What had he done for a living? By what miracle had he protected his family from so many looters? Had all of this happened at the outset of the war? Was the house now shunned because of all the skeletons?
Watch out for the creeps, the man had said.
He sounded a little like Hickok.
They must have been extremely close-knit, this family. The man had valiantly defended them against superior odds. But wasn’t that what familial relationships were all about? Loving selfishly. Putting the welfare of your loved ones first. Doing whatever was necessary to insure their happiness.
Doing whatever was necessary…
Blade frowned. Why hadn’t he seen it earlier? If you truly love someone, they always come first. No matter what. You do whatever you must for them, even if it’s something you don’t necessarily want to do.
Like becoming Leader of the Family.
So what if he balked at the very idea? So what if he found it difficult to confront the prospect of one of the Family dying due to his stupidity or negligence? Didn’t he love them? All of them? Weren’t they his friends and associates and loved ones? Then how could he refuse them?
The answer was staring him in the face: he couldn’t.
Blade rose and nodded at the photograph. “So long,” he said aloud.
“And thanks.”
The dust stirred as Blade walked through the bedroom to the living room.
“Going somewhere, Warrior?” hissed a guttural voice.
Blade froze in the doorway, startled.
Three men, dressed all in black, including black masks over their faces, were waiting for him on the other side of the living room, lined up under the archway. All three had assumed martial arts postures. All three carried long Oriental swords.
Blade had encountered a man dressed like these three before. The man had stealthily entered the Home in the early morning hours and attempted to blow up the SEAL, only a short while before Alpha Triad had departed for the Twin Cities.
“You look surprised,” the speaker stated. “You shouldn’t be. The Imperial Assassins have kept your convoy under surveillance since Fort Collins, waiting our chance, waiting for you to drop your guard.”
“Samuel has a message for you,” said the figure in the middle, a sneer in his voice.
“He sent us to deliver it,” commented the third.
“Three guesses what it is,” declared the first man. With that, he charged.
Chapter Ten
Never in all his born days had he seen a sight like it.
Hickok stood on the rampart above the drawbridge, his hands on his hips, and gawked.
“There are so many of them!” exclaimed a young Clan woman to his left.
“That’s good,” Hickok told her.
She eyed him skeptically. “How can it be good?”
“It means you won’t have to aim as hard,” Hickok informed her, grinning.
The Civilized Zone force had parked its trucks and other vehicles in the woods bordering the cleared fields. All except the tank. It rolled from the trees and parked at the edge of the western field, its engine idling, directly across from the drawbridge. The troops had followed the tank, marching four abreast from the woods. Half of the soldiers bore to the right, half to the left, until the field near the forest was covered with green figures, all of them armed with M-16’s, all of them standing at attention. Some of them wore helmets, some didn’t.
Either their discipline was lax, Hickok deduced, or there was a shortage of helmets.
A hand fell on the gunman’s left shoulder.
“Why are they massing to the west?” Spartacus inquired. “Why haven’t they deployed their troops to surround the Home and take advantage of their numbers?”
Hickok indicated the drawbridge below them. “My guess, pard, is they intend to wallop the stuffin’ out of us on the first try. They know the only way into the Home is through the drawbridge. Their head honcho must reckon this here drawbridge is our weak link.”
“It is,” Spartacus mentioned.
“We’ll see about that,” Hickok stated grimly. He focused on a pair of men walking along the front rows of the opposing army. Was one of them the commander?
“They got here much sooner than I expected,” Spartacus remarked. “I didn’t think they’d make it until noon.”
“They’re in a hurry to die,” Hickok said.
“May the Spirit preserve us,” Spartacus commented.
Hickok found his mind straying. He thought of Sherry, his darling wife, and the night they had shared. She’d been overjoyed to see him, and had been all over his body like a bear on honey. He had tried to convince her they should get some shut-eye, to no avail. He’d even pleaded a headache, but still she’d persisted. He sighed contentedly at the pleasant memories.
When a woman was warm for your form, there was nothing to do but take the heat.
“Look at the size of that tank!” Spartacus stated.
The tank was a behemoth, a mighty metal colossus, its huge cannon fixed on the drawbridge like the baleful gaze of a steel cyclops.
“We’ll have to take out that tank,” Hickok said thoughtfully.
“How?” Spartacus demanded. “We don’t have any explosives.”
“Then we’ll improvise,” Hickok remarked.
“How?” Spartacus reitereated. “What will we use to stop a tank?”
“A pillowcase.”
“A what?” Spartacus leaned closer to the gunman, certain he had heard incorrectly.
“A pillowcase,” Hickok repeated. “Have somebody run to B Block and get me a white pillowcase.”
Spartacus started to speak, then thought better of the idea. He hurried off.
Hickok scanned the western rampart, noting the nervous state of most of the 67 men and women manning the wall. He couldn’t say as he blamed them. That blasted tank was a whopper.
Spartacus hurried up. “I’ve sent for the pillowcase.”
“Good,” Hickok said. “Now send runners to the north and south walls.
Have every other fighter report here on the double, but tell ’em to keep their heads down. I don’t want the soldiers to see them when they take their posts. Have ’em crouch below the top of the wall. Pack ’em onto this rampart.”
“On my way,” Spartacus ran off.
Hickok pondered the formidable odds they were facing. He was grateful the enemy was concentrating its initial attack on the west wall of the Home. It meant Sherry would be spared the first assault. But sooner or later, the Army bozos would completely enclose the compound. Sherry would experience her baptism of fire as a Warrior. She, and the rest of the Family and the Clan, would be overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers.
Blast!
Why had he agreed to her becoming a Warrior?
What did he have for brains? Rocks?
Why were women such contrary critters? Why did all women have this peculiar notion about doing everything their way? Why couldn’t they let the men run things? Life would be so much simpler! With the menfolk as the ramrods, everything would be—
He stopped himself, chuckling.
No, that wasn’t such a great idea. The men had been handling things before the Big Blast. Plato had once said men had dominated society before the war. The men had dictated the direction of the government and the military.
And look where it had gotten them.
Blown to kingdom come!
Maybe the best way, the only way, was to have the government and the military run along the same lines as a family: by couples. That way, every time some dipsy power-monger wanted an all-out war, his wife could slap him upside the head and tell him to go fishing until he cooled down. There was nothing like marriage to teach a man humility.
“Here’s the pillowcase.”