by Rob Preece
"The zone is where it's happening,” she explained, her voice rising slightly as she thought things through. “The rest of the country is dead-end. I mean, look at this neighborhood. It used to be classy but now it's junk. In the zone, you get ahead by who you are. Nobody cares if you have a credential. They don't care if you're a dwarf with two heads."
Simon's gaze bore through her, but she could see the ideas percolating through his brain.
"I never thought of the zone,” he admitted.
Chapter 14
In the end, the thought of the zone was too much for Harry and Jeff. Danielle, Fred, and Simon smashed the phones, left the two others tied up, and headed out with Danielle driving the white van she'd arrived in a few days earlier.
Danielle posted the confessions to the local Warder office—via snail mail—and then headed south and east. With mail service as poor as it was any more, Harry and Jeff would have plenty of time to work themselves free and find someplace to change their lives. She thought she'd cured them of any interest in drugging innocent women.
Unlike Los Angeles, which sprawled in every direction not closed off by the ocean, Dallas had grown mostly to the north and west. With the return of magic, Dallas swelled with refugees from the lost cities of Houston and San Antonio. But it had shrunk in its physical reach. A medieval urge for the protection that comes from being surrounded by others had taken seat.
The old towns and highways to the east of Dallas were largely deserted. Occasionally they passed a pickup truck or an aging sedan. Once in a while, they drove past a house with the flash of television in the window and electrical lighting reflecting off iron bars.
Mostly, though, they drove through darkness.
"Used to be we couldn't even see the stars,” Fred observed. “The city lights blinded them out."
There was still a glow from the city. But it wasn't as bright as in Danielle's childhood memories from before the return. Storefront lights were mostly dimmed now. Streetlights had been shot out and not replaced.
"That's a good thing,” Simon observed. “Too much light and it'd be hard to get into the zone."
Danielle shook her head. There might not be as much electricity as there had been in the old days, but there was plenty to run the searchlights for warders patrolling the zone.
"We'll abandon the van here,” she told them. “Jeff and Harry will be free by now. I'm betting that Jeff will call the warders within two minutes of getting his hands free."
Simon laughed. “He's too stupid to know they'll lock him up. You know the really funny thing, though?"
"What?"
"He didn't have to drug chicks. He's so good looking he could always get someone to volunteer. It's not like many people have good options these days. But he flipped when he saw you. And he figured he couldn't have you without cheating."
"Women wanted him?"
Simon rolled his eyes. “None of the guys I know could understand it. We figured it was a woman thing."
Danielle didn't remind him that he'd been Jeff's partner. She'd let both of the men know what she expected of them once they'd reached the zone—what would happen if they even thought about playing their evil games in the future. She had a lot to be forgiven for herself and couldn't help believing in a second chance. But one second chance was all these guys had coming.
They parked behind an abandoned gas station. Danielle hesitated, then left the keys in the van. It was a calculated risk, but she decided to hope a professional thief would take it and obscure its identity before the warders turned it up and used its location as a clue to finding them.
They set off on foot, traversing the five-mile no-man's land between normals and the zone.
Without conscious choice, Danielle had approached the zone from the same angle that the Tiger elf clan had tried to make their escape.
As she and the men crept closer, she began to see evidence of that failed breakout.
The first bodies they saw were elf women. More graceful and smaller than the men, the women could move more silently, more carefully. They would also have been less likely to stand and fight.
So they'd gotten farther. In fact, many had made it past the usual warder barriers. Her warning to Joe had let the warders deepen their lines. If she'd simply kept her mouth shut, these women would be alive and free.
Instead, their rotting bodies lay where they'd been shot.
"I think I'm going to be sick.” Fred's face turned so pale it almost glowed.
"Pull it together,” she insisted.
Simon looked as worried as Fred, but he said nothing.
Some of the killing had been done from the infamous warder helicopters. Even after a week, the foliage was still in ruins from the high-powered machine gun fire from those gunships. The helicopters hadn't created all of the destruction, though. Several bodies had telltale powder burns surrounding small holes on their foreheads—they had been finished off by warders going through the area and making sure that no escapee remained alive.
"Are you sure this is a good idea?” Fred demanded. “I'm starting to have second thoughts about the zone."
"Nobody tries to get into the zone,” Danielle reminded them. “The warders will be looking the other way."
She hoped. Unless they were still on alert, looking for her to return to the zone after her aborted visit to Warder Regional Headquarters.
Simon had been walking the point. Now he held up a hand in warning.
Someone was coming.
Fred froze.
She'd trained the two in this, at least. The human eye can detect movement where it can see nothing else. Fred wouldn't move until she told him to, or until he panicked and ran. Which would get all of them killed. It was the chance she'd taken when she'd agreed to take them into the zone.
She waited, but Simon didn't give the all clear.
That was bad. Very bad.
She clicked into blur mode and crept forward, making each move so swift that she would appear simply to be in a different position rather than moving between them.
The blur heightened all of her senses.
Simon's breath sounded like a nearby train engine. Beyond him, the roar of millions of cicadas, crickets, and mosquitoes filled the air.
But human-made sounds are distinctive and her trained senses sorted out the noise made by at least two moving humans.
They moved more carefully than any normal human. Without her enhanced senses, even Danielle wouldn't have picked them up. That Simon had was pure luck.
For an irrational second, Danielle let herself imagine that they might be survivors of the massacre—two elves creeping around, still looking for some way to escape.
And maybe it's the tooth fairy, she told herself sternly. She knew perfectly well who else could walk so softly. Warders.
* * * *
Against two warders, Simon and Fred could only handicap her, distract her attention.
As she passed him, she signaled to Simon to remain in place. This was her fight.
A one-against-two battle was not especially difficult for a trained warrior. Unless the two have trained together, they are likely to get in each other's way. A skilled fighter divides and conquers.
Warders, though, were trained to fight in teams. And a trained team could defeat a single warrior, even if that fighter was more skilled.
Like her, the two hunters disdained any artificial light, relying on their enhanced senses to see through the dark.
"There's nobody here.” An untrained ear wouldn't have even heard the sound of that voice. To Danielle, it cracked like thunder.
"The sensors say there is."
Danielle fought a brief sense of vertigo. She knew the second voice.
Mary had mentioned that Sergeant Mansfield would be coming to Dallas, but Danielle hadn't even considered the possibility of running into her. Mansfield, the woman responsible for training the warders in both blur and unarmed conflict, could eat Danielle for lunch.
"Probably three
big dogs,” the first voice argued.
"She's here,” Mansfield stated with the certainty that only years of hunting can give. “Close."
From the changing angle of the voices, they were heading straight for Fred and Simon and would pass within ten feet of Danielle.
If she'd been alone, Danielle thought she could get past them. Mansfield was good, though, and it could have gone either way. With untrained men to protect, Danielle didn't have the option of simply fading into the bush. Unless she wanted to abandon Fred and Simon. But she'd abandoned too many already. She wasn't going to leave any more behind her.
Besides, the guys were important if her idea for the zone was going to work. With his cooking skills, Fred could help make the zone more of an attraction to tourists from the normal side of the line. Tourists who could see the promise of the zone and compare it to the hopelessness of the normal side of the line.
Simon, with his video talent, could help communicate the message of their new zone throughout the world—to other zones and to normals.
Even more importantly, the two would be wonderful examples of how people with ability, even if non-magical, could prosper in the zone. They would serve as a beacon of hope to those who, stuck on the normal side of the line, had given into despair.
Of course, Danielle knew she'd work just as hard to keep no-talents like Jeff and Harry alive. Go figure.
A sense of anticipation froze her.
It was the oldest trick in the book, but the snick of a shell being chambered almost made her start.
"Stay alert. I sense her,” Mansfield hardly breathed the words.
"You're crazy,” the male voice replied.
Danielle could see them now. Mansfield's solid form, almost as wide across as it was tall, took the lead. Behind her walked a massive, almost troll-like, man. Mansfield carried a large-caliber shotgun: the man, an assault rifle.
"Call for a chopper,” Mansfield ordered. “We've got her."
They were past her now, almost to where she'd left Simon.
Danielle let her trained reflexes take over, allowing her brain to watch rather than direct.
She bent, picked up a rock, closed the distance, and slammed the rock into the male warder's helmet before he was aware that he was under attack.
She wasn't sure she had done it quickly enough to head off his call to the helicopter, so she knew she needed to keep going, to take on Mansfield.
The instant she'd connected with the man's helmet, Danielle had rolled away, intent on avoiding the shot she was sure would follow the hollow sound of her rock striking the helmet.
The air displaced by the solid slugs was almost a punch.
"Got him, did you? That sucker won't be a loss to the warders."
Mansfield had vanished into the high grass that marked the return of prairie to this part of what had once been the second-largest city in Texas.
"I'm not interested in fighting,” Danielle said. “I'm just heading back to the zone."
"And I'm just here to stop you,” Mansfield said. “There'll be a hundred warders in the area within fifteen minutes. You don't seriously think you can finish me off before then, do you?"
Danielle kept quiet.
She was still holding the remains of the rock she'd broken on the warder's head. Now she threw it to an angle of where Mansfield's voice had come from.
Mansfield only laughed. “You didn't think I'd fall for the old shoot at a rock trick, did you?
The woman was good. Damned good. But was she as good as she thought she was? Danielle wasn't sure, but she knew she had to find out.
She circled around, counting off the seconds. Mansfield had been lying about the fifteen minutes. Even if Danielle had headed off the male warder's call, Mansfield would have called in her own helicopters. Danielle had five minutes at most.
She almost stumbled over something soft and yielding.
A stench reached her sensitized nerves like a shout. The distinctive smell of rotting corpse.
Recalling Arenesol's penchant for dynamite, she steeled her senses and reached for the corpse.
No dynamite. The elf had been a teenager and looked more normal than magical. She'd probably been a child when the return hit and moved to the zone with her parents. If her ears had been pointed at all, that, like so much else, had faded with a week of decomposition.
The only weapon the girl had carried was a light silver sword.
A sword was the kind of impractical statement that children like to make, but it was better than another rock.
Danielle picked it up. Things would have been easier if her nightstick hadn't dented Harry's pistol barrel. But she hadn't planned on fighting her way back to the zone. She'd hoped this part of the journey would be a walk in the park.
She didn't think she'd made a sound as she unsheathed the small sword, but she must have been wrong. A spread of shot whistled over her head where she bent over the corpse; a single silver slug ripped away a tuft of her hair.
Well, she'd never been a fashion plate anyway.
Mansfield's conceit in using an old fashioned shotgun was Danielle's only advantage now. She had already closed half the distance before she heard the weapon's action as Mansfield chambered a new shell.
Her sword met the shotgun just as Mansfield pulled the trigger, Danielle's weight deflecting the aim and the sharp blade embedding itself in the barrel.
Mansfield swore, then threw the ruined gun away, the sword still stuck to it. “Just you and me, kid. In another minute, it'll be just me."
Danielle hadn't been on blur for long, but she hadn't had much sleep for the past week and that weakened her. She felt the burr begin to ebb away.
With it, she had a small chance against the Sergeant. Without it, she knew she'd be outclassed by the woman who'd taught the Academy instructors most of what they knew.
Mansfield must have caught her look of dismay. “You had potential, kid. You're throwing it all away."
Danielle re-engaged the blur just in time to block a flurry of kicks and punches. But Mansfield pressed in too quickly to give Danielle a chance to counter.
Only one blow got through Danielle's guard, a hard fist to her floating ribs, but that punch ached and sucked energy from her system.
Desperately, she remembered what Carl had done to her when they'd fought. It had only been a week earlier, but already it seemed to be another life. Carl didn't have the blur, but he had his Were abilities. Very soon, Danielle would have neither. Still, she didn't think Mansfield would have faced the set of moves that Carl had put on her.
As her blur blinked out, she stepped back and tried to remember, to emulate, the way Carl had moved into the small circle kung fu/t'ai chi that had defeated her.
"Straight lines, Goodman,” the sergeant instructed as if they were in a classroom. “That fancy stuff is fine for forms, but it isn't fighting."
Danielle hoped Mansfield believed that. Danielle had certainly believed it until Carl worked his moves against her. But Carl was a master. She'd had only had a week to integrate them into her own system. And a week wasn't long.
Mansfield seemed impossibly fast, shifting from stance to stance without seeming to move in between. She phased in and out of the blur, preserving her energies when she didn't need it. That was something else for Danielle to integrate into her own arts—assuming she survived this fight. Mansfield definitely hadn't taught this lesson to her fellow warders and Danielle hadn't even known it was possible. People like Mansfield were always aware that their students may some day be their rivals.
Danielle guessed she should feel complimented that Mansfield thought she was worthy of using her secret weapon. She decided she could do with one fewer compliment.
She kept her hands in motion, knowing that she wouldn't have time for conscious reaction. She had to rely on her training, her skills, and her instincts.
It wasn't a good time to remember that Carl had fought her off with these techniques, but he hadn't beaten her until her own b
lur had faded. She couldn't fight defensively, waiting for Mansfield to lose her blur. The area would be crawling with warders before then.
Mansfield landed a hard shot to Danielle's calf—a fraction of a second after Danielle lifted her leg. Without that instinctual move, she would have lost her knee and the fight.
"You've learned something, but not enough,” Mansfield told her. “Too bad."
For the first time since she'd lost her sword, Danielle went on the attack.
Mansfield didn't even bother trying to decipher her feints and real attacks. She blocked everything, relying on the blur to speed her wherever she needed to be.
After the first few seconds, Danielle knew her attack was pointless. Still, she pressed on for a full twenty seconds sucking every reserve of energy she could find in her body. She wouldn't surrender, wouldn't let them capture her without giving everything she had to the fight.
Mansfield blocked Danielle's last kick—a spinning roundhouse that she knew was too slow before she launched it.
"I guess that's about it, then, Goodman."
If Danielle couldn't escape, at least she could let Simon and Fred try to get past the warder. “I'll keep her busy!” she shouted. “You two keep moving toward the zone."
"We can help you,” Simon answered.
"Trust me, you can't."
"Come on, Simon. Let's do what she says before we get killed."
Fred and Simon weren't the hero types, fortunately. She heard the loud tramp of their footsteps as the two men circled around the two warders and headed west, toward the zone.
Mansfield's eyes widened. “You're helping impaired escape?"
"They're not impaired, they're normals. And the only thing they're trying to escape is the world you warders have created."
She knew Mansfield understood her words. It was equally obvious that the Sergeant didn't have a clue what she meant.
"You hate the impaired,” Mansfield reminded her, spitting out the word with contempt. “Why would you want to expose any normal to that perversion?"
