“I know Hays Woods,” Guy said. “I’ve gone with Alton a bunch of times. I can guide them.”
Jane scanned her brothers. Alton was going to keep Boo and Joey out of the mess. Geoffrey and Marc were going to be in the Humvee with her. Duff was handling communication; with three vehicles in motion, they were going to need someone outside the action as backup to keep things clear. Nor did Duff know the area any better than Hal and Nigel.
“Come on!” Guy cried. “I can do this! I won’t be in any danger if I stick with the production trucks.”
If Guy was with the production truck, he could keep Hal in check. Without someone babysitting Hal, there was a strong possibly that Hal would try to see the fight somehow. Typical Hal stupidity would follow.
If it was anyone but her baby brother…
But that was the source of all of Guy’s rebellion. No one was letting him be anything but the baby while he knew full well that all his older brothers had been treated as adults long before they turned eighteen. It was part and parcel of being allowed to handle a gun.
“Fine,” she said. “I want you take your rifle with you.”
“Yes!” Guy went bouncing off to do a victory lap around the Humvee, arms upraised.
Her four other brothers glared at her.
“Someone has to sit on Hal,” she explained the most obvious point. Understanding dawned on their faces. Taggart looked amused by it.
“Hey!” Hal cried.
Guy leapt at Hal and grabbed him in a chokehold, proving he’d grown taller than Hal sometime in the last month. “Consider him sat on!”
“Let’s get some sleep and head out at four-thirty.” Jane ignored the fact dragging her brothers into this fight meant she was going to have monster-sized nightmares.
At a little after five in the morning, with sunrise still an hour away, they rolled into South Side Flats. Most of the windows in the row houses and three-story apartment buildings were dark. Graveyard shift hadn’t ended and dayshift workers weren’t awake yet. Jane prayed silently that the hunt went fast and they could kill whatever was out there quickly and quietly. She hated that all but one of her brothers was in harm’s way.
Marc drove the Humvee in the front. They’d covered Bertha with a heavy tarp but anyone with two brain cells could tell what was underneath. While Marc stopped to set up the police barricades, complete with flashing warning lights, Guy and Nigel continued on down East Carson in the production trucks.
“Can’t I at least drive?” Hal complained yet again over the channel.
“No!” Jane, Duff, Geoffrey, and Guy all snapped.
Jane continued with reasons why. “Chaser One knows where he’s going and he’s a better driver than you.” And it will be easier for Guy to ignore Hal from behind the wheel than on the passenger side. “He can’t babysit the incoming feed and make sure all the backup cameras are online. You have to do that. We’re only going to be able to do this once.” Hopefully. “You’ll let us know if any of the cameras go out and we’ll do what we can to fix them.” As long as Bertha is operating, since our lives will ride on keeping the cannon firing. “And I told him that he can punch you if you don’t listen to him.”
“Jane!” Hal knew that her brother only lightly smacked him when they thought he needed to be hit. “Punching” was a whole different ball game.
“Chaser Two, you already have a broken nose,” Jane ruthlessly pointed out. “Another hit to the face means nothing.”
“Jane!” Hal pleaded that she not be so cold to him.
“I’m trusting you with my baby brother. Don’t you dare screw up! And stick to the code words—stop using names.”
“Jane—ow!” Hal cried.
“Just checking my reach.” Guy hated “baby” and probably felt the need to prove he could keep Hal in line.
After that, silence came from the PB&G production truck.
Beyond the wide flats of South Side, there ran only a narrow ledge at the foot of the steep hills that edged the river. The bank was thick scrub trees and the old cracked pavement of the Heritage Trail. Jumpfish made the old walking path too dangerous to use since it lay only feet from the water and well within the big fishes’ range. On the other side of the road were the railroad tracks that headed straight east to the coastal elf settlements.
Pre-dawn started to lighten the sky to fragile gray. Mist hazed the Monongahela. The river lay nearly a thousand feet wide at this stretch, dark water hiding all sorts of evils. In the 1950s, a B-25 bomber had crashed into this section of the river. Fifty feet of airplane with a wingspan of seventy feet, swallowed up by water, never to be found. How many monsters were hidden in the waters?
They stopped to put up the barrier at Becks Run Road and continued downriver to erect the last blockade.
Her hand brushed against Taggart’s. She glanced down at the seat between them. If she shifted slightly, she could take hold of his. If she did, would he see it as her committing? She huffed out. Commit to what? Hand holding? Not like they’re going to be making out in the back of the Humvee with her little brothers in the front. It was a stupid time to even be thinking about it.
If they killed the monsters, would Maynard repay them by extending Taggart’s visa? Would a few extra months actually make any difference? Two months. Two years. Sooner or later the visa would run out and he’d be gone. Unless of course they got married.
She glanced at Taggart. He studied the misty river through his camera lens. A giddy warmth and painful shyness surged through her, making her want to take his hand and at the same time edge away from him like he was a dangerous thing.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she whispered. “Thinking of that? Now?”
“Hm?” Taggart looked toward her.
“Nothing,” Jane whispered. She covered her microphone and whispered a half-lie. “Just nervous. Hal and I deal with this kind of shit all the time but we always know what we’re fighting. How many. And we don’t get other people involved.”
He took her hand and held it in silent comfort. He said no platitudes; he knew her fears were well grounded. His hand was warm and comforting.
“Keeper, this is Chaser One and Two,” Guy reported, using the code words that Duff came up with. Joey and Boo had helped. “We’re in position. Waiting on the Seeker.”
“Do you have hard cover?” Duff asked before Jane could.
The tone of Guy’s voice indicated he was giving a teenage roll of eyes at the stupidity of the question. “Yes, there’s a large cinderblock garage in the back. We’ve got full cover.”
“Set up and check the feeds on the cameras…” Duff read from “the plan.”
“I know what we’re supposed to do,” Guy snapped.
Duff skipped over what was written to add, “and keep an eye out for normal shit like steel spinners and wargs.”
“I know,” Guy growled.
God as her witness, she had to be insane to get her brothers involved in this.
They hit the end of East Carson. Jane gave Taggart’s hand a squeeze and left his comforting presence to set out the last barricade. Luckily since this was the abandoned part of town, it was unlikely any real police would stumble across their fake roadblock.
The world was pale and still and silent. The sun hadn’t risen and the birds hadn’t started their morning serenades. The only noise was the Humvee’s motor and the dark gurgle of the river.
“Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!” Duff cried over the headsets.
“What is it?” Jane started to run for the Humvee. Her heart climbing into her throat. Had something happened to Alton?