by Schow, Ryan
“Don’t underestimate Indigo,” Rider told him. “That girl is as solid as you’ll find under fire. Trust me, this is personal experience talking.”
Back to the meeting at hand. Back to Atlanta.
“What do you think we should do for a plan B?” he asked in response to Atlanta’s question. “This question is for any of you, or all of you.”
He could see Macy wanting to say something, but she kept her mouth shut and waited for everyone else to have their turn first. When no one spoke up, she said, “We wait on pins and needles. Or maybe we put six on the roof in shifts. Four on each corner. Two with field glasses. It blows goats, the waiting, but at least we’ll have eyes on the outfield and six on high.”
After she said it, the statement just hung there until finally someone said, “This really sucks.”
“Yeah,” Rider said, “but I think Macy’s right.”
When the enemy finally arrived at the gates, it was not a move Rider saw coming. Not in a million years. But sometimes war delivered as many gifts as it did disappointments and betrayals.
Rider wasn’t sure what this enemy represented—a disappointment, a betrayal or a gift—but one thing was for sure: he was going to find out soon enough.
War was coming, of that he was certain.
Chapter Seventy-Four
Gunderson observed Lisandro’s methods. The boy was thorough, efficient and he was ruthless. Five years ago, Gunderson would have been proud. A little scared, even. The boy had become something of a legend in the clan. Where so many of these kids were once gamers, he was a true banger. Offspring to a freaking mercenary. Afraid of nothing.
They were in his office when two of Lisandro’s scouts knocked, were summoned, then entered. They did not look at the girls in the cage. No one was allowed to look at them but Lisandro. Gunderson broke that rule right away. Of course, Lisandro was less than pleased, but what was he going to do, tell his father what to do with his eyes?
“We have a report, sir,” one of the scouts said. He was tall with blonde hair, brown eyes and a slight deformity of his ears.
“Go,” Lisandro said.
“We found three guys armed but weary, and four girls ages twenty to seventy.”
“Twenty is good,” Lisandro said, eating an apple. “Seventy not so good. What about the other two girls?”
“Late twenties, early-thirties?”
“Good looking?”
The blonde haired scout looked at his counterpart, a brown haired kid with a wrestler’s physique but no nasty cauliflower ears to complete the look.
“I guess they had decent bodies, sir. But we didn’t get a good look at their faces.”
“Take John and his team, kill the guys and the grandma, bring the girls back untouched along with any weapons, food, water and supplies.”
“If the girls are ugly?” he asked.
“Then kill them, too.”
“Okay, boss,” the lead scout said. “Anything else?”
“Naturally I expect you to toss the place. These people aren’t going to keep their best wares out in the open.”
“Will do,” both scouts said.
When the pair left, Gunderson said, “Why would you kill the grandmother?”
“I don’t see the point of keeping her around.”
“Knowledge, experience, a den mother for these pack of ingrates you’ve got running around.”
“This isn’t a summer camp, dad. This is an armed response.”
“An armed response to what?”
“To an open war.”
“Who’s picking a fight with you? Because as far as I can tell, the war is over, unless you’re intent on starting another war. And it looks as though you are.”
Lisandro thought about it, clearly not used to being questioned, and clearly not liking it one bit.
“No one’s waging war on us directly,” he finally said with a grin. “That’s why it’s genius. We are eliminating our enemies before they even present themselves. To always remain victorious, you must only engage in those wars you know you can win.”
“Someone else I heard about did that.”
Lisandro took another bite of his apple, not bothering to offer one to Gunderson, who was getting hungry.
“Oh, and who’s that?” Lisandro asked.
“Adolf Hitler.”
Lisandro’s nostrils flared and he narrowed his eyes.
“I always thought you were harder than this. Mom said your job was to break people, that you’d done time which I took to mean you weren’t a bitch.”
“Yes, well I’m not above evolving either.”
“None of us evolve out of who we are,” he said, devouring the rest of the apple. “We only sharpen our sticks and learn to kill better.”
Gunderson recognized his own words being given back to him.
“I was exactly where I wanted to be back then. But what was right yesterday might not be right for today. The world is rapidly changing.” Then: “Can I give you a bit of advice?”
Lisandro looked at the core of the apple, almost like he was ignoring the question (for who dared offer The Great Lisandro advice?), he said, “You hungry?” then offered Gunderson the uneaten core of the apple.
“No,” Gunderson replied, quietly offended.
“I hear your stomach,” Lisandro said, still thrusting the uneaten core his father’s way. “You should eat it.”
“If you don’t get that core out of my face, I’m going to shove it straight up your ass.”
Lisandro drew a deep breath in through his nostrils, then relaxed and said, “I was just joking.”
“Don’t you see?” Gunderson said. “We don’t have to be held hostage by our old ways. In this world, we can live the life we truly want.”
Standing up, grabbing another apple, he looked down at his father—who remained seated—and said, “I’m not held hostage by anything. I have an abundance of girls, plenty of power, and I have a damn castle. If anything, everyone else will be held hostage by me.”
Gunderson felt those old familiar urges. The last time he’d seen Lisandro, he tried to choke the boy to death. That was about a year ago. Gunderson was on pills when he came home and learned his son was selling crack cocaine at school and getting into fist fights.
The rage took over. When he’d grabbed the boy by the throat and started to squeeze, Gunderson didn’t see him as his son, rather his mind held images of him being his dead son. Fueled by pills and too much alcohol, the pressure on him more than he could bear at the time, Gunderson had taken so much of his hostility out on Lisandro and it wasn’t fair.
Now those same hateful emotions were resurfacing. Except a year had passed, he was not on speed, he hadn’t had a drink in a month and he couldn’t blame his bad temper on stress because he had almost none.
“Perhaps we should talk about this another time,” Gunderson said.
“Other than you threatening me with an apple core, I’m starting to think you’ve gone soft,” Lisandro said, dead serious. “Well? Have you?”
“You don’t have to be soft to hate the idea of killing old women.”
“Well get used to it,” he snapped. “Let’s go. We’ve got a strategy meeting and I could use a soldier with your experience.”
The heat stealing to his cheeks, Gunderson grabbed Lisandro by the arm and hauled him around. “Let me tell you something, you wisecracking little turd. This isn’t a video game and I don’t work for you. You get my experience if I let you have it and you don’t act like you out rank me because you won’t, ever. I don’t care what these clowns think of you.”
Lisandro shook his arm loose, gave Gunderson a mighty shove. Gunderson stepped back in time for Lisandro to shove him again, harder, catching Gunderson off balance. Before he could even comprehend this turn of events, Lisandro shoved him once more for good measure. This one put Gunderson on his ass, his cheeks beet red, his jaw flexed just about as tight as his fists.
“You aren’t the man anymore, old
man. I’m the man! Get that through your thick skull. And get up. We have things to do and I don’t need to be wiping your butt.”
Gunderson got up, rattled, sick at how his boy had turned out.
“I never wanted this life for you,” Gunderson said as his son started for the door.
“Well I have it now, so either get in the boat and row or go back to whatever ditch you slithered out of.”
And with that, the boy was off. Gunderson followed the obstinate little rodent through the hallways toward their strategy meeting, this confrontation only reinforcing the notion that he should try once more to choke the boy to death.
When they had the meeting, Lisandro’s men said, “We were able to reach the windows with the bottles, sir. The rooftop, too.”
“All of you?” he asked. They nodded in unison. “Good. Let’s get everyone filling them up with gas this time. How many men are proficient with the modified sling shots?”
“Twelve,” Bear answered.
“And you?”
“I’d rather shoot the rats as they come scurrying out the back door. But yeah, I’m proficient with them.”
“We need lighters,” one of the guys said, referring to people who light the rags of the Molotov Cocktails just before they’re launched. “These should be people who have no problem being near these kinds of explosives. We’ll need six to assist simply for speed. By now they have to be anticipating something. Which means they may be ready with something of their own.”
“So the six lighters will also need to know there could be retaliatory strikes,” Lisandro said, eyeing each man. Well, everyone but his father who sat there having just been disciplined by his son.
“I’ll have six volunteers inside of an hour,” Bear said.
“Good.”
“So when do we do this?” Bear asked.
“Are you going with them?” Lisandro asked.
“And miss out on all the fun?” Bear replied with a glint of humor in his eyes.
“Alright then,” Gunderson said. “Take your men and head out just before dawn.”
Looking at Gunderson, Lisandro said, “You sure there’s only one exit?”
“The Hayes Street entrance is boarded up and sealed shut,” he said. “So yes. There is only one exit.”
“And it’s defended on high?”
“Four men on the roof, all good shots.”
“We hit the roof first, so we need one up-close team and five mid-range teams.”
“There are children in there,” Gunderson said. “And old women. Plus one of the girls is pregnant with her first child. You going to kill a pregnant girl, Lisandro? In this world?”
“Casualties of war,” Lisandro muttered with a dismissive wave of the hand.
“She’s pregnant,” Gunderson said again, this time drawing it out.
Lisandro spun in his chair and glared at his father like the eyes themselves were about to attack. “These people threw you out in the street because they didn’t like your ink,” he barked. “They threw you out like a dirty dog. And now you want to defend them?!”
“It wasn’t like that,” Gunderson said calmly.
“Yet here you are, in my house, freshly tossed from theirs. If you haven’t got the stomach for the job, seriously, you don’t need to be my father.”
“But I am.”
“On paper, yes. But those papers and my allegiance to you burned up a long time ago. In here, you get to be a general behind Bear, if you want, or you can take the other option we discussed earlier.”
Smiling, chewing on his anger, Gunderson said, “Looks like the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Lisandro hissed.
“It means I’m in,” Gunderson said. “I don’t need to think about it.”
Lisandro measured Gunderson with a long, cruel gaze, and then he relaxed into a weak grin and said, “It’s about damn time.”
Chapter Seventy-Five
He was curled in the arms of Sarah having the best dream of his life when he was ripped from the glorious slumber to a pounding racket. Rider woke just as Sarah woke.
“Rider?” she said softly in the dark.
“I got it,” he replied, crawling out of bed. The knocking persisted and he said, “I’m coming, I’m coming. Hold your horses.”
Groggy, still gathering his bearings, he pulled the door open to a man with a candlestick and a concerned look. Rider rubbed his eyes, recognizing Rowan from his security detail. Rowan oversaw the graveyard shift.
“Sir, you need to come with me and you need to come now,” Rowan said. “There’s someone here to see you.”
“Who?”
“I’ll let him tell you.”
Rider pulled on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, then he stepped into a pair of black work boots sans the socks. For safe measure, he grabbed his Glock as well. When they got downstairs and out back, on the other side of the courtyard wall, that’s when he saw Gunderson.
Groaning audibly, he said, “What do you want?”
“I found your enemies,” Gunderson said.
The man looked nervous. He wasn’t wearing a coat, he looked cold and his teeth were chattering. If he was standing out in the dead of another freezing San Francisco night, there was indeed a purpose greater than warmth or safety. Against his better instincts, he was inclined to believe the man.
“Is that so?”
“They’re up on the hill inside the USF Lone Mountain campus and they’re maybe one sixty, one seventy of them.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Rider asked, suspicious.
“Because they’re going to attack this facility with Molotov Cocktails in less than four hours, and if you aren’t prepared, they’re going to run you the hell over.”
Rider felt his heart jump. A cold sweat broke out on the back of his neck. Suddenly he was crossing his arms, thinking he needed to ward off this sudden chill.
“How do you know this?” he asked.
“Because my son, whom I thought was dead, is running the entire operation. This is his army and he’s adamant about breaking you and this compound.”
“Why?”
“Because he can. For him it’s a preemptive measure. Like taking out the competition before they realize they’re even competing.”
“What are we competing for?” Rider asked on the tail end of a yawn.
“Life.”
“That’s twisted.”
“Yeah, well this group calls themselves a clan and they are mostly comprised of gamers. Guys who were your basement warriors, your hackers, your anti-social nerds. These are the kind of guys who lived for Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Dungeons and Dragons.”
“You’re talking about…video games?”
“Yes.”
Shaking his head, thinking about something that was nagging at him, Rider said, “Why in the hell would you turn on your own son? Especially to us? I mean, Jesus Christ, Gunderson, we just exiled you from our community. And not nicely in case you’ve forgotten.”
“Because you don’t kill pregnant ladies or children.”
“Okay,” Rider said, realizing Gunderson wasn’t playing. He watched the man’s expression change. Was he worried about Indigo? “This is your son, you say?”
“On paper, he tells me. He also says I’m a fossil, the relic of a bygone era and free to piss off whenever I see fit.”
“But he’s your son.”
“The last time I saw him, before he ran away, I tried to choke him to death.”
Rider took a deep breath, stared at the man through the light of a three quarter moon, then said, “Do you have any allegiance to anything?”
“Whatever he used to be, that boy is no longer my son. He knows he’ll be killing innocents, including women and children, and he can only think of them as casualties of war. Like he refuses to even consider them human. If I have an allegiance to anything, it’s to change. I can’t be this person anymore. I don’t support this.”
>
“Why should I believe you?” Rider asked.
“In four hours,” Gunderson said, his look solemn, rueful almost, “it won’t matter what you believe. The war will be kicking down your front door and then you’ll know I was telling the truth. That I am telling the truth.”
After a moment’s consternation, Rider said, “Alright then, come inside.”
Rex and Indigo were standing at the other end of the courtyard, watching. They’d been alerted as well. When Rider saw them, he said, “Get Jagger and Stanton. Meet us in the War Room.”
Within twenty minutes, Gunderson made clear to Rex, Rider, Jagger, Stanton and Indigo Lisandro’s battle plans, their sheer numbers and the general layout of the occupied parts of Lone Mountain.
Per Rider’s instructions, Cincinnati was working with Sarah and Lenna in getting everyone up and preparing them for an immediate evacuation. Rowan and the vets dispersed the weapons to every available hand, made sure they had ammo then secured the fortress from on high.
By two a.m. everyone was awake, alert and ready to move on a moment’s notice, but not a single wick burned with flame, and not a single person but Cincinnati spoke. She was in charge of making sure the group knew both evacuation routes. They’d gathered in the front entrance, the one they’d boarded up and blocked off two months ago. Rowan and his team were now pulling down everything that secured the front entrance from outside penetration.
They needed a second way out, just in case…
Leaving the War Room to escort Gunderson out, when it was just the two of them, Rider said, “If you’re lying to me on this, with my last breath I swear I will find you and I’ll pull your eyes out with my bare hands, and then I’ll beat you to death the slow, hard, sick way.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“But if you’re right, and if you want, then I’ll make sure you have a place within our group. You promise me you’re dedicated to living a more principled life and I promise you a home here, with us.”
“Your people won’t like it.”
“You’re saving our lives tonight,” he said. “It shouldn’t be a hard sell. Also, it’s worth mentioning, I sent scouts to the hospital where you say you slaughtered The Ophidian Horde, and it checks out.”
