Текст книги "Howlers"
Автор книги: Kent Harrington
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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 25 страниц)
CHAPTER 26
“She’s in the bathroom,” Bell said, tossing the black man his penknife.
The man, catching the closed knife, looked at the thing dismissively. “Keep it, Lieutenant. They want you downstairs. Are you in or out?” the man said.
“Count me in,” Bell said and smiled.
“Good,” the black man said. He turned around. Bell saw he was holding an automatic in his right hand, the hammer down, but “hot” and ready to fire, he guessed.
“She was about to piss herself,” Bell said. “She’s in the can. I freed her hands. I couldn’t say no.”
The black man walked toward the closed bathroom door, turning his back on Bell. Raising his pistol slightly, he opened the door with his free hand. Bell could see Patty was sitting on the toilet, her pants down at her ankles. She looked up at the man, obviously terrified. Bell could hear her piss hitting the water in the toilet.
“Get the fuck up! You’re to be tattooed. You’re going to be a CG, like the other girl,” the man said, looking at her.
Bell walked toward the bathroom. He sprang on the man from behind. The man turned, but was too late to stop Bell from getting his left arm wrapped around his neck. Bell, taller, got his right arm—clamped at the man’s throat—locked into the crook of his left arm, then wrapped his left hand up and behind the black man’s head, forcing his head down, and against the arm at his throat. Once Bell felt his two arms lock, the way he’d been taught in Survival School, it would be almost impossible to break his hold. The man would stop breathing very soon, his trachea crushed. But it was like riding a bull; the black man, very strong, tried to buck Bell off his back, swinging Bell’s legs first left, then right.
Bell, managing to keep his arms locked, watched as the man brought his pistol over his left shoulder, intending to shoot Bell in the head. He fired over his shoulder, aiming his shot where he thought Bell’s head should be. The sound of the gunshot exploded through the tiled bathroom. But Bell, anticipating the shot, had dropped his own head behind the man’s, and the shot missed him, hitting the shower-stall glass door. Bell managed to force the man’s head down and toward the floor, making it impossible for him to fire at him again effectively.
The man managed to lift Bell completely off the floor, hitting out at the lieutenant with his elbow repeatedly after the shot failed. All the while the black man’s free left hand continued to try and pry Bell’s death-lock loose. He aimed his pistol at the girl, but Bell jerked the man to his left just as he fired at her and the shot went wild.
Missing her, the bullet hit the toilet’s tank and smashed it. Water leaked out of the cracked porcelain now. Bell heard the man’s pistol clatter to the tile floor. The man’s legs gave out, weakened from the lack of air.
Bell, his feet back on the floor, cranked down on the man’s neck with every ounce of strength his hundred-and-seventy pounds could muster. his whole body contracted with the effort as he tried to break the man’s neck. Airless and frantic, the man brought both hands up to the arms around his throat in a lame attempt to break Bell’s grip, but it was too late.
Bell felt the man’s windpipe collapse, finally crushed. The man’s strength left him completely. His two hands dropped away from Bell’s arms. He fell forward with Bell on top of him, still choking him for all he was worth. Bell, on his knees, heard himself grunt as he continued to try and snap the man’s neck, twisting it violently one way, and then another.
Patty had sprung up from the toilet, a toothbrush she’d picked up from the floor in her right hand. She rammed the green plastic handle straight into the man’s right eyeball, driving it into his brain, pushing it with her palm until it stopped moving. She’d sent the entire length into his head.
The man, in agony, managed to buck crazily from the pain, not dead yet. Bell rode him toward the wall by the toilet. Despite the toothbrush shoved into his brain and a crushed trachea, the man managed to struggle again. But Bell locked up with all his might a second time. The man finally slumped dead, his chest rammed up against the rim of the toilet.
The lieutenant stood on the man’s back and cranked his head back, feeling the neck snap. Patty grabbed the dead man by the back of his head and slammed his face down as hard as she could onto of the edge of the toilet bowl, splitting his skull open.
Bell, exhausted, rolled off and watched Patty drag the body up and put the man’s face into the piss-filled toilet bowl, holding it under water with her knee. She walked her knees up on the man’s neck, holding him down until she realized he was dead. She watched the last few bubbles of air from the dead man’s lungs came up out of the piss water. Bell could see the white of Patty’s naked thighs, her pants still around her ankles, as she knelt on the man’s submerged head, toilet water leaking onto the floor.
“Dead,” Bell whispered.
She finally climbed off the man’s back and away from the body. She bent down and pulled up her wet pants. Bell put his index finger up to his lips in a signal for quiet. He picked up the pistol from the wet floor, sure one of the guards would come in after hearing the shots.
Patty finished buckling her belt. It was quiet, with only the sound of the water leaking from the toilet. Bell walked out to the room, planning to step outside and shoot it out with the guard.
Patty came to his side and grabbed his shoulder, stopping him. “No. Wait.”
“We can’t wait,” Bell said. “We’ve got to get out of here. Someone must have heard those shots.”
“Let me go first. They’ve seen me. They won’t react to me, maybe.”
Bell looked at her. “Okay,” he said.
“I’ll walk out. If more than one is out there, I’ll tell them they’d better come and check on their friend.”
They heard howling outside the hotel, coming from the pool area. Bell walked to the window overlooking the pool and saw several Howlers standing around the verge of the pool. Their ugly faces were lit by the pool’s underwater light.
The group was cut down in a hail of automatic-weapons fire. The guards in the hall had left to deal with the Howler attack, he realized.
“I have to find Ryder,” Bell said. “We need to find out where that helicopter is.”
“What about the girl—Rebecca?” Patty said.
“Okay,” Bell said. “We find her first.”
“She’s just down the hall,” Patty said. “We were kept together.” Bell nodded.
Patty walked out of the room. She ducked back inside almost immediately and motioned for him to follow her. The hallway was empty, but he felt sure they wouldn’t make it more than a few yards before being cut down.
Patty stopped in front of a room several doors down. She tried to open the door, but it was locked. She knocked softly but got no answer. She turned to look at Bell. He leaned against the wall, motioning her aside, and kicked the door in.
* * *
Senator Prince looked up from an Apple tablet computer where he was poring over military grade maps of the Sierra Nevada, using Google’s special top-secret web site reserved for Government contractors and NSA. Two of his guards escorted the blond girl he’d asked for, in just her underwear, into his tidy hotel suite. The senator dropped an electronic pin, with gusto, into the spot where Chuck Phelps’s cabin had been finally located.
The NSA had been especially interested in the place because it was considered one of the best doomsday forts in the Sierra. It had been the NSA’s idea to fund a “Doomsday Prepper” series on Cable TV as a way to get more data from unwitting would-be preppers who deluged the show’s web site with comments, photos, and requests to be on TV, all without raising suspicion. The government had about ninety percent of all the Level One strong houses in the country located, photographed, and monitored continuously by high altitude drones. Level One structures—many with bunker-type constructions below ground, like the Phelps Cabin, were at the top of the government’s list.
The doomsday preppers, as a class, had been put on a master list in order of importance. A sophisticated algorithm regularly updated the list of Level One sites, the ones Homeland Security thought worth taking over in the event of any insurrection. NSA scanned the Internet for any mention of key phrases or credit-card transactions. Anyone buying, say, an electric generator and freeze dried food, or ammunition, during the same credit-card billing cycle would be added to a list of possible doomsday preppers. Homeland Security would search the target’s email correspondence going back five years, while the NSA program compiled property records, credit card purchase records, photo records, voice and messaging records. A Homeland Security drone would fly over any sites, once identified to take photos, sometimes during construction. Rural properties, especially those built expressly as “forts”, and with adjoining farms, were ranked Level One.
NSA had shared its information with important government contractors, asking them to build a database of all the important doomsday prepper sites in the country. A private intelligence organization reported 10,000 of them, and had built the database. Google had worked closely with Stratford and NSA; the special Google/NSA map of the Sierras was marked with several electronic red pins, all Level One forts. A click on Google Earth revealed photographic details under each pin.
An NSA employee had deleted the Phelps site’s coordinates from the agency’s computer records, along with hundreds of other doomsday forts in California. The records had been part of an extensive database that listed all the Level One doomsday-preppers’ sites in the country, including Hawaii. But the talked-about Phelps strong house had been relocated and added back to the list.
Prince had decided to use the Phelps site as his headquarters during the campaign to clear the Sierra Nevada of Howlers. The provisional government being formed in Washington thought he would be safe there. The region’s other doomsday sites would serve as forts in the new government’s war against the Howlers.
Senator Prince had two satellite radios on the table. CNN was playing behind him on one of the room’s flat-screen televisions. CNN was broadcasting live feed from the destruction of Washington, DC by huge mobs of Howlers. Prince, however, knew something the reporters didn’t: the DC Howlers were fakes, a false flag using the Western states’ outbreak as the opportunity for a coup.
A helicopter pilot was providing dramatic voiceover. The news ticker at the bottom of the screen said that the White House had been abandoned, and that the President and his family had been airlifted safely to Camp David. Due to the extraordinary emergency, the anchorperson said, the President had declared martial law “until further notice.” The military would be providing “continuity of government,” according to the President, who’d spoken to the country via a radio hook up early that morning. There was no further message at this time, nor any kind of explanation of what had happened in several major American cities on the West Coast.
The military had ordered all radio and television networks to stop broadcasting and to carry only approved news. CNN had been designated the official voice of the “provisional government.” Newscasters were using this term to suggest that the U.S. constitution had been abrogated, but no one at CNN questioned any of the military’s press releases.
With the help of government contractors, Senator Prince was cobbling together something called the “New Freedom Army.” Forces within the government had been waiting for any kind of social disorder to allow them to spring into action with a secret plan to “save the republic.” The emergency was the excuse needed to take over the U.S. government and run America with the super-rich at the wheel. The Howler emergency had been just the kind of national emergency they’d been waiting for—in fact, hoping for.
The senator was in close communication with other important members of the secret government. The Provisional Government’s first priority was the formation of something called the “Steel Ring,” which would both protect them from any counter-coup and insure their personal safety from the Howlers—which were real, and a threat.
The senator had had Rebecca brought to the Presidential Suite on the ground floor of the hotel. She’d been tattooed and was ready to be shipped to one of the new comfort stations the Provisional Government planned to open for its mercenary army.
The Provisional Government’s contractors, in anticipation of this takeover, had devised a new social order based on caste system, with slaves at the bottom. Slavery would make the new state able to compete economically against the rising Asian superpowers, especially China. Slave labor would build new factories. All prisoners of the New Freedom Army were to be tattooed with their new caste designations: BS for Blue Slaves, a category for the meanest hard labor tasks; CGS for comfort girl slaves; CBS for comfort boy slaves. OCSO-class slaves would be used in offices and big box stores, government relief centers, and in hospitals, and as support staff and domestic help. G-4-Zeros would be used in factories where reading and writing were required. The lowest castes would not be citizens, but would be “Use Slaves” and would work without any political rights. These castes were the property of the state and would be treated as chattel. A simple C would be used to brand conscripts to the army and police castes. Mercenaries were to be used as Special-Ops troops, and as a Pretorian guard for the top castes.
Army Conscripts would have full citizenship in the new state, but no political rights. Praetors, Bankers, and Consuls – men and women – would not be tattooed, but would wear uniforms with their caste clearly marked on their lapels.
The top caste, R1s, owned everything, including the State. R-1 ranking was reserved for the “Hundred Families,” and all their blood members. The Hundred Families would be represented on “The Council of One Hundred” by one male member from each family. Council members—called Praetors—would rule America by decree. Each Praetor would have one vote on the Council.
“What’s it stand for?” Rebecca had been stripped of her jeans and Pendleton shirt and was standing in just her bra and panties. A cruel new tattoo on her left shoulder read CG.
“Comfort Girl,” said Senator Prince. He wore a plush white hotel bathrobe.
A messenger stuck his head into the suite. “A large group of the things has been sighted near the hotel. Looks like they’re massing.”
“Stop them at the entrance,” Prince said. “We’ll be leaving soon for new digs by U.S. army helicopter. We’ll have two M1 Abrams tanks to clear the strong house at Timberline. They’re on their way from the Army’s Reno proving ground.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Comfort Girl,” Prince said again, turning to Rebecca. “That’s your designation now.”
“Designation?” Rebecca said.
“Yes, in the new country we’re building. This is a gift. Something we’ve been waiting for,” Prince said.
Rebecca looked at him blankly. He sounded like a crazy man. “I don’t understand,” she said.
“Well, you’re a Comfort Girl now. You don’t need to understand. That’s the beauty of life in this new nation. People like you can do what you do best: serve us.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Rebecca said.
“It means you’ll give comfort to important people. Like me. It will be an honor to serve us. You’ll see. You will be happy in your work.”
“Give comfort? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Yes. With your body. Everyone has something to contribute to the new society. You have your beautiful body. You’ll contribute that,” Prince said. “Now come here.”
The two men who’d brought her to the room pushed her forward. The Senator told them to back off and guided Rebecca toward a large black-leather ottoman. He pushed her over, her wrists bound behind her. She landed face down on the ottoman. Rebecca felt her panties ripped off of her. She screamed for help, but it did no good. The senator, enjoying his audience, indulged himself.
“I wanted you to know that if you’re a good Comfort Girl, and do exactly what you’re told, you’ll be perfectly safe, despite everything that’s going on out there. We’ve already arranged for an Army helicopter to deliver us fresh foods. Imagine that! Wine, too. I can hardly wait. Do you like wine?”
Rebecca, her hands still bound behind her by plastic handcuffs that cut into her wrists painfully, turned toward the Senator. She’d been unceremoniously stood up. She noticed for the first time that Prince’s face was red as if he were sunburned. She didn’t answer. She closed her eyes for a minute and did what she used to do when she was a little girl and woke from a nightmare.
I’ll wake up and Dad will be down the hall. I’ll wake up. It’s just a nightmare.
The sound of gunfire outside the hotel forced her to open her eyes. Senator Prince, re-tying his robe, ordered her taken to her room. One of the guards marched her out of the suite and into the lobby, naked except for her bra.
As the guard led her across the hotel lobby, Rebecca could see the Senator’s gunmen in the turnaround, fighting a pitched battle with a large group of Howlers. Two of the things made it past the gauntlet of shooters and ran into the lobby. The man guarding her turned and started to fire at the two Howlers, who ran straight for him.
Feeling herself let loose, Rebecca, her arms behind her, ran straight into an elevator door that magically opened. She expected to be grabbed from behind, by either a Howler or the guard. She turned as the door closed in front of her and saw the Howlers beating the gunman, who’d panicked and missed his shot. They had torn the rifle from his hands and were clubbing him to death with his own weapon.
The door closed before one of the Howlers could follow her. The thing’s hand was caught in the closing elevator door; the dirty hand reached for her. Rebecca raised her boot and kicked its hand as hard as she could. She could feel the elevator begin to rise. She watched the thing’s fingers finally slip out between the door’s big black rubber bumpers. She went to the console of buttons and pressed 6 with her elbow.
“Oh Jesus Christ, someone help me!” she said aloud, watching the lit display’s digital counter stop at the sixth floor. She started to shake, exhausted, feeling dirty and frightened, all her reserves of courage and bravado completely gone. She sagged to the floor. The elevator door opened as she wept.
“What the fuck,” Bell said. He and Patty had decided to try and escape, unable to find Johnny Ryder, Sue Ling or Rebecca.
Patty ran into the elevator and hit the Emergency Stop button. She looked down on Rebecca, who was sobbing uncontrollably. For a moment no one did anything. They could hear the shooting outside slow down, then stop all together.
Without thinking, Bell grabbed Rebecca by the shoulders and stood her up.
“Cut these fucking handcuffs off!” Rebecca said. Her face was wet with tears; she seemed hysterical. He pulled her into the hallway, had her face the wall, and cut her free of the plastic handcuffs with his pocketknife.
“Now what?” Patty said.
“I’m going to kill Prince,” Rebecca said. “Give me that pistol. Come on. Give it here.”
“What happened?” Patty said. “What did they do to you?”
“Just give me the fucking gun.”
Bell grabbed her and pushed her back into the wall. “You can’t. Okay? The only hope we have is getting out of here, now. Do you understand? We have to work together, or we, all three of us, die tonight.”
Rebecca’s eyes were crazy. “He raped me,” she said. “Give me that pistol or I’ll kill you, too.”
“Let her go,” Patty said. “You need something to wear, clothes.”
Bell let go of Rebecca’s shoulders. She rolled out from under him angrily. The elevator doors remained open, the doors jerking as they tried to close.
“You better unlock the elevator, or they’ll know something’s wrong,” Bell said.
Patty ducked into the elevator, unlocked it and stepped out. The door slid closed.
They trooped down the hall, Patty scouting empty rooms for clothes for Rebecca to wear. Bell, behind them, tried not to look at the naked girl. The raw and ugly new black tattoo—CG– on her right ass cheek terrified him.
