My parents and Uncle Dagger aren’t buried too terribly far from us. I try to visit as often as I can. I don’t know why, but it comforts me to do so. I almost imagine they’re looking down on me, watching my back. I don’t know if there’s a Heaven, but I like to imagine there’s some sort of afterlife. I like to think Dorothy and Sally are up there right now. I even hope Arrow is with them. If there isn’t an afterlife… if life on Earth is all there is… then our Creator, whoever He or She or It may be, has played a cruel joke on us all.
Boom Boom’s sobbing intensifies. I pull her close and gently rub her head. There’s nothing I can say to ease her pain. All I can do is be there for her, like she’s always been there for me.
I can’t believe it’s only been a week since our manhunt for Rasputin came to a brutal, horrifying end. It seems like a lifetime ago. After Krystal found us on the shore of that Alaskan river, we decided to drive up to Washington, D.C. That was the nearest city, and we were all in desperate need of medical attention. We drove 50 miles over rugged terrain until we reached the nearest hospital. We then checked ourselves in to get our wounds treated.
We were only in our rooms for a couple hours when a bunch of government agents rushed in, flashed their badges to the startled nurses, and whisked us away to some secret government facility. At first we were afraid Klaxton had sent her people after us, but we soon realized we were actually being put into protective custody, per the orders of Vice President Cindy LeBeau. LeBeau didn’t want to run the risk of Klaxton sending assassins after us, since we were the last people to see her before she escaped.
It turned out Vice President LeBeau had nothing to do with Klaxton’s conspiracy to assassinate Empress Xing. She, like most of the rest of the world, found out about the conspiracy from Pitbull’s live internet feed. LeBeau immediately went to work having all secret service agents and administration officials arrested and interrogated, to see who else was involved. The interrogations led to the arrests of a few other high-ranking government agents, but so far Klaxton’s conspiracy appears to have been confined to her small, tight-lipped inner circle.
Shortly after the shocking internet feed went viral, LeBeau put out an alert to all Alaskan hospitals to keep an eye out for young teens matching our descriptions. That, of course, was how they found us so quickly. We were told all of this by one of LeBeau’s top aides. A couple hours later the vice president herself came in to talk to us.
To say I was unimpressed with LeBeau would be a drastic understatement. She did not come across as presidential material, which is going to be a big problem since she’s about to take Klaxton’s place as President of the United States (once Congress officially impeaches her in absentia).
LeBeau is a meek, mild-mannered, almost shy Canadian woman in her mid-to-late 50s. She’s a bit thinner and taller than Klaxton, almost lanky, and she wears red-rimmed glasses and has spiky black hair. As she talked to us (I guess to gather information on Klaxton’s whereabouts) she didn’t even make eye contact. She almost seemed intimidated by us, which is scary. The girls and I are smart-mouthed 18-year olds. How’s LeBeau going to act when the Chinese start pushing her around?
Speaking of the Chinese, LeBeau has done everything in her power to placate them. Congress did a quick investigation on LeBeau and came to the conclusion that she had nothing to do with Klaxton’s insane plot to ignite a world war. The Chinese apparently believe that, too, because they haven’t demanded that she step down. I personally feel the Chinese love the fact LeBeau is about to become president. They know she’ll be much easier to manipulate than Klaxton. The sole reason Klaxton picked LeBeau as her vice president (besides making Canadians happy), was because she knew LeBeau wouldn’t ‘rock the boat’ and question her policies. Klaxton (and the rest of the country for that matter) never actually thought LeBeau would ascend to the presidency. Now that she’s about to, the entire country is incredibly nervous. LeBeau doesn’t exactly install confidence in the American People. Say what you want about Klaxton, but she was full of a confidence that was contagious. Americans knew they could count on Klaxton to keep the Chinese at bay. LeBeau is the complete opposite. She comes across as a complete pushover. The Chinese must be salivating at the prospect of a LeBeau Presidency.
Speaking of Klaxton, she’s still on the run. It’s like she vanished off the face of the Earth. The Chinese have pretty much forgotten about Rasputin (especially after LeBeau informed them he’s dead). Now the Chinese want Klaxton. In order to keep General Kang and Empress Xing happy, LeBeau put out a $100 million bounty on Klaxton’s head. Pretty much everyone on the planet is now looking for her.
Right before LeBeau allowed us to leave (after her interrogators realized we had no clue where Klaxton flew off to), we asked if she knew what happened to Pitbull and the gang. One of LeBeau’s aides informed us police officers searched the scorched remains of Rasputin’s cabin and found a bunch of dead mobsters and secret service agents. Pitbull, Yin, and Yang, however, were nowhere to be found. (I know for a fact Yin is dead, since I saw her brains get blown out. Yang must have carried her body.) Igor, Norma, and a few others were missing, too. They all must have escaped the inferno before the authorities arrived.
Before LeBeau let us go, she was kind enough to give us $100,000 for our efforts in uncovering the conspiracy. It’s only a fraction of the bounty we were promised for taking out Rasputin, but it’s a heck of a lot better than the goose egg we were expecting. LeBeau also gave us a brand new car to fly back home in. Last but not least, LeBeau pardoned us for burning down the Wild West Settlement, wiping out Geronimo Blackbird’s bounty. (Caesar’s bounty is no longer a factor, for obvious reasons.)
A rumble of thunder snaps me out of my thoughts. The rain is coming down in sheets now. I pull my jacket up over my head, but it doesn’t do much good. It feels like I just jumped into a lake.
The priest must take the sudden downpour as a sign from God to wrap things up. He says a few last words before going over to comfort Machete. He places his hand on her back and starts to say something when she grabs his wrist and whips out a dagger.
“Oh boy,” I groan. I stand up and get ready to rush to the priest’s rescue.
Machete holds the dagger up to the priest’s face and. “I’ve endured enough of your holier-than-thou dribble. I hate to burst your bubble, bub, but there is no God. If there was, He surely wouldn’t have taken my son from me.”
The priest stutters, “Ma’am, I didn’t mean to upset you. I…”
Machete growls and twists the priest’s arm, sending him to his knees.
“Leave him alone, Machete!” I shout.
Machete snaps her head around and scowls. The hatred in her eyes is beyond frightening. She releases her grip on the priest, who jumps up and runs toward the funeral home, slipping in the mud and tripping over his robe.
“Who the hell invited you heathens?” she snarls, thrusting her dagger in our direction.
I turn to Harpoon and Blade, who appear frightened by Machete’s outburst.
“Why don’t you guys go play in the rain?” I say calmly. “We’ll come get you when we’re done here.”
“O… okay,” Harpoon stammers. She grabs Blake’s hand and they rush over to a small pond on the far end of the cemetery plot.
I make my way toward Machete. Boom Boom and Krystal hesitantly follow me.
In as sympathetic a voice I can muster, I say, “We know you’re hurting, Machete. We all are. But…”
“Don’t you dare act like you know how I feel,” Machete interrupts, rising to her feet. The pouring rain does little to extinguish the white-hot rage burning inside her. “Until you’ve lost a child you’ll never know how I feel.”
Boom Boom brushes past me.
“Boom Boom, wait,” I say, reaching for her arm.
Boom Boom waves me off. “Hang on, Lance. I just want to talk to---”
Boom Boom turns around and walks right into Machete’s foot. Boom Boom yelps and collapses next to Arrow’s c
asket.
“Boom Boom!” I run toward Machete and try to tackle her, but she punches me in the nose and kicks me in the groin. I cry out in agony and keel over on my side, clutching my privates. It’s almost less painful getting stabbed than it is being kicked in the balls.
I hear Krystal yelp a few seconds alter. I guess Machete took her down as well. I roll over to find Machete leaning over Boom Boom, placing her blade against her neck.
With tears pouring from her one good eye, Machete says, “I blame you for Arrow’s death. He died saving you. It’s your fault he’s gone. IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT!!”
Squirming, Boom Boom cries, “Machete, I’m sorry! I never meant for---”
“Shut up!” Machete screams.
Machete keeps Boom Boom pinned to the ground, but she does lift the blade. “Now you listen to me and you listen to me good. The only reason I’m not going to kill you is because Arrow loved you. I have no idea why, but he did. He would never forgive me for slicing your jugular, so I’m not going to. But if I ever see you or your damn friends again, I will not hesitate hurling a dagger in between your eyes. Do you understand me?”
“Y… yes,” Boom Boom whispers.
Machete sheathes her blade and jumps up. She briefly glances at me and Krystal before marching toward her car.
I slowly rise to my feet and shout after her, “Where are you going?”
Machete stops in her tracks, but she doesn’t look back.
“I’m hunting down Klaxton. And when I find her, I’m going to kill her.”
She then storms to her car, hops in, and zooms off.
I help Boom Boom to her feet. “Did she cut you?” I ask, checking out her neck.
Boom Boom shakes her head. In between sniffles she says, “No, but I think we should keep our distance from Machete. I believe her when she says she’ll kill us.”
“I think you’re right.” I pause a moment because I know what I’m about to say next will ignite a firestorm. I take a deep breath and finally blurt out, “I also think Machete has the right idea about going after Klaxton. I think we should do the same.”
Krystal and Boom Boom look at me like I’ve lost my ever-loving mind.
“Are you nuts?” Krystal hollers at the top of her lungs. “We almost died a million times going after Rasputin, and now you want us to go after someone even more dangerous?”
“Krystal’s right,” Boom Boom says, still massaging her throat. “I just want to stay home and take care of the kids. If we need to go after small-time criminals again to make ends meet, that’s fine, but I don’t want to get dragged into another international manhunt.”
“But guys, if we find Klaxton… if we get that $100 million… we can retire! We’ll never have to go bounty hunting again!”
“Nice try, Lance, but that’s the same argument you used to convince us to go after Rasputin, and look how that turned out,” Krystal says.
“And even if we were stupid enough to go after her, where the hell would we even start looking?” Boom Boom asks. “She could be anywhere. At least with Rasputin we knew his general location. Klaxton could be in Canada. She could be in any of the hundreds of isolated oases in the Great American Desert. She could be in Central America, in South America, in Antarctica. Hell, she could even be over in Africa, or Bavaria, or Siberia! While she may be a controversial figure, she still has ardent supporters all around the globe. A manhunt for Klaxton will make our search for Rasputin seem like a childhood game of hide and seek.”
“I concede that it’s not going to be easy, but nothing worth doing ever is,” I say. “It’s our moral duty to go after her.”
“How do you figure?” Krystal asks.
“Well, until Klaxton is apprehended there won’t be peace between the U.S. and China. The threat of war will still hang over our heads. We owe it to Dorothy… and Arrow… to bring her to justice. If this world is to ever know peace… if Blade and Harpoon are to live in a world free from the specter of nuclear war… then we must go after her.”
Krystal shakes her head. “Sorry Lance, but Boom Boom and I ain’t joining you for no suicide mission. Ain’t that right, Boom Boom?”
Boom Boom takes a quivering deep breath and says, “Actually, Lance might be right. Maybe we should hunt her down. After all, we did find Rasputin when no one else could. Why couldn’t we find Klaxton, too?”
Krystal’s eyes nearly bulge out of her head. “Wait, what?! Are you nuts?!!”
I smile at Boom Boom. She always has my back when it matters most.
“Don’t worry, Krystal, you don’t have to come along if you don’t want to.”
“Hell naw, I’m not letting you two get all the credit for capturing that psycho bitch,” Krystal says, wagging her finger at us. “If y’all are stupid enough to go after Klaxton, then I’ll be stupid right along with you.”
My grin widens.
“It’s settled then. But you’re wrong about one thing, Krystal. We’re not trying to capture her. If there’s one thing we learned tonight, it’s that Klaxton will never allow herself to be taken alive.”
As a monstrous bolt of lightning splits the sky in half, I say, “Tomorrow morning we begin our mission to assassinate the President of the United States.”
Highway To Armageddon Page 36