Lindo reaches for one of the MP5s lying at the bottom of the carriage. I would have preferred something with a little more punch, but the MP5 is an affordable submachine gun capable of unleashing a barrage of 9mm ammo. “We need to load these magazines.”
Before I can tear open a case and start stuffing cartridges into magazines, Reg pushes the cart out of reach. “No need. Rand—!”
The kid comes barreling out of the office clutching five Heckler & Koch HK416 assault rifles. It’s the kind of hardware the best special forces outfits in the world, including guys like Aeron, prefer to use. Each weapon is outfitted with ACOG sights for ranged fighting, foregrips, and tactical stocks to reduce recoil, as well as compressors to add a little extra kick to the weapon’s 5.56 NATO ammo. While I understand how to use a weapon like this, I’ve never had the pleasure.
Randy passes the weapons out and then shrugs off a backpack, placing it on the counter with a thump. He unzips the pack and peels it open to reveal a mound of pre-loaded magazines.
“Reg,” I say, plucking a magazine from the collection. “I wish I’d met you a week ago.”
I slap the magazine in, chamber a round, and give the weapon a once over. There’s nothing unfamiliar about it, so I set about stuffing my pockets with magazines. Lindo does the same, before hurrying back to the door, ever-vigilant even though he can see everything from above—or perhaps because of it. But if the door was about to be breached, he’d let us know.
Godin loads his weapon and starts toggling the fire selector with his thumb, switching from semi-automatic to full auto. He pauses, looks at the selector with a mix of relief and disapproval. “Did you auto kit this?”
“Gonna arrest me if I did?” Reg asks.
“More likely to hug you for it,” Godin says and chambers a round.
Loud sirens and screeching tires announce our adversaries’ arrival.
“I’m counting two police cruisers and three pick-ups,” Lindo says. “Five men in the back of each. Two officers in each cruiser. Nineteen targets total. All heavily armed.”
“How you seeing all that?” Reg asks, looking to the front door, which is solid and closed.
Lindo ignores him. “Our car is around back, in case we need to fall back.”
“There’s room for you and Randy,” I tell Reg.
“Unnecessary. This place is mine. If it’s going down in a blaze of glory, I’ll be going with it.”
I doubt Randy shares the sentiment. The look on his face says as much. But he heard the offer, same as Reg.
“Sheriff Godin.” The words are muffled by the warehouse walls, but the voice is amplified by a speaker. It’s also recognizable. Harry has come to collect. “Exit the building now or we will be forced to open fire.”
Randy scurries away, and I can’t help but feel disappointed in the kid’s resolve and loyalty.
“We know you can hear us,” Harry’s amplified voice says, lacking all emotion. “And that you lack all hope of survival. However, if you return what is ours—Now—you will be allowed to leave unharmed.”
“Trancers,” Reg grumbles. “You see? Fuckin’ lifeless. He’s talking about them kids?”
“He is,” I say, “but that he’s asking for them now means they don’t know where the rest of them are.”
“Rest of them?”
“They tracked us down,” I explain, my voice filling with a new kind of darkness. “Took one boy back. Name’s Jacob.” I motion to the gear Randy had been collecting for us. “All this is to get him back.”
Randy returns, depositing two arms full of tactical armor and making me glad I didn’t voice my disappointment in him aloud.
“You have ten seconds to comply,” Harry says, while we all slip into our armor.
“He serious?” Reg asks.
Thinking of the ranch shootout, I give a quick nod.
“Walls beneath the windows are reinforced,” Reg says, moving to the far side of the counter.
“What windows?” Godin asks.
“Go on!” Reg says, waggling his hand down the warehouse.
I spot several gaps in the wall displays and head toward the closest. “Look for the empty spaces!”
While the others take up positions along the fifty-foot-long wall, Harry verbalizes our countdown. “Five…four…”
“Light ’em up!” Reg says with just a touch too much eagerness. He slaps a button mounted on the wall beside him.
“Three...”
A series of three-foot-wide, five-inch-tall panels snap up in front of me, Reg, Lindo, Godin, and Randy. The perfect sniper positions give us a clear view of the parking lot, where the five vehicles are parked. Men line the far sides, their weapons aimed at the front door. A few of them flinch when the panels open, but most remain locked on target.
“Two...?” Harry’s eyes turn toward my open panel. For a moment, our eyes connect, and through him I see them. Watching. Plotting. Hating. Then I pull my trigger and put a round between those sinister eyes.
Men duck for cover as my compatriots unleash a barrage of ammo.
Reg goes through two magazines of ammo, sending a fully automatic fusillade into the vehicles. I’m not sure if he’s got a tactic besides mass chaos and destruction, but he buys the rest of us time to pick our targets. A few men shout in pain as they drop to the pavement. Vehicle tires burst and hiss.
Lindo takes his time, punching holes in the sides of cars. For a moment, I’m confused by his tactic, but then a stream of fluid dripping onto the pavement beneath one of the cruisers explains it. He’s probably connected to the Internet right now, researching the locations of each make and model’s gas tank, putting holes in them for what will be a grand finale.
I duck to reload and the action saves my life. The men outside start to return fire and as we duck down, one by one, the fifteen men still on their feet send a cascade of metal into the warehouse walls. While sunlight streams through a growing constellation of bullet-sized holes, the panels beneath our foxhole gaps resist. I can hear the bullets and buckshot pinging against the wall, but nothing reaches us.
Guns and gear five feet off the floor ping and fall, as rounds slip through the small windows. Had the wall been weaker, or I’d been standing, I’d be dead. But the men outside either lack discipline, or the Others controlling them aren’t skilled in the art of a shootout. As each of the men runs out of ammo and pauses to reload, our chance to turn the tables returns.
As I start to rise, Lindo shouts. “Machine gun!”
My eyes reach the window in time to see a tripod-mounted, belt-fed machine gun in the back of a pickup truck swivel toward Lindo’s position. The .50 caliber rounds it fires make what the rest of us are shooting look like BBs in comparison. I try to get a bead on the man standing behind it, but he pulls the trigger before I can, spitting ten rounds per second into—and through—the warehouse’s protective panels.
“Down!” Reg screams.
A white-hot tracer round burns through Lindo’s position, showing the path of several more rounds. Sparks fly. Weapons are flung from the wall. Debris fills the air as though propelled by oversized party poppers.
And then, as I dive to the floor, a cloud of wet red bursts from Lindo’s falling body.
37
“Lindo!” My voice is lost to the thunder of the continuing .50 caliber bullet storm. I try to crawl toward his position, but a rack of hunting jackets topples in my path. Scurrying through the loose layers of desert camo, I’m forced to the floor again as the machine-gunner makes a second pass.
The warehouse wall shudders with every impact. I wonder how much more abuse the building can take before the men outside can drive a truck through it. I flatten myself to the floor, bullets buzzing past, striking the mound of jackets just slightly higher than me. A tracer round strikes the mass, embedding itself in the thick layers of fabric. By the time the stream of bullets has passed my position, a haze of smoke rises from the jackets. Somewhere within, the tracer round is setting the clothing ab
laze.
I grip a handful of jackets and yank them away, hoping to free the tracer round and reduce the chance of a full-on fire. But my concern for Lindo outweighs my firefighter’s instincts. As the machine gun rounds chew through the wall, headed back toward Reg—who is now sprinting for his office—I scramble on hands and knees, punishing my joints on the concrete floor.
Lindo lies amidst a pile of metal, wood, glass, and paper debris, all of it covered in a fine mist of red.
Shit.
I peel the top layers away, exposing Lindo’s arm.
It’s not attached to his body.
Feeling ill, I dig deeper, finding the rest of Lindo intact, but he’s pale from shock and blood loss. He’s conscious, though, blinking up at me, his face speckled with blood and bits of what was probably his shoulder.
“We’ll get you some help,” I tell him, but even I can hear the lie. With no arm left to tourniquet, no hospital nearby, no way to escape this bullet-laden shit show, and no way to seal the massive wound, he’s going to bleed out.
Lindo reaches up with his still intact arm, the effort drawing a grunt. He takes hold of my shoulder and tugs me closer. “All my life I’ve wanted to fight them. To really fight them. But I’ve been afraid of what that might mean. I feign fear for the world, but I’ve only really worried about myself.”
“You’ve helped a lot of people,” I tell him. “A lot of kids.”
“A small fraction of the total,” he says. “Those whose freedom risks little.”
“It’s still something.”
“Not enough. Not until now.” His smile is bloody. “After all this time, I didn’t feel brave enough to face them head on. Until now. Until you. You’re the liberator the Taken have needed all along. Like Moses to the Israelites, you’ll set them free.”
Lack of blood is making him delirious. I’m going to be lucky to survive ten more minutes. But I don’t tell him that. Better that he dies with some hope.
“Will you do that?” he asks, his voice fading.
“I will,” I tell him, flinching as machine gun fire sweeps past overhead. I can hear the others, spread out through the store, shouting, but not screaming. My eyes drift back. Godin is on the floor, hands on his head. Randy, too.
At the far end of the store, Reg runs out of his office carrying a grenade launcher. He’s headed for the nearest open slit, raising the weapon. A good shot could turn the tide of this battle, but not for Lindo.
Just before Reg reaches the gap, a few pellets of buckshot slip through a hole carved by the machine gun, striking him in the leg. He twists around, lands hard, and accidentally pulls the grenade launcher’s trigger.
There’s enough time for Reg to bark, “Fuck!” and then the ceiling explodes.
Before I can see how much of the ceiling is coming down, or if Reg survived his mistake, Lindo squeezes my arm and pulls me closer.
“Tell them what you want, and they’ll do the work. Think of them as intermediaries doing the heavy lifting on your behalf. You don’t have to know everything, see everything, or be everywhere. Let them serve you, and maybe it won’t be too much. Maybe you’ll survive.”
The hell is he talking about?
Instead of expressing my confusion, I nod.
His eyes close, and I’m surprised when my tears drop onto his face, carving clean paths through the blood on his cheeks. But he’s not gone yet. His hand, latched onto my arm, draws me closer.
Expecting to hear his final parting words, I lean in close, allowing him to press his forehead to mine.
“They’re going to breach the back door,” he whispers, and before I can react to his revelation, or his imminent passing, I’m clutched by an intense pain. I try to reel back away from it, but there are hooks in my forehead, holding me in place. Something burrows through my eyes, up my nose, seeping through the cracks in my skull, slipping into places that have been unexposed since I was formed in my mother’s stomach.
Upon being released, I sprawl onto my back, writhing in pain as pressure builds beneath my skull. The pain surges around my head, throbbing behind my eyes. There are no pain sensors in the brain, but I have a strong sense that something is in there, taking up space that’s not available, like a mobile tumor.
My vision narrows, as intense pain moves from between my eyes to behind my nose.
And then the pressure subsides as a heat works its way down my spine, following the path of my nerves, spreading out through my whole body. The sensation is something like an extreme sunburn, and I half expect to find boils rising on my skin, ready to burst hot liquid. But then like the pain in my head, the heat subsides to a gentle warmth, and then nothing.
I feel normal.
But I know I’m not.
I know what Lindo did.
What he put inside me.
A parting gift. Or curse. I don’t think he knew which it would be. The nanites now spreading through my mind and body could kill me, or give me the tools I need to see this through.
I’m not even sure how to use them.
His parting advice replays in my head, making a lot more sense. Tell them what you want, and they’ll do the work.
Show me outside, I think, also remembering his warning about the back door. I haven’t seen or heard from Wini or Young. If they’re distracted by the chaos at the front of the store—how could they not be—they might not be prepared for a breach.
Nothing happens. With the machine gun fire now focused on the store’s far side, where Reg is taking cover after blowing a hole in the ceiling, I start making my way toward the back of the store.
Show me a satellite view of this position, I request, hoping a more specific command will get me somewhere.
Just when I think the nanites aren’t capable of functioning inside my fully human physiology, I’m struck by a wave of disorientation. The room spins. A total loss of equilibrium sends me sprawling into a glass cabinet, which shatters and drops me to the floor.
It also saves my life.
A fresh wave of bullets punches through the warehouse wall, and it’s not just the machine gun now. Sensing our imminent defeat—probably because we haven’t returned fire recently—the whole gang has joined in.
At least I killed Harry, I think, as my mind spirals out of control, and then comes into sudden focus…several thousand feet above. A sudden feeling of falling pries my eyes open. I’m greeted by a dual view of the ruined gun warehouse’s interior and the airspace above it.
Something like a brain cramp stabs the space between my eyes, sending them both into spasms. My stomach reacts by heaving the little I’ve had to eat and drink today onto the floor.
I hear—or maybe feel—something like a crack inside my head. Like a chiropractor’s adjustment. Then everything feels aligned again. I open my eyes, seeing the satellite view and the room around me simultaneously with no negative side effects.
There’re a thousand things I want to try, but right now, the back door is my sole focus. When I push myself up and look toward the back door, the satellite view zooms in on the same location, letting me see the door from inside, and above, at the same time.
There are three men, all armed, working their way down the warehouse’s back wall, heading for the rear door. On the inside, Young and Wini are nowhere to be seen. But neither of them are cowards. They wouldn’t leave their positions.
Someone’s injured, I think, throwing caution to the wind and running for the door. The aisles are cluttered with debris, slowing my progress, but fueling my anger.
Wini comes into view after I shove a rack of tactical sports bras aside. She’s on the floor, bleeding, being tended to by Young. Her shirt is torn open, revealing a half-dozen small holes, each leaking blood. She’s been hit by stray buckshot, probably from the front of the store.
“I’m fine,” she barks when she sees me, and I think she’s telling the truth. At this range, the buckshot wouldn’t have penetrated too deep, and the wounds aren’t anywhere vital. It’s going to hurt
like hell getting them out, but she’s not in mortal danger.
That’s about to come through the back door.
Outside, two men with shotguns take up positions on either side of the door, while another one lines up to kick it in. The Tesla is parked behind them, still waiting to drive us away, but now under my command.
I sprint for the door, reaching my hands out toward Young. “Weapon!”
Young tosses his shotgun to me. I catch it just as twin blasts from outside remove the door’s lock. The door springs open just before I arrive and find myself staring down the barrel of a shotgun.
38
A lot happens at once, but I find myself able to process it all, from multiple points of view. Even as I act, and feel, and think, the nanites are reworking my brain, adding connections where there weren’t any, and adjusting for the discomfort caused by those changes.
When the shotgun comes up, I dive to the floor, ducking beneath the barrel before the buckshot tears through the space where my head had been a moment before. The boom, at this proximity, is painful, but my ears barely register the sound, not because of the nanites, but because it’s par for the course at this point. Between all the gunfire and the grenade misfire, I’m already destined for a life of tinnitus...unless the nanites can take care of that, too.
My roll isn’t graceful, but it doesn’t need to be. While a soldier might come up under the man, lift the shotgun away and headbutt the man, I don’t have to do any of that.
He’s already airborne, sailing over me, a look of pain and surprise on his face.
The moment I hit the floor, the whisper quiet Tesla slammed into the men from behind, pinning one of the intruders outside the wall, sending the door kicker flying inside, and staggering the third man back.
As the struck man, who looks like one of Harry’s sons, hits the floor behind me, I get to my feet and leap through the door, onto the car’s hood.
The uninjured man is already climbing to his feet, swinging his shotgun in my direction.
A second too late.
One shell is all it takes to shred the man and send him back to the pavement. I spin around to face the pinned man—one of the marshals—and hold my fire. He’s dropped his weapon, and judging by the agony on his face, he has two broken legs and is likely no longer under the Others’ control.
The Others Page 23