Strike (5 page)

Another guy shows up and points to his eyes, then his gun.
I'm watching you
. Kevin starts to quietly cry, and Gabriela mutters, “Goddammit.”

As the first guy opens the backpack, the second guy points his
gun on Wyatt, who reflexively puts up his hands. “That's not necessary, man. We're on your side,” he says, as if that's not exactly what you would say if you weren't on their side.

“Oh, shit. Where'd you get these?”

The bearish guy holds up Alistair's laptops, and I glare daggers at Wyatt. We never talked about them, but I assumed the laptops were in the trunk of the car or maybe back at the house. We couldn't figure out the code, and then we got too busy putting up with our new friends and trying to stay alive on eight dollars to worry about a bunch of green numbers on a black screen.

But we're busted. There's no point in lying to someone who has a bigger gun.

“From a guy who went by the name Alistair Meade,” I say. “Same place we got this flyer.” I reach for my pocket, and the gun swings to face me.

“Slowly, girl.” The guy with the gun is a big country boy with crazy eyes.

I nod and—slowly—hand the bearded guy a poorly folded piece of paper, one from the stack of hundreds I found in Alistair's trailer, along with a ton of maps, notes, and a list of the names of local kids who would make good Valor assassins. He reads it and looks at me carefully from a nest of black hair and mustache and beard streaked with gray.

“What's the story?” he asks. But not Wyatt—he asks me.

“Valor showed up at my house. Alistair was on my list. He told me to look in his trailer. I—we—didn't mean to shoot him. It was an accident. He told me the password before he—” I gulp down a cold stone of fear and regret, remembering that moment. “We just want to help. I swear.”

After considering me for a few moments, he nods and says, “Get Leon,” to the smoker. He tosses the pack back to Wyatt but holds on to all three laptops. “You got anything else we need to know about?”

Wyatt groans. “I've still got a Valor credit card. Does that count?”

“It very much counts, if you want to stay alive. Hand it over. Again, slowly.”

I look back at Chance and Gabriela and join them in giving Wyatt the Death Glare. This is not the way I wanted to start out with the group that might be our only allies. Wyatt pulls out his beat-up chain wallet and holds out his card, and the guy pulls something out of his own pocket—looks like a battery pack. He runs it over the card both ways, throws the card in a box with dozens of others, and nods at the woman with the wand, who runs it over Wyatt again. No beep.

“You're in. But sit up front. We'll have questions for you after,” the guy says. I must look as terrified and trapped as I feel, because he gives me a small, quick smile and adds, “Don't worry. You're going to be fine.”

Wyatt waits as the rest of us pass the boop test, and we all sit
where the guy told us to, because what else are we going to do? It's weird to sit on gym bleachers again, and the wood creaks with every movement. Nobody said anything about Matty, although they did scan her with the wand. A couple other people in the crowd have dogs, and one lady has a beaver-sized cat on a leash. Our area is mostly kids, ranging from country boys in overalls to prep kids to this tiny little blond girl who looks like she's ten. I'm between Wyatt and Gabriela, and although I didn't want these three jerks to show up at our hideout last night, I'm glad I'm not one of the confused loners. It feels safer to be in the middle of my herd. Wyatt reaches into his backpack and pulls out Monty, rolling the pillowcase between his hands without actually releasing the snake.

“Sorry,” he mutters under his breath. “I forgot. I just wanted to keep the laptops safe.”

“It's fine. We weren't getting anything out of them anyway.”

But I'm pretty pissed, and I know he can feel it.

As I look around, I decide we're probably going to get ax murdered. The old gym is lit up with bright, cold lights like the kind they use to work on the roads at night. The corners are strung with cobwebs, and old decorations hang dejectedly from the walls, hearts and graying doilies, like there was a massacre at the Valentine's Day dance and they just locked up the building forever. The stage has glittery red bunting around it, the curtain halfway pulled and black beyond. I can detect movement on the stage, but not clearly.

There must be at least a hundred people in here with even more entering after the wand does its work. I look over every time it beeps, and I mostly just see confiscated credit cards getting deactivated and chucked in the box. Does that mean Valor can track a body with a credit card even if they're not using it? Jesus. Nobody ever mentions that in the TV ads.

A spotlight blasts on, bathing the stage in light. A thin man stands there alone before a podium, but it's clear that he's no high school principal or teacher. The dude is utterly self-possessed, oozing confidence. He's thin, wearing an overcoat and rolled jeans over boots, with the Southern version of a lumbersexual look, faded hair that's long on top but shaved on the sides and a well-kept beard; he's in his forties, probably. And he looks like he'd smile at you, so sweetly, and put ten rounds in your chest. I'm terrified of him—and fascinated by him. This must be how cobras die when they're staring at mongooses. Mongeese? Shit.

He clears his throat, and the room goes silent.

Just in time to hear the wand beep again.

“What you got, boy?” the smoky-voiced woman says tiredly.

“Nothing.”

The guy at the podium sighs as if sorely aggrieved and turns to watch the proceedings, and the entire gym full of spectators does too. The kid looks to be in his twenties, beefy and utterly normal. Country-club type in yacht shoes that have never seen a yacht. He
looks nervous as the guy with the gun pats him down and yanks something out of his front pocket.

“What the hell is this?”

“Looks like a phone, genius,” Gabriela whispers under her breath.

“My phone,” the kid says, like he's trying to act brave.

“And what brand is it, dumbass?”

“I—I don't know. My dad gave it to me. It's just a phone. Like, a normal phone.”

The man at the podium leaps nimbly off the stage and stalks toward the door, his hands in his overcoat pockets. The guy with the gun throws the phone to the guy with the overcoat, who flips it open—a flip phone, really?

“Well, son, congratulations. You're the first malcontent to try to blow up our little tea party.” He turns, holds the open phone toward us. “Friends, here's a little tip to ensure your longevity. Recall that Valor Savings Bank bought out Linkstream in 2009. So if you're carrying a Linkstream-branded phone, you're carrying a Valor company phone. And if you're carrying a Linkstream burner phone like this one? Well, we're going to have to assume you're either working for the enemy or too stupid to live.”

The country-club kid's face is sweating like crazy, his hands up in front of him. “I didn't know, okay? It's just a phone. I'm sure my dad will—”

Overcoat guy snaps the phone in half, crushes it under his boot, whips out a gun, and shoots the kid in the chest. The pop echoes around the gym, and half the people stand up, and the other half must feel like me, cold and mesmerized and full of outrage with what the world has become. We came here for help, for community, and they're just randomly shooting kids with no warning? My face goes red-hot, and I want to scream and yell at the injustice of it. The country-club kid is on the floor now, facedown in a puddle that's become all too normal. Overcoat guy squats, pulls something out of the mess of phone guts, and holds it up.

“Oh, what do we have here? Why, it's a Valor company SD card. That means they know where this phone is, who it calls and texts, and who ends up on the camera. Now, let's see if the plot thickens.” He rummages around the kid's body, and I have to look away. “Here we go! This fine young man was indeed carrying a Valor recording device.” I dare to look up, and sure enough, he's holding a small black recorder. He stands and stomps it under a boot, again and again, until it's a pile of plastic. “Anybody else got a Linkstream phone or an old SD card?” The crowd whispers and rustles, folks whipping out their phones just to make sure, just in case the wand somehow missed them. No one says anything. “Well, then, I guess you all get to keep breathing tonight.” As he turns and stalks back to the stage, he calls over his shoulder, “Clean that up, please.”

Every eye stays with him as he hops onto the stage to stand again
behind the podium as if nothing unusual has happened. My rage dissipates, and I go cold again. That kid wasn't an innocent victim at all—he worked for them. For Valor. Maybe they made him do this like they made me do worse, but I stand with the guy in the overcoat. This is the world now. You bring danger to the group, you die.

The crowd is as terrified as a flock of sheep with nowhere to run, and you could cut the tension with shears. Old women are fanning themselves, and little kids are crying. Whatever they've seen, they're still not accustomed to this kind of violence, not like I am. The man—Leon, the smoker called him—takes a long moment, watching us. Judging us. His hands finally leave his overcoat. His gun has disappeared. Tattooed knuckles wrap around the lectern.

“I'm so sorry we had to meet that way, but I'm Leon Crane. I hope you'll take care to remember this about me.” He looks around the gym, meets every eye, and the moment his eyes lock on mine, it's like walking into a wall of steel. “I will kill whoever I must to keep you safe. Once you're on my side, you're my family, and I protect my family, even when it pains me to do so. I stand, now and forever, against Valor Savings and anyone who joins them in their crusade to remove the God-given freedoms of good Americans. Now tell me, friends, who here has lost a loved one to Valor's first wave of terror and anarchy?”

Every hand goes up. Every single one. All shaking. Leon nods like a preacher who feels our pain.

“So have I, friends. So have I. My cousin Lester was gunned down at his front door just a few short days ago, right in front of his young children. Now, as a veteran of the Iraq War, I know what it's like to lose a comrade in a fair fight, and I know that what we have now, with Valor Savings, is not a fair fight. Fortunately, I also know how to find the enemy. As it turns out, a certain anonymous hacking group called Incog has been on to the Valor takeover for quite some time, and when you add their technological wizardry to my talent for guerrilla warfare and blowing shit up, that means that we're one of the finest cells of the Citizens for Freedom in what's left of the United States. And I assure you, there are hundreds of other cells, like us, secretly fighting Valor together.”

The bleachers creak, and an old man stands. He's wearing holsters like a damn cowboy, his thumbs tucked into his belt loops. His hand goes up, nice and slow.

Leon smiles, showing straight white teeth. “Yes, sir. How can I be of service?”

“That's all well and good, son. And thank you for your service to our country.” Leon bows his head. “But I don't understand what you-all expect to gain here. Computers didn't make this land of ours free. I think we should take to the hills and wait it out.”

Leon nods. “Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I can see your point there. But we do not all possess your gifts of survival. Looking at this crowd, I see widow women, old folks, and young children who've seen their
parents shot in cold blood on the doorstep. Unless you're willing to support these folks in their time of need and you feel capable enough to feed, clothe, and shelter them through a brutal winter, leaving for the hills is likely to kill them, or at the very least, leave them at the mercy of Valor.” Again, that grin. “And as I'm sure you'll all agree, Valor is not known for mercy.”

“What exactly is it you want us to do, then?”

Leon steps around the lectern, hands in his pockets, and grins like Christmas. “I'm so very glad you asked. As it turns out, we're in contact with hundreds of other cells of the Citizens for Freedom. All across the country, Americans of every age and breed are meeting, just like we are. The fine scholars of technology are joining forces with those of us who, for all our ignorance, are pretty handy with weapons and explosives. And we're making plans.” He rocks back on his heels and laughs to himself. “Oh, yes. We do have plans. And for those willing to abandon their former life and join our fight, we can promise you one thing: the chance to strike back at the company that has taken so much from you.”

“And what are your qualifications, Mr. Crane?”

For just a second, Leon's smile breaks into a sneer, but he catches it quick. “That's an understandable question. No one wants to follow an unfit leader. I've lived in Candlewood all my life, as did my father and his father before him, all the way back to the War of Northern Aggression. I graduated from this very school and served
my country during two tours in Iraq.” He rubs his hands together, looks down, and chuckles. “Now, normally I wouldn't mention this part, but I want to be straight with y'all. After the war, I didn't much know what to do with myself, and I put some of my knowledge of explosives to use in some shady-type operations. And I got caught. But my time in prison taught me several things: how to preach the good Lord's word, how to lead men to the light, how to help the less fortunate, and how to control my anger issues. I style myself a gentleman now. A gentleman with a mission. And that mission is fighting to save the people Valor wants to enslave.” He grins beatifically. “Now, does that answer your question?”

The old man nods thoughtfully and sits back down.

Leon eyes the crowd. “Anything else?”

“What if we're too old to fight?” This from an ancient woman, fat and wobbling.