Outcasts (32 page)

“Oh god. No. What happened?”

“Everything. It’s as bad as you can imagine.”

“How many people died?”

He shrugged, an unhappy bunching of his shoulders. “Still don’t know. The two Chosen had nails like razors, and…” His voice caught. “It’ll be months before all the carnage is cleaned.”

“Carter told me once about nails like those. Happens to girls with long fingernails in their late adolescence.”

“What now? How do we fight this?”

“I’m going back downtown in a couple days. Finish what we started. My hope is still in Chase. In the Outlaw.”

“If Chase’s still alive.”.

“He’s alive. I wish you knew how special he is, Richard. I mean, you know. But I know in a different way than you do. He’s light-years ahead of the curve. So advanced. He’s the only one of us that operates out of selflessness. The rest of us are mean and suspicious and live out of survival and greed. Not him. Only Chase is strong enough to resist the disease, to think about others, to protect the innocent. Chase is the eye of the storm, and we just swirl around him. He’s alive. Which means we’ve got a chance.”

Fox News was broadcasting the President’s walk to Marine One on the south lawn. Where is Blue-Eyes? There. There she is, the bitch. The crazy hot bitch.

Mental note. Check the President’s itinerary. Find out where he’s going.

Incoming texts from Zealot. Weird. Haven’t heard from him in a while. Still in Africa, weirdo? Better stay there, bro. America getting crazy.

Yawn. Big yaaaaawwwwwn. Kinda tired. Need to rest soon. Where are we? I swiveled to glance out the window behind me. It’s morning? Where
does
the time go.

I texted my driver.
yo!! where r we? running low on supplies. stock up in next twenty-four hours homie

I could look up our location myself. But I like having servants.

Okay. Back to debugging. Stupid code. Stupid stupid beautiful code. The iPhone’s sandboxing methodology is SUCH an irritation. If only everyone was stupid enough to jailbreak their phone, my life would get a lot easier. Samsung got the right idea. Basically an open door…There! There’s my mistake. Bah. MINUTES wasted looking for that extra digit.

Still no text from the Outlaw?

Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.

>> We’re skirting Bakersfield, sir.

k thanks

u better not be texting n driving

that junks real

o and don't forget poptarts

puckdaddy hungers

Incoming texts. From Carter’s beta security team, infiltrating Atlanta’s CDC headquarters. CDC was operating as the nation’s hotspot right now, working in conjunction with the FBI to find solutions to Hyper Humanity. I’d commissioned Carter’s secondary team to place phreaking devices which would speed up my long-distance observations.

Looking good, looking good. Window of CDC security deactivation is GO. Atta boys.

I’m SUCH a baller.

I had a half gig of digital military reports to read, staying abreast of the constant and radical changes taking place at the speed of sound within the government. One thing was for certain; the United States of America would be in a state of civil war soon. How big and bad was yet to be determined.

France wasn’t far behind. Trying to cover up the existence of freaks. Of Chosen. But the freaks were in Paris. And London. And Germany. And Russia. And China. Not an infestation, like America. But still. Chaos would soon reign.

Chaos. Carter’s speciality.

If he EVER woke up.

My screen blipped. Facial recognition software. Such a powerful program, but MAN it ate the batteries and cycles. Worth it, though. Totally worth it.

Who’d we find? Walter. We found Walter. At a traffic light in a Humvee with his crew. Wearing his shades. Always his shades, which is why I located him easier than others. In…where was he? San Jose??! He was in Los Angeles twelve hours ago!

Might be able to isolate his cell signal now. Doubtful. But maybe. PuckDaddy leaps buildings in a single bound!

Walter, what a barbarian. That dude HATES the Chemist. Hates hates hates him. Never wants to be in the same city. I intercepted eleven of Walter’s texts last month between phone transfers. High comedy.

Surprised the Chemist let him leave. Tonight is a big night, after all, right?

Tonight. Holy crap,
tonight
.

Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.

If Chase dies…

Chase was my best friend. Kinda my only friend. Everyone else acted as a co-worker. I was their operator, essentially, but not a friend. Shooter had gotten nicer recently. Like she learned how to be a friend by watching Chase.

My RV hit a pothole or something. All the monitors swayed and my chair creaked. Something had been rolling around the floor behind me for days. I’d get around to picking it up. Sometime. Probably a can of soda.

If Chase dies…then what?

I might just activate the explosives attached to the fuel tank. We’d all be dead anyway.

Phone call. From Captain FBI. I activated my headset.

“What’s up, FBI,” I said. “You talk with the Outlaw?”

“Just hung up.”

“What’d he think of our plan?”

“He hated it.” His mic blasted with noise, like he exhaled all his air in frustration. “Sounds like he
wants
to die. There’s got to be other options.”

“The Chemist isn’t giving us enough time to plan, dummy.”

“Katie is great. I get it. She’s the best. But…”

“Would you sacrifice yourself to save Natalie North?” I asked.

“Of course. Or any American civilian. But this is different. The
planet
depends on him.”

“Not much we can do. He’s going up there. We can either take advantage of it, or not.”

“I’ve exhausted resources worth ten million just to keep him alive…”

A long pause. During which we both calculated risks and odds and responsibilities. While I waited and calculated, I was also scanning webpages at the speed of one per second. He asked, “Are you positive you can launch those rockets?”

I answered, “I can’t
activate
them. Not even mighty PuckDaddy can remotely crank the engine. But if the rockets are activated, I can enter coordinates and launch.”

“How?”

“In addition to my other responsibilities, Puck acts as an off-sight consultant for several weapon manufacturers. I’ve built backdoors in…in a lot of stuff.”

“It’s treason. On a grand scale. Launching American missiles at Americans on American soil. At the frickin’ Outlaw, for Christ’s sake. It’s a big damn deal. They’ll invent new ways to hang us.”

I probed my neck experimentally. “Wonder if that would work.”

“Innocent civilians might die.”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “I bet Chase didn’t like that part much. He’s not quite as…cold and logical as the rest of us.”

“The governmental infighting has been skirmishes between military forces. Until now. This is something else entirely.”

I shook my head and opened the mini-fridge under my desk. Empty. Gah. Times like this call for Mountain Dew. “Won’t matter if we can’t activate that rocket launcher.”

“My strike team is ready to deploy. We’ll activate. If you’re looking for a HIMAR system, Los Alamitos has several trucks.”

“Okay. Lemme check. Stand by…” I started flying through systems and reports. “After you activate the power, will you be arrested?”

“Possibly. We don’t plan to remain on-sight and find out.”

“Okay. Okay. Here it is…let’s see…four MTVs, two of which carry the HIMAR. Both armed with rockets instead of the big ATACM missile.”

“Perfect.” A pause. “Perfect. That’s all we need.”

“Sure you want to do this?”

“Hell no I’m not sure. I want Chase to behead that guy and go home.”

“He refuses,” I grumbled. “Says violence can’t win this war.”

“Then what are we doing with these rockets?”

“This was YOUR idea!” I practically shouted.

“We’re the only two with the intel! Only we know he’s dying tonight! If we can’t talk him out of it, we can at least blow the Chemist to the gates of hell.” His voice sounded feverish, off kilter, like he’d been trouble-shooting the same software for forty-eight hours straight.

I moaned, “Carter says the Chemist can hear rockets anyway. This won’t work.”

“Not if he’s busy with Chase. He might not be listening.”

“Uuuuuugh. This sucks. So much.”

He laughed, a soft throaty sound. “So much. I’m planning to start a civil war with help from PuckDaddy, a man the FBI’s Cyber Division has spent millions trying to apprehend.”

“I always thought that group was cute. I even left them clues.”

“Where do you live, out of curiosity?”

I grinned, my cheek brushing against the mic. “Screw you.”

“Puck, all kidding aside, if it’s discovered that you launched the missiles, you’ll be as wanted a man as the Chemist. There will be no safe places left for you.”

“Nah. I’m not worried.”

“You should be.”

I leaned against the chair to stretch my lower back, and stared at one screen in particular with bleary eyes. It was a masterpiece. “I already got it solved, homie. If we launch those rockets, I can make it look like the order originated from within the White House.”

The big cat was back. I felt him. Like he was radioactive and I possessed an internal geiger counter. He paced back and forth beyond the metal barrier, testing the air, searching. I tuned into his movements and detected soft footfalls and heavy breaths.

We couldn’t see each other which diminished the primal exchange of information. But I knew his hate had dissipated. His presence was exploratory. Carter and I didn’t smell like the Father. Or like the Chosen. Or normal human bodies. So what the heck were we?

How could I explain to Katie how big these animals were? In dimensions he appeared about the size of car. Not as tall as me, but wider. Maybe weighed a thousand pounds. What sick surgeries had the Chemist performed on the tigers? And how many more did he have? If Puck and Anderson wanted to fire rockets, these man-eating tigers would be an acceptable target. As sad as that was.

What Puck and Isaac Anderson didn’t understand was that this wasn’t a battle to break the Chemist’s body. But to break his heart.

I knew of no other path to victory. And after watching Miss Pauline change her community, I’d decided perhaps no other paths should be considered. The Chemist
had
to be stopped. Unequivocally and aggressively stopped. But breaking his body wouldn’t cause the cessation of his evil. We needed the Chemist to do that himself. Lo and behold, he’d presented me with the opportunity to convince him.

He didn’t want me to die.
That thunderbolt of a realization kept hammering me. He practically tried to talk me out of it.

Don’t be so hasty.

The stakes cannot be higher.

Doesn’t it matter that she doesn’t want you to die?

She wants you to live!

Don’t let me kill you, he seemed to say.

Katie. Why did he capture Katie if his plan isn’t to execute me?

Because…he wants me to show up. He wants me to break my promise. To fight. To lose. In front of a global television audience. And then to be his captive, soon to be brainwashed.

He needs the drama. He needs me to discredit myself. Needs me to be the villain. Needs me to be weak, like him.
See
, he’ll tell the world. See?! He’s a liar! The Outlaw is a coward! He can’t even sacrifice himself!

I would lose if I fought. And so would everyone rooting for me. He couldn’t be beat. Not when he was expecting the battle. Evil can’t drive out evil. I couldn’t know for sure but I bet it hadn’t occurred to him I even
could
keep my end of the bargain. Warriors don’t lay down their lives! Kings don’t sacrifice!

He was wrong.

He didn’t know love. No one loved him.

I would show him love. Show him I loved another human being enough to die. I would express it to the fullest measure. And in doing so, show him I thought he was worth bargaining with. And worth my kept promise. And it would break his heart.

Or else he’d totally kill me. That could happen too. But I doubted it. Not after watching Miss Pauline. Which is why I told Puck and Anderson NO ROCKETS! It would undermine everything.

I expected to live through the night. But just in case, I’d typed messages Puck would deliver to everyone I cared about. Especially Katie.

He’d never deliver those messages though. That’s what I kept telling myself. I’d lay down my life and it would work. The Chemist wouldn’t be able to follow through with his threat. He’d be broken by the willing sacrifice. He’d be shattered. He’d stop this crusade. That’s what we needed most. We needed our enemy to voluntarily lay down his weapons. To renounce evil. We didn’t need more violence. The problem had grown too big. We need a fresh beginning. Reconciliation. And it had to start with him. Tonight.

From outside my storage unit, the tiger snarled. More like a cough. A warning? Then a voice. A human voice. I hurt too much to fight. Or run. Speaking of running, whoever owned that voice should run. Or get bit in half. A man’s voice. Echoing off metal doors. Softly at first, then growing close. “What is it, boy? What have you found?”

Not a man’s voice. A woman’s. A husky rasp. Even muted by metal, I knew it. I stood from my chair with a silent groan and backed further into the dark storage unit.

“Why are you back here?” Hannah Walker asked the big cat. “Is this where you live?”

I stumbled on Carter’s bed. Carter. Still asleep. I sat on the bed with him and pressed my back against the far wall. Maybe our scents would mingle. He was sweating still. Now I was too. A cold sweat, trickles instantly running down my back.

Hannah Walker. Not here. Not now.

Samantha told me that Carter and Pacific could restrain their aura. They could flex, and they could restrain. But how did they do that? I concentrated my whole being on silence. I didn’t exist. I became a hole. An empty space. A nothing. I hope.