After the Dark (17 page)

. . . then the bullet
thwack
ed into the gentle giant's chest, and Joshua hurtled backward, his arms flying out, his eyes going wide, his mouth dropping open, but no sound came out and he disappeared into the brush.

In the next instant the shooter was turning toward where he'd heard Max yell.

She dove for cover, rolled, and—possessed by a burning rage . . . no soldier ever forgave another soldier for doing his duty—she blasted forward, blurring into a zigzagging ghost, the shooter always just missing her as he fired off the whole clip. When he went empty, she swept his legs and dumped him on his ass. As he tried to kick his way back to his feet, Max caught him with a straight right that slowed the guard, but didn't hurt him.

A Familiar.

“Good,” Max said, and smiled a terrible smile. “Time we found out just where your pain threshold begins . . .”

He was a good six inches taller than her, and a good fifty pounds heavier, and if the muscles bulging through the fatigues were any indication, he was probably a good deal stronger than her, too.

The man growled, but it got cut off by the boot she planted in his chest. He backed up, then came forward trying to get in close, where his size would give him an advantage. Max sidestepped him, back-elbowed him in the head as he went by, then—as he turned—she leapt and broke his nose with her boot.

Incensed now, he charged again.

This time she held her ground and—when he hurled himself at her—Max simply went limp and dropped.

As the guard flew over her, she caught him in the throat with an uppercut. The guard sprawled onto the forest floor. He rolled and tried to rise, but it was clear he was losing momentum, his breathing ragged through the blood-filled broken nose, even as he choked from the last punch.

As he sat up, Max was on him again. Three quick rights sent him back down, groggy. When he lifted his head again, Max—tired of her new game, deciding this snake-cult son of a bitch didn't need to suffer, just die—took his skull in both hands and gave it a violent twist, breaking the man's neck like a celery stalk.

She let go of the head, and the limp dead form slumped to the ground.

She went off to look for Joshua and spotted him, spread-eagled about ten yards away, his eyes closed, his chest barely moving. She went to his side, knelt next to him and finally forced herself to look at the wound in his chest. To her surprise, she saw no blood on his coat.

Max steeled herself to lift it back, but then Joshua moaned, opened his eyes, blinked a few times, and in a strangled voice barely above a whisper, asked, “What happened, Little Fella?”

“You were shot, Big Fella.”

“Took one for the team?”

“. . . Afraid so.”

Joshua swallowed thickly. “C-Cold.”

She stripped off her leather vest and covered him with it as best she could.

He moaned, and it almost sounded like a death howl.

“Does it hurt?”

“Hurt,” he repeated. “Like I got punched—hard.”

His hand went to his chest and she tried to pull it away, but he was stronger. Reaching under the vest and inside his coat, he drew out something red, and for the briefest moment Max had a vision of him pulling out his own heart.

But what he had in his pawlike hand was a book . . .

. . . the hard-back copy of
Gulliver's Travels
she had used to find Ray White in Appleton.

Slowly, Joshua sat up and looked at the blood-colored volume with a neat entry wound in the cover that went almost all the way through. When he riffled the pages, the bullet tumbled out.

“Are you mad, Max?” he asked.

“Mad?”

“Joshua ruined Father's book.”

Relief flooded through Max and she grabbed her monstrous friend in her arms and gave him a big hug.

“
Ow!
” he growled.

“Aw, did that hurt?” she asked. Pulling back and taking his face in her hands, she gave him a big, wet, sloppy kiss.

This time he didn't say anything, and when she let him go, a wide smile spread over his face. His eyes were glassy, and he wobbled for a moment.

Then he passed out.

“Big Fella,” she said, and shook him.

He was dead to the world . . . but not dead, thank God.

Plenty left to do tonight, and now she had two or three hundred pounds of dog-boy transgenic to haul out of these woods.

Still, it was a hell of a lot better than leaving his dead furry body behind.

Chapter Nine

MEET THE NEW BOSS

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
DECEMBER 23, 2021

Just twenty yards from the west side of the house, Mole and Alec huddled in the woods. Between them and the mansion lay the building's blue shadow, one last suggestion of night, even though ten minutes ago—on the other side of the massive, mausoleum-quiet building—the sun had broken through, bringing a not entirely welcome morning. And yet the chill of the night clung to them, as they squatted like oversize gnomes at the base of an oak.

“Where are they?” Mole asked, the reptilian face wrinkling with impatience. “What do you think? Should we go lookin' for 'em?”

“We should do what Max said,” Alec said, “and wait.”

“Mr. Frickin' Rule Book all of a sudden!”

Alec offered up his trademark smirk. “Is it my fault you ran out of smokes?”

Mole said nothing, just scowled.

Alec's smirk softened into a smile. “Relax, buddy. They'll be along.”

“They musta heard the shots.”

“Yeah—and we heard shots, too, remember? They maybe had a little trouble of their own.”

“They maybe got iced.”

“Maybe. But for now we wait.”

Mole sighed heavily and settled in. “All right . . . but it'd be easier if I had a damn cigar.”

“Life with you would be easier for
me
if you had a damn cigar . . . On the other hand, one look at the smoke and every goon and gun on the grounds'd be down on us.”

“Yeah yeah yeah. It's a frickin' moot point, ain't it, smart-ass?”

A familiar female voice cut in: “Why don't you two try marriage counseling?”

Mole swung around and there was Max, coming up a path between trees, an arm around Joshua's waist, walking him along like he was drunk. To Alec, the smile on his friend's furry face was even a little dumber than usual, as well as inappropriate, considering the circumstances.

“What's up with Furballs?” Mole asked.

“He was shot,” she said.

“What? Jesus—” Mole said, getting to his feet.

“You mean he was stabbed,” Alec said, frowning, also getting up. “We all saw it, Max.”

Helping the beast man along, she said, “That was then . . . this is now—but he'll be okay.”

Mole was helping her with Joshua, who they walked over to the base of a tree, sitting him down.

“Where'd he get it?” the lizard man asked.

“In the front cover,” she said, and quickly filled them in, finishing, “But he took the full impact of the slug—he's pretty shaken.”

Joshua said, “Max kissed Joshua's oowwie,” and grinned stupidly.

Alec and Mole exchanged lifted-eyebrow glances, then Alec said, “I don't even want to know.”

Mole, amused, leaned toward Max, saying, “I got shot, too . . .” Then he puckered his lizard lips, as much as lizard lips could pucker, anyway.

And Max said, “You wish . . . Let's see it.”

Mole showed her where the bullet had cut a crease in his vest and his side; the bleeding had stopped.

“Get over yourself!” she said. “I nick myself worse shavin' my legs.”

Alec and Mole reflected on that image perhaps a beat too long, and Max snapped, “Can we get to business?”

Alec gestured through the trees. “I know about your cat-burglar background and all, Max—but how do you intend to get inside that dollhouse?”

The three-story antebellum mansion made, as before, an intimidating adversary, hedge in front, at least three windows on each floor on each side of the house . . .

“Windows,” Max said.

“What about them?” Alec asked.

“That's our way in.”

The X5 frowned. “We're not going to try to take out the alarm system? Those things'll be as wired as Sketchy on Saturday night. Not very subtle, Max.”

“This from the guy who shot up the whole damned island on the way in.”

Alec looked hurt. “
They
started it—anyway, I heard way more gunfire from your side.”

She arched an eyebrow, a fist on a hip. “What, are you afraid alarms will alert them to our presence?”

Alec smirked humorlessly. “Well, maybe the gunshots already did that, yeah.”

Mole cleared his throat.

They both turned to look at him.

“Anybody got a cigar?” he asked.

“No,” Max said.

“Of course not,” Alec said.

“No,” Joshua said, and suddenly the Big Fella was standing next to them.

Mole made a mock-gracious “after you” gesture, half bowing. “Then can we just
do
this shit, please? So I can find my way back to civilization and some frickin' tobacco?”

They each came in from a different direction, breaking through a first-floor window—gloved hands punching a hole and reaching up to undo the latch—and rolling in, into a combat stance. No audible alarms were triggered, though silent ones would no doubt be registering in some security center.

Max had assigned Joshua—seeing as how he'd been both stabbed and shot recently—to go in on the west side; the window Max selected for him was toward the back, probably a study or den. Alec went around to the east side and came in through a dining room window. In the back, Mole barged into the kitchen, while in the front, Max rolled right into the living room. If you're gonna crash a party, Max thought, might as well really crash it . . .

Two guards waited for her, and when she came up, one hit her high in front while the other hit her low in back. She dropped, hit the floor hard, feeling like a gong somebody had sounded, and wondered for a moment if Alec might not have been right about being a little more circumspect in their entrance.

They were big and well-built, both with short, dark hair, and they wore black TAC fatigues. One was a few inches taller than his partner and had a short, crooked scar on his right cheek. But they were not smart: they should have immediately attacked a second time instead of waiting there, poised as if some invisible referee were counting Max out.

And of course Max wasn't about to be counted out . . .

Bouncing to her feet, she hit the nearest one, the scarred sucker, with a straight, powerful right, a punch that could have put a hole in a wall . . .

. . . and he didn't flinch.

Goddamn Familiars, she thought.

The other one kicked her in the back, but she was braced for a blow and took it well, only when she moved forward the scarred one karate-edged her in the stomach and doubled her over.

And unlike a Familiar, an X5 like Max—for all her superior attributes—could feel pain, all right . . .

Like an overeager dance partner, the scarred boy spun her around, jitterbug style, one hand on the scruff of her neck, the other on her backside, and ran her at the open window. With no more effort than it would take him to toss his jacket on a chair, the big man threw her through the window, over the hedge and into the yard, where she hit with a thud, rolled a couple of times, and stopped in a sprawl.

Standing in the window, the two Familiars grinned at her. Max got up, dusted herself off, and with a toss of the head, flung the hair from her eyes.

“Fellas—I been thrown outta better places, by better people.”

Like an ugly family portrait in the frame of the broken window, the two guards just kept grinning at her. The scarred Familiar said, “You're always welcome here.”

And he gestured with a little “com'ere” curl of the fingers.

Max smiled. “I think I will make another visit. Only this time, just for a change of pace—I'll kick
your
asses.”

“Go,” the scar-faced one said, and the rest of the phrase presumably would have been “for it,” only Max didn't let him get that out. Instead, she launched herself back through the window, taking both men down with her in a wide generous embrace.

Max rolled off them, leaving the two startled men on their backs; then she landed nimbly on her feet and pirouetted, facing them, a woman possessed. They scrambled up even as her fists and feet flew in all directions, and—despite their incredibly high pain threshold—the Familiars could not withstand the one-woman onslaught. Though there were two of them, the guards were no match for this whirling dervish of a pissed-off X5.

The vast living room—the meager furnishings that remained sheet-covered and pressed up against the walls, like mute spectators—gave the three combatants plenty of space to maneuver on the hardwood floor.

The scarred one went down first, a vicious kick catching him on the side of the knee, tearing ligaments audibly. He didn't cry out, of course, but any lack of pain couldn't make up for the physical facts of life, and the leg gave out underneath him when he tried to attack her. He made one more sweeping attempt with his good leg, which she jumped as if skipping rope, and the aftermath of the guard's attempt was to present his chin at a nice angle; and Max clipped him with a straight, swift, hard right that turned out his lights.

The other one cartwheeled toward her, delivered a fast one-two and cartwheeled away.

“That looked pretty,” she said. “Blow me another kiss, why don't you?”

And she waved for him to bring the shit again, and he did, this time cartwheeling in and kicking her first with his right, then his left foot, before cartwheeling away—she'd pulled back some, but he did catch her. She raised her gloved hand to her face, wiped a trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth, and waved for him to come back one more time.

This time he backflipped into a cartwheel, apparently hoping to confuse her, but Max was ready, and when he was braced for that split second on just one hand, she hit the floor in a baseball slide, knocked the guard's palm out from under him and dumped him on his head.

He jumped to his feet, only to find Max cartwheeling this time, right toward him; then she dropped into a roll and launched at him, her fist burying to the wrist in his crotch. He said nothing, his eyes bulging and watering as he bent over, obviously surprised by the intensity of the sensation.

“See?” Max said, with a demented little grin. “Some kindsa pain you just
can't
completely breed out of a guy . . .”

And she came up, delivering a hard head butt that broke the guard's nose, twin streams of blood erupting from either nostril as he went pitching back into the wall.

He bounced back at her, consumed with rage, blood and spittle flying as he roared toward her. At a fraction of the last moment, she sidestepped and the guard blasted through the middle unopened window, breaking glass raining all around as he came to rest over the sill, half in the room, half outside. It was as if he were taking a breather.

Then he stood, turned, blood dripping from several cuts as he stepped through the shattered glass. Coughing, he frowned and reached up and felt a huge shard protruding from his neck. He coughed again as if that might dislodge the scratching in his throat.

“Got a tickle?” Max asked. “Let me help.”

She stepped forward, yanked the glass from the man's neck, and ducked, anticipating the arterial spray, which easily rose to the ceiling, where it painted a scarlet Jackson Pollock abstraction.

The Familiar's eyes went wide and his hands flew to his throat, but it was too late. Max drop-kicked him, sending him on through the window this time, to leave him outside to bleed to death. She knew it wouldn't take long.

Say what you will about Manticore, she thought, but science'll beat out pagan breeding rituals, any time.

She left the living room—and the drip-drip-drip of her opponent's blood off the ceiling—and went into the hall.

Joshua was emerging from the back of the house, in the midst of fighting another guard—obviously a Familiar (any human would be crushed by any one of Joshua's formidable blows)—backing the man slowly down the hall toward Max with a series of punches alternating between face and belly. The guard was putting up a good fight even though Joshua towered over him. Slowly, the battle neared her.

“Don't be cruel to animals,” she said.

The guard turned, and she delivered a right cross that spun the man back toward Joshua, who caught him with a left hook. The Familiar's eyes closed and the guard melted to the floor.

“Hard to hurt them,” Joshua said.

“They're like robots,” Max said. “But when you shut off their electricity, they go down.”

Joshua nodded, getting the concept.

“Check on Mole,” she said. “I'll look for Alec.”

They each took off in the direction from which they'd come, Joshua toward the back to find Mole in the kitchen, Max to the front to look for Alec, moving away from the living room. She ran into him at the bottom of the staircase, just as four Familiars opened fire with automatic weapons from above.

Both Max and Alec dove into the dining room, but they knew this sanctuary would last barely ten seconds. Already they could hear the guards thundering down the stairs. The room had a long table covered with two sheets and a dozen sheeted chairs, as if a banquet for ghosts was in sway. At the other end of the room, sharing the same wall as the door they'd used, another door led, presumably, to the kitchen.

Communicating with hand signals, they put a plan together—no time to decide whether it sucked or not, and anyway, it was a collaboration—then the X5s set it into action.

Alec took off for the back, while Max flattened herself against the wall, next to the near door.

When the first guard came in, Max jerked his gun out of his hand, and pulled him to her. As she did, a second guard fired at them, killing the guard Max held in front of her, a human shield.

Alec—having slipped out the door at the back of the dining room—came up the hall from the kitchen, Mole on one side of him and Joshua on the other, and the three of them waded into the remaining guards, just as Max discarded her dead shield and attacked the nearest opponent, using the butt of the commandeered weapon as a club, knocking him unconscious and to the floor in a pile.

Within seconds all the three guards were down, likely out for the rest of the day, if not dead. None of the three transgenics gave that a thought, not even the compassionate Joshua—these four were soldiers, bred by Manticore for combat, and soldiers did not linger over the casualties they'd created, shedding tears.