Leo shrugged again and smiled. “I work for information brokers; what do you think?”
“Right.” He glanced towards the door the doctor had gone through. “He always like that?”
“Yeah, the Doc's a born surgeon—thinks he's God.”
*
Kevin Anderson made it back to his apartment, and slowly climbed the fire escape. He stepped over the tripwires, around the electrified railings, and made certain to skip over the spring trap. He disarmed the window alarm, used a mirrored knife from his pocket to reflect the laser grid on the inside of the window, and slipped into his apartment.
That done, he promptly tripped over an assault rifle.
Kevin cursed at the weapons he had piled up spilled all over the place. Handguns, the assault rifles from his first day here, shotguns, weapons taken from the Mercenaries of his first announcement. Knives were already cluttering up counter space, and he had enough commando blades in his kitchen drawers to open his own cutlery store.
He scrambled to his feet and grabbed a hold of the couch. When he had first ordered the Children of Thanatos to collect the corpses of those he killed with the rifle, he had also instructed them to bring him any proper weapons from the bodies. What he had gotten was an assortment of knives, handguns, shotguns, two katana, and, somehow, five crossbows! Who the hell would use crossbows? Answer, anyone who can't afford or steal bullets. Then again, how hard could it be to carve out extras crossbow bolts, or arrows, or....
Kevin blinked, then laughed. Of course, why hadn't he thought of it before? He could carve his own arrows, his own longbow. That would be fun...
He looked around the extra guns and thought, First, I have to clean up all these guns and put them somewhere.
He sighed and looked around the apartment... his spare apartment... with nothing at all on the walls... and he still had lots of nails... Bingo.
He looked at his watch. He had plenty of time until his evening round of sniping from the rooftops.
Suddenly, there was a voice calling from below. Sounded like Shen Lo...looked like Shen Lo... happened to be Shen Lo.
After having the Tong contact maneuver through the miscellaneous booby traps up to Kevin's apartment—Shen couldn't memorize the pattern that Kevin had shifted the traps in. Kevin wasn't certain he had memorized the pattern either.
"I hear that you had an incident at a bar, Mr. Anderson," the Tong Lieutenant said as he came through the window.
Kevin shrugged, and smiled. "Sort of. Have a seat." He waved Shen to the armchair as Kevin took a seat on a kitchen bench, propped up against the wall. “What did you hear?”
“That you had been saved by our infamous Assassin.”
Kevin arched a brow. “He saved me, huh?”
“Well, there was some odd news about the Assassin being felled, but those have been dismissed as confused rumors... so far. Should there be something else to the story?”
“That depends, am I speaking to the Tong, or to you?”
A faint, inscrutable smile. “Is there a difference?”
“Usually, yes, but let's say for the sake of argument, that Assassin Elsen—”
“Master Assassin,” Shen corrected with the usual deference to proper titles.
Kevin cocked his head, the eyebrow arching further. “Ahem, anyway, let's say that Kyle got knocked out during the exchange, what of it?”
“That would mean the blood is in the water, and the sharks will soon sweep in to dine.”
“Can you speak in phrases that don't sound like you write fortune cookies?”
Shen laughed, an uncharacteristic bellow. “It’s in the job description. Now, tell me, who is after you? Are they Forsaken?”
“Probably...” Kevin frowned, and then sighed. “Okay, I give. Who the heck are the Forsaken and why should I care?”
Shen's face showed some slight surprise for a moment before returning to its normal, placid lack of expression. “They are the ones who you threw out of the church.” Shen continued, as if he were describing an animal. “You see, they are communal in nature. They kill without mercy, and often.”
“As opposed to the Children, who just knock people off for kicks, huh?”
Shen waved it off. “They do it for their own strange reasons, but they bear no malice towards their victims.” He frowned. “The Forsaken...no one knows who leads them, how they came together...they hide outside the city, but when they come in, people die, usually over money. Oddly enough, when people see the same Forsaken twice, they never seem to be any richer—they also tend to mutter about it being for the 'good of all.'”
Kevin nodded. “Hence the communal part…that would explain defiling the Church, then.” Kevin frowned. “Unless communalism is in a religious setting, like a Mission or a monastery, they tend to be radically anti-theist.”
“Atheist?”
“No, anti-theist...anti-God. God is outside the community, something other and greater than the group, so God, belief in God, and the people who believe in God, are all threats to the community.”
“Is that why you removed them from the church?”
A muscle group in Kevin's mouth twitched. “Because it should have been done, and I was at least able to clean out some of the infestation.” His face froze like that a moment, then he smiled broadly. “You know what? I think it's time to return the favor.”
*
Kyle Elsen awoke in the doctor's office with a splitting headache, the pungent smell of antiseptic lancing through his brain. When his eyes focused, they landed upon Dr. Gabriel Sieger. Gabriel stood there with his arms folded, and glaring right at the Assassin.
“Did we have a nice widdle nappie?” His voice was uncharacteristically harsh. “Get off the bed, Kyle; this ain't a hotel I'm runnin'.”
The Assassin tried moving immediately. He wasn't certain how he had gotten here and he wasn't particularly interested in staying. He sat up and had his legs slung over the bed when he was hit with enough vertigo to make him wonder who had hit him with the hammer. He grabbed his head and suppressed a groan. A professional doesn't feel pain. Doesn't care about pain. He just gets the job done...and he had a job to do, didn't he? He always had a job, somewhere. Business was booming. It was San Francisco; there was always someone who needed killing. “What happened?”
“The new guy saved your sorry ass,” Gabriel said. “Supposedly, you tried helping him out against twelve other guys, and you got shot in the head. But what was really impressive, Kyle, was your massive concussion—which has been patched up, you're welcome.”
The Assassin rose to his feet unsteadily and made his way through the door, into the waiting room. Gabe came out right behind him and shouted, “Next victim!”
Chapter 22: God Forsaken Place
May 25th, 2093
It didn't take Kevin long to get a bead on the Forsaken. As Shen had told him, they appeared from outside of town, usually in a vehicle another group had stolen, which meant they were living outside the city in an area that hadn't been nuked, and wasn't that far away—without government regulations on offshore drilling, there were oil rigs up and down the California coastline, providing enough cheap gasoline to keep the entire city soaked in the stuff for years.
The usual numbers given about the Forsaken were mind-boggling—even by Kevin's estimations, there had to be a few thousand of them, though rumors said a million. All told, the details made their location easy to narrow down: the Muir Woods.
A stolen car and forty-five minutes later, he had arrived. As advertised, the trees were gigantic, with hollows in them that could, and did, house entire families—he had even driven his car through one of the trees.
They were decked in squalor. Many of them were families, and they looked as well dressed as the average Scavenger, maybe a little better, in what Kevin could only assume were recently stolen clothing. No one gave him a glance; no one had stopped him as he walked along. There were so many people in the forest that Kevin started to believe the rumors about there be
ing a million Forsaken. The old videos he had seen of Woodstock in the 20th century had people camped out for days in the midst of nowhere—the Muir Woods had become a similar scenario.
Along the way, Kevin spread his homemade listening devices. Between them and the occasional conversation, he managed to piece together some details about the Forsaken.
Their leader was named Andreas Foreman, who was perfect for Kyle—a perfect target—well over six feet tall, blond hair, deep “soulful” brown eyes; what the ladies would call “a real heartbreaker.” What was even better was that “no one” would ever hurt him, since “everyone” loved him. This was, in part, true; Foreman was a very charismatic man, and it was the general belief that he held the Forsaken together with his own two hands.
The other, possibly more dangerous fellow was Harris Derringer, the “first secretary” of the Forsaken.
After the first hour, one of Kevin’s listening devices picked up on a name that caught his attention.
It is hard to imagine that the deep, melodic voice of a giant can actually whine, but that is really the only way that one can describe it: the voice of The Leader. Foreman. The microphones picked up the sound of him clomping back and forth through the woods. “I want Kyle Elsen, Harry! I want him now!”
“Of course, Mr. Foreman,” came the soft, gentle voice of Harris Derringer. The voice was similar to that of a lackey, but smoother in tone, soothing, almost as if he were dealing with a hysterical employer or a child throwing a tantrum. It was so soft that the microphones almost missed it. “And there is no reason why you shouldn’t have him, Sir.”
“Of course not! Everyone loves me! Why hasn’t he come to talk with me, Harry!?” The clomping noises stopped for a moment, then headed back towards the microphone - toward the residential area of his base camp. “They love me. They all want to talk with me! They can’t wait to please me! Why doesn’t he want to do the same!? WHY!?”
A slight hesitation before Derringer answered. “He simply hasn’t met you yet, Mister Foreman. The entire matter will be settled once he meets you.”
“Of course! That’s it! He hasn’t met me yet!” Silence. “Tell me again, Harry, why should that assassin come work for me? In fact, why should I even want to sully myself with dealing with an assassin?” Spits. “I’m above that sort of thing, aren’t I?”
“The reason you should get Kyle is—” Derringer’s raised, aggravated voice cuts off, he takes a deep breath, and then resumes speaking, his voice taking on its earlier tone. “We should grant Kyle Elsen the…the opportunity…the privilege of joining our—your! —ranks…because he can serve you with more skill than almost anyone else here, Mister Foreman.
“Imagine what he can do for you, Andreas,” he hissed. “The power of having the finest killer in all of San Francisco working just for you! He can kill anyone you want, and you can plan around the death of whomever you have him kill. Also, besides that, he’s the best, and you deserve only the best, don’t you, Andreas?”
“Of course I do! After all, would so many people love me if I wasn’t so…so…”
“Perfect?”
“Exactly!”
Kevin wandered some more, drifting with the traffic of the crowd. Andreas Foreman was little more than a glorified child, skilled at manipulating large groups of people, the way a toddler can play their parents off against each other. While charismatic, he possesses all the depth of a dinner plate. However, on the other hand, Harris Derringer not only runs the day-to-day, he also runs Foreman, playing him like a violin.
Kevin tuned out the rest of the conversation due to Derringer’s prattling, plodding, and pandering platitudes. How could anyone like Foreman manage to tie his shoelaces in the morning? Let me think...
As the crowd slowed to a stop, Kevin realized where he was—in the dead center of a massive amount of people who wanted him dead.
Oh goody. He spent a moment looking for a way out, and then the crowd fell silent.
Foreman stepped out on the roof of the main building for the Japanese gardens on the edge of the woods, projecting the image of a little gray man in a little gray tweed suit, wearing brown loafers. Oh great, Kevin thought. Don't I have better things to do than watch the Wizard of Id brainwash the masses for the evening?
When Foreman started to speak, it was like a prerecorded introduction about how the Forsaken came together. It was easy to put together a timeline. In 2090, the summer after the Last Day, Haight-Ashbury was heavy on hippies and drugs. There, they came to listen to Foreman speak about how they were “Forsaken.” The city had abandoned them. Their families had abandoned them. Their friends had abandoned them. Even “the myth that was God” had abandoned them. “We” were alone “together,” and they, Forsaken by society, would band together, and they would all support “the community” of the Forsaken. They would all work together, and share in the benefits of being a part of the community. They were proud to be Forsaken, for they would rely solely on each other…not on anyone else…
Most importantly, they would all rely on him. They would trust him to split up the benefits among their number. They would kill for “the community,” they would die for “the community,” but only because Andreas Foreman was “the community.”
I should bring popcorn and treat this like a bad Friday night movie.
Then Foreman went on to discuss how “…there is a man in San Francisco who has not yet been exposed to our guiding light! This man is a very skilled man, one who is the best and last of his kind! His name is Kyle Elsen, the Last Survivor of the Assassin’s Guild!”
There was a brief murmur throughout the crowd. Kyle's more popular than I am, I'm jealous… not.
“This man has yet to experience our glory!” Foreman continued. “He has yet to see the benefits of working in a group. Of working in our group, as one of the Forsaken! But, somehow, not one of you has considered having such a man within our ranks. Why is that, I wonder? Is that because you have all decided to abandon your duties to one another?”
He glared at the crowd with a haunted, soulful look in his eyes. “I am hurt, deeply hurt, that none of you have actively gone out to recruit this man. This is laziness! We should not rely on someone else to do our work for us. Work is life! You must each of you go out into the world and bring the valuable, the skilled, the capable, in to our ranks, and leave the others to their fate!”
Anderson blinked, impressed by the theatrics. Foreman almost seemed to grow in size, even though he had always been one constant form throughout. Impressive. What’s even more impressive, though, is how many people actually buy into him.
Foreman's eyes wandered over them. “Each of you has killed for this community, has given their dedication and their livelihood for one another; and yet you would not go out and bring this man to us? He who would be worth any fifty of us? Who among us has the courage to go and recruit this man? Who here would serve fellow Forsaken? Who among us will go forth and bring back Kyle Elsen? Who here loves me enough to go out and bring him to me? Is there no one brave enough? Will no one among you consider his fellow Forsaken? Are you cowards?”
At this point, the murmurs in the crowd grew to a roar, and it seemed like a million people wanted to personally drag Elsen to Foreman’s feet, trussed up like a turkey.
I haven’t heard a man who liked to hear himself talk this much since the last time I met a deconstructionist English professor.
Anderson shook his head and sighed gently, ducking his head to move through the crowd. By the time he had gotten to the edge of the screaming mob, they had a sucker chosen for the mission. He was about thirty, but his face sagged in all the wrong places, his hair platinum blonde. His teeth were jagged and sharpened, as if with a nail file. His clothes were as awful as one might expect from a badly treated Armani—he had apparently garroted someone within the business world.
Kevin sighed, and tried to ignore it. If Elsen was going to be taken out by this idiot, he deserved to die. So, the lesson for this evening, kids,
is that the principle concept behind the Forsaken is that, since society has forsaken them, they forsake society’s rules.
As he slid into the driver's seat, Kevin thought a moment. San Francisco proves the three fastest means of communication are: telegram, telephone, tell a scavenger—one can only wonder if Derringer heard about Elsen getting shot. Highly suspicious.
The passenger door opened and someone slid in. Kevin was going to tell him to get out, but paused—it was the hand-picked Forsaken. “Can I help you?”
“You're going into the city,” the Forsaken with the bad teeth told him. “We will go together, for the good of all.”
Kevin nodded, started the car, and drove, pressing down on the gas pedal as hard as possible... And I'm not throwing your ass out of this car for the good of me not being hunted down and killed in the woods.
*
Kyle made his way through the streets of San Francisco, and slinked onto the campus of what had been the University of San Francisco. Before the Last Day, it had been a secret that the Assassin's Guild was hidden deep beneath the city. The day before the Last, however, a full-out assault had blown their secret.
And then the Last Day happened, and no one cared. Not about the Assassins, or the Corporations, or themselves, or their families, about anything. No one wanted to think about what had happened. It was too big for the mind to get a hold of. For the most part, the rest of the world was gone. Most of those who wanted to get back couldn't afford to, and for the most part, a lot of them couldn't get back even if they had the money.
And then there was Kyle Elsen, the scariest man in all of San Francisco. The deadliest. The Killer. The Last Assassin. Where did he have to go? Who did he have to talk to? Even the damned Forsaken had each other. They could play in their own little cult-induced reality, disassociated from everything and everyone else's problems. Even the Triplets had each other and Leo. There were always places to hide, places to run. Everyone who acknowledged the reality around them at least had somewhere to run from it, for even a little while.
Codename: Winterborn (The Last Survivors Book 1) Page 24