Geek Mafia: Mile Zero (44 page)

"No phones," Chloe said.

"I know you don't trust me, but..."

"She means no phones work," said Paul. "We shut down all the phones in the neighborhood."

"Why?" asked Winston.

"So no one can call the cops and so no one can call for reinforcements," Chloe snapped. She was looking at the screens. Sandee and the killer were in the shed. Sandee had a shovel in his hand, ready to take the head off of anyone who came through the front door. On the porch, the boys were still debating tactics.

"Which means you can't call for reinforcements either," Winston pointed out.

"We don't have any reinforcements. And right now we outnumber them."

"Assuming there aren't more out back," Winston said.

"And whose fault is it that we don't know that?" she snapped.

"My people would be able to take care of..."

"Enough!" shouted Paul. "We're on our own. Let's formulate a plan."

"Maybe they'll go away," Bee suggested. On the screen they continued to huddle. It looked like Eddie and Marco were arguing. The fat guy stayed out of it.

"If they do come through the door, they're in for a nasty surprise or two," Paul said. "I say we let them break themselves on the defenses and sweep up whatever remains."

"I hate just sitting here like that," Chloe said. "But I don't see any other option."

She watched the screens as the argument on the porch came to some sort of conclusion. Marco tried to use his cell phone but failed to get a signal. He threw the phone at Eddie, who was yelling at him and then stormed down the steps and back toward the car. Eddie flipped him off and then motioned for the big guy to bust down the door. As Chloe watched, Eddie drew the gun from behind him and held it barrel down as the big man slammed his whole body into the door.

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Even from their position upstairs and at the back of the house, they felt and heard the building shake from the blow. The guy was sumo big and sumo strong. He slammed again. Chloe knew the deadbolts would hold, but she was worried about the door's frame, which was no doubt already splintering under the onslaught. She turned to Bee and asked, "Is everything ready?"

"All charged up," Bee replied, her eyes glued to the screen, her mouse cursor hovering over a button on the screen marked "LIVINGROOM DOOR 1E."

"This ought to be good," said Paul.

"He's pretty big," Chloe pointed out. "He might be able to take it."

"No way," Paul insisted. "He'd have to be an elephant."

"We'll see," she replied with a smile.

About a minute later they did see. The door frame burst on the eighth blow and showered splinters as it gave way and the door came off its hinges. One more kick sent the door crashing back into the room, right on top of the metal plate hidden under the doormat.

"Oh shit," said Bee. "They're going to walk right over it." She moved her cursor off the activate icon on her screen and over to another button marked "LIVINGROOM WALL 2A"

Chloe watched on the screen as Eddie followed the big guy into the room, both of them clambering over the door, which covered an electrical plate that would've sent a charge arcing through their bodies strong enough to knock them both unconscious. No one had ever considered the possibility that a broken-down door would cover the defense mechanism. Shit. Now all their furniture was about to be ruined, which totally sucked. She liked that couch.

Eddie was shouting something, waving his gun around like an idiot. It was a revolver, maybe a .38, if she had to guess. Didn't seem like the kind of penis-replacement, nickel-plated automatic she would've assumed Eddie would tote. She guessed that he hadn't brought a gun at all and had been forced to buy that off some crack dealer or down-on-his-luck local. She hoped he didn't get trigger happy when...

The room suddenly went white. Even upstairs in Bee's room they could hear the loud whooshing sound as a tear gas grenade hidden in the room's ceiling fan filled the whole downstairs with noxious fumes. Fortunately their room was sealed tight, because the entire house was going to stink to high heaven for the next few weeks, she was sure. With the storm shutters down, there was nowhere for the gas to go but out the front door and up the stairs.

There was also nowhere else for Eddie and the Big Guy to go. Eddie, who hadn't made his way more than a few feet into the house in the first place, retreated back out the door, coughing and wheezing. Chloe could see him stumble down the stairs and into the yard. She didn't see the gun and hoped he'd dropped it on the floor somewhere. The Big Guy had just run straight ahead when the gas flooded the room, and somehow he'd managed to find his way onto the stairs, where he was now running ahead of the expanding cloud of gas.

Bee watched him on the stairwell camera and clicked the icon marked "STAIRSLIGHT 1," switching off the light both by the stairs and in the upstairs hall. The internal cameras automatically switched over to night-vision mode. They watched as he fumbled around, tripping on a stair and falling forward onto his hands.

He crawled the rest of the way up on all fours and started feeling his way along the hallway. They could hear him coughing from the tear gas.

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As he approached the door to Sandee's bedroom, Chloe watched Bee click three icons in rapid succession, each marked: "2ND FLOOR DOOR CHARGE." Bee had hollowed out a space inside each door that contained the mechanism from a 100,000-volt stun gun. As soon as something touched the metal doorknobs the device went off, giving a nasty shock. That's exactly what happened to the Big Guy as he reached for Sandee's door. The current coursed through him and he screamed, pulling his hand away and falling to the floor in a twitching heap.

Chloe realized another flaw in their system. Ideally she would have loved to rush out into the hall, shock the guy again and subdue him. But odds were he'd be recovered by the time she undid all the locks and seals that Bee's door had on it. Instead, she had to watch as he shrugged off the pain and shook his head from side to side trying to clear his vision. But his eyes were no doubt still tearing up from the gas, which was now spreading through the upstairs hall as well.

"Look there," Paul said, pointing to one of the screens showing the outside of the house. Eddie was there with Marco, who'd run forward from the car to help his partner recover from the tear-gas attack. The two of them were pointing at the house and yelling at one another. As Chloe watched, two more guys she didn't recognize came running around the side of the house, straight past the shed where Sandee and the killer were holed up.

She didn't recognize them, but they were definitely with Eddie. They must've been hiding out back. Good thing they hadn't tried to escape that way.

The four men seemed to be debating what to do about the gas filled house. Marco was trying to pull Eddie toward the car, but he would have none of it. The two new guys just sort of stood there, staring down at the ground or back at the house. They reminded Chloe of a couple of kids trying to ignore the fact that their parents were fighting in front of them.

Meanwhile, their big house guest had recovered enough to continue feeling his way blindly around the hallway outside their door. He'd learned his lesson about doorknobs at least, and had made his way to the end of the hall and the bathroom door (which wasn't electrified). The guy felt along the edges of the door as he stood up. Unlike Bee's door, the bathroom wasn't reinforced at all, and it gave a little as he leaned against it.

The man didn't even have to try hard - one shoulder slam and it popped open. He flipped on the light switch and disappeared inside, shutting the door behind him.

"Where's the bathroom camera?" Chloe asked.

"There is no bathroom camera," Bee said. "I thought that would be weird."

"Unlike having cameras all over the fucking city, including bathrooms at the party?"

"But not in our bathrooms! That's icky."

Chloe looked around Bee's room. "Fine. Where's a gas mask?"

"In the chest by the bed," Bee replied.

"What're you doing?" Paul asked.

"I'm going to get that guy when he comes out," she said, opening the chest. It contained a jumble of gadgets and devices, most of them in pieces. But there were two gas masks. She took one for herself and tossed the other to Paul. "You want to help?"

He looked down at the mask in his hands and sighed. His forehead still had a nasty bruise from his fight with the killer. "Yeah, of course."

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Chloe rooted through the chest some more and came up with a pair of handcuffs and some pepper spray, ignoring the fact that Bee also kept a vibrator with her other gear. She glanced at the screen to see that Marco and Eddie were still arguing in the front yard. The other two had retreated to the street where they were talking to one of the neighbors who'd come outside to see what all the fuss was about. They were probably trying to convince the old man that the white smoke pouring out the busted down front door was no big deal.

Paul finished unlocking and unsealing the door, and already they could smell the gas seeping in through the cracks. "Do you have any other gas masks for us?" Winston asked, speaking up for the first time since the siege began.

"Under the bed," said Bee. "Could you get me mine?"

Winston knelt by the bed and pulled out a long, clear plastic storage bin that was full of more gadgets and gear. "Which one's yours?" he asked as he opened the box, but it was immediately clear to everyone. There were three gasmasks in there, one of which Bee had modified heavily to look just like a Hello Kitty face.

"Never mind, I found it."

Bee and Winston donned their masks, and Chloe and Paul waited by the door. "Ok, we're going to get rid of this guy and then we need to bug out," Chloe said. "Bee and Win, load one of those containers with backup drives and whatever else Bee wants to take. And Bee, turn off the security on the back door, ok? Once we're done with the big guy, lock this place up - but non-lethal, ok? We're gonna have cops and probably firemen here pretty soon, and the last thing we need is one of them getting zapped."

"Bug out?" said Bee, her voice barely audible through the mask. "Not like..."

"No, of course not," said Chloe, knowing how much Bee had hated having to abandon the crew's house in San Jose on short notice. "We'll just clear out until Eddie and any cops are gone." She turned to Paul.

"You ready?" she asked.

"Someone's going to have to stay and spin the police a story to make them go away," he pointed out.

"I know," she said. "Let's get rid of fattie first though, ok?"

He nodded. She held up three fingers and counted down to one before throwing the door open. Bee hit the lights from her control panel, allowing them to see the bathroom door clearly. Chloe rushed down to the end of the hall and slammed her shoulder into the door, knocking it wide open. There was a very surprised man sitting on the toilet, a washcloth over his nose and mouth. Chloe emptied the can of pepper spray right into the guy's eyes. He yelled in protest, although she wasn't sure how much good it did since his eyes were already screwed shut as a result of the tear gas.

At the very least, it shocked him into momentary compliance. Chloe grabbed his right arm and Paul came in and grabbed his left. They pulled him to his feet and yanked him out of the small bathroom and into the hall.

Then Chloe leaned back and swung him to her right while Paul let go. The big man fell forward, right into the door of Chloe and Paul's bedroom. He was so big it was impossible for him to miss the doorknob. She'd been hoping to shock him in the groin, but it looked like he got it in the hip. Either way he screamed again and collapsed to the floor once more.

Paul descended on him, rolling his spasming body over onto its stomach and handcuffing the man's hands behind his back. The guy wasn't knocked out though, and already he was struggling to get to his knees, even with Paul on his back. Chloe moved forward, pulled Paul away and gave the guy a swift kick in the ass as he stood up. He stumbled forward toward the other end of the hall, only stopping when he hit the wall beside the Chapter 36

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stairs.

Most of the fight had gone out of him at this point, especially now that he was back in the tear-gas-filled hallway. Chloe and Paul came up behind him, grabbed him by his elbows and marched him down the stairs and into the living room. Together they gave him a massive shove that sent the big man in an off-balance run through the front door and out into the yard. Chloe could well imagine the sight from Eddie's point of view -

his buddy coughing and wheezing suddenly emerging from the gas-filled house.

"Shall we check out back?" Paul suggested.

Chloe nodded and they went through to the kitchen. She used a rubber spatula to poke at the pressure plate by the back door just to make sure Bee had actually turned it off. She had. She unlocked the door and they went out onto the porch. Everything looked clear, and no one shot at them, so she assumed all was safe. Time to get out of there.

They ran back in and up to Bee's bedroom. Bee had closed the door after they'd left, but Winston opened it up as they approached. "Your friends have decided that discretion is the better part of valor," he said. Chloe swept past him into the room and watched the screen as Eddie and his four Crewmembers were getting into their car and driving off. They had to go slow because the street was full of curious spectators. All their neighbors had come out to see the excitement.

"Let's get gone," said Chloe. "Bee, the car's parked two blocks..."

"I know," Bee said. "I've got the spare key in my pocket."

"Ok, we're going to get Sandee and go out the back way right now."

They moved as fast as they could, locking every door behind them as they left. They went out the back door and so far they were lucky: None of the neighbors had come around back to see what was happening. But Sandee and the killer were still in the shed, and Chloe needed to get them out of there as well. She pulled Paul aside for a moment.