Max Collins - After the Dark

Slowly, Joshua sat up and looked at the blood-colored volume with a neat entry wound in the cover that went almost all the way through. When he riffled the pages, the bullet tumbled out.

“Are you mad, Max?” he asked.

“Mad?”

“Joshua ruined Father’s book.”

Relief flooded through Max and she grabbed her monstrous friend in her arms and gave him a big hug.

“ Ow! ” he growled.

“Aw, did that hurt?” she asked. Pulling back and taking his face in her hands, she gave him a big, wet, sloppy kiss.

This time he didn’t say anything, and when she let him go, a wide smile spread over his face. His eyes were glassy, and he wobbled for a moment.

Then he passed out.

“Big Fella,” she said, and shook him.

He was dead to the world... but not dead, thank God.

Plenty left to do tonight, and now she had two or three hundred pounds of dog-boy transgenic to haul out of these woods.

Still, it was a hell of a lot better than leaving his dead furry body behind.

Just twenty yards from the west side of the house, Mole and Alec huddled in the woods. Between them and the mansion lay the building’s blue shadow, one last suggestion of night, even though ten minutes ago — on the other side of the massive, mausoleum-quiet building — the sun had broken through, bringing a not entirely welcome morning. And yet the chill of the night clung to them, as they squatted like oversize gnomes at the base of an oak.

“Where are they?” Mole asked, the reptilian face wrinkling with impatience. “What do you think? Should we go lookin’ for ’em?”

“We should do what Max said,” Alec said, “and wait.”

“Mr. Frickin’ Rule Book all of a sudden!”

Alec offered up his trademark smirk. “Is it my fault you ran out of smokes?”

Mole said nothing, just scowled.

Alec’s smirk softened into a smile. “Relax, buddy. They’ll be along.”

“They musta heard the shots.”

“Yeah — and we heard shots, too, remember? They maybe had a little trouble of their own.”

“They maybe got iced.”

“Maybe. But for now we wait.”

Mole sighed heavily and settled in. “All right... but it’d be easier if I had a damn cigar.”

“Life with you would be easier for me if you had a damn cigar... On the other hand, one look at the smoke and every goon and gun on the grounds’d be down on us.”

“Yeah yeah yeah. It’s a frickin’ moot point, ain’t it, smart-ass?”

A familiar female voice cut in: “Why don’t you two try marriage counseling?”

Mole swung around and there was Max, coming up a path between trees, an arm around Joshua’s waist, walking him along like he was drunk. To Alec, the smile on his friend’s furry face was even a little dumber than usual, as well as inappropriate, considering the circumstances.

“What’s up with Furballs?” Mole asked.

“He was shot,” she said.

“What? Jesus—” Mole said, getting to his feet.

“You mean he was stabbed,” Alec said, frowning, also getting up. “We all saw it, Max.”

Helping the beast man along, she said, “That was then... this is now — but he’ll be okay.”

Mole was helping her with Joshua, who they walked over to the base of a tree, sitting him down.

“Where’d he get it?” the lizard man asked.

“In the front cover,” she said, and quickly filled them in, finishing, “But he took the full impact of the slug — he’s pretty shaken.”

Joshua said, “Max kissed Joshua’s oowwie,” and grinned stupidly.

Alec and Mole exchanged lifted-eyebrow glances, then Alec said, “I don’t even want to know.”

Mole, amused, leaned toward Max, saying, “I got shot, too...” Then he puckered his lizard lips, as much as lizard lips could pucker, anyway.

And Max said, “You wish... Let’s see it.”

Mole showed her where the bullet had cut a crease in his vest and his side; the bleeding had stopped.

“Get over yourself!” she said. “I nick myself worse shavin’ my legs.”

Alec and Mole reflected on that image perhaps a beat too long, and Max snapped, “Can we get to business?”

Alec gestured through the trees. “I know about your cat-burglar background and all, Max — but how do you intend to get inside that dollhouse?”

The three-story antebellum mansion made, as before, an intimidating adversary, hedge in front, at least three windows on each floor on each side of the house...

“Windows,” Max said.

“What about them?” Alec asked.

“That’s our way in.”

The X5 frowned. “We’re not going to try to take out the alarm system? Those things’ll be as wired as Sketchy on Saturday night. Not very subtle, Max.”

“This from the guy who shot up the whole damned island on the way in.”

Alec looked hurt. “ They started it — anyway, I heard way more gunfire from your side.”

She arched an eyebrow, a fist on a hip. “What, are you afraid alarms will alert them to our presence?”

Alec smirked humorlessly. “Well, maybe the gunshots already did that, yeah.”

Mole cleared his throat.

They both turned to look at him.

“Anybody got a cigar?” he asked.

“No,” Max said.

“Of course not,” Alec said.

“No,” Joshua said, and suddenly the Big Fella was standing next to them.

Mole made a mock-gracious “after you” gesture, half bowing. “Then can we just do this shit, please? So I can find my way back to civilization and some frickin’ tobacco?”

They each came in from a different direction, breaking through a first-floor window — gloved hands punching a hole and reaching up to undo the latch — and rolling in, into a combat stance. No audible alarms were triggered, though silent ones would no doubt be registering in some security center.

Max had assigned Joshua — seeing as how he’d been both stabbed and shot recently — to go in on the west side; the window Max selected for him was toward the back, probably a study or den. Alec went around to the east side and came in through a dining room window. In the back, Mole barged into the kitchen, while in the front, Max rolled right into the living room. If you’re gonna crash a party, Max thought, might as well really crash it...

Two guards waited for her, and when she came up, one hit her high in front while the other hit her low in back. She dropped, hit the floor hard, feeling like a gong somebody had sounded, and wondered for a moment if Alec might not have been right about being a little more circumspect in their entrance.

They were big and well-built, both with short, dark hair, and they wore black TAC fatigues. One was a few inches taller than his partner and had a short, crooked scar on his right cheek. But they were not smart: they should have immediately attacked a second time instead of waiting there, poised as if some invisible referee were counting Max out.

And of course Max wasn’t about to be counted out...

Bouncing to her feet, she hit the nearest one, the scarred sucker, with a straight, powerful right, a punch that could have put a hole in a wall...

... and he didn’t flinch.

Goddamn Familiars, she thought.

The other one kicked her in the back, but she was braced for a blow and took it well, only when she moved forward the scarred one karate-edged her in the stomach and doubled her over.

And unlike a Familiar, an X5 like Max — for all her superior attributes — could feel pain, all right...

Like an overeager dance partner, the scarred boy spun her around, jitterbug style, one hand on the scruff of her neck, the other on her backside, and ran her at the open window. With no more effort than it would take him to toss his jacket on a chair, the big man threw her through the window, over the hedge and into the yard, where she hit with a thud, rolled a couple of times, and stopped in a sprawl.