Villain

by Michael Grant

  “. . . not trying to get killed but we can’t disobey!” the woman said. “Don’t you understand? We have to attack you and kill you! Without mercy!”

  Lowering the bullhorn, Poole said, “If you fail to disperse we—”

  And suddenly a mellifluous, compelling voice spoke into a handheld bullhorn. The voice said, “Soldiers! I order you to blow this town apart! You, boss man! Order your soldiers to annihilate this town!”

  At which point Poole keyed his microphone and said, “Attention to orders. You will immediately begin firing on any and all buildings.”

  One tank—the one immediately behind Poole, whose commander had heard Dillon on the loudspeaker, swiveled his cannon, aimed it at the largest target at hand: the faux Eiffel Tower of the Paris casino.

  Ka-BOOM!

  A round of high explosive blew up as it struck the restaurant level about a third of the way up. Bits of steel strap and rivets and a shower of glass went flying.

  “Sir!” Poole’s driver yelled. Having headphones on, he had not heard Dillon’s voice.

  “You heard my order!” Poole shouted.

  “Sir, no sir, we can’t just start blowing shit up!”

  Poole drew his service revolver and pressed it against the man’s head. “I said fire!”

  “I’m the driver, not a weapons operator!” Poole’s brain screamed NO! but he fired once. The driver’s brains decorated the inside of the windshield and side window.

  The JLTV swerved left, bumped against a light pole, and stalled. Poole, afire with desperate need, leaped out and ran down the line of his column yelling, “Fire on all buildings! Fire on all buildings!”

  He was tackled by a second lieutenant, still raving and punching. More soldiers ran and surrounded their commander, lifting him as well as they could given his hysteria, and hauled him toward the ambulances in the rear.

  At that moment a pickup truck, its bed full of barrels, came roaring out of the Paris driveway and smashed straight into the number-one tank. The barrels, filled with gasoline, split on impact, spraying fuel over the tank. The tank’s commander stared stupidly, still yelling orders to his crew to fire! Fire! Fire on that casino! Gasoline found the hot engine block and burst into flames as the crew bailed out of their hatches. The fleeing tankers were immediately set upon by the waiting, sinister crowd and were beaten and battered to death.

  The tank’s commander yelled, “Fire! Fire!” until smoke from the literal fire choked his throat and then rose to consume him.

  “Irony,” Dillon muttered, shaking his head in mock concern. He had snuck away from the Triunfo to directly supervise his mob on the Strip, confident that his control meant he could return when necessary. But then, trying to find a place to hole up, he had been beaten back by determined (ear-covered) resistance at the Flamingo and at the Linq, the two casinos across the Strip from Caesars. But he’d been able to take control of a restaurant called Margaritaville, and now stood on the second floor, looking out through a window he’d had Kate shoot out so he could hear—and speak—as well as see.

  He still had five Cheerios with him, as well as three ex-military who claimed to know how to use the missiles Dillon’s forces had seized in a raid on the National Guard armory. One of them had, when forced to do so, made some recommendations, among them that Dillon should divide his forces into battalions.

  On the plus side, Dillon thought: I have a very nice margarita here, with extra salt. He had never tasted a margarita before, and he quite liked it. But after his earlier experience he made a mental note not to drink more.

  On the negative side, he could not get the Jimmy Buffet song out of his head. Which was far from the most annoying thing in his head, because all the while the Dark Watchers were whispering their silent whispers and seeming—at least to Dillon—to be watching with the enjoyment of professional sports fans on Super Bowl Sunday.

  And on the still more negative side, one tank round through the front of Margaritaville . . .

  Dillon glanced at his ex-soldiers. “Yeah, we can’t have you guys shooting from here, you’ll draw fire. Go out, walk south, and take a shot when you find a good target.”

  One tank was burning. The lead vehicle, the command JLTV, had been driven off the road. But a shocking amount of death-dealing armor was slowly but inexorably advancing, now less than fifty yards from the first line of Dillon’s slave army.

  Dillon took a long pull from his margarita, raised his bullhorn, and yelled, “First battalion! Attack!”

  Words I never expected to say . . .

  With a will, a thousand or more people, people of all ages, from elderly down to small children, ran down both sides of the column, firing guns. As they ran they lit the Molotov cocktails Dillon had thoughtfully provided after having his Cheerios hijack a Chevron fuel truck. These they smashed against tanks and trucks and armored personnel carriers.

  Half a dozen vehicles were on fire before the temporarily leaderless men and women in the column reached their own conclusions and opened return fire; .30-caliber and .50-caliber machine guns roared. Tracer rounds lanced here and there like bright lasers.

  B-r-r-r-r-t!

  B-r-r-r-r-t!

  Civilians ran at the tanks and fell, heads blown open like dropped watermelons. They ran as parts of them—hands, ears, shoulders—were crudely dissected by slugs the size of a man’s fingertip flying at a devastating 2,910 feet per second.

  But they did not stop. They screamed, they shouted apologies, they begged to be spared, but they did not turn tail. They were helplessly fearless, running down the column, throwing their gasoline bombs, firing at any exposed soldier. But it was flesh-and-blood amateurs versus professional soldiers, and the slaughter was horrifying.

  “You like that, don’t you?” Dillon asked the unseen audience. “Yeah, you love that shit.”

  The second tank in line swerved past the first, past the crashed JLTV, gunned its engine and drove right into the remaining crowd, machine guns blazing.

  “So much louder in real life,” Dillon muttered. “You! Get me another margarita. Extra salt!”

  The tank treads crunched bone and squashed flesh, but none of Dillon’s voice slaves ran.

  None moved aside.

  They stood and were crushed. Or, if they were in the first battalion, attacked and were gunned down. Dozens had fallen already. Blood in slick pools reflected the Las Vegas lights.

  The machine guns tore big red holes in legs and chests, in stomachs and groins and faces. In men and women. Young and old. And as they fell to the guns they were crushed beneath the M1A2’s seventy tons.

  Woosh . . . BAM!

  The first of the missiles was fired at the fifth tank back. The tank erupted in flame. Leaning eagerly out of the window with his drink in hand, Dillon saw the tank’s tread spool off. Crewmen bailed and were shot or stabbed or mauled.

  Maybe, Dillon thought, his true calling was as a military leader. He was doing pretty well, it seemed to him. But could you be a great leader and still be a comic?

  The army column was still advancing, but slowly, at a crawl. “Time for round two,” Dillon said. “Let’s play Civilian Crush.” He yelled through his bullhorn, “Battalion two! Do it now!”

  Approximately a thousand people dropped to the ground. They scooted around, getting into position until they formed a human chain of prostrate bodies across the Strip. It was a wide street, so his human chain was only four people deep, and he’d have liked to have more, but still, he figured he had presented the army commander with an insoluble problem. Would the tanks roll over passive, unarmed civilians just lying in the street?

  At first he thought it had worked. As he watched, the tank column suddenly executed a crisp left turn onto Flamingo Road, treads gouging concrete, machine gunners picking off attackers.

  “Shit!” Dillon yelled. “You know what they’re doing?” he demanded of Kate, currently wearing her cheerleader outfit crisscrossed by heavy ammo belts. “They’re going around!”

&
nbsp; “Yes,” Kate said. It was just about the only safe word to use around Dillon. Kate, like the other Cheerios, was bound to the power of Dillon’s voice and had no choice but to obey. But that did not mean she liked it. In fact, she was straining her last nerve to get herself to draw her gun and shoot the monster.

  “Maybe stick with comedy after all,” Dillon muttered. But his audience—the Dark Watchers—sustained him. To Dillon, they were a demanding but fair audience. Not easy to please, but not impossible, either. They seemed glued to the action. On the other hand, he’d never sensed them laughing at any of his jokes.

  “Battalion two, get up and run after them! Throw yourselves in front of them!”

  He glanced up at the news helicopter that was defying the army’s no-fly order. The camera up there recorded a dozen or more people, including one in a wheelchair, literally throwing themselves in front of vehicles that remorselessly rolled on over them.

  Dillon shook his head. “Not enough.” Raising his bullhorn, Dillon said, “Battalions three and four, run to the Triunfo! Run! And Kate? Drive the fuel truck back there.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Rough Beasts, No Bethlehem

  “SURE, I DID a tour in Afghanistan,” Master Sergeant Matthew Tolliver said. “Iraq, too. None of that was good. But hey, one thing you can say about floating around on Navy ships, the squids keep a nice mess. Steak once a week. Fried chicken . . .”

  Justin DeVeere was torn. Should he stay on the flatbed with the deranged marine? The truck of misfit toys? He had quickly grown bored with the old marine’s war stories and reminiscences. But as an artist, this trip down the two-lane 95 through the utter wasteland of the Nevada desert was a field day.

  I’m on a truck with an entire bestiary of monsters. And the sunset is gorgeous.

  “. . . ice cream. It’s boring, but the Navy will definitely feed a man.”

  “Are you hungry, Tolliver?” Justin smirked.

  “No,” Tolliver replied. “I don’t have a stomach anymore.”

  This was said without rancor, just a fact of life: I don’t have a stomach.

  What the hell lunatic asylum am I in?

  He could jump off the truck at any point; no one was keeping him prisoner. But A) there was nothing but rock, sand, and scruffy plant life. And B) when would he ever get a chance to see a woman who could morph into an abomination that was half turtle, including a faintly purple shell?

  But mostly it was A): it was a long, long, dry walk to anywhere. They were heading toward Las Vegas, and as it happened, Las Vegas was the nearest human habitation worth going to.

  He slept for a while and dreamed of his long-lost patron and girlfriend, Erin O’Day. She had been killed.

  He woke to a night sky and dropping temperatures made colder by the wind that buffeted the open truck bed. And tears on his cheeks. He wiped them away angrily.

  He hadn’t loved Erin, but he’d liked her. And she was rich and could have done amazing things for his career.

  Career. As what? As a promising young art prodigy? Or as the monster who destroyed the Golden Gate Bridge?

  Justin knew the answer. Even if he created art to rival DaVinci, Van Gogh, and Picasso it would never wipe away the image the world had of him. Never.

  His stomach turned and his mouth twisted, and he wallowed for a while in self-pity. The phrase “not my fault that . . .” kept coming up, followed by various specifics. Not my fault what happened on the plane at La Guardia; not my fault what happened on the bridge; not my fault that Erin was blown to pieces and died beneath an obscure lighthouse.

  In a world gone mad, how could anyone blame Justin DeVeere? Hadn’t he told them all that Knightmare wasn’t him but a whole separate person? Most of Justin knew this was nonsense, but enough of him was willing to at least pretend to believe it—when the lie was necessary. When accepting responsibility would leave him naked and defenseless in attempting to justify his actions.

  “I have to believe in me even if no one else does.”

  “Eh?” Tolliver asked. The tank man had better-than-human hearing.

  “Nothing,” Justin said. “I was just—unh! Oh! Oh, shit!”

  Justin had been on his rear end, sitting cross-legged, but now he writhed and rolled onto his side and slapped impotently at the pain chip still embedded in his neck, with wires tied directly to his spine.

  “Pain chip?” Tolliver asked.

  “Just a tap, not a . . . Ah! Dammit!”

  “DiMarco,” Tolliver snarled. “Or whoever took over for her. A little reminder from the Ranch that you’re still their property.”

  “I need to find a doctor to get it out of me,” Justin said. “It must work by satellite!”

  The turtle woman—currently just a woman—said, “No, it’s the cell towers. Their system uses cell-phone signals, wi-fi, direct radio. You need to find a place where there’s no coverage.”

  “Not far now,” Tolliver said. He pointed with his articulated mechanical arm.

  Justin shook off the pain, which had been, as Tolliver suggested, just a quick tap, a reminder. He looked ahead and saw the glow of Las Vegas. There would be doctors in Vegas. There would be rich, lonely women looking for a handsome young . . . monster? No, no, artist. Artist.

  Monster.

  One of the truck passengers, a slight teenaged boy who’d been forced to take the rock along with a dose of hawk DNA, began to morph. The result was extraordinary, even with so little light. He had wings, which he kept folded. He was covered in feathers that ruffled in the stiff breeze. His face was still human, but dominated by oversized yellow eyes.

  It was those hawk’s eyes he trained on the city ahead. In a hushed, awestruck voice he said, “There are things burning. Big fires, at least two.”

  “Looks like they started the battle without us,” Tolliver said.

  But Justin’s eye was looking elsewhere. At the moon, halfway up the sky in the east. A big yellow gibbous moon.

  And the small, swift shadow that crossed it.

  “Christ,” Dekka said. It was all taking place a few hundred feet below them, illuminated by Las Vegas’s eerie neon glow. Unbelievable scenes of innocent civilians crushed by tanks that had no other choice. Scenes of civilians tearing soldiers apart. In the middle of an American city.

  Dekka saw Armo draw back, too sickened to watch.

  Cruz watched it all, perhaps, Dekka thought, as a sort of grim penance for having come up with the idea of waiting to intervene. The smart move, but also the ruthless move, and Cruz had never struck Dekka as that kind of person. Sam had been that kind of person, as had Caine. The two great powers of the FAYZ had used that gift of ruthlessness in very different ways, but they had each been decisive. Cruz looked like she was shrinking into herself, wanting to be somewhere else, anywhere else. Dekka wondered if there was anything she could say to ease Cruz’s pain. But anything she said would sound condescending and false. That was the damned thing about making life and death decisions: they could eat you up inside, and no one could really do much to help.

  Francis Specter watched quietly. She was the new kid, the untested one. Dekka wondered how her peculiar power would even be useful when they finally got into the battle.

  Whenever that was.

  Only Shade avoided the window and watched the TV coverage from the news helicopter, supplemented by dozens of unenslaved tourists aiming iPhones through hotel windows. All video shown on TV was sound-off as a precaution, so the gruesome pictures had as soundtrack only the horrified exclamations of TV anchors.

  “They’re going around,” Shade called, wincing and closing her eyes as what looked like a child emerged from beneath tank treads, roadkill in a pink, spangled Disneyland T-shirt.

  Shade opened her phone, clicked on the maps, and held it up for Dekka. “They’ll most likely come back around Treasure Island,” she reported. “That’s, like, a mile north.”

  The same thought had obviously occurred to Dillon Poe, because the mass of his own army was now run
ning north. The news said the Triunfo was under his control. It was north, and his victims would have to run fast to get there before the army turned back toward the Strip and cut them off.

  “Did you drop this?” Cruz asked Dekka, holding up a crumpled yellow Post-it note.

  Dekka’s eyes went wide. She practically snatched the paper from Cruz and stuffed it deep in her pocket. “Thanks. Must be an old shopping list.”

  Cruz nodded, a bit disappointed to discover Dekka lying. The paper had not been a shopping list; it had borne six words.

  If it has to be: me.

  Cruz wondered if this had something to do with Dekka’s little tête-à-tête with Shade. She could ask, but now was not the time.

  Dekka watched and calculated and waited. She knew that despite Cruz’s strategic decision, she, Dekka, would be the one to give the actual order to attack.

  Possibilities:

  One. Cut off Dillon’s mob. But how? If they ignored tanks, they’d ignore her. She would be left to use her power to slaughter innocent people.

  Two. Go after the Charmer. But where was he? On the Strip or at the Triunfo? Some third place?

  Three. Try to stop the tanks to avoid further massacres? And leave the Charmer in charge of the city?

  Her internal mental struggle must have been evident on her face because Cruz, Francis, and Armo were looking at her intently.

  “Not yet,” Dekka said.

  Abaddon the Destroyer—Vincent Vu—was sort of excited to see the column of tanks charging straight at him down the freeway like single-file cavalry.

  The disease he bore in his morph, the starfish densovirus, had already caused two of his limbs to break free, trailing viscera and goo. Now he sent them tube-crawling forward, his own slow-moving cavalry as his limbs grew to replace them.

  “Da da da da!” Vincent sang a trumpet fanfare. “Da! Dada da dada da daaaa!”

  There were two explosions. The smaller explosion—more a sound like a tornado’s rushing wind—the round being fired; and a split second later . . .

  BAM!

  The first tank round hit one of Vincent’s mini-me’s and turned it into sushi confetti.