More than four thousand projectiles laced through the refugee vehicles at three times the speed of sound. Tabby jumped at the sudden assault on our senses.
When the noise faded, the sound of screams replaced it. Not many of them, and only one had any real strength to it. If one or two of my people shifted their weight uncomfortably at the piercing wails, that was understandable. I felt nausea writhing in my belly like a pair of eels fighting each other. None of them pulled away from the night scopes, and when the night filled with the screeching of a door opening on badly damaged hinges, there was no hesitation.
“Got him,” Allen said in a low, even voice. He took two long breaths and gently squeezed the trigger.
I was watching with my naked eyes and didn’t see the next one, but Scott muttered softly and took a shot. Over the next few minutes, three more badly injured people tried to escape and all were cut down.
We waited a full half hour in total silence. No one else made a move. Mo more piteous wails echoed across the broken and abandoned parking lot.
“I’ll stay,” Allen said. “The rest of us can do a sweep in a little while. We’ll see to anyone that might be left.”
I shook my head. “No. This was always supposed to be on my shoulders. The rest of you stay up here and cover me. Just let me use your headset so I can see what I’m doing.”
Allen hesitated. “That’s a hell of a risk just to satisfy your, I don’t know, honor or whatever. We can go together.”
“Give me the damn goggles, Allen,” I said, putting my hand out. He handed them over reluctantly. I turned to Tabby. “I’m sorry you saw this, but I’m also glad you did. There are two lessons I want you to take away from tonight. The first is that I keep my promises. So when I say I’ll get Logan back, let the bodies down there be all the proof you need that I’ll do it. Maybe that will stop you from wavering next time you think about turning on me. The other thing I want you to take from tonight?” I waved a hand at the destruction below. “When I give you a second chance, don’t fuck it up. You don’t get a third. Those bodies down there should serve doubly to remind you of that.”
I left her looking stunned, too rattled by the sudden and brutal deaths to form coherent sentences. Every survivor gets used to carnage to one degree or another, but it’s a whole new level to coldly slaughter sleeping and defenseless people. Doesn’t matter if all they have to do to become dangerous is wake up—the fact that they didn’t see it coming and couldn’t have put up a fight was enough to fuck with anyone’s equilibrium.
I moved through the broken vehicles with caution. Any survivor smart enough to stay still might see me through one of the thousands of holes and fire at me through the metal. No one did. In fact I found no one alive at all. I silently thanked the universe for that mercy.
I left a message, however. There was no doubt in my mind that the rest of the Sons would scour the countryside looking for their wayward children. Come morning, or some morning soon, they’d find this camp. I might even set a fire so they couldn’t miss the smoke. What they would see in the light of a breaking dawn were foot-tall letters written in smeared blood across the armored panels of those vans and trucks.
NO MERCY FOR THE RELENTLESS SONS
Not subtle and not without drama, but it would do the job.
27
We weren’t welcomed home as heroes. I doubt many people even noticed. Haven was so large, so busy, and acted as a crossroads for so much trade traffic that even a caravan of a dozen vehicles showing up was largely ignored. I found the idea oddly comforting.
Will was kind enough to come to the Hangar to get the briefing he so dearly wanted, which was useful because I really didn’t want to sit in his cramped office when I told him everything that had happened. The idea of being cooped up in the small space was maddening to me. Turns out his motives weren’t wholly altruistic; Haven’s ruling council came with him. They wouldn’t have all fit in the cubby Will worked in.
He, however, was the only one who spoke. The eight of us—me, Will, and the six elected members of the council—sat in camp chairs around a small fire. Will wore one of the faded polo shirts which made up most of his wardrobe and which served as the fanciest clothes anyone bothered to wear in Haven. The others varied from freshly cleaned jeans and shirts to deeply stained coveralls. The council members all worked like everyone else. They let Will do the administrative stuff.
The current makeup of the council was four women and two men. They studied me silently.
“That’s a hell of a story,” Will said after I finished talking. “If it was anyone but you, I’d have my doubts. Do you really think you can do it? Sneak in there and take the kids? I’ve seen you do some amazing things, Mason, but I can’t help wondering if you’re just looking for a way to go out in a blaze of glory or something.”
I leaned back in the nylon chair and rubbed my hands down my face. “Can I do it? No. No way in hell. But I won’t be alone. Frontal assault won’t work. Yeah, we probably have enough firepower in Haven alone to do the job if killing was all we were going for, but I’m not willing to do that. I won’t let those kids die.”
The councilors fidgeted at my tone. Haven didn’t generally elect the power-hungry or idiots to lead them, but neither were they used to people giving Will Price ultimatums. The guy had fought his way from pariah to hero years and years before to get the support needed to become our governor. People didn’t keep their peace around him out of fear, but respect.
I knew Will from those early days when he was hated, though. And I knew the kinds of hard choices he had made over the years. When his eyes met mine, it wasn’t challenge I saw in them, but curiosity. “And if I decide that we will fight them openly? What will you do then?”
I scratched my nose. “Try to convince you not to. Since I know you’re about to pose another hypothetical asking what I’d do if I couldn’t manage to talk you out of it, I’ll go further. If you decide to take that step, I’ll leave Haven and warn the Sons you’re coming. I’d rather let them get away and fight them on the right terms another day than let you get a bunch of children killed. If you kept on after that and tried to chase them down, well...I’ve forced regime change before. It’s not easy and it’s not fun, and you’re one of the oldest friends I have left, but that wouldn’t stop me.”
The silence in the small courtyard was, for lack of a better word, unique. A mixture of outrage and palpable fear that something violent and unfortunate was about to happen. Maybe a little eagerness to see it go down. The same kind of guilty blood lust that made boxing so popular.
“You would, wouldn’t you?” Will said, not a trace of anger or fear in his voice. “I’d be an idiot not to listen to you on this, anyway. If you say this is the best way, then I have to believe it. You’re the man with the experience.”
A wave of relief swept the area. I smirked. “Plus you know this way you won’t have to risk half the citizens in yet another waste of lives like the last war.”
Will waved a hand. “There is that, obviously. There’s still the question of how you plan on making this happen. What resources will you need? With all the armories and bases we’ve looted, arming you isn’t a problem, but somehow I don’t think that’s your primary concern.”
“It’s not,” I said. “We’ll need weapons, and I know ammo is still an issue so we’ll have to work out those details...” That understated the problem by a fair amount. We had people who made bullets when we ran low on what we could scavenge, but the hard truth was that so far no community within the Union had real manufacturing capability in that area. Haven possessed a deeper well than others, but the reserve wasn’t infinite. If I accidentally precipitated a full-on ground war with the Sons, we’d have to either win it fast or win it creatively. We couldn’t afford a drawn-out firefight.
But then those weren’t the kinds of weapons I would focus on. “There isn’t going to be an easy or quick solution here, people.” I scanned the faces to make sure they were paying attenti
on and taking me seriously. “Truth is I need people more than I need guns. Maybe fifty of them.”
Will’s eyebrows rose. “That few? Really?”
I shrugged. “Thing is, they aren’t going to be any random volunteers. I need the best. People with the best combination of fighting, stealth, and tracking skills who are also fast learners.”
Will leaned forward, fingers laced together loosely. “Sounds like you’re talking about finding fifty more versions of you.”
“Not exactly,” I said. “Part of why my plan is going to take time is because I’ll take the volunteers and spend at least a month training them. Every day, twelve hours a day. I need the biggest pool of people, probably taken from scouts, that I can get.”
“We don’t even have that many scouts,” said Miranda, a thirtyish councilor with a mane of black curls and skin the color of dark honey. “Where—oh. You want this to be a family affair.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Isn’t that why we formed the Union to begin with? To share resources? I don’t just want the best Haven has to offer. I want to scour every community who has volunteers. Find me scouts. Find me former Rangers, SEALs, Force Recon. I’ll take anyone with military service. Killers, murderers, whatever you got. Send word to the other communities and tell them what we’re up against. Spread the word and let them know what we’re up to here. You’ll get volunteers, and in six or eight weeks I’ll lead the charge against the Sons with one of the scariest collections of people seen since the Fall began.”
Miranda didn’t so much as glance at Will before speaking again. “How do we convince them?”
I smiled grimly. “Tell them the truth. If we try to smash the Sons, they’ll kill children before splintering off into fifty groups. They’ll be like sand in our clothes, constantly irritating and leaving us raw, but impossible to get out. They’ll attack our trade and fade away before we can run them down. They’ll be a plague. Will led these people to war and pulled them together, then made peace with the enemy. Hell, he was instrumental in securing a treaty with New America before that whole situation could explode into full-scale war. If anyone can convince them, he can.”
Will snorted. “But no pressure, right?”
I found Tabby right where she was supposed to be, which was in the containment cell of the lab. The cell was where zombies were isolated when Kell needed to test some new idea or another on them. The space was clean—meticulously so, since Kell was anal about it—and the door sat open. Tabby wasn’t a prisoner. We just didn’t have any open rooms in the Hangar.
“How’d it go?” she asked as I settled a shoulder against the steel door frame.
“Eh,” I said, seesawing a hand. “They’re not jazzed at the idea of trying to convince a bunch of people to throw in on this. I actually think selling a war would be easier. They know how to do that. The idea that we could get the same end result with a fraction of the people is alien to them. Everything they’ve learned since the Fall started tells them this can’t possibly work.”
Tabby raised an eyebrow. “Lot of vague ‘they’ in there. Who are you talking about, exactly?”
“Same people I’ve been talking about for twenty years, I guess,” I said. “It’s always the same. The people above you think you’re capable of miracles or that you’re overselling yourself to an insane degree. There’s almost never any shades of gray between. But Will is smart. He’s seen enough to convince the council. The fact that we managed to put a hurt on the Sons with volunteers and a slapdash plan will help sell it.”
Tabby nodded absently. “What about me? What do I do next?”
I felt for her. I really did. She was a woman of action, a trait I could both identify with and appreciate. It was that impulse to move, to do anything to get back to Logan, which drove her to try taking me prisoner. In life as in war, people are full of those subtle variations. We’re all shades of gray.
“If you want to be a part of this, I’ll train you,” I said after a little while. “I don’t think I can fully trust you yet, but I want to. I want to believe you won’t take an opportunity when you see one if we’re close to the hub the Sons are fortifying as we speak.”
“I won’t,” Tabby said at once. “I learned that lesson.”
“Did you?” I asked. “So tell me: if you and I spend two days slowly crawling across open ground in ghillie suits to get within sight of the kids and Logan walks ten feet away from us, could you stop yourself? Could you trust me enough to obey my orders, knowing my goal is to get him back? You’re quick to answer now, but I want you to think hard about this. Come up with scenarios like that one. Things that will test your resolve as hard as possible. Lay awake at night and run them through your head endlessly. Do that for the weeks it’ll take the new recruits to get here. If you can convince me your answer is still yes by the time training starts, you’re in. If you can’t, you stay here and hope for the best.”
She stared at me, a look of appraisal on her face. “God, that’s what you do, isn’t it? That’s how you’re so good at this. You torture yourself with every possibility just so you always have a plan.”
“Sure,” I said with a shrug. “That’s how you win. Keep in mind I have a lot of practical experience at this, too. It’s not theory for me. I’ve been tested more times than I care to remember. I rarely falter when the time comes to put my mission ahead of transient needs or wants.”
Tabby chewed on her lip, a habit I now understood to be one she engaged in when thoughtful about something she thought might offend. Mannerisms can be deeply specific. “Does it bother you? The people you kill, I mean? You’re not crazy, so I assumed it did. But you kill so easily...”
“I do it well,” I corrected. “Not the same thing as easily. To answer your question, sure. It bothers me. But usually they have it coming, and that helps me rationalize it if nothing else. The thing that really gets to me is how necessary it is. Same old world, you know? People can lose everything, but still be selfish, murderous assholes in need of a bullet to the brain pan. Just seems unfair that we never seem to learn.”
What I didn’t say was how that answer could change from day to day. Words have a hard time capturing the real complexity of a person. I’ve known snipers who would casually high-five over their kill count one day and weep themselves to sleep over it the next. Tabby wanted to know if I was a tormented soul, struggling under the weight of a small town’s worth of bodies on my shoulders.
Truth was that some days I was, but mostly not. Few people can accept the flexibility of the mind that can let a person do monstrous things without becoming a monster or losing their sanity.
“I’ll do everything I can to convince you,” Tabby said. “I need to be there for my son. I’ll do anything to make that happen.”
“I believe you,” I said. “Or I should say I believe you believe that. We’ll see.”
I wanted her to be right, to have learned her lesson. Both of us knew it was a steep hill to climb, but Tabby was strong. I had a feeling it would work out for her.
Epilogue
“You need an MRI,” Kell said after a thorough examination. “We have the portable, but I’m going to see if Will will give us the power allotment for a full body scan.”
I winced at the words in ways that casual torture could never manage. “He won’t be happy about that. That thing chews through our storage. People won’t have lights for a full day.”
Kell scratched down notes in one of his dozens of notebooks. It was the one with the silver cover, a thick tome of college-ruled pages filled with tiny script. The book dedicated solely to me and my weird Chimera infection. “Yes, I know. It’ll suck, but the information we gain from it could be invaluable.”
I chuckled. “Sometimes I forget how very Reed Richards you can be. Science above all else.”
Kell glared. “That’s not true. What I mean is yeah, it’ll help my research a lot, but getting good images of what’s going on in your body is crucial.” He frowned worriedly. “If I had known cutt
ing you would do more than reinforce the layer of stuff beneath your skin, I’d have stopped taking samples ages ago.”
I waved away the worry. “Stop. You had no way of knowing. This is new, Kell. You’d have seen it before if it weren’t. Stop worrying about the past and tell me what we’re dealing with now.”
Kell sat back against a lab table, arms crossed. “Jo was right. Whatever this new evolution of your Chimera is, it’s doing more than reinforcing your tissue and helping you heal. It came up through your wounds like lava and hardened in place. From what I can tell, it reconfigures the tissue it creates to allow for muscular control, blood flow, all of that. It works just like your own tissue, even with your tissue, but it’s Chimera.”
“Huh,” I grunted. “That doesn’t sound so bad. So it probably won’t fuck up my internal organs or anything, then? If it’s doing the work parts of my body would be doing anyway, I mean.”
Kell suddenly grew nervous, a rare condition in him. Few people could have seen the reaction for what it was, but I spent a lot of time with the guy. Getting roped into playing Dungeons & Dragons gives you ample chances to observe a man. “The only organ I’m worried about is your brain.”
I blinked, and then laughed. “Thinking of switching teams, man? That sounds like a cheesy pickup line if I ever heard one.”
Kell smiled thinly. “I wish it were a joke. Remember, Chimera attaches to the nervous system and brain first. The cure works by separating the Chimera in the brain from the rest of the infection and making the division permanent. My concern is that the part in your brain might be doing more than just laying down a lace of copycat material over your gray matter.”
Beyond The Fall (Book 1): Relentless Sons Page 19