna hand me a money-making opportunity like that?”

  And she had to laugh. It felt good.

  Then the two X5s exchanged serious nods, and Alec said, “Let's go wish those serpents a Merry Christmas, what do you say?”

  “And help 'em shed their skins for the New Year,” she said, and they bumped fists and started down the wooded hillside.

  Max was in the lead, with Alec several paces behind her, guiding Bostock, who had to sort of hop along, else be dragged bodily by Alec. Joshua and Mole, carrying the corpses, were several paces behind Alec. Max's point position allowed her to spot one of the three-man patrols, in camouflage TAC apparel.

  Bostock made some noise, and Alec slapped him with the pistol.

  But Max was already on the move, throwing a kick into the lead guard. Suddenly Joshua and Mole—having laid down their gruesome burdens—were right there with her. A martial-arts blow to the neck from Max cancelled her guard's contract with life, and Joshua broke his guard's neck with a quick twist of both hands. Mole buried his gun so deep in his man's body that the guard's flesh muffled the shot.

  Max looked over at Mole, the gun in his hand as he stood over the dead Familiar. He returned her gaze and whispered, “I know you don't like firearms, Max . . . but I gotta do this my way—'kay?”

  Hating it, she nodded. Some part of her mind wondered how she could be such a hypocrite—after all, she'd crushed her opponent's windpipe with a knife-blade of a hand, the “gentle” giant Joshua had just snapped a Familiar's neck like a twig . . . and she was having trouble with Mole killing a man with a gun?

  Maybe she could talk to somebody at Big Sky about this psychological hang-up of hers . . .

  They were still fifty yards from the building when her cell phone rang.

  “Go for Max.”

  “Time's dwindling, 452,” Ames White said, in the same distant, processed sound as his previous calls, as if he were on the moon and not, most likely, within shouting distance. “Do you have my son?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “He's here with me.”

  “Put him on”

  “Not possible. We have to talk
about that . . .”

  “. . . I'm getting the feeling I'm not going to like where this is going.”

  “Are you at Big Sky?”

  Perhaps the question took him by surprise, as there was a long silence; she could almost hear the wheels turning, as her longtime antagonist tried to figure out just how much she knew.

  “Yes or no?” she asked finally.

  “. . . Yes.”

  “Are you on a secure line?”

  “What do you mean, 452?”

  “I mean, are we ‘alone' or are your friends listening in?”

  “I'm on my cell,” he said, the tone implying he could talk.

  “We've been enemies for a long time, White.”

  “We agree on that much.”

  “But you need to know something . . . We have mutual enemies.”

  Another pause.

  Then: “Where is my son?”

  “If you really are at Big Sky, step outside the front door and we'll talk about it. And White? Bring Logan.”

  She knew he'd be running to a window to try to see if she was serious. They were still behind the building, so there was no chance of White actually catching sight of them as they made their way through the trees toward the front.

  “And don't bother contacting your foot patrol,” she said, “to come up behind us. They're busy being dead.”

  White's voice took on an icy note. “You always did know how to make an entrance, 452 . . . I'll be right out.”

  “Don't forget what I said, White—about mutual enemies.”

  “How could I?”

  “Bring Logan.”

  “I will. We have an exchange to make, right, 452?”

  “Right.”

  She clicked off.

  Only a few stars dotted the night sky and a heavy chill hung in the air. Mole and Joshua, their arms filled with the dead, waited at the border of the woods as Max, Alec, and their duct-taped captive moved into the clearing, their feet crunching on the snow-powdered ground.

  Floodlights on the corners threw pools of light around the building, spotlights awaiting a star performance; but Max and her company avoided them, stopping at the edge of an arc of light that shone from a floodlight above the main entrance.

  She looked behind her, toward the trees; she could barely make out Mole and Joshua there, though the white of the boy's bedsheet shroud finally guided her to them. She gave a hand signal—stay put—and then nodded at Alec. He nodded back. Bostock, his ear a little bloody from where Alec had disciplined him, held his head up. He seemed to think he was about to turn from hostage to hero.

  Max doubted that.

  Then she, Alec, and the duct-taped prisoner moved into the pool of light.

  The main entrance—double steel doors with wire-mesh-and-glass panels—was at the top of five concrete stairs lined with metal rails. The new masters of the world had selected unprepossessing main headquarters, to say the least. The trio faced the entrance in a loose line, Alec holding Bostock by the scruff of the neck, to her left; Max standing with her hands on her hips, defiant to the last.

  The doors flew open and White—in a black suit and a thin black raincoat—stormed out. He stopped at the edge of the top stair, his eyes going to Bostock. He had changed not at all since she'd seen him last—his spiky dark hair looked frozen in place, his face ghostly pale under the floodlight, and his lips seemed to have no color at all, his dark eyes intense, burning.

  Alone, he came down the steps, moving within fifteen feet of her.

  “My son!” he yelled. “Where is he?”

  Voices traveled clearly in the chill night air.

  “I don't see Logan,” Max said.

  The doors erupted open and two dozen or more Familiars streamed out of the building and down the steps, in flowing reddish-copper hooded robes, monklike, the wind catching the garments. Some wore round metal collars engraved with pagan motifs; others had decorated their faces with black war paint; a few others had tattooed faces, reminiscent of heathen cultures from far-flung Pacific islands. Many, though, were bare of face—cultists who had infiltrated the world of the ordinaries . . . as Ames White had done, with the NSA. They filled in behind White, in a wide arc, a wind-shimmering wall of copper-red.

  “Okay,” Alec whispered to her. “We're officially outnumbered . . .”

  One Familiar stepped up to White's side, immediately to his right—a tall wraith of a man with angular features and a hawkish nose, his hood back, exposing flowing silver hair; he wore neither markings nor tattoos. His regal bearing combined with the long robe—which included a scarlet tippet—gave him the appearance of a cleric or even a wizard.

  Max had never seen this one before, yet his distinctive presence told her that he was their leader—that this was the Familiar who wielded the power.

  At least, here at the nuthouse.

  “Franklin,” White said, acknowledging Bostock.

  Behind his gag, Bostock said something unintelligible.

  “Where,” Max asked, “is Logan?”

  White's head tilted. “Where's Ray?”

  She gestured with open hands. “Look—you've got us outnumbered. We're on your home field. Give us what we came for—how are we gonna get away before you get want you want?”

  White considered that, then gave a quick nod.

  “Bring him!” the silver-haired Familiar called.

  Two more hooded, robed figures burst through the doors, one on either side of Logan Cale, who they dragged down the stairs.

  The crowd parted and the Familiars hauled Logan up by either arm; he wasn't bound, but seemed weak, even groggy. They stopped on White's left, maintaining their hold on him.

  Logan's eyes met hers.

  “Surprising,” he said, “the lengths I'll go to, Max, to get back on your good side.”

  For a guy who'd been the guest of Ames White and the snake cult, he didn't look so bad—they hadn't let him shave, and the beard gave him a scruffy cast; his clothes—jeans, pullover blue sweater—were filthy and wrinkled. But there were no obvious signs that he'd been beaten or tortured, and—despite the Familiar at either arm—he was standing on his own two feet; they obviously had not deprived him of the exoskeleton that allowed him upright mobility.

  She smiled at him and said, “You're not forgiven yet.”

  He grinned and shrugged, and she grinned and shrugged.

  “All very brave and touching,” White said, and he withdrew a Glock from under the raincoat, “but if he speaks again before I have my boy, I'll kill him.”

  Max held her palms out and up. “White, I need you not to do anything rash . . .”

  “Where is Ray?”

  “You need to listen. You have the advantage here. Wait until you've heard it all.”

  White's frown revealed an inner battle between rage and curiosity, impatience and willpower. “Heard what, 452?”

  Max raised her hand, issued signals, lowered her hand.

  “Nothing rash,” she advised him.

  White's frown deepened.

  Mole and Joshua emerged from the shadows, their arms filled with the terrible cargo; it was as if they were two somber grooms carrying brides over the threshold. Mole put the dead Familiar on the ground in front of the silver-haired leader. Joshua put the smaller, sheet-wrapped body down before the boy's father.

  Ames White did not have to lift the sheet to know—the small form said it all. In a voice that he was obviously straining to keep emotion-free, White said, “Ray.”

  “Yes,” Max said. “But I didn't do this.”

  The gun in White's hand swung up and he leveled the barrel at Logan's temple. White's lips were peeled back over his teeth in a skull's smile, and Logan winced . . .

  “My people did not do this terrible thing!” Max screamed. “Or don't you really care who did do it!”

  White remained poised there, ready to shoot, for several long moments. Then the gun came down, his eyes narrowed, and he turned his homicidal gaze on Max.

&nbs
p; “If you didn't, 452,” he said, “who did?”

  “Ask him!” Max said, and pointed at Bostock.

  Alec ripped the duct tape from the man's face. Bostock spat the rest of the gag, the knot of cloth, onto the snowy ground.

  White said, “Do you have something to say, Franklin?”

  Bostock stood frozen.

  Max said, “He was talkative before. Maybe he's a little intimidated in the presence of the father of the child he ordered killed.”

  “Explain,” White said.

  The silver-haired leader gripped White's arm and whispered in his ear. But White shook his head and yanked his arm away.

  “Explain!”

  Max quickly told White that she'd first encountered Bostock trying to get ransom aid from Lyman Cale.

  “That makes sense,” White said, astonishingly self-composed, but not looking down at the little sheet-wrapped corpse. “Approaching Lyman Cale for the ransom . . . but how did you recognize Franklin as a Familiar?”

  She explained tracking Ray down. “When we got to the house, we were too late, only by moments, but too late—two men had executed Ray and his aunt. One got away, but we stopped this one . . .”

  She gestured to the dead Familiar in the snow.

  She went on: “I recognized him as one of the security guards employed by Bostock.”

  Mole stepped forward and flipped the corpse over, giving White a good look at the face of the Familiar.

  Almost gently, she asked, “Recognize him?”

  White nodded.

  Max said, “He was assigned to Lyman Cale, wasn't he?”

  White nodded, his gaze on the secretary now.

  “We're enemies, White,” Max said. “But I wouldn't have killed your boy. For one thing, I needed him, to get Logan back. For another, I'm not a sick son of a bitch, like Franklin, here.”

  The secretary tried to break away from Alec, but the X5 grabbed him by the arm and shoved the gun back in his ribs.

  “What do you have to say, Franklin?” White asked, in a tone that was all too reasonable.

  Bostock said nothing.

  “Is it true, Franklin? Did you kill my son? Why would you do such a thing . . . to a Brother?”