“Go ahead and shoot me,” he screamed. “It’ll be like a bee sting.”
Olivia backed away, crying.
Charlotte watched in stunned wonder.
Tori, Kent, and I had been through this before. It was nothing new. The three of us watched dispassionately, waiting for the inevitable end.
“Is there anything we can do?” Charlotte asked, horrified.
I shook my head.
“No wonder he wanted me to go in there,” Kent said. “He wouldn’t have had the guts otherwise.”
Jon pulled the cot apart with his bare hands, tearing off a length of metal that he wedged into the door to try to pry it open. His hands bled, but he ignored the pain. He was stronger than the metal tool. So were the cell bars. The metal snapped in his hands.
He screamed in despair, grabbed the bars again, and shook them furiously.
“Let me out,” he begged, changing tactics. “I’ll convince them to spare your lives. I promise.”
Even through the Ruby-fueled insanity, he realized he had made a mistake. The bars were too strong. He turned and ran into the far wall, hitting it square on with a sickening thud. Jon was out of his mind, more so than Marty Wiggins or Kent’s father or anybody else who paid the price for taking too much of the Ruby.
“You have to calm down,” I said again, though I knew it was no use.
He grabbed one of the cell bars with both hands, and with a primal howl he yanked forward and back with a frightening fury.
This time the bar broke loose. He fell backward, and with an inhuman cry that showed both triumph and anguish, he landed on the floor.
Tori lifted her gun, though she didn’t need to.
Jon lay still.
We all stood there, staring at the now quiet figure on the floor. The beams from the two flashlights played over him.
“Oh, Jon,” Olivia whimpered.
“What happened?” Charlotte asked, stunned.
“His body couldn’t handle it,” I replied. “That’s what happens.”
“How horrible,” Charlotte said with a pained whisper.
“He got what he deserved,” Kent said with no sympathy. “And he did it to himself. Idiot.”
“Everything is falling apart,” Charlotte lamented.
“Not yet it isn’t,” I said. “But it will. When the sun sets, the storm of planes comes back.”
Tori said, “We’ve got to evacuate.”
“What time is sunset?” I asked Charlotte.
“Around six o’clock, give or take.”
“So we’ve got ten hours to put together a plan,” I said. “An evacuation plan?” Kent asked.
“Yes, and a plan to carry out the mission that everyone came here to do. Is that possible, Charlotte?”
Charlotte continued to stare at Jon’s lifeless body.
“Charlotte?” I said sharply.
“What?” she replied, as if snapping out of a dream.
“You’ve been calling for people to come here to fight back against the Retros. Is there a real plan for this sabotage? Are you ready?”
Charlotte looked at Jon’s lifeless body. I thought she was going to zone out again, but she said, “We were waiting for more volunteers to show up. There wasn’t any time pressure before.”
“Well, there is now,” Kent said, stating the obvious.
“I get that, junior,” Charlotte said curtly. She was beginning to sound like her old self. “Yeah, we’re ready. Let’s take this to the Chiefs.”
She went for the door, and the others followed.
I hung back with Jon’s lifeless body.
One suspect down.
Jon was a traitor. Or an infiltrator. Whatever. But his death didn’t take the heat off of the others. Jon wasn’t from Pemberwick. Granger hadn’t been hunting him.
There was still a very good possibility that there was another traitor.
I left the remains of Jon Purcell in the cage where he died. He had given us some valuable information. Disturbing information. But the power and purpose behind the Retros was still a mystery. We now knew their plan was to wipe out almost every survivor except for those they would use as slaves to prepare for their repopulation of the planet. The first big city to be targeted was Los Angeles, but when would that attack happen?
They considered us primates. Lesser forms of life. Animals. We meant nothing to them as human beings, which raised the question: What exactly were they?
Whoever or whatever they were, they had destroyed three-quarters of the world’s population and were preparing to finish the rest.
Unless we could stop them.
TWENTY-FIVE
Every last survivor in Las Vegas had gathered together in an opulent theater that was supposed to look like the Roman Colosseum. Not that I’d ever been to the real Colosseum, but as far as I could tell, the only thing about this theater that looked like ancient Rome were some huge murals that I guessed were modeled after the originals. Everything else was slick and modern.
We had walked to the meeting along the Strip, past the destruction that the Retro planes had brought to the city. The beautiful indoor park where we had met some of the other survivors had been reduced to a pile of rubble with a few forlorn carousel horses poking their noses out of the debris. The Eiffel tower had been sheared off halfway to its peak. The upper section and the observation tower lay crumpled across the street. The only thing left of the huge bronze lion were four paws on a pedestal. The giant Coke bottle was smashed. The massive guitar had its neck broken off. Immense holes had been blown through many of the high-rise hotels. The Statue of Liberty was intact, but it lay across the road with its torch hand jammed against a broken palm tree.
As disastrous as it all appeared, Jon was right. The Retros had been shooting at empty buildings. When the final headcount was done, there was only one person who had died in the assault. It was Tom, Charlotte’s friend. And he hadn’t even died because of the attack. Jon had murdered him.
Jon himself didn’t count. He wasn’t one of us. He was a spy. His body lay alone in the cell that was normally used to hold people who tried to cheat the casino. I guess it was a fitting place for him to die.
The theater was packed, and the people were all nervously chattering.
Tori, Kent, and I took seats near the front of the large stage. We had been given that choice position because we had spent the last hour being interrogated by the Chiefs. It turned out that Charlotte was one of them. She hadn’t mentioned it before, but it made sense. She knew what she was doing.
We spent the time going over every detail of what we had learned about the Retros. After listening to what we had to say, Charlotte sent us to the Colosseum with another escort so that she and the Chiefs could factor whatever information we had given them into their plans.
The theater was fairly dark since the only lights were battery-powered floodlights that were trained on the stage. Camp lamps were scattered throughout the audience, creating an eerie atmosphere in which shadowy people moved through pools of light.
It struck me as risky to have everyone in the same room. If the Retros decided to attack early, a few well-placed bombs would wipe us out entirely.
The crowd hushed when three men and Charlotte walked onto the stage. They were the Chiefs. One of the men was Matt. The second guy went by the name of Harris. No first or last name, just Harris. He had short blond hair and walked like he had a back brace on. Though he had been living in the dark depths of Las Vegas, his white shirt looked as neat and crisp as if he had just ironed it. He definitely looked military. When we were being questioned, he hadn’t said much, but he was definitely taking it all in.
The last guy was a beefy character with a shaved head who went by the name of Cutter. Again, no first or last name. He had a thick neck and heavily muscled arms to match. During the interrogation, he was mostly interested to hear anything about how the black planes worked and what they could do. He took particular note of how we described the complete obliteration of so many of the planes when a missile struck their fuel tanks.