Feral King

by Ginger Booth

  And their overwatch was secure. “Go back and warn the others? About the cutout.” Frosty suggested.

  Maz took out his rifle and hosed the Hopper front lines below a few times first, then did as he asked. Frosty allowed he had a point, and fired a few bursts as well.

  But indiscriminate bullets weren’t what he and Maz were here for. Unlike most of their compatriots, these two were decent marksmen. When Maz returned, Frosty switched to binoculars, while his sidekick enjoyed himself picking off Hoppers in the intersection – and there were plenty. Unlike the rooftop, fires now lit the streets below. And with no further need for a defensive posture, his well-anchored, carefully aimed shots devastated the enemy. Nothing quite like your buddy’s head exploding, his brains and blood spattering in your eyes, to rattle a guy’s nerves.

  Boobzilla, as Frosty mentally dubbed any of Kat’s coterie of girl co-captains, yelled up at them, demanding to know who was shooting up here. Frosty ignored her for the moment. The enemy didn’t need to know where he was. “Maz. Navy blue coat, hood and hoodie, twenty paces southwest of the center.” He paused for Maz to take aim and slay someone. “That’s royal blue, dumbass. Navy is like almost black.” Maz shot again and took out the right guy.

  He resumed his potshots at targets of opportunity, but asked, “What did navy blue do to you?”

  “Squad leader,” Frosty replied absently. Hoppers grew confused by the fall of Navy Dude, and that’s all he cared about. He continued searching linchpins and guided Maz to shoot them. Hoppers below began to get a clue, and flee from the intersection into the warm reception of Jake and Pomelo’s forces.

  Executing squad leaders was all well and good, but was there…? Oy. “Yellow whale. Southeast corner, edge of sidewalk on 6th –” He broke off because Maz had already shot the dude. “Kill anyone who runs toward him.” He tucked his binoculars away and joined Maz in shooting a few bursts.

  Satisfying as that was, Frosty sighed and crouched again to bring up his binoculars. This part got tricky. He’d bet anything the dead fat guy in flamboyant yellow was Kringle, the Hopper kingpin. But they’d only neutralized a few squad leaders. Who was trying to rally the remainder? The intersection grew crowded with corpses to trip over by now, 6E dealing some fine damage as well. Judging by the rainbow accessories, Libre folks were beginning to crowd into the kill zone too. Jake’s end was lagging, and harder to shoot from here anyway. He took away the binoculars and looked with bare eyes, then zeroed in with the glasses, several times. Got him.

  “Linebacker build, grey coat with tactical vest, from our corner, second lane into the avenue –” Maz got him. A pig-pile of Hoppers descended on this guy, trying to haul him into the relative shelter of the building wall. Maz concentrated fire on them. Frosty continued to scan the crowd, bare eyeball and binoculars in turn. Other Hoppers seemed to pause, then run. Quickly the tableau turned into a rout.

  This Pomelo was no slouch in a fight. Libre caught on to the changed vibe in mere moments, and charged in, slaying Hip Hops right and left. A touch slower on the uptake – well, he couldn’t see the cause – Jake and his Libre counterpart made a warrior stand to the south. Puño, or whoever Libre had in command facing 6E, also held the line, denying the Hoppers escape or mercy.

  Frosty rolled his eyes as Boobzilla’s forces advanced past their barricade to get in on the fun. He made a mental note never to critique her choice. He, thank God, hadn’t been holding 6E this past hour, his friends dying by his side. She did the best she could. He sighed. As did they all.

  The number of live Hip Hops, still trying to dart through to find any route to safety, was dropping fast. “That’s a wrap for me, Maz.”

  Frosty tucked his binoculars away, and moved to the 6E edge to holler, “Hello, below!” Not surprisingly, he couldn’t catch the Boobzilla’s attention. Whoever she was. Fine.

  Giving the interior atrium a wide berth, Frosty wandered back to the first of the little buildings, easily hopping the short dividing wall. He found the edge and studied below, resorting to the binoculars a couple more times. He spotted his quarry and shifted to the next small roof. “Pistol! Pomelo! Frosty! Above you!” He waved hugely, then dropped to a crouch as a bullet zipped by.

  Maz would be very annoyed with him for doing that. Frosty smiled crookedly. He confidently predicted his best friend would tell him not to play yellow whale for months.

  Pistol was too intent on talking to his guys, but a Libre saw him and hastened to point Frosty out to his boss. Soon a truly scary-looking Puerto Rican sauntered across the avenue, gazing up.

  “Someone tells me there’s a Snowman on the roof!”

  That caught Pistol’s attention at last. “Frosty-Frosty-White-TIGERS!” he led the cheer, which caught on and spread. Pistol could be an asshole, but he sure was useful.

  Not to be outdone in the morale department, the Libres soon countered with, “Elon-Elon-Elon-LIBRE!”

  Frosty and Pomelo were stuck waiting for the cheers to die back to resume conversation. Frosty noticed the Latino boss wasn’t worried about his surroundings in the slightest, safe in a ring of defenders pacing him. The way I’m supposed to be, Frosty realized ruefully. He really ought to make life easier for Maz and Hotwire. But he enjoyed fighting. And it’s not like he stinted on his job of figuring out what to do.

  Frosty finally managed to cut through the noise. “We have a Caudillos problem! On 7th Avenue! Honored Mr. Fruit, you want to kick some more ass with the Tigers?”

  “Que?”

  Frosty tried again. “Black assholes, 7th and 23rd. Wanna kill some?”

  Pomelo shook his head and raised his arms, cupping his ears to show he didn’t catch it. Frosty gave up. By now Hotwire, Maz, and the rest of his squad caught up with him. “Point downstairs on 24th for me. I’m headed down.”

  Maz of course wouldn’t let him take a piss alone at this point, but the others did as he asked. Libres and Tigers alike teased them from below for their chorus line number, so they hammed it up.

  Frosty finally landed, jumping the last four rungs of the fire escape to the corner of 24th. And he found himself face to face with Pomelo, one of Elon’s beast men. Pistol and Waldo and some of their guys hung back nearby, unsure how this might go down.

  “Poquito!” Pomelo’s outriders laughed harshly at his quip, little bit. “Such a pretty little snowman, ay-ay?” He loped like a panther, taking a loop around Frosty to size him up. Compared to Pomelo, the Tiger’s young frame suggested anything but menace.

  Frosty elected to take the high road. “Great win! We work well together! But my fight isn’t over.”

  Pomelo completed his circuit, a predator poised to strike. Frosty let his friendly diplomat mask drop. He cocked his head slightly, and met Pomelo’s crazed black eyes with his own ice-cold blue. “Caudillos, 7th and 23rd. You wanna tidy up here? Or come with me to kill?”

  Frosty’s neck bore the pressure of Pomelo’s will beating against his own. He suspected he’d never been as close to death as he was right now. He could almost feel its cold breath from the snowballs now falling from the sky.

  Bring it, fruit-dude. Poquito is a predator, same as you.

  Pomelo broke into a slow feral smile. “Subway at 7th. You take us through your street. We’ll fight with you.” He pulled closer, within inches of Frosty’s face. “I want to see you in action.” Abruptly he broke off his intimidation and turned his back, to rapidly assemble a strike team.

  Pistol aped wiping sweat from his forehead. Frosty kept his ice mask intact and nodded to him. Pistol gulped and got busy collecting his guys. Jake and Boobzilla could mop up here, and whatever Libres volunteered.

  Within minutes, Frosty led the dual force through Butch’s alleyway, and pelted down West 23rd, the heart of his home block, gang members scattering out of their way. He didn’t stop before he and Pomelo, side by side, thundered down the street steps into the 7th Avenue local subway station.

  29

  March 4, E-day plus 86

 
; Frosty automatically flicked on his tiny penlight, hoping the others had better flashlights. Immediately upon reaching the base of the stairs, he broke left, thinking to take a place against the wall, and light the steps for the rest.

  Pomelo had other ideas. His guys lit up the dead payment turnstiles, and jumped them, straight onto the platform. West 23rd was not a complex station, merely two local platforms to go opposite directions. The stairs across the tracks let out right behind the Caudillos barricade, a spot guaranteed to be pre-sighted and defended to the gills.

  In fact, Frosty expected Dominicans to start boiling down the stairs any minute. They surely saw the coming force run down here. Then again, the defense was far safer than coming down here to fight.

  He expected full dark, but that wasn’t so. Ventilation grates opened to the avenue above, which was mostly dark. No, as he vaulted the pay-gate, he saw that lightning balls roved here, attracted to frolic along the bare steel. Frosty gulped. Most of the time, his immediate problems were so vast he forgot what brought them to this pass. But the ball lightning, blood red skies at sunset, hurricane-like storms at New Year’s, snowdrifts layered like chocolate ice cream from the devastated Midwest, its topsoil cast on high – these things made him afraid at the deepest primordial levels of the brain where reason could not touch.

  He snapped back to the here-and-now as Pomelo’s guys jumped straight onto the tracks and kept running. He hesitated, appalled. But there was no live rail anymore, no power, no risk of oncoming trains. The gang’s children came here to hunt rats and cockroaches for food. Shamed by that thought, he jumped down, Maz a fraction of a second behind him. They ran across the local tracks, squeezed through rusty steel I-beam uprights to access the express lanes, then across and through to clamber onto the downtown local platform.

  “Which way?” Pomelo demanded of him. Two staircases served as exits.

  Frosty had taken this local scores of times, depending on whim and weather when he finished at Sensei’s dojo at night – two stops down to the West Village. “Either side of 23rd, just behind their barricade. North is probably better defended.” He pointed right.

  “Take both,” Pomelo decided. “Libre and White Supreme mixed on both teams.”

  “How?” He didn’t bother to correct Pomelo on the name of his gang. The proceedings led Frosty into a fatalistic mood, as the last of their forces clambered onto the platform and chose a side. A few too many Tigers chose his end and he redirected them to join Pistol on the south exit.

  Frosty startled as his eye fell on a pile of rags farther down the platform, momentarily lit by a lightning ball. Skeletal forms, huddled to stare at the tiled wall. “People live down here.”

  Pomelo snorted. “Ghouls.” He strode to the track edge and called across. “Call the play!”

  Frosty hadn’t realized the Libres left someone behind. A younger guy, maybe 15, jumped down the last few steps from the 7W barricade. “Standard!” He hustled back up the distant stairs.

  Standard? Pomelo really was nuts if he made a habit of assaults through subway stations. Or maybe not.

  “You Tigers!” Pomelo hollered, to explain this standard. “Exit the stairs guns blazing, then break right or left! Then you slip behind your squad-mates. Ring the subway stairs. Shoot Caudillos. That simple. Pitchers – smoke and frags, then up on my mark!”

  The moment Pomelo stopped talking, four Libres pelted up the exits. After only a few steps, they hurled grenades and fled back down.

  Shrieks came down through the street vents and echoed from the tunnel walls. The spotter across the avenue ran back down his side and called, “Good to go!”

  “Go go go!” Pomelo concurred, and led the charge in front of Frosty.

  Maz the spoilsport grabbed his arm to prevent Frosty from being one of the first up. Frosty ripped his arm back and cut into the column about a third of the way from the front. And he ran up the stairs as directed. The preceding Libre wasn’t clear yet, so he ducked and waited a second, then took his turn with a 6-bullet burst of fire as directed, and dodged right, Maz beside him, running practically blind.

  The hurled smoke canister contributed plumes of crimson, extra lurid in the light of trashcans and the burning puddles of fuel oil that blocked the sidewalks at 7W. His ears, buffeted by gunshot and screams, offered no useful information, nor smell, overwhelmed by smoke, ammunition, blood, and other bodily fluids released by the dead. Fortunately Frosty had one sense in superabundance, his own body. He felt his way to the back fence of the subway hole and an opening in their ring big enough to accommodate the two of them. He started firing into the dim dancing pre-corpses of the damned. There weren’t especially many of those, perhaps one per second, and no shortage of his team firing at them.

  He paused his gun to perceive more, anything at all, through the chaos. Which way? He thought it through and checked the nearest storefront and the building shapes which loomed blacker against a dark sky. Yes, he was facing the White Tigers and 7W across the avenue. “Don’t fire straight ahead!” he yelled to his right and left. “Friendlies across the avenue!”

  What else? The smoke was starting to clear, or perhaps it was his mind. A figure materialized by the buses, trying to rally his forces. Frosty took a moment to aim carefully, and killed him with a neat three bullets to his chest. Maz steadily picked off Caudillos trying to flee north up the avenue, while his Libre neighbor to the other side pretty much hosed the buses indiscriminately.

  Frosty tapped him on the shoulder blade and waited for him to stop firing. “Go to the end of the line there, shoot that way.”

  “Que?”

  Right. Frosty repeated his instructions in Spanish, semi-fluent from haggling with Maz’s housekeeper over the years. Then he told Maz to break left, add to the line extending from this side of the stairway. No one remained alive between Frosty’s position and the bus barricade. He wanted to switch to shooting up the avenue after fleeing Caudillos, this spot not providing an angle to the ones on 23rd Street.

  Frosty was bone-tired by now, and bet everyone else was, too. He also wasn’t in charge of this attack plan – Pomelo was. He wondered what exactly Pomelo considered an end condition here. They had about sixty guys. His estimates for the Caudillo forces was somewhere between 200-400 active fighters. And they had far more ways to flee than frontage to make a stand. How does this end?

  Then suddenly, it already had. No more Caudillos fled up 7th. A final few shots took out the last Dominicans fleeing south.

  “Frost-tea,” Pomelo boomed out. “Are we done?”

  Frosty couldn’t help it. He laughed. “Race you across 7th Avenue? See if anyone shoots at us?”

  “Fuck that. I’m tired. Diego, Sebastian! Run across the avenue for me! Everyone else, cover them.” Pomelo doubtfully glanced around the surrounding buildings. He’d put snipers up there, and obviously Frosty would too.

  The volunteered pair of Libre ran, zig-zagging toward the mound of corpses. The canister smoke had dissipated. Falling snow clumps prettily diffused the blue flames from the fuel oil pyres. Someone took a couple shots from the building nearest Frosty. He stepped forward, Maz yanked him back, and another Libre-Tiger duo pelted into the building to hunt the sniper.

  “I’m tired too,” Frosty admitted to Pomelo’s back. The Latin gang boss was presently standing at the top of the subway stairs, contemplating the Caudillo block of 23rd. “Call it a wrap? Maybe Elon and I could talk about gleaning, who gets what.”

  Pomelo turned to face him. “There ain’t shit here. Nowhere. Let’s go.” He switched to Spanish to summon his three runners back from White Tigers’ turf, then had his guys collect to depart up 7th Avenue to 24th, rather than traverse Frosty’s block again. These other blocks were fair game to plunder, but not Frosty’s.

  “Respect, Pomelo,” Frosty called. He stood straight, pounded one fist into the other hand, and bowed, martial artist to warrior.

  Pomelo’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah? Fuck you, midget.” He turned his back an
d strode away.

  One of the Libres volunteered to Frosty, “Pomelo, he likes you!” His companions laughed and slapped the comedian.

  Frosty flipped him the bird, and turned to survey his newest acquisition. Yet another fucking block of Chelsea, not greatly different from his first block. Well paved in red blood and corpses.

  He won.

  It beat the alternative.

  30

  March 4, E-day plus 86

  Ava washed thoroughly in her intimate bathroom, nude in the cold, spinning a romantic fantasy of enjoying the night in with Frosty.

  She needed the sponge-bath. After the victory, as the dim and snowy dawn crept into the canyons, she’d loosed her little minions like a swarm of locusts to glean the 200s block of West 23rd.

  She mostly stayed down in the street with the backup force guys, hauling dead bodies. Which was gross enough in itself. But after the host died, lice and fleas swarmed to the surface to catch a new ride. She itched like hell. Given the crappy food she lived on, old scratches and scrapes didn’t heal too well, adding their own tiny infections to the incessant itch.

  Her latest body wash made her smell pretty good, she fancied, sweet pea and violets. She attempted a sexy smile in the mirror. Lit from beneath by her bluish solar desk lamp, she looked like a Halloween ghoul, hollow high cheekbones casting deep shadow upward into her wide but narrow eye sockets. And her chapped lip split. She licked away a salty drop of blood and shifted her ablutions to her hair. Frosty liked to toy with her hair. Unlike most, Ava kept it long, and washed it every week or so. She French-braided it for work, then let it down to brush thoroughly before bed. Or let him unfurl it to toy with.

  The apartment door opened, and he trudged in, dropping his keys and candle stub in their habitual spot. He claimed one of the high counter stools, awaiting his turn at the bathroom.