Chapter 7
We tore out of the Buzzard Island Amphitheater parking lot and up onto the freeway heading south. There were a ton of flashing lights, ambulances, fire trucks, and police cars arrayed around the hall now. Thousands of people were wandering around, aware that something weird was going on, but not knowing what exactly. And it was about to get a whole lot weirder for them when that unkillable red bastard came running out after us.
“Head for the Air Force base,” Franks directed Mosh.
“Listen, big scary dude, I don’t know where the air base is,” Mosh said. “Owen, who is this asshole?”
“He’s my bodyguard . . .” My brother started to turn around. I knew he had a lot of questions at this point, and the look he gave me indicated just how pissed off he was. “Just . . . Never mind . . . Keep heading south. I’ll tell you where to turn.” I held onto a stainless steel pole by the driver’s seat as the bus jerked violently through the gears.
Franks keyed his radio. “This is Delta lead. Southbound in the black bus with the primary.”
Myers came back. “Are you all right, Franks?”
“Yes, sir. But Alpha Team was rendered combat ineffective.” Apparently “combat ineffective” meant that most of them had just gotten dismembered. The quiet man stated it with less emotion than the average person expressed over stubbing their toe.
“Evacuating them now. Apaches’ ETA ten minutes,” Myers replied. I breathed a sigh of relief at that. There was no way that Cratos could catch up to us on foot before we had some serious firepower overhead. “We’ve got a level-five containment problem here, a couple hundred viable witnesses.” The senior agent sounded really upset.
“Did you get Violence?”
“Negative.”
Franks started scanning through the darkened windows. “Roger that.”
“Owen, we’ve got to talk,” Mosh said as he painfully ground the bus into a higher gear. He turned and looked at me. “Okay, what the hell were those things? What are you doing playing commando? You’re an accountant! And these weirdos keep bowing and calling me War Chief.” He waved his hand at the orcs. All three bowed simultaneously. “See? See!”
“I’ll explain everything.”
“No. You won’t,” Franks ordered. I had to remember that part of his job was murdering witnesses who couldn’t keep their big mouths shut.
“Wait,” Skippy interrupted before I could tell Franks to go screw himself. “Smell monster.” He lifted up the base of his mask, revealing his face. The wide nostrils in his piglike snout flared as he sniffed the air.
“Aaaahhhh!” Mosh screamed when he saw Skippy’s face, jerked the wheel of the tour bus, and clipped the rear end of a passing car. The car careened off the freeway and out into the wetlands. He barely regained control before we went off the road, all of us being slammed back and forth, and stumbling in the aisle. “What the fuck!”
Skippy dropped his mask. “Sorry . . . War Chief.” Then he bowed an apology to Mosh. “Sister here.”
There was a thump on the roof.
I raised my shotgun and started blasting random holes through the ceiling. Franks had lost his rifle at some point. A Glock appeared in his hand and he started shooting. Skippy raised my .45 and popped off the remaining rounds in the magazine. The roof was Swiss cheese in a matter of seconds. A purple hand smashed through the roof and wrapped around the shoulder of my armor. Bia hoisted me from floor as if I weighed nothing. My head slammed into the sheet metal as she tried to tug me through the gap. My boots kicked uselessly. Franks maneuvered for a shot. I levered Abomination up and emptied the rest of the magazine through the roof and right into Bia’s body. She didn’t let go.
Skippy and Gretchen grabbed my legs and pulled down. Monster tug-of-war. I screamed as my head slammed into the roof repeatedly. Ditching the totally ineffective baton, Edward leapt up and pulled the kukri from my vest. He swung, embedding the blade deep into the oni’s arm. She shrieked and the claws released.
I landed on the minibar, shattering a bunch of expensive booze bottles and a fancy mirror. The arm disappeared. I hit the floor hard but my new angle gave me a clear view of the freeway ahead. “Mosh! Look out!”
My brother, distracted, had turned toward the action. He swiveled back just in time to see the rear end of the semi we were about to collide with. All of us were flung about as Mosh cranked it violently to the right and stomped on the brakes. We tore one of our headlights off against the rear of the trailer. The bus bounced wildly as we went off the pavement, tearing huge swaths out of the grass. We slid, somehow moving sideways in the mammoth vehicle, then jarred violently back onto the pavement.
We were on an off-ramp.
Mosh righted the vehicle, but now we were curving back, heading to the northeast. We began to climb up an overpass, going back over the freeway. We were in too high of a gear, and the engine made a gurgling noise as Mosh downshifted.
“Wrong way,” Franks said simply as he shoved a fresh magazine into his 10mm.
“Maybe we knocked that bitch loose!” Mosh said hopefully.
Bia crashed through the side this time, a purple blur swinging down from the roof. The oni’s massive fist hit Franks square in the chest and he just disappeared, his body flying through the glass on the opposite side.
“Franks!” But he was already gone, blasted right out the moving vehicle and into the night. Struggling, I pulled another Saiga magazine from my armor. A long purple arm stretched forward, searching for me, ripping up shards of thick carpet. Edward stepped forward, kukri swinging, and nailed her again. The blade bit deep but no fluids came out. Bia screeched, swinging at Edward, and without room to maneuver he couldn’t dodge. The orc sailed down the aisle, colliding with the dash. Ed tumbled down the stairs, landing against the door.
Abomination reloaded, I put a round of double-aught buckshot into Bia’s face. She turned away from me, and noticed my brother steering, eyes on the road, a bunch of orange flashing lights pulsing through the windshield past his bald head. Bia crawled further into the bus. “Mosh, move! Move!” I screamed.
But she wasn’t going for him. She knocked Mosh from the driver’s seat. Claws reached for the wheel and I realized what was happening, but too late to do anything other than shout something unintelligible about holding on. Purple fingers clenched and jerked, the wheels screeched in protest, and the orange flashing lights rushed up to meet us.
We hit the construction equipment at about forty miles an hour.
I woke up.
It must have only been a moment later. I tasted copper. Blood was running freely from my scalp and down my face. I wiped it away with one sleeve, smearing it away from my eyes. The bus was resting at an angle, the right side and front end a lot higher than the rest of the vehicle. The door was open. Edward was still stirring slowly on the steps. The door was open. My brother was gone.
“Mosh?” I sat up slowly, feeling the urge to puke. No answer. “You okay, Ed?” He gurgled. But he always sounded like that. I started to call for Franks, my brain needing a second to realize that Bia had already murdered him. The hole through the side of the bus was splattered with Franks’ blood. “Skippy? Gretchen?”
“Pretty bus . . . all smash,” Gretchen said sadly.
“War Chief?” Skippy asked. The two of them had ended up further back toward the Jacuzzi.
“Mosh?” I asked again, pulling one leg out from under me. Dizzy, I crawled down the stairs, past Ed, hands crunching bits of broken safety glass into the thick carpeting, and tumbled, facefirst, onto the pavement. Bia had steered us into a giant orange vehicle labeled Alabama Department of Transportation. Judging by the front of our bus, it was one solid chunk of machinery. Other orange vehicles were parked behind it. One lane of the overpass, the one that we were currently in, had been blocked off by rubber cones. Glancing back, Mosh had managed to run over at least fifty of them. I pulled myself up the side of the bus, and tucked the butt of my shotgun against my shoulder. “Mosh! Can you hear me?”
We were on the edge of the overpass. Southbound vehicles flew past beneath us, in the direction we were supposed to have been going to meet air support. Would the Apaches know where to find us? Gun raised, I stumbled around the side of the bus. That evil she-demon had to be around here somewhere.
“Pitt. Come in, Pitt.” It was Grant.
“Listen, we’re on the overpass about two miles south of the concert, just north of the river,” I replied. “We need immediate extraction.”
“Damn it, that was you behind us.” His voice became quieter as he said, “Flip around, head back to the overpass,” then returned to normal volume. “We’re on the way.”
The construction crew was on foot, running for their lives down the edge of the overpass, scared to death of something. A car zipped past in the open lane. Every passenger in the vehicle swiveled their heads in the same direction, a family of four, each of them with mouths wide open, all staring at something just around the end of the bus.
Bia! I flew around the corner, Abomination up. I was going to pop her in both eyes and kick her ass off this bridge.
“Hey, Bro . . .” Mosh croaked, “. . . could use a hand.”
My brother was dangling over the edge of the overpass, Bia’s claws encircling his throat. Mosh was holding onto her wrist with both hands, arms bulging, legs kicking futilely as vehicles screamed by below. The oni smiled, her sharp white teeth a brilliant contrast to her leather skin. She was standing on the raised concrete barrier to keep cars from driving off the side. If the drop didn’t kill him, a passing car would.
Bia dipped her head in greeting. “Greetings, Hunter.”
“Let him go,” I ordered.
She ignored me and continued speaking. My brother had to weigh at least 250, but she didn’t seem to even notice his struggling weight. Her focus was entirely on me. “I should have pulled you out of there instead of this one, but you humans all smell the same when stinking with fear.”
Grant’s voice sounded in my earpiece. “We’re south of you. What’s that purple thing?”
I keyed my radio as discreetly as possible. “Snipe her,” I whispered, hoping that the throat mike would pick it up.
The oni didn’t seem to hear me. “The old gods have smiled upon us tonight. I was afraid we would have to harm you. The Shadow Lord’s contract specified that our payment would be halved if you were injured. Luckily, the foolishness of humans knows no bounds when their blood kin are threatened. When the Shadow Lord’s minion reported that you had left in such haste to come to your brother’s aid, I knew we would surely capture you tonight.”
That staggered me. There is a spy. I had a clean shot at her eyes, but I was terrified she’d drop Mosh. “I don’t care about your contract, just my brother.”
Bia cackled. The unnatural sound caused the hair on my arms to stand up. “The contract is everything. Would you break a contract, my fellow Hunter?”
“Fellow Hunter?” I snorted, never letting the muzzle of my gun waver. “I don’t think so.”
“Oh, we’re very much the same, we are. My brother and I deal in the same trade as you, only we’re not picky who we work for.” She reached with her free hand into her gray cloak and pulled out a tangle of rope. She tossed it at my feet. “Just like you, we have contracts to fulfill, and now I must fulfill mine.”
It was just a small bundle of hemp rope. Then suddenly, it twitched. I took a step back. The rope moved on its own, uncoiling into a memorized circle. As the ends met, there was a flash of fire, and the cement inside the radius disappeared into nothingness. It was like there was a black hole in the floor of the overpass.
“The portal will take you to the Shadow Lord. You will step into it willingly.”
“Fat chance of that.”
“Or I drop your blood kin to his certain death.” She shook Mosh painfully. His eyes were shut tight as he yelped in pain. “Then I will make you get in the portal. If I cannot, then my brother will be here in a moment. You would much rather do it my way than his. Cratos will simply pull your limbs off and toss you in. I would rather not lose our bonus. Either way, you will be at the feet of the Shadow Lord before this night is through.”
“Violence . . .” The ragged voice came from slightly behind me. I turned.
Franks! He was alive, barely. Blood was running freely from a dozen lacerations. His suit had been reduced to rags. He must have lost his gun, because now all he had in his right hand was a folding fighting knife. He limped right past me, one foot dragging on the pavement.
He was seething.
“We have no quarrel with your kind,” Bia said. “This is not your concern.”
“Bullshit,” Franks muttered, closing, as he left a splatter trail behind.
Bia was distracted by Franks. “Grant, you got a fifty?”
“Yeah. I’ve got my McMillan.”
He’d been working on precision shooting with the Newbies today. I could only pray that he had a good zero. There was no wind. “Head shot. Don’t miss. Wait for my signal,”
“I’m three hundred yards away,” he protested.
“It’s a big head, asshole,” I hissed.
Bia shook my brother again. Mosh was struggling to hold onto her arm, slipping. “I only want the Hunter.”
“You can’t have him,” Franks said slowly, still drawing closer to his target. I had to do something before he got close enough to attack, because I knew he wouldn’t care if Mosh was splattered into road kill.
“Have you grown so weak, so jealous, that you would live as a slave?” She extended one huge hand toward Franks, pleading. “The Shadow Lord understands the fallen. He can grant you true freedom. Join us.” Bia said something else in a strange, almost musical language.
Franks stopped, turning his head slightly, as if thinking about her offer, whatever the hell all that weirdness meant. There was a bellowing cry in the distance. Car horns were blowing. Cratos was almost here.
“Ready,” Grant said in my ear. “Hostage is blocking the shot.”
“Hey, Bia!” I shouted. She turned her attention back to me. I was way too far to make a grab for Mosh. “I’d go with you to save my family. Your shadow guy was right about that. But you’ve got one problem . . .”
“Yes?” Her red eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“That’s not my brother. You grabbed the drummer by mistake.”
Curling her massive arm, she pulled Mosh closer for examination. Purple lips pulled back, puzzled, over those deadly sharp teeth. Mosh was suspended over the concrete now.
Grant was calm. “Clear.”
“Send it.”
The impact made a distinctive sound, like a watermelon being struck by a bat. The boom of the .50 BMG sniper rifle arrived a split second later. The bullet missed her vulnerable eyes but pierced directly through her ear hole.
Bia’s head jerked violently to the side. Mosh was thrown against the concrete, landing hard on his shoulder and rolling away. A terrible whistle emanated from the oni as something unnatural ruptured. Her hands clenched spasmodically over her ears, trying to staunch the energy screaming from her collapsing skull. The inner creature had been ruptured. There was a vortex of white light and vapor shooting from her ears, eyes, and mouth, spinning, flashing upward under the halogen lights.
Franks covered the last few feet, stopped, and glared up at the monster as Bia added her inhuman shriek to the noise. “You always did talk too much,” he said simply. Then he put one hand on her chest and shoved the oni over the side.
It was a twenty-foot drop to the freeway, but I couldn’t tell if she actually hit the ground before the speeding 18-wheeler’s grill struck her. The entire engine block of the semi instantly collapsed around her, driving steel through Bia’s animated body. The truck turned brutally to the side, trailer jackknifing as the truck’s weight slammed the oni solidly into the base of the overpass. The truck shuddered to a smoking-rubber halt. Suddenly a shockwave expanded outward from the impact point. Brilliant white light turned night temporarily into day. The wave passed and there were ghostly figures, literally hundreds of shapes, men and monsters, intelligences and lives that had been captive for thousands of years, now freed, leaping into the sky. They were gone in an instant.
“All those people . . .” I muttered as I walked to my brother’s side, trying to comprehend the sheer horror of the creature we had just ended.
“What people?” Mosh asked hysterically, surely waiting for something else to try to kill him. “Where?” He hadn’t seen them.
Franks regarded me suspiciously, shook his head, then stepped forward and peered over the edge. The truck was crushed below us. The trailer—a giant, stainless-steel tube—was sideways directly underneath the overpass, blocking two full lanes. It was tall enough that I probably could have just jumped down to the trailer and been fine.
Franks still had his radio. “We’re on the overpass.” I was far enough away that I couldn’t hear the response. “Good. Evacuate the road.” The southbound traffic was stopped by the wreck. The Feds must have blocked the northbound route, because nothing was coming from that direction either.
The orcs materialized, Edward balanced between his brother and sister-in-law. I checked Mosh. He was shaken, confused, but seemed okay. It was when I stood up that I noticed how badly Franks was injured. His left arm had been ripped apart from hitting the road, flesh shredded and hanging in strips, splintered bone shards visible through the welling blood. His clip-on tie had been applied as a tourniquet around the top of his bicep.
He caught my shocked expression. “Just a flesh wound,” he said nonchalantly.
“BIA!”
The cry was so loud that the halogen lights overhead exploded. All of us flinched. Glass rained from the sky.
“SISTER!” Cratos was crashing down the freeway, colliding with the stopped cars. His gray cloak was flapping behind, rendering him visible to all. People ditched their cars and fled screaming from the red nightmare giant. “Filthy souls! Filthy souls must die! Kill! Killed SISTER! NOOO!”
“Oh, man. We’ve made him mad,” I said.
Franks scowled, doing the math. The oni was a few hundred yards away and closing quickly. “Go,” he ordered without looking. He limped to a nearby construction vehicle and retrieved a length of heavy cable from the back with his good arm.
I didn’t know what Franks was planning, but anything involving staying and fighting was suicide. “Come on!” I shouted at him as I ran to one of the Alabama DOT trucks. Of course, there were no keys in it. I swore.
“Primary mission, protect Pitt from the Condition,” Franks stated as he pulled out the cable. His injured arm was leaking everywhere, but he still managed to use his left hand to open the steel clip on the end to fashion a loop. Franks tugged out the other end of the cable, pulled it over to the bus and crawled under. He started wrapping the cable around the frame.
“Pitt! We’re below you,” Grant screamed in my ear. A horn honked on the freeway just south of the wrecked truck. “There’s a big red thing coming this way, and I think I just killed its sister or something.”
Franks was going to sacrifice himself to slow down Cratos. He looked up from his work long enough to glare at me. “I’ve never failed a mission.”
In other words, it was time to go.
The fastest way down to Lee and Grant was to go right over the edge. Skippy was way ahead of me. He climbed over the concrete ledge and jumped down to the top of the trailer. His boots bounced, and he fell, but managed not to go over the side. He stood and gestured for his wife. Gretchen was much more nimble and she had somebody to help catch her. Ed, weaving badly, but still managing more dexterity than I would ever have, went over next. I helped Mosh to his feet and we wobbled to the side. “You’ve got to be shittin’ me,” he said when he looked at what was still a pretty darn scary leap down to a narrow, stainless-steel catwalk. Cratos roared again, much closer now. “Point taken.” He jumped, landing awkwardly. I waited for Skippy to help him before I went over.
The yellow sign said that this was a 20-foot overpass. It felt like ten times that when I stepped into space. My boots hit the trailer just as the smell hit my nose. Gasoline. Pain surged up through my ankle, still tender from Mexico. Strong hands grabbed my arm. Mosh shoved me toward the ladder. “Gas truck!” he shouted.
I slid down the ladder, past a bevy of red signs saying danger/peligro and flammable, and landed with a splash. I was standing in gasoline. The tanker had ruptured on impact. My brother was down a second after me. Lee laid on the horn. “Come on!” But then Mosh was running in the wrong direction. “Damn it!” I shouted as I followed. He was running toward where Bia had died. Didn’t he realize we had to get out of here, either before this thing caught on fire or before Cratos got here? Stupid idiot.
Then I felt like the idiot as Mosh scrambled his way up to the wrecked truck. He was trying to get the driver. The engine block was completely smashed into the wall and fragments had been hurled a hundred feet but the trucker could still be alive. Mosh jerked on the door but it was crumpled tight. I reached him just as he crawled, headfirst, through the broken window.
“Hurry, man. We’ve got to go,” I insisted.
“Working on it,” came the muffled reply.
“KILL! KILL!” Cratos screamed.
I saw Agent Franks standing at the top of the overpass, perched in the exact spot that Bia had been in only a minute before. He held the thick loop of cable in his hands, noose ready. Was he going to actually try to lasso the thing? The rear of the tanker shook as Cratos slammed into it, pushing past, splashing into the gasoline. He was so absurdly tall that his head terminated nearly three quarters of the way to the overpass above. He saw me.
“FILTHY HUNTER DIE!”
Franks waited patiently for the monster to step into view.
Force roared. The sound began as a rumble, but then rose in intensity, until it was a primal scream of pure hate. He lowered his head and charged.
Franks tossed the makeshift noose. The oni’s head passed right through and he made it three more steps before the cable jerked tight. The bus was jerked several feet. His beady eyes bulged as the cable tightened around his throat. Too enraged to stop, he kept tugging inexorably toward me, dragging the bus with him.
The ground was littered with wreckage, gasoline quickly spreading and washing over it. I realized with a shock that much of the debris was actually what was left of Bia. The purple bits looked like dried clay. “Grab my feet and pull!” Mosh shouted. I grabbed him, glad that he was wearing those giant lineman boots that laced all the way up to his knees, and yanked as hard as I could. The adrenaline was surging through my system and I pulled my brother back out the window. Mosh saw Cratos struggling less than a hundred feet away but he was a man on a mission. “Help me with this guy.”
We both reached through the window. I found an armpit, and we pulled, lifting the unconscious man through the gap. Of course, he had to be a big, heavyset guy, too. No, it would have been too much to ask to have to carry a petite person out of a probably soon-to-be-exploding truck with an angry giant thing trying to eat your soul. No, Owen Z. Pitt, you get a three-hundred-pounder. It took two strong and desperate men to pull him through the window. I slung the trucker over my back in a fireman carry and ran for our lives.
Cratos was trying to scream, but the sound was choked off by the cable. The harder he pulled, the tighter it got, but he was still getting closer. Driven by supernatural strength, he had dragged the tour bus partway over the cracking ledge. If that thing went over it was bound to spark and blow us all to kingdom come.
Then I heard the choppers. The MCB’s Apache gunships were coming in, low and fast, from the west side of the island. Their mission was to put some hurting on this monster.
And they didn’t know about the fuel tanker.
What Franks did next absolutely stunned me. With his knife held in his good hand, he leapt over the edge, not to the trailer top, but rather, straight to the ground, directly behind Cratos. Franks landed on his feet, automatically rolling to absorb the impact, but still surely breaking his legs. He tumbled through the gas, coming up in a petrochemical splash, right beneath the oni’s leg. Franks slashed the knife brutally, chopping through whatever served as the unnatural beast’s ligaments, hamstringing it. Cratos collapsed to one knee, the cable pulling even tighter.
The beast swung, tearing one mighty fist at Franks, but hitting only gas and pavement, as Franks had rolled behind the other leg, and struck deep there as well. This time Franks wasn’t fast enough, and a backhand landed hard enough to tear a cloud through six feet of road. Franks was flung into the darkness, disappearing into the trees along the river.
Now, with both legs damaged, the oni toppled, hanging itself entirely. It struggled, twisting, legs flopping, as it swung back under the overpass.
The gasoline was everywhere, soaking my legs, as I lumbered up to the MHI van. Grant was holding the back door open. “Toss him to me!” he shouted. I shoved the injured trucker in before clambering up behind. Grant and Mosh were in a second later, and Lee had us moving before we could even get the rear door closed. An angry dragonfly shape passed overhead as the first Apache took aim.
“Gun it, Lee!”
“Going as fast as I can,” the little man stated calmly, as he put all of his weight and will on the gas pedal. The MHI vans were all supercharged V8s, and that was a good thing.
“Go! Go! Go!” Grant shouted.
Behind us, Cratos raged and fought. The millennium-old killer was hanging, thrashing, tiny eyes bulging with hate, when the chopper fired. The 30mm cannon struck him in the torso, depleted uranium shells exploding out his back in a shower of fragments and white light. Rocket pods launched, lancing fury under the overpass. The gasoline caught, flames tearing across the freeway, leaping back up into the emptying trailer, igniting the massive amount of fumes in a conflagration that was probably visible in Cazador.
A wall of heat and pressure rocked the van, blowing the rear windows out in a spray of hot glass. I covered my head. A killing wind smashed through the interior, super hot and stinging. The exterior paint caught on fire.
But we made it.
A roiling red-and-black mushroom cloud rose behind us, hundreds of feet into the air. Somehow I alone could see through the conflagration to see the ancient oni’s final moments. Through the curtains of fire and smoke and howling wind, the beast hung by a fraying cable, false flesh boiling away, energy fleeing, until finally in a flash, he was consumed. The container was destroyed, freeing thousands of trapped souls as his body exploded into clay dust that was sucked upward into the flaming vortex.
“You okay?” I asked softly.
My brother had spent the last fifteen minutes doing CPR on the trucker. The two of us and the rapidly cooling body were the only ones left in the van. He had done his best, and his chest heaved from the stress and exertion. He smelled like evaporating gasoline.
After we had stopped the van, Gretchen had examined the man for only a few seconds, shook her head sadly, then walked away. If Gretchen had said nothing could be done, then truly, it was over. Mosh didn’t know what I knew about her healing powers and had continued trying to resuscitate, pumping the man’s chest over and over, stubbornly trying to work a heart that was just plain done, then filling the lungs with air and trying again.
The back of the van was bare. It made a decent work space for first aid. Mosh leaned back against the wall and rubbed a filthy hand over his face.
“You okay?” I repeated, a little louder this time.
The trucker was a big old boy with a Charlie Daniel’s beard, with those kind of thick arms that bordered on fat but were amazingly strong, and he had LOVE tattooed on one set of knuckles and HATE tattooed on the other. It was cheesy, but it didn’t matter now, because he was dead, and it was my fault. College kids in Mexico, who knows how many innocents tonight, my family put in danger, and it wasn’t going to stop. . . . All because of me.
Mosh gave a sad little laugh. It was a pathetic sound. “Hell of a night.”
“Yeah . . . Listen, dude, I can explain everything.”
He just shook his head. “Shut up.”
“No, really. Everything you saw, I can explain.”
Mosh lowered his hand. His face was bloodstained and scratched. “Just leave me alone right now, okay?” His eyes got a dangerous squint to them and just for a second I could see that family resemblance that everybody always told me about.
I nodded. I could understand. There was a -helicopter landing outside. This particular talk could wait. The back doors of the van were pulled open. Grant was standing there in his perfect black armor. “Feds are here,” he stated, though it was pretty obvious with the black helicopter settling on the freeway a hundred feet away.
“Hey, Grant.”
“Yeah?”
I clapped him on the shoulder. It was kind of awkward. “Good shot back there.”
Grant just nodded, his expression inscrutable. It was no secret that he disliked me. “Just doing my job.” Saving my life was a professional courtesy, nothing more. “I suppose that makes us even.”
He was talking about me pulling him out of DeSoya Caverns. Technically I figured I was still ahead by one, but I had broken his nose for that incident. “Fair enough.”
The fire was still burning in the distance. We were parked on the bridge between Buzzard Island and Montgomery. State police, by order of the Feds, had blocked the bridge into town. This area was now quarantined, certainly as part of what Myers had referred to on the radio as a Level 5 Containment Event. Agent Myers, trailed by Agents Torres, Herzog, and Archer, approached as Grant and I waited. The Goon Squad looked pretty beat up. Archer had a black eye and a Sig 229 dangling from one hand. Skippy, Gretchen, and Edward were nowhere to be seen, which was probably real smart right about now.
“Pitt . . . Jefferson,” Myers addressed us, anger barely contained. I was waiting for him to explode. I was going to jail, if I was lucky.
“Myers,” I said gravely. “Have you found Franks yet?”
“We will find him,” Myers stated matter-of-factly, somehow talking while keeping his jaw clenched. “As for you . . .”
I waited patiently for my arrest.
Agent Myers hesitated, obviously waffling between having the cuffs put on or ordering his agents to just shoot me to get it over with. The look he gave me was a mixture of anger, frustration, and something else that I wasn’t sure about. He turned from me, studied the surviving members of my protective detail one by one, and then scowled back at me, deep in thought. Finally he seemed to deflate. His teeth unclenched and then Myers just seemed like the tired, middle-aged, glorified bureaucrat that he was. “You, I’ll deal with later. Go home . . .” He waved his hand. “Just . . . go home.”
That was a surprise. “Seriously?”
“But, sir!” Herzog shouted. “He attacked us.”
“I never touched you,” I said, which was true. The orcs had beat the hell out of them—not me.
“He pulled a gun on Agent Franks.” Archer said. “That’s—”
“Enough!” Myers cut his subordinate off. “Pitt, if I thought it would benefit my mission I’d have you locked up for eternity. Your actions jeopardized my men.”
I had no idea why he was letting me go. A smarter man would have kept his mouth shut, but my temper tended to run faster than my brain. “You knew more about these oni than you let on. I had nothing to do with your trap failing. Did you expect me to just let them kill my brother?”
“You’re a free man for one reason only. You’re still our only in against this group,” Myers spat. “Don’t mistake my actions for mercy. I need all of my available men for this containment but I’ll provide another protective detail shortly. We’ll assess how tonight’s setback affects our case against the Condition. Hopefully, the cultist your father shot will survive and we can get some information out of him.”
“How are my parents?” I asked.
“Fine. They’re on a flight now.”
“Parents?” Mosh spoke up from behind Grant, concern evident in his voice. “What happened?”
Myers gestured into the back of the van. “One of your people?”
“That’s my brother, the one you were going to leave to die,” I said, pointing to Mosh, who looked really exasperated.
Myers sighed. “I meant the dead one.”
“Driver of the tanker.” Grant spoke for the first time.
“We tried to save him,” Mosh said.
“I understand.” The senior G-man nodded. “Men, carry this body to the chopper.”
“What about Mom and Dad?” Mosh demanded.
“I’ll explain later,” I said. Mosh scowled in a manner that suggested he was giving serious thought about attempting to kick my ass. I was bigger and had a lot more experience but I knew my brother was damn tough when he got angry. “Chill out, dude. They’re fine.” Mosh punched the side of the van and stomped away. I waited until the Goon Squad had picked up the trucker before returning my full attention to Myers. It took all three of them to hoist the body up and shuffle away, each of them telegraphing their distaste for their superior’s decision not to haul me off. “Any idea how many more dead?”
“Not as many as you would think,” Myers replied. “We got lucky. Some civilians at the concert and I have four men dead and several more wounded.” I didn’t know if he was counting Franks in that quantity. “We got most of the cars stopped away from the tanker and the people stuck behind the crash were smart enough to run when they saw Force drop his invisibility. As far as we know, nobody else was caught in the explosion. In the meantime, I’ve got hundreds of witnesses and a slew of damage that I have to explain. Some idiot is going to talk about this and that means they’ll have to be dealt with . . .” He trailed off, finding the idea distasteful.
“Wouldn’t it be better if we just let the truth be known?” I suggested.
“Not my call, Pitt. I just enforce policy. I don’t make it.” He began to walk back to the waiting Blackhawk.
“You murder survivors and witnesses!” I shouted. “You destroy lives to keep up this illusion of safety! People should know what’s really out there.”
Myers paused, turned, and shook his head sadly. “Can you imagine what would happen if the world found out the truth? Chaos. Pandemonium. No. People need to be kept safe from themselves, and I’ll do whatever I have to, lie, cheat . . . kill . . . anything, to keep my country safe.” The professor was a dedicated man.
It was disgusting. “How do you sleep at night?”
Myers actually chuckled, his normally bureaucratic demeanor apparently damaged by his losses. “I don’t. If you knew what was coming”—he resumed walking, the wind from the rotors snapping his cheap tie over his shoulder and making it difficult to hear—“you wouldn’t sleep anymore either.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I shouted after him.
But he didn’t answer. The chopper lifted off a minute later, leaving me to ponder what it was that Myers thought was coming. Clearly there was more to this cult than the Feds were letting on. Lee hobbled around the side of our van. He was in jeans and a Schlock Mercenary tee shirt. He had bailed out of the compound so fast he hadn’t even had time to gear up. Grant must have gotten dressed on the road. The sight of Lee in normal attire made me especially thankful for my friends. They hadn’t hesitated to go after me any more than I had for my own brother. “Z, I’ve got Harbinger on the phone. He’s been trying to reach you.”
I pulled out my cell phone. It had gotten cracked at some point during the evening’s excitement. “Piece of crap!” I cocked my fist back and chucked it far out into the Alabama River. That small bit of random violence made me feel better.
Lee shook his head and grinned. “You know the company phones have a warranty on them, right? You could have got that replaced for free. Now you’ll have to buy a new one.”
I groaned. “What did he say?” I knew it had to be some variation of Pitt, you suck. Go hide at the compound. Lee handed me his phone.
My boss actually sounded concerned. “How’re y’all doing?”
“We’re good. Only minor injuries.” I hurried, knowing that he was going to rip me for disobeying his orders. “We got to my brother in time. Agent Franks is dead.” Saying that sounded weird. Franks had always seemed so stoic, so invulnerable, that it was hard to imagine anything being able to end his life.
“He was a jackass but he was a pro,” Earl said simply.
I turned away so the others wouldn’t hear. Something that Bia said had been gnawing at me. “The creatures knew I was coming. Somebody told them I was on my way. There is a spy at the compound.”
There was a long silence at the other end while Earl mulled that over. “Either there or it could have been somebody who’s with me right now. Julie got your message and told everybody else. We’re on our way back. I’ve got an idea. I want you to meet me someplace. Can you ditch the Feds?”
“Already done.”
“Okay, Lee’s driving? Pass the phone back to him.”
I walked back to the others and handed the phone to Lee. “What’s going on?” Grant asked. Lee was listening to instructions and went forward to program an address into the onboard GPS.
“Earl wants us to meet him somewhere.”
“I don’t like it. Myers said we should go back to the compound,” Grant said.
“Screw him,” I said automatically. “When did you start caring what the Feds say?”
Grant snorted like that was absurd. “I don’t.”
“You’re just worried that you’re too pretty for prison.” They’d have loved Grant in Tijira. Lee came back. “Where to, man?”
“Birmingham. Harbinger gave me an address for a house in a neighborhood called Hensley.” Lee said.
“Never heard of it, but cool.” So Harbinger had something up his sleeve after all. The whole “hide and wait for the bad guys to kill me” plan hadn’t gone real well so far, so hopefully he had found a way to go on the offensive.
I like being offensive.