Someone clamped down on Dominic’s shoulder. He spun around with his hand on his pistol, ready for the worst. What he found was a familiar face: a lanky man, in his early thirties, with a nose so big it looked like he had trouble turning around in tight spaces. “Oh, shit, look who it is…” Dominic stopped short, the name sticking somewhere in his subconscious.
“Merrick.” He’d been an ammo runner during the war.
“Yeah, it’d have come to me eventually. Getting slow in my old age.”
“But no less paranoid, I see.” Merrick’s eyes went to Dominic’s right hand, still resting on the ass end of the pistol in his waistband.
“Ah, yes,” Dominic relinquished his grip, “time and experience.”
“That’ll do it. What the hell brings you all the way out here?”
“Got a job. Walk and talk?” Dominic stepped down from the porch and started towards the saloon; the foot traffic was flowing smoothly now. The widow was dragging her dead husband’s body away, snot dangling from her nostrils.
“What kinda job?” Merrick had to walk fast to match Dominic’s long strides.
“The kind I can’t talk about.”
“Seems like those are the only kind a man like you is good for.”
“Suppose so. But I’d appreciate it if you kept my name off your lips. Trying to keep a low profile.”
Merrick zipped two fingers across his lips and tossed the invisible key. “Consider them sealed.”
“Saloon still carry food? I’ve got a couple days on the road ahead of me and am running pretty empty.”
“Last I checked.”
“Could use a drink too.”
“Hey, why don’t you let me be your guide for the day? Not much has changed around here, but you never know.”
Dominic faced him with folded arms. “Can’t afford to pay you.”
“Can you afford to buy me a drink?”
“Just one.”
“Then you can afford to pay me.”
A young boy ran into the center of the square. He was shirtless. His bony chest rose and fell rapidly as he fought to catch his breath. He cupped his hands on either side of his mouth. “The Rebels are marching from beyond the Glass Mountains! The Rebels are marching!” he shouted, his voice overriding the hum of the crowd; even the widow was standing and listening, her dead husband’s body propped across the tops of her feet. The air became electric with silence. Dominic could feel the vibration in the ground beneath his feet; boots marching. Then he heard them, rowdy and undignified. Then he saw them, entering town from the opposite direction he had; five across and who-the-hell-knew how many deep. Rebels marching from beyond the Glass Mountains could only mean one thing: they’d heard about the conflict in Genesis and were seizing their opportunity. It was a bad deal for Genesis and a damned sweet one for him. It meant there’d be less resistance when he crossed over the mountains to the shores of the neon sea. His chances of success had just gone up a few notches, so long as the Rebels didn’t spot him.
Dominic cut sharply towards the saloon.
Merrick took notice of his shifty behavior and followed, brimming with curiosity. “You got beef with the Rebels?”
Dominic shot him a hard look.
“Okay, my bad. Your business. You can’t talk about it. Message received. But as your guide for the day, might I suggest we enter the saloon from the back? I know the bartender. He keeps a private table in the storage room for me.”
“Private table? You’re coming up in the world.”
“Like I said, I’m staying afloat.”
“Lead the way.”
They got off the main square just as the Rebels were flooding in, chanting and waving their rifles above their heads. It was going to be a long night in Skarwood.
24
Dan decided to do some cleaning in the lobby. He didn’t know how long he would be stuck there, but he didn’t want to spend whatever time he had left staring at corpses. He piled Buddy, Ichako, and Loviatar behind the bar and covered Caldwell’s body with a blanket he found near the stables.
He hadn’t figured out a game plan, yet. He knew there was no getting out alive. The only thing left for him to decide was how he was going to go down. Hause would most likely try to starve him out. But Dan had no intention of taking that road. He’d seen men starve to death. They always wound up begging for a bullet at the end. That wouldn’t be him. He wouldn’t waste away, too weak to lift his own damn gun. No. He’d run out the front doors of the lobby and face the rifle barrels head on. He’d do his best to take as many of the bastards with him as he could. But he wanted to wait just a little longer…in case.
In case of what?
He hadn’t figured out the answer to that question. But he could feel something in the shadows, holding him back, preventing him from making his final stand. Maybe he still had a faint glimmer of hope that he’d see Lerah again. That he’d look out and see her riding towards him on the back of the Saboteur’s horse, returning his smile, no worse for wear. That’s all he wanted, that one last look.
Dreams. Selfish dreams.
Dominic would never bring her back here. He knew what was waiting for him…for her. He’d tell her that the Towers had fallen and then they’d go off somewhere together and start a life. She might protest at first, but Lerah was a sensible girl. Practical to a fault. She’d see the truth in his words and she’d follow Dominic’s lead. More importantly, she’d live. She had to live. Otherwise, this was all for nothing.
Hause’s voice rang out from the stairwell across the lobby. “Dan, old friend, are you there?” There was a slight pause. It lasted just long enough that Dan began to think he was imagining things. “Of course you’re there. Where else would you be? Come on over, let’s have a chat.”
Dan approached the stairwell with caution, turning circles as he moved. The ambush could come from anywhere: from the front, the back, above, below. He put nothing past the Lord Marshal. There could be a team of Shadeux outside, just waiting for the signal to breach the lobby.
He stopped just outside the stairwell, his back to the wall, clinging to his rifle. “This is as far as I go.”
“Oh, come now, you won’t show an old friend your face.”
“Old friend, new enemy.”
“Fair enough. Isn’t it ironic that the betrayer is the one with the trust issues?”
“You betrayed the Union long ago when you decided to become a politician rather than a leader.”
“Can a man not be both?”
“I’ve yet to meet that man.”
Hause sighed. “I suppose I pursued the easy road a time or two in my latter years. But is that so wrong?”
“When it costs lives, when it jeopardizes the very foundation of everything we’ve fought to build, yeah, it’s wrong,” Dan’s voice swelled with conviction.
“My plan was to save lives. To usher in a new age of peace and prosperity, one where our boys no longer had to spill their blood beneath the Outland sun just to keep our walls intact.”
“You almost make it sound selfless. You been practicing that little spiel in front of a mirror?”
“Can you blame me for being war weary? Haven’t we seen enough blood spilled?”
“You tried to reason with the unreasonable. Men died because you were too weak to stand, so you decided to kneel. If you care as much as you claim to, you should step down.”
“And hand the reins over to who? You?” Hause jeered. “How dare you point your finger at me! How many men have died because of your little hissy fit?”
“At least they died honestly! As soldiers and not pawns!”
“Tell yourself that, old friend. But there has been talk. Things have come to light.”
“That’s the best you can do? Talk? There’s always talk. You wanna give specifics?” Dan knew exactly what Hause was getting at. But he wasn’t going to willingly remove the lid from his bucket of secrets, he’d make Hause pry it loose while he held on and dug his heels in.
“Oh, don’t play the fool, Dan. You were never any good at it. The Saboteur, I know you turned him loose. Is that what this was all about? A selfish attempt to save your daughter? Did you really throw the lives of your men on the pyre in the name of a girl, a traitor, that’s almost certainly dead?”
“Fuck you! Fuck you! This blood is on your hands! You don’t get to put this on me!” He was screaming, trying to convince himself, as much as anyone, that he’d been justified in his actions. But standing in the shadow of defeat only served to illuminate the corpses and dim the cause. There were tears forming in Dan’s eyes. “You couldn’t spare the time or the resources to search for my daughter? Couldn't you have given me that? I dedicated my life to the Union and my loyalty to you!”
“Your daughter is a traitor, Dan. Just because we buried the truth, doesn’t mean it’s dead.”
“You put her in that position!”
“She volunteered. No one forced her to go. And no one forced her to side against her people.”
“She was defending innocent settlers! Our men had gotten out of control!”
“Supposedly. We don’t know the whole story.”
“That’s because you never gave the whole story a chance to come out! You never got her side! You had no interest in getting her side! You’re too worried about your damn public image! You couldn’t send just a few men to find her and bring her back!”
“Where would you have had me send them? Beyond the Glass Mountains to be slaughtered? How much blood is your daughter worth?”
“She’s worth anything! Everything! I’ll scorch the fucking—”
“Exactly! Listen to your whimpering. You’re so blinded by your affection. You refuse to see reason, even when it’s dangling in front of your face. And you dare to call me weak? The course I chose benefited me, yes, but it furthered the cause of the Union. Who benefits from your blind allegiance to a corpse?”
“Fuck you!” Dan extended his rifle through the doorway, pointed it up, and held down the trigger. He was still hollering as the gun clicked empty.
Hause continued, seemingly unmoved by the violent display. “A soldier no longer in control of his emotions is no longer a soldier, he’s a liability. You know how we handle liabilities, old friend?”
It hit Dan all at once. He’d just been played. Coaxed into the net and trapped like a wild animal. He’d just spent every last round of ammo he had and the closest spare magazine was across the room on top of the bar. He looked to the lobby entrance and could see the doors slowly being pushed back.
“Goodbye, old friend.”
The words were nothing more than background noise; Dan had already pushed off the wall by the time the snide farewell tickled his ears.
By the time the doors were fully open, Dan was halfway across the lobby.
There were three of them.
Shadeux.
The best Genesis had to offer.
They were stacked up in the doorway, aiming rifles. The Shadeux out front was down on one knee and his brothers in arms were behind him, crouched low, aiming over either one of his shoulders. Dan didn’t recognize them off hand. They were painted up and kitted out: black fatigues, knee and elbow pads, tactical vests. His reapers had arrived at the ball, ready to dance.
He dove forward and went into a slide as they started firing. He could feel the heat from the shrapnel torpedoing just millimeters above him. The dive and slide didn’t get him all the way to the bar. He still had ten feet to go. He began to crawl, rifle out front, but he couldn’t crawl fast enough. Something hot bit into his thigh, then it crawled down and chomped into the side of his right shin. He’d been shot, twice. He groaned and held his breath as he pulled himself into flimsy cover. He sat up on his butt, reached up behind his head, and pulled down the spare magazine. He sat with his back against the bar, right next to the bodies of Ichako, Buddy, and Loviatar. He could hear them fanning out and reloading, moving like phantoms, their footsteps barely registering.
“You don’t have to do this!” Dan knew that trying to reason with a Shadeux was a fruitless endeavor. They weren’t trained in the art of negotiation or diplomacy. They were single-minded soldiers. Precision weapons. Once they were loosed on their target, there was no diverting. But Dan had already gone all in. The only thing left for him to do was to throw his cards on the table, even though he could see the river and knew he didn’t have a chance in hell. “My daughter! You trained with my daughter! Hause is playing you for fools!” He took a quick second to examine his leg. The wounds were leaking at a steady rate. Two small pools of blood had begun to form, they would eventually meld, and the pool would continue to grow until his face turned pale and his heart stopped beating. His femur was definitely shattered. His jogging days were over. But that wasn’t the wound he was worried about. It was his thigh. There was an artery there. If it got nicked it was farewell and goodnight. No amount of wrapping or pressure was going to fix that pipe.
Three rounds blew through the top of the bar, missing the left side of his face by inches. They were patient. Poking and prodding. Looking for the soft spot. No need to rush. They had the upper hand. Dan dared to turn his head and peer through one of the bullet holes. He caught sight of one of them in the open, changing positions, moving with the grace and efficiency of a cat. He fell out of cover sideways and cut the Shadeux down with a quick burst from his rifle. The Shadeux was squirming and crying out, the lower half of his body now completely useless. Dan had to make sure the threat was eliminated completely. He pulled the trigger again and shot him in the back of the neck and head, just above the vest. He pushed up and scooted back into cover as a volley tore up the ground. They were firing steady. The gunshots were getting louder. They were closing in on him, covering their advance. Soon they’d be on top of him and he’d be dead. He looked at the pile of bodies to his right and an idea washed over him.
A few seconds later the Shadeux emerged on either side of the bar, weapons pointed towards the ground, letting loose steady bursts of gunfire. For just a fraction of a second, they paused, overcome with confusion.
Dan wasn’t there.
That fraction of a second cost them their lives.
Dan rolled Loviatar’s corpse aside and fired from his back, stitching the Shadeux standing over him across the top of the chest. The man screamed and fell back, his trigger finger locked in a death spasm. As he fell backward his rifle rose and he emptied his magazine into his partner’s vest and face.
Dan slid from the heap of corpses and pulled himself up against the bar. His wounds were still leaking blood. Too much blood. He could feel his senses dulling. Could feel the world pulling away. He stripped off his tan colored shirt. It was crusted with the sweat and grime of a very bad day. He ripped it down the center. He tied the first piece tight around the hole in his thigh. The second piece he tied just above his shredded calf, gritting his teeth so hard he thought they’d crumble in his mouth.
“Zeta team, is the target down?” the harsh, hesitant whisper came from the other side of the room. From the stairwell. Hause’s voice.
Dan pulled himself to his feet, gripping the edge of the bar, arms shaking from the effort, sweat pouring from his brow like a rainstorm. The pain in his leg shot up through his groin and swelled in his stomach. He paused for a moment, positive he was going to puke. He reached down and picked up the rifle and began working his way around the bar, using the rifle as a crutch, stock nuzzled under his arm, muzzle pressed against the floor. The journey across the lobby was precarious. He stumbled a few times and had to hop on his good leg in order to regain his balance.
“Zeta team, respond!” Hause’s voice sounded a bit more panicked than it had minutes earlier, giving Dan no small amount of pleasure. “Zeta team, com—”
“I’m afraid they’ve undertaken their last mission.” Dan was panting as he fell against the wall outside the stairwell.
“Impossible, they’re—”
“The best you’ve got? So imagine what I’l
l do to the rest of them. You know what’s in the dungeon and so do I. You send anyone else through those doors and I’ll press the goddamn button. Don’t believe me? Think I care too much about all the innocent women and children? I’d be doing them a favor. Your leadership is killing them slowly, but surely. At least my way is quick and painless.”
“You’ve been defeated, Dan. We both know it. So, what’s it going to take to end this?”
Dan thought for a moment. Hause was right, he’d lost. He was battered and broken and most likely bleeding to death. So what was he waiting on? Then it hit him. He wanted what all men wanted when they saw their end approaching.
More time.
He wanted to go out like Caldwell: meditating and atoning. Not slaughtered like some animal.
“I want medical supplies. And I want water.”
“Okay,” he said, swallowing the bitter pill, “I can probably arrange to have something dropped down to you. And then what?”
“And then nothing.”
“When does this end, Dan?”
Dan sighed. “I think you’re bad for Genesis. Your leadership is poison to the people of the Union. But so long as Genesis remains under Union control, and brave men and women occupy her halls, no further harm will come from me. Now, I’m not long for this earth. I’ll be out of your hair shortly. Just get me what I asked for.” Dan wasn’t interested in a response. He started back towards the bar, a thick smear of blood following his injured leg.
25
Lerah startled awake. She tried to scream, but the hand across her mouth forced her into silence. She thought of biting and fighting, but her time on the beach had taught her the virtues of passivity.
“It’s me.” She instantly recognized Hawthorne’s voice. “I’m gonna take my hand away, don’t scream.” He kept his word and slowly withdrew his hand, leaving it hovering in front of her face for a few moments just in case.
The Glass Mountains: The Saboteur Chronicles Book 2 Page 19