Max Collins - After the Dark

“Town,” Mole said back over his shoulder.

The two in the back stirred, saw the position they were in, and instantly slid to the far sides of the vehicle, each looking toward the front to see if anyone had noticed them. They glanced quickly at each other, gave a little nod that signaled they didn’t think the others had seen, then they both sighed in relief.

“You lovebirds have a nice nap?” Mole asked.

Joshua glared at the lizard man, and Alec offered a couple of short words in response.

Within minutes they were pulling up in front of the Gulliver house, a white two-story clapboard dating to the first half of the twentieth century, resting on a well-tended sloping lawn, a large ash tree in the front yard, and they could glimpse some other big trees out back. It was after dark but early in the evening, yet no lights were on inside the house. Max wondered if the Gullivers were out to dinner or visiting a neighbor.

They could be anywhere, doing anything, blithely leading an idyllic small-town life, unaware of the storm swirling around young Ray White... that is, Lem Gulliver.

And all the transgenic team could do was wait for them to come home. Leaning against her side of the car, Max looked up at the house. She hoped the Gullivers wouldn’t be gone all evening. She wanted to get back to Terminal City; getting the boy was only the beginning — a strategy to defeat White, and return Logan, had yet to be developed.

She was about to turn and ask Mole a question when she saw a sudden illumination in a second floor window, as if someone had taken a picture with a flashbulb...

... and Max was running toward the house and up the lawn even before she heard the report.

The X5 knew a muzzle flash when she saw it.

“Gun!” she yelled over her shoulder, but the others were in action already, too, even as she saw another flash, and they heard a second report from upstairs, terrible momentary thunder in the otherwise quiet night.

She shouldered through the locked door and on inside, Joshua on her heels, Mole and Alec taking off around back to block the shooter’s retreat to the rear.

The stairs were immediately to the right, and she hit the fourth step just as a head peeked around the corner at the top, a stocking-capped head that looked like it belonged on the body of a big man, which it did. He stepped forward, showing off a linebacker’s frame and, more important, a nine millimeter automatic in his right hand.

Taking the rest of the stairs in a single bound, she leaped, landed at the top on one side and swung her leg around, her foot catching the man in the face. He backed up but neither flinched nor dropped the gun.

Shit , she thought, noting the lack of reaction; any normal human would’ve dropped in pain. A Familiar!

Had a squad of cultists been sent to guard Ray? And if so, why didn’t Ames White know where his son was?

Pressing her advantage, she punched him six quick times, backing him up toward the door of the room from which they had seen the gunshot flash, outside.

And if the Familiars were guarding Ray, who the hell were they shooting at in that bedroom?

The Familiar brought the pistol up again, and this time Max grabbed his arm and spun, the barrel of the pistol pointing directly at Joshua, who had followed her up the stairs but was now facing her.

At the last second Joshua dodged to the right as the Familiar pulled the trigger two times, the shots blowing through the front wall of the house and into the night.

Max heard Joshua growling, but there was no way to let him by, and she didn’t want to, anyway... not until she’d disarmed the Familiar. She crashed the man’s arm down on her shoulder and heard a satisfying crack as his arm broke at the elbow, the pistol slipping from his grip and thunk ing on each stair as it bounced to the bottom like a heavy Slinky. The Familiar made no noise when his arm snapped — pain just didn’t seem to register on these bastards — swinging the limp limb like a whip. The open other hand caught her on the side of the head and sent her tumbling down the stairs, as if following the gun.

Somehow, Joshua got past her, grabbed the Familiar around the waist and forced him toward the far end of the wall. Rolling into a combat stance, Max rushed back up the stairs and pushed her way through the closed door into the bedroom. The window was smashed and any Familiar that had been in here was gone.

All that remained were Sara Gulliver and her “son” Lemuel, aka Ray White.

And they were both dead.

From the hall, Joshua roared with rage, then Max heard another nasty crunching sound... then silence.

Heartsick, she spun into the hall and found Joshua, blood running from a wound in his shoulder. The Familiar hung limply in the Big Fella’s arms, head lolling like a Christmas goose with its neck broken.

Forcing herself back into the bedroom, Max gaped at the horrifying sight before her. On the floor, their hands tied behind their backs, gags in their mouths, the woman and the child both lay facedown, a single bullet hole in the back of each of their heads.

Executed.

Alec and Mole came pounding in from outside.

“Bastard got away,” Mole said. “We were around back, he went out the front! He was one fast son of a...” The lizard man’s voice trailed off as he took in the bodies on the floor. “Oh, God.”

Pushing by him, Alec saw the carnage. Shaking his head, he turned away.

Bending down, Max touched Ray’s face. It was still warm.

Why would the Familiars kill Ames White’s son ?

This made no sense at all to her! Not only had they killed White’s boy, they had taken the only bargaining chip she had left. She stroked the child’s head, his hair, and she wept.

She wanted to be tough.

But with the dead child, and the realization that Logan was going to die — and that there was nothing she could do to prevent it — these things and every other thing she hadn’t cried about for all those years, all the way back to Manticore, came pouring out.

She knelt there, one hand on Ray’s head, the other on her forehead as she wept. Tears ran freely, her body wracked with sobs.

“Let it out, Little Fella,” the gentle giant said, kneeling beside her now.

Max wondered if she ever could, though — there was too much to let out, there had been so many wrongs, so much pain, with no end in sight. Was this the normal life she’d hoped for, this endless parade of pain?

At least little Ray White could sleep through it all — his pain, his travels, over.

Eventually, as Max’s sobs began to abate, Alec stepped forward and placed a hand on her shoulder.

Max glanced back at the X5, surprised by the gentleness of the gesture and the genuine sorrow on the handsome face. She swallowed, nodding to him a small “Thank you” for his concern.

His hand was still on her shoulder as Max — making no effort to rise — looked down again at Ray, as she continued to run a soothing hand through the boy’s hair, her fingers inches away from moist, matted blood.

He looked just as she remembered him, a bright-looking boy, hair cut short like his father’s, the color more the blond of his late mother’s. Rather small for his age — some of White’s fellow cultists had doubted the boy had it in him to belong in their “exalted” ranks — he might have been asleep, but for the hole in his head.

“Max,” Alec said, “we gotta haul — somebody in the neighborhood must’ve heard the noise, and we got three dead people here.”

“Three?” she asked absently.