Max Collins - Before the Dawn

Looking north toward Mount Lee, Max could see the fifty-foot letters that now spelled out HO WOOD, their whiteness stark even in the three A.M. darkness. The sign had read HO YWOOD when Max had arrived in Hollywood in 2013, barely a year after the Quake had decimated most of what the post-Pulse riots hadn’t. This latest revision struck Max as appropriate to a city of scavengers and street tramps of every stripe.

She checked her watch: it was time.

Securing a foothold on a window ledge, Max lowered herself onto her stomach on the steel awning above the seventh floor. On her belly, she spun and slowly crawled to the edge, her head hanging down as she peeked into the window.

She saw nothing but darkness.

Silently, she ticked off the seconds until Moody’s diversion would begin.

Moody — leader of the Chinese Clan, the group Max belonged to — had taken over in Max’s life (though she had never made the mental connection herself) the father-figure position that had once been filled by Colonel Donald Lydecker.

An old man by the standards of these short-lived times — fifty-five, maybe even sixty — Moody had piercing green eyes, a trimmed gray beard and mustache that contained flecks of black, his long silver hair combed straight back, usually tied in a long ponytail. His skin tone said he rarely saw light of day; and his nose — a twisting series of hills on the plain of his face — spoke of many breakings, while the thin, pink-lipped line of his mouth kept the man’s thoughts locked up tight. His black garments — black leather jacket, black T-shirt, black jeans — inspired Max to her own, similar style of dress.

The Chinese Clan were thieves, so named not because any of the members were of Asian descent, rather because they lived in what had once been Mann’s Chinese Theatre, the grandest of many local, abandoned movie theaters. The Pulse and the Quake had combined to effectively kill the motion picture industry, and theater complexes across America stood empty, their design difficult for any worthwhile purpose, some being turned into flophouses, fortresses, whorehouses, and even occasionally, if clumsily, a hospital.

The self-dubbed Chinese Clan had occupied the theater within days of the Pulse, and Moody’s youthful gang had staved off every effort — from both police and rival gangs — to evict them.

Five, Max calmly thought, four... three, her large dark eyes locked on the window ... two... one...

An explosion rocked the world, a bright orange column of flame rising along the east side of the building like a fiery offering to the heavens!

The roar that followed a second later reminded Max of the artillery blasts during war games back at Manticore and, even as heat waves rolled through the building, for a second she froze, a chill slicing through her bones.

A second explosion, this one on the west side, sent flames shooting skyward, as well, orange and blue tongues licking hungrily.

Snapping out of it, Max could make out movement behind the darkened windows of the seventh floor. A door swung open, a light in the hallway suddenly illuminating the room, and Brood members poured out into the hallway, most likely believing they were under attack.

They weren’t far wrong, considering those fires burning below; Moody’s idea of a diversion seemed to Max to be just short of an all-out blitz on the Brood stronghold. Moving quickly now, unsure how long Moody’s fireworks would keep the gangsters occupied, Max lowered herself onto the sill of the seventh-floor window and went to work. Using a glass cutter, she etched a circle big enough to accommodate her slender form, punched it in, and then held the edge to maintain her balance as she undid her tether.

The lithe thief released her hold on the rope and the window, seeming to hang there for a second, then leapt headfirst through the hole and somersaulted onto the mattresses scattered across the floor, coming up in a fighting stance.

The room was empty, unless you counted the stench left behind by a dozen unwashed souls sleeping in what had once been an office for one. Only the desk remained from the furniture that had formerly marked this room as a place of business; it sat to Max’s left, one mattress on top of it and another underneath, one end stuffed under the desk so the owner’s head rested where a worker’s legs and feet had once been. In the Brood, this probably qualified as earthquake awareness.

Tiptoeing to the door, Max listened for any sound that might indicate she wasn’t alone on the floor. The information about the security plan had reached Moody through a Brood intermediary who apparently figured the bribe he’d solicited from the Chinese Clan was worth risking the wrath of his own gang.

According to the sellout, Mikhail Kafelnikov — the formidable, legendarily sadistic leader of the Brood — kept the museum security layout in a safe on this floor, in his private office at the far end of the hall.

The building, tomb-silent, appeared to have emptied as the Brood poured downstairs to check out the explosions. Moving into the hallway, Max’s hypersensitive hearing sought any sound — a creak of the floor, the squeak of a sneaker, even something as inconsequential as the breathing of a guard... nothing.

Nothing but the distant crackle of flames and raised voices, anyway, many floors below.

An eyebrow lifted in a little shrug, before Max took off into a short sprint that deposited her at the threshold of Kafelnikov’s office.

She really wanted to make sure that sinister son of a bitch wasn’t in — again, she listened intently, hearing nothing, then tried the door...

... locked.

Max considered picking the lock — she had the tools, and the knowledge — then decided her limited time would be better spent inside the office. Rearing back, she kicked the latch next to the knob and the door splintered with a satisfying crunch as it swung open.

Time is money, she thought, moving inside the empty room.

Empty of people, at least. This was a combination office, apartment... and arsenal. To the left, running the length of the wall, a rack displayed with pride guns, rifles, machine guns, and shotguns. Shelves above the rack held boxes of grenades, flashbangs, and a wide array of pistols. She could have easily helped herself; but ever since Lydecker had shot one of her X5 sibs that night in the barracks, Max had had an innate abhorrence of firearms. She hated the foul things then, she hated them now.

The wall opposite the guns, to Max’s right, was home to a monstrous round waterbed covered with silk sheets; next to it, like a disapproving parent, stood a tall stainless-steel refrigerator. The wall itself was a huge window, moonlight flooding the room with ivory. The center of the office, in front of Max, was dominated by a massive kidney-shaped desk, behind which loomed an oversized, thronelike leather chair. A large-screen TV rose like an altar to the right of (and behind) the desk, angled toward the bed. Behind the leather throne, an oversized portrait in oil of Kafelnikov (not very good) took up most of the wall.

Surprising there’s room for all this stuff, the young woman thought, and the ego of that bastard Kafelnikov...

Moody’s informant had said the safe that held the security plan was behind the painting. If the safe was as big as the portrait, Max thought, the dial ought to be about the size of a hubcap.

As she made her way around the desk, she slipped a switchblade out of her pocket and flicked the button, the blade springing open with a click. She found a metal wastebasket, turned it over, spilling refuse, and climbed up on it, and looked the Russian gang leader in his smug, superior face. Then, wearing her own smug smile, Max stabbed Kafelnikov in his oil-painted heart and sliced upward, the canvas ripping, as if the subject himself were crying out in agony.