Kingdom of the Seven

by Jon Land

  “Fuck,” Thurlow muttered as he collapsed, feeling warm life spilling out of him, thinking with absurd calm, I’m shot!

  There should have been pain, but there wasn’t. Thurlow managed to pull himself behind the cover of some thick azalea bushes and tried to steady his breathing.

  What had happened? What was going on?

  Crawl back to the car, he told himself, get on the radio.

  Before he could do anything of the sort, though, he heard the sound of heavy vehicles screeching to a halt nearby. Peering out from his cover, he saw three large, olive green trucks dwarfing the department’s Crown Victoria. Warren Thurlow had enough presence of mind left to pull himself into the deeper cover of the thick bushes rimming the front of the Oasis as the men began to spill out from the rear ends of the trucks.

  Thurlow saw their rifles first, shiny black in the morning sun. Mind slowing now, he realized that he recognized them, that they were familiar to him. Then he saw why: The black windbreakers some wore over their flak jackets and matching black caps were labeled STRIKE.

  They were dressed in the standard garb of the Federal Marshals Strike Force.

  The residents of the Oasis had ignored Roland Bagnell’s halfhearted instructions, going about their daily chores as if the park would be up and running in a few hours’ time. Sister Barbara strode through the magnificent gardens fronting her house in search of Bagnell, finding him finally leaning on his golf cart in the center of Hope Avenue, which ran the park’s entire length.

  Bagnell had a half smile on his face, looking almost pleased. “I did the best I could.”

  “They’re still here.”

  “They aren’t leaving, Sister. They wish to stand by your side, just as you stood by theirs.”

  “You don’t understand, Roland. They don’t understand.”

  He limped closer to her, cane left inside the cart. “They understand obligation, loyalty. They understand what you have taught them.”

  “No! Listen to me. Please!”

  Bagnell’s smile stretched a little wider. “I have, Sister, and I—Sister!”

  With that he threw himself at her, twisting her around, his eyes bulging in fear and disbelief. Sister Barbara felt her ribs contract on impact and then tumbled over with Bagnell’s weight pinned atop her.

  “Roland,” she said, trying to get her wind back. “Ro—”

  Her hands came away bloody from his back. She looked at his face and saw more blood dribbling from his mouth and nose.

  “Roland!”

  He’d been shot! Sister Barbara had no sooner realized that than she heard the din of staccato bursts echoing through the park. She rose into a crouch and dragged Roland with her behind the meager cover of the golf cart.

  “No,” he rasped, blood frothing from his mouth, “leave …”

  His eyes locked open and sightless, dead. Horrified, Sister Barbara pulled away from him. The bursts of gunfire continued to blare around her, and now her clearing senses recorded another, much worse sound:

  Screams.

  Her people were being massacred!

  A group sped down Hope Avenue directly before her, and Sister Barbara watched three of them being cut down when bullets fired by unseen gunmen stitched up their spines. One who was still alive tried to claw her way for the grass, as if to flee harm’s way, and Sister Barbara lunged to her aid.

  “Why, Sister, why?” the woman muttered fearfully when Sister Barbara reached her. “Why? …”

  Because of me, Sister Barbara thought as she yanked the woman toward the cover between a pair of refreshment booths. It’s my fault … .

  Sister Barbara was smoothing the woman’s hair when her eyes closed. She was still breathing, but clearly there was nothing else Sister Barbara could do for her. But there were others, so many others … .

  The gunfire was constant and widespread, evidence of an inordinately large group of gunmen on the premises. The Reverend Harlan Frye’s gunmen, here to end the threat she posed to him once and for all.

  As Sister Barbara made her way through the park, pressed as close as possible to an assortment of buildings for cover, she caught glimpses of figures in black moving in commando fashion behind their erupting muzzles. They fired at anything that moved. A longer look at the water slide attraction showed the bodies of more of her followers floating in the huge lagoon-shaped pool, the crystal blue water dirtied with stringy beads of red.

  Sister Barbara could hear herself moaning, crying deep inside. Her sorrow was so vast that every step was becoming an effort, her feet slowed by having to carry the weight of all that was happening around her. She felt rage building within her, a fury that burned at the surface of her skin replacing the chill of her sorrow.

  She would destroy Frye and the Seven. If her followers were to be sacrificed, then let there be some worth in their deaths, something salvaged. But she had to survive herself first, and that task at present seemed daunting, if not impossible.

  She crept behind the cover of an empty kiosk and waited for an approaching complement of the enemy to pass before pressing on.

  “Gunfire,” Blaine said as their crowded van approached the isolated hilltop setting for Sister Barbara’s Oasis.

  “We’re too late,” muttered Rachel. “Frye’s people have beaten us here!”

  “Faster!” her twin, Jacob, ordered Johnny Wareagle, who was behind the wheel. The Indian merely glanced at him before he eased the van to the side of the road out of sight from the complex’s entrance.

  They had arrived in North Carolina after their near cross-country flight landed in Knoxville, Tennessee, just two hours before, leaving no time for rest. They had rushed to pack their gear into the van and drove swiftly to reach Sister Barbara’s complex in the hills of Asheville.

  “You told me you were good, kid,” Blaine said to Jacob.

  “I am.” Then, as he gazed at his sister, “We are.”

  “I hope so, because with the numbers we’re about to go up against, you’re gonna have to be.” He looked toward Johnny Wareagle, whose ear was tuned out the driver’s-side window. “Indian?”

  “Between thirty-five and forty men, Blainey.”

  “Christ … And four of us, not counting Dr. Raymond here …”

  Patrolman Wayne Denbo, curled up in the van’s rear seat, spoke from his prone position.

  “You got five, mister.”

  Blaine looked at him, but didn’t speak.

  Denbo sat up. “Look, I went a little nuts, thanks to Beaver Falls and all the shit they pumped me full of in the hospital. But I think I got my senses back now.”

  “You good with a gun?”

  “District target champ three years running with a nine and a rifle.”

  “Ever shoot a man, Officer?”

  Denbo lowered his eyes. “No.”

  “There’s a first time for everything.”

  They drove off the road into the line of thick brush buffering the woods less than a quarter mile away, the van sufficiently camouflaged. McCracken, Wareagle, Denbo, and the twins geared up as Blaine laid out the plan for them. Not surprisingly, Jacob hung on his every word.

  The twins’ cache of weapons allowed a pair of automatic weapons for all of them except Denbo, who would make do with one. Blaine and Johnny each carried an M16 along with a smaller nine-millimeter Mac-10 submachine gun. The twins had M16s as well, but in Jacob’s case the arsenal was complemented by an M79 grenade launcher, which fired 40mm grenades out a thick, shotgunlike barrel. Rachel, meanwhile, carried a semiautomatic twelve-gauge shotgun known as a Street Sweeper, equipped with a twelve-shot cylindrical magazine.

  The twins led the approach to the front gate of Sister Barbara’s Oasis. At the fifty-yard mark, they waited for Johnny and Blaine to catch up, while Wayne Denbo hung back at the group’s rear. Inside the Oasis the gunshots continued, though more sporadic and selective. Blaine took that as a bad sign, wondering if Sister Barbara was among the many who had fallen to the hundreds of rounds that had
already echoed back their way.

  McCracken and Wareagle took the lead in approaching the front gate. Three troop-carrying trucks blocked the street in all directions, squeezed around a single Ford sedan. Johnny moved on ahead to recon the trucks. Finding them all empty, he nodded to Blaine, who waved the rest of the group on for the main gate. Seconds later the five of them were clustered against either side of the stone fence for cover. Blaine was set to lead them in when a low sound made him pause. It sounded like a moan and it was coming from a nearby set of bushes. He signaled the others to hold fast and threaded his way in to find a man whose suit was dirtied by loam that clung to the bloody areas of his midsection and shoulder.

  “It’s not us,” he said between labored breaths. “I don’t know who they are, but they’re not us.”

  Blaine looked back at Wareagle. “Not who?”

  “Federal marshals. Our strike force. Dressed just like them, but don’t be fooled. Kill the bastards, you hear me? Kill them!”

  “Sounds like an order.”

  Warren Thurlow winced in pain. “This is the U.S. government you’re talking to here.”

  “Then just keep your head down, Uncle Sam, and leave everything to us.”

  McCracken backed away and returned to his original position. When he was certain the immediate coast within was clear, he nodded to Rachel and Jacob. The twins surged past him and slid through the main gate, heading toward the east side of the Oasis where Sister Barbara’s private house was located. A moment later Blaine and Johnny entered with Wayne Denbo, and headed west to where the rides and water attractions of the theme park were centered.

  They started forward, sweeping the well-manicured front grounds with their eyes, as the sound of gunshots grew even louder ahead of them.

  CHAPTER 30

  The minutes spent dodging across the Oasis were agonizing for Sister Barbara, full of brief panicked stops behind whatever cover availed itself when the gunmen drew near. Her original thought had been to seek refuge inside the mansion, but sight of the thick, sprawling flower garden set before it provided a better alternative. Taking cover amidst its mazelike confines seemed the best option available. Making sure none of the attackers could spot her, Sister Barbara waded through a bed of flowers and sank quickly into the thicker foliage toward the garden’s center. For the moment, she stopped beneath the lavish and tangled growth of some giant dahlias, secure from any eyes that might be searching for her.

  Blaine, Johnny, and Wayne Denbo came upon the first bodies seventy yards past the front gate: four corpses, two women and two men. All unarmed. Cut down as they were approaching the front gate.

  As they advanced cautiously along Hope Avenue in the center of the Oasis, Blaine and Johnny saw more bodies everywhere. They’d been shot down in cold blood with no chance to defend themselves. It made McCracken feel sick, revealing to him all at once the lengths the Reverend Harlan Frye was prepared to go in order to complete his agenda.

  All the more reason why he had to be stopped. But to do that they needed to find Sister Barbara, alive and unharmed.

  A trio of black-clad figures darted out from an aisle separating the slide complex from the wave pool. They saw Blaine and Johnny an instant after Blaine and Johnny saw them. The instant might as well have been an eternity. McCracken and Wareagle’s M16s spit out simultaneous short bursts that dropped the men as they stood before the waist-high chain-link fence.

  Two more gunmen emerged from behind a T-shirt shop to check on the source of the commotion and opened fire when they spotted Blaine and Johnny. McCracken dove and rolled in Wareagle’s shadow behind the cover of a concession booth whose position eliminated their own angle of fire.

  A rapid burst from a weapon nearby dropped the enemy pair before they could continue their assault. Wayne Denbo had entered the fray. By lingering behind McCracken and Wareagle, he had remained unseen until he chose to reveal himself.

  “Thanks,” said a grateful Blaine, now back on his feet with Johnny next to him.

  Denbo’s response was a rueful smile, glad he’d had the opportunity to prove his worth. He felt alive again, the fog of the last several days, since his fateful visit to Beaver Falls, cleared away for good.

  They pressed on toward the rendezvous point with the twins at Sister Barbara’s mansion.

  The first stretch of Jacob and Rachel’s sweep through the Oasis was uneventful. Since they were the only ones who could recognize Sister Barbara, their role was to track her dowi. while the others dealt with the bulk of gunmen concentrated in the theme park. Still, some of Frye’s soldiers were sure to be searching for Sister Barbara as well, if she was still alive. They had to be neutralized if the twins’ part in the mission was to be successful.

  As they reached the outer edge of the lavish garden fronting the mansion, Rachel grasped her brother’s shoulder to get his attention. Turning, Jacob nodded and watched her glide down a narrow aisle between the unbroken reach of the multicolored flowers. She knew her task, just as he knew his. It had been McCracken’s idea, and for that reason alone, Jacob had embraced it. He and his sister had made only some minor refinements in the plan, in order to utilize the layout of this section of the Oasis.

  The black jackets and caps labeling them as part of the Federal Marshals Strike Force made those in the opposition easy to spot. But Jacob took no action against those who passed by his temporary hiding place in the garden amidst a series of sprawling lilies on their way to the mansion itself. He could just barely see what was going on by gazing through gaps in the thick flora. Rachel had long passed out of his sight and would just be reaching the structure now. Jacob tensed, readied.

  Suddenly a burst of gunfire erupted from within the mansion. Glass shattered. A woman screamed. More gunfire followed.

  Jacob ducked lower to make sure he wasn’t seen.

  His strategic positioning allowed him to glimpse a concentrated charge toward the mansion on the part of Frye’s soldiers. The sudden bursts, coupled with the screams, had attracted a large bulk of them to the area. Everything was going just as planned.

  Jacob pushed through the lilies to obtain view of the mansion’s front steps, waiting for his turn to come.

  Wayne Denbo had drawn up even with McCracken and Wareagle, keeping pace with them. They came to a photo booth, and Blaine stopped within its cover.

  “Expert marksman, right?” he said to Denbo.

  “Hundred feet with a pistol. Up to five hundred yards with a rifle.”

  “What about a 16?”

  “Not my favorite.”

  “Not what I asked you.”

  Denbo shrugged, not entirely confident. “From three hundred, yeah.”

  “Then we’ll keep the window at two-fifty,” Blaine said, and briefly detailed the rest. “We’ll cover you.”

  “No need. Keep moving. I’ll get there on my own.”

  Blaine and Johnny watched and waited until Denbo slid out of sight. Then they started on again, the past at once frighteningly close. Neither had seen the likes of this since entering burned-out Vietnamese villages during the war. The Cong were very thorough in their work, as borne out by the number of bodies left compared to the few who managed to survive. The bodies here lay in the same twisted, misshapen heaps of limbs and dead stares. They continued on in search of survivors, hoping to move on Frye’s gunmen before those gunmen could turn their guns on whoever was left.

  Up ahead a woman dragging two children of nine or ten emerged from the cover of the merry-go-round and scampered toward the recreational area featuring fields and courts. She gazed back fearfully just as a pair of gunmen sped out from another of the roads bisecting Hope Avenue. They leveled their rifles and took aim.

  Blaine and Johnny fired bursts into their backs. The woman kept running, arms like chains attaching herself to her children and keeping them at her pace.

  As others watched their escape, they, too, began to emerge, desperate and terrified, into the open. They fled toward the open fields, believing t
his offered the best hope.

  McCracken and Wareagle moved protectively in their wake, clinging to the side of Hope Avenue that featured the amusement rides because of the additional cover they provided. A number of black-clad figures charged onto the fields, trying to close the gap with the fleeing throng before opening fire, not looking back. Their heedlessness enabled the wild-eyed Indian behind them to drop to one knee, draw a bead upon each black suit, and fire his M16 in single-shot fashion. The enemy gunmen began to fall like shooting-gallery ducks that pop up for the next pass.

  McCracken hung back and waited for the expected enemy wave to converge on Wareagle. As anticipated, a small force rushed for the field. Their charge brought them straight into Blaine’s line of fire. The first four or five went fast, the others managing to find cover and snap off random bursts at their unseen assailant. Blaine fired back nervously, worried about Johnny being left alone in the fields. It was up to Denbo now to cover him.

  Denbo had used a ladder to reach the top of the Oasis’s tallest building, a three-story movie theater 250 yards from the field where the Indian knelt. The highway patrolman had just sighted through the M16’s scope when eight black-jacketed gunmen rushed Wareagle from the west. The Indian swung and fired a burst their way. A pair went down as Johnny ejected a spent clip and dove to reduce himself as a target while he jammed home a fresh one. The remaining six gunmen surged toward him, firing, widening their spread. No way even the Indian could get all of them.

  Wayne Denbo centered the first in his crosshairs and fired. The man’s head snapped sideways and he crumpled. Instantly Denbo turned the rifle on the next nearest gunman. Sighted. Aimed. Fired. The man’s arms flapped like a puppet’s before he collapsed.