by Stark, Ken
“Lord, we thank you for this bounty, and we thank you for bringing us together in these troubling times,” Inez prayed in a hush. “We thank you for every day we have on this good Earth, and we ask in Jesus' name that you look over us that we may all have another tomorrow. Amen.” With that, she opened her eyes and beamed a smile at all of them, adding, simply, “Thank you.”
“You could've asked for a few sirloin steaks before hanging up the phone,” Mason quipped, eliciting a growled, “Asshole,” from Hansen and a subsequent, “Daddy...” from Becks, sitting between the two.
Mackenzie was on Mason's other side, with Sarah beside her. Christopher and Beverly had claimed the last open seats at the main table, so Addison and Alejandra had been relegated to the kids' table next door with varying degrees of acceptance. Apparently, Teddy had taken a shine to Alejandra, and even now, she was more interested in regarding the girl with awe than in the food on her plate. But Alejandra was having none of it.
“You have a very a big gun,” the girl said, running her eyes over the Tommy gun on Alejandra's back and clearly desperate to strike up a conversation.
When Alejandra failed to respond, Addison did so in her place.
“You wanna see big guns?” he said, striking an exaggerated Mr. Universe pose. “Just look at these guns!”
All of the kids laughed, but Alejandra just went on eating.
Small talk followed, mostly kept to its own table, but then the discussion became more focused. There was certainly nothing but individual tales of woe among these people who had just met, but Sarah described San Francisco in general and their group's flight south, and the college kids took turns detailing the running of their little piece of the world.
“So, the courtyard fills up every night, and you send children down to clear them out every morning.” Beverly picked that one single detail out of the infinity of horrors, and scowled across at Hansen like an angry Rottweiler. “Children?”
“Young lady,” Hansen laid down his fork and returned every bit of the scowl, “Beverly, is it? Well, Beverly, these people you see here are no longer children. They are warriors, in every sense of the word. Why, back in the thirteenth century, they'd already be considered middle-aged, and every single one of them would have had a dozen battles under their belt.”
“This isn't the thirteenth century,” Beverly hissed at the man.
“Isn't it?” Hansen huffed back, and when no one at either table was able to come up with any kind of argument to the contrary, a deafening silence fell over the room, broken only by Addison's hushed, “Awkwaaard...”
“Why don't you shore up the defenses?” Christopher said at last. “You know, like the man said, build a wall. A great, great wall...”
“Oh, yeah?” Sk8rBoy William snarked back. “With what? Good intentions?”
“There's all kinds of stuff here, right? Tables? Desks? Chairs?”
“We tried that,” Richie offered between bites.
“There's just not enough,” Becks explained. “Even if we stripped the place of every desk and every table and every chair, it would only be a stumbling block. They'd barge through it in seconds.”
“But a building is more than its contents.” Inez had a sudden epiphany. “Desks and tables sure, but there's more here, right? Doors, walls, floorboards...”
“And nails to put it all together!” Diego added excitedly. “Hey, my dad used to do that. He'd tear down old buildings from the inside out, and what he didn't re-use, he'd sell.”
“Even nails?”
“Are you kidding? There's a lot of money in that old crap. He sold a toilet once for five hundred bucks!”
Most of the kids laughed, but the whole idea got Mason's mind working, and Hansen's too, apparently. The man looked around the room, but now he did so with fresh eyes. Mason saw him doing the math, and he had to give him credit for not dismissing the idea out of hand. In fact, he had to confess that he had actually started to see the man in a somewhat new light of late. Yes, Gary Hansen was a bull-headed, opinionated, self-centred prick, but he was most certainly intelligent. And deep down, Mason was beginning to suspect that he might actually give a flying fuck.
Sound like someone you know, Mace?
From out of nowhere, he felt Becks' hand curl into his, and suddenly, all other thoughts were forgotten. Barricades, alphas, echoes... even the blustering, pig-headed-but-possibly-giving-a-fuck Detective Sergeant Gary Hansen. In that moment, all Mason knew in the entire world was Becks' hand in his, just like it had been so many times before.
Before...
The very notion of the word was like a cold slap across the face. There was no before. There was only ever a now, and in that most evanescent moment of now, everything was different.
He could feel Becks' hand in his, he could feel her long, slender fingers and the warmth of her flesh, but something had changed. Hell, everything had changed. He had already had time to resign Becks to the past, back when the thought of a past actually meant something. Back when he could look at photographs of the two of them together and smell her on his pillow and feel her ghost beside him as he cried himself to sleep. But that past was long gone, and any after the two of them might once have had was gone right along with it.
Her hand lingered for a moment longer, and then it slipped away. So, apparently, she had sensed the change as well. Or maybe she had simply sensed the change in him. Either way, with her hand slipping away from his, he began to feel the first fresh pangs of an old wound reopening in his heart.
But then, Mack leaned in from the other side and put her little hand on his elbow, and he was brought back to the here and now.
“All good, Mace?” Mackenzie hushed.
“All good, Mack,” he replied automatically. Then, he leaned over and buried his face in her tangled mop of curls and gave her a gentle kiss on the top of her head. “Yeah, Mack. All good.”
“You sure, Mace?” Sarah broke in, and when she caught his eye, he knew that she knew. She was inside his head, same as always, so he could see his own concerns reflected back in those big blue eyes.
Whether it was all good or not depended entirely on what they did next. The description of life at Skyline was done, and the future was clear. This sanctuary couldn't last. The arrival of Mason's group might have accelerated the end, but it was an end that had always been coming. They could debate imaginary options until they were blue in the face, and it wouldn't change the outcome. Fuck the great, great walls, and fuck building six. Either way, they'd only be delaying the end by an extra day or two. At most.
If they stayed, they'd be dead – wall or no wall, stuff or no stuff. Eight echoes yesterday. Twelve today. Tomorrow, there'd be twenty. The day after, there'd be too many to clear. And once that tipping point was reached, they'd be trapped in the Alamo and those DBs would pile up like gruesome snowdrifts until the windows finally gave way.
So... that was it. They had to go. Hansen was sunk deep in thought, and Mason knew he was debating that very question. Surely though, the man had to be able to see the writing on the nonexistent walls. Despite Mason's feelings toward him, Hansen was no fool. Surely, he could see that this place was a death trap.
So now came the moment of truth. Mason knew exactly what their next step should be, but it wasn't his call to make. Not here. Not now. Or at least, not yet.
Hansen was sitting ponderously quiet as he mulled over the whole situation, and Mason used those few moments to come to another conclusion. If the man opened his mouth and anything but the right words fell out, this little social experiment was done. He and Mack and Sarah and all the rest of them would be gone at first light tomorrow. Sooner, if possible.
He laid down his fork and waited for the man to speak, and while he waited, Clancy snaked his way under the table and came up between his legs, resting his big head across his knee. Mason scratched the big dog between the ears and patted his head, and he waited. When Clancy abandoned him for Mackenzie, who was more certain to pass him a b
ite of food, he waited still.
At last, Detective Sergeant Gary Hansen made up his mind, and no one hung more on his every word than Mason.
He leaned forward, ready for the worst, so he wasn't at all surprised at what came out of the man's mouth.
“We have to clear building six,” Hansen said, just that simply.
Well, shit...
CHAPTER XI
“Huh?” Christopher looked up from his plate. “What's a building six?”
“It's the next building over,” Teddy said with a little tremor in her voice.
“The one with a bite out of it,” Mason added through clenched teeth.
“Didn't someone say that every building here was overrun?” Beverly looked across to the kids' table. “Doesn't that include building six?”
“It does,” Becks answered, though not easily.
“Yes, building six was overrun, but we're going to clear it,” Hansen announced, calmly resuming his meal.
“Uh... and why, exactly?” This, from Sarah.
“There's food over there. Water. All manner of supplies.”
“We have all that in Gloria,” Addison jumped in, “which, I don't hesitate to remind you, is parked just beyond your building six.”
“He's right.” Alejandra aimed her fork at Addison and her glare at Hansen. “We should make a run for it while we can.”
“Damn straight!” Christopher agreed most vehemently.
Inez scowled at her son's use of language, but she didn't disagree with the sentiment.
“It does seem wise, Gary.”
Hansen didn't even bother to look up from his plate. “I'm sorry, Inez. But my house, my rules.”
“Well, so much for democracy...” Beverly scowled.
So, that was it. Game over. Just as there was no arguing with stupid, there was no reasoning with the pig-headed. Though Hansen could never be lumped in with the former, he was the absolute epitome of the latter. If the man's mind was made up, a truckload of dynamite wouldn't be able to move it an inch. And so, it was settled. Come morning, Mason would take his merry band back on the road and leave this stubborn, hard-assed son of a bitch to his own doom.
All eyes were on Mason, but he pretended not to notice.
“Can't you see that Skyline is a lost cause?” This was Sarah again. Not yet giving up on trying to move the unmovable.
“Little lady, one thing I learned in the navy is that you don't abandon ship until your feet get wet. The second you trade that big, dry ship for an open-air lifeboat, the clock starts ticking. So you do everything possible to keep the ship afloat for as long as you can.”
Christopher dragged a hand through his hair. “Uh, dude, I hate to break it to you, but you're already treading water and the sharks are circling.”
“All that's missing is the frickin' lasers,” Addison tacked on, eliciting at least one nervous giggle from the kids' table.
Mason had lost his appetite entirely, but he continued to pick at his food as he tried to wrap his mind around a problem he wouldn't have imagined coming in a thousand lifetimes.
Hansen was a dick. He'd known it from that first over-the-top, iron-fisted handshake two years ago. He'd declared it to Becks in a fit of pique on more than a few occasions since, and he'd seen absolutely nothing in this new incarnation to change his mind in the slightest. The man was a dick. A grandiose, bull-headed, know-it-all dick. If he was so willing to throw his life away, then so be it. But Hansen wouldn't just be throwing his own life away. He'd be killing his daughter, too.
With that realization, Mason almost reached for Becks' hand so he could feel her long, slender fingers intertwine with his own once again. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. And so he sat there, staring down at his plate and dragging a plastic fork through rice turned suddenly sodden, as he turned his mind to the others so intimately involved in this unimaginable drama. The kids. The college kids. Would they listen to reason and abandon this place, or was Hansen's Kool-Aid just too strong?
It didn't take long to get an answer.
“We've done alright so far,” Sk8rBoy William huffed.
“It's been no walk in the park, but we wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for Gary,” Richie seconded the motion.
The others said nothing, but their body language spoke volumes. As scared as they were, each and every one of them would stick with Hansen. They'd go on plugging leaks in a boat already on the bottom, until every last one of them was fish food. As much as Mason wanted to grab them by their collective necks and shake some sense into them, he couldn't blame them at all. After all, Hansen had kept them alive in a world gone mad. So why the hell would they take someone else's word over his? In fact, Mason would have lost respect for them if they had.
And with that revelation came another.
Hansen was a dick, but he was willing to go down with his ship for one reason and one reason only. His family. Becks. Richie. Donn. William. Diego. Teddy. They were his family now, every bit as much as Sarah and Mack and all the others were Mason's. Just like Mason, he'd never put his people's lives in the hands of another.
Right, wrong, good, bad, us, them... they were all just words now. Meaningless, empty words from a dead world. Just as hollow and insignificant as those other words – past and future. There was only ever a now, and in the now, seven souls were going to end if he didn't do something.
He ran the math a dozen different ways, but all he saw was death. Even when he cheated the values, the outcome was always the same. Two days. That's how long they had. Two days at the most, and even that second day was a long shot. They might once have had more, but not now. He'd seen to that himself by charging Gloria in here like a bull moose on steroids.
He instinctively reached out for Mack and Sarah, and as always, their hands automatically parted to include his. As he drew strength from that unfathomable bond, he came to a decision.
Building six had lots of stuff, the kids said. Enough to keep them going for weeks. Until Mason and his crew arrived, clearing that building and liberating all of that stuff was the only smart move. Now that things were so much worse, Hansen was only hedging his bets. His family needed supplies, so why not grab them now while they had the manpower? If these new people fled off into the darkness afterward, all the better. They'd take the bulk of the swarm with them, and things at Skyline would be better than they'd ever been.
Fuck. Hansen was even smarter than he'd thought. The man was damn-near brilliant in his cold-bloodedness. He was looking after his own people, and perfectly willing to sacrifice the lives of others to do it. If Mason wasn't so impressed, he might actually have been appalled.
But maybe Hansen's ruthless cunning wasn't wasted after all. If they could liberate some of that stuff and set these kids up better than when they'd blundered in, it would be far easier to convince Sarah and the others to leave them behind. He had to admit, it might just make it easier to convince himself.
His mind made up at last, Mason gave him the only answer he could.
“Alright.” He gave his assent to Hansen, and by extension, the entire group.
“Seriously?” Christopher scoffed. “Like, we're seriously going to do this?”
“Mace, there's no─” Addison started to say, but he didn't get to finish.
“Me, Addison, Christopher, and Alejandra will go in first,” Mason said, not looking up. “Crossbows, slingshot, and .22s on the roof. Once the building's secure, the snipers can cover everyone else as they come across. Then, we'll all cover the snipers as they follow up.”
Despite the capitulation, Hansen remained his usual self. “Negative. Me, you, and Richie go in, and Teddy and William will cover us with crossbows.”
“Bullshit!” Alejandra railed at the very notion. “We're a team! We know each other's moves! You can't just throw a bunch of people together and hope for the best!”
To his credit, Hansen actually considered her argument, and though it clearly didn't sit well with him, he ultimately relented.
“Too big a risk,” Mason said. “Why make the crossing twice?”
“You afraid, big man?” Hansen challenged him with a smirk.
“Only an idiot wouldn't be,” Mason told him without a hint of shame. “But fine. Your house, your rules. We'll do it your way.”
“Fine,” Hansen growled.
“Fine,” Mason agreed again, scowling.
“Fine!” Hansen barked, concluding the ridiculous interplay.
“Well...” Addison sighed aloud., “It sounds like everything's fine.”
They all ignored him.
“Uh... I don't suppose there happens to be a library in this building six?” Sarah asked, looking across to the kids' table.
“The library's in building five,” Teddy answered her. “It's the next one over.”
“There's a bookstore in six, though,” Diego chimed in. “That's where we get our textbooks.”
“Any chance they'd carry the American Medical Journal?”
“Uh... dunno.” Diego shrugged. “Maybe.”
“How about magazines? Science Life? Anything like that?”
Now, Donn with two Ns stepped in. “I think I've seen Science Life in the bookstore, but if it's not there, the library will have it for sure. They get all kinds of magazines no one ever reads.”
Sarah withheld comment.
“Do they keep all the old issues? The one I want is from a while ago.”
“Uh, I honestly have no idea…” He shrugged.
Sarah turned to Mason and told him, point blank, “Mace, I want that report. If it's not there, I want that magazine.”
“A little light bedtime reading material?” Christopher asked.
“It's something Jim Lambert said. He thought it might help explain the virus.”