The 1000 Souls (Book 2): Generation Apocalypse (21 page)

Mabruke, still trembling, hardly able to contain himself answered for her. “She hosts a portion of the Angry Captain. The same soul is hosted by Joyce .”

Now a dropped pin could be heard, and Kayla knew by the intensity of Mabruke’s stance what was coming. So did the crowd. She couldn’t believe it. This was simply fantastical.

Mabruke put one hand on Tevy’s shoulder. “And this, my fellow hosts, is the Dormant Hero. The trinity has come to us tonight.”

The crowd went crazy, weeping and screaming and applauding. Mabruke went down on one knee and kissed Tevy’s hand. Kayla stepped back, afraid the crowd would charge, her Uzi coming up just as Elliot leveled his M16 and Tevy drew is shotgun.

This only seemed to make the crowd more ecstatic, but at least they stayed back.

“What the hell?” asked Tevy of her.

Kayla had to re-evaluate every interaction she had with Tevy. Could this teenager really host a portion of the same soul as the ripper she met in the basement of Atherley College?

“You’re the Dormant Hero,” she shouted to him. “You answered the determination the same way Bertrand Allan and Erics answered it.”

He shook his head, now pointing the shotgun to the ceiling with one hand since it was clear that the crowd would keep their distance.

Kayla wondered if he’d heard and just didn’t believe. She could hardly believe it herself. “You host a portion of the same soul as their prophet Erics, and Bertrand Allan. How can you be so thick? You’re Erics!”

Mabruke stood and kissed each of Tevy’s cheeks.

“Thank you for coming back to us, master.”

Tevy pushed away from the Mabruke’s kisses in horror, but it was the shining in Kayla’s eyes that really stunned him. She believed it. Did that mean she was a heretic? An Ericsian?

“No way,” he said. “No effing way.”

But the crowd couldn’t hear him, and apparently Mabruke didn’t care, but Kayla just kept shaking her head in wonder and saying, “What are the odds? What are the odds?”

Tevy couldn’t get his head around it, so he turned to Elliot, who was grinning like an idiot and blowing kisses to the girls as if he were the star of a boy-band. Tevy resisted the urge to punch Elliot’s shoulder to get his attention.

“Dude!” he shouted instead.

Elliot turned his grin on him. “You’re not supposed to use that word. You’ll get in trouble with the bishop.”

“Whatever. Surely you don’t believe this crap.”

Elliot shrugged and continued his waves. “What does it matter? Bobs wanted their cooperation and you’ve done it, dude. Oops!” He held his hand over his mouth as if he’d just burped. “If their believing this 1000 souls thing means they’ll do what you tell ’em to, isn’t that a good thing?”

Suddenly, Tevy had an idea, saw a chance to right a wrong. He turned to Mabruke. “How many troops can you put in the field tonight? Now.”

Mabruke thought for a moment. “We could get two hundred together in half an hour.”

“Will you do it?”

Mabruke didn’t hesitate. “If that’s what you believe we should do.”

“Yes, I do.”

But to Tevy’s surprise, Mabruke turned to Kayla. “Once they’re ready I assume you will lead them?”

Kayla seemed to know way too much about the Ericsians—and Tevy made a note to ask her about that later—because she knew exactly what to say to Mabruke. “Of course. I’m the Angry Captain.”

Mabruke ushered them away from the crowd and back into the lab so he could muster his troops, and that’s when Kayla turned her eyes on Tevy, and she did look angry. “What are we supposed to be doing with these two hundred troops?

Tevy had never been so sure of anything in his life.

“We’re going back to get Radu.”

Tevy fought to contain his frustration. They stood around one of the lab tables, a yellowed map of Chicago spread wide and held down at the corners with beakers that Mabruke had pulled from a cupboard under the table.

“Every second is precious,” Tevy said, looking around the table in the weak light of the kerosene lamp. “Radu could still be alive.” He usually found the scent of kerosene soothing, reminding him of Helen’s storybook readings to the Brat Pack. But tonight nothing calmed him, especially with Kayla glaring at him across the table as if he were the stupidest person alive.

“By now, he’s either dead or a ripper,” she said. “There’s no chance he’s alive and I’d shoot him on sight just in case.”

Why was she always angry with him? Tevy could remember several instances of this long before she’d been declared the Angry Captain, so it wasn’t that she was putting on a show. But now he thought of a weakness in her argument.

“So why did you agree to lead this raid if Radu’s dead?”

Kayla put a finger over the location of the high school on the map. “Because they obviously fortified the school to prevent exactly what Bobs wants: coordination between the Ericsians here at Wright and you guys at St. Mike’s. As long as that’s there, they might as well have built the Great Wall of China between the two strongest human fortresses in Chicago.”

Mabruke nodded but didn’t say anything and couldn’t seem to stop smiling every time one of the three spoke, as if everything they said confirmed his belief. Tevy wanted to punch him, but more than anything he wanted to fight the rippers. Ever since he’d aimed high, fearing to kill humans and go to hell, he regretted it. Radu stayed with them in the forest. He proved himself a worthy companion, and Tevy let him down.

“So, like I said,” continued Kayla. “We go in at dawn.”

“Six hours! For eff’s sake.” Tevy was tempted to rush out and try to shoot his way in right now.

“Come on, Tev,” said Elliot. “You can say it. Fuck.”

Kayla didn’t even glance at Elliot, let alone acknowledge his joke. “You want to catch this place full of rippers or not? If they’ve got as many as you say from all those trips downtown, plus all those traitors from California, we want to take as many of them out tonight as possible, or we’ll be fighting them tomorrow or next week.”

Several of Mabruke’s captains were with them, and they all muttered in agreement. They might treat Tevy with the honor due their prophet, but they all knew their history very well: it was Bobs and Joyce and Barry who command the armies that fought into Cave Mountain, not Erics and not Bertrand.

Tevy knew she was right, which didn’t make it any easier. Sure, it was unlikely Radu was alive, but maybe, just maybe, there was a tiny chance.

“You guys got any C-4 to blow the doors with?” Kayla asked of Mabruke.

Tevy found himself fascinated with Kayla’s expression, the intensity, the focus, the way her brow creased as she studied the map. One day maybe there would be lines, but she was younger than he thought, her skin still fresh.

Mabruke shook his head. “Nothing as subtle as C-4. We’ve got some good dynamite, but best of all, we have some M-72 LAWs.”

“What are those?” she asked.

Tevy suddenly remembered playing
Call of Duty
in the living room and his dad asking the same question. “They’re light anti-tank weapons. One and done. How many you got?”

Mabruke looked at the map for a few moments before he looked up and met Tevy’s eye. “I think we could spare two tonight. We have others, but we should save those for the next battle. These were very hard to come by, but I guarantee they’ll blow the doors off this place.”

Kayla’s eyebrows rose even higher, and Tevy could practically see the calculations going on in her head.

“This changes everything,” she said.

“This is just great.” Tevy could hardly contain his excitement. “We blow big holes in the side of the building, it doesn’t even have to be at the doors, and we charge in and get Radu.”

Kayla fixed him with a cool gaze. “Part right. We blow holes in the doors and go in through the second floor.” She turned back to Mabruke. “You must have some ladders around here?”

“We’re going to kill their human slaves?” Tevy still couldn’t break free of Bishop Alvarez’s warning.

Kayla looked up from the map in surprise. “We’re going to kill traitors. We killed a few today just in case....” That frown deepened. “Is that why you were such a lousy shot? You didn’t want to kill human traitors? What the hell’s that all about?”

“It’s about hell.” For once Elliot wasn’t in joking. “I got this,” he added to Kayla before taking Tevy by the elbow and turning him farther down the lab and away from the pool of light and humanity.

“I know they deserve it,” Tevy said. “I just get the heebee jeebies and all. There are a lot of rippers in hell waiting for me.”

“Remember how the bishop said that rippers weren’t human?” Elliot looked older than his seventeen years now, all the youth and mischief leaving his face.

“Of course.”

“We’re going into a ripper fortress, dude, and for all we know there are no traitors. Everyone you come across will be a ripper, and God’s okay with killing them. We just shoot everybody and let God sort them out.”

“But we saw humans go into there.” Tevy leaned back against a wall.

Elliot tapped a finger into Tevy’s chest. “Last evening. They’ve been in there with hungry rippers all night. It’s fair to say that anyone we come across is a ripper, and if you do shoot a human, well, you thought you were killing a ripper. No intent to murder. No harm, no foul. You don’t burn in hell.”

Tevy took a deep breath. “I sure hope you’re right.”

“If I’m wrong, I promise we’ll at least be together in hell.”

The cold produced a steady tremble in Tevy, rising and falling depending on when they were moving and when they were waiting—like now. Dawn had yet to blush the horizon and the moon set made it difficult to travel without using flashlights, a tool only a few possessed and even then were forbidden from using for fear of warning the rippers. The stars shone in a brilliant display above, now fading in the east, but they didn’t provide enough light to see the ground, which was littered with lumps of brick from burned and smashed buildings. Tevy had one aching knee from an encounter with these.

Now they all waited on the sidewalk of opposite the high school, which sprawled around three sides of the quad, with its peaked roofs making it look more like an alpine hotel than an education center. Tevy decided it was a shame they were going to blow holes in the building, for it had survived relatively unscathed by the apocalypse until now. It would be harder tomorrow to imagine what high school would have been like without this huge piece of architecture frozen in time as if the teachers and students were off for the summer.

Two wings of the school protruded at right angles from the main building and ended close to the street. It was the street side of those two wings that they would assault. One group here with Kayla, the other at the far wing with Mabruke.

Dim light glowed from the upper-floor windows, proving that power of some kind must be in use. Tevy strained to listen for the drone of a generator and crossed his arms close to his chest in an effort to stop trembling.

“Don’t be scared,” whispered Kayla, standing close while studying the school and the sky.

“Just freezing.” Tevy tried to sound relaxed to prove his point and not seem defensive. He’d done stuff that would turn her white as a ghost. How dare she suggest he was afraid? But he had to admit that the source of the tremble did seem beyond the cold. It also came from excitement, the exhilaration that he would get to fight rather than hide.

The high-tech weapons that Mabruke provided also excited Tevy. One of the Ericsians, an older man with a trimmed gray beard and black skin, stood nearby with the tube of the LAW now aimed at the front door of the building. Tevy had watched with interest when the man had extended the tube and set up his position, ensuring that no one stood behind him.

“This would fry you good,” he’d said, his accent suggesting Jamaican origin before the apocalypse. Tevy remembered that Erics himself had been from that country before becoming an American.

Elliot had nodded when he moved to stand clear. “Back blast from the rocket. I should’ve thought of that. This is going to be great.”

“Will it blow through the doors?” asked Kayla.

The rocket man nodded. “Through the doors and down the hall and out the ass end. Made for tanks, this was. Not piddly little high school doors. We’ll make a fine mess as soon as you give the word.”

Tevy was desperate for her to order the attack, too, and he really wanted to just charge in right after the rocket, but Kayla had the plan and he would follow it. Surely, she would call soon. The rippers all had to be back by now, and any that weren’t would likely trip into the little army that waited in the pre-dawn. But it was another ten minutes—when the school began to resolve in the early light, looking more like a building and less like a hulk occluding the stars—that Kayla tapped the man with the rocket launcher on the shoulder and hurried to join Tevy and Elliot.

“Hide your eyes, children,” said the rocket man.

Tevy clamped one hand over his eyes, his other hand already holding the pistol grip of his Winchester, but even then the light dazzled him through the cracks of his fingers, and the scream of the rocket deafened him, prompting an involuntary switch of his hand from eyes to left ear. The explosion sent a concussion of air back at them, as if a giant had exhaled.

Tevy yanked up his end of the aluminum ladder and rushed ahead, Elliot barely having a chance to pick up the back end before the charge across the street. Small fires inside the school now provided light, and that saved Tevy from stumbling over errant bricks from the blast.

The open door beckoned, undefended now because of the explosion, but Kayla had been insistent, and Tevy turned onto the lawn, dropping his end of the ladder. He holstered his shotgun, cursing himself for getting it out too soon, and helped Elliot raise the ladder to the second-floor window.

This was it. A chance save Radu or at least avenge him. Tevy again drew his shotgun and rushed up the ladder, keeping a wary eye on the window in case a defender appeared. None did, and Tevy smashed the window with the barrel of his gun, the glass raining around him and slicing at his hands as he dumped his body over the sill and onto the floor.