“But the bad guys already have TranStar,” said Megan.
“So who’s attacking?” wondered Eamon.
Lauryn smiled grimly and said, “Hopefully, it’s the enemy of our enemy.”
* * *
“It’s the goddamned National Guard,” said Maggie.
All eyes in Traffic Ops were fixed on the main screens at the front of the room. The huge flat screens displayed the feed from the exterior security cameras monitoring TranStar’s front parking lot. At the moment, the lot was rather crowded. The Weisshemden on sentry duty outside the facility’s main entrance had hunkered down by the time the handful of Humvees rolled in. They’d exchanged gunfire with the weekend warriors, forcing them to deploy. Now the prisoners were retreating inside the foyer to more defensible positions.
“How the hell—”
“Someone must’ve tripped an alarm,” offered Simpson, cutting off the Maestro.
“I thought part of the reason we came here was to control the roadways and keep these yahoos at bay as long as possible,” said Marsten. His voice sounded like gravel in a grinder.
“Maybe they’re a nearby unit,” shrugged Simpson. “But now that really doesn’t matter, does it?”
Marsten gave him the eye. “No, I guess not, General.” The gravel was slurry, heavy and hardening behind the Maestro’s words.
They watched as two of the Humvees formed a wedge where the sidewalk met the parking lot, with the apex of their front fenders forming a V aimed like an arrow at TranStar’s front doors. The guardsmen piled out from the doors facing inward along the legs of the V, protected by the armored, desert-colored vehicles. Looking past the soldiers, the cameras showed a truck moving through the main gate, past the perfectly parked school buses. More soldiers inbound.
“This is so delicious,” said Id, sitting up on the couch to get a better view. Simpson thought she looked like Cleopatra, newly informed of Mark Antony’s arrival: anxious and hungry and planning her fun. “Chaos heaped on anarchy.” Her eyes, like everyone’s, were glued to the screens.
The troop truck parked its front grill flush with the back bumper of the Humvee on the left, extending the wedge aimed at the main entrance. More guardsmen piled out of the back to join their comrades. A man with a bullhorn poked his helmeted head over the vertex of the V and seemed to be speaking. But the cameras had no audio feed.
“What’s he saying? What’s he saying?” demanded Maggie. “I can’t hear a damned thing!”
“He’s telling the occupants of the entryway to lay down their weapons and come out peacefully,” said Simpson.
“What? How do you know that?”
“Because, Maggie, I know. Been there, done that.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Marsten. “We need to advance the whiteshirts and take these fuckers out before any more show up.”
“We’ll lose a lot of them,” warned Simpson.
The Maestro shrugged. “We’ll make more.”
“Delicious!” exulted the Lady. “A smorgasbord of sacrifice. I like the way you think, Maestro! I always have.” This last she said with a breathy sigh.
No one noticed the wicked narrowing of Maggie’s eyes as she shot invisible blades at their nude patroness.
The guardsman was speaking through the bullhorn again.
“How long will they wait till they do more than just talk us to death?” wondered Cackler. “I mean, you know, the cops, they’ll sit outside and send in pizza while they wait for the hostage takers to sweat in hopes of saving as many hostages as possible. I mean, it’s just now daybreak, maybe they’ll give us—”
“These guys ain’t the cops,” said Marsten. The gravel was grinding again in his throat.
“Agreed,” said Simpson, approaching Id. “Lady, we should move fast, before they mount their own assault. They’re not going to wait around to take back this building. It’s too significant after the hurricanes.”
“Oh, I agree General,” she purred. “By all means, let the carnage begin.”
Simpson paused, unsure how to proceed. He glanced back at the screens. More Humvees were squeezing their way into the tight quarters of the small parking lot. The man with the bullhorn had five fingers in the air.
Make that four.
“How do I—”
“Take half the Black Hand,” said the Maestro, that same disdain from earlier still in his voice. He turned his open left eye on Simpson, saying, “Overrun them. Like the cops when we got here.”
“Yes!” said Id. Her voice gripped all of them by the ears. “Rip them to shreds!”
An explosion rocked the building.
Chapter 17: Wednesday, dawn.
Megan was right. The black-and-white monitors of the observation room provided eyes across the whole of the facility—windows into each of the major operations rooms and the immediate area surrounding the outside of the building via weather-resistant cameras. What they saw appalled them.
The National Guard had tossed two concussion grenades through the front door of TranStar, taking out the whiteshirts and establishing a defensive position inside the foyer. But they hadn’t held it for long. The Weisshemden counterattacked, a cawing mass of prisoners sweeping forward from the stairwells on the first floor and swarming the well-armed but unprepared guardsmen. To the soldiers, the screaming prisoners seemed to outnumber the bullets fired at them, and soon the soldiers lay in bloody heaps of camouflage-covered viscera.
Simpson and Cackler managed to pull some of the guardsmen away from the meat-grinding charge of the Black Hand, converting instead of killing them. Now the ranks of the Weisshemden in their white prison uniforms were peppered with men and women in army combat fatigues.
Overwhelmed by the whiteshirts and their lack of concern about getting shot, the Guard abandoned their vanguard of vehicles near TranStar’s front door and fell back across the parking lot to reestablish defensive positions along the iron security fence, holding the line as new units arrived to swell their ranks. Now both forces—the Black Hand under cover of the newly captured Humvees and the Guard using the buses for protection behind the security fence—faced off like two gangs lining either side of a western town street, neither achieving significant advantage over the other. The whiteshirts seemed to have sated their battle fury for now. There was no audio feed, but the flash of sporadic automatic weapons fire lit up the screens.
“This is our chance,” said Eamon, eyeing the monitors. “Their attention is outside. It’s our chance to separate Marsten from the herd.”
“I’m still unclear how we do that,” said Lauryn. “We have to find him first. Chances are they’re in Traffic Ops. Or maybe Emergency Ops.”
“Traffic, I would think.” Eamon’s voice was thoughtful. “If they’re luring people here, then they’d want to monitor the roads, right?”
Megan was flipping switches, the camera views snapping from one interior shot to the next.
“What are you doing?” asked Colt.
“Looking for the bad guys,” she said. “There. There’s a crowd in Dad’s old work area.”
“You were right,” Lauryn said to Eamon. “Traffic Ops. And when did you learn how to work these monitors?” she asked her daughter.
“I told you, I used to get bored here during the summer.”
Lauryn’s expression was quizzical, but mostly contained a healthy dose of parental pride.
“There he is,” said Eamon. “I think. Can you zoom in at all?”
Megan played with the controls.
“I think you’re right,” said Lauryn, squinting at the grayish picture and the behemoth lurking just in camera view. “A big, bald badass. That’s Marsten, all right. And I recognize the biker clothes from … from the roof. And there’s Maggie Spinks with him.”
Eamon made a noise Lauryn couldn’t quite interpret when she said Maggie’s name.
“He looks wounded,” noted Colt. “Look at him limping.”
“Good. Easier to take down then.”
&
nbsp; Lauryn gave the scientist a wary look. “You’d better holster that John Wayne attitude, partner. Marsten’s a bear with a taste for red honey. And if he’s wounded … all the more dangerous.”
A dark look fell over Eamon’s face. “I know exactly how dangerous he is,” he said. Then his eyes focused a little more as the thinking man returned. “But you’re right. We have to be careful.”
After holding his gaze a moment, Lauryn nodded. “If I remember right, there’s a back way, an emergency access corridor that leads to the observation deck over Traffic Ops,” she said. “A conference room where all the bigwigs come and stand for photo ops during a crisis. If we can get up there unseen, we can get a better sense of what’s going on in Ops. And maybe cull Marsten from the crowd.”
“We need to hurry,” said Colt, nodding at one of the monitors. At the back of the building, high above the roof, three helicopters with U.S. Army markings were approaching from the northwest, spotlights sweeping the ground around TranStar. “Or we might end up caught in the crossfire.”
Eamon held up the bowling bag he’d five-fingered at Walmart. “The sooner, the better.” There was a touch of the bravado still in his voice, but mostly he sounded like a pragmatist. “All I need’s his head, remember?”
Lauryn turned to Megan. “I’m tempted to leave you here,” she said and held up a hand before her daughter could protest. “But I want you near me. I have no idea how we’re getting out of here. And the way things are going,” she said, nodding at the battle raging outside on the monitors, “this whole building might go up before this is all over.” As if to make Lauryn’s point for her, the sharp, constant report of automatic weapons fire sounded through the walls. The battle wasn’t just a silent struggle in black and white on TV anymore. It was moving inside, live and in color. “But Megan …” She held her daughter by the shoulders. “Keep Jasper close. Do what I say. And don’t argue when I say it. Please?”
The teen stared hard at her mother for a moment. Not in an angry way, but more like she was impressing the image of her mother’s face onto her brain. It made Lauryn a little uncomfortable until Megan said, “I’m good, Mom. And yes, I’ll do what you tell me. As long as I can stay with you.”
Lauryn kissed her on the forehead. Jasper got to his feet when she said, “Let’s go.”
They made their way to the first floor, then the second by a set of side stairs. These smaller evacuation stairwells were intended for emergency use only, Lauryn told the others, so were away from the elevators and main corridors. At each landing they paused, assessing the nearness of gunfire. Besides the ongoing battle near the main entrance, they could hear the thwup-thwup-thwup of the helicopters around the facility’s rear parking lot.
Eamon had been right. With the National Guard occupying everyone’s attention, they hadn’t run into a single hostile from Marsten’s group. And with Megan leading them, her knowledge of the building’s side hallways and stairwells supplied by warm summer days of wandering aimlessly, they reached the observation room above Traffic Ops in no time.
A long conference table lined with a dozen empty chairs occupied the room, and a glass window stood at a thirty-degree angle to the floor, giving them full view of Traffic Ops a half-story below them. Its lines of desks and multiple monitors were alive with images of the battle out front. A handful of prisoners in white stood watching the battle, and a couple dozen TranStar personnel were sitting on the floor along one wall. A handful of them sat at their stations, and Lauryn thought she recognized Frank Baines, Mark’s old friend and TranStar’s chief meteorologist, sitting on top of a desk. And there was Marsten, with Maggie hanging out near him. Both of them hunched over the screens, watching the battle. Orange ground fog lay across the floor like a moving carpet. Lauryn and the others stood and watched Marsten for a moment, fascinated and nearly paralyzed by how near their enemy was.
Like the proverbial dog that’s finally caught the car it’s been chasing, thought Lauryn. Now what?
“Oh no,” said Megan. “Oh, no.”
“What?” Lauryn asked, scanning the activity below. She stood well back from the glass, lest they see her. “What, baby?”
“It’s her,” said Megan. She turned to face Lauryn, and there were tears forming in the teen’s eyes. “She’s here.”
* * *
Iris Dufresne had a headache.
The top of her skull felt like her hair had been pulled half out of her scalp. From her position on the floor with the other nonessential TranStar personnel, she stared at the back of Marsten’s bulbous head, listening to the skinny psychopath beside him complain about everything. And she tried not to stare at the red-haired, living sculpture of alabaster splayed across her pseudo-lounge chair. Though the woman’s blatant lack of shame in her posture drew Iris’s eyes where they shouldn’t want to look.
Who were these people? Prisoners, she knew that much from their uniforms and what they’d said. But what did they want? Why had they taken TranStar, of all places, and all its personnel hostage?
Not all, she remembered. Not Alvarez.
Marsten had dragged the body in and set it up as a warning to all of them. Iris stared at the corpse that had once been her friend. Heaped in a chair in the middle of the control room, split skull lolled back on the shoulders, eyes staring forward, vacant and dead.
That’s not her, thought Iris. She’s gone now. It’s only a shell.
Then the battle outside had erupted. The other big prisoner in charge had rushed from the room, leading the rest of the prisoners out to meet the National Guard. Iris had let herself believe for almost a full minute they might be rescued by the military, just like in the movies. Then, like everyone else, she’d watched the battle unfold on the monitors. Heard the distant explosions beyond the building’s thin walls.
It was all giving her a throbbing headache.
Iris reached over and took Frank Baines’s hand and squeezed it tight. He didn’t stir, but he squeezed back.
“Maestro!”
The other man in charge ran in, the one who’d led the prisoners in their battle against the Guard. The fact that he was back and looking desperate gave Iris hope. Maybe rescue wasn’t out of the question after all. She squeezed Frank’s hand again.
“What are you doing here, Simpson?” demanded Marsten. “You should’ve squashed the Minutemen out there by now.”
“There’s more coming in, and they’ve started knocking down the perimeter fences around the building. They’re going to come at us from all sides any minute.”
Marsten adopted a look like a coach whose star quarterback had just thrown an interception. “Do I have to do everything my goddamned self?” He grabbed his axe from the console and loped for the door. Maggie smiled after him, her face beaming.
Simpson moved into his path. “I wasn’t asking you to take over.”
The Maestro stopped. “I didn’t ask if you were asking, Simpson. Now, get the hell out of my way.” Marsten said it suggestively, like it was a first-time, friendly warning. The muscle of his forearm rippled as he gripped his axe tighter.
Make that an only-time warning, thought Iris.
“I can handle this,” Simpson insisted.
“Then why are you here?” growled Marsten. “Don’t waste my time half-assing an answer. Get out of my way.”
Simpson stepped back but not out of the Maestro’s path. He stepped back just far enough for effective range, then pulled his pistol and aimed it at Marsten’s barrel-like chest.
Maggie chattered nervously behind them like a clacking toy skull on Halloween. Like she was applauding their confrontation with her teeth.
Click-clack, click-clack, click-clack.
“You stupid bastard,” Marsten said, his knuckles white around the axe handle. “Right answer, wrong time. Just when I thought you were smarter than Franklin.”
“I’m holding the gun, asshole,” Simpson said, cocking the hammer. “You’ve got one bullet in your leg. Let’s see how you do with one in
the chest.”
The Maestro smiled.
“Get him, baby!”
Click-clack, click-clack, click-clack.
Something in Maggie’s voice made Iris wonder which psychopath she was talking to.
Marsten turned in profile, stepping forward and sweeping the axe up. Simpson took another step back to gain ground and gripped the pistol with both hands.
“Stop!”
Both men froze. Simpson aimed his pistol, one eye closed, at Marsten, whose right hand held the axe high, his blackened left forearm reaching for Simpson. The entire room caught its breath. All except Maggie, who hissed like a cat teased into frustration.
The Lady rose from her queen’s lounge for the first time since they’d taken the control room. She stepped off the conference table and slowly floated to the carpet.
“She is here.”
The Maestro’s slag-eye hung open and staring at the end of Simpson’s pistol. “Who’s here? And can it wait, like, two seconds?”
Id’s voice betrayed a hint of surprise, shock even, as she said, “No, it cannot. Put your weapons down, Generals.”
Simpson lowered his gun immediately.
Marsten merely twitched his right eyelid.
Iris’s mouth dropped open as she watched Id approach the two men, her legs, her hair, her breasts, all her features united in their flawless femininity, many parts merging like liquid skin into one body. Iris reached up, unconsciously wiping the saliva off her lower lip. No woman had ever tugged at her desire to be touched like this walking work of art did. No woman had ever made her want them like this before.
All eyes in the room turned toward the Lady for the pure joy of watching her move, of stealing a schoolboy’s glance at her carnal treasures.
All eyes but Marsten’s.
Chapter 18: Wednesday, morning.
The worms were working hard. Marsten could feel them winding inside his head, every segment of their little brain-eating bodies tickling and taunting. His good eyelid spasmed as they bore their way through his gray matter. And the closer she came, the faster they turned.
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