Max Collins - After the Dark

He stepped out of the woods and walked straight at the two guards, who wore black T-shirts and jeans, like all Furies. They were small for guards — maybe that was why there were two of them he thought — both about the same height, a good four inches shorter than he was, and stick-skinny. They didn’t appear terribly bright, either — both looked to be on the dim side of forty watts.

Alec smiled as he approached, nodding, waving casually, and the two guards looked at each other, as if each hoped the other might have managed to form a thought. Then the same thought formed in both their limited minds, as they simultaneously pulled pistols from the waistbands of their pants and leveled them at Alec.

The guy on the left had a revolver which had probably last been fired before the Pulse, the one on the right brandishing a small caliber automatic that belonged in an old lady’s handbag.

Pitiful. The only thing that made the Furies formidable was their numbers — they were the largest gang in Seattle, a mix of Latinos and Russians, mostly.

“Whoa whoa whoa,” Alec said, his hands rising easily in a gesture of surrender, his smile never wavering. “I’m a friend, fellas... you know Manny?”

This was one of the two Furies he’d met a year or so ago and spent some time with, drinking beers they’d paid for when they were trying to recruit him.

“Manny not here,” the one on the left said.

“Manny not here,” echoed the one on the right. “You see Manny here?”

“I would have to agree,” Alec said. “Manny not here — where Manny?”

The one on the left sighed heavily. “Manny not here!”

If he didn’t find somebody smarter than a footstool to deal with soon, this was going to be a lot harder than he’d thought.

“How about Stefan?” he tried, dropping the name of the other Fury he knew.

The two guards looked at each other again, then returned their thick gaze to Alec.

“Stefan not here,” one of them said, and that was it, Alec was fed up with these two. Another minute with them and there was no telling what kind of permanent damage he might do to his own IQ.

One more question, any question, should be all he’d need. He asked, “You two related?”

When they looked at each other this time, Alec plucked the guns from their hands, in a two-handed move, and flipped the pistols around so they were pointing at the guards, who gazed at him with eyes and mouths open.

“This is where you put your hands up,” he advised the pair.

Four hands shot skyward.

“Good, fellas. Nice reflexes.”

The one on the left turned to the one on the right. “You screwed up.”

“ I screwed up?”

His brain hurting, Alec said, “Shut up and turn around.”

They did, facing the tower now.

“This is stupid,” the one on the left said to Alec, “what you’re doin’.”

“Well,” Alec said cheerfully, “you’d know.”

And — in another two-handed move — smacked them both on the back of the head with the gun butts. Firmly. Both guards dropped to the sidewalk with little sound, a couple of skinny piles of kindling.

Alec tucked the guns in his waistband, then dragged the two guards, one at a time, into the underbrush. He tied them up, using their own belts and shirts, then returned to the now unguarded door.

It opened in on a white metal stairwell, the only light provided by the sun glinting through the doorway. On his left was the gray, riveted body of the metal tank, which might have once been white, but time and lack of care had bruised it gray, more Furies graffiti decorating it.

The stairs circled the tank and led up into darkness. Alec had no clue how many Furies were up there; however many, there was bound to be at least one smarter than the bonehead guards. He had a miniflash in his pocket and considered using it, only he didn’t want to give away his position, so it stayed put.

The X5 had abandoned his like-he-owned-the-place approach; now that he’d taken those guards out, he was officially an invader, trying to maintain silence as he crept up the steps. His rubber-soled shoes made no noise and he kept his breathing relaxed and regular.

After four minutes and over one hundred stairs, Alec came around a turn into light — the entrance to the observation deck must’ve been standing wide open. This didn’t surprise him; the Furies were probably up and down these stairs all the time. They had guards posted downstairs, didn’t they?

At the top of the stairs, Alec plastered himself to the wall and gazed through the open doorway.

The floor was concrete, the brick, occasionally graffitied walls punctuated every eight feet or so by arched openings, which may at one time have been glassed-in windows but now stood open to the weather. The gray bulk of the inner tower made the observation deck a relatively narrow glorified covered walkway that curved around.

At the third window down from where Alec watched, three Furies sat in a sandbag bunker. One Fury took a turn as sentry at a window, using binoculars — but not in the direction Alec had come, luckily; the other two bangers were playing cards and good-naturedly bitching at each other about the game.

The one with the binoculars looked to be in his early twenties, with dark hair, another Latino; like the rest of the Furies, he wore a black T-shirt and blue jeans — it wasn’t much of a uniform but it was theirs. The card player on the left was a big, heavy guy with long, stringy dark hair and a middle European look. Brushing bangs out of his eyes, he said, “C’mon, Hutt, play a damn card.”

“Jack of spades,” Hutt said triumphantly as he dropped the card on the pile. He was thinner than his opponent, but his hair was the same dark, stringy mess, and he had a similar ethnic cast — the cardplayers might be brothers.

“Ha,” the fat one said, snapping up the card.

“Think you got the winning hand there, pal?” Alec asked.

At the sound of the unfamiliar voice, the fat guy looked up; none of the trio had heard the stranger’s approach. “Huh?”

Alec’s casualness froze the three dopes.

“I like my hand better,” the X5 said.

And he swung his right fist, connecting with the side of the fat guy’s head. The fat guy’s eyes rolled back, he wobbled for a second as cards filtered out of his hands, then he just fell over on his side, unconscious.

Hutt had already started to rise, but Alec’s spinning kick dropped him, cold.

The sentry, facing Alec now, hurled the binoculars, but Alec ducked the throw and stepped forward, his hand closing over the guy’s windpipe.

“Hey,” Alec said. “I’m a guest.”

The guy wasn’t much more than a kid himself, maybe twenty, zits covering his face, his eyes bloodshot, his skin the color of wet newspaper. He squeaked but that was all he could get out, and when Alec increased the pressure, the squeak turned to silence.

The idea — a quick revision of his plan, now that joining up with the Furies seemed less likely — was to squeeze info out of the sentry, find out where Logan was...

Then Alec saw something that hadn’t been apparent from the doorway — off to the left, around the concealing curve of the inner tower, was a second sandbag bunker, six windows away, with three more Furies, two of whom were rushing toward him and his captive, the third furiously punching numbers on a cell phone.

The sentry Alex held by the neck became suddenly useless, and the X5 popped him with a straight right. The guy pitched onto the sandbags and took a nap. Finding out Logan’s whereabouts had become secondary to survival.

The bangers running up to him spread out, so despite the relatively closed-in area, Alec couldn’t get them both at once — unlike the guards below, these two weren’t complete morons... unfortunately. The one to his left — a stocky Latino — came in with a long, looping right that Alec ducked, and countered with a right that caught the guy in the solar plexus, air bursting out of the Fury as his body slapped to the cement.