Max Collins - Before the Dawn

“You really think Max’ll be back?” Niner asked.

“Oh yeah — she’s just off on some errand or something. She ride in on that bike of hers, and kick Brood ass!”

Eavesdropping, Moody could only wish Fresca were right.

Gabriel seemed to materialize at his side. “Them knowin’ about our secret exits,” Gabe said quietly, “you don’t think Max sold us out, do ya?”

“Don’t let Fresca hear you say that.”

“What do you think?”

“I think, no. No way in hell.”

Moody walked Gabriel off to one side, to make even more sure this confidential conversation was not overheard.

Gabriel, Uzi ready, was saying, “They could have grabbed her... tortured it out of her...”

Moody just looked at Gabe. “Do you really think they could get anything out of that girl?”

Gabe’s concerned expression dissolved into an embarrassed smirk. “Listen to the stupid shit’s comin’ outa me... Guess I’m getting stir crazy.”

“You’ll like it at the Cap,” Moody said. “End of the day, we’ll come out of this with better digs... you’ll see.”

The explosion erupted through the doors in a belch of orange flame and gray smoke, hurling Fresca and his girlfriend across the room, slamming them into the concession stand in a shower of glass fragments. The girl, Niner, lay decapitated by one oversized glass shard, her head nowhere in sight, perhaps incinerated; and Fresca rested at her side, a twisted charred bloody husk with its guts trailing out, and the only mercy that neither had to witness the horror of what had taken the other from this life.

The kids who’d been standing guard duty at either end, alongside those doors, had their own share of nicks from flying glass, though none seemed to have serious injuries. But it was a bit hard to tell, since before the smoke had even begun to clear they’d started running pell-mell toward the auditorium... until machine-gun fire cut them down like tall grass under a swinging scythe.

Blasting away as they came, screaming unintelligible war cries, Broodsters charged up the patio toward where the doors had been, automatic weapons in hand, eyes wild, piling in over the broken glass and the small barrier of sandbags that Fresca and Niner had managed to pile there before they died...

Moody and Gabriel stayed ahead of the invaders, and dashed into the auditorium. The Clan kids — with handguns, mostly, a few with rifles — had taken refuge behind their sandbag and theater-chair battlements. The two leaders circulated quickly, dispatching kids to sandbag the auditorium doors shut; then they sent small groups to try various exits, now that the Brood was attacking in full force, which would presumably open up some outlets for escape.

Each group that headed for an exit, however, opened doors onto figures... soldiers... in black combat gear, heavily armed, blocking the way.

Tippett was the first to discover this, and reported it to Moody.

“That doesn’t sound like the Brood,” Moody said.

“Not hardly! Some kind of damn military SWAT team...”

“Any casualties?”

“No — they didn’t fire on us... We got back inside before they could...”

Four more older Clan kids scrambled up, and reported their exits similarly blocked.

Gabriel said, “Bastards have the building surrounded! We’re blocked in by these guys, while the Brood comes in to party!”

It made an awful, crazy sense to Moody: this explained the siege, the suddenly superior Brood firepower... the Russian had high-level support in this effort, even federal government sanction...

Moody looked toward the auditorium doors, where sandbags were piled waist-high. The enemy had breached the lobby maybe five minutes ago, and had not yet made a move to rush the theater itself.

Where the hell were they?

A nearby blast, separated from the auditorium by the left-side wall — accompanied by screams — provided an answer: the explosion came from the corridor along which Moody kept both his real office and the C4-rigged door to his nonoffice. This told him two things: the enemy was filtering into the building, to come at them not just through the main auditorium doors. But it also said that his booby trap had been sprung.

He only hoped the C4 had taken a good number of them out.

Even so, in that moment, it became crystal clear to Moody that there would be no escape. They would either win or lose, live or die, right here in this auditorium... and Moody didn’t like the odds one little bit...

Right now Gabriel was shouting orders, but these children seemed scared, barely listening. Hell was knocking at the door, and pep talks weren’t going to cut it.

Turning these kids into self-reliant thieves was one thing: turning them into soldiers was another. Moody had never tried to do the latter, really — kids weren’t cut out for that.

The harsh metallic rattle of machine-gun fire rained down on them from the balcony — that was where the Brood made their first appearance in the auditorium — And then the doors blew open with plastic explosive charges, and members of the Brood streamed into the room, up and over the sandbag barricades, automatic weapons blazing, eyes wild with speed, screaming like the murderous maniacs they’d become.

Moody, in his way, loved his kids... but this was a lost cause. He now began to wonder if he himself could survive, and get to the Heart of the Ocean, in its hiding place, and somehow slip out into the night.

Then Tippett aided him in this self-serving effort: the bodyguard threw himself on Moody and took them both down to the floor, shielding the leader with his own body. Wedged to the floor, like that, Moody bitterly watched the massacre unfold...

All around him, bullets were shaking young bodies like rag dolls and then discarding them, flinging them dead to the floor. The Brood fanned out in murderous waves, gunning down anyone who moved, including those who had raised their hands in surrender. Over the gunfire, Moody could make out screams and pleas for mercy and, worst of all, crying. The acrid odor of cordite seemed to singe the air, the gun smoke creating a fog through which the Brood roamed like well-armed homicidal zombies.

Like a crazed Davy Crockett in his last Alamo moments, Gabriel swung a chair back and forth; but furniture was no match for machine guns, and Moody watched helplessly as at least thirty slugs slammed into Gabe, making him do a terrible dance, lifting him off the floor to deposit him in a bloody heap not far from Moody’s face.

Gabe’s blank eyes stared at Moody accusingly...

The gunfire was subsiding, only an occasional pop now, as an occasional living Clan member was spotted, like the last few firecrackers on the Fourth of July.

In his knee-length brown leather coat and snakeskin boots, Mikhail Kafelnikov — his high-cheekboned features looking carved and cruel — seemed to glide down the incline of the auditorium floor, a wraith in a yellow silk shirt emerging from the gun-smoke fog. He surveyed the carnage — they were all dead now, the Chinese Clan... almost all, anyway...

One of the Brood, a skinny clear-eyed lieutenant, came up to their leader, who batted the snout of the automatic weapon away.

“Sorry,” the lieutenant said. “No sign of the girl.”

“Check all the corpses — careful! If she’s alive, and playing dead, you’ll have a wildcat on your hands. Remember the briefing!”

The mention of Max inspiring him, Moody suddenly revealed himself, by pushing his bodyguard off and getting to his feet, (while surreptitiously slipping a knife from his boot, keeping it tucked in his palm and half up his sleeve).

Several Broodsters, eyes glittering with gore and drugs, moved in quickly, raising their guns, but Kafelnikov shouted, “No! You were told!”