by Jason Brant
“Is Daddy going to be OK?” the boy asked me.
I looked down at him. “I hope so. Now get going.”
They reluctantly went up the stairs, casting quick peeks over their shoulders at me. I doubted they would listen to my instructions, and the thought of them coming down and letting Steve loose made me queasy.
But I had to look at the big picture. The whole town was flipped upside down, and I didn’t have the time or ability to save one person at a time. It would be more effective for me to get the attention of the outside world so an army of paramedics and armed men could help.
I went through the back door and hopped a handful of stairs leading to a small yard.
Nami put her hands on her hips. “It’s about fucking time. I thought maybe you’d stopped to get some coffee.” She grimaced when she saw my bloody nose. “Aren’t you supposed to be good at fighting?”
“How about you kiss—”
Jim sighed and turned around before I could finish my retort. He cut across the next yard, watching the back of a yellow house. He hunched a bit, though I didn’t see how that would keep someone from spotting his large frame as he traipsed through an open space.
Nami shrugged. “Guess he doesn’t appreciate our witty banter.”
“What a surprise.”
We followed him, moving quickly to catch up.
Jim ducked down as he approached a row of hedges that divided the lawn from the next street. Pausing there, he waited for us to move beside him. He pointed over the hedges and to the left. “The barbershop is across the street, the second building up the block. We can cut into the alley behind and use the back door.”
I peered over the bushes and frowned.
Several blood-covered people plodded down the sidewalk, each with some kind of bladed weapon or firearm. There weren’t a ton of them, but it would take us longer than I’d hoped to sneak over there.
And if we were spotted, we’d be in some deep shit.
A loud burst of static startled all three of us.
I hunkered down behind the hedges again. “What was that?”
“P.A. system. The whole town is wired with speakers. The mayor uses it when we have big events planned around the holidays.” Jim pointed at a spot over my shoulder. “There’s a speaker right there.”
Another burst of static was followed by the sound of a man clearing his throat.
“That’s the mayor.” Jim pursed his lips. “He always does that when he uses a microphone. Damn fool never clears his throat before turning the system on.”
Good evening, dear friends and neighbors. I trust that everyone has enjoyed this glorious morning. The fall festival has been moved up to today. Bring everyone with you! We’ll have a group culling and a magnificent bonfire held right in the quad!”
I asked, “Where is the quad?”
Jim said, “The center of town, right in front of the courthouse.”
“Isn’t that just up ahead, by the barbershop?”
“Yup.”
“Great.”
Now that we’ve all come to have a greater understanding of ourselves, we have to bring justice to those who would harm and persecute us, the enlightened. I’ve spent the morning creating a master list of those who haven’t partaken in our rebirth. Take to the streets and find those who will be our entertainment for the afternoon!
“Did he say a culling?” Nami whispered.
The ruffling of papers being shuffled came through the speakers.
Emily and Adam Reinke. 2925 Patriot Garth. Bring me their heads.
“Oh, shit.” Nami gaped at the speaker. “That’s not good.”
Brian Narizzano. 4408 Shelley Court. Bring me his head.
Stan Kman. 186 Duvalle Avenue. Bring me his head.
22 – BBQ in the Quad
Nami punched me in the chest. “I can’t believe you brought me into this Podunk fucking town.”
“Yeah, well—”
“He’s telling people to cut off someone’s head like he’s reading off school delays.”
“I won’t let anyone cut off your cute little head.”
“And how are you going to do that? We don’t even have a goddamn gun!”
I held up both of my fists. “With thunder and lightning.”
Jim shook his head. “We’re so screwed.”
The mayor continued rattling off names. He’d already gone through at least twenty or thirty, so I hoped that meant that there were more survivors in Arthur’s Creek than I’d originally thought.
The day was still young, however, and they were apparently planning a human barbeque in the center of town.
“OK, Jimbo. You lead the way.” I checked both directions for anyone milling around.
The streets had cleared a bit when the mayor started reading off addresses. I guessed that a lot of people hunkered down in their homes were getting unwelcome visitors just about then.
“Stop calling me that,” Jim mumbled. “Nobody calls me Jimbo.”
He stood up and moved around the hedges.
Nami fell in behind him as he jogged down the sidewalk and crossed the street. We paused at the corner of a bakery and checked the intersection. People stood in front of a house two blocks down, talking loudly, but they were far enough away not to be able to tell who we were. As long as no one got close, I hoped we could move around without anyone knowing that we weren’t like them.
Jim sprinted through the intersection and down a narrow road.
Nami struggled to keep up, her breathing turning ragged by the time we’d made it a block and a half. She huffed, “Fuck this running shit.”
Jim cut into an alley on the right.
I stayed behind Nami, keeping an eye on our six.
Main Street was just ahead. More people walked up there, each with body parts and weapons in tow. They passed the small side street we were on without glancing down it.
Just as I followed Nami into the alley, a convertible filled with teenagers rolled by. They hooted and hollered, brandishing knives above their heads like they were driving into battle.
One of them peered down the street just as I lunged around the corner.
He shouted something, and then I heard the squeal of brakes that needed replaced.
“Go,” I whispered. “I think they saw us.”
“This is the back of the barbershop.” Jim tried a door, found it locked. He reared back to kick it in.
“Don’t.” I pointed to a ladder that ran up the wall to the roof. “Go up there and do it fast.”
Jim grabbed the sides of the ladder and gave it a yank. Dust flaked off and it creaked, but the metal held firm. “If you say so.”
He started up, taking the rungs two at a time.
When he was halfway to the top, I nudged Nami. “I’ll be right behind you.”
“Try not to stare at my ass.” She grabbed hold and began her slow ascent. The spacing of the rungs made it a struggle for her to get her foot high enough for each step.
I stood at the bottom of the ladder, watching the mouth of the alley. The kid had only seen me, so if he came looking for trouble, I wanted to make sure that he only found me standing there.
When Nami reached the top, I lunged onto the ladder and flew up it as fast as I could. I reached the roof while she was still struggling to get her leg tossed over the side.
I put my hand on her ass and pushed, throwing her over the edge of the building and onto the roof. Jumping in behind her, I ducked down, putting a finger to my lips when I saw she was about to yell at me.
Black tar covered the flat roof of the barbershop.
Sweltering heat baked off the surface in waves.
A three-foot brick wall surrounded the roof, giving us a railing that we could hide behind while Nami did her thing.
I chanced a peek over the wall and saw four teens walk into the alley. They all carried knives of differing sizes, as if they’d taken them from the same block on a kitchen counter. I imagined them sitting around a table
having breakfast when all of their cells rang in unison. I could only hope that their parents had already left for work when the call came in.
“I’m telling you, I saw someone run in here.” The teen in front, a tall, lanky boy with freckles and unkempt hair, grabbed the handle of the locked door and yanked.
“Yeah, right,” a smallish girl said. “What did they do then? Climb this ladder for no reason?”
I ducked back behind the wall at the mention of our hiding place.
The ladder vibrated beside my face.
“Maybe,” the boy said. “It would be a decent hideout.”
Then I heard a shoe hit one of the rungs, and the ladder really shook.
They were coming up.
Nami’s eyes widened.
“Did you hear that, Billy?” the girl asked. “The mayor just said Clarissa’s name!”
The ladder stopped shaking.
Billy asked, “Really?”
“I’ve hated that bitch since she pulled my hair in the fifth grade. Let’s go slice her up.”
“Now you’re talking.”
One last tremble came from the metal.
Shoes clopped on the pavement, moving toward the opposite end of the alley.
I peeked over the top again, saw the kids disappear onto the side street. “They’re gone.”
“Christ on a cracker. I thought we were going to have to fight some tweens.” Nami pulled her pack off her shoulders and placed it on the tar roof. “And if you ever touch my ass again, I’ll dick kick you so hard you’ll be singing soprano for the rest of your life.”
Jim scooted across the roof, staying low, and knelt by the front of the building. He looked over the top of the small wall for a few seconds before giving me a piercing glare.
“Take care of business,” I said to Nami. “I’ll see what’s going on up there.”
“Duh.” Nami slid a small laptop from her bag. “And this whole time I thought that you’d brought me here to actually get my haircut.”
I stayed crouched down as I moved across the roof, my quads burning after ten feet. I stopped beside Jim. “What is it?”
“Take a look.”
Slowly, I raised my eyes above the edge of the wall.
The courthouse stood on the opposite side of the street, at the end of a long lawn with sporadically placed maple trees. Sidewalks lined the perimeter of the property with a handful cutting through the grass.
“That’s the quad, I take it.”
Jim said, “No fooling you.”
Everyone was a goddamn comedian today.
Roughly a hundred people meandered through the grove. Three large piles of dead bodies stretched ten feet or more into the air. The lunatics tossed more corpses on top of the mounds.
Blood pooled in the grass.
Even though we were a solid football field away, the reek of death filled my nose.
Thousands of flies buzzed around the dead.
“It’s like a genocide,” Jim mumbled. “They’re stacking bodies like they’re kindling.”
Several people held gas cans, splashing fuel on the piles, saturating everything with accelerant. They joked and laughed, truly seeming to enjoy what they were doing.
I slid down the wall, fighting the hopelessness that crept into my thoughts, and moved back to Nami. “Please tell me you can get through to someone.”
“I’ve got a signal. We should be good.” Her fingers blurred across the keyboard.
A black window popped up on the screen, a white cursor blinking. She blasted a string of code into the window in a flash.
It looked like complete gibberish to me.
“What’s going on out there?” Nami asked without looking away from the screen. Her fingers kept dancing across the keys.
“You don’t want to know.”
“It’s that bad?”
“It’s worse. We need to get someone in here now.”
Jason Zemcik. 834 Crescent Avenue. Bring me his head.
Jessica Friedman. 248 Scoville Drive. Bring me her head.
A series of new windows opened. Nami sifted through them so fast that I couldn’t even tell what they were. She was a vulgar little turd, but she had an impressive skillset.
Nami said, “OK, I just connected to the SIPRnet. Almost done.”
I didn’t understand a whole lot about tech, but I did know that the SIPRnet was the government’s classified version of the internet. They used it for disseminating secret and top-secret information. The idea behind it was to keep people from doing exactly what Nami had just done.
“Isn’t that supposed to be a secure network?” I asked.
Nami scoffed. “Bitch, please. I’m a digital gangster. I do what I want.”
“A digital gangster. What a bad ass.”
“That’s right.” Nami stopped typing, her index finger hovering over the RETURN key. “We’re about to pop up on my boss’ computer in a video chat. He’s not going to be happy.”
“Who is he?”
“Albert Nelson. He’s a former intelligence officer they kicked over from the CIA to restart the Psych Ward. He’s a bit of an asshole, but he gets shit done. This isn’t going to make his day.”
“You and Drew are working for the Psych Ward now? Christ.”
“Sort of. We’re using the same name, but now we’re chasing Smith’s telepaths, not using them.”
“Except that you want to use me.”
“Do you work for Smith, Gigantor? You know what I’m saying. Don’t be an ass.” Nami hit the button.
Yet another window popped up, a circular cursor thing spinning. I could remember when an hourglass used to flip over while you waited. Damn, I was getting old. I’d be yelling at kids to get off my lawn soon.
We sat on the roof for several seconds, watching that annoying circle.
It was hotter than the Hinges of Hell up there.
A split-screen opened in the window with Nami’s face on the left and a dude’s mug on the right. He had narrow eyes and a deep frown that didn’t hint at an entirely pleasant disposition. I doubted he would be inviting us over for a movie night at his place any time soon.
“Ms. Williams. I’m afraid to ask why your face is appearing on my monitor.” He scowled at someone off screen. “On a system that I’ve been assured was secure.”
Nami said, “We’re in some serious shit here, Chief.”
“So I’ve heard.” Nelson had a closely cropped haircut and a thin, angular face. He could have been a carbon copy of any field agent I’d come across over in the sandbox. They all had unremarkable features, except for Smith and his scarred face.
Nelson wore a collared shirt, but no suit or tie.
That moved him up a rung on my ladder.
He was on the first one.
“We were under the impression that all telecommunications to the area had been cut.” Nelson stared straight at us, unblinking.
“A barbershop in the town has satellite internet.” Nami tapped her head. “I be smart, yo.”
Nelson gave her an almost imperceptible nod. “Well done, Ms. Williams. Give me a sitrep.”
I leaned close to Nami, and my face appeared on the screen beside hers. “The sitrep is that everything is completely FUBAR.”
Nelson barely reacted to the sight of my handsome visage. “Lieutenant Benson. I can’t say that I’m surprised to see that you’re still with us. Your reputation precedes you.”
That was the third reference he’d made to our predicament.
I leaned closer to the screen. “You know what’s happening here?”
“We were made aware of the situation in Arthur’s Creek about an hour ago. We’re still gathering intel.”
“We need an immediate evac.” I hated how easily I fell back into the language. “We’re on a roof right now, and the area is hot.”
Nelson looked off the screen again. “Get me eyes on the barbershop.”
“You can see the town?” Nami asked.
“We have sate
llite imagery and a dozen aerial drones in operation. We should have significantly more within the hour.”
My teeth were grinding as I glared at him. “You have eyes in the sky and you know that something awful is happening, yet you haven’t sent the whole enchilada in here? People are being massacred, goddamn it.”
“Lieutenant, I can assure you that—”
“I’m not a lieutenant anymore.”
“—the situation is fluid. We’re monitoring the problem, gathering intel, and securing the quarantine. Once that’s in place—”
Nami’s head rocked back. “Did you just say quarantine?”
Nelson’s frown deepened a few millimeters. “It’s going to be extremely difficult to pass information to you if I’m constantly being interrupted. And yes, Ms. Williams, we’ve quarantined Arthur’s Creek.”
“You’re setting up a quarantine while citizens in here are getting their fucking heads cut off.” I looked to the sky. “Do you have a shot of us yet?”
“Yes, Lieutenant, we can see you.”
I balled my right hand, raised it into the air, and extended the middle finger.
If my little display pissed Nelson off, he didn’t show it. The man was stoic, if nothing else.
“You are as advertised, Lieutenant.” Nelson shuffled a few papers and then continued. “I can appreciate your frustration, but precautions have to be taken. We haven’t ascertained whether the condition on the ground is contagious. Even if it isn’t, we can’t allow anyone to leave the town, for fear of what atrocities they might commit out in the open.”
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath through my nose. As pissed off as their hesitation made me, I did understand the reasoning. They had to contain the problem before they could attack it.
That was great for everyone outside of the town and really shitty for those of us inside.
“Where is Agent Lloyd?” Nelson asked.
“He’s escorting two civilians through the woods.” I’d been worried about Drew, Sammy, and Allison before, but now I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. If they couldn’t leave, then they’d have to find refuge somewhere in the hills, which left them open to anyone walking by with a gun and a hard-on for bald men and big-breasted women.
