by Ryan Schow
Maybe he was worse.
Am I?
“You want to know how I’m calm? I’ll tell you,” Jareth said. He leaned in, changed his tone so it was a little sharper and a little lower, then said, “Right is might, brother.”
“So these people, they have to go? You have to do this?”
“It’s God’s will.”
“No it’s not, brother,” he said. “This is your will. If you can admit that, then you’re in the right place, and like you said, right is might.”
Jareth relaxed.
Will looked around, then in the same low tones, he said, “Is there going to be collateral damage?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Am I in danger?” he asked. “Not just right now, but at all?”
Jareth smiled, then said, “Not a chance.”
The security guard—his expression firm now, reassuring—went back into work mode and said, “Well be as clean and as quick as you can.”
“Roger that, friend.”
Jareth walked to the elevator, stepped in and closed the doors. He pressed the fourth floor button then set down the M82’s carrying case and his backpack. There was a woman next to him with a man she was not speaking with, much less looking at.
Jareth took a bite of his muffin, then said, “Anyone want my coffee? I don’t think I’ve taken a sip. I’m afraid I’ve got a bit of a pouty stomach.”
“You’re not sure if you’ve sipped it?” the woman asked, her face pinched, looking at him like he was some gross bum asking for change, or shooting up in the streets.
He stared at her all the way to the third floor where the elevator stopped, the doors opened and she got out, freaked out. As he was leaving, the man turned and said, “You’re a little too intense, bro. You need to chill.”
“I’m chill.”
“No, you’re not.”
When the doors closed, he unzipped his backpack and pulled out his silenced Sig Sauer. Drawing back the slide, he laid his eyes on the round, then let go of the slide.
Let go of everything…
Jareth closed the backpack, sipped his iced coffee and took a bite of the muffin. He was coming to his floor.
Jareth left the coffee and muffin on the floor, picked up the carrying case and the backpack, then slid the Sig into the front of his pants where it pressed uncomfortably against his stomach.
The elevator stopped; he wavered a moment against a surge of nausea. It passed quickly. The elevator dinged, and he took the deepest breath of his life. As the doors opened, he untucked his shirt and covered the Sig.
“Right is might,” one side of his mouth said.
“Be quiet,” he whispered.
With everything important in hand, he walked into a large open floor filled with a network of cubicles. It was still early and there were people milling about, but not as many as he expected. He checked the clock on the wall. In ten minutes this place would be a bull pen of noise and activity.
Jareth walked down the hall, saw several people who startled when they saw him looking the way he did, and in the office no less. By the looks he was getting, everyone knew what had happened. Everyone knew he’d been fired.
Mr. Tampon Man is back in town, ladies and germs.
Just outside Hendrix Pugh’s closed office door, Jareth sat his backpack and rifle case on the ground. The blinds were drawn, a soft glow of lights emanating from behind them. He knocked twice, gently, like maybe he wanted to say good morning before starting work.
“Come in,” Pugh said.
Jareth withdrew his weapon and then stepped inside the office. He couldn’t help the smile that crept onto his face as he took in the startled look in his former boss’s eyes. He raised the weapon, sunk three rounds into the man’s belly. Pugh (as in stinky) twitched three times, his face bright and stilled with expression, his glasses nearly falling off his face.
Jareth stood there, looking at Pugh’s bleeding stomach, a huge smile etched on his face. Spinning the pistol in his hand, he walked around his boss’s desk then smashed the butt of the gun into his fancy rectangular eyeglasses. They shattered, two cuts opening over Pugh’s eye. For whatever reason, the sight of Pugh bleeding gave him no problems. None at all. The eyeglass rims hung in place, although a bit cockeyed. He looked a wreck. Broken.
“You still breathing there, Mr. Fartman?” Jareth asked, no longer jovial, a smile no longer on his face. “Because you’re looking a little wan.”
Pugh turned and looked up at Jareth, gasping for breath, his functions stifled by both pain and surprise. Jareth knew he was going into shock. He wasn’t there yet, but the bewilderment was still registering.
“Why?” he asked in a strangled voice.
“Because I hate everything about you, Mr. Pugh. So now I’ll leave you to your day,” he said, standing tall and chipper. “Make it a good one, a productive one. And try not to bleed all over everything when you die.”
“Wait, I…I, you can’t leave…me—”
Jareth shoved the papers on Pugh’s desk aside, then took him by the back of his neck and forced his head forward, pressing his cheek into the cleared surface.
“If you croak like this, your expensive shirt and your fancy pants will catch most of the blood,” he said, kind and patient. “What’s missed there will be caught by the cushion in this nice, expensive chair.”
There was some gurgling, and a half of a wet cough. Pugh’s hands were hanging down, his knuckles resting on the short, carpeted floor.
“If it’s any consolation, Pugh, I think you were born a jackass and just got everything you wanted in life. It’s not really your fault. You were probably coddled as a child.”
“I wasn’t,” he said, blood bubbling around his lips.
“C’mon man, you’re like the poster child for participation trophies.”
With that, Jareth turned and left the office, ignored the faces staring at him, or the many sets of inquisitive eyes trying to see inside Hendrix Pugh’s office.
Did they know Jareth killed him?
Maybe.
Did it matter?
It doesn’t.
Jareth walked straight to the enclosed office overlooking the front entrance to the building. Five sets of eyes were surprised to see him. He told them all to leave, then locked the door and went for the Claymore mine in his backpack, the one he’d found stashed away in Neil Vickers’s storage unit. Neil was a nut job as far as he could tell. He was a guy who didn’t want to let go of the war, so he collected armaments like a kid collects stuffed animals.
Then again, being around guns after you’ve left the war, it just made you feel better. A security blanket for the uncommon man.
Neil had a box of grenades in the storage unit as well. Jareth almost brought them, but he didn’t. This was about precision, not destruction. Well, not until he found the Claymore mine. That was as much of a find as the M82.
He pulled the Claymore out of his backpack, locked the office’s double doors then prepared to rig the explosive device. He had a moment of clarity. Before proceeding, he went to the nearest desk, pulled out a sheet of printer paper, then wrote on it in black Sharpie pen.
With some Scotch tape, he placed the paper on the other side of the door, then locked it and rigged the mine so the directional blast would take out any intruders.
Claymore mines were flat, directional mines packed with C4 and steel balls. The filling weight for the C4 was twenty-four ounces. The mine itself was packed with 1/8 inch steel balls, around seven hundred of them. He prayed the blasting cap did its job, but if it didn’t, he had the Sig on hand as Plan B. Even though the door was going to be locked, and people would hear the fifty caliber rifle bucking like a canon, he wasn’t sure if someone was going to try to be a hero.
That’s why he put up the note.
In black felt tip, it read, “Don’t come in - shooting in progress.” He felt better. Responsible. After all, he told Will there would be no casualties. After a promise like that, h
e intended to keep his word. The way he saw it, if you didn’t have your word, then as a person, you really didn’t have anything.
The Claymore’s steel balls traveled at almost four thousand feet per second with a blast range of fifty meters in the open field. Whomever opened that door was going to be meat sauce in no time flat. But he’d warned them…he was warning them.
With the mine rigged, some of the tension in his mind unwound itself and he felt better. Having the Claymore at his back meant he wouldn’t have to take his eyes off his targets for even a second.
By now someone would be calling the police.
Jareth started clearing a desk and an area to work. He swept papers and pens aside with force. He grabbed potted plants, chucked them right and left. He ripped the printer chord from the wall, tossed the printer, too. The ruckus was building. He didn’t care. He shoved filing cabinets out of the way, tossed a pair of garbage cans over his shoulder, then made one final sweep of the desk. Lamp, monitor, pictures of little kids with missing teeth, all moved now, all gone.
When the space was clear, he maneuvered the long, flat desk so that its edge was to the window he’d be shooting from.
When that was done, he cracked open the M82’s carrying case and assembled the weapon. He opened up the bipod, set it on the stock. Inside the opened backpack, he fished out the spare mags. There were four mags plus one, each holding ten rounds of fifty caliber ammunition.
In the distance, he heard the first sirens.
Next came ear protection, a bottle of water, a protein bar and maybe two dozen loose rounds, which he dumped in a pile on the chair’s cushion.
Jareth took a deep breath, thought of Prudence and Cinnamon, and then he thought of MaryAnn’s face, specifically that wart. He hated that wart! So many times she caught him staring at it. Once she even asked what he was looking at. He lied and said he sometimes lost focus. In truth, he didn’t lose focus; he just couldn’t stop seeing it!
It was like that with him—the hyperawareness of insignificant things.
Taking the sniper rifle in hand, he walked backwards ten paces, aimed at the heavy glass window, fired the first shot. It thundered like a canon. The glass blew out, the broken pieces raining down on the sidewalk five stories below. A light gust whipped up, bringing with it the unmolested sounds of police sirens. Across the street, he saw the BOE’s two neighboring towers. He also spotted several drones. Were they police drones? Alien invaders?
It didn’t matter.
He flipped open the scope’s lens covers, then set the weapon on the desk. Using the M82’s powerful scope, he scanned the morning foot traffic. A few people stopped, looked around, like maybe their ears were playing tricks on them they hoped their eyes would resolve. Most everyone else went about their day, consumed with the aliens, or the day ahead, all the while unable to see the danger right in front of them.
Jareth saw Jeanne first. One of MaryAnn’s friends. He snugged the rifle’s stock into the crook of his shoulder, sighted the woman in the work-appropriate skirt, took the shot. The first round missed the mark, but not by much. He nicked her hip. She spun hard, dropped down, then rolled off her injured side, screaming.
People started freaking out at this point.
He couldn’t hear the screams, specifically Jeanne’s, but her face was wrecked with pain, her mouth a gaping, howling noise box. The second shot stopped all that. The people nearby, the ones brave enough to try to help her, they were close enough to catch some skull-fragment shrapnel.
“The early bird gets to squirm,” he muttered.
Right now people were moving, looking around and trying to make themselves small until they could hide behind something real. But not everyone. That’s when he saw MaryAnn and Pepper coming up the block. They hadn’t seen Jeanne go down, or get finished off, but they were looking around, wondering about the ensuing hysteria.
The truth was, it was impossible not to hear the fifty cal barking off shots. MaryAnn and Pepper stood close together, across the block and up against the building.
“Good morning, ladies,” one side of his mouth said.
The sirens grew ever closer. He counted three different sets of noise, maybe four. In time, he was sure there would be more.
MaryAnn and Pepper were scanning the buildings, trying to lock down the source of the rifle report. The next shot hit Pepper in the upper chest; Jareth adjusted the rifle slightly to the left and hit MaryAnn right in the stomach. He was quick, on target. The next shot he took his time with. He set the scope right on that wart and slowly squeezed.
The report was loud and satisfying. Like a weight was lifted off his shoulder.
What no one tells you, what all snipers know, is that the impact of a fifty caliber round is beyond brutal. It travels at nearly a thousand meters per second and has an impact force of around twenty-five thousand pounds. Needless to say, the weapon was sharp and accurate, but it could also leave a ghastly mess.
“Clean up on aisle nine,” he said, taking a sip of his water.
Below, everyone started running for cover. The breeze gusting in through the window felt good on his skin. He didn’t realize he was sweating, but it didn’t matter either.
The cops arrived moments later; further up, he saw them blocking off the streets, setting up a perimeter.
Jareth wasn’t worried about them, but he was growing increasingly concerned with the aliens. That’s when he turned the rifle on them and started shooting. He took four shots, ignoring the black SWAT van or the teams pouring into the building. He finally took down one of the aliens only to realize these weren’t aliens. They were drones. The one he fired on was a huge Predator drone. It made a nosedive straight into the building across the street, the explosion blowing a wall of glass out.
After that, it seemed like the drones converged on everything and everyone all at once. They dropped down and fired into the crowds and on the cops; they sent missiles into the buildings across the street.
He looked around, realized there were too many to hit, wondered if they were going to turn on him. Frantic, looking to complete his mission, he scanned the crowds for Aubrey, the last of the four Horsewomen of the Apocalypse.
He didn’t see her.
His insides were winding tight, too tight. Behind him, he heard a noise. He spun around, watched the door. The small breaching blast set by SWAT startled him. When the double doors were kicked in, he smiled. A fraction of a second later, the Claymore mine did its job.
The explosion was earth-shattering, even with his shooter’s ear muffs on.
The Claymore had opened a gigantic, smoking hole in the office wall as well as the men who thought they were dealing with some amateur shooter. All over the hallway, there were human remains, none of them whole body parts.
He went back to searching for Aubrey. When he found her standing behind a police barrier about nine hundred yards away (give or take), he drew a deep breath, let it out slowly. When the moment was right, he squeezed the trigger and Aubrey was no more.
What surprised him was his inability to care about anything now that his job was done. That’s when he saw the drones. When he really saw them. There were dozens converging mercilessly onto the downtown masses.
He had dozens of rounds to spare and judging by the distraction, he was sure he was going to get away.
That’s when an odd whirring sound captured his attention. He pulled off his ear muffs. Hovering right in front of him was a spotter drone. A small, four propeller unit with an HD camera mounted underneath. This was the kind of drone you could buy at Best Buy for a couple hundred bucks.
He grabbed the Sig, started shooting at it.
Seconds later, however, a mid-sized drone swung around and all he saw were two orange blooms of fire from Gatling guns mounted on each wing. He had milliseconds to duck behind the desk before everything around him started dancing.
Chapter Seven
The morning of the attack…
When Rock left Maisie’s hotel a
nd headed outside to his truck, it was the kind of cold that seemed icy against a stiff morning breeze. Rock got into his Dodge Ram, started the truck, blasted the heater. He shivered half the way back to the shop only to practically burn up the last mile. He trudged into the garage, turned on the overhead fluorescents, saw Amber’s Lamborghini.
No, Maisie’s Lamborghini.
It was perfect. He ran his hands over the surface, marveled at Leo’s work, then realized he wanted Maisie gone from town, but that he also wanted to be back in her bed.
“She’s an actress,” he told himself.
He got played. But he played, too, so it wasn’t a total loss. He’d just never met someone he got along with better than Maisie. Amber, no. Maisie? A resounding yes. It was that yes that was going to turn circles in his mind. Jill wanted to get back together, which meant the remodel was either almost done or done completely, and though that’s exactly what he’d wanted since they first split, now he wasn’t sure.
A text came in.
It was after three a.m., but he checked it anyway.
Hot Ginger: I’M SORRY ABOUT YOUR GF. IF ITS ANY CONSOLATION, I HAD AN AMAZING NIGHT WITH U.
Rock: I DIDN’T LIKE U AS AMBER, ADORED THE SHT OUT OF YOU AS MAISIE. UR CARS READY IN THE AM. I’LL PICK U UP AT 7?
Hot Ginger: K. WISH U WERE HERE.
Everything in him wanted to go back to her hotel, make one last go of it, have breakfast in the morning and then settle up with the Lamborghini later. But that would only mess with his head even worse. And she had messed with it. That’s why he didn’t text her back. That and the drone thing concerned him.
He went to his office, ignored the clock (3:35 am), and accessed the internet. It was a bit glitchy and slow, but he couldn’t sleep even though he wasn’t quite awake either. Certainly not awake enough to be impatient anyway.
When Yahoo! opened as his home window, he saw pictures of the drones, stock photos of President Dupree, several articles about the dangers of unmanned aerial vehicles and how the military was preparing to counter them. Instead of freaking himself out more about the unmanned drone swarms, he opened an article titled: US MILITARY EXPLORING DEFENSE METHODS AGAINST DRONES.