Barrel of Monkeys

by Tymber Dalton

  “Who is he?”

  He smiled. “You were in. I’m sure you’ll recognize the name.”

  “And why should I do this?”

  “Because you have a road that needs to be blown, we’ve got the guys who can do it, and we need a safe way to get our caravan out of Santa Clarita.”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  He nodded. “You do that.”

  Knowing they had reached an impasse, she headed back to the office.

  Hell, they’d had grenades, for crying out loud. No telling what else—or who else—they had with them.

  Chapter Fifteen

  General Joseph Arliss was working on his computer and looking at the latest dismal numbers from the CDC about the New York region when the line on his secure scrambled phone rang.

  Frowning, he picked it up. “Hello?”

  It was a woman. “Hi. Who is this?”

  “Lady, you call me on a number you need special access to get and you’re wondering who the hell I am? Who the hell are you?”

  It turned out Captain Gia Quick, of the LASD, and former MP, was the woman calling him. After she gave him the correct passcode, which she could have only received from Bubba, he noted her information and put her on hold.

  Pulling up his secure terminal browser, he punched in his security clearance code and ran her particulars.

  Sure enough, she popped up in the system.

  He walked over and locked his office door before grabbing the phone again and dropping his voice. “Listen to me, Captain,” he said, “and listen well. I’m a four-star general. Perhaps you’ve heard of me? General Joseph Arliss. I was in when you were, so you should recognize my name. Why are you phoning me?”

  “I’ve got two guys calling themselves Omega and Echo locked in one of my holding cells and I need them to blow a road for me.”

  “Have you run their fingerprints yet?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Do not, and that’s a direct order.”

  “I’m not in the military anymore. And I received a surprise promotion to station chief this morning, so you want to change your approach just a little to one of peers instead of officer and grunt, be my guest.”

  She had spunk, that was for sure. “Captain, no disrespect intended, but you need to release those men immediately. They’re in the middle of a clandestine mission.”

  “I got an apocalypse of my own going on here in LA County, General, in case you haven’t been watching the news lately. So no disrespect intended to you, but how the hell do I know this isn’t a bunch of bullshit?”

  * * * *

  No, Gia didn’t really believe at this point that it was a bunch of bullshit. The situation was too chaotic and volatile for them to have set things up beforehand. This stunk to high heaven of military special ops.

  But she had to be sure.

  Then the general started rattling off a bunch of facts about her, including specifics that only someone staring at her military records could know. Including the three-month stint she’d spent on Guam on secret assignment, guarding nuclear weapons that, technically, the UN had been told the US no longer had.

  Only someone with access to military records—high-end classified access—could be reading that. That wasn’t something that just popped up in the VA system’s computers.

  That was Pentagon-level and higher access.

  “Okay, okay.” She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples again. Her headache was starting to return with an unholy vengeance. “I get it. You’re a general.”

  “Good. Now listen to me and listen closely.” He outlined the mission SOTIF1—AKA the Drunk Monkeys—was currently engaged in. How they were protecting three scientists from The List, who were frantically searching for a vaccine for Kite.

  “They can tell you even more horror stories about how it came into existence when you meet the rest of them in person. But for now, suffice it to say it’s not melodramatic when I tell you the fate of the world rests in their hands.”

  “Terrific.”

  “If you’re not up to the task of helping them, then at the very least get the hell out of their way. Release them, give them a vehicle, return their weapons, and forget you ever saw them.”

  “No, I’ll help them. Because I need their help.” She told him about her plan to blow up the freeway.

  “Well, if anyone can do it, they can. Probably can drop it exactly how and where you tell them you want it, to the inch. Good luck, Captain.” The line went dead.

  She stared at the phone in her hand.

  Shit. Yes, she did recognize the general’s name.

  Just when she thought there was no farking way in hell her day could possibly get any weirder…it did.

  Exponentially weirder.

  Unbelievable.

  She pushed back from the desk, wearily hauled herself to her feet, and trudged down the hall to the holding cell area.

  * * * *

  Arliss jumped on a secure line to Bubba. “What do you think about her?” he asked the man.

  “Everything I’ve found out about her so far checks out, sir. You?”

  “Yes. I gave her marching orders. Feel free to pass that back to them next time you’re in contact.”

  “Roger roger. FYI, I’m in transit, changing safe houses, so I’ll probably be offline until tomorrow. It was only a lucky fluke that she caught me and didn’t get voice mail.”

  “Everything all right?”

  “Sure. Just cleaning up a surprise liquidation attempt. I need to figure out who sent them after me. You still cleaning house?”

  “I thought we had.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s probably left over from when Pandora went to Oz. That’s old info anyway. But I’ll be taking more precautions in the future. Any new attempts, we’ll know the food chain is still tainted. Later.” The line went dead.

  Arliss hung up the phone. Bubba had been the miracle answer to their prayers when he discovered the mole in his food chain.

  Correction, moles.

  That discovery had not only enraged, but embarrassed Arliss as well. He couldn’t believe he’d been taken in like that.

  Him, of all people.

  Goes to show who you can and can’t trust. Practically no one can be trusted.

  He hoped to hell there weren’t other moles directly under him.

  This world had proved increasingly hostile to men his age. Unfortunately, it wasn’t like he could just quit and retire somewhere. Not until his Drunk Monkeys had succeeded.

  He had no doubts they would succeed.

  He wouldn’t allow himself any doubts.

  If he did, it might be too easy to succumb to the enormity of the situation and then envision putting a bullet in his brain and ending it all. And then the Drunk Monkeys would be out in the cold without any kind of official support whatsoever.

  He’d never do that.

  Not to mention he had his other SOTIF teams to think about. And none of them had yet turned up with that damn woman from Seattle, the one final volunteer from Silo’s little experimental apocalypse lab in LA. There weren’t any spikes in Kite infection in Seattle yet, either.

  Unfortunately, he’d need to pull the teams out of Seattle soon and send them elsewhere.

  If anything can go wrong, it damn sure will.

  * * * *

  The drunk had rolled over, but other than that, he was still sleeping.

  “What the hell’d you guys nail him with?” Echo asked as the woman unlocked the cell door and motioned for him and Omega to follow her.

  “I believe my deputy said he tased him. Not sure what the hell he drank before my deputy got to him, though. He was drunk and armed and threatening his ex-wife.”

  “What’s going to happen to him?” Omega asked as she locked the cell door behind them.

  “Once he sobers up, someone will drive him down south, bid him good-bye, and he’s on his own. The deputy gave the guy’s gun to the ex-wife. She and the rest of her family were packing to ge
t out of town anyway.”

  “What about your family?” Echo asked her.

  “Me, myself, and I,” she shot back without turning to look at them.

  She led them down several corridors, punching in her access codes at security doors along the way, until they reached an office.

  “Yours?” Omega asked.

  “Temporarily. It belonged to Chief Baynes, but I was appointed station chief by proxy this morning. It appears the upper leadership of the LASD is now an endangered, if not extinct species.” She sat at the desk and logged into a computer workstation. After a moment, she turned the monitor to face them. “You have any idea what all that means?”

  They both looked. It appeared to be a color map of the Los Angeles county and surrounding areas. Several sections were blacked out.

  “Do we want to know?” Echo asked.

  “Those are stations no longer online. You tell me why the military is evacuating people to Barstow, of all fucking places.”

  Omega slowly shook his head. “Don’t know. That’s not our department.”

  “Really,” Echo said when he spotted her dubious expression. “You know what local government bureaucracy is like. Times that by a thousand. You were in. You should remember that.”

  She leaned back in her chair. Echo guessed her height at about five three, but she cut an imposing figure. “So this General Arliss of yours told me there’s quite a story behind your special little group.”

  “Yes, you could say that,” Omega said.

  “I’m listening.”

  “We don’t really have time for this now,” Echo said.

  “Yeah, we do. Because I just took it on faith from someone on the phone who knew stuff about me that no one except Pentagon-level brass should know. Spill it. Tell me how Kite came to be, and what the hell is up with the scientists, and why you’re not taking them in to Edwards or something. The short version is fine, but nothing else happens until I’ve heard it.”

  Omega talked. Echo watched her expression as it edged closer and closer toward despair.

  When Omega finally finished summarizing the story five minutes later, her gaze was focused on the floor. “There might not even be a vaccine in the future, then. You all are just hoping they’ll come up with one.”

  “There’s a pretty good chance,” Echo said. “Doc caught what they think was a mutated form. He’s recovering, though. At this rate, a vaccine might not even be possible because it’s mutating so quickly in the right direction.”

  She finally looked up at them again, her blue gaze settling on him. “But there are plenty of people who have the bad form of it.” She related what Ricosa had told her. And Dave’s girlfriend. “And have you seen the video feeds coming out of the city? It’s not pretty.”

  She reached over to the computer and tried to pull up traffic camera feeds. Most of the ones from the west, south, and central part of the basin weren’t working. But a few for the north and east were. Heading north on the 15 was an unbroken line of cars, in all lanes.

  “They instituted contraflow,” she said. “Seriously? I thought only Florida and Louisiana used that shit to evac from a hurricane. To farking Barstow.” She logged out of the system and sat back in the chair again. “So you boys tell me what the next step is. Help me shut down my city so all of that isn’t flowing into here.”

  Echo shrugged. “First of all, how you planning on blowing the 5 anyway?”

  She smiled and stood. “Follow me, boys.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  It never failed. The timing of her life’s events appeared to suck big, hairy monkey balls. Two gorgeous guys she wouldn’t mind asking out for a drink, especially since she was single and hadn’t been laid since just before Dave sprang the news of the divorce on her, and she couldn’t because the world was coming to an end.

  Literally.

  She led them through the station and back to the garage, to where the two kids were standing guard over the DOT van.

  It took everything in her not to laugh at them when they came to attention at her approach.

  “Guys,” she gently said, “it’s okay. You don’t have to do that with me.” She hooked a thumb over her shoulder at Echo and Omega. “Them, now that’s different.” She looked back at them. “Sergeant and corporal, right?”

  “He’s nearly a sergeant,” Omega said, a sexy half smile quirking up the left corner of his mouth. “TMFU fucked that timing up, too.”

  “Anyway,” she continued, “I need to let them see what we’ve got inside.” The boys stepped away from the side door and she opened it before stepping out of the way.

  Echo let out a low whistle. “Holy. Shit.”

  “Lady, why the hell you have this parked inside?” Omega asked.

  “Because there’s less chance of it accidentally going off in here than there is if I leave it outside where someone might, oh, I don’t know, mow down the fence and steal it. So do I have enough to accomplish my goals? I want the 5 blown just south of the 14 junction, and I want the two overpasses on The Old Road blown, too, in case people come up that way.”

  Omega turned. She didn’t even mind having to crane her neck back to look up into his face. “You know that won’t stop the world, right?” he asked. “This will only buy you a couple of days, at most.”

  “That’s all I’m looking for,” she quietly admitted. “I’m no crazy-assed hero with delusions of grandeur. I’m not going to try to force my deputies to maintain their positions at all cost. But I’ve got to do something. Not everyone will leave Santa Clarita. I get that. I want to keep as many of the assholes like you ran up against out of here as possible. I can’t totally clear my conscience, but I want to be able to sleep at night when I turn my back and head north.”

  The men shared a glance.

  “What?”

  “How far north you talking?” Omega asked.

  She shrugged. “Sharon, one of my admins here, she’s got no family either. I sort of told her the two of us could stick together to get the hell out. She’s no spring chicken. I don’t want to abandon her.” She pointed into the van. “So? What next? How do we get in touch with your people?”

  “We’ll figure that out here shortly,” Echo said. “There’s something else we’d like to do first, if you don’t mind.”

  “That would be?”

  “We’d like to bury our friend,” Echo said. “He died trying to help us with our mission. He deserves a burial. He’s former military and retired LAFD. It’s the least we can do for him.”

  Yes, they had lost a friend in the firefight. “Let me go scrounge up some shovels for you, and a couple of helpers from the Guard.”

  When she returned, she led them over to the truck where the man’s body had been put into a body bag and lay next to Nick Edison’s body. After verifying they had the right body, the two men carried him out back where she showed them the best place. Then she helped them and the Guard kids dig the grave. After twenty minutes, they had a hole large and deep enough.

  As she watched while Echo and Omega carefully placed him in the grave, she felt like crying.

  That was a totally alien emotion to her lately. Especially since she hadn’t even known the guy. Emotional numbness had set in at least three days earlier due to the situation and the stress and her focus on her job, but even before that she’d been unable to feel.

  If she was truly honest with herself, it had started before Dave had asked her for the divorce. Not long before, but in retrospect, about the time he’d started pulling away from her.

  The two men stood next to the grave and stared down into it. “Not sure what to say,” Omega started. “I’m not good at this stuff. Didn’t know him very well, but he seemed to be a good man. He helped us get this far. If there’s something after this life, I hope he’s enjoying it right now.”

  Echo nodded. “Rest in peace, Sparky.”

  Echo leaned over, grabbed a handful of earth, and dropped it into the grave where it softly pattered against the b
ody bag. Omega did the same, and then they started shoveling in the dirt.

  Once that task was finished, she handed her shovel off to one of the guardsmen and told them to return to the garage. Alone with the two men, she said, “I’m sorry about your friend.”

  “Thanks,” Omega said. “I’m not looking forward to having to talk to Annie about this.”

  “Who?”

  “Her real name’s Dolce,” Echo said. “She was his friend. They were neighbors in the same apartment building. The two of them had planned to escape the city together before they met up with us and then the quake hit.” He slowly shook his head. “She’s going to take this really hard right after losing her friends.”

  They slowly walked back to the building as the men gave Gia a little more detail about how Annie and Sparky had joined their group and proven themselves invaluable additions.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t know him,” Gia said. “He sounds like he was a nice guy.”

  “He was,” Omega said, staring down at her. “Life is too farking short anyway. Kite’s made it that much shorter.”

  She felt something come alive inside her under the intensity of his brown gaze. His black T-shirt looked painted onto his torso, muscles rippling under the fabric. Broad shoulders that tapered into a hard, sexy V at his waist…

  Oh, my.

  She swallowed, then focused on Echo. They were yin and yang, his light but tanned skin a sharp and delicious contrast to Omega’s dark coffee flesh. Echo’s blue gaze pinned her in place.

  Wait, what the hell am I doing?

  An apocalypse wasn’t exactly the best time to start a romance, or even a one-night stand.

  “How do you feel about Seattle?” Echo asked her. A heavy weight accompanied his question, one she could feel but not identify.