“Jeremiah!” A voice calls from behind him. “Jeremiah!” is shouted once more. The voice comes from the doorway of the soup kitchen as a man in a suit stands there waving one arm, with a radio microphone in his hand. Another man is there with a camera in hand, as the first continues, almost like a cheerleader, waving and yelling. Jeremiah goes the other way, toward Malachi, yet the shouting man begins to follow after, and the camera guy begins shooting. He figures that he can get a good shot without getting any closer to the plane that just poofed from there to here, or under any of the rubble that just dropped off the roof, and may drop more. Most cameramen want to win a Pulitzer, but would rather do it from an armchair.
“Are you okay?” asks Jeremiah of Malachi.
“I think,” he says, in a fair daze, dusting himself off, feeling his joints, head, butt, and package. “Yes! Everything is here.”
“You didn’t do what I said, did you?” asks Jeremiah, as the reporter arrives, microphone in hand.
“I made the bet! Just like you said! I gave Marty the numbers and he said that since it was such a giant long shot for each one that he would pay seven to one, per day, tallied up at the end of the second week.”
“But you were not supposed to make two weeks’ worth of bets at once . . . one bet per day, Mal,” he says in dismay. “Remember?”
“I figured, what the hell, it’s just a few hundred bucks, if we win, it’s a few thousand bucks, and all is good. Right?”
“If you had done what you were told, and if it had gone full term, the winnings would be almost eighty-five-billion dollars,” Jeremiah says. That’s why so many others wanted into the bet. There was an unperceivable potential for profit.
“BILLION?” shouts the reporter. “Holy shit!” Then he realizes he is on mic.
“Who the hell are you?” asks Jeremiah, as a glimmer of recall enters his mind.
He switches off the mic for a minute and says, “They call me Leicester Burrows now, but thirty years ago, I was a stringer working with you in DC,” he says waiting for Jeremiah to get it all together. “You called me Lester!”
“Lester, sure!” He really does recognize him, as the mic switches back on, and Jeremiah is not schmoozing. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Are you kidding me? I read your letter.”
“And you want to know my source!” he says, leaning back a bit, taking a slightly smug posture with a hand out, keeping Lester at a distance.
“Well, yeah! That, and I wanna know what comes next. I mean . . . dude! You wrote a letter a month ago, predicting the financial collapse of the world’s stock exchanges, the record highs this past week – almost to the point – the astounding amount of raw financial capital moving from place to place out there, the absence of the cash in the economy to cover it, the looting of the treasury, and . . .” SLAM! The three men are simultaneously thrown to the ground by soldiers – a SWAT team maybe – Spec Ops guys in black. They are instantly zip-tied, bagged, and carried away, all in front of the camera – all in front of the world. But the world isn’t looking.
Lester’s cameraman stands at the door of the soup kitchen, and he keeps recording, but as soon as the tackling begins, the cameraman begins sneaking, backward into the dining area, still shooting. The microphone lay in the street until one of the Spec Ops guys picks it up – this one moves like a woman – looks around to see if someone is watching, drops it under the rear tire of the van and gets in to drive away. Of course, someone is watching, someone is always watching, everyone is watching, and no one is watching-watching. If they care, they don’t care enough to jump in the back of the van with the others. “Nothing to see here,” bellows from one of the men, “Keep on walkin’ folks,” as the van pulls away. Squealing off, the van drives over the microphone, smashing it into a small plastic and metal pancake. The cameraman sneaks out the rear of the shelter, after the three disappear into a black van with no plates, and all the tagless cars have driven away.
Three Weeks Back
Do you believe in Jesus? . . . You're gonna meet Him.[10]
E-Day Minus 7.1 Years
Mike is making history, as the Club is decimated on a daily, sometimes hourly basis. Ten more here, five there, and the numbers are climbing, just as predicted by the hands-off-minded fed. She sneaks into one of the Club drinking establishments, well after nightly operations close down, but there are still a half dozen or more guys laying around, sleeping in recliners, or bunking in the back. Quiet as a snake she enters the kitchen door, bearing three pounds of old style C4 with a little creativity, a radio controlled detonator, and a trigger switch in her shirt pocket. She slips in through the kitchen, past the bar, and into the room where drinks and women are so often to be had. There is snoring coming from the office behind the bar, letting her know that there is someone there, sleeping it off. She sets down her bag, below the edge of the pool table, and crawls quiet as a snake under it, to place the charge beneath the slate top, using peel-and-stick tape to bond the pack to the stone. It is pre-formed to fit in a PlastiBuilt box, sealed by aluminum tape, surrounded by nearly twelve hundred ball bearings, each a quarter inch in diameter, suspended in a rectangular doughnut of incendiary liquid-gel weighing in at just over another pound. The total weight of the device is nearly twenty pounds, but the carpet tape on the back fastens it to the table, just as if it was made for it . . . which it was.
She doesn’t hear a sound, and as far as she can tell, not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse. But Mouse is not asleep. Her first hint of danger is when she is being jerked out from under the table by her boots, sliding across the floor, slung across the room, full body hammered into the bar. The slamming of her body against the wood wakes up the other resident nasties. Mouse approaches her, much as he would any other woman he might be planning to abuse, and that is his last mistake. Lying on the floor, with her shoulder braced against the bar, she kicks up and out as he arrives, right between his legs. The force of the kick is nearly enough to kill him, but just in case she is weak on that motion, she takes his knife from its sheath, fastened to Mouse’s boot, and slices his jugular. He reaches for his neck, as if to save his own life, by slowing the blood loss, but she puts the knife into his diaphragm next, and twists with both hands. He loses his grip on the neck wound. He has no air because his diaphragm is severed, and in a few seconds, his lights are completely out. It doesn’t matter if it was the pain that caused him to faint, or the realization of his own mortality, the result is that his life has faded into non-existence, now bleeding a little slower with every second, as his life spills out onto the floor.
She goes backward, over the bar onto her head and shoulders, because someone grabs her and jerks her in that direction. As she lands, she sees that there are two men standing over her, one on each side, and one is reaching for his gun. She quickly punches him in the crotch as the other man reaches down to grab her again. The man with the giant pain between his legs has even more anger in his soul, so he punches for her face as she was being lifted up, striking her forehead. This takes her from the other man’s grasp, fracturing her attacker’s hand, slamming her to the floor, but does not get her out of danger. Her kicks are furious, one to this face, one to another, then the crotch of that man again, and one to the radial nerve of this guy’s leg. As she spins in a violent torrent of will, she raises and grabs two bottles of liquor from the bar, smashes them on the heads of the two men, and slashes their necks with the jagged edges of the bottles. They both take hold of her again, each with one handful of hair and another handful of her clothes, but she is not done. She keeps delivering blows with the broken edges of the bottles to their bellies, legs, arms, and backs as she can, gouging and screaming her way to freedom. Each of them is doomed from the slash to the neck, with very little time to accomplish what they hope could be revenge. Still, she has more time and less injuries than they do. In less than a minute, she stands over their dead bodies, heaving violently, dropping the remains of the bottles.
&nb
sp; When the breathing and bleeding is over for those two, the struggle is still not finished for Mike. Standing at each end of the bar, she discovers, is a desperado with a gun, and another has appeared on the other side of the bar from where she now stands. There is some banter about “the boss gonna be happy to get hole o’ you” as one of them comes closer with a pair of handcuffs, but things do not go as planned.
His name is Coon’ass – though that is a designation of his origins – deep bayou Louisiana – and he is the big dog of this particular chapter of the Club. As he comes close, he can see that she has something in mind, sets his gun down on the counter behind the bar, and he is confident that the other two men will shoot her if she gets out of hand. His confidence is soon alleviated.
Stepping close, he extends the cuffs, offering to let her put them on herself. Denying his demand, she snatches them from his hand, jumping forward and spinning, smacking him in the head with one cuff as she crosses behind his back. She slaps the cuffs against the back of his head, throws him down with his face against the shelves under the bar, and as he falls, she dives under him, reaching to her pocket to drop the stick on the pack under the table.
The “stick” – a detonator switch – is a small box, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, with a red plastic lever recessed down the one side so it cannot be compressed on accident. She grabs her breast pocket, feels the lever switch, and as his body rolls over onto hers, she squeezes that button for all she is worth. It doesn’t need much pressure, it’s just that she is excited, angered, and possibly, somewhat terrified. The button gives under the pressure, the radio signal is sent, the pack detonates, shattering the pool table surface, launching those ball bearings through the wooden sides of the table, in every direction, through the other two men standing there, no longer trying to shoot her. The incendiary gel ignites, filling the room with sticky flames that light the curtains on fire, and parts of the clothing of the men, as well as some of the furnishings. Each of the bikers takes a few chrome-covered balls through their bodies, mostly below the waist, and the walls of the place are soundly peppered. One of the projectiles exits the window nearest the table, perforates a cat from front to back, and lodges in a phone pole outside. Several went out into the world, puncturing vehicles that were parked in the lot, and one of the errant balls even strikes a truck that was passing by, penetrating the front fenders and rear, unnoticed at the time.
The man lying on top of her has been punctured several times as well, but he is, like the others, still alive. Mike, shielded from the blast and balls, struggles to free herself from her attacker. She gets up from under his paralyzed body, seeing that one of the balls has torn through the back of his neck, shattering his spine right below his skull. She extends him mercy; looking in his eyes, she reaches into her jeans pocket, retrieves her pocketknife, and flicking it open, slices his neck from back to front, three inches long. She severs his carotid and jugular on the right side, allowing him a gentle, quiet death.
She walks around the bar and finds the other two men. One guy, Flapjack, is laying on the floor at the end of the bar, trying to crawl away. The other, Skooter, is crawling toward her, trying to level his gun in her direction. She takes the gun that had been dropped by Flapjack, when he was hit by the blast, and aiming carefully, she puts a round right through the forehead of Skooter, splattering down his back to his boots. She then grabs a small table from beside the window, walks over to Flapjack, and slams it onto his leg, shattering his femur.
Flapjack is bleeding from the ears because of the concussive blast, and from some other parts of his body due to steel balls passing into him, and now he has a busted leg so that he cannot walk, or even crawl. She says to him, “Give a message to your bosses and friends.” Flapjack nods in sobbing silence, grateful that he may live through the night. “Tell them all to leave the state or die, because I know who they are, and where to find them.” She lets that sink in for a minute, and then she asks, “Do you understand?” Flapjack nods again and passes out.
As she goes out through the kitchen there are two more men entering the back door, arriving to check out the ruckus, and she shoots them both before they can even react, dropping them to the floor as useless schmatta. They used to live in the little house out the back of the lot, but now they just lie there, lifeless, expended.
She steps gingerly over their bodies, onto Tiny’s bike, and into the dark. She parks a half mile away, pulled into a Chevron station, and watches the place burn almost to the ground before the fire trucks arrive, rescuing Flapjack, and police roll in. In the distance, she evaluates the night, the fight, and the possibilities.
That did not go as well as she had expected, though it did go worse than the gang members would have preferred. She may have missed a step, she may have been less than vigilant in her vigilantism, and she almost got herself killed.
Maybe, deep inside of her, that’s the goal. Maybe she feels that she has to die, as an atonement for the loss of her sister, Mae. Maybe, just maybe, she feels a deep, crying pain, and a hunger to rid her parents of their suffering. And to some smaller, quieter degree, she feels that she is the bad sister, that the loss of the good sister leaves the universe out of balance somehow. That’s a lot of maybes, and way too many feelings for such a tired, angry woman; and of course, her course is not yet run. Besides, balancing the universe is not her job . . . at least not right now. Right now, her job is to be the killing machine that the Texican Marines had trained her to be, that her character allows, and her pain demands.
She is unrelenting, unforgiving, unconcerned about these things called consequences, fueled by rage and caffeine. Tonight a few ball bearings passed through the truck of an innocent who will not know about it ‘til morning. Is she losing perspective?
She returns to her stores of munitions to plan her next step. Whatever her next step will be; it needs to be elegant, powerful, and pointed. She wants to bring her greatest enemies together for a final confrontation. She wants to see their faces when each of them dies. And she wants to do it up close and personal if she can.
Management
When anyone sins unintentionally . . .[11]
E-Day Minus 7.4 Years
Luther lives on Cliffside Drive, in the northeast corner of the neighborhood. His is a community with several exits, all onto NW Military Highway, so it has multiple escape routes, and considering its proximity to Highway 1604, De Zavala, and Huebner Road, it has excellent opportunities for flight. On her list of things to do is to make James and Luther flee, but to where. To Jacob, of course.
Luther chose his house, in part, because it was in a well-established neighborhood, it had firmly planted foundations, old world construction, and trees that were over three feet thick, when he moved in a decade ago. He had plans for a special someone and a dog, but that never materialized for him. Luther had chosen his home for its privacy without displaying any sense of forced privacy. There are no guards, no bars, and no walls; but the house is set back on the lot almost a hundred yards, backed up to a green space, with a ravine, and a quiet walkway, over a hundred yards behind his pool. On either side of the lot is about a hundred fifty feet of latticework, ten feet tall, serving as a fence, laced with vines that bloom purple flowers in springtime. In this yard, Luther and his lovers could do whatever they want and never be noticed.
James’ house is on Happy Trail, if you can believe it, about a mile from Luther on the other side of Military Highway. It also has excellent escape options, being a typical, upscale, neighborhood near two major intersections.
Mike has “borrowed” a service truck from CPS (City Public Service), the local electric and gas company, and, armed with a wrench, she drives down Happy Trail, at nearly noon, parking in front of James’ house. She puts out the orange cones, just like a service provider should, and proceeds to go to the gas meter on the west side of the house. Turning off the meter, she proceeds to the back of the house to enter by the French doors facing the pool. The false sense of secu
rity has allowed James to leave it unlocked, so she strolls in as if she owns the place.
Passing through the breakfast nook, she crosses the kitchen, into the living room and down the hallway; she finds the mechanical closet, which houses the air conditioning unit and the furnace. She reaches around the wall to the living room and switches off the system, then she uses her wrench to disconnect the gas pipe from the furnace, leaving it fully open.
At that moment, just as Mike closes the closet door, a woman walks out of the bedroom with a towel over her head, drying her hair, wearing only a startled look, petrified by a stranger as she looks up from under her towel. With the wrench in her fist, Mike punches the woman in the side of the head, rending her unconscious. Mike notices that this is not the first time this woman has been hit, but that is not her concern today. She goes to the bedroom to gather some belongings of the woman, taking them to the garage where she assumes the woman’s car must be, and she is correct. She opens the driver’s door and tosses the purse, dress, undies, and shoes into the passenger seat. She then goes back to get the woman from the hallway, lifting her into a fireman’s carry, Mike delivers her to the driver’s seat of the Jag with the license plate, ANGEL 72. Before leaving, she gets the woman’s lipstick from her purse, writing “LEAVE” on the windshield from the outside in reverse. She goes to the kitchen, discovering that the stove has electronic igniters, so there are no pilots to blow out. She slides the stove out from the wall, and with her wrench, she bashes the hose apart, so that when the gas on again, it will flow freely. She checks the water heater to find that it is electric. Going to the last bedroom down the hall, she sets up an electric kitchen timer, with the alarm set to a small pivoting arm with a wire brush on it. When the brush moves as she has set it up, it will touch the contacts of a 9 volt battery, creating a spark. The timer is set for one hour. As she walks around the end of the house, preparing to leave, she stops at the gas meter, opening the gas line again, and the fuel begins to flow.
The Warriors' Ends- Soldiers of the Apocalypse Page 12
