Mark, I hope you’re all right.
Iris sent the thought into the ether as she had so many times in the last five days. She’d tried calling his cell with one of the agency’s satellite phones, but for several days the signal wouldn’t even go through. Finally she’d gotten voicemail and must’ve left a dozen messages. She’d given up hope of reaching him or hearing back from him anytime soon, but sometimes she called anyway, just to hear the sound of his voice in the voicemail greeting.
A muffled report from below derailed her thoughts. Iris’s ears sharpened. A gunshot? From the first floor? It had sounded so far away. But she’d been to the gun range enough times with Mark to know what a gunshot sounded like.
The boredom of the last few days gave way to a sudden sensation of helplessness. The fact that she was sitting on the toilet only sharpened her feeling of total exposure. She grabbed at the toilet paper roll, cursing as the lowest-bidder paper tore multiple times. Finally, when she’d cleaned up, she pulled up her panties and stood.
Then she heard movement outside the bathroom. The heavy tread of booted feet.
A man?
The bathroom door swung open on its poorly oiled hinges. Something metal scraped against its prefabricated surface.
You shouldn’t be in here, came the automatic thought. This is the ladies’ room.
The door closed again and she froze, half standing. Iris could hear the heavy, labored breathing of a large man. Something told her to sit back down. The little voice in the back of her head that reminded her to walk under bright street lamps at night in parking lots. It chimed in again, and she picked up her feet.
More boots running by outside. And she could hear voices. Radios. HPD officers on the move and sounding aggravated as hell.
Iris heard the man catch his breath. With the added weight of her lifted legs bearing her down, the polystyrene toilet was already biting into her ass.
“Little pig, little pig,” said the man in a low tone, the relish in his voice clear.
He was big. She could hear it, now. Her breathing shortened. Her leg muscles began twitching, preparing themselves.
Iris heard the soft step of the man’s boots on the squeaky clean tile of the bathroom floor.
You shouldn’t be in here. This time, the thought yelled in her head. This is the ladies’ room!
“Let me come in,” breathed the baritone.
Her heart hammered in her chest. She could feel him, just on the other side of the stall door. Hovering. Waiting.
Waiting for what? For God’s sake!
A part of Iris wanted him to throw the stall door open, so her mind could put shape to the large shadow looming. Part of her hoped the door would never, ever open.
Tap-tap-tap.
She jumped backward, her legs betraying her as they sought the floor for balance. Any pretense of an empty stall was now gone.
Meaty fingers curled around the top of the door.
Tap-tap-tap.
More insistent. Iris couldn’t stand it anymore, the not knowing. He knew she was here. It was only a matter of time before… Iris flipped the latch on the stall door. Gravity and a sloping floor did the rest.
Standing in front of her, a giant ape of a man, all denim and leather and teeth. He was bald, she noticed.
“Who—”
The man smiled at Iris. Her eyes fixed on the axe he held nonchalantly on one shoulder.
“Oh, no.…”
The thought came to her: I should’ve left the door closed.
“Oh, no.…” she whispered again.
The ape’s arm lifted, and her gaze hyperfocused on the bloodstained axe head rising into the air.
Iris screamed.
Chapter 12: Tuesday, night.
“If we wait, it might be too late,” Stavros said.
“Too late for what? Are we on some kind of timetable I’m unaware of?”
Stavros wasn’t sure how to answer that. He didn’t know any more than she did about Marsten’s plans or the exodus of prisoners headed south they’d witnessed earlier. But he felt something in his gut. Something he couldn’t explain. Something he couldn’t quantify with distinguishable data. The not knowing edged the scientist across the foul line of his comfort zone.
“They’re up to something,” he said. “They just mass-moved thousands of prisoners into Houston, headed for TranStar.” He nodded at Megan, an acknowledgment of her insight. Her visions were another inexplicable factor in their decision-making equation, but one he didn’t feel the need to question somehow. “Whatever they’re up to—it can’t be good.”
So they made the decision to travel through the Bayou City in darkness. In the plus column—Lauryn’s knowledge of TranStar’s location and her familiarity with the area. In the minus column—the chaos that was the transportation network.
“We need a car,” said Megan.
“And it’ll need to be something small and maneuverable,” her mother added. “Something high enough off the ground, in case we hit some standing water along the way.”
“I’m your guy for that,” said Colt. “I just need to find a vehicle.”
Stavros glanced at the boy as if Colt’s claim confirmed a hypothesis.
“I know just the place,” said Lauryn. “Colt and I will get the car. You guys finish packing up our ammo and the junk food from the vending machines in the break room. And you,” she said, looking at Jasper. “You stay put.”
A wagging tail answered.
Lauryn led Colt to the used car lot they’d passed earlier on Hickerson Street, hopped the fence, and stood guard while the scrounger from the Land of Nod that was future Texas did his work. They settled on a small Ford Ranger pickup, maneuverable and practical under the circumstances, and once back at SSI Guns & Ammo, they had it loaded and ready to roll in no time.
Finding a clear route through the forty-five miles between Conroe and the traffic management center would be nearly impossible. They did their best to use the interstate—still mostly an elevated parking lot of vehicles, lined bumper to bumper—relying on its parallel feeder roads when the mainlanes themselves weren’t clear. And if they found themselves cut off between exits, Lauryn was forced to back up, exit the previous ramp, and make her way through the rat’s maze of side streets and neighborhoods. How quickly she was able to reclaim the main route south changed with each new obstacle they encountered.
Lauryn had no idea she was following, practically street for street, the course the fleet of school buses had taken only a few hours before. But without the benefit of a map like the one Simpson used, their start-and-stop routine made their trip to TranStar a much longer one.
Lauryn drove slowly, keeping her attention glued to the road, looking for anything they couldn’t drive through, over, or around. Stavros sat in the passenger seat of the Ranger’s cab, jotting down notes.
“What are you writing, anyway?” she asked.
“Grocery list,” he grunted.
“Grocery list? We’ve got all the nonperishables and ammunition we can carry.”
“This isn’t that,” he said absently, annoyed. “You’re breaking my concentration. I need to think.”
Lauryn was tempted to shoot him a dirty look but didn’t want to take her eyes off the road. She reserved those quick distractions for glancing in the rearview mirror. The kids rode in the truck bed with Jasper, and Lauryn couldn’t resist quickly checking on them from time to time. Not that she could see much in the dark. She remembered what life was like for a teenager, and how easily puppy love progressed to groping hands. More to the point, she remembered teenage boys. But so far she’d been impressed by Colt’s gentlemanly qualities.
Interesting that, she thought, in light of his car thief skills.
“There are some more,” she said, pointing briefly at the darkened convenience store passing slowly on the right.
Crawling along at ten miles per hour down the feeder road afforded Stavros the luxury of indulging his scientific curiosity as they hap
pened upon survivors. The city was coming back to life, he noticed, and that process fascinated him. They’d seen more wanderers coming out of their homes since leaving Conroe than they’d seen in the previous two days. With the power grid offline and the heat of September hanging over the Gulf Coast like a wet blanket, survivors were like vampires. They only came out at night.
There were suburbanites looking lost, waiting for the power company, the police department, the cable guy, anyone to return civilization to them. There were young people camping on lawns with flashlights and battery-powered radios, which finally played music and news reports again. One teenager waved vigorously at them as they drove by his neighborhood until he realized they weren’t anyone that mattered; then he sulked his way back into his home and shut the front door.
And there were looters.
Everywhere.
Theirs wasn’t the only group to go mobile, Stavros noticed. More than once, Lauryn had changed their course to avoid other vehicles prowling along the side streets of the ritzier neighborhoods. Moonlight would flash sometimes from a rifle barrel, and Lauryn would turn them away from it as soon as she could. They really began to crawl when she finally turned off her headlights to avoid being seen by the prowlers.
The darkness kept them safe. For a while.
But then a minivan and SUV, clearly traveling together, angled after the Ranger, like sharks smelling blood. The chase was comically slow among the jammed roadways—a cat-and-mouse game akin to slow-turning warships in the Age of Sail—with the hunters at a distance and occasionally firing semi-automatic rifles across their path, like warning shots from the cannon of a pirate ship, demanding they heave-to and prepare to be boarded.
Lauryn turned the Ranger and its new bullet holes off the interstate to try and lose the other vehicles in The Woodlands Mall by sandwiching their small truck among abandoned vehicles in a parking garage. She made the rest of them hunker down while she positioned herself just inside the edge of the garage and watched as their pursuers slowly cruised by on the street outside, hunter spotlights flashing left and right, searching for their mark. Ten minutes later, with no further sign of the pirates, Lauryn began to relax.
“I need to go to Walmart.”
Lauryn turned to find Stavros standing behind her. She’d been so focused on looking for any sign of the sharks circling back, she hadn’t heard his approach. She’d have to watch that. It wasn’t as if he was a ninja.
“What?”
“Walmart. The supplies we talked about. We’ll need them for when we find Marsten.”
Lauryn holstered her handgun. “Speaking of that … just what exactly do you plan to do with him?”
“Autopsy him,” Stavros said flatly. “Specifically, his brain.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Come to think of it, all I need’s his head.”
Lauryn looked at him a moment. “Uh-huh. But, what I mean is—it’s not like your lab is nearby. And with the power grid offline … just what is your plan?”
Stavros jerked his thumb at the Ranger. “Head up 290 to Austin. You know. To my lab.” His dry tone scratched her ears like sandpaper.
“How do you even know the lab is still … we haven’t talked to the outside world in days, Stavros. The only broadcasts on the radio so far are public service announcements. Things might be weird in Austin too after the storms.”
“You must not know Austin very well. It was weird there before the storms.”
Lauryn cocked her head and glared at him through narrowed eyes. “Are you trying to be funny?”
“Unsuccessfully, it seems.”
“And you’re just going to knock him upside the head and take him, right out from under the noses of all those prisoners?”
Stavros stared at her a moment. “We’ve been through this. I have to try and figure out what happened—”
Lauryn raised her hands to warn against a rerun of their earlier argument. “Just so we’re clear. As soon as you have him secured, I take Megan and go. Colt can go with us if he wants, or he can go with you, or he can go wherever. But once you have your … specimen … we’re gone, Stavros. Understand?”
The scientist nodded. “And since we’re saving the world together, call me Eamon, would you? I’m starting to hate hearing my last name when it comes out of your mouth. Sounds like a curse word when you say it.”
Lauryn’s cheek twitched. Then, finally, she allowed herself a small smile. “I’ll try to be more aware of that.” She surveyed the dark streets beyond the garage again. Still no sign of the sharks circling back around. “I guess we’re headed to Walmart then.”
“Sure,” Eamon sighed. “I always said it’d be the Apocalypse before I stepped foot inside one of those Jerry Springer casting calls.”
As she led them back to the truck, Lauryn said, “Okay, now that was funny.”
* * *
Red slaughter.
A trail of corpses left behind him.
At least I’ll be able to find my way back out, thought Marsten with a grin as he stood over the woman, ready to deliver her final fate with a single stroke. The rush of red murder burned in his veins. He needed to shut her screaming up.
He lifted his axe.
The bathroom door flew open.
“Hold it! Put the axe down! Put it down!”
Marsten heard the officers piling in behind him, boots scuffing the cold tile of the bathroom floor, hammers cocking.
And he hesitated. For an instant, time stood still.
Then came the distant sound of drumbeats.
“I said put down the goddamned axe! Get on the floor, now!”
The Maestro didn’t move. He was entirely focused on the cavalcade boiling up the stairwell. It sounded like hundreds of ancient warriors banging swords on shields.
Ain’t that nice. The cavalry’s coming.
Marsten stood up straight and turned away from the cowering woman to face the handful of HPD officers squeezed into the foyer of the ladies room. Their guns still pointed at him, but their eyes were wondering what their ears were hearing. Their middle-of-the-night rousting of two comrades on the first floor had turned into something quite different. Like Marsten, they’d heard the challenge of the thundering feet on the stairs.
“Caw, caw, caw! Caw, caw, caw!”
The Maestro smiled as the trumpeting of the crows sounded, the blood-oath promise of banshee warriors hungry for battle.
Then he charged.
Chapter 13: Wednesday, the wee hours.
The Maestro tried bunting again, but he faced three officers this time. One dodged backward into the corridor. A second fired but his shot was deflected when the first knocked him off-balance. He slipped on the slick tile surface and went down. But a bullet from the third officer, the one who’d barked orders at Marsten, found flesh.
Hot fire burned into Marsten’s left thigh, but adrenaline quickly drowned the pain. His momentum carried him into the two men still facing him, bowling them over. The one who’d darted into the hallway brought his pistol up. The Maestro tracked the black barrel rising toward his center mass with his one eye that was still worth a damn. But his hands were full with the loudmouth cop he’d pinned against the open door. The cop who’d been knocked down howled as his tailbone hit the floor.
A flash of white bulled past the door, and the officer outside went flying out of view. Another Weisshemden followed after, and soon the shouts from the man were drowned in a chorus of “Caw, caw, caw!”
Loudmouth was too busy trying not to black out to be a threat, so Marsten turned his attention to the howler. He released the choking cop and took one giant, stretched step toward the other, raising his right leg and stomping as hard as he could on the man’s balls. Marsten’s wounded thigh screamed at him, and he jerked back, gasping. It wasn’t until that moment that he realized he’d been shot.
Motherfucker.
Loudmouth coughed behind him, and the Maestro turned. The cop-hero was raising his weapon, his arm shaky and slow as oxygen re
turned to his muscles. Favoring his left leg, Marsten braced himself against the bathroom wall and half chopped the axe across the man’s wrist, a weak cut but enough to make the man release the gun. One reversed follow-through later, and the cop was a corpse, sliding down a red-streaked, floral-designed wall.
Marsten turned to the officer on the floor, half-expecting the last of the three to either be clutching his ballsack or lining up a shot. Instead, he saw whiteshirts reaching in from the corridor, dragging the howler out of the ladies’ room as he struggled and yelped, one man fighting four.
“Caw, caw, caw! Caw, caw, caw!”
The Weisshemden lugged him out, the officer’s protests growing more frantic. As he watched, Marsten had to give the man credit. The cop’s training must’ve kicked in—despite having his balls smashed and being ripped at from all sides, he managed to finally bring his weapon up.
Two quick reports from the pistol and Marsten saw a prisoner go down, his white jumpsuit blooming red at the chest. The cop fired desperately, randomly, easily hitting one or more targets among the white jumpsuits surrounding him. Their fists pounded him, their nails ripped at him like claws, until the pistol was also grabbed and tossed aside.
The Maestro ogled the scene. The Weisshemden fought each other for space around the poor bastard, groping with their meaty fingers, wrenching first cloth, then flesh, heedless of their injured comrade moaning somewhere behind the dog pile of hungry hands.
“Caw, caw, caw! Caw, caw, caw!”
Then two different sounds reached Marsten’s ears—one, the guttural shrieking from the officer being ripped apart, the other the high-pitched screaming of a teapot, ready to come off the stove. The shrieking stopped when the whiteshirts finally shredded the man’s larynx. The teapot kept screaming.
“Convert, not kill! Convert, not kill!” Simpson’s voice carried over the clamor. Marsten watched him, amused, as he tried physically to intervene, attempting to pull frenzied prisoners away from the bloody viscera on the floor. They drew out intestines like ropes, snapped muscles and tendons. The hallway smelled of piss and shit and blood and gore.
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