The sun was setting and there was still no indication that, say, the entire North Korean military was amassing somewhere nearby—someone would have noticed. Still, Alonzo’s team had been dispersed to various points along the walls that Will had determined were tactically the most likely places to attempt a breach, with two shooters placed on the roof with a clear view of the gates. Guns were a no-go on Zoey’s side, as the grounds were dotted with the propellant cookers that had ignited Redd Gunn the day before. Anyone who showed up with firearms would have a very bad time and the bigger the guns, the worse time they’d have. As such, Alonzo’s men had been supplied with railguns from the Suits’ arsenal, rifles that could send a pulse of electricity down the length of the barrel, carrying with it a tiny object that flew so fast that the impact alone would splatter a human body like a ketchup packet under a car tire.
Echo was inside in the conference room, monitoring all of the security camera feeds. Budd was working the phones, trying to get a line on anything that might be occurring, anywhere. Andre had been piloting a drone to monitor everything from the sky, until he crashed it into a tree and now he was wandering around the grounds with nothing to do.
Will stood in the front yard in the orange glow of the huge house-sized jack-o’-lantern, drinking scotch next to Andre. Zoey and Wu approached and a moment later they were joined by Megaboss Alonzo and his bodyguard, Deedee.
Zoey made eye contact with Deedee. “You don’t say much.”
“People don’t ask me much.” She did not smile when she said it.
“Are you missing big Devil’s Night plans for this? Were you supposed to be staking out a spot along the parade route?”
“If I want to watch a string of noisy eyesores driving along at walking speed, I can just look out the window of my apartment any day of the week. I’m supposed to be getting the winter collections up on our racks. Some of us don’t just get to take off from work when something more fun comes along.”
Alonzo, forcing a jocular tone, said, “Don’t let her fool you with that, she’s got girls to do that work. The store’s the job she puts on her taxes, this is her real job, being the eyes in the back of my head.”
“I stand corrected,” said Deedee. “What I meant to say was I should be at the store explaining to those girls why they did the whole thing wrong and making sure they fix it the right way.” Alonzo started to reply, but Deedee cut him off. “And go right ahead and swallow your speech about how I need to learn to delegate. Not in the mood.”
Zoey glanced around. “Well, I don’t see a million people. Unless they’re tiny. Wait, I’m freaking myself out with the thought of a million little elves pouring over the walls.”
Andre gave her an ugly look. “Ew. Now I’m gonna have bad dreams. Why’d you have to say that?”
Budd’s voice came through Zoey’s earpiece. “They just announced the battering ram was at the gates.”
“I can see the gates from here,” said Will, “and there’s no battering ram there.”
“Unless it’s tiny,” muttered Andre. “Got a little rat driving it or something.”
Alonzo said, “Let’s get serious now. This is what we’ve been waiting all day for.”
“A white moving truck just turned onto the inlet road,” said Echo’s voice in Zoey’s ear. “It’s the one Budd’s been tracking since they rented it. Will arrive at the property in a few minutes.”
Everyone exchanged serious looks. Here it comes, thought Zoey. The “million foot soldiers,” be they real or metaphorical.
Will asked, “Can you get a scan of the truck’s interior?”
“Just a moment,” replied Echo. “All right … there are people in the back with … something. Oh, it’s the drone. The one Budd said they’d bought, consumer model.”
Will said, “How many people?”
“Two.”
“What if they’re going to use the drone to drop a bioweapon on us?” asked Zoey. “Like the million foot soldiers are viruses? Or bacteria?”
Will said, “They don’t have a bioweapon. If there was a place making or selling such a thing we’d already know about it.”
“Nanobots? Oh god, I didn’t think about nanobots.”
“If they managed to build an army of microscopic attack robots without us hearing anything about it, then they deserve to win.”
“The truck is stopping,” said Echo. “They got right up to the property line, parked.”
Will nodded. “They knew exactly where the countermeasures kick in. Zoey, get inside.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
“I’m suggesting, as your employee, that you get inside. Wu?”
Wu said, “There really is no reason to stay out here.”
“There is a reason, which is that it’s my house and my yard and I can stand in it if I want to. They don’t get to decide that.”
Alonzo said, “Damn right!”
“They’re pulling out the drone,” said Echo, sounding a little excited.
Will nodded, also relieved that something was actually happening. “Alonzo, make sure your people are watching all of their stations, this could be a distraction for whatever they’re actually about to do. I don’t want every pair of eyes on this thing, no matter what it is.”
Alonzo said, “Sure,” but made no move to tell anyone anything.
Soon the drone took to the sky. From their position it was almost invisible in the evening gloom, just a couple of tiny running lights. Alonzo pulled the rail rifle from his back so he could get a look at the thing through its scope.
Echo’s voice said, “It’s heading your way.”
Alonzo peered through his scope. “It has a little box attached to the bottom that looks like an add-on. About the size of a hamster cage. No too big. Like a middle-class hamster.”
Will said, “In about ten seconds it will be in range of the grounds’ anti-air security. It’s set to automatically blow it out of the sky, unless I tell the system not to, and I can’t think of a single reason to do that unless just out of sheer, morbid curiosity.”
The drone flew for about nine more seconds, then stopped, hovering in place.
Will shook his head. “Knew right where to stop.”
The drone continued to hover. Everyone waited.
A tiny, piercing light appeared below it. The light split into thousands of tiny points, fanning out, forming a hologram a hundred feet across. It took the shape of a Spider Cow Zoey cartoon, fully rendered in three dimensions, complete with the black polka-dot underpants. It had a huge stupid grin, purely to show off its version of Zoey’s messed-up teeth. Then, below it in huge, hovering red letters, was the phrase:
FARTBURGER COOKS BALLS WITH BALLS!!
This, Zoey would find out later, was intended to be the sickest of burns in the anti-Zoey community. Like most of their insults, catchphrases, and memes, it required quite a bit of unpacking.
Untangling this particular one required rewinding several decades to when it was first determined that one of the greatest contributors to global climate change was the production of beef, due to the sheer amount of methane cows expel into the air while digesting their feed. In order to discourage and stigmatize beef consumption, an animal rights group had launched an infamous campaign called “Skip the Fartburger.” Since Zoey’s personal hate group had decided she was a cow, some had thus started referring to her as “Fartburger.” Separately, it was a popular phrase among the youth to say that a particular hot summer day was “cooking balls.” Once the group decided Zoey was also a cannibal and added in the detail that Tilley’s testicles were missing (along with many other parts), it was decided that she was farting out all of the balls she had eaten, so much so that it was warming the city. Thus, “Fartburger cooks balls with balls.” It really made perfect sense when you sat down and diagrammed it out.
Everyone stared at the hologram, took it in, then flew into action. Will shouted commands, ready for the next shoe to drop. This was, Will was sure, the exact kind of distraction the enemy would use to draw their focus in one direction while attacking from another angle. And yet, there were no signs of that attack.
Finally, Deedee rolled her eyes and took the railgun from Alonzo. She aimed, fired, and turned the drone into a cloud of whirling fragments. On the ground below, the pair of twentysomething males who had been watching the whole thing play out were now speeding away in the moving truck.
Then, there was only silence.
“No other activity, not for a mile in any direction,” said Echo.
Budd’s voice chimed in again. “Zoey, I called your momma, she says she’s fine, off work, and drinking with friends along the parade route. No one’s bothering her.”
Echo again: “The Blowback put out a statement that’s just four words long. ‘That Was For Dexter.’”
“Hey! Everybody look,” said Andre. “Over there.”
Zoey spun to face him. “What?”
“I got the drone out of the tree!”
Zoey threw up her hands. “Oh my god. So, the ‘battering ram,’ the million men, all of that was just code for whatever that was?”
Budd’s voice said, “They’re still saying the feast is at midnight. Whatever that means.”
Will sipped his drink. “I’m starting to think that our adversary is not speaking the same language we are.”
Zoey put her hands on her hips and puffed out an angry breath. “This is so stupid. We’re all idiots for falling for this. We wasted our entire day, had people running around all over the city, we’re going to have Megaboss Alonzo as our mayor—”
Andre said, “As our what?”
“—over vague, totally unrealistic threats made by people who would have probably found a way to trip over their inch-long dicks on the way here. Fine. That plan you guys came up with yesterday, the ‘Get Chobb’ plan? We’re putting it in motion. Do your thing.”
Zoey walked back toward the front doors and sensed everyone was following her.
Behind her, Alonzo said, “You know, I’ll be even madder if I find out this was all arranged by you guys just so my crew would help set up your Halloween maze.”
Zoey took a bite of the brownie ice cream ball that had appeared in her hand and said, “We’re going to hold Chobb at gunpoint and make him come clean about all of this. Then I’m going to come back here and get dressed up and I’m going to go to that stupid parade and I’m going to hate every minute of it because parades are dumb and there are always lines at the toilets a mile long—”
Zoey’s shoe kicked something that had been lying on the floor of the foyer. It skidded away.
It was Stench Machine’s collar, and his Blink camera.
The cat himself was nowhere to be found.
Zoey told herself that this was nothing, that it had just fallen off. Then she thought about what Will had said, about the distraction. Then she thought about The Blowback boasting that they would have a feast at midnight.
Zoey balled up her fists, bent over, and screamed as loud as she could.