“I don’t mean to be bull-headed, ma’am, but I’ve seen plenty of heatstroke in the cotton fields, and this is that. We’ve gotta get you cooled down.” Careful of her flowing evening gown, he continued toward the gala, now with Austin’s most powerful woman cradled in his arms.
“I must protest,” she huffed, “much too,” panting between every word, “undignified.”
“Undignified or not—” a tortured scream worse than a rabbit in the jaws of a coyote interrupted him as chaos descended over the Capitol lawn. “What in God’s name?”
At the opposite end of the outdoor gathering, a human tongue of flame burst from a scattering clump of guests before stretching its arms toward the evening sky. Blue plumes of fire shot from its thighs and stomach, arching the person impossibly backwards. In a final quake, the flames pulsed outward in every direction until, with a whoof, the charred remains tumbled to the scorched grass.
Silence blanketed the scene for a single, sick second. Then the paralyzing spell of terror broke, scattering the crowd like ripples in a pond. Starr clutched Gwendolyn tighter and bolted toward the refreshments. Shouts punctuated the spreading darkness. Then came the flames.
One after another, fountains of flame burst from the crowd amidst horrible screams. Starr swallowed his own bile, focusing on the life he held in his arms, the pulse of which thumped against his chest like a hummingbird hammer. At a labored sprint he punched a hole through the edge of the panicked crowd, cutting cross-grain toward the ice chests while stumbling through the surging river of humanity.
His gimpy knee struggled with the extra weight, threatening to buckle. The rising swell of sounds and smells reminded him strikingly of the rodeo arena during the singular moment of being thrown. The moment that as a rider, you lock onto the one thing that will bring you through.
Daisy. He scanned the faces as they poured past, until a burning man charged him blindly. Diving clear, he tucked his shoulder and struck the ground hard, lightning extending from stem to stern. Still cradling the nearly unconscious Ms. Lloyd, he crashed into the leg of an icebox, bringing the insulated tin container down on both of them.
As the ice scattered across the grass causing a human pile-up, Starr caught glimpse of familiar faces. “Daisy! Sheriff!” Flipping over another icebox, Starr created an oasis in the midst of the human stampede. Daisy strained under the weight of her six-foot-four father whose face had turned redder than her dress.
Starr hoisted the sheriff off of her, flopping him down next to Ms. Lloyd and propping the two of them up against the overturned iceboxes. Finally all four of them were sheltered within the cool, moist air created by the ice and evening breeze.
He squeezed Daisy and pulled her close. “Sheriff, what the hell’s happening?”
“Attack,” he grunted in between labored breaths. “Has to be Oleg.”
“But how?” Starr searched their surroundings for clues. An increasing number of people were passing out before they could flee—hitting the ground with dull thuds.
“I don’t know.” The color in Lickter’s face improved gradually. “Poison?”
Daisy grabbed Starr by the wrist, “James.” She pointed with her expression, having seen what he’d missed—a single man walking calmly toward them, unlabored amidst the anarchy. “He’s holding something.”
“An umbrella?” Encased in shadow, the man’s silhouette slowly raised the tip of a parasol until it pointed straight at them. With a sinking stomach Starr simultaneously recognized the man and the truth of his horrific design. “Down!” The senator tossed himself across the others lengthwise as a searing hot pain stung his right buttock.
Jaws clenched, the sensation of liquid flames surged through his body with every fluttering pulse of his heart. But before the suffocating cocoon of pain could sever his senses, he swore he heard laughter fading in the distance.
“James!” Daisy heaved his rigid body off of them. Her crystalline eyes came into Starr’s view, dripping tears onto his burning hot skin.
He gripped her by the shoulders. Jerking with seizure, he feared snapping her in two. “Go.” Trembling, she shook her head. “Go! Dammit. Your father and Gwendolyn.” His eyes twitched, his muscles jerking with spasm, the scar a red-hot iron branding his face. "Go!” He felt his brain swell from pressure as the pain finally paralyzed him, rigid as a board.
Shaking her head and gripping him with her cool embrace, Daisy shifted him onto his side. Then staring into his eyes and holding him so close he feared they’d fuse together, she rolled the two of them clear of the others.
EIGHT
The Gambit
His body jolted and frizzed with searing pain. The surface of his skin flashed red in desperate effort to expel the overwhelming heat generated from the projectile. Daisy's presence forced him to fight the pain when every nerve demanded he beg sprouting flames to consume him. Through blurred vision, Starr kept his eyes riveted on her as the tears streaking her face evaporated between her skin and his.
A wave of sweat overcame him, expelling the heat through his pores and stabilizing his core temperature. As suddenly as the pain had begun, it subsided. The seizures released him and his swimming vision sharpened. A gentle sobbing reached his ears. He loosed his grip on Daisy’s arms where he’d left burn marks in the shape of his hands.
“Daisy.”
She opened her eyes. “James?”
“I’m sorry.”
She burst into a combination of laughter and tears, resting her head on his chest. His excessive sweat stuck the two of them together. “Sorry? You’re alive.”
“I’ve hurt you.” He ran his hands along her arms as a gunshot startled the pair.
She stood, helping him up. “Daddy!” Several feet away Lickter staggered before falling to his knees, smoke rising from the barrel of his .38. Starr lunged unsteadily in his direction, but Daisy beat him to the sheriff’s side.
“I’m fine. Get him!” As he sagged to the earth, Lickter pointed with his chin toward a figure cloaked in black and staggering into the shadows. Starr shook the popping lights from his vision and corrected course, but the inflammation around his gimpy knee locked it in place. On pins and needles he collapsed, smacking the side of his head into the turf.
Lifting himself onto his elbow, Starr watched Daisy launch herself into the shadows, the hem of her brilliant red gown rippling behind her. The sound of bodies colliding proceeded a dull thud followed by a grunt. Then the crack of knuckles impacting flesh.
“Dammit, that hurts.” She emerged from the darkness cradling her right fist. “Why are guys always doing that? I should have hit him with my shoe.”
“You didn’t want to kill him, honey.” Ms. Lloyd stood on wobbly legs. Behind her a trickle of guests stumbled out the gates and trailed off into the blue glow of Austin’s moonlight towers. He hadn’t noticed them come on, but with the festive lights of the gala and the morbid flicker of human torches extinguished, their chilling illumination was all that remained. Eventually all four of them gathered around the groggy figure clothed in black. Starr seemed to recover the slowest, but save the wound to his buttock, he felt markedly better.
“It appears him is actually a her.” Ms. Lloyd observed.
Daisy wrapped her arm around Starr’s waist. “And with my dad shooting her and all, I suppose we’ll have to take care of her.” Starr shook out the cobwebs and slowly gazed at the faces around him cloaked partially in shadow. He saw worry on Daisy’s, but Lickter and Ms. Lloyd revealed a steady, cold anger. None of this surprised them.
“Just enough to get some answers.” Lickter cast his eyes about the capitol lawn before stooping over the fallen figure. “Starr, find us some transport. We’re leaving.” With a grunt he hefted the mysterious girl roughly over his shoulder. “At least she doesn’t weigh much.”
~~~
Striding confidently through the pitch-black tunnel, Oleg led the others away from the Capitol and back toward campus. The smells and echoing sounds directed him.
He found the exercise of suppressing one sense for the benefit of others to be rewarding. Plus, keeping the system of tunnels blacked out maintained their mystique along with their power over weaker minds.
The students huddled behind him, relying on his intellect rather than their own. Fear dimming their awareness, they failed to create sensory maps despite having four of five senses available. Most of his foot soldiers held little promise.
But they were obedient, and tonight they’d done well. They had sent a message to the lazy and corrupt. Oleg Rodchenko is no lap dog. He wears no leash. He stopped at a juncture. “Shhh.” After several seconds his trailing entourage stilled. He projected his sense of hearing several meters down each possible path one at a time. Separating the dripping water from the surface world’s din of vibrations, he sought the faint whisper of scaly armor on slick cement and crumbling brick.
He shivered with delight on detecting the familiar sound. The guardians. What they were or where they’d come from, his scientific mind could only hypothesize. In his youth he’d seen something similar in a textbook—prehistoric, long extinct. The inventor in him marveled at their form and function. “This way.”
Moments later he stopped at the base of a metal stair and congratulated his faithful as they rose up the rungs ahead of him. Only after the last of them reached the ladder, did he scowl for the first time that evening. Emerging from the trap door in Bradley Hall, Oleg stood in the middle of his student assault team. “Where is Oleander?” He grilled them with his gaze, crumbling their smug expressions. “How was she left behind?”
A slight yet iron-willed youth stepped forward. “Brutus is gone as well.” Of course. Oleg closed his eyes to regather himself. He’d purified the mole privately moments before the expedition, his usefulness expended. “You don’t think the two of them—”
“No. I sent Brutus home. He had objections, is no longer one of us. I failed to assign Oleander new partner. Is my fault she’s lost, but I’m sure she’s waiting at assigned spot.” He reassured them with his posture. “You should celebrate. You have done great thing this evening. Together we have begun purification of land—your land. Soon rest of people will see truth, will know truth you bring to light. You will succeed where I have failed. I’m proud of you.” He smiled like a grandfather holding his favorite grandson on his knee.
“Tomorrow is big day. We finish what we begin. Those who steal land from workers, those who start wars they depend on you to fight, those who prop up hollow government to mask evil deeds will gather tomorrow at auction ready to put price on human suffering.” His warm face dissolved into a snarl. “We make them pay in more ways than one.” Softening again, he dismissed them with a nod, each to their individual lives—the worlds they inhabited outside their secret life as insurrectionist anarchists led by the unassuming mastermind, Oleg Rodchenko.
Wisely, the United States government restricted official power to a small crowd of insiders, like all powerful governments. But their affection for individuality ironically left their young easy prey for social and political movements. Or in this case, it lent them to assisting his cause in rectifying the past and regaining his future. He’d learned a lifetime ago that while taking power and keeping it were difficult, disrupting it was easy. Currently, disruption was all he needed.
After depositing their weapons in a pile at his feet, most of the students left. A few lingered in the corner, preparing hot drinks, pulling book bags from mahogany cabinets for a long night of study. They were good students, slipping easily back into the roll, just as he encouraged them to.
“Barabbas.” He caught the attention of the slight-framed leader. The young man bundled up the narrow, steel pipes Oleg had crafted into gas-powered firearms—each capable of firing a dozen lithium pellets—and followed the professor from the study hall down a corridor until they reached his office.
Oleg unlocked the door with a key dangling from a chain around his neck. Once inside, Barabbas closed the door behind them. “I’ll check tunnels, but I need you to go back to capitol. If still no evidence of her or me at meeting place, check hospital and all local doctors where they might take her. If they have her, we must get her back, quickly.” They both nodded. “Go.”
Barabbas left the weapons on Oleg’s desk, exiting the small office without comment. Oleg hung his umbrella on a rack behind the door and sighed. With drooping shoulders he twirled the ends of his garish mustache. He drew a flask from a drawer in his desk. Twisting off the top he tipped back a long swig of water—purified of all contaminants, boiled over a flame, and filtered. He did not allow himself to sit.
Tired as he was, he knew this to be the game. Moves and countermoves. He had thrown the gambit, and one of his knights had fallen. He hoped to get her back. Taking another drink, he closed his eyes. His memories the only intoxicant he allowed himself, he stumbled briefly into the past. But with a twitch his lip curled as the memory turned unpleasant. He opened his eyes, shaking the image from his mind.
Placing the flask back in the desk, he shuffled to the bookcase where he studied the narrow spine of a nondescript book reading, What is to be Done? Tipping the top corner, he opened the hidden passageway from his office to his lab. This sour time will soon pass. He steeled his mind, battling to reclaim mental ground.
At the base of the stone stairs, originally crafted by direct order of the university’s founders, a set of bronze horns protruded from a relief of a bull’s head engraved into the wall. Oleg shoved the right horn back into the wall. The entrance from his office closed with a distant thud as a series of gas-powered lights around the perimeter of the underground chamber sparked to life. One by one the gas tubes warmed. Glowing brighter, they created shadows from the ghastly assortment of lab equipment and war machines—children of Oleg’s mind. The lab had been the trap that snared him. The promotion, the new office, he now knew had been orchestrated to entice him to resume his work.
A proud parent, he wove up and down each aisle, running a hand across metallic and glass surfaces, encouraging the devices that their day would come soon. At the center of the room he slipped a framed picture from beneath a work station and held it to his forehead. With effort he felt the presence of the two women represented in it. Forcing the venom into the corners of his mind, his purest thoughts finally transported him through space and time, back to a dirty flat in St. Petersburg, June 16th, 1902.
“Oleg, what are you doing? You’ll lose your scholarship.”
“Shush, or we’ll lose the moment. I’ll have it back before anyone misses it. Just wait until you see the result. It’s wonderfully simple.” He danced around the tripod, adjusting lens and aperture, careful not to upset the box camera he’d borrowed from his university.
“You and your gadgets. Honestly, Oleg.” She corralled their daughter, keeping her away from the camera. Bending at the waist, the neckline of her blouse hung open, revealing a delightful amount of her porcelain cleavage. Bronze tendrils of hair unfurled from the bun on the back of her head, partially blocking the view.
Tantalizingly, her nipples clung to the stubborn collar as it refused to give its ground and liberate the entirety of her glorious breasts—not overly done or excessive, yet not lacking. They listed slightly, each to its own side, and came to subtle points. Perfectly her. Perfectly unique. He contemplated snapping the still straight away, but why preserve for wandering eyes what he longed to keep to himself?
“These gadgets will buy us a nice place some day, some land next to my parents.” He soothed her as she straightened, having gathered little Tatiana into her arms. “I promise. We’ll leave the city soon.”
“I know we will.” Tousling their daughter’s hair, mother and child laughed roisterously. It was perfect. Oleg snapped the still.
Now the single image tenuously preserved the final window connecting him to his family. With it, the last threads of his humanity. He yanked the picture away from his head, placing it face down on the table. Soon he would no longer need it.
~~~
Lickter stood in the corner, stewing over the evening’s events and waiting for the doctor to finish stitching up the young woman he’d shot—some drone with a cold, distant father, or perhaps an overbearing one like himself. He shuddered.
Daisy sat perched on the edge of the couch where he and Starr had drank coffee several hours earlier. She held her ridiculous shoes in one hand while dipping the other in a bucket of ice. Her red gown, only slightly worse for wear, revealed grass stains from where she’d tackled the good doctor’s patient. He chuckled and took a deep breath. No need to worry about his daughter signing on with some kook. He’d been far from a perfect father, but his girl had made up for it on her own.
As for the mystery girl, he’d recognized her under the bright lights of the Grandview lobby. She had the same bobbed hairdo as the foot soldier his mole had tried to befriend. This meant she knew Oleg well, but it also meant she’d be hard to crack. He didn’t look forward to leaning on a girl barely older than his daughter. While he certainly could gather better results than an aspiring actor hungry for espionage, he doubted he could undo months of Oleg’s manipulation.
Then there was Oleg. The crazy bastard had left two dozen charred corpses on the capitol lawn, and Gwendolyn didn’t seem to understand that this changed everything. Sure you could use a cook fire to roast your enemies, but this was a forest fire. How the hell was he supposed to control this while working freelance security as a sheriff without jurisdiction?
“Sheriff.” Starr gestured him over. With a huff he joined them on the couches. “Daisy and I were wondering. Why do you think I didn’t burn up?”
The Austin Job Page 6
