by Schow, Ryan
“Closer to downtown.”
Demon seemed to relax a bit, then said, “Well you’re going to find the most value in staying with us. We’ve got rooms across the street. Come, I’ll introduce you to your housemates, get you set up.”
“That would be great,” Draven replied.
Demon took him across the street, introduced him to five other people, two of them kids, then showed him a room. It was hot pink with posters of two boy bands and some eighteen year old boy with too much confidence in his smile. There was nothing Draven hated more than boy bands.
“This is perfect,” he said. “How’d you know pink is my favorite color?”
“Just a guess,” Demon laughed.
When he left, the woman with the red hair just waltzed into his room. She didn’t even bother to knock. It scared him how entitled she appeared to be. He frowned. She brushed it off. Then she looked at him and said, “I don’t like you.”
“I’m relieved to know I’m not your type,” he said. Her frown deepened the longer she stared at him. Then: “Are you undressing me with your eyes?”
“More like skinning you with my eyes,” she said.
“As sexy as that sounds, unless we’re bunking together, why don’t you piss off. Maybe get a bit of sun. You look like a corpse.”
She took a step toward him, her eyes so intense the hair on his arms stood.
“In America, we were born to be free.”
“Thanks for the patriotism.”
“But the founders never meant for something like me to exist outside of a prison,” she said, her voice hitting him like ice chips and frost.
“You knew them?”
“Free isn’t the same as unleashed. Here, in this new world, I have no tethers.”
“Well I’m a big proponent of the #metoo movement, and right now you’re making me uncomfortable.”
“I don’t want to rape you, Draven.”
Now he stepped forward, completely changing his tact. She stood her ground.
He hoped she would.
“If you come in my room unannounced one more time, if you try to stand here and threaten me with your dirty clothes and your cheese smelling breath, then I’m going to show you what untethered feels like.”
“This world is full of monsters,” she mused, her breath even more sour than ever.
“Don’t you forget that,” he replied, looking down on her.
She stood there, looking at him, a creaking grin coming on her mouth, her eyes radiating static electricity, like they were reaching out for his brain, wanting to grab it, squeeze it, short-circuit it.
Then she turned and left, pulling the door shut behind her.
His heart hadn’t kicked like that in years. This wasn’t nerves or adrenaline, this was pure, undiluted fear.
If there was one thing he could be sure of, it was that he couldn’t stay, but he couldn’t leave either. The world was screwed up enough without that red headed psycho in it.
Chapter Thirty-One
Rock was ready, Jill was ready and the guys were locked and loaded for bear. The game plan was clear, the objective clear, the ROE clear: they were going in, weapons hot. Anyone in BDUs, and anyone with a gun proving to be hostile ate a bullet.
For the Walmart op, Gregor was running point with Alphonse, Chad was behind them in the number two position and Oscar and Kane moved side-by-side in third position. Each man was clear on their positions and timing relative to the breach. Jill and Rock were almost an afterthought. Gregor said they were in fifth position, which was designated as mop up. What he meant was, they were only consequential enough to cover everyone’s six.
Gregor called this plan “The Motor Home” because of the way the formation looked on paper. Regardless of its name, the plan was good. It felt solid.
Over the last two weeks, Alphonse ran recon on what he called “the Base” even though it was once a Walmart. He’d provided detailed sketches of the surrounding areas, guard count, a clear and detailed accounting of “troop movements.”
There were fifteen hardened men at the warehouse at any given time. Twenty more sat on four different checkpoints throughout the city. These were the men who were armed. Non-military personnel were not considered targets, and fortunately, everyone worked during the day, save for a small graveyard shift. Those people slept in their respective RVs, big rig sleepers, or travel trailers behind “the Base.”
“Just so we’re clear,” Gregor said as they pulled to within a quarter mile of the hardened installation, “when I cut the head off the snake, when this Errol Bradshaw butthole is coughing up his own guts, I’ll shoot out an overhead light signaling that it’s done.”
“That means keep your fire at ground level,” Alfie said to both Rock and Jill.
“I’m not new and she’s as competent as the rest of us,” Rock said. Rock didn’t like Alfie very much, and he was ambivalent about the rest of them, save for Gregor.
When Gregor parked the SUV, Jill swallowed hard. She was trained for this, but she’d never actually done this. Rock and the boys had. If it came to cardio, she was good, but shooting live rounds at breathing targets? She’d rather go hand-to-hand, even though she wasn’t the kind of girl who felt confident fighting guys bigger than her.
In the end, it didn’t matter. There was no way those people were going to stay one more day in their cages waiting to be part of some larger, sick version of Bradshaw’s freaking utopia.
They humped it in. Everyone spread out. The only person not following with the original formation was Rock. He ran side-by-side with Gregor.
“What the hell, Rock?” Gregor said as they approached critical entry. “Fall back.”
“I’m not your tagalong,” he said, keeping pace, weapon out.
Now it made sense, Jill thought.
Rock had been awfully quiet these last ten days. He didn’t feel threatened by these men, which was why he never puffed out his chest or inserted either dominance or personal opinion into their discussions. He appreciated their status, but they were acting superior to him because they’d only ever known him as injured. The didn’t know Chicago PD Rock. Truthfully, she didn’t either. In that moment, though, she was terrified of him getting hurt. Yet there was still that part of her that wanted to see what he could do.
The second they had eyes on targets, they slowed their approach to steady their aim. The second the first man saw them, he drew on them. Either Rock or Gregor put him down. Two more guys drew on Rock, Gregor and Alfie and again, she couldn’t be sure if it was Gregor or Rock who put them down, but they were down.
When they were in position, Oscar flanked the left side of the building, Kane headed to the right. Both men were tasked with clearing out the graveyard shift, then breaching the building from the rear.
Rock moved quickly with Gregor, keeping a steady but unusually fast pace to compensate for the sounds of gunfire. They no longer had the element of surprise. Now it was about stealth and efficiency. Well, not so much stealth since they were entering an open warehouse full of civilians.
“Stray bullets will kill,” Gregor told everyone the night before. “There are no walls to stop your rounds, only bodies, and ninety-nine percent of those bodies are the ones we’re trying to protect.”
Alfie and Chad spread out, cutting their slice of the visual pie, making sure Gregor had a clear path in. Neither man seemed particularly happy about Rock breaking formation. Jill was last to the party, taking up the rear. This really pissed her off because it felt like they were protecting the girl. They were. Sadly, she probably needed it.
Fanning out, Gregor took one side of the entrance while Rock took the other. Alfie was on the right with Gregor, Chad on the left with Rock. Jill fell in behind Chad, her heart racing, her breath quick, her concerns overwhelming.
The former Walmart wasn’t one of the newer buildings that boasted wide open front entrances. This one had a pair of doors, each one roughly seven feet tall and two and a half feet wide. These were not automatic doors, a
nd the access point had been modified to fit the storage facility look. In other words, where Walmart wanted lots of sunlight and plenty of views inside, the storage facility wanted privacy and security, meaning the windows had been outfitted with blackout blinds.
The first guy out was in BDUs with a weapon at his side. Rock pulled out a blade, buried it in the man’s neck, tore it out sideways and caught him as he fell. He stripped the weapon, tossed it back to Jill, then dragged the man off to the side where he wouldn’t bleed out and die in their way.
Rock looked at Gregor with a steady look. Gregor seemed surprised.
When no one else came out, Rock and Gregor inched their way into what guys in the business called the fatal funnel, or the front doorway. This was where they were most vulnerable. Scanning up and down, their aim synced up with their eyes, they moved forward, saw no danger, then moved in. The second they did, one of the men came around the corner.
Jill saw it was Ham Sandwich.
He saw her and she saw him, and that’s when Alfie popped him. One shot to the head, close range.
“I never trusted that guy anyway,” Alfie said with a grin.
Jill suddenly saw red.
Breaking all kinds of protocol, she waltzed right through the fatal funnel, and cracked Alfie in the side of the jaw with her good hand. He staggered forward, the blow catching him by surprise, his face hitting the wall, the only thing to catch him from falling.
Gregor looked at her like, “What the hell?” and she said, “He breaks protocol again I’m going to kill him.”
Alfie advanced on Jill, but Jill held her ground. Another man rounded the corner where they were huddled like a pack of dumbass teens. Rock took a swipe at him with his blade, but he stepped out of the weapon’s arc and drew his firearm. Jill put two rounds in his chest, then turned the gun on Alfie.
Inside the warehouse, the noise levels jumped a few octaves and people started to scream. Suddenly they heard the gathering sounds of boots headed their way.
“When this is over,” Alfie hissed at Jill, “you’re going to get twice what you gave. Doing what you’re doing, that’s not how we work.”
“You were supposed to question him first,” she hissed. “He wasn’t a bad guy!”
“Guys,” Rock said, “we’ve got company.”
Like a coiled snake striking, Alfie took a shot at Jill; she moved backwards enough, but not far enough. His fist tapped her chin enough to wobble her, which caused Gregor to push the man backwards out of range.
Rock turned and put a bullet in Alfie, then said to Gregor, “Get it together or we’re dead.”
“You stupid son of a—!”
“Shut up, Gregor,” Jill interrupted, her voice low, but fast and hostile. She was rubbing her chin, looking at both men aghast.
This situation had gone south so quick, even she was amazed.
Alfie killed Ham Sandwich, Rock just killed Alfie, and now the whole of the interior was converging upon them.
Great.
“We’re going to settle this later,” Gregor hissed at Rock.
“That’s what Alfie said to Jill that got him killed, Gregor,” he spat back. “Think about that next time you open your mouth and threaten me.”
Putting the circumstances aside, both Rock and Gregor moved to the next fatal funnel. The second Rock crossed over, he drew fire. As soon as there was a break in the action, both Rock and Gregor moved into the interior, firing to the chorus of frightened screams and people dying.
Jill took a breath, then cut the path between the two men, shadowing Rock rather than Gregor. She liked Gregor, probably more than she wanted to admit, but her loyalties were with Rock despite their inability to reconcile their differences.
He saw her, gave her a nod, then moved forward, ignoring the scared faces of those in cages. For a second, Jill stopped. When she looked inside one of the cages, she saw faces that were stone cold, completely devoid of any emotion. The same, absent faces looked back at her, ambivalent, lifeless, their eyes making that thousand yard stare.
Her eyes went back to Rock. Her man. The guy who broke apart in all this. The love of her life who, just this afternoon, broke her heart again.
“How are you feeling?” she’d asked, referring to the op.
She’d come into his tent where he was taping his ribs.
Without looking up, without a hint of happiness in his voice, he said, “I feel almost nothing, Jill.”
“You don’t have to sleep out here, you know.” He didn’t say anything as he finished the wrap and pulled his shirt down. “Why won’t you talk to me?”
“I need my head straight for this,” he said. “If we’re off our game, one of us could die. Or both.”
“I don’t care about what your head is feeling now, Rock. I want to know about your heart.”
That hardened thing inside her was starting to crack. To see him and not be with him, or even be able to talk to him like she used to, was painful. But knowing he’d abandoned his own house, and her, to sleep in a tent next to the rest of the refugees? That was truly devastating.
“Is your heart that hard?” she asked, half angry, half bitter, her tone getting away from her.
“If you hadn’t been such a psycho over this house, or such a damn hothead, we would be together in this,” he said, harsh, his eyes brewing with hatred. “But you had to be…you.”
“We’re both who we are, Rock.”
He reigned his temper in, the struggle in his body real and obvious. Holding up his hands, he said, “I don’t want to do this.”
“You left me, Rock.”
“This was my house, Jill,” he said, his own anger quickening. “We were working on it being our house. I slept at the shop for three weeks. Three weeks! You kicked me out of my own home because you’re a control freak with a massive mood swings, and now here we are, me in a tent, you having turned my home into…forget it. Just forget it, Jill.”
Now they were in a firefight with ex-military with all these blank faces staring back at her, like her efforts to save them were gone, that they were already gone.
If they were free, would they really be able to live? Are any of us even alive anymore?
She didn’t feel alive, or particularly happy.
Now she was afraid, too.
Regaining her focus, she followed Rock until she realized they were short Alfie and she needed to pull her weight. Branching off, she headed to the far left of the warehouse and that’s where she saw Bruce.
She raised her weapon to fire on him, but Rock beat her to it.
Jill stopped, recognized the face of the woman Bruce had been talking to before all that broke out.
Amber.
She just stood there, unafraid, or petrified, staring at Rock.
A massive burst of automatic gunfire erupted, breaking her spell. Jill dug farther into the installation until she came upon Colonel Bradshaw.
Her gun was up as fast as his gun was up. Now they stared at each other, his jaundiced eyes drilling into hers, her wild eyes drilling into his.
“You going to shoot a lady?” Jill asked.
“It depends on—”
She fired two shots, both hitting him in the chest. His body bucked, his weapon discharging high before his hand fell limp. The stray bullet took out a bank of overhead lights, casting some darkness over a caged group of frightened children. The gun then fell from his grasp as he stumbled into a table, knocking it over, along with its contents.
She walked over to him, stood above him, smoking gun in hand. She watched the light fade from his eyes, a welcomed sight. Kneeling down, she watched him gasp and gurgle, blood bubbling up through his lips.
He reached out for her. She pushed his hand away.
The last thing he saw before dying was the woman who killed him, looking down on him, feeling absolutely nothing.
She found her way back to Rock who was with Gregor.
“Who shot out the lights?” Gregor was asking. He had blood spatter on
his face, but it wasn’t his.
“I did,” Jill said.
“I told you not to do that—”
“That you would do it once Bradshaw is dead,” Jill said, finishing his sentence. “Well he’s dead. Sorry to steal your glory.”
Oscar and Kane were now joining them, Chad not far away.
“We’re all clear in back,” Oscar said, “just need to do a final sweep of the interior.”
“We’ll divvy out the keys, start letting these people out,” Gregor said.
“Where’s Alfie?” Kane asked.
Gregor took a deep breath, then said, “He didn’t make it. They got him early on. Took two on entry.”
Both men were visibly disturbed by the news, but neither said anything. That always seemed to amaze Jill how guys could take their feelings, bottle them up and use them for fuel. If she could have only gotten Rock to be different, to tell her how he felt, maybe she wouldn’t have lost him. That’s when their eyes met.
“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded in response, not sparing any of them a single word. Then she thought, now who’s being the guy…
Rock broke the silence with a new order.
“Ask these people what they do,” he said. “If there are any doctors or soldiers, give them the invite to return home with us.”
Gregor nodded in agreement, then gave his guys a look and they took off.
“Alfie wasn’t a bad guy,” Gregor said.
“You didn’t want him to be a bad guy,” Rock said. “But you saw it. I saw you seeing it. I’ve seen you seeing it since I first saw you together.”
“It didn’t mean he needed to die.”
“You were running point. He violated your orders. If the odds were stacked against us, even more so than they were here, he could have cost all of us our lives.”
To that, Gregor conceded.
Jill grabbed a set of keys like the others, then went cage to cage letting people out. When she got to a group of decent looking men, she said, “Have any of you served?” to which one of the guys said, “I’m Sac PD, and my buddies here were Army and the Reserves.”
“How’d you land in here?” she asked.