Assured Destruction: The Complete Series

by Michael F Stewart

  He bears down and starts swinging his foot around, leaning heavily on the handrail. It’s faster but—

  WHUMP!

  It’s a low sound, like the warning bark of a huge dog. Light flashes from below and heat billows over us. We’re far enough away that I’m not afraid of burning. Then the alarm rings out.

  And that’s what I was afraid of.

  Chapter 36

  The door at the top of the stairs slaps open, and hauling a massive fire extinguisher, Jug barrels through. When he sees us, he stops.

  “You.” His shoulders bunch and he calls out behind him. Resistance is futile.

  The stairwell fills. Links flit past to fight the fire, but others remain with us; someone grabs my arm, wrenches it around my back, and hauls me into the foyer, where the mayor stands beside the Storm Trooper like Darth Vader himself.

  Oddly it’s not the smell of smoke that I notice, it’s the overwhelming scent of fresh pizza—Karl! But I don’t see him. He’s already come and gone. It might have been a trick of the light, but I would swear that I saw the Storm Trooper turn its head a fraction. Peter’s wrestled to my side, held by two broad-chested links.

  “You had me willing to give you a chance,” the mayor says. To another link he adds: “Get Williams. This is her mess.”

  When the double doors to outside open wide, I see only a few dozen stragglers, some stepping into cars. Ellie’s yelling at the last news truck. Only one vehicle is driving down the road toward the mansion, honking for people to move out of the way. I wish it had police cruiser lights flashing, but all I can make out in the deepening darkness is that it’s larger than a car but smaller than a news truck. Probably some desperate Celine fan who received the news late. The doors slam shut, blocking my view.

  The mayor pulls a large silver revolver. He has my full attention.

  “To the farm?” Hector asks.

  “There are idiots all around the fence. I’m not taking these two anywhere.”

  Hector’s jaw flexes and that’s when I realize I’m about to die. Here. The gun lifts.

  Peter struggles against the men holding his arms.

  “Leave the girl alone,” he says.

  But the mayor shakes his head. “This is a mess. We’re going to clean up every loose end.”

  I’m staring down the shiny barrel. Peter writhes and screams. And it’s like I’m dreaming because, as the mayor’s eyes tighten in advance of the gun’s retort, the Storm Trooper steps forward.

  A swift jab to the back of the mayor’s head sends the gun skittering. The mayor collapses in a heap. No one moves, everyone staring at the animated action figure. With a twang, the Millennium Falcon drops and lands on top of Jug, catching Hector’s shoulder and sending him sprawling. Jonny, on the Falcon’s back, crashes to the ground and rolls off.

  I squirm, but the link holding me pulls my head into a vice. Peter roars as he dives for something. The foyer doors blast inward, ripped from their hinges by the bumper of my mom’s van. It skids, forcing my captor to stumble back into the wall. We hit and his grip loosens enough for me to jerk my head and catch his face with the back of my skull. He lets go and I leap away to grab a four-foot length of chain from the wall moulding. More links rush in from the great room and up from the basement.

  Jonny takes a kick to the head and goes flying. The Storm Trooper is whipped by a long chain. I am running short on allies.

  In the middle of the foyer, behind the wheel of the van, hunches my mom, grinning like a devil as she hits the gas and pins two links between the wall and the front grill.

  “Mom,” I scream.

  “Get in!” she shouts, her neck craned around the window. It’s easy to see why. From the halls everyone is converging. I swing the chain, but no one’s close enough to lash.

  “Back off!” Peter has the mayor’s gun and he’s pointed it at Fenwick, then to another link who starts forward.

  I grab Jonny beneath the armpits, just like he once carried me, and haul him through the sliding door of the van. The Storm Trooper seizes Jonny’s ankles and pushes. My mom throws the van into reverse and begins to slowly exit. The links all start to follow too, held at bay only by Peter’s gun.

  But then more guns are drawn, several aimed at each one of us. I remember what Peter said about superior firepower. We won’t win this battle.

  Peter lifts the gun into the air in a show of surrender.

  “Look,” Jonny says, and I’m so relieved that he’s conscious that I smile despite the weapons drawn on me. Then I peer out the rear window where he’s pointing.

  “The news truck!” I shout. “It’s transmitting. This is live!”

  Eyes flick to the road and the blown gate. Cameramen have moved closer than I’d expected. On the field, only fifty feet away, lenses are glinting.

  “You can shoot us,” I say out the window. “But then you’re all going to jail for murder.”

  Links glance to the mayor who has extricated himself from the downed Millennium Falcon, shaking his head.

  “Every link for himself,” he calls, then dashes back toward the kitchen.

  Stunned, the others take a second longer before running. Within moments, they’ve all fled.

  “We’re even,” the Storm Trooper says, pulling off her helmet. “As long as I can keep this.”

  I laugh as Hannah shakes the sweat out of her hair and stares at me with big, proud eyes.

  “Thanks, Hannah, you’re cool.”

  I hear the sound of sirens screaming down the road. Several cruisers. But I also hear the roar of engines. On motorbikes, links try to beat the cruisers to the gate, but it’s too late for that. Karl waves. He’s mixed into the crowd but not before he blocked the exit with the delivery car marked with A ZaZa Pizza on the roof. Which must have been how Hannah and Jonny broke in, taking my place in the trunk.

  But celebration is premature. The mansion’s triple garage doors begin opening and blue smoke clouds out in the shine of dozens of lights. The first link rips out across the pavement on a motorbike and then turns to head behind the mansion.

  “There’s a rear gate,” Jonny says.

  “They’re escaping,” I say.

  Peter’s gun snaps off shots and one of the bikes tumbles out of control. An ATV’s rear fishtails, the driver rolling into the snow before it overturns. Then Williams tears out on a motorbike and veers toward the back. I have to stop her. What did Peter say about a crime not being solved until the culprit is captured? Yeah, he was right about a lot of things.

  How do we stop them? What had the mayor said when Hector asked about taking us to the farm? He’d worried about gawkers being on the perimeter. Not at the main gate. What if the farm isn’t far from here at all? What if it’s just one of the nearby fields?

  “Mom, we have to cut them off,” I say.

  “Leave it to the police, Janus,” she says.

  “No, mom, we can’t. They don’t realize Williams is evil. They don’t know that there’s an escape route. And they don’t know where they’re headed.”

  “Jan—”

  “They’re getting away. Just pull it, Mom!” I point toward Karl and the delivery car.

  “Get in, Peter,” she calls out the window.

  Peter folds himself into the passenger side and the van surges down the lane. Luckily, Karl notices us coming and moves the car out of the way so that we miss the bumper by a knife’s edge.

  “Which way?” my mom cries.

  The van slows at the end of the drive, but we don’t have time to slow.

  When I visited my father’s grave, the woods had been on the right. The field on the left. Woods are behind the mansion so—

  “Right!” I scream.

  We tear past the first cop car. The second cop has a megaphone, urging
us to stop. We don’t and his sirens blare as he launches in pursuit, tires spinning on the gravel road. The trees blur past, but the moon shines over a nearing field.

  “Get ready for another right,” I say. “Lights off.”

  My mom douses the headlights. There’s a small inlet on the right, signaling the start of an old farm road.

  “This is it!” I point.

  The van skids out as it turns onto the farm road, jostling along the ruts. Branches scratch across the windshield. Sure enough, lights too close together to be headlights bounce toward us. They don’t slow. I know most of all who I want to stop. A bullet cracks the windshield and everyone starts screaming. The van skids to a halt. Peter climbs out with the big revolver and fires a single shot before he throws the gun at an escaping link.

  “No,” my mom shouts as I grab the chain and leap from the van into darkness.

  Engines saw all around us, but so do the sirens and the distant whumping of a helicopter. On the breast of a motorcyclist, I see the flash of a badge. It’s Williams. She’s turned her bike into the woods and begins to rumble slowly over brush. There’s no way I’m letting her get away.

  Chapter 37

  The shouts of my friends and mom already sound far away, even though I haven’t followed Williams for more than a hundred yards. The chain in my grip grows sticky with cold.

  She’s broken trail for me, but I often find myself thigh deep in snow. I clamber over logs and use saplings to keep my balance. I’m not entirely sure why I want to catch her. She’s a cop packing a gun. The odds are not in my favor. I push these thoughts away and keep pursuing.

  Ahead I hear the racing of her engine. A tree trunk sticks between the two tires. When she peers into the darkness behind her I duck into the arms of a large spruce. But I have no light and her eyes are adjusted to the glare of her headlights. I don’t think she can see me.

  Motionless, my thighs ache with cold and effort. Williams brushes hair from her face and turns back to the motorbike, shouldering the bike to shove it over the log. Not far ahead, lights flash past, showing the trail she’s headed toward. If she reaches it, I’ll lose her for good.

  While she works, I move off the trail of broken twigs and tramped snow and wade my way ahead of her. I search by moonlight for danger; my hands are red, frozen into claws that will not open as I clutch the chain.

  Williams grunts and heaves the motorbike off the log, panting with her head down. I want to lash her with the chain. I glance ahead and try to imagine her route with the bike. She has to push it through the brush rather than ride it. The handlebars and weight of the thing means certain paths are impossible due to the closeness of trees or the height of fallen logs. Her engine revs as she uses the bike’s own power to move it. I have to go faster.

  With the chain over my shoulder I take great steps, ignoring the noise of my crunching through snow. She’s stuck again, but by the direction of the front tire, I know where she’s headed. Another perfect Christmas tree spruce stands fifty paces ahead. I’ll be there first. My hands and ears ache, but my parka’s kept my chest warm. I don’t hear the calls of my friends anymore. The helicopter light searches the field, not the forest. We’re alone.

  I back into the snow-laden arms of the tree and hold the chain low down, almost to my knee.

  The bike engine saws back and forth as it rocks over a log. Glare from its headlight casts weird dancing shadows that make me flinch when they reach out to me. My throat’s constricting. I’m back in the apartment and I can’t afford to be. I shove my face into the snow on a branch, clearing my mind. She’s closer—only a matter of feet now, gripping the handlebars and revving the engine. And then with a sudden surge, she runs the bike up my embankment.

  With all my strength, with all the frustration of the last several months, the betrayals, and most of all, for my dad, I swing the chain. It connects with her forehead. She flips backward. The motorbike jerks a few feet before wobbling and flopping over when a branch catches the handlebars.

  Williams rolls, one bulky mitten fumbling for her sidearm. As I leap, I bring the chain down again, this time hitting her shoulder, and she cries out. I stomp on her mitten but she pulls her hand free. The chain lashes across her chest. And I drop the chain to reach out and clasp her weapon. I can barely feel it, but somehow manage to slip my finger through the trigger guard.

  She has her hand up as a shield as I point the gun at her face.

  “Jan,” she shouts. “No. Don’t do this.”

  Somewhere near is where I’d dug for my father. This is poetic. It’s right.

  “Did you kill him?” I ask. “Did you?”

  My shoulders ache from holding the gun up.

  “No, Jan. I didn’t kill your father.”

  “Tell the truth!” I’m as surprised as anyone at the searing strength of my voice.

  “I—”

  And I pull the trigger. I think a part of me wondered if I could actually do it. I aim up and to the right of her, but I pull it and she flinches from the crack of the shot. The kick of the gun nearly flips it out of my hands.

  “Yes!” she says. “No.” And, of course, I don’t know whether she’s saying this so that I don’t shoot her. At this point I don’t even know what I’m going to do. I’ve control of the gun again and aim the barrel at her chest.

  “Tell me … how it happened.” The apartment flashes before me. The creep’s head is pinched between my knees.

  Her motorbike sputters and stalls, leaving us in silence. It’s so quiet that our ragged breathing is loud. Shouts of my name bring me back. My friends call, no doubt reinvigorated by the gunshot.

  Her feet paw at the ground, pushing her back until she presses against a tree trunk. The white scar of the bullet has split the bark near where her head rests.

  “Your … your father came to the hackfest—that’s what this was, tonight,” she begins. “He … was acting strange. Told me to disappear, tried to get me to run, I said I would, but I didn’t.”

  “He tried to warn you about the crackdown that was coming?” My voice shakes.

  “Yeah, but I wanted to be the hero, right? I wanted my links, so I went around back and told the other members. I swear I didn’t think they’d kill him.”

  “Why didn’t the agents help him?” I ask. “Why? If they sent him in with a wire, why weren’t they there to back him up?”

  It isn’t Williams who responds. It’s Peter. “Because they took him out the back, Jan. We never knew he was gone until it was too late. Anything could have happened. He could have turned on us.”

  Peter stands, holding out his hand for the gun.

  “Then who pulled the trigger?” I ask.

  “He did,” Williams says. “It was his family or himself.”

  And I can hear the pain in her voice. He may have pulled the trigger, but it implicated every one of them. Jonny appears to my right, and behind, Hannah struggles with the deep snow.

  I nod and lower the weapon.

  “She’s all yours, Agent Moore,” I say, holding the gun out to Peter. “I’m done.”

  It was a much longer walk back to van than I’d expected, but it was an easy one, supported by my friends.

  Chapter 38

  I don’t have my phone. I can’t tweet. I might go insane.

  My mom lounges in a leather chair. Sure, it’s got a tear in it, but nothing I can’t stitch, and besides, it adds character. Where would Frankenstein be without his stitches?

  Karl laughs at a big table. It’s three times the size of our old IKEA table and there’s an eclectic assortment of chairs to seat ten, rather than four. Everyone’s still telling stories about what happened. And it’s funny because we’d been at the cop shop until morning, answering questions. It’s almost noon.

  No one has slept and no one really wan
ts to, not yet anyway. Everyone wanted to return to Assured Destruction to congratulate Harry, who sits in another battered armchair, my laptop on the ground at his side. I imagine it smoking. Evidently he kept Celine’s feed going for twenty-two minutes before some dazed publicist was shaken from her bed.

  So I was thinking a sort of @Disney Fairytale theme? Celine tweeted. Things really exploded when Disney retweeted that one!

  And when they started to tweet that Celine’s account was hacked, Harry managed to kick off one last tweet. Follow @JFlyTrap and all of #Shadownet—before being finally expunged for good.

  “You gained over a thousand followers!” Harry says. And it’s funny because not long ago I would have been jumping up and down. Now I just smile.

  I ordered my mom to keep Assured Destruction closed today, but she refused and asked Trin if he’d come back, promising to pay him at the end of each day. Business is good. Not good enough to keep something the size of our warehouse afloat, but better than I’ve seen in years. I am pretty sure we owe all of this to the Kickstarter campaign—to Jonny. Jonny, who sits beside me. His cheek and eye socket are swollen; he’ll have a black eye. Our thighs press together and I like the heat of him.

  “And then,” Ellie says. “This big huge bear guy—I mean massive—he comes lumbering down the driveway and yells at me—get out of my way. You’ve never seen a guy drop so fast in all your life. Ethan tasered him! Bear guy was suddenly on the ground.”

  This makes me laugh harder than everyone else because I saw how Ethan stared after Ellie in the police station. Ethan, now buried under a mountain of paperwork.

  No one died. And the gas fire only damaged a few banks of servers. In retrospect, keeping the NOC intact probably did more for the investigation than anything. There’s something to be said for failure. With the servers in the mansion and other Bitchain locations shut down, the scourge of the Zombie Worm is fading.