Sanctuary

by Alan Janney

  “Outlaw, you alive?” Samantha called. “I need you up here.”

  I pulled myself out of a supply closet, covered in buckets and mops and spray bottles. “Okay,” I groaned. “Gimme a sec.” The thin carpet glistened with sharp flecks. This floor appeared to be empty. At least offices in this engineering firm were. A good sign. I staggered out.

  “Harrier jets approaching,” Puck warned. “Coming in from the west, instead of south.”

  “Croc, you need to find a hiding spot,” Samantha called. “Those jets might have air-to-air missiles.” I could hear noises of her reloading. “And I’m not sure how much help I’ll be. Outlaw, where are you?”

  “I’m coming,” I grumbled.

  “The Chemist is broadcasting live from his helicopter,” Puck announced. “But the camera is out of focus on his face. I can’t tell where…”

  I asked, “What’s that maniac saying to the camera?”

  “He’s describing the future. A new age, ruled by his Chosen. Earlier he recited a poem about the Outlaw.”

  Four minutes later, I laid down at Samantha’s feet, on the hot tarred rooftop, gasping. “That’s…a long…climb…”

  She wrinkled her nose. “You’re all gross and dusty. Get up, wimp.”

  “Shut up,” I wheezed. “Just need…a quick nap…”

  “Bad place for a nap. We’re exposed and we’ve got enemies inbound.”

  Puck said, “I have bad news and good news.”

  “Bad news.”

  “America sent reinforcement fighters, but they’re still thirty minutes away. Won’t get here in time.”

  “Good news?”

  “Two pieces of good news, actually!” Puck chirped. “First, the final Apache just crash landed to the north. It was forced down by police with assault rifles.”

  “There you go, Los Angeles,” Samantha nodded grimly. “Good work.” She was scanning the western horizon with her scope.

  “Woohoo,” I offered weakly.

  “Secondly, I have Isaac Anderson on the line.”

  “Anderson,” I yelled into the mic with all the air I had. It wasn’t much. “We need to stop the inbound Harrier jets. Or at least stall.”

  “I’m here,” Anderson called. My ear piece was getting crowded with voices. “I’m in the FBI’s last helicopter, a Little Bird. I’ve got a launcher and two rockets. That’s all we could find on short notice. The army won’t get here in time.”

  “You’ll only get one shot off before those Harriers blow you out of the sky,” Samantha warned.

  “I know. But we have to try.”

  “And here they come.”

  I stood beside Samantha and peered west. The Harrier Jump Jets were fifty feet off the ground, skimming houses. They were fast. We couldn’t stop them. Helicopters were one thing, but fighter jets moving at three hundred miles per hour were another.

  “I see them. Preparing to launch,” Anderson said.

  “He’s going to fire the rocket launcher from inside that tiny chopper’s backseat,” Samantha chuckled. “Going to be loud. And hot.”

  “Damn right it is,” he radioed, and he fired. We couldn’t see his vehicle, but a missile flared from the downtown maze and arced towards the Harriers.

  These pilots were good. They scrambled and climbed into the atmosphere, and the rocket missed by a mile. We watched them thunder overhead, turbines hurting our ears. The Jump Jet wings were freighted with deadly Maverick missiles.

  “I’m never going to hit those bastards,” Samantha snarled, tracing jets through the air from behind her scope. I watched. Nothing else I could do.

  All three Harriers loosed a Maverick missile on their first pass above Downtown. The missiles dove into the city bowels and connected with three different structures. The earth shook. Fire plumed east of us.

  The Harriers executed sharp turns and came roaring back, prepared for another bombing run. They could strafe with impunity until exhausting missile supplies. Samantha fired her whole magazine to no effect. Three more Mavericks fell and the city was rocked to its foundations. Los Angeles was a city in torment.

  The Harriers were just past us when one erupted. A lance of fire pierced the turbines and the Jump Jet loudly broke apart. The pilot ejected.

  “Got one!” Anderson announced. “But now I’m out of rockets.”

  Puck laughed, “But the Navy isn’t! Way to go, USS Gravely! Watch this!”

  Two massive eruptions shattered the sky, larger and more violent than Isaac’s rocket impact.

  The Harriers had flown high enough in the sky to be fired upon from ten miles away. The naval destroyer, USS Gravely, had launched three guided missiles at the Harriers during their first staffing run. The missiles arrived and connected with the final two Jump Jets as they banked over Korea Town. Instant destruction.

  Reverberations caromed off remaining downtown windows. Burning gasoline and debris filtered down to earth.

  Samantha and I watched the show, our hearts heavy with loss and massacre.

  But we’d forgotten about our real enemy. He attacked from behind.

  Puck cried, “Sammy, move!”

  The Chemist’s television chopper rose straight up from the eastern face of our tower. We turned in time to see his aircraft plunge, poor Carla’s eyes scared and angry. He was ramming the tower’s helipad, kamikaze-style.

  In that instant, I saw how it would happen.

  He was too close. We couldn’t reach the open air before his machine detonated. We’d be engulfed in fire. Even if we could jump, Samantha was dead. She wore no parachute. And she was too far from me.

  We would die.

  So would he.

  So would Carla. And the pilot, and the girl operating the camera.

  I could see the Chemist. I could hear him screaming.

  I was almost too tired to care.

  But I didn’t want to disappoint Katie.

  I bolted for Samantha. Maybe I could reach her. Maybe the explosion would throw us out of harm’s way. Maybe we could land before we burned to death. Maybe a miracle.

  “Not today, ya tosser!” Croc laughed.

  Croc’s FBI Little Bird materialized out of nowhere and plowed into the Chemist’s television chopper. The two machines tangled, a riot of twisted metal, and glanced off the edge of the City National, swaying the entire high-rise.

  Croc rammed him! Sacrificed himself to save us! Above the screaming steel, the Chemist howled in rage.

  The wreckage plunged in slow motion. Nine hundred feet is a long way to fall. An eternity.

  “Croc!” Samantha cried. She slid to the edge, an inch from falling, and watched in horror. “NO!”

  Crackles of static reached our ears.

  “…now, Sammy-girl…all my love, the rest of your long gorgeous life…my pretty sheila…”

  Spilled gasoline caught fire. The ruined vehicles touched down. 5th Street became an inferno, instantly destroying the beautiful street and the beautiful life of our dear friend Mitchell.

  * * *

  Samantha and I remained on the tower another hour. Too exhausted and heartbroken to evacuate.

  Downtown Los Angeles still stood. But it was being rapidly overrun by hundreds of Infected and twenty thousand drugged gunmen.

  As the dust settled and reports began coming in, we learned the Chemist had attacked multiple locations. Multiple BIG locations.

  Houston was being invaded, evidently by Infected in substantial numbers. Videos also showed assailants dressed like the Outlaw.

  Seattle was under attack too.

  Plus, additional California military bases were being ambushed, and their vehicles immobilized.

  Every report was the same: the enemy’s goal wasn’t death, but destruction of property and vehicles. He wasn’t after lives; he was after structures and systems. He was disabling the country, piece by piece.

  “Think Martin died?” I asked Samantha after we stared at the azure infinity for forty-five minutes.

  “Dou
bt it.” Her face, like mine, was a mask of caked dirt and tears. “The older we get, the stronger. The harder. The faster.”

  “Carter was right,” I sighed. “Los Angeles was already lost.”

  “No. No, we saved thousands of lives today. Those lives weren’t lost. The Chemist didn’t get them. We did the right thing.”

  Puck spoke up. “Meanwhile stupid ‘ol Carter is just circling New Mexico, looking for a place to land. All airstrips are closed. Even if he made it to Houston, George Bush International is locked down tight.”

  I grabbed Samantha’s hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back, uncharacteristic of her. She must’ve been as stressed and overwhelmed as me. “Thanks for coming back,” I said.

  “We’re a team. That’s what we do.”

  “Yeah,” Puck said. “We are a team.”

  Anderson arrived in his small FBI chopper and plucked us off the helipad. We were too tired to fight the gunmen that Puck reported were about to arrive.

  We flew north, away from Downtown, away from towers and smoke and fires and sirens. Away from mayhem.

  And towards Katie.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Thursday, November 25. 2018

  Samantha Gear

  Katie and her mother came over to Chase’s house for Thanksgiving. So did Lee. (His parents approved of, but did not celebrate, Thanksgiving. Cory’s parents, on the other hand, invited their whole extended family, so he couldn’t come.)

  I do not cook. So my contribution was a new table that would hold us all. The Jackson tribe had grown in size considerably since their last Thanksgiving.

  It was an extravagant feast, especially for me because I hadn’t attended a Thanksgiving meal since I was eighteen. Chase is weird like that; he invites everyone into his life, including the lost and lonely, like me. He even asked Carter, but never received a response.

  Like many families in America, we ate and drank and laughed to intentionally spite the Chemist. There were signs that people were uniting against him. Right after he seized downtown Los Angeles, the Compton community finally united and heaved out the remnants of his forces. The citizens banded together and took back their city.

  But there could be no such rebellion downtown. The people had fled and they weren’t returning. Downtown was not a besieged American city; it was an empty shell, occupied by terrorists with captives. It was a fortress pure and simple, brazenly defying the world. The hostages were not allowed to roam free; they were locked away in the towers. Several national figures were missing, including television personality Teresa Triplett and movie star Natalie North. Chase was especially upset over those two.

  The Chemist was alive. He made a brief appearance after the helicopter crash. But now? No idea. Maybe here. Maybe Houston. Maybe Antarctica.

  I snuck back to the wreckage to confirm Croc’s death, but I already knew the truth. I found his remains within the mangled cockpit. Carla’s body was still strapped to the burnt fuselage. She’d been brave; wish we could have helped her. I salvaged and buried Croc’s charred cowboy boots, and I wept. Sweet Croc deserved better. He was one of the few Infected with a clean and untainted soul.

  I also discovered and returned Chase’s new Thunder Stick. At least that’s what I call it. It was unscathed, lodged inside a Black Hawk’s burnt carcass. Might be useful in upcoming battles.

  Houston and Seattle still smoldered, their power grids and public services all decimated. The Chemist’s forces retreated after the initial attack, blending back into the population, waiting to strike again.

  He had also destroyed key sections of oil pipelines coming out of Canada and Houston. Much of the country would soon experience crippling oil shortages.

  Despite all the gloom, hope still rose. The world had watched his forces fail in Los Angeles. The towers still stood in direct defiance of his plans. They were enemy territory now, but they hadn’t fallen. Nor would we.

  The media, the military, and the citizenry all cried out for the Outlaw and his team. Now was the time for unity. Now was the time to stand together.

  And we would. Chase had decided to meet with Isaac Anderson’s select group of loyal government officials soon. No more hiding. No more secrets. No more masks.

  He was going to change the world.

  Anderson’s team had taken custody of Tank and several other incarcerated Infected. They also located several large stores of the super drug, and soon they’d understand what was in the mixture.

  We still had a job to do, but today was for family and love. Chase and Katie glowed like twin suns orbiting each other, generating irrepressible heat and shining despite the darkness. Beauty and the beautiful beast, unable to keep hands off each other.

  We had just started on chocolate pies when the doorbell rang.

  “I’ll get it,” I said. I rose from my place next to Richard and squeezed his thick shoulder before walking to the front door.

  An unfamiliar man was there. A black man, about my age, with a buzzcut, sitting in an electrified wheelchair. A very impressive RV was parked on the street. Looked more like a space shuttle.

  He smiled sheepishly and said, “Hey dummy. Can I come in? Chase said I was invited.”

  I didn’t know the face, but I knew that voice!

  “Puck!!”

  The End

  Epilogue.

  The Chronicles of Martin Patterson

  Emperor of the New Age

  January 4. Year Two (2019).

  As recorded by Teresa Triplett

  We are woken in the middle of the night. The Father calls, so I dress quickly at gunpoint. My new roommate, Natalie North (perhaps the most famous hostage of all time?), is not allowed to accompany us.

  I am taken into the basement of the Ritz, the hotel where I’ve been living. The Father has use of an underground labyrinth that connects him with many of the city’s more important structures; part of the maze passes below the Ritz apparently. I’m taken down corridors until I’m hopelessly lost, and then left with him.

  His mania has grown. He sings and quotes poems incessantly. We hear him laughing at all hours of the night.

  This chamber is dark. Only a lamp in the corner. The air reeks of metal, iron in particular. He’s gathered a macabre collection of medical equipment and technology, but I know this is not one of his fabled laboratories.

  A tube connects his arm to a blood bag. He is being drained of blood every moment of the day. Bags of the stuff lay on tables, waiting to be stored or used immediately. Nearby, raw meat and fresh spinach await ingestion. One of his attendants once explained that the Father consumes over seven pounds of meat and vegetables per day, and drinks a comparable volume of water and juice. And yet he still looks like a shrunken cadaver.

  The old man is shaking and sweating. His eyes are huge, unblinking. His pallor is pale, partly from the glow of the computer monitor. He giggles and whispers at the screen.

  He’s looking at two digital photographs. One is a newspaper photo taken at a funeral service, zoomed in on the mourners. I know that funeral. I covered it for Channel Four News, the funeral of Hannah Walker, the beautiful blonde girl killed in Compton.

  The other photo is from a local football game, with an inset profile of star quarterback Chase Jackson.

  He is whispering, “…I found him…I found you, dear boy…”

  From the Author

  The most commonly asked question I get is…

  How many books will there be in the Outlaw series?

  Here’s your answer:

  Chase’s entire adventure will last eight books. (Maybe nine. But I think I can wrap it up in eight.) However, after Book Four the story will look dramatically different. The first four books are a mini-series within the overall story. Books Five and Six will be a miniseries. And Seven and Eight will be a miniseries. I might even label them differently.

  That sounds confusing. Think of the Star Wars movies. There will be nine total movies in the Star Wars story arc, but there are three distinc
t trilogies within those nine.

  Same with the Outlaw series.

  The Outlaw is the star of the show. But it’s going to be a wild ride.

  I will try to deliver two books a year until the story is done (and maybe even a few tangential short stories). Waiting a decade on one series is the worst.

  Thanks for reading.

  Text me and let me know what you think.

  (260) 673-5450

  Leave Amazon feedback. Pleeeeeeease.

  Find The Outlaw on Facebook

  Find me on Twitter or Instagram

  Many thanks to everyone involved

  - artists (Anne Pierson, Mike Corley, Jeff Brown, Nimesh Niyomal)

  - test readers (Sarah, Liz, Becky, Will, Anne, and Debbie [twice!])

  - formatting (Polgarus Studio)

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One