CICADA: A Stone Age World Novel (25 page)

She examined her arms and legs as if they were someone else’s, seeing that she must have already sliced through her bindings.
Did I do that
? she wondered as she examined her boot knife, still clutched in her hand, as if it were part of her.

There was movement by the office entrance door; guards poured into the office, searching for survivors.
Good luck with that!

She didn’t need an invitation to leave; already on her hands and knees, she crawled all the way to the hallway entrance before finally getting to her feet and made it to the elevator without being seen. With further luck, all the guards would have left their posts to investigate the explosion or gone to Operations. She descended.

The elevator dinged. She waited, knife ready to take more blood, but she heard no one outside. The three guards she had killed earlier had been moved over to a wall, out of the way. Simon was gone.

She deliberated and then walked over to one of them. He hadn’t drawn and she wondered if he still had his gun. He did. She snatched it and two magazines, slipping them into her front waistband and covering them with her shirt. Her handy boot knife she shoved back into her shoe. She stood up straight and gazed at her reflection in the painted-over outside windows.

Her eyes were swollen from tears, from dust and smoke. Her head had a splash of dark red, some dried blood where Lunder had clocked her;
retribution is a bitch
, she thought and smiled slightly. Her face sagged back again.

Before thoughts of Carrington could invade and ravage her emotions and take away her rage, she pushed them back, mussed her already-rumpled hair with her fingers and stepped out into the bright sun.

She had a new goal in mind: shut down the reactor that was killing the planet. She couldn’t do anything about Cicada. They’d have to fend for themselves. But maybe she could save a few scientists by helping them escape, and she could save them all by destroying the reactor.

She walked briskly to their apartment, trying not to draw any attention to herself. Carrington had fashioned two explosives… the second one was built into a clock. She would use that device to blow the reactor to hell—the hell that she hoped Westerling and Lunder now occupied.

She rounded a corner, her building in sight, and looked back at the Observation Tower. She was now on the side opposite of where she’d watched them die. Smoke poured out of a couple holes in the forty-five-degree angled windows. And then she noticed something else, something she had only seen a couple times during testing and the firing of their EMAs. The EPF was down. Bios-2 was unprotected.

A guard brushed past her and yelled at his dead radio, “The field is down. Operations, can you hear me? The field is down.”

Melanie grinned proudly. Carrington had given them all a chance now. “Thank you, my love. I will make sure your efforts were not wasted.”

It was her turn.

John couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He stood tall on the road leading to Bios-2 after one of his men told them there was an explosion. Black smoke billowed out of a gash in the large tower in the middle of the walled complex. But he also saw something much more important. Their force field was down.

The Teacher told him to watch out for treachery from the leader of Bios-2. He said it would lead to their downfall and that John should wait for a sign and be prepared. And there it was.

A dozen other red-robed men joined him on the road, gawking at the damage.

“Prepare the men for battle,” John hollered. “We’re attacking Bios-2 in five minutes. Meet outside my tent then.” John dashed down the embankment and into the woods, his men following, yelling to others, “Five minutes. Meet in five.”

She found him in Comms, just as he had promised. He looked up; the bill of his Cubs hat tilted at her as she stood in the doorway, staring curiously at him.

“Hi, Sally. So glad you could come.”

She considered what to say, like an actress trying to remember her lines. “Were you just in the hallway in front of the Library?”

“Of course I was. Remember, I talked to you in the Library about meeting me here?”

“I mean right after that; did you go into the communications closet off the hallway?”

“No… I haven’t been in that room in probably a month. Why?”

She looked at him carefully and then shook her head. “Oh, never mind. Now, please tell me why we don’t have to worry about the invading army.”

“In a minute; first, help me figure something out. Come here,” he beckoned from the dark Comms room.

“Why is this room so dark?” Nervousness washed over her like a blast of cold air. She timidly walked around to the far end of the console to where Webber was now standing, his arms behind his back, like he was hiding something.

He didn’t respond, just gazed at her.

She hesitated because she was starting to believe that it was, in fact, Webber who was in that closet; and if it was him, he was up to no good; and he then must have been lying to her; and if he was, then what was he hiding behind his back?

Fear rose up behind her and she took a step back into the darkness of the room.

His expression changed to a querulous one. “What’s wro—”

A swift movement from the doorway, and someone jumped on top of Webber, knocking him to the ground. “You!” screamed the madman, who connected a roundhouse to Webber’s cheek, knocking his head into the floor.

Sally screamed. “Uncle Max? What are you doing?”

Max sat on top of a dazed and only semi-conscious Webber, pulled his right arm back to continue the pummeling and grunted in pain. “Ugh…” He lowered his arm. “This man is a mole for Bios-2 and called them to let them know we were coming.”

“Wha-what?” Webber babbled, eyes blinking. “I did-did what? No, not me… why would I da-da-do that?” He thrashed about in a feeble attempt to free himself from Max’s grasp.

Max hit him again in the side with a left. “Stop moving or I’ll beat you to death.”

“Maxwell,” yelled Preston from the doorway, coming in. “For God’s sake stop. What are you doing?”

Max spun and looked at Preston bounding toward him. “Freeze!” he yelled, training his gun on Preston.

“Whoa-whoa-whoa. Hang on, boss. It’s me; what the hell is wrong?”

“This… asshole,” Max said, sniffling, “is the reason two more…” Max’s head dropped down and he took a deep breath. “…of our people were killed. He gave Bios-2 intel…”

“Look, I don’t know what you think you know, but I know this man. He is definitely on our side. He is not the enemy. And I am absolutely sure he is not our mole.”

Max looked at Webber, blood trickling out of his nose, his cheek swelling, and then looked back up to Preston. Behind him, Magdalena and several others, were all staring at Max.

Magdalena flipped on the light switch and Max stood up. Webber squirmed away.

“I don’t want to believe it either,” Sally spoke, squinting at the brightness, “but I just heard the voice of a man who sounded like it could have been Webber, talking to someone in the communications closet by the Library. He said, ‘plans are in place’ and that something was happening within an hour and that he’d be waiting for a sign. The man was Webber’s height and he was wearing a blue baseball cap, just like that one.”

They all looked at Webber, now holding a tissue to his nose. “But you didn’t see my face or my Cubs cap, right?”

They looked at Sally, who shook her head.

“Web, I gotta ask, what were you doing in Comms on your day off in the dark yesterday?” Magdalena stepped further inside. “I saw you had a phone in your hand, in the dark.”

“I noticed the drawer was unlocked. The console drawer is supposed to be locked, and I was checking to see if there was any problem with the phone,” Webber answered with rapid-fire words.

“Maxwell,” Preston insisted, “is what Sally or Magdalena said what convinced you he was our mole?”

“No,” Max hobbled to and rested against the console, “it was Sampson’s journal. Sampson’s room was practically destroyed by someone looking for this. His journal said, ‘there is one other on the inside, like me: he is IT.’ Who else could that be?” Max begged.

“Johnson!” Webber said decisively.

“The Dodgers,” Preston added.

“What?” Max asked, partially because he thought he must have not heard him right.

“Johnson wore a Dodgers cap sometimes. It’s blue.”

Magdalena jumped in. “Of course. He’s an IT guy, and I’ve heard Web and him argue all the time about the Dodgers. Where is Johnson?”

“He just left,” a voice out in the reception area yelled out. It was a guard, marching up the stairs. “He was in a hurry and just rushed out.”

Max righted himself and hobbled toward the doorway, about to trot after him.

“Hold on,” the guard said, “more important than Johnson is what’s outside. There are hundreds of fully armed men and women, wearing red robes. They look like they plan to invade us.”

“Get this shit out of my face!” he shouted.

“Sorry, Mr. Westerling. I’m trying but there’s a lot.” Dr. Robert Thornton stood beside him, carefully pulling glass out of his face, one tiny fragment at a time. The nurse immediately blotted the streams of blood, cleaned and bandaged the wounds.

“Sir, can’t I put you under so it’s not so painful?” He watched his patient writhe with their every touch.

“No way. I’m not going under until we get that bitch Reid who did this to me.”

“I’m almost done. Looks like two more,” Robert said. “Just be thankful you shave, unlike most every man these days. A beard would’ve made it much harder to excise the glass from your face. And you were lucky that your eyes weren’t hit. Hell, it’s a miracle you’re still alive. From what I understand, they’ll be finding pieces of Mr. Gufstafson and Mr. Reid for weeks.”

Robert stopped, his nurse still dabbing at the blood. After each wound was cleaned, she applied suture strips, then gauze, and finally surgical tape to each of the spots where glass fragments were removed from his face.

“There, that’s it for the glass. Now, let me fix your arm; you need stitches.”

“Not right now, Doc,” Westerling said, sitting up in the infirmary bed and swinging his feet onto the floor. “Throw some of those strips on it for now.”

Thornton deadpanned his doctorly advice. “You might want to take it easy.”

Westerling ignored him. “Reynolds?” he called, looking past the bandages. “Where the hell is Reynolds?”

“I’m here, sir,” Walter Reynolds answered, bounding through the clinic’s doorway.

“Tell me you found Mrs. Reid.” He glared at him and then went back to buttoning a shirt someone had brought down for him from his apartment in the tower.

“Sir, I’m sorry; we have larger problems… Our EPF is down and it looks like we’re about to be attacked.”

A red signal flare screamed into the green evening sky at John’s command. The gunshots began. To conserve ammo, the warriors were to fire at three locations, purposely not firing at the northern gate. This was to both see how Bios-2 reacted and if they would take guards off that location. It would be easier if they did. The first lightning cannon erupted, filling the air with the smell of ozone and burned flesh.

John had his suspicions about these things and used the older women—those less likely to bear children and not part of God’s Army—to attract their fire. The second lightning cannon went off on the south side.

“Okay,” he said to his two gunners, “take out the cannon with the .50 and you tap everything that moves on the wall.” He pushed plugs into his ears and watched the north wall with his binoculars.

The third and fourth lightning cannons went off just as his men’s .50 came to life, pummeling their fifth cannon with exploding tracer rounds, each one finding its target with a mini-explosion. The M4 simply spat out death upon anything moving, connecting successfully with three shadows before it fell silent. The .50 sat quiet as well, having successfully dispatched its target.

“All right, give me cover fire.”

John waited for another warrior with an M4 to join in and now both took turns firing two or three rounds on semi-auto at the wall, even though there was no one to shoot at. He handed his binoculars to another warrior, who scanned for life signs, and John ran to the gate to place the C4 on the prime points to give them their entrance. He had no training in explosives, but when they found the military supply on their journey, he was able to torture sufficient “how-to” information from one of the military guards and found he was quite adept at the process.