by B. C. Tweedt
“BUT HE’S RIGHT ABOUT ONE THING.”
But that was then, and this was now. This time he was prepared to make a sacrifice for the greater good. Leaving would mean a greater debt to pay. More black smears on his white G. But now he was a soldier. He was meant to obey.
“Kit, come.”
But Kit didn’t come.
“TEXANS DON’T RUN.”
“Let’s go boy. We have to go.”
It was like Kit didn’t believe him. He whimpered instead. Looked down the alley of vans, and then back at Greyson – his glassy eyes pleading as if wanting to be let outside.
“BUT BECKER WILL.”
“Kit…”
But Kit dashed away into the cheering crowd.
[Leave him!]
Greyson heard the words more clearly than they were meant to be heard.
Leave him behind?
No. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t leave anyone behind. Ever again.
Greyson threw aside his conscience, cursed under his breath, and darted after his dog.
Chapter 37
“Get in!” Sydney shouted, pointing at Mrs. Tomlinson’s SUV.
“Why?” Jordan was pathetic. Crying. Sniveling.
“You want the antidote? Just do it.” She had to believe her own lie enough to pass it off as truth.
Glaring at her, he opened the door and sat in the passenger seat. She took the driver’s seat, turned on the satellite radio and turned it to 81.5. There was nothing but static. She fished the headphones from her pocket and plugged them into a special box next to the radio, ignoring Jordan’s stares and questions. He called her a liar, asked her where the antidote was, and mixed angry threats with pleas for mercy.
“Here’s the script. Don’t say anything different. You read the script just like your dad would, you get the antidote. You don’t sound like him, or read it wrong, you die painfully.” She held out the wrinkled piece of paper.
His shaking hand grabbed it, and he mouthed the words.
“Ready?” she asked, glancing at her watch.
They had five minutes.
“What is this?” he asked. “Tell me what it is.”
“We’re going to stop a terrorist attack.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“Don’t screw this up. Read it in three, two, one.”
She turned the microphone on and nodded at him.
Jordan swallowed hard, staring at the penciled words. His mouth formed them, but they couldn’t come out.
She glared at him and finally he choked them out.
“P-pontiac Solstice. B-bravo, Nine, Kilo, M-mike, Kilo, Seven, Victor…”
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Greyson tore through the crowd, pushing at the bodies, but the path was getting thinner and thinner. People were pressed against one another and pushed back at him as he followed Kit toward the front of the leaning City Hall, its shadow now looming over them as if the whole building was on a slow tilt, toppling onto him and the hundreds below. The loudspeakers cranked out the voice of a different man – this one not on the floating platform, but on the balcony of City Hall – a stout, imposing man in army fatigues, reading from a loose paper in his hand. His words met with jeers and wild shouts as the seconds to martial law ticked away.
“THIS IS GENERAL BORLAUG. BY EXECUTIVE ORDER 3179, IN ORDER TO PRESERVE ORDER AND MAINTAIN CIVILITY DURING THE ELECTION PROCESS…”
“Kit…” Greyson whispered, chasing the dog’s tail as he neared the edge of the crowd.
“…SO AS TO ALLOW THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE TO BE HEARD THROUGH MEANS OF THE VOTE…”
The crowd was buzzing with anticipation, the peoples’ attention swinging toward the perimeter where Army trucks began sweeping around the edges. Greyson jostled through the crowd, avoiding the swinging elbows.
“THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES…”
Greyson shimmied to the edge of the crowd but found himself face to face with another riot cop. Kit sniffed at the cop’s feet, but looked to Greyson. He whined.
“…IN ACCORDANCE WITH SECTION 134.8 OF THE VIGILANT SHEPHERD ACT…”
Kit whined again as Greyson knelt by him and grabbed his collar in anger. “Geez, Kit. What’s with you? We have to get back.”
He yanked the dog back toward the crowd. But it was Greyson who was yanked back. Kit didn’t want to move and the muscular dog got its way, pawing at the cop’s leg with an insistent growl.
“HEREBY DECLARE THE CITY OF DALLAS, TEXAS…”
“Greyson!” Windsor ran up to Greyson, out of breath. “We have to get out of here.”
The cop must have heard something strange. So strange that he cocked his head and pulled up his helmet’s visor. His brow was furrowed as he looked down on the boys.
Greyson’s HUD locked on to the man’s eyes as they locked on to his own.
“Greyson? Greyson Gray?”
Greyson’s mouth dropped as Kit again pawed at the man’s leg.
[It’s PatriARC.]
“…UNDER MARTIAL LAW.”
Chapter 38
Verbal chaos had erupted in the crowd. Angry jeers mixed with screams. Masks and helmets emerged. Chants and commands mixed with the slow, trance-like hymns sung by a gospel quartet; but above the din rose the all-powerful microphone that the General controlled from above.
“PEACEFULLY, IN AN ORDERLY FASHION, MAKE YOUR WAY TO THE BUSES ON GRIFFITH STREET. THERE IS NO NEED TO BE AFRAID…IF YOU OBEY.”
But Greyson was already afraid. He didn’t know what to do as he stared down PatriARC and the automatic rifle he held.
Before Greyson could even think to stop him, PatriARC turned on his heels and left, racing behind the line of cops.
[Don’t give chase. Leave him to us.]
Kit jerked forward, but Greyson held him back. “No boy. Stay.”
The gap PatriARC had left in the ranks of cops was quickly filled. Windsor gave him an odd look, but shrugged it off as if the cop was just a cop.
And just like that, his job was done.
Done. Mission accomplished. He’d found PatriARC for Rubicon.
But Drake didn’t give him time to gloat. “There you are!” Drake said, pushing through the crowd to his side. “You find him?”
Beep, Grimes, and Ankeny were right behind him. There was urgency in their eyes, gritting their teeth.
“Yes. Rubi…my team will get him now.”
Drake let it sink in. Greyson could tell he had more questions, but he withheld them.
“THOSE WHO STAY ARE VIOLATING A DIRECT ORDER FROM THE UNITED STATES MILITARY. THOSE WHO STAY WILL NOT BE GIVEN THE CHANCE TO VOTE. YOU WANT CHANGE? YOU WANT TO BE HEARD? THEN TAKE THE BUS.”
“Then it’s time to get us out,” Drake said. “And you better do it soon.”
“Right,” Greyson said, remembering. “Now to get out of here…”
He tried to see over the heads of the crowd, with their protest signs and cowboy hats, but his growth spurt hadn’t yet taken him high enough. With a hop, he could see a steady stream of people rushing toward the caravan of buses, but more seemed to be taking their places, choosing instead to press closer to City Hall.
The army had anticipated their decision.
The trucks unloaded their soldiers, who ran to their stations behind the riot cops, guarding the General’s new fortress. Others were unloading to the east, west, and north, encircling those who stayed.
“YOU HAVE TWO MINUTES TO COMPLY.”
“We can get you out,” Drake assured. “Where are we headed?”
[Getting interference…] came Forge’s voice, interrupted by static. [Rendezvous…] And then nothing.
“Come again?”
He listened, but there was no response. Nothing.
Drake and the others were watching him. “Greyson?”
Greyson shook off his concern and turned to see the 50-story glass skyscraper that had been their assigned ren
dezvous. Half a mile away. “Thanksgiving Tower.”
Drake’s squad turned to look with him, just as overwhelmed at the distance.
“Windsor,” Drake began. “You’re on. Take us there.”
Windsor smiled. He’d been described as a living map of Dallas. He knew the ins and outs and how best to transverse them. He was the lightest on his feet, a self-described lover of free-running, and a thrill seeker. The challenge lit up his face even more than usual. “Right on. Let’s go!”
They barreled through the crowd after Windsor. Angry shouts rang out in southern twang, but they continued forward, aware of the drones scanning faces and the soldiers encircling the crowd on all sides.
Clonk, clonk, clonk, clonk.
Greyson snapped toward the sound, trying to pick it out above the cacophony. A group of soldiers had penetrated the crowd, taken control of the protestor’s microphone with a screech and howls of protest. Hissing buses began to drive away, drones buzzed overhead, descending from the clouds like Frisbees stuck in a draft, but the clonking was rhythmic, like footsteps.
Clonk, clonk, clonk.
He searched for the source of the sound. It was coming from the east and the west. Then he saw it. A flash of something clomping between army trucks. It was lurching. Big. Gray.
Then it disappeared behind another truck.
Clonk, clonk, clonk.
The way back to Belo was still open, and people were filing through, but the gap was shrinking.
“Hurry!”
A burly cowboy grabbed at Drake. “Y’all ain’t runnin’, are ya? They ain’t but big hat, no cattle.”
Greyson stopped to help, recognizing the cowboy as Anderson Dawes – the country singer who sang on stage earlier – but Drake wrestled free.
“Wait,” Anderson said. “Do I know you?”
Drake smiled at him even as he hustled away. “You knew my dad, but I gotta go,” Drake responded. Sprinting further, Drake turned back to warn him. “They’re fixin’ to fight!”
He joined Greyson, who gave him a look. Greyson wanted to ask him how Anderson Dawes knew him, but that could wait. Instead, he raced ahead, aiming for the gap.
But out of the corners of his eyes he finally saw them. Two metallic monsters pounding toward them from both sides.
CLONK, CLONK, CLONK!
Greyson skidded to a stop on the pavement as the gap was closed.
Kit growled low and deep.
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“What’s wrong? Everything is green-light.” came the voice through the SUV’s speakers.
Sydney jutted her head at the paper and pointed at the next line.
Jordan read the words from the wavering sheet of paper in front of him, but his eyes were clearly looking beyond the paper, searching for an explanation. “Tell me what a successful test looks like.”
There was a brief pause.
Sydney held her breath, ignoring Jordan’s painful confusion. Sweat was beading on his forehead, dripping down his temples.
He sounded a lot like his father. A lot. But not exactly.
Can the man tell?
“What a successful…what kind of question…?”
Sydney jabbed her finger at the same line and Jordan read it again.
The man scoffed. “You don’t need to remind me, Peter. If you don’t trust me at this point…”
Suddenly Jordan came alive. “Tell me now!”
Sydney jerked, startled at his outburst. Jordan seemed surprised as well, his red eyes flustered, latched onto the dash.
As the man on the other end stammered for a response, Sydney couldn’t help but to rethink her idea. Maybe Jordan had a mind after all. Maybe he too wanted to know what his dad was up to.
“Fine. If this is some sort of word trap, I’ll…”
“You’ll what?” Jordan interrupted, his body a furnace.
The man stopped and Jordan and Sydney stared at each other for a moment, hoping that he hadn’t gone too far. Then she glanced at her watch.
Hurry. Please hurry.
“The uplink will proceed through the back door without delay,” the man began robotically, “leaving nothing to back-trace. Sixteen in Texas and twelve in Oklahoma will come under our control. They will maneuver, track, fire, and self-destruct under command. The blame for the incidents in Dallas and the FEMA camp will fall solely on the Air Force, Becker, and the government. If successful, Cicada will be a go.”
Sydney searched for a line of the script that would work but couldn’t find any. Her finger shook, but Jordan looked at her, sure of himself.
“Sixteen what in Texas?” Jordan asked. “What will come under our control?”
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Greyson couldn’t breathe. He held his arms out in an attempt to shield his new friends from the metal beasts.
Each had four robotic legs stomping underneath their bulky, armor-plated bodies. Each was the size of a small rhinoceros, their heads with a flashing display for eyes, scrolling messages that shouted ‘DO NOT MOVE’ at the crowd. As they turned in Greyson’s direction, they waddled and lumbered in a stiff, rigid motion, seeming to teeter on the edge of balance, but lumbering forward on their own.
“Riot rhinos,” Windsor stated.
How fitting.
“They’re cute, huh?” Beep asked with a smile.
“Not really,” Greyson said. “Let’s go around.”
But sooner than he had finished, a band of riot cops swung in to the gap in front of the beast and pushed them back into the crowd. By now the protestors were growing worried, chanting louder, throwing things – bottles, shoes, whatever they could find.
The kids ducked a flying shoe as they backed into the crowd. There had to be hundreds of them at least, and now they were completely surrounded – herded together like cattle. Big hat, no cattle? No, they had cattle after all.
“THOSE WHO OBSERVE OUR ACTIONS WILL SEE THAT WE ARE HERE TO PROTECT AND SERVE LAW-ABIDING CITIZENS. UNFORTUNATELY FOR YOU, LAW-BREAKERS, YOU HAVE CHOSEN TO DISOBEY A DIRECT ORDER OF YOUR GOVERNMENT. YOU WILL BE DETAINED.”
“What do we do now?” Beep asked.
“We…” Greyson and Drake began at the same time.
Greyson apologized and nodded for Drake to go.
“If they do what they did in Austin, we wait out sonic and paint. Then we distract and go.”
“Sonic? Paint?” Greyson asked.
As a response, Drake whipped his guitar case around and reached inside. “Here!” His whisper was heavy with fear. “You’ll need these.” He held out a pair of earplugs. “And the umbrellas.”
Questions pestered Greyson’s mind, but things were moving too fast to question. He obeyed Drake, grabbing the plugs and putting them in a free pouch.
Drake then handed out umbrellas. “On my word, we open them like shields.”
Confused, Greyson gulped down his fear, staring down the riot rhino. At the same time he analyzed his HUD. The map laid out possible routes to Thanksgiving Tower with distance and time. No matter which one he took, they wouldn’t make it in time.
“Diablo. You there? Forge?”
No answer.
“Come in guys. I need your help.”
Still no answer. Where can they be?
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“PatriARC’s in your path. Take him down,” Diablo whispered from his perch behind the skyscraper’s open window.
He followed PatriARC in his scope, expecting to see Grover and Stack slip from the alley and incapacitate the man and his small cadre. But the time came and passed.
“Missed window. What happened?”
After a silent beat, Diablo pulled his rifle from the windowsill and snapped his paranoid gaze to the empty room behind him. Papers on desks ruffled in the breeze. A dark doorway exposed the hallway where he had laid his motion mine, but the little green light told him it was still functioning.
The only thing not functioning was their only channel of communication.
“Terrapin. Repeat. Terrapin,” he whispered the abort code.
His lip curled with hatred. He knew what had disrupted their communication, and it scared him.
StoneWater.
They didn’t scare him like other people were scared, in the sense of there being fear. This type of scare was the type basejumpers felt before jumping off a cliff. It was not fear of dying or injury. It was thrill. Excitement. Adrenaline. A body’s natural reaction to a danger. When confronted with a danger to its survival, it was natural for a body to choose flight or fight. Either way, it needed a boost – a temporary high – to aid in its fight or its flight.
In this case, it would be fight.
The mine’s light blinked off. Hacked. Disabled.
He flipped his goggles to infrared, leveled his sniper rifle and shot two rounds into the wall, shattering the plaster. In another moment he had rolled a grenade into the hall and dove behind a desk. The two men who hadn’t been in the path of his 50-caliber bullets sprung through the doorway, firing automatic rifles just before being engulfed in the grenade’s explosion.
Knowing he had only moments before StoneWater’s reinforcements arrived, Diablo rose and activated two drone-grenades. Tiny propellers buzzed as they hovered in place, even as Diablo slid to the ground next to the men downed by his grenade.
All at once, the reinforcements came. Two roped in from outside, zipping through the windows in a mighty crash that sent a glass wave over desktops and industrial carpet. Three more fully armored reinforcements breeched the opposite wall with a bang, slipping through the fresh hole with weapons forward.
The ones coming through the windows didn’t have time to unlatch themselves from the ropes before the two drone-grenades buzzed at their chests like rabid hornets. They stuck like cement and exploded a second later, sending the two unfortunate soldiers back through the windows from which they had come.
At the same time, the ones crouch-walking from the hole in the wall didn’t see Diablo laying as a dead man next to their comrades – his gun-hand emerging from one’s armpit.
