The Wolves Within

by David Lucin

  “He’s on his way from the station,” Dylan replied.

  Dad tapped the side of the radio with an index finger. “You should know, Mr. Baker, that we have supplies to last a week.” Philip eyed the water cooler across the warehouse. It was nearly full. Ten gallons. A spare jug, also full, rested beside it. He wasn’t sure how much food Dad had brought with him, but water would be the limiting factor in how long they could hold out, and there was plenty of it. “Moreover,” Dad continued, “I have stifled your attempt at subterfuge. I applaud your endeavor to use my son against me, but it has unfortunately failed.”

  Esteban shifted uneasily, his poker face failing. Felix had his weapon out of its holster and aimed roughly in the direction of the door to the offices. Like automatons, the siblings watched closely. Were they beginning to suspect him? Suspect Esteban?

  “We all want to bring this to a peaceful conclusion, Mr. Grierson,” Dylan said. “Would you agree?”

  Dad laughed without smiling. “I want what I’ve always wanted. However, I am willing to make a concession: the mayor’s life in return for the immediate deportation of all refugees to New River.”

  “Dad,” Philip cut in. “The cops will never go for that. You can’t just snap your fingers and move two thousand people to Phoenix.”

  Dylan began answering through the radio, but Dad shouted, “I won’t have an ex-convict lecture me on logistics. If they truly want the mayor back unharmed, they’ll find a way.”

  Philip spoke over him and addressed Esteban once more. “See what I’m talking about? He’s not thinking straight. He’ll—”

  “Enough!”

  “—keep making crazy demands until Andrews is dead or he is.”

  Esteban’s spine straightened, and his shoulders locked into place. Philip didn’t have much time to consider what the reaction meant, because his father said, softly and with a heavy dose of disappointment, “You’ve let me down, son. Worse, you’ve let your mother down, God rest her soul. But you have my assurances that I intend to finish this.” He spoke into the radio again. “Mr. Baker, my demands are final. If you attempt to breach this compound, the mayor will be executed. If I do not receive confirmation within four hours that the deportations are underway, she will be executed.”

  Andrews bucked, her silvery hair falling over her face, and let out a muffled scream. Next to Philip, her husband hung his head, seemingly resigned to his fate.

  Dad rubbed his temple in frustration. “Please, Alisha, would you keep her quiet?”

  Alisha lifted a hand, ready to strike the mayor with her palm, but she froze when Esteban said, “Don’t touch her.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Ortiz?” Dad asked. “I’ll be the one giving the orders around here.”

  Esteban shook his head. “Philip’s right. This has gone too far. We’re not hurting any more innocent people.”

  Philip cheered internally as Dad took notice of Esteban’s revolver. “Mr. Ortiz, you’ll return that weapon to its holster immediately.”

  “I can’t do that, sir. I need to be able to look my little girl in the eye and explain what I’ve done, and there’s no explaining this. You’ve lost your way. We all have.”

  At the far end of the room, Felix took a few steps to his right, creating a clear line of sight past Esteban and toward the siblings.

  “I’ll give you one more chance, Mr. Ortiz,” Dad said, stretching out each syllable.

  Esteban answered by cocking the hammer on his revolver with a click. The sound might as well have been a crack of thunder.

  The next second passed so quickly that Philip couldn’t process what happened or in what order. When it had ticked by, Esteban’s gun was leveled at Alisha. The siblings’ pistols were raised, too, one pointed at Esteban and the other at Felix, whose Glock was trained on Isaac. There was shouting, demands to drop weapons and surrender, but Philip couldn’t tell who was saying what.

  “Mr. Grierson?” came a new voice from the radio, and the shouting ceased as abruptly as it began. “Mr. Grierson, this is Officer Kipling. Chief Morrison will be here shortly. Before we proceed, I want to ensure that Mayor Andrews is unharmed.”

  For a long, tense minute, the room was silent and still, a snapshot of the moment before a massacre. Dad’s attention had moved to Philip’s empty AR on the table. Felix’s arms shook. Esteban’s remained steady. Every second or two, Alisha would glance at her brother, who could have been a statue.

  Philip tried to envision this ending peacefully and without bloodshed, but the images simply wouldn’t form in his mind. Eventually, one side would make a move, the other would react, and then the floor would be littered with bodies.

  Isaac breathed heavily through his nose. He hadn’t so much as glanced at Philip since the guns went up.

  Cold sweat wetted his hands, and a muscle in his back pinched, followed by an ache in his knee. The sensations reminded him that he wasn’t bound to this chair. Restrained, yes, but he could stand.

  An idea began coming together in his head, but before he could work out the details or weigh the pros and cons, his father shot a hand toward the AR. Felix saw it; he wouldn’t know the weapon was empty, and neither would anyone else. There was no time to explain—that would take seconds, and the shooting would start in less than one—so Philip’s half-formed plan went into action.

  With a grunt of effort, he burst from his chair and dove shoulder-first into Isaac’s hip. The attack caught him by surprise, and together, they tumbled to the floor. On the way down, the crack of a firearm exploded next to Philip’s face. Ringing filled his ears, but through it, as he and Isaac hit the concrete, he heard a second shot ring out. Then a third.

  Beneath him, Isaac writhed and kicked and struggled in a blur of motion. A knee struck Philip in the stomach, knocking the wind from his lungs. In retaliation, he formed two fists and brought them down. They collided with something soft but made no sound upon impact. It was like he was wearing earplugs.

  He lifted his bound hands once more, but before he could deliver a second blow, Isaac threw him to the side. The next thing Philip knew, Isaac was on top of him, a fist raised, teeth bared. Then a harsh pain exploded in his jaw, and everything went black.

  21

  The sharp crack of gunfire from inside the warehouse made Jenn’s bowels turn to liquid.

  Her first thought was that Vincent had executed the mayor, but killing her wouldn’t make sense, not when the police hadn’t yet responded to his demands. He could have killed her husband instead, though, as a way of demonstrating his resolve. Or Philip. Would the man go that far? Would he murder his own son for betraying him?

  Dylan had frozen. Next to him, Liam held the radio a few inches from his mouth. All the other guards and police were watching him closely, waiting for instructions on how to proceed. As his thumb pressed the talk button, a second shot split the air.

  On instinct, Jenn ducked. Before she’d recovered, a third followed, sending her even lower, almost into a crouch. Vincent wasn’t executing hostages—his people were shooting at each other. Had Philip convinced someone to help take down his father?

  “We’re going in!” Dylan shouted, clearly having come to the same conclusion as Jenn, then charged toward the front door.

  Mikey fell in behind him. So did Bryce. Without thinking, and without fear or hesitation, Jenn followed, keeping her weapon low and her finger away from the trigger until she was ready to fire. She felt others to her rear and heard their boots clomp on the stairs leading up to the entrance.

  They went inside. Jenn’s training was in command of her every move. Twice a week before she died, with Dylan’s help, Val ran the guards through exercises where they cleared rooms in Sophie’s house and in the cabin. In Phoenix, Jenn marveled at the way Val moved like a soldier. Two months later, Jenn was a soldier, too.

  A short, dim hall stretched forward, terminating at the door that led, according to the bearded guard Jenn and Bryce had apprehended, into the warehouse, where there were four armed
guards, plus Vincent and now Philip. The mayor and her husband were supposedly tied to chairs at the far end.

  She passed a bathroom, then an office with a blow-up mattress on the floor and boards over the windows. The stink of rot tickled her nose, but the adrenaline was too fierce for her to care. Vincent Grierson, the man behind Val’s death, the man who wanted to send Allison to New River, was mere feet away. The end was so close she could taste it. Hopefully one of those three shots hadn’t killed him; he had to see her face and understand what he stole from her.

  His back flat to the wall beside the door, Bryce gripped the handle and flung it open inward. Dylan charged in first, gun up. He and Mikey fanned to the left and right, respectively. Jenn went straight through and took the middle. Shouts to drop weapons and surrender came from every direction, the voices blending together in an angry crescendo. She joined them, her lungs burning with each word while her brain processed the room and its threats.

  At the back, as the guard outside had said, there was a pair of chairs with bound hostages. To the right were two men, one straddling the other. The man on top had a square face and deep, dark eye sockets. When he noticed Jenn’s weapon pointed at his chest, his hands reached for the sky. Beneath him lay Philip. His eyelids were shut, and there was blood on his lip. At first glance, Jenn thought he was dead, but his head rolled over and his mouth moved. Surprisingly, relief filled her belly; for reasons she couldn’t explain, she was glad to see him alive.

  With a sense of urgency Jenn didn’t know he possessed, Mikey rushed over and forced Philip’s attacker to the floor.

  On the opposite side of the mayor, a woman who could have been the square-faced man’s twin sister sat slumped against the warehouse’s wall, her hand over her shoulder. Blood coated her fingers, and she wore a pained grimace. A rifle lay nearby, out of reach. She lifted her free arm as high as she could to signal her surrender.

  Directly in front of Jenn, near a long fold-out table, two men sprawled themselves out on their stomachs, limbs splayed like starfish. Bryce and a cop rushed over and pulled their arms behind their backs. Neither complained or resisted. When Jenn searched for blood or signs of injuries, she found none.

  Her pulse was beginning to slow. Though her fingers and toes continued to tingle with the anticipation of a fight, the room had been taken, the threats neutralized. All she was waiting for now was—

  “Clear!” Dylan called out.

  Feeling a hundred pounds lighter, Jenn lowered her rifle.

  And then she found him.

  Beneath the table, hiding like a coward, was Vincent Grierson. He sat with his arms holding his knees tightly to his chest, as Jenn had done during the shootout with the refugees on I-40. Never wanting to forget this moment, she took a mental snapshot. Now, whenever she thought about Vincent, this was who would come to mind.

  Dylan kicked away Philip’s empty AR, reached under the table, and gripped Vincent by the bicep. With a sharp tug, he coaxed him out, then forced him down so his face was flat to the dusty concrete floor.

  “Please!” Vincent cried. His lip trembled, and his whole body shook. “I won’t resist! I concede!”

  The sight of him brought on a torrent of memories: Val bumping her knee into the corner of the bed in Prescott, Val grimacing after a swig of Ed’s bourbon, Val gloating about winning at Connect Four, Val demonstrating how to shoot a rifle, Val giving Jenn a tour of her strangely cozy home and lending her Rainwater. Jenn expected to be overcome with rage, but she wasn’t—she was overcome with gratitude. She was lucky to have known Val, if only for such a short time.

  Dylan stood over a sobbing Vincent Grierson. “You want to do the honors?” he asked her.

  “With pleasure.” She crouched next to the leader of Citizens for Flagstaff, the man who ordered Val shot, and snapped her fingers to draw his attention. “Hey,” she commanded, smelling liquor and fear. “Look at me.”

  He lifted his head and watched her with bleary eyes. The bold, confident, arrogant monster whom she’d seen at the farm was gone, replaced by this sad, pathetic excuse for a man who hid when the shooting started. She almost pitied him.

  But not quite.

  From her pocket, she pulled out a zip tie. Dangling it dramatically in front of his face, she asked, unable to repress a wicked smirk, “Remember Valeria Flores?”

  * * *

  The second squad car, this one carrying a Hispanic man with glasses and a scrawny boy Jenn swore she had a class with in her freshman year at NAU, pulled through the gate and left the parking lot, headed for the police station. A few minutes earlier, Vincent, the man who’d pummeled Philip, and the guard with the beard were taken away in the first car. Ed and Yannick had driven the injured CFF woman to the hospital. The wound wasn’t life-threatening, so she would live. Presently, the mayor and her husband waited in the Nissan, both folded into each other for comfort, while Sophie kept watch and chewed on a stir stick.

  One squad car remained. In the back was Philip. Liam, bracing himself against the vehicle’s roof, leaned in and spoke with him. Gary sat in the driver’s seat, ready to cart Philip off to prison, where he’d hopefully spend the rest of his life.

  Jenn watched from the front steps. Her eyelids were heavy, and she couldn’t stop thinking about a bed made warm by Sam.

  Behind her, the door squeaked open, and out came Dylan. “There you are,” he said and sat beside her with a long groan.

  “Where else would I be?”

  “Figured you’d be celebrating with the rest of the guys.”

  She dug deep for a joke, but her mind was too muddled to work very hard, so she said, “Need some alone time, I guess.”

  “Amen to that.” He leaned back on his hands and yawned. “I’m an only child, so I get it.”

  “Only child? How did I not know that?”

  “Never asked, and I never told you.”

  “Weird,” she said. “You don’t seem like an only child. I always assumed you had brothers and sisters.”

  “Why’s that? You think only children are all self-obsessed loners?”

  “No,” she uttered, afraid that she’d offended him. “That’s not what I meant.”

  He slapped her shoulder. “Relax, Jansen. I’m messing with you.”

  Scowling, she pretended to punch him in the arm. “Not funny.”

  “Meh, I thought it was a little funny.”

  They sat in silence for a few moments while Liam continued speaking with Philip. From this far away, Jenn couldn’t hear the conversation, but she suspected that they were recounting what happened before the Beaumonts and police charged into the warehouse. “This all doesn’t feel real,” she said to Dylan. “It’s like I’m half-dreaming. I swear the farm was attacked a week ago.”

  A sound that she took for a lazy laugh came from deep in his throat. “A week? Try eleven hours.”

  “I know. It’s crazy.”

  Liam shut the door to the squad car. Before Gary pulled away, he gave Jenn and Dylan a short wave. She waved back as Liam slunk toward them, his limp worse than Jenn had ever seen it. “Not sure about you guys,” he began, “but I’m very much looking forward to lying down for a while.”

  “Hey,” she complained to Dylan, “if he gets a day off, why can’t I?”

  “Who said anything about a day off?” Liam countered. “I came to terms with never having another one of those as soon as the lights went out.” He leaned against the metal handrail and took all his weight off his left leg. “Thanks once again for your help today. Feel like I’ve been saying that a lot lately.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Dylan said. “We’re all on the same team here.”

  “What did Philip say?” Jenn asked and nodded toward where Gary had driven off in the squad car. “He tell you what happened before we got in there?”

  Liam eased himself down and sat on the bottom step. Without turning around, he said to her, “The basics, yeah. We’ll get a full report out of him at the station, but it sounds like Vincen
t caught on to what he was trying to do, then tied him up. Philip was able to convince the guy with glasses—Esteban Ortiz, a fifth-grade teacher, if you can believe it—to see reason. The kid backed him. Apparently Vincent tried to reach for Philip’s empty AR, so Philip tackled one of his dad’s people. Three shots later, the girl was hit. The other two missed. Then we were barging in there. I think it all happened in about thirty seconds.”

  “Felt like thirty minutes,” Jenn said.

  Liam turned so that his left leg was flat on the step and his back rested against the handrail. “It’s the same in the service. Lots of hurry up and wait, then a flurry of action that you can’t really describe afterward. You’ll get used to it.”

  You’ll get used to it. Liam probably hadn’t meant much by the sentence, but there was a lot to unpack: the promise that this wouldn’t be the last fight, the acknowledgment that Jenn was where she belonged, the recognition that she was one of them now—part of the group defending Flagstaff and its people. A sense of pride and accomplishment warmed her from head to toe, but the warmth made her crave a nap even more.

  Dylan slapped his knees as though he was preparing to stand. The gesture reminded her of Liam. When compared to what they went through in West Ukraine, the events of the past two weeks were likely tame. A part of Jenn admired their strength and resilience. Another part feared that she, too, would grow numb to the violence, that she would begin to regard combat and war and death as little more than a normal day’s work. Then again, she was nearly there already; last night, she shot three people, and they had hardly etched themselves into her memory. The only face she could see was that of the woman with the blonde bun, and even then, the details were fading fast. Not like Yankees Hat, whose rotten teeth, thinning hair, and thick stench she could still imagine vividly on command.

  “Jansen,” Dylan said. “Let’s go check on the guys.”

  “I’m going to rest here for a bit.” Liam wiggled a few times to get comfortable, then joked, “If you need me, find Mikey instead.”