Threat Warning (31 page)

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Authors: John Gilstrap

Tags: #Fiction, #General

BOOK: Threat Warning
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“Take them, brothers and sisters!” a voice yelled from behind the curtain. “They won’t shoot as long as—”
Boxers’ rifle shot severed the man’s hand at the wrist, and the pistol dropped harmlessly to the floor. It hadn’t yet bounced when Jonathan raked the man’s location with bullets. Gail dropped out of sight.
In those two seconds of bedlam, mass insanity was born.
It started with a single voice launching a guttural yell from the cowering fighters huddled among the line of pews. It was the sound of raw emotion, and in two seconds, it had metastasized to the entire room.
“This can’t be good,” Jonathan said.
It wasn’t.
As the chorus of voices rose from all corners, he shot a look to Boxers. The Big Guy seemed hopeful for a fight.
He got his wish.
As the ear-shattering eruption of noise crescendoed, robed gunmen seemed to materialize out of ether. One second, the church seemed mostly empty, and the next, it was filled with target silhouettes, each one standing, and each one brandishing a rifle of some sort.
Jonathan eliminated the most immediate threat by unleashing the remainder of his M4’s magazine—twenty-one steel-jacketed rounds—down the length of the gunmen to whom he’d tried to show mercy. The bullets left the muzzle of his rifle in seven three-round bursts, and the bad guys were so well aligned that individual bullets had to be taking out multiple targets as they passed through one person into the people standing behind him. He did it all from his knee, and in less than five seconds, the bodies were everywhere.
With that threat neutralized, he shifted his aim to the rest of the cavernous room. He saw one gunman in the far right-hand corner—the red-black corner—but even as his finger tightened on the trigger, he saw blood spray from his shoulders, and he dropped, dead on the spot from a burst delivered by Boxers.
As quickly as the sound had peaked, the room was now silent, save for the moans of the wounded. Jonathan yelled, “Big Guy?”
“Fully satisfied,” Boxers yelled back.
“And PC-Two?”
“Still scared, still okay.”
“Gunslinger?”
Gail sat up on the stage, her legs crossed, and pressed her hand against her bleeding head. “I’m fine,” she said.
Jonathan started his check of the room and the wounded. The issue at this point was not to provide them with medical assistance—they’d lost that courtesy when they opened fire en masse—but rather to disarm them to make sure that they could pose no further threat.
The numbers were astounding. Jonathan counted eighteen dead and seven wounded, all of whom would likely be dead before the sun rose. With the gift of marksmanship came the curse of accuracy. While he surveyed the carnage from the green-side aisle, Boxers shadowed him from the red side. When they were done, they’d collected an impressive arsenal of weapons.
They met in the middle, near the altar, where a Klansman lay with his head unzipped and his brain excised. Jonathan said, “I think we’re clear.” He walked a few steps to Gail, and stooped to assess her head wound. “Are you okay? Here, let me take a look.”
She pulled away. “I’m fine.”
“Let me see anyway,” he said. He pulled his NVGs out of the way for a better look. The candlelight wasn’t nearly bright enough, but he didn’t dare give the enemy outside a white-light target. He thought he saw a one-inch gash, maybe worthy of a couple of stitches, maybe not. “I think you’ll be fine,” he said.
“I already told you that,” Gail replied. She surveyed the carnage, really taking it in for the first time. “What’s with these people? That was like a mass suicide.”
“I write it off to zealotry,” Jonathan said.
Christyne Nasbe stood from behind the pew where Boxers had taken shelter. “Where’s Ryan?”
Boxers pointed his forefinger as if it were a gun. “You stay down.”
“Shut up!” she shouted. “Where’s my son?”
C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-ONE
 
Kendig Neen found himself overwhelmed. As faithful soldiers of the Army swarmed him, looking for leadership and a plan, he was desperately looking for Brother Michael. Unbelievably, several soldiers had reported seeing him and Brother Franklin running away after Brother Franklin bolted from the stage using the Nasbe boy as his shield.
With Michael and Franklin both gone, Kendig was in charge, if only because of his position on the Board of Elders. He’d sidelined himself from the main event of the execution after Brother Michael berated him for showing cowardice.
Oh, the irony.
With a veritable war being fought inside the assembly hall, he needed to form a counterassault, and he needed to form it quickly. As the soldiers of the Army of God fled for their lives, he stood in the open, his arms extended, trying to stop them and bring order to chaos.
Some stopped, most didn’t. Of those who did, the majority were members of his security unit. Virtually everyone who had gathered for the execution was armed, so firepower would not be a problem.
He felt pleased that they’d only lost a few minutes to chaos. “Gather ’round me, brothers and sisters,” he shouted above the din. Those who heard—those who
admitted
that they’d heard—stopped and formed up around him.
“Everybody settle down!” he called. “Who has hard data?”
“Brother Zebediah is dead,” someone said.
“Brother Neil and Sister Sonia Mary,” someone else said.
Kendig waved off that information. “I don’t need a casualty report. I need to know how many people we’re facing and where they are.”
“There must be many in the assembly hall,” someone said. “Listen to the gunfire in there.”
“That’s speculation,” Kendig said. “I want fact. I want to hear from people who have
seen
things with their own eyes, and who can report
fact.
”
A young lady—Kendig always had difficulty with names—stepped forward. “I saw a very large man take one of the prisoners inside the assembly hall.”
“I saw Brother Franklin running away with the boy. With Ryan,” someone else said.
The phrase
running away
triggered a disturbed murmur through the crowd.
“Where’s Brother Michael?” a soldier asked.
Kendig ignored the question. He needed to motivate these young men and women for action, and if they perceived that the top leadership had run for their lives, nothing good would follow. “What’s going on in the assembly hall?” he asked. “Who are the Users shooting at?”
“Brother Benjamin was in there preparing for services after the executions.”
“How many people did he have with him?”
“Twenty. Maybe twenty-five.”
“Did anyone see the assault force?” Kendig asked. With as many as twenty-five soldiers inside, maybe this whole incident could go away quickly.
“I saw that one big soldier,” someone said.
“Huge,” someone else corrected.
“I think I also saw someone running after Brother Franklin.”
Kendig turned his gaze toward the soldier who spoke of Brother Franklin. “So of course you hurried to help him.”
The soldier looked at his feet.
The crowd around him continued to grow, and as it did, a plan began to form in his mind. Two against many was impossible odds. If he could just—
“Brother Kendig!” someone yelled from the night. The tone was frantic.
As one, the gathering crowd turned toward the voice. A clot of soldiers emerged from the night, still dressed in their ceremonial robes. Two appeared to be spattered with blood. “She killed four of us,” one of them said hurriedly. Kendig thought he remembered the young soldier’s name to be Brother Kurt. “We tried to stop her, but she fought us.”
“A woman fought
all
of you?”
“We were in the process of disarming her when she got shots off.”
Kendig couldn’t believe this. “All of you are armed,” he said. “Why didn’t you shoot back?”
“We tried, Brother Kendig. We really tried. I think she got away into the assembly hall.”
As if to punctuate his point, the shooting in the assembly hall crescendoed.
“We did strip her of this, though,” Brother Kurt said. He handed Kendig a portable radio.
 
 
Ryan had never heard so much noise. It rolled on and on, individual gunshots combining to form a continuous pounding. As he pressed himself into the corner and tried his best to dissolve into the floor he jumped at the sound of what could only be bullets sailing through the wall that separated him from the shooting. In the oppressive darkness, where his only sensory input was the bedlam of shooting and the stench of gunpowder, he found himself screaming, as if adding a human element to the cacophony would take the edge off so much death.
And then it was over. Just like that, silence became more oppressive than the sound of battle. The silence came so abruptly that he wondered whether he’d gone deaf.
He heard movement out there beyond the door, but it didn’t sound violent. It didn’t even sound urgent. Just voices talking about things.
Suddenly the darkness of his room—and the loneliness of it—became unbearable. He’d been alone enough. He’d been scared and victimized enough. Now it was time for him to
do
something. He had no idea what that something might be, but by golly, he was going to do it. His hand tightened on the grip of his revolver.
“Where’s Ryan?”
Jesus, was that his mom?
“You stay down!” boomed a voice.
“Shut up! Where’s my son?”
Ryan coughed out a laugh before he could stop it. That was definitely his mom’s voice; but it was attached to an entirely different brain.
He decided that whether the good guys had won or lost, he was going to be with his mother. He stood and made his way to the door. He pushed it open.
“Oh, my God,” he heard as soon as he stepped clear of the jamb. “Ryan!”
He turned to his right, and there she was, dressed in the stupid white gown, her arms tied behind her. She ran toward him. She didn’t walk quickly, or jog; she
ran
.
As she closed the distance between them, he instinctively turned to present his left side, shielding his right.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, I thought you were dead,” she said.
She was still five yards away, when Scorpion stepped forward and held out his hand to stop her.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Scorpion said. He drew an ugly knife from somewhere over his left shoulder and made a swirling motion with his fingers for Christyne to turn around. The rope from her wrists fell away without resistance, and now she was ready to hug her son.
“The arm, Mom!” Ryan said, but he knew that she knew, and he knew that there’d be no stopping the assault of kisses.
She grabbed his face in both hands. “Oh, my sweet baby, I’ve been so scared. You’re so beautiful.” She kissed him again.
Embarrassed, Ryan shot a glance at the other men in the room, and he saw that they were embarrassed, too. “Mom.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “You’re alive. We’re both alive.”
She threw her arms around him, and somehow, it didn’t hurt.
Emotion bubbled out of nowhere. One second he was embarrassed by all the mommy shit, and the next, he was completely absorbed by it. He wrapped his good arm around her, gun still gripped in his fist, and he buried his face in the crook where her neck met her shoulder.
Wracking sobs came from a place in his gut that hadn’t been tapped since he was a kid. Shame and sadness and anger all flowed in an unnerving tsunami of emotion that startled him. And as his tears poured out of him, his mom rubbed his back, just as she’d done when he was a little boy.
“Shh,” she said in his ear. “We’re fine. We’ll be fine. Shh.”
He closed his eyes, and he tried to transport to a different time. A better time.
For two seconds—maybe three—it worked.
Then reality returned.
 
 
Jonathan was a sucker for a tearful reunion. That was, after all, why he did what he did. But while the Nasbe family enjoyed their moment, he still had a war to fight.
“Close those shutters!” he commanded. True to its role as the castle keep, heavy wooden shutters framed the assembly hall windows. To Jonathan’s eye, they were thick enough to stop all but the most powerful conventional firearms. Four-inch-wide slots had been cut vertically and horizontally to accommodate gun barrels in the event of a firefight. They ran from about four feet off the floor to six feet. When closed, they formed paired crosses over every window, as if to further blaspheme.
Father Dom would not approve
, Jonathan thought.
His earpiece popped and a deep baritone voice said, “Whoever you are, we need to talk.”
Jonathan shot a glance to Boxers, who shrugged. A glance toward Gail told him how the bad guys had gotten a radio. He unplugged the earphone jack so Gail could hear, and he pressed his mike button. “You may call me Scorpion,” he said.
A derisive laugh. “Tough name,” the voice said. “Scary name.”
“That’s him!” Ryan yelled, pushing away from his mother. “That’s the sheriff, the guy that picked me up. I forget his name.”
Jonathan hadn’t. “Well, hello, Kendig,” he said.
 
 
Kendig recoiled at the sound of his name.
“How does he know you?” Brother Kurt asked.
“He doesn’t,” Kendig snapped. “That boy—that Ryan—is in there. He must have—”
“Are you in danger, sir?” Jonathan asked over the radio. “I’m sorry we let you down.”
Kendig felt himself going pale. To the group around him, he said, “He’s playing a bluff.” He fumbled the delivery, though. He sounded too defensive, even to himself.
“Try to run, Kendig,” Jonathan said. “Signal that you’re out of the line of fire and we’ll open up to keep their heads down.”
He keyed his mike. “Nice try, Scorpion. Nobody out here is buying it.”
“Oh, my God!” Jonathan exclaimed. “I didn’t know people could hear you. I, uh . . . I’m sorry.”
Kendig looked to his assembled troops. Some of them were in fact buying it. “He’s trying to undermine my authority,” he said. “Brother Kurt, Brother Absalom, assemble your soldiers. Prepare them to assault the assembly hall.” Into the radio, he said, “Whoever you are, this is your one opportunity to surrender. In ten minutes, that opportunity expires.”
When he lifted his thumb from the transmit button, he saw that neither of his commanders had moved. “Assemble your soldiers,” he said again.
Brother Kurt shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “Where did these invaders come from, Brother Kendig?” As he asked the question, his hand shifted on the grip of his rifle.
Kendig made himself swell larger and took a step closer to the young man. “Assemble your soldiers,” he growled. That deep baritone was a tool he’d perfected over the years. “Or I will shoot you right here and right now for mutiny.”
 
 
“What the hell kind of gambit was that?” Boxers yelled from across the giant room as he slammed another set of shutters and slid their blocking bar into place.
“Son of a bitch wanted to chat,” Jonathan explained, working on his own set of shutters. “So I chatted. I figured he had people nearby, and it wouldn’t hurt to throw some psy-ops into the mix.” He pointed to Gail. “Gunslinger, check the back of the altar. Make sure every door is locked and blocked. We may be here for a while.”
As his ears recovered from the firefight, the moans of the wounded became more distinct.
He eased by the Nasbes to block the windows of the vestry. As he reentered the sanctuary—what else do you call a big room with an altar?—he saw Christyne Nasbe approaching the cluster of Klansmen he’d shot behind the pews.
“Whoa,” he said. “Stay away from them.”
“My God, there are so many,” she gasped. “They’re suffering.”
“They’re dangerous,” Jonathan countered. “All wounded animals are dangerous. Wounded animals who know how to shoot even more so. Stay away from them.”
“But they’re bleeding. Can’t you help them?”
Boxers said, “Let ’em bleed long enough and they won’t need help.”
Leave it to Big Guy to take it one step too far.
“What happens next?” Ryan asked.
Jonathan answered by walking to the stacked firearms and ammunition, and coming back with two M16s and two belts of spare magazines. “What happens next is, it gets interesting,” he said. “How about giving me back that peashooter and taking this instead? Give that left arm of yours a workout.”

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