Chapter 43 – Five To One
By two-thirty, the children had corralled over a thousand adults in the stadium, and they were methodically collecting keys. It was the one thing Ashley had been explicit about, and it was an easy task to focus on.
Now, the stage was empty, but for the thin microphone and stand.
Ash and her gang of orphaned revolutionaries had yet to return from her second trip to the guard's headquarters. They had set out twenty minutes ago.
The orphans in the stands chatted about what all this meant, while adults, those who came voluntarily, as well as those who did not, were directed onto the field.
Loud boisterous voices came from the side of the stage, where six conference tables had been arranged in two rows of three, creating a giant rectangle. Rival factions had paired themselves opposite each other.
Drews and Chris looked dissatisfied with the arrangement. Drews had suggested the conference after the Blades and Dragons almost went to blows. In light of the sensitive conditions, the young lawyer had suggested that it might be more productive to sit, and discuss a rational, reasonable plan, like gentlemen.
Big Chris organized the tables, reasoning that if nothing else, six feet of table top between one group and their enemies was better than air and opportunity. And with six tables, no factions would have to share.
Their natural allegiances were strong, the gangs dominating the athletic complex sat opposite those from the bolt. Drews and Big Chris sat with Rudy and Taylor, representing the Fist. Dante, Yama and Frost sat opposite for the Devils. Cho Fu Sah and Kjell of the Dragons sat across from Hector and Ricarlo of the Blades. Likewise, the Red Stripe Martians and Yellow Jackets glared at each other from their seats.
Drews grinned at Chris. For all their bluster, the orphans were working together. It was an uphill battle, but far better then open war.
Near the guards' main headquarters, Ashley stood between two groups of pointed weapons. Rifles and handguns were aimed over, around and through her.
Ashley's recently drafted teen army was in a standoff with a group of guards on the outside rooftop adjacent to the zoo. Several dozen soldiers stood before them, blocking their way toward the command center and the armory. They had refused to surrender their weapons.
If anyone opened fire, a lot of kids on both sides would die.
Still suffering from the shot to his head he'd taken earlier in the week, Kaz rode the hoverboard, doing his best to remain upright. Tanaka, Oddball, Jones and Rebound followed. Sky and Geoffrey were both armed and walked with them. Everyone who mattered to Ashley was right there. She hadn't been able to keep them away. She hadn't tried.
Ashley tried to reason with them, "One, you are outnumbered. Two, you have more to lose."
They didn't reply.
Ashley was growing impatient. She needed to get moving if they were going to be ready by noon.
"Surrender and we'll let you live, I promise."
No one moved.
"Put them down now.”
The guards still hesitated.
Ash slung her rifle over her shoulder and drew the pistol from her belt. She turned and the crowd of zeros at her back parted for her.
The soldiers and the orphans held their weapons on each other, but everyone in the front row was hesitant to begin, aware they would all die.
Ashley returned with a young guard, a prisoner they had disarmed, only eighteen and small for his age. She dragged him into the open space between the two lines, holding him like a shield.
She pointed her handgun at his head.
"We told this guy we'd let him live. And we did. But if you don't put down your guns, You will kill him. Don't make me go back on my word. I hate that. Put your guns down, now.”
Several of the guards laid their weapons down, raising their hands and stepping away.
Yet several more continued to refuse.
Ashley's finger tightened on the trigger, cranking the hammer back into firing position.
Her hostage began to shake with fear.
A few more guards set their weapons down and backed out, but the front line remained, and they were still too many for such a small space.
"You won't do it," Michaud, said, standing at the front. In his early twenties, he looked far meaner than her hostage.
He pointed his weapon at Ashley. "I can end this bullshit right here.”
Ash turned her weapon on him and fired.
The bullet struck Michaud in the forehead and splashed brain matter onto the citizens behind him. He fell, his weapon clattering to the cement.
No one did anything.
Then, as if of a singular mind, the remaining guards set their weapons on the ground. They were corralled with the other surviving prisoners as the orphans collected the abandoned weapons.
Every one of them having a loaded weapon, the orphans rushed up the three flights of stairs and secured the command center, killing all inside. Only four kids had been killed, with another six wounded.
Ashley found and used Major Dumont's key card to open the armory. The kids streamed in, creating a chain and emptying the shelves of their contents.
It was still dark, the deepest black of night, when the pathologist and the colonel returned to the district. This time they were properly prepared.
Keller anchored the vehicle just outside the lock box above the district's highest point, the dome over the central stadium. They looped ropes through the landing rails and slid giant cases of equipment and gear down through the top of the box. The cases landed safely on the dome and didn’t slide.
Keller and Morgenstern stepped out together, each sliding from one side of the anchored vehicle, down to the coliseum rooftop. With the proper tools, a crisis box was no more secure than a doggie door.
They unknotted their ropes and pulled them down, setting the transport free. Following its preprogrammed plan, the vehicle sped off toward a safe house across town.
An entire layer above the children’s impromptu mutiny, Keller and Morgenstern hefted the cases and made their way over to the Bolt. His eyes still bandaged, the giant pathologist, Morgenstern, had no trouble seeing the cases, or picking his way across the rooftop.
Keller didn’t ask any questions. He’d seen what he girl had done to the giant’s eye. He presumed Morgenstern had gone with stereo optics, a good deal better than a singular augmentation, but requiring the sacrifice of his other ocular orb as well. The man had balls of terillium.
The warden stifled a laugh, remembering that, at her trial, Ashley had been charged with blinding another boy. She did have a thing for eyes. Some girls scratch, some go for your balls, some go after your money. Ashley liked to fuck you where you see.
Eventually they reached the decimated HQ; finding the murdered soldiers and the ransacked armory. The dead soldiers had been slid to the side, making room for the orphans to carry out the weapons and ammo. There were dozens of bloody footprints, children's footprints, running across the floor.
Keller swung open the armory hatch. His good eyes confirming what his mind already knew, the racks were empty. He looked inside the live ammo locker. The shelves were empty. The orphans had taken everything.
Together, Morgenstern and Keller scanned the security monitors. All across the district, children brandished assault rifles, handguns and machetes. The bulk of them were still assembled in the stadium. The resident adults had been taken hostage and were being held on the field.
Colonel Keller checked the communications equipment; there was no off-district access. He walked into the main communications room and discovered the missing router.
Morgenstern removed Dunkirk's head from its bag and set it on the counter in sight of the security streams.
The triumphant orphans returned to the stadium. They drove the captured soldiers and citizens ahead of them; distributing weapons to kids they met along the way.
The children could not be dissuaded from kicking and punching the adults as they passed. Neither did t
hey hesitate to shoot those who tried to run or fight back. Several littered the route back to the command center.
The adults’ hands, upon initial capture or entering the stadium, had all been cuffed behind their backs with heavy-duty flex-cuffs that Ashley had picked up at the surplus store.
Now, inside the stadium, Ashley ordered her captives separated into two groups, teachers and social workers to the right, guards and security personnel to the left.
Near the stage, the gang leaders sat, hotly debating their imminent future.
Ashley walked over to them. "What the fuck is this?" she asked, looking at Big Chris. He had been one of the first people to speak to her, when she'd arrived, but now, no one answered.
"Why are you guys all down here instead of in the stands with everybody else? Why are you all at separate tables like that? What the fuck do you think you're doing?”
Drews cleared his throat. "Nation building?" he joked.
Ashley pointed at them and spoke to the crowd in the stands. "This is a major problem we have here. Instead of working together some of you are already fighting over who's gonna run what.”
"We are working together. And you need our help," Dante said.
"Really?" Ashley threw the major's key card onto the table in front of him. "What do I need your help for?”
The orphans behind her raised their guns and cheered. The noise was unexpected and deafening.
Ashley raised her hand, they calmed down, but only just.
Dante showed no fear and stood. "We're doing the right thing, the best for everyone. We're going to legitimize the student government. We're here in the spirit of charity and cooperation. Ask not what your district can do for you, but what you can do for your district," he smiled.
Ashley came around the tables and put the barrel of her rifle to his ear. "If I blew your brains out, how many points would that get me for charity and cooperation? I would be doing a public service, after all.”
Aware that the threat was hollow unless she pulled the trigger, she lowered the rifle. "Fucking asshole," she said, walking toward the stage.
Behind the microphone stand, the teen girl looked absurd, wearing body armor two sizes too big for her, a rifle slung over her shoulder, pistols tucked into her belt and a sword strapped to her back.
She leaned toward the microphone. "Orphans of Angel City. My name is Ashley Fox. We need to talk," she said to the packed stadium.
The kids cheered and screamed.
It took a full minute for them to calm down.
Ashley leaned forward again. "We have all these adults here, who believe they are obligated to educate us in pain.”
The shouted hostility for the adults forced her wait another minute.
Once quiet, she looked over to the gang leaders, "And another thing, no more zeros fighting zeros. This is our one chance. If we lose today, we're all dead. The truth is some of us probably won't make it. But if we don't work together, none of us will. We need to become one gang, an army. Are you with me?”
A tremendous cheer went up from the stands.
"Okay, wait, now listen. I know you've heard that the fucks running this place have been selling orphans, murdering us and even eating us. It's all true.”
Ashley held up the detective's weapon. "I said I was gonna show you the truth, so watch.” She popped the slide back and ejected the chambered cartridge.
Gage, the young hacker who'd helped Ashley first get wired up, handed her a cable. She connected it to the weapon's AV port and began scanning through the footage. The stadium monitors switched over to the stream. They fast-forwarded through target practice and cleanings.
Once she found the action in the meeting hall, she let the footage roll. The hooded Detective was introduced by his kidnapper, Escurrido, and beaten with the weapon. The massive screens and speakers broadcast the data stream to the crowd. Every monitor in the district displayed the images. Everyone watched in stunned silence.
Keller helped Morgenstern remove the bandages from his face. The forehead over the eye sockets was raw pink tissue, tender. His eyes themselves were shiny, black and faceted, alien, optical gemstones. The insect-like eyes were expensive, despite their unnerving appearance. Internally, Morgenstern's vision had been enhanced a thousand-fold, granting him awareness and focus over hundreds of spectrums, but on the outside, the eyes looked grotesque.
"We should get this thing working." Keller gestured to the packs.
Morgenstern and the Colonel knelt and unpacked the weapon system. It consisted of a wheeled-mount supporting three riot shields and two machine guns. Built for urban combat, the two-horned beast could splinter anything caught in its path, and it only took a few minutes to assemble.
Once finished, the pathologist and colonel again scanned the security monitors for a suitable target. The district was either silent or engulfed in anarchy. The central stadium had become a place where madness reigned. Adults awaited justice at the hands of feral children, all in obedience to the blood-spattered Ash.
Yet the orphans seemed oddly controlled. They were coordinated and intuitively working together. Keller had never seen soldiers cooperate in such a selfless fashion, even when their lives were on the line. The children saw their enemy with clear eyes. They were unified in courage and desperation. There was no ideal way to attack all of them at once and no way to reach their obvious enemy, at their center, Miss Ashley Fox.
Keller pointed to a place on the district map. "We should attack there.”
Morgenstern laughed and nodded, his new eyes glittering with broken light.
A short time later, the gang leaders and their followers had been won over, properly armed and assigned specific missions.
Dante, Yama and Frost organized the sack of the administration building. Yama and Frost oversaw the removal of the unit's terminals, having them delivered to the school, while Dante searched offices, looking for some hint to the location of the governor's secret offices.
Finally he tracked her to an abandoned wing of the old orphanage. Digging through some old maps, they realized that section was huge. Unsure of what they might be getting into, they assembled a company of a hundred orphans to help them sweep the entire space.
Soon they were clustered at the locked stairwell leading up to the abandoned wing. They tied the caged-grate doors to heavy maintenance equipment and pushed it through a newly created gap in a staircase railing.
The equipment fell three floors before the grates were jerked from the wall with a terrific snapping and wrenching of metal. The whole mess crashed to the floor below with a reverberating smash.
The orphans cautiously moved up the darkened stairwell, rifles at the ready. On the first floor, all they found was a bunch of abandoned rooms, beat-up office equipment, empty desks and filing cabinets.
It was the same for three more stories.
On the fourth level they found bloodstained walls and floors, ruined bloody clothing, pajamas, sheets, caked and dried blood everywhere. Beds so thick with murder they've bred entire colonies of insects.
The kids pulled up their shirts to cover their noses.
They soon found came across the first corpse. A child's body, discarded on the floor next to one of the beds. Most of the tissue was gone. The hair lay black and ruined, the face turned away from their flashlights.
Over the next twenty minutes they found fifty-seven bodies.
Almost half were missing limbs.
Several were chained to their beds.
Someone signaled for quiet.
They'd heard something up ahead.
Terrified of what might be ahead of them, the children held their rifles pointing out and clustered in tight knots. Flashlights bobbed along over the gunners' shoulders.
The next floor revealed over a hundred corpses, newer and fresher. Wicked scars crossed their bodies. Many were missing eyes and some their lips. Some had staples across their foreheads, where parts of their brains had been removed.
Some st
ill had empty IVs plugged into their ruined arms or legs, some tubes plugged directly into limbless torsos, Horrific as this was, the orphans were more shocked by the living children they found.
Like the corpses around them, they bore the same mutilations and scars, only they hadn't moved on yet. Their eyes cried out for mercy, an end to their torment.
Then the orphans met their adult caretakers.
The first encountered assistants were immediately riddled with bullets, but the zeros didn't hesitate to get creative with their revenge.
None of the three-dozen conspirators left those rooms alive. The images of the sadism perpetrated against the adults was recorded by adolescent cameramen and broadcast to the stadium.
The orphans found the stairwell leading up to the governor's ostentatious living quarters.
Dante insisted on going in first, with Yama and Frost. The other kids had no complaints and followed closely.
Dante made them all put their rifles on safe as they crept up the stairs. He did not want to get shot in the back, either by mistake or on purpose.
They kicked in the main door to find the bald and plum-stained Governor Maime doing her makeup, unarmed.
As they filed in, she attacked, barehanded, all teeth and claws.
The children easily subdued her, cuffed and gagged her, according to Ashley’s orders.
The investigation of her quarters revealed cases full of homemade recipe books. Journals of gruesome evidence, all composed of her murdered and eaten victims. She kept ID cards, locks of hair and drops of blood, all sealed and stapled to the facing pages, opposite the description of the dishes she created and her own reviews of the taste, texture, etcetera.
Dante drove her to the stadium at makeshift spear-point, her recipe books accompanying them as evidence.
Carved from a hefty tree limb, the spear was planted in the soft earth of the field, the gagged Governor Maime secured to it by hands and throat, and guarded by machete-wielding children.
Soon, Dr. Mallus joined her; bound to his own spike, where together, they faced their captors.
Far out across the ocean, Captain Snow spotted the blinking infrared beacon of their anchored transport. The vehicle had arrived at its pre-programmed destination and awaited their arrival.
The engineers cut their speed and Captain Snow dialed the lab control room. Inside the wing, the conductor answered and saluted her. He stated that all seals were secure and that the wing was ready for submersion.
Snow gave the official clearance and the conductor nodded, repeating the order to his subordinates.
Snow gave the command and her team set their elevation controls, detached their cables and kicked away from the building.
As the 7982 wing began its descent, the engineers glided over to their vehicle. The secret projects wing broke water and a moment later vanished from view.
Inside the vehicle, Captain Snow powered up the monitor. The conductor reported that all seals were holding, all dials in the green. He reported that their landing gear deployed properly and he expected touchdown any moment.
Then the wing landed safely on the ocean floor, the conductor saluted and Snow returned the gesture of respect.
None of them wanted to go swimming, and thankfully they didn’t have to. Snow gave the hand gesture to rally up and King engaged the transport’s gravity drive. Their flight back would be quicker and considerably less turbulent.
Grey and the others sat in silence. He felt as though his guts had been ripped out, shuffled out and randomly stuffed back in, but it couldn’t tell if it was because of the shaky ride, or because his father had just had his guts ripped out, completely replaced, and dumped back in, along with a few gallons of that brackish blue syrup.