Max Collins - After the Dark

Bostock was smiling. “Don’t worry — when they find out it’s you, the welcome will be warm.”

Max’s eyes went to Mole, who was shifting his latest stogie from one corner of his mouth to another.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Keep driving.”

Mole kept driving.

Both he and Max had a good sense of direction, a Manticore-tuned grasp of geography, and after a while she nodded to the lizard-man chauffeur to turn right onto a dirt road, which was little more than a path. It wasn’t wide and didn’t look like it had been traveled on for a good long time.

Still, something about the road had set off Max’s radar, and she pointed to a grove of trees off to the left. “Pull in over there and park it. Kill the lights.”

Mole eased the car off the road, onto the grass, and let it glide under the cover of the trees.

They all got out, Alec still holding the gun on Bostock, the bound secretary hopping along awkwardly.

“You’re wasting your time,” Bostock said.

“Gag him,” Max ordered.

Joshua held Bostock while Alec went back to the car; soon Alec returned to give Bostock half a smile before jamming a rag in his mouth and circling his head with duct tape.

“I’m going up ahead to have a look,” Max said. “Hang here — if I’m not back in half an hour, bail.”

“I’ll just tag along,” Mole said.

“No. Stay with the group.”

Joshua raised his hand like a school kid wanting to be excused, and said, “Me, then.”

She shook her head. “It’s just a recon — better off alone. I’ll be back soon.”

Before they could put up any more fuss, she took off.

She traveled less than a mile through the silent, dark woods, the evening chill making the temperature crisp again. The trees were close together, the grass not too tall, and above her, small meteors streaked across the sky, giving her a sense of foreboding.

She’d read in that rag Sketchy wrote for about the end-of-the-world comet, but hadn’t taken it any more seriously than the vampire bat boy story or “Bigfoot Had my Baby.”

But the comet was coming...

Still in the woods, she reached the top of a short hill and peeked around a tree to see what lay beyond.

Down the other side, past another patch of trees — alone in the middle of a wide, well-trimmed, sparse landscape — sat a three-story white stucco building and two outbuildings. Even from this distance she could see that bars covered the windows, and something C. J. Sandeman, the nutty brother of Ames White and evidently her half brother, had told her — when was it, a year ago? — came back to her.

“I’m not going back to their loony bin,” C.J. had said.

From here the building indeed looked exactly like a no frills mental hospital. Below her, she knew, sat the stronghold of the Conclave.

Logan was in there somewhere — White, too; and God only knew how many Familiars, and what horrors...

But they had to go in. If they were walking into a trap, so be it; at least she’d be near Logan one last time.

The people in that bare-looking building — whether directly or indirectly — had been screwing with her since before she was born. It was too close to sunup to do anything now; they would sit tight during the day, and then tomorrow night it would be time to take the asylum away from those madmen.

They took turns watching the Conclave stronghold from Max’s spot atop the hill, facing the northwest rear corner of the building complex. Max had scouted all the way around the place, and this seemed to be the best, most easily defensible vantage point.

Though they couldn’t see the front entry, they could monitor the parking lot and most of the compound; the lot had a dozen cars, plus a couple company vans, which was promising — it indicated the size of the staff, which would seem manageable, though she wouldn’t have minded knowing if these Familiars were car-pooling.

Her foray around the far side of the building had provided little more than knowing that the sign out front identified this as BIG SKY RETREAT. When C.J. called the place a “loony bin,” Max had no idea he was being this literal.

On the other hand, it made perfect sense for the Conclave’s purposes: an ideal front, and a wonderful cover for both their sub-rosa activities and the keeping of any prisoners... Should any state inspectors come ’round, the only protestations they might hear would be courtesy of the inmates.

Of course, with the snake cult in charge, the lunatics really were running the asylum.

By dawn, Max and her minicommando squad had a pretty good idea of the Conclave’s movements around the facility. Roving patrols of three took circuitous and seemingly random routes around the edges of the valley, into the woods surrounding the grounds of Big Sky; however, none of them came as far into the woods as the hill.

By Mole’s count there had to be at least a dozen Familiars serving on patrol duty alone.

The four of them, up against an unknown number of selectively bred soldiers whose chief hobby in life was to wipe out transgenics — and Max was the snake-cult poster child of all transgenics, the “Messiah” the Conclave must smite.

Yow.

Funny thing was, troubled though she might be by the prospect of the apparently lopsided battle ahead, she didn’t feel particularly frightened. They had faced long odds before and accomplished their missions; Manticore had instilled that ability, that attitude, within them.

But being up against an army so close to being their equals, and being decidedly outnumbered, did give her pause. This would definitely take a plan that didn’t suck. They would need not only a solid scheme, but a diversion that would allow her to get Logan out.

She sat next to the car. Bostock, trussed up in duct tape, lay on the ground next to her, Alec sitting Indian-style, loosely training the pistol on their prisoner. Joshua was taking his turn at the watch post, and Mole was reclined in the front seat, catching z’s before the fun.

“Cooperate with us,” Max said to the gagged Familiar, “and I might help you stay alive.”

He stared at her defiantly — or at least that was what she figured he was trying to do; mouth duct-taped like that, it wasn’t really clear.

“You give me a rundown on the inside of that joint,” Max said, “let me know how many of your fellow Snake Scouts of America are in there... I’ll help you survive this. Interested?”

Still gagged, Bostock wriggled — like a snake, actually — and said something loud and angry, two words, the first one guttural, the second a vowel sound.

“I’m gonna take that for a no,” Max said.

She walked over to a tree and withdrew her cell phone and punched in Dix’s number, back at Terminal City. She got him on the first ring, and he was excited — relieved and worried — to hear her voice.

Max settled him down and filled him in, telling him where they were and what she had in mind.

“When?” he asked.

“Around midnight,” Max said, and gave him more details. “Can you make it happen?”

“If we book,” he said.

“Why don’t you, then?”

“Roger that.”

And Dix broke the connection.

For the rest of the day, they maintained their watch. A small basket of cold cuts and canned soda, brought along from the Cale mansion, provided sustenance — a rather grisly picnic, considering the basket had ridden in the trunk with the two corpses. The Manticore-trained soldiers weren’t bothered by such trivialities, though, and an eerie calm touched their hilltop camp.