It became a rout—everyone for themselves, all running through the concourse past the security desk and the elevators and into a dark stairwell. Tevy stopped behind the security desk, his shotgun out as he watched his platoon flee. A man entered the concourse not wearing a white headband. Tevy shot and killed.
“Go, go, go!” he shouted at the stragglers of his platoon.
Now rippers poured in through the broken windows, hideously silhouetted by the harsh light of the flare. Tevy turned for the stairwell, but just after he slammed through the doorway, he tripped over a body. He tried to stand and sprint up, but a hand closed around his ankle and tripped him to the stairs. He had to fling out his hands to prevent a face plant, and he lost his shotgun in the process. He struggled to reach for it as a ripper rushed up his body to pin him down. Breath that stank of blood washed into Tevy’s face, and a guttural voice spoke in his ear. “Fresh meat.”
The ripper grabbed a fistful of Tevy’s hair to pull back his head, but Tevy’s hand had found the Glock, turning it in the holster and firing backwards and up. The ripper screamed and fell back holding a bloody stomach. Tevy tried to rise but now it was a pile on, a half dozen rippers charging in to pin him down.
Others sprinted past him, pursuing his troops up the stairs.
Tevy prayed and struggled. Now he would die. He wouldn’t get to see Kayla again, and that was the greatest loss. The only comfort was that he wouldn’t die a virgin and maybe, just maybe, he had left offspring.
A loud voice shouted even as a ripper placed a knife to Tevy’s throat.
“Wait, wait, wait! We’re supposed to get a prisoner.”
The knife withdrew and Tevy was flipped onto his back.
“Hey, I know this guy. This is the fucking sneak who ran across the ‘L’ way back.”
It was the officer who ordered Tevy to stop at the Wells Street Bridge the day he discovered that Vlad Who Bleeds was now in charge of Chicago. Except the man was human then. Now he had clearly converted, his skin pale and stretched, his eyes slightly bulging.
“Captain.” What else to say? “How’s it hanging?”
The captain had no sense of humor. “Take him to Vlad. No drinking his blood, on pain of impaling. He gets there in one piece.”
Tevy struggled to reach the knife at his belt.
Someone shoved his head from behind, slamming it into the concrete stairs. Pain. Massive pain and disorientation. His arms and legs wouldn’t respond to commands. Then he was on his feet, dragged vertical by the rippers because he had lost the ability to stand without help. His hands were yanked behind his back and a plastic cable tie encircled his wrists. They marched him south, dazed and bloody, through a city completely controlled by rippers.
Twenty-Six - It All Comes Together
Kayla heard the tanks first, and she knew they could mean the death of her lover. When she heard that Tevy was to lead an assault on the Franklin/Orleans Bridge, she begged Joyce to let her join him, but it was too late. They were already across the river. She had run up the stairs of the Merchandise Mart several floors until she found an open window facing south. The running figures were difficult to see as dusk descended, but she approved when Tevy led them into the office building and back out again, keeping in the best cover possible. When his assault began, it was too dark, only muzzle flashes and explosions told the story.
He had taken out the tanks first, that was good, and Joyce’s fifty cal was now raking the traitor positions on the north side of the bridge, but the rumble of tank treads told Kayla this was all about to fall apart. The first shot from the barrel of a Bradley proved her correct. Tevy would have no choice but the fall back in panic.
When the flare exploded high above the city, the whole battle suddenly became tiny live soldiers on a board game. She could use her binoculars. The troops made for the office building. Good. Tevy must know that the bridge would be a slaughter in this bright light. Kayla’s heart leapt when she saw Tevy crossing Franklin, leading a squad to the office building, their only hope, their refuge. The rippers, and it was rippers now, charged into the building close on their heels. Muzzle flashes pulsed out of the building, illuminating the lobby for seconds and telling Kayla that someone provided cover fire for that last squad.
All went silent, and Kayla prayed that Tevy had succeeded in blocking the routes to the upper floors. She imagined a frantic rush to throw desks, chairs and filing cabinets down the stairwells. Perhaps barricading doors. Tevy could last until morning, when a thin screen of less than enthusiastic humans traitors would be left as a holding force. Kayla would launch her attack at dawn. She would free Tevy and bring him back across the river.
The rippers brought a prisoner out of the building, his hands secured behind his back, his face bloody. Even in the last of the light of the flare, Kayla recognized Tevy’s skinny figure. They marched him south toward the Willis Tower.
Kayla watched, hardly breathing, as another figured slipped out a third floor window of the office tower and slid down a rope in the fading light of the flare. He crouched in the shadow of a column until some rippers passed. He ran into the street in pursuit of Tevy’s captors. Kayla couldn’t really tell that the hair was red, but the teenage body and the insane pursuit told her it was Elliot. She watched until the flare fizzled out and the city again went dark.
*
Bobs gave them a chance to pitch Kayla’s case. That was the good news. It was hard enough to convince Joyce, but Jeff came on board immediately.
“It’ll be like the Battle of the Mountain,” he said. “We’ll cut the head off the snake.”
Bobs wasn’t impressed. She sat at the head of the table in her war room and had the younger kids from the Brat Pack serve them sandwiches. Emile and Helen were part of this meeting, and Kayla remembered Tevy talking about them on the bus, how they were like parents to him. In fact, all of the Companions of Bertrand except Barry St. John and Bishop Alvarez sat around the table in the war room, including Julia Chen and Simon Gonsalves, people Kayla hardly knew, even though they led the two armies of Chicago troops from the St. Mike’s Cantonment.
Kayla talked at length, but Bobs shook her head even before she finished.
“It’s all about the bridges,” Bobs said, standing and pointing to her maps. “Even if you could fight across the Franklin Bridge, or Adams, or any of the others, you’d be caught in a crossfire from every office building all the way downtown. Useless massacre to save one guy who’s probably already dead. No way.”
“It’s not about saving one guy.” Joyce stood and walked around the table to stand beside Bobs and point to the map in her turn. “If Vlad is here, at the Willis Tower, we should go and get him and get this over with. He’s the one bringing troops from California. He’s the one doing all the organizing. Kill him and this ripper army will fall apart.”
“Love to. But you don’t think you’ll get massacred?” Bobs met Joyce’s eye and Kayla sensed the bad blood and a struggle of wills.
“Wait a minute.” Kayla had the seat by the map, and Joyce’s finger on the location of the Willis Tower gave her an idea. “It is all about the bridges, isn’t it? But what about the lake or circling around and coming up from the south?”
Bobs looked up sharply. “You’d spend a day getting far enough west before you could swing down to the south, let alone start sweeping north again. If your boyfriend’s alive, he sure as fuck will be dead by then. Don’t you think about the south.” Bobs put a finger on the map at the shore of Lake Michigan near the outline of a large building that bore the name CHICAGO ART INSTITUTE.
“The lake thing, though.” Bobs frowned. “Never a water person myself, and I don’t think Vlad is either. Brat Pack used to get deep into the Loop along the shore and through the park before it became fucking impossible to get across the river. But boats.” Her finger traced a line around the mouth of the Chicago River and down the map to the shore near Jackson Drive. “Land here and you’ve only got about a mile to the tower and the fir
st half is all open park. You won’t have any cover but neither will the rippers. After that, it’s the concrete and steel canyon.”
Joyce nodded as she studied the map. “But surely the rippers don’t have so many human troops that they can mount guns in every building and sweep every street. Like you said, we’ve got them all concentrated on these bridges. They’re all up here.”
Jeff sat with his boots on the table, a beer donated by Emile in one hand. “Vlad probably doesn’t trust his Daylight Brigades. Look how fast those guys in the Mart surrendered to us, even though they’d been told we eat babies or some shit. I hear you’ve even convinced them to fight for us. My guess is Vlad likes to keep the Daylight Brigades pinned between us and him so they don’t get any ideas about heading for the hills and leaving us to fight it out.”
“That sounds about right.” Bobs studied the map and shook her head. “The tower is going to be fantastically defended though. Vlad’s probably deep below his frigging phallic symbol, and you bet he’ll have his most trusted humans and rippers at every entrance.”
Running feet in the corridor prompted several to draw guns, but it was thirteen-year-old Colin, a runner from the Brat Pack, who threw open the door without knocking, his face flushed and his eyes wide with excitement.
“They broke through...into the river, I mean. I mean they broke through the river into the tunnel. The drill thing! It broke through. There’s a foot of water in the basement and it’s rising fast.”
“The basement of what?” asked Kayla, picturing the dorm of the Brat Pack in the basement of St. Mike’s for a moment before she remembered where the drill was located.
“The Mart.” Collin couldn’t contain his elation. “This is going to flood them out right? The rippers’ll all drown.”
All eyes turned to Bobs, who stood with an ever-so-slight smile that chilled Kayla.
“Get Webb on the radio and get the bishop the hell in here,” Bobs said to Colin. “It’s tonight. It’s fucking now!” Her fist pounded the table, making all the little flags and toys jump.
She looked at everyone in the stunned room. “Okay, cards on the table. I never gave a shit about those bridges. Who the fuck attacks bridges when they don’t have to? It’s not like they’re on an island.” She pointed to Kayla. “You’re the only one who figured it out. When you talked about going around and attacking from the south.”
Joyce had stepped back from Bobs and crossed her arms. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Bobs walked to a different map farther down the table, one of the whole country. She had to lean in between Emile and Jeff, and she picked up several little flags off of Malmstrom Airbase in Montana and carried them over to the Chicago map. She placed them just south of the Loop, not far from the Willis Tower.
She looked up at them all, daring an argument.
“People. The Illinois National Guard is coming home. I convinced Webb to abandon Malmstrom and throw in with us. He’s been bringing in the Bradleys and Strikers by transport trucks, and they just got here yesterday with lots of supporting troops. Webb’s just been waiting for me to give him the word. That’s now.”
“I can’t believe you,” said Joyce. “Why the hell did you call us all the way down from St. John’s if you have a frigging army?”
“Because I didn’t have the army before. That was a deal we worked out after you got on your buses.”
Kayla knew that getting in between Joyce and Bobs was a bad idea, but she couldn’t help herself. “Then why these attacks on the Mart and the bridges and all? Like you said, we obviously don’t need them.”
“We needed to focus Vlad’s attention. I couldn’t have this leak out, and I couldn’t have the rippers or the Daylight Brigades find Webb’s army by accident. We need surprise and we’ve fucking got it.”
She looked around at them all, her forehead creasing with a frown.
“Don’t you see? We’re going to win tonight! Tonight we’re going to take the Loop. The rippers are gonna be flushed out of those tunnels just as Webb attacks from the south. We’re the other side of the pincer. We don’t even need to attack! We just hold the bridges and machinegun the rippers as they try to cross. They’ve got nowhere to go except the lake, and rippers don’t do so well on a sunny day on the lake.”
“So you were using us as bait.” Joyce’s bitterness reflected Kayla’s feelings.
Bobs again slammed the table with her fist. “You just don’t get it, do you? While you and Jeff have been hanging around and screwing up at St. John’s, I’ve been down here making all the tough decisions.” She pounded her chest between her breasts. “I’m the one who had to watch millions starve, fighting off good people who didn’t have it together. Millions! Do you know what it was like down here? I starved! We all starved and we all fought. It was like being in the middle of a hundred dogs in a dogfight with half the mutts rabid. And you come down here to lecture me about bait? About nuking our enemy?”
The room went very silent, and the look of ‘caught’ on Bobs’ face, one eyebrow raised, indicated that she had said more than she intended.
Jeff spoke first, carefully placing his beer bottle on the table. “I thought you said you’d take it under advisement. I thought we were supposed to talk about this together.”
Bobs glared at Jeff. “I did take it under advisement, and advised myself to ignore you pussies and do what needed to be done. By now Vlad knows that he won’t be getting any help from L.A. or New York. Nice sunset last night, eh?”
“Sweet mother of God,” said Helen, the first thing she’d said since the meeting began.
Bishop Alvarez calmly turned into the room from the corridor.
“Robertta Jean is God’s general on earth,” he said. “She is winning this war for us.”
“By ending the world,” said Joyce.
“Joyce, my daughter in Christ. The world ended a long time ago. When did we last hear anything from the Vatican that wasn’t ripper propaganda? What about Europe, Africa, or Australia? We already know that several Chinese cities were destroyed with nuclear weapons by their own government eight years ago. The world has been silent. No jets or ships arrive on our coasts to rescue us. They have all gone down to the dogs of hell. The best we can hope for is that some cities survive like ours.”
Joyce looked from Bobs to the rest of the people gathered around the table. “We’re not needed here anymore. Let’s get the hell out of here.” She headed for the door, but a call from Bobs stopped her.
“Joyce, if your Raiders really give a shit about Tevy, this would be a good night to go on that raid. The rippers will be completely disorganized, and Vlad will be busy turning his whole army on a dime to fight Webb. When the rippers realize their tunnels are flooding, I’m willing to bet a lot of them will book for the countryside. This is going to be a rout.”
“I guess that means Tevy will be just fine by dawn.” Joyce turned into the corridor, others rising and heading out to follow with the exception of Gonsalves and Chen. The bishop left in a hurry.
Bobs glanced at Kayla and down to her map and flags and toys. For a moment Kayla thought she caught an odd look from Bobs, one of regret or maybe jealousy. Did she have a thing for Tevy?
“Tevy won’t be fine, will he?” Kayla asked.
Bobs didn’t lift her eyes from her map. “If I were Vlad and I’d ordered a prisoner for questioning, I’d question the hell out of him until Webb attacks. Then I wouldn’t need any more answers. Then I’d know where the real danger was coming from. Then I’d turn to fight, and that prisoner would be useless. I’d give him to my guys for a snack.”
Now Bobs did look up, and Kayla was surprised to see concern on Bobs’ face. “He was the best of my Brat Pack. I had plans for him. He was going to be the first of a new order in the church. Instead, I’ll see that he’s listed as a martyr for the cause. Not on the level of Bertrand, of course, not for taking out the anti-Christ himself, but people will remember Tevy.”
Kayla turned to g
o, but she had just reached the door when Bobs again spoke. “So, was he any good in the sack?”
For a terrified moment, Kayla feared she would weep, but her anger saved her and she used it to turn her voice icy cold. She fixed her eyes on Bobs and used words to deliver the most savage blow. “He was fucking great, and so was I.”
*
Kayla caught up with Joyce and the others in front of the steps outside the church, including Emile and Helen. They had stopped to talk to Mabruke, catching him up on the news of the nukes and Webb.
“That explains a lot,” Mabruke said. “It seemed strange to me that almost all the fighting was performed by St. John’s and my Ericsians around the Mart. The St. Mike’s troops did little more than hold the north side of the bridges. We’ve suffered the most casualties.”
“We’re getting out of town,” said Joyce. “At least some of us. A lot of people came down to stay, and that’s fine with me. We’ll only need one bus for the trip north.”
“I’m thinking it’s time for us to leave, too,” said Mabruke. “The bishop hates us, and if Bobs now has Webb at her side, her alliance with us isn’t so important.”
Kayla knew it made no strategic sense, but Tevy had come back for her when the bridge fell into the river.
“So we just all pack up and leave Tevy to die?” she asked.
A white flare burst far to the south, high over the city, and its light was enough to show Mabruke’s surprise, even in the shadow the church cast over them. “What’s this about?” he asked.
Kayla brought him up to speed as fast as she could while Joyce looked uncomfortable and Jeff lit a cigarette.
“But he’s the Dormant Hero,” Mabruke said. “Aren’t you going to his rescue?”
Suddenly Kayla understood. She didn’t need anyone’s permission. She was going after Tevy, even if it meant she was risking her own life, even if she had to go alone. She wouldn’t live without him, and what if she were pregnant like Joyce had been when Bertrand had died? That would be even worse. Elliot was brave enough to go after him alone in a city full of rippers. She would follow.
The 1000 Souls (Book 2): Generation Apocalypse Page 28