by Schow, Ryan
Then again, Rowan wasn’t himself. He felt possessed as well. Whatever the hell came over him, it was something otherworldly and vengeful. He felt supercharged, violent, not only ready to kill, but downright itching for it. He chalked it up to this being his time to right all these incredible wrongs.
But then this kid on the skateboard decided it was the right time to taunt him. Rowan didn’t like it, and he didn’t like the kid. There was something wrong and unnerving about him. It was like he and Rowan were in the arena and how things shook out now was how the larger battle between good and evil would shake out.
When the kid got close enough, Rowan shot him in the chest, then took his skateboard and his mask. He stood on the skateboard, then put on the mask. And then, slowly, he skated toward the crowd.
Collectively they backed up, not because of Rowan, but because of what the mask and the gun represented. A few of them threw a few things his way while leveling their many insults at him. But he had the gun. He pulled to a stop right in front of them, popped the skateboard’s tail, caught it by the nose.
Everything was burning all around him, but there was a silence to it, one man against a mob and he wasn’t backing down. Then someone charged him. He fired his weapon point-blank. The kid’s head snapped back and he fell down dead.
If he counted his rounds right, he either had one more round left, or none. He wasn’t sure. But he stood there anyway. With all these riotous creatures of the night standing in silence, each of them poised to pounce the minute he made a move, he turned and cruised back to his building.
Knocking on the glass door, he was immediately let inside. He knew the second he returned to the office, he had made them all a target. He didn’t care. He’d just put nearly a dozen scumbags into an early grave.
“You idiot!” the doorman hissed. Looking at Rowan, he said, “You’re aware that you just got us killed, right?”
“Someone needs to take a stand against these guys, or we’re all just a sea of victims.”
He stalked upstairs, everyone glaring at him in silence. He’d become the unhinged one, the certifiable nut job. First he showed up with blood on his face and hands, and now everyone had seen him smoke those maggots like a guy who’d lost his marbles.
Upstairs, he walked to the window only to see that the fires he thought he put out were now being stoked again. People were fleeing the building, waving smoke out of their faces and coughing.
One of the HR turds hurled another can of gas into the building. A few minutes later, the explosion fortified that fire. He recognized the five-gallon gas jugs, realizing only then that they were the gas cans Owen had been filling in the parking garage before taking a thirty-foot swan dive.
“You gonna go shoot some more of them?” Clair asked.
“I want to, but there are too many.”
Later, as the fire took hold, two people broke out a third-story window and tried to lower themselves into the street using a bedsheet as a rope.
Smoke poured out of their window, but the mob didn’t care. They advanced on the couple, screaming at them, throwing things at them. A glass bottle finally hit the girl just right. She lost her grip and fell, but on the way down, her foot hooked on the man’s shoulder below her, flipping her over at the last minute.
This poor girl landed on her back, then lay there like a fish out of water. Some guy pulled down the front of his pants and proceeded to piss on her, while the guy on the rope of bedsheets started climbing back up. He was almost there when the fire inside burned through the sheets. The guy dropped almost three stories to the ground, landing on top of the girl. The goon squad broke into a ruckus of taunts and laughter.
Rowan ground his teeth together, checked his mag, saw he had one round left. He pulled back the slide, saw brass in the chamber.
By now, half the mob was splitting up. One half of them moved to the next building while the other descended on his building. He had steam collecting on his eyeballs at the thought of these guys doing this again, and to them no less! So when one of them looked up at him and started doing a little demon dance, Rowan saw red.
A few guys broke into a nearby car, turned it around, then started pushing it toward his building. More guys joined in and about ten of them rolled the car right into the wall below. The same dancing fool who taunted him before did so again. Behind him, someone pried open the wrecked car’s fuel tank lid.
Rowan hurried to the storage room, grabbed two big boxes of paper, muscled them out. He sat them down in front of the window and said, “Cover your ears.”
All of them did.
He shot out the window, then hurled a chair through the shattered safety glass. Leaning out of the broken window, he aimed at the dancing man and fired. His aim was off, but not by much. Instead of hitting him in the head, Rowan caught the dope on top of his shoulder. The guy dropped back and started howling, his arm limp at his side.
A new guy took his place, stuffing the gas tank with a rag he picked up off the ground. Rowan hurled the box of paper out the window, hitting the new gas man in the head. His neck cranked hard, the impact so perfect, Rowan wondered if it had been a kill shot.
“Get more boxes!” Clair yelled at Brian and Tommy.
“Forget that,” Brian said. “Rowan needs to get more bullets.”
“I need all the rounds I can get if we want to get out of here. Clair’s right, let’s get the boxes.”
Below, someone tried to help the injured man. When he bent down to pick him up, Rowan hurled another box of paper down into the street. It hit the man in the back. He fell over, howling.
“We can’t do this all day and all night!” Brian barked as he tossed his first box of paper into the crowd. He hammered someone’s shoulder, visibly hurting the goon. To Rowan, Brian turned and said, “We need to find another way out.”
By then, the mob had surrounded the building completely. Underneath them, a huge explosion rocked the foundation.
If the HR clowns kept blowing things up, would they eventually succeed in taking the entire building down? He didn’t know. If the foundation was weak enough, it was possible.
Just when he thought things were going to go from barely manageable to catastrophic, everything calmed down. Unfortunately, as night fell, things changed again.
Everything changed.
Half an hour past dusk, Dave burst through the office door and screamed, “They’re hitting the glass with crowbars! And the door isn’t going to hold!”
“Why didn’t you use the walkie talkie?” Rowan asked.
“Someone took it,” Dave said.
“I’ll be down in a second, just shoot whoever comes in.”
“I only have six bullets!”
“Well then make them count, Dave!”
He went to the storeroom, looked down into the parking lot at the back of the building. Beyond the parking lot was a hedge of grass and a small grove of trees. The mob had increased in size yet again, all of them cheering, all of them chanting.
“No quarter, you’re dead, a bullet in your head! No quarter, you’re dead, a bullet in your head!”
At the back of the mob, near the grass and trees, he saw something unusual. He had to squint to see better, but it was definitely worth the look.
To him, it appeared as though bodies were being wracked with spasms, their spines arched, their heads jerked back in pain. They started to fall, one by one, all of them dropping to their knees, some of them dying.
Moving swiftly behind the crowd, a slight figure in a hoodie was currently on a terror spree. Thankfully, no one else noticed, but soon someone would. And then what? Could Rowan get out and help this kid do whatever it was he was doing? The answer to that question came quickly: Hell, no! There were too many of them.
“I can hear them banging downstairs!” Clair screamed. “They’re hitting the glass!”
Brian popped his head in the storeroom and said, “I hope the people you saved were worth it, because you just killed yourself and your frien
ds.”
“Stow that dog shit attitude, Brian,” Rowan growled. “We’re not dead yet.”
Chapter Thirteen
Senator Clause Eichmann
Ohio Senator Clause Eichmann sat in his big house next to a roaring fire with a decanter of whiskey, a clean tumbler, and a gun at his side.
“Dulantha, bring me the short wave radio,” Eichmann said to his assistant.
The lanky Sri Lankan brought Eichmann the Sangean World Band Receiver, then said, “Will there be anything else?”
“No, thank you.”
Dulantha looked at his guest, then said, “Perhaps the young lady would like something?”
“She has all she needs,” Eichmann told the man with a dismissive wave.
Dulantha studied the girl on the couch, then said, “Very well, sir.”
Eichmann looked at his watch, then turned on the receiver, and activated the second preset. If Diesel Daley and his men used the EMP pouches like they were supposed to, they would be able to communicate with each other at specific times on the pre-determined frequencies. This was his initial check-in with Diesel Daley, his first since the EMP.
“Eichmann here,” the Senator announced.
“There you are,” a voice replied.
This voice not sound like Diesel Daley. Eichmann found this odd considering this person was on the right frequency at the right time.
“Who is this?” Eichmann asked.
“Rhett Jensen out of Nashville,” the man said.
“I’m supposed to be talking with Diesel,” Eichmann said, not terribly happy.
“I’m afraid Diesel is attending to personal matters concerning Walker McDaniel.” Rhett was out of Nashville, and the number two guy behind Diesel.
“Has he executed that rat yet?” Eichmann hissed.
“Yes, he has,” Rhett replied, cold. “Where are you on Columbus?”
“Haven’t you something more to say to me?” Eichmann asked, looking at the lovely little thing Dulantha had referred to as the “young lady.” The North Korean refugee was a smaller girl than Eichmann was used to, and barely of age. He studied her form and found it difficult not to bask in the glow of his amazing new life.
“You held up your end of the bargain,” Rhett confessed. “Congratulations. Now tell me about Columbus.”
“Columbus is being handled,” Eichmann said. “The troops are on East Long Street now, burning out the vermin, sowing fear and chaos, setting the tone for our long march forward. Once we’re done there, we’ll fan out into the suburbs.”
“What about membership?” he asked.
“It’s on the rise I’m told,” Eichmann said, “but tempered. We are recruiting warriors only, no one with family, kids, or loyalties to the old America.”
He took a sip of whiskey, watching this peculiar girl as she read one of the many magazines he’d procured for her.
“With Diesel’s attention elsewhere, I’m assuming you are in communication with the other factions in the South,” Eichmann said.
“I am,” he said.
“Tell me about Indianapolis.”
“I’ll handle the ground forces,” Rhett said. “We need to talk about Columbus.”
Eichmann had always been a planner, able to see ten steps ahead of everyone else. That was why he’d sent his wife to Paris earlier this week. He knew the timeline of the EMP which meant he had a way to insure he’d never have to hear from his wife again.
Letting his eyes slide over the lithe form of this North Korean tart, he felt the world was about to right itself again.
“Columbus is ahead of schedule,” Eichmann said. “You wanted a slow burn, but I think speed and force are working best to destabilize any resistance.”
“Normally, I would tell you to stay in your lane, but the topic of advancing our timeline was central to our communications today,” Rhett said. There was some static, as was normal with communications like those, but then the noise cleared. “Tap your generals in the street, Eichmann. Tell them to burn everything. The message of fear won’t put food in our bellies, wood in our fireplaces, or ammo in our weapons. We need to turn our focus toward long-term sustainability. The faster we wipe out the masses and move in that direction, the more secure we’ll be as an outfit.”
“What about the heads of the other states?” Eichmann asked. “How are they progressing?”
“What do you mean?” Rhett said, congenial but guarded.
“The biggest problem with the rank and file Nazis was not their inability to see the larger vision, or even to engage in mass slaughter,” Eichmann explained. “The Nazis had no problem with that. The problem was in the up-front execution of the Jews and Jew sympathizers. They couldn’t do it. That’s why they needed the ovens. Today, half of these kids grew up on Call of Duty, so for the most part, the video games have paved the way for a more efficient civilian army. Times like these test the wills of men. These are the times when we must separate the wheat from the chaff. If your ground forces can gut their fellow men, women, and children without hesitation or remorse, then we will have our new Brownshirts, our new Stormtroopers. I have my Brownshirts, Mr. Jensen, I just want to know if your other men have both their wits and their forces.”
“Our hands are full in Charlotte. Half my guys can’t do what’s necessary. And we don’t yet have the resources in place we should have had by now, but that is being remedied.”
“Is that where Diesel is now?”
“No,” he said.
“That’s a shame. A man like Diesel would have the bodies stacked a mile high by now. If Charlotte is that bad, then perhaps he should be there instead of…wherever the hell he is right now.”
The North Korean glanced up at him. He was staring at the slight swell of her breasts as they moved beneath her terrycloth robe.
Hwa-Young Tae stood, turned to him, and disrobed. She was wearing nothing but a large tattoo on her chest. Eichmann drew a breath, felt the euphoria wash over him.
“When I hear from Diesel,” Rhett replied, “I will be sure to pass along your feelings on the matter.”
“Back to Indianapolis,” Eichmann said dismissively. “Why did you divert from Indianapolis?”
“Know your place,” Rhett said, less congenial.
He sat up in his seat and said, “Do you know why Columbus has been successful? Because I have the balls to have orchestrated the larger option. I did my part, Jensen. You and Diesel are in charge of the mop-up, so why is this so hard to talk about?”
In between the slight swell of Hwa-Young’s breasts, trailing down to her naval, was a giant tattoo of an upside-down cross. As she sauntered toward him, the cross came into focus.
“You’re right,” Rhett said. “Indianapolis is problematic. Like Charlotte, we are replacing some of our generals.”
“Well, rest assured, you will not need to worry about me, but the next time we talk, I’d like to know that things have changed on that front. This is a complicated, well-orchestrated operation with too many moving parts for you to fail on your end.”
“It’s not my end,” Rhett snapped. “This is Diesel’s end, I’m just reporting on it.”
“He should be made to speak to his own failures, Jensen.”
“I agree,” Rhett said, taking a breath.
Moments later, Hwa-Young nudged one of his knees aside, then stepped in between his opened legs. He reached up, put his hands on her hips, let his gaze travel up the stipes, or the long base of the cross. All over the cross in perfectly tattooed ink were small, tortured bodies. They looked like they were writhing, as if they were dying on the cross over and over again. The tattoo was a horror show that thrilled him immensely.
“Same time next week?” Eichmann asked.
“Yes,” he said, begrudgingly. “And on the same frequency.”
Eichmann cut the two-way communication and set the receiver aside. Trailing a finger up Hwa-Young’s skin, he said, “There is a wickedness about you that calls to me.”
�
�I am part of the dark flock, Senator.”
Turning to his Sri Lankan assistant, who stood by the door trying hard not to stare at the naked nineteen-year-old, he said, “Get out of here, Dulantha. I’m all done with you.” The man nodded, then returned to his post outside the bedroom door.
When the door was closed and Eichmann and the girl had their privacy, Hwa-Young grinned and, in surprisingly fluent English, said, “Tell me about the last bad thing you did, Senator.”
He began to undo the buttons on his shirt, his grin growing by the second. When he finished with the buttons, he pulled his shirt back and said, “Kaboom,” like he was bragging about setting off a bomb.
“How many dead?” she asked with a seductive smile.
There was darkness traveling through her eyes, a malice so intoxicating that Eichmann didn’t even mind that this girl and his estranged daughter were nearly the same age.
“I want details,” she said, “because it’s the details that make me hot. And it’s the death count that gets me wet.”
He held up a finger, and said, “One dead.”
He watched her smile falter. The withdrawal of her sexual energy became a palpable thing. “Just one dead?” she asked, pushing out her lower lip.
“Not one person, my young flower. One nation.”
Her smile returned.
Reaching between her legs, she ran her hand up the inside of her thigh, stopped short of her privates, then said, “Which nation would that be?”
“Have you looked around lately?” he asked, reaching for her.
She pushed his hand away and said, “Not yet. Tell me more. It’s the violence that will make me yours.”
He pulled his shirt off, started to unbutton his pants and said, “Columbus will be my kingdom once the fall is complete. And the fall, not just of this city, but of all the cities all around the nation, was only made possible because there is a lack of power. The grid is dead, child. I orchestrated that. Me.”
“You?” she purred.
“The EMP was my idea.”