“Fighting even as we retreat,” Moody said with a nod. “And we beat them at their own game.”
“How's that?”
Moody grinned wolfishly. “We head for the Cap… we'll trade headquarters with the sons of bitches!”
Gabe grinned wide, head shaking on that ostrich neck. “The Moodman still has moves, I see.”
“Always. Now— I'll help you spread the word.”
In the auditorium, Moody and Gabriel did just that, and faces brightened, morale visibly lifting, and yet the fear remained. Though he felt his plan was a good one, Moody remained uneasy, still troubled by the absence of both the local and federal authorities. How he wished Max was still here… She alone might turn the tide for them, and certainly even up the fight.
His bodyguard, Tippett, looked as stoic as ever in biker leathers, his tattooed arms bared as threats, but the hulking man had removed all his piercings— he never went into battle giving opponents anything to rip from his flesh.
“You want me in the hall?” Tippett asked.
“No— let them have the hall… they'll try my ‘office' door and that'll tell us what they're up to. You take the back exit, over there… ” Moody pointed. “They may still have somebody positioned, so serpentine your ass.”
“No prob… I ain't had so much fun since the pigs ate my cousin Fred.”
Moody found himself smiling at that. “We should have at
that much fun, this evening… ”
His black robe trailing like a cape, Moody threaded through the auditorium, passing along the strategy, continuing to build morale. Then he went upstairs to the old projection booth, where Max had kept her quarters, and knocked.
Freckle-faced Fresca answered. “Yes, sir? What can I do, sir?”
“The girl Niner in there with you?”
“Yes, sir. Just kinda… cooling her out, sir.”
“I hope you haven't been doing anything I wouldn't do.”
“Kinda doubt that, sir.” And Fresca grinned.
Of all these kids, only Fres seemed unafraid under these siege circumstances— whether this was courage or naivete, Moody would not hazard a guess.
“You and Niner go down and block the doors.”
“What with?”
“Use those sandbags we stacked up against the wall, by the stairs, last night. I want them piled directly against the front entry.”
“You got it!”
Fifteen minutes later, when Moody was again moving through the lobby, he saw that the freckle-faced boy and his new girlfriend had set to work.
“Don't worry, Niner,” the boy was saying. Though he was several years younger than the skinny-looking newbie, Fresca spoke with the authority of experience. “You'll see.”
“You really think Max'll be back?” Niner asked.
“Oh yeah— she's just off on some errand or something. She ride in on that bike of hers, and kick Brood ass!”
Eavesdropping, Moody could only wish Fresca were right.
Gabriel seemed to materialize at his side. “Them knowin' about our secret exits,” Gabe said quietly, “you don't think Max sold us out, do ya?”
“Don't let Fresca hear you say that.”
“What do you think?”
“I think, no. No way in hell.”
Moody walked Gabriel off to one side, to make even more sure this confidential conversation was not overheard.
Gabriel, Uzi ready, was saying, “They could have grabbed her… tortured it out of her… ”
Moody just looked at Gabe. “Do you really think they could get anything out of that girl?”
Gabe's concerned expression dissolved into an embarrassed smirk. “Listen to the stupid shit's comin' outa me… Guess I'm getting stir crazy.”
“You'll like it at the Cap,” Moody said. “End of the day, we'll come out of this with better digs… you'll see.”
The explosion erupted through the doors in a belch of orange flame and gray smoke, hurling Fresca and his girlfriend across the room, slamming them into the concession stand in a shower of glass fragments. The girl, Niner, lay decapitated by one oversized glass shard, her head nowhere in sight, perhaps incinerated; and Fresca rested at her side, a twisted charred bloody husk with its guts trailing out, and the only mercy that neither had to witness the horror of what had taken the other from this life.
The kids who'd been standing guard duty at either end, alongside those doors, had their own share of nicks from flying glass, though none seemed to have serious injuries. But it was a bit hard to tell, since before the smoke had even begun to clear they'd started running pell-mell toward the auditorium… until machine-gun fire cut them down like tall grass under a swinging scythe.
Blasting away as they came, screaming unintelligible war cries, Broodsters charged up the patio toward where the doors had been, automatic weapons in hand, eyes wild, piling in over the broken glass and the small barrier of sandbags that Fresca and Niner had managed to pile there before they died…
Moody and Gabriel stayed ahead of the invaders, and dashed into the auditorium. The Clan kids— with handguns, mostly, a few with rifles— had taken refuge behind their sandbag and theater-chair battlements. The two leaders circulated quickly, dispatching kids to sandbag the auditorium doors shut; then they sent small groups to try various exits, now that the Brood was attacking in full force, which would presumably open up some outlets for escape.
Each group that headed for an exit, however, opened doors onto figures… soldiers… in black combat gear, heavily armed, blocking the way.
Tippett was the first to discover this, and reported it to Moody.
“That doesn't sound like the Brood,” Moody said.
“Not hardly! Some kind of damn military SWAT team… ”
“Any casualties?”
“No— they didn't fire on us… We got back inside before they could… ”
Four more older Clan kids scrambled up, and reported their exits similarly blocked.
Gabriel said, “Bastards have the building surrounded! We're blocked in by these guys, while the Brood comes in to party!”
It made an awful, crazy sense to Moody: this explained the siege, the suddenly superior Brood firepower… the Russian had high-level support in this effort, even federal government sanction…
Moody looked toward the auditorium doors, where sandbags were piled waist-high. The enemy had breached the lobby maybe five minutes ago, and had not yet made a move to rush the theater itself.
A nearby blast, separated from the auditorium by the left-side wall— accompanied by screams— provided an answer: the explosion came from the corridor along which Moody kept both his real office and the C4-rigged door to his nonoffice. This told him two things: the enemy was filtering into the building, to come at them not just through the main auditorium doors. But it also said that his booby trap had been sprung.
He only hoped the C4 had taken a good number of them out.
Even so, in that moment, it became crystal clear to Moody that there would be no escape. They would either win or lose, live or die, right here in this auditorium… and Moody didn't like the odds one little bit…
Right now Gabriel was shouting orders, but these children seemed scared, barely listening. Hell was knocking at the door, and pep talks weren't going to cut it.
Turning these kids into self-reliant thieves was one thing: turning them into soldiers was another. Moody had never tried to do the latter, really— kids weren't cut out for that.
The harsh metallic rattle of machine-gun fire rained down on them from the balcony— that was where the
