Villain

by Michael Grant

  But he got past that very, very quickly.

  Being Justin, he accompanied his gasping panic with a self-justifying narrative. “Not my problem . . . outta there! Screw all of them . . . not standing around trying to be Captain Courageous . . . every man for himself . . . situation like this . . . one of the most important young artists . . . any kind of artist, to hell with young . . . not cannon fodder, I’m Justin DeVeere!”

  Of course, he was Justin DeVeere with a control chip in the back of his neck, right where a tap on an app could send waves of pain through him. Yeah, that was an issue. If DiMarco survived—and somehow he expected that, like a cockroach, she would survive—she could still activate the chip any time she wanted.

  Well, depending on what kind of transmitter she had. Did it work from satellites? That would be bad.

  Suddenly he burst from the woods onto a nicely paved two-lane road.

  “No!” he cried. He had been running in what he hoped was a straight line, but it was apparently just an arc, because he was back at the main road, but still not at the front gate.

  His sense of direction was poor, but he was in luck, because coming from the Ranch was a flatbed truck, followed by an assortment of official vehicles and private cars. It was like something out of a Mad Max movie. It was monsters on parade.

  The flatbed truck pulled to a stop, and Justin gaped at the cyborg monster occupying most of the cargo area.

  And gaped harder when the creature swiveled a hideously deadly-looking chain gun toward him.

  “You staff or prisoner?” the cyborg demanded.

  “Me? I’m . . . I’m like you,” Justin stammered. “I mean, not a cyborg, but a rock guy. You know, Rockborn. A mutant.”

  “Yeah, you’re too young to be staff.” This judgment was rendered by the human eyes behind a tank-like slit. “I’m Master Sergeant Matthew Tolliver. You coming with us?”

  “Where are you going?” Justin asked.

  “Las Vegas.”

  Justin could have asked why. He should have asked why. But at the moment he had an invitation to Vegas from a terrifying cyborg with machine guns and rockets.

  So, Vegas. Yeah, that would be perfect. He would be able to disappear into a crowd of tourists. And if he couldn’t parlay his good looks and artsy bullshit into finding a sugar momma in Vegas, well . . .

  “Vegas it is,” Justin said.

  “Vegas and Valhalla!” Tolliver said grimly. “Semper Fi!”

  Justin knew what Valhalla meant. It was the Norse heaven, the Viking heaven, where any Norse warrior who had died with a sword in his hand would sit at Odin’s table surrounded by other honored dead warriors and drink ale.

  It made Justin think of ale.

  It made Justin think of doing a series of mythology-inspired paintings. Someday.

  It did not make Justin wonder why a Marine Corps master sergeant turned into an NRA wet dream of a cyborg would be referencing the celestial home of men who died in battle.

  So Justin said, “Yeah!” with all the enthusiasm he could muster, and hauled himself up onto the flatbed, a young man thinking he’d just been handed a free pass out of trouble by an older man who saw his best future being a righteous death.

  CHAPTER 21

  With Great Power Comes Pure Malice

  DILLON POE STOOD in the doorway of Triunfo, a tall, gold pillar of a hotel, now entirely under his control thanks to his voice and to the battering power of a Coors beer truck his Cheerios had used to smash in the doors.

  He was furious that Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram had been taken down. Even YouTube! How was a desperate nation going to get its Jenna Marbles and PewDiePie fixes?

  The major media were dumb but, sadly, they weren’t dumb enough to broadcast his video. The video would certainly have already reached a lot of people anyway—it had been two hours before Facebook had taken it down, and three hours before some bright person in the government had ordered a shutdown of all social media. But he knew without active social media he would reach only thousands, not millions.

  The battle was coming, and he needed an army of his own. But Nevada was a small state in population, and as a practical matter the only large population center close enough to provide the huge numbers he wanted that was near enough to be useful was Los Angeles. How many Angelenos would hear his call in time? People coming from Kansas two days from now were not going to save his ass.

  It amused Dillon to realize that at least some people overseas would have seen his video and were now desperately trying to catch a flight to Las Vegas. Well, good luck with that—the airport was closed. He imagined various Dutch or Japanese or Kenyan people spending the rest of their lives trying to follow his order.

  Funny. Dark funny, like The Onion, or Frankie Boyle, but funny.

  If only he could speak directly to the soldiers rolling up from the south, followed by news cameras and breathless news anchors as adoring as if the column was Jesus, Jehovah, and Mohammed all coming together to save the day. But how? He could grab a bullhorn, and maybe reach some of the troops, but they’d be in loud, armored vehicles, many wearing headphones . . . Yeah, that wasn’t a solution. Anyway, he wasn’t crazy about exposing himself physically to a column of tanks: he was all-powerful, but he was not bulletproof.

  The Strip was largely unpopulated now aside from earlier iterations of his slaves still trying to carry out his old orders. There must still be lots of people in the greater Las Vegas metro area. But how could he reach them? Fear rose inside him like a sickness.

  How did all this happen? Just because I got myself thrown into the drunk tank?

  Notebook: Something about tanks and drunk tanks. Explosive vomiting like cannon?

  He had moved from the stadium to the Triunfo, a hotel without a casino, on the theory that hotel security was less prepared, less trained than casino security. That had proved correct—the Triunfo’s security had ear coverings, but the staff and tourists milling like frightened sheep in the lobby had not been protected. They had made short work of the security team.

  But even the relatively easy conquering of the Triunfo had left him rattled. One of his mind-controlled slaves had badly injured one of his Cheerios, and he’d had to leave him behind to be torn apart by the mobs Dillon had created. His mobs were greatly diminished in number, either because they’d been shot by police, or because they’d killed each other—it was very hard to speak orders that guarded against friendly fire, the killing of your people by your people. So, his army was diminished in number, but still comprised thousands, scattered up and down the Strip. Sadly, it was an army he could no longer reach with his voice, so some were insistent on eating any person they came across, while others were following his later order to attack anyone in uniform. They were disruptive and destructive, but cops in street clothes were mostly safe and had gotten quite used to shooting to kill any attacker, and Dillon did not try to fool himself into believing his forces could prevail.

  After smashing the front door with the beer truck, he’d been able to get to the intercom at the hotel, and now all the staff and all the remaining tourists were under his control (or dead), but that wasn’t nearly enough.

  He needed live bodies. Not in some other country, not even in Chicago or New York. He needed them here, now.

  Here! Now!

  “Who knew taking over the world would be so hard?” he muttered. “I’m the most powerful person in the world, and I can’t get anything done!”

  After giving Kate and some of the other Cheerios orders, Dillon took the elevator to the three-bedroom penthouse suite he’d appropriated. The suite was complete with three bathrooms, a kitchen, and a great view. He still had six—or was it five?—Cheerios. And in his suite he had TVs everywhere, in every room, tuned to the cable news channels.

  “This is very, very important,” some fool was babbling, “That you not look at any—any—new or unfamiliar video.”

  “Not helpful,” Dillon muttered. He tried a work-around, dialing the CNN newsr
oom.

  “This is Dillon Poe. Put me through to whoever is in charge.” The person answering had no choice but to obey.

  Too late he realized he had given them his name, so when the person who’d answered announced to her superior that she had to take a call from Dillon Poe, well . . . click.

  Local radio proved less well prepared, and in mere seconds he was on the air with some DJ named Ferris.

  “Ferris, first things first: do not hang up on me, no matter who tries to stop you. Second, put me on air.”

  Ferris did as he was ordered.

  “Anyone who can hear me, listen and obey! I am Kodos, your new insect overlord.” Simpsons references were timeless, Dillon figured. “You will immediately come to the Strip and attack any soldier or police person you see!” As an afterthought he added, “Whether they’re in uniform or not. Use your best judgment on that.”

  What Dillon did not know, and Ferris did not mention, was that the station’s chief engineer was already halfway to Salt Lake City, having had the good sense to grab his family and flee hours earlier. So transmission was not all it might have been, and the order came out garbled.

  “. . . immediately . . . Strip and attack any soldier or police . . . see!”

  Dillon did not hear the broadcast—he was on the phone. But he ordered Ferris to continue replaying his order forever.

  He heard frantic noises on Ferris’s end of the line, a loud banging, a rending of wood.

  “Hey, I’m on air here!” Ferris yelled at unknown people.

  “Not another f—king word!” a male voice yelled.

  “Hey, this is my show, asshole!” Ferris yelled back. “I’m going to loop that and play it as long as I’m on the—”

  The next loud bang was undeniably a gunshot.

  Half an hour later came the first video from a news helicopter of a scattering of people standing stark naked outside their homes, many carrying guns, and glancing like metronomes up and down the street.

  “Dammit!” Dillon cried. He really missed Saffron now. She’d had a good imagination, that girl. And in some ways she was more ruthless than he was. It had been her idea to make the two cops jump off the Venetian tower. Sadly, none of the Cheerios seemed half as bright, or half as ruthless. It was, he reflected, the downside of turning people into slaves: they only obeyed, they did not counsel or advise or suggest.

  On MSNBC Rachel Maddow was warning that Dillon Poe had tried to get on air with a radio station. “I am sorry to even say this, but if you work at a radio station or broadcast TV station, you must not answer your phone unless caller ID gives you a number you know—absolutely know—is safe.”

  “Oh, I’m going to hurt you, Rachel,” Dillon vowed.

  How to assemble the mighty slave army he needed?

  Old school? He could just sit and start randomly dialing Las Vegas numbers. But when he tried to get a line out of the hotel he just got the rapid busy signal.

  He had a cell phone, but he’d sent the owner off to kill himself before getting his security code, so all he could dial was . . .

  Dillon’s face split into a smile. He grabbed the cell, and yep, there it was, security code or no: 911.

  911 was busy. Very busy. It took sixteen tries, followed by a very long time on hold. Then:

  “911, state your emergency.” The voice was ragged with exhaustion.

  “Do not hang up. Listen only to me. Tell me: Do you have access to an intercom?”

  “Yes.”

  “Something everyone there at the emergency center will hear?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you connect me to that intercom?”

  “I . . . I think so . . . maybe . . .”

  “Do it,” Dillon snapped.

  He listened to keys being tapped, and the operator’s muttered thoughts. “Don’t know . . . shouldn’t do this . . . maybe this will work . . . Hmmm . . . Okay, sir, I think I can do it.”

  Deep breath. Get it right, Dillon, get it right.

  “Attention, everyone in the emergency center. I am going to give you an order. You will broadcast this order over police radio.”

  He could hear the hollow echo of his voice coming through the public address system at the emergency center.

  “This is the statement you will send out to every cop—”

  “Excuse me, sir,” the operator said.

  Dillon was taken aback. “What?”

  “Well, just to LVMPD? What about private security?”

  Dillon’s voice was silky. “Wait . . . are you saying you can reach out to casino security people?”

  “Well, sir, some, yes. We have an emergency communication system called—”

  “I don’t care what it’s called!” Dillon said, and did a little dance around. His reptile form was a much better dancer than his old human form. “Here goes the message: All people who hear this message will first do all they can to spread it by any means available. They will take two hours doing that. And then, they will assemble on the Strip, near, um . . . what’s a central casino?”

  “Caesars Palace? The Cosmopolitan?”

  “Okay. Take two: All people who hear this message will first do all they can to spread it by any means available. They will spend two hours doing that. And then, they will assemble on the Strip, near Caesars Palace. There they will wait until the military column arrives and then they will attack the military, killing everyone. Without mercy.”

  The “without mercy” was irrelevant, but Dillon was pleased by the note of grim determination it added. Part of his mind noted the comic possibilities in the phrase “without mercy.” What was the alternative? With mercy?

  “That’s the message you want us to put out there?” the operator said.

  “You and everyone at the center. Oh, and, what’s your name?”

  “My name? Dot Perkins.”

  “Well, Dot Perkins, as soon as you’ve spent two hours spreading this message, I want you to hop in your car and drive to, let’s say, Dallas. You should be safe there. You helped me out with a timely suggestion, and the Charmer rewards his friends.”

  “Dallas?”

  “Don’t worry, Dot, they’ll be hiring a whole lot of emergency operators there, too, soon enough.”

  CHAPTER 22

  World War Vegas

  FRANK POOLE STOOD up in the JLTV, squeezing up through the same hatch occupied by the machine gunner, and scanned the road ahead.

  Cars stalled or burned out. Bodies lying in the road. The air stinking of smoke. It looked like they’d started the war without him.

  He drove on past the Mandalay Bay, passing a looted liquor store on the right, and a McDonald’s, which gave him a pang of hunger despite the nausea of anticipation.

  Next came the black pyramid of the Luxor casino, with its Sphinx replica out front.

  So far, so good.

  Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.

  Excalibur, with its Disneyesque Knights of the Round Table theme.

  A person came out of nowhere, an elderly man dressed in sweatpants with neither shirt nor shoes. He was clearly unarmed.

  “Hold your fire,” Poole said to the gunner.

  The old man ran at the JLTV, kept running, slammed into it, and fell straight back, knocked cold.

  They came to the state road 593 overpass and suddenly:

  Bam! Bam!

  Poole dropped down into his seat as rifle rounds pinged and bounced off the JLTV’s armor.

  “Take him out.”

  “Roger that, sir.”

  Poole peered up through the windshield and watched as his gunner’s big .50 shredded the man with the rifle.

  Now it was the New York-New York casino with its half-size replica of the Statue of Liberty and its faux New York skyline. A pedestrian walkway crossed the Strip from New York-New York to the MGM Grand. Poole saw three people on the walkway. And he saw the silhouettes of guns.

  “Don’t fire unless we are—” Pool ordered. At which point the three on the walkway opene
d fire with handguns and a shotgun, none of which would have any effect on the JLTV, let alone the tanks.

  “Okay,” Poole said, and the .50 opened up again, showering spent brass down the windshield and killing the civilians.

  If they knew what a .50 caliber does to flesh and bone . . . Poole thought.

  Thirty-five miles an hour now, slowly past the Monte Carlo, slowly past the Aria. An electronic billboard advertised Celine Dion, who, Poole was pretty sure, was going to have to cancel her show.

  Another pedestrian walkway. More gunmen firing. More gunmen with big holes in their bodies and chunks of themselves sent flying through the air.

  Civilians. American civilians.

  He would go down in history as the first commander to open fire on American civilians. He felt sick. But at another level, relieved, because so far the only firing done had been by his own JLTV. So far this hardly called for a whole tank attack force.

  But then he saw the crowd. In the street, just standing there. Thousands of people, a silent mob in front of Caesars Palace. They stretched from the casino doors down the semicircular driveway, then a quarter mile of them on the Strip itself. He raised his binoculars and gazed into faces that might have been any random cross-section of American citizens, with no doubt some foreign tourists mixed in. He saw weapons—lots of weapons, including military ordnance—assault rifles, grenades, shoulder-carried missiles. Someone had broken into the National Guard arsenal. Poole could only hope no one knew how to use the anti-tank weapons, because if they did, and if they used them, then he was going to have to order a massacre.

  Poole stood up in the hatch again. An observant corporal handed him a set of shooter’s earmuffs. He asked for the microphone—the JLTV had an onboard public-address system.

  “Under the emergency decree passed by Congress and signed by the president, I order you to disperse immediately.”

  The crowd just stared.

  “We have already been forced to open fire. We do not wish to harm you, but you must disperse.”

  A woman toward the front of the crowd was saying something, looking very earnest. Poole pushed his earmuffs back from one ear.