I ran to the back of the house and flung open the storm door. There was a small window set into the top of the back door. Inside it was dark. I raised my foot, launching a front kick at the lock. All my desperation and fear flowed into that kick. The lock was solid, but the jamb wasn’t. It splintered with an obscenely loud crack, and the door banged open.
In the dark, we raced through the main floor of the house, crashing blindly into unseen furniture, looking for a staircase. Finally I spotted a dim ray of light. I ran toward it, my empty gun held at shoulder level in front of me, commando style—at least I thought it was from what I’d seen in video games.
I pulled up at the base of a grand Victorian staircase. Polished wood and elaborately turned balusters gleamed in the light of an oil lamp. The lamp sat on the floor next to a whip-thin guy, so short that even I could have looked down on him if he hadn’t been at the top of the staircase. His brown hair was chopped into a cruel buzz cut, his upper lip adorned with a wispy Hitler mustache. He had a large straight knife, almost a sword, in his right hand and a short blade with a wicked serrated spine in his left. He played with the shorter blade, rolling it across the back of his hand over and over, as if it were a habit ingrained through hundreds of hours of practice. Other than the motion of that hand and blade, he was preternaturally still.
Ed was on my right, another squaddie on my left. All three of us aimed our guns up the stairs. Ed had the shotgun he’d taken from one of the warehouse guards—the only gun that was loaded. “You brought knives to a gun-fight,” I called up the stairs.
I fought to keep my hands steady, to keep the tremors rattling my innards from leaking out. If my gun shook, surely he’d notice, realize I was bluffing. Then what?
The guy at the top stared at us over the tip of the larger knife. The smaller knife flashed in the lamplight, its motion unceasing. “Knives to a gunfight?” he said. “Really? That hoary old saw? It’s not such a bad strategy as you might think, bringing a knife to a gunfight. Within twenty-one feet, the guy with the knife can win every time.”
I didn’t believe him, but it didn’t seem like the time or place to argue the point. “Put your knives down. On the floor. Now!”
He continued in a conversational tone. “If there were only two of you, you’d be dead already. Julia, my throwing knife, would enter your body just above the suprasternal notch. It would puncture both the trachea and the jugular vein. You’d asphyxiate, drowning in your own blood. In the meantime, I’d charge the other guy. His hands would shake—like yours are. He might not even get a shot off, and if he did, it would miss. The first blow with Claudia, my gladius, would sever his arm at the elbow. It’s tough to pull a trigger when your hand isn’t connected to your arm. The second blow, the killing blow, would be an uppercut through the stomach, the liver, and into the descending thoracic aorta. He’d go into hypovolemic shock in seconds and be dead of blood loss within two minutes.”
The other two guys in my squad, Cliff in tow, clattered into the foyer.
“Shoot this guy, Ed,” I said. “I’m tired of listening to him.”
Ed raised the shotgun to his shoulder.
The guy dropped both his knives. They stuck, quivering in the hardwood floor, handles up, ready for fast retrieval.
I charged up the stairs, Ed and the rest behind me. The guy didn’t move, not even when I reached the top and grabbed his knives. When I stood, I was just inches from him, so close I could smell him—an alcohol scent like cheap cologne.
“Where’s Doctore?” I asked.
He smiled and said nothing.
“Ed, watch him. The rest of you, search this floor. Find Doctore. Make sure there’s nobody behind us.”
Ed took the lamp from the floor. I stepped around him to let the other guys past and tucked the gladius into my belt.
I was stowing Julia, the smaller knife, just as the front door near the base of the stairs burst open. A stream of guys dressed in black rushed in, guns raised. I stepped behind our captive and raised his own knife under his chin. He barely flinched.
A forest of rifles aimed up the stairs toward us. “Tell them to put their guns down,” I said, pressing the point of the knife into his chin.
The guy in the lead yelled up at us. “Orders, Doctore?” He very nearly growled his response. “Standish, you idiot. To start with, don’t give the enemy intel—the fact that I’m in charge, for example.”
“Tell them to put down their weapons,” I said. “S-s-sorry, Red,” Standish said.
“You know why they call me Red?” the guy asked. As he talked, the knife I held nicked his throat, a thick line of blood dripping downward.
“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” I said. “Tell them to put their guns down!”
“Red is the color of the knife, the color of blood, the way of iron, the way of the new world, the world of men. Our laws are the ancient laws, the Laws of Steel,” Red said. His voice crescendoed to a shout, “We are!”
“The Reds!” the men below us screamed in unison. “Johnson!” Red called.
“Sir!” a guy in the middle of the pack yelled back. “Standish failed me. You are hereby promoted.”
“Yes, sir!” he called back.
“Shoot Standish.” Everyone was still for a second. “Now!” Red hollered.
One of the guys in the front started to swivel, but Johnson was faster. He lowered his gun and shot, hitting Standish in the back with a three-round burst. Standish flew forward, crumpled.
“Jesus,” I yelled, “I almost stabbed you! If a firefight starts here you’re—”
“Cliff led them here,” he said. “Shoot him next.”
Cliff tried to move around behind me, but Johnson raised his gun and shot. Cliff was standing so close to me that I could hear the meaty thunks of the bullets hitting his torso.
“Tell them to put down their guns! Now!” I rammed the knife up into the soft underside of his throat, drawing more blood. “I’m this close to stabbing you.”
Red’s voice came out as a croak. “Do as he says.”
The men in the foyer below us—eleven of them now—laid down their guns. Drawn by the gunfire, the rest of my squad had returned. “Floor’s clear,” one of them said. “Just him up here.”
“Yeah, he’s Doctore,” I replied. “Tie ’em all up. We need to check on the other teams.”
Lynn’s patrol at the west gate had been spotted before they could take out the guards. Lynn was dead. The rest of the squad had overpowered and killed the two Stockton guards.
That firefight had put the guards at the east gate on alert. They pinned down Nylce’s patrol, and things were stalemated until Darla, hearing the gunfire, rammed the gate with her pickup truck, killing the guards who’d been using it for cover. Everyone on Nylce’s squad was okay, but we were down a pickup. Darla seemed to be fine.
“I thought you were going to guard the trucks?” I said when I finally caught up to her.
“I never left the truck,” she replied, giving me a shit-eating grin.
It took what little remained of the night to get organized. I sent Darla and Nylce back to the farm with our two remaining trucks to try to recruit reinforcements. Ed consolidated all our captives—including the guy I’d left at the warehouse—on the main floor of Doctore s mansion, tied and under guard. I split everyone else up into groups: three to guard the east gate, a pair to guard the west gate, a pair to guard the prisoners, two pairs to patrol the walls, and two pairs to patrol the streets of the town. I told the street patrols to enforce a curfew—keep everyone at home, indoors.
We were woefully undermanned. I hoped Darla and Nylce would return quickly and bring a couple of pickups full of help. The one bit of good news was that with all the rifles we’d taken from Red’s soldiers, all our people were armed now. Ammo, however, seemed to be in very short supply—nobody had more than thirty rounds. When I finished setting up all that, Ed and I grabbed a lantern and headed to the warehouse.