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“SO WHERE ARE WE HEADED?” I spoke to the back of Millie’s head as we filed east on Oak Street, headed toward the lake. A stiff breeze whipped my hair back, and I was glad for my jacket. As night came on, the temperature dropped faster than a whore’s pants at a political convention.
“The Drake,” Millie called over her shoulder.
“It’s a hotel, by the lake,” John informed me. He kept pace on my right, having to shorten his stride to do so. “A fancy one.”
“Really? What do they do about the smell from the lake?” I liked John, but I’d forgotten his tendency to state the obvious. The giant would lull you into thinking he was dimwitted while secretly having fun at your expense. My neck cramped trying to read his face for signs of humor. “You ever stay there?”
“No, I can’t afford it.”
Behind us, Tim kept quiet. I could feel his eyes boring into my back, giving me an itchy-crawly-millipede sensation down my spine. We crossed Wells, and I glanced north, toward the Dive In. Hard to believe I was there only last night, sipping cheap beer and waiting for one of my current companions to show up. Too bad it had to be Tim and his pal, the Zulu warrior king.
I swiveled my head around. “Hey, Timmy, who was that you were meeting with last night? He looked scary as hell.”
“None of your business,” he growled.
“Oh. Okay, thanks.” Dickhead.
This part of downtown, propped up by Gold Coast money, had weathered the economic storm that gutted chunks of downtown farther south, like around the Huateng Tower. Expensive, trendy stores lined the street with window displays behind bulletproof glass, and fewer homeless wandered about. More cops patrolled in flak jackets and helmets, keeping the well-dressed shoppers safe from panhandlers, pickpockets, and rebels like us. Armed guards, stationed under apartment building entrances, tracked us as we passed, their hard eyes cold enough to freeze my balls.
“Hey,” I said loud enough for Millie to hear, “isn’t the Drake on Walton?”
She glanced over her shoulder. “The front entrance, yes, but Secretary Nguyen will come in through the back. We have a couple of folks out front, in case they pull a last-minute switch, but I’ll bet he comes in the rear.”
I resisted the obvious joke about coming in the rear.
Foot traffic thinned as we crossed Rush Street. Two guys I didn’t know joined our parade on the east side of Rush, exchanging silent signals with Millie and John before falling in next to Tim. More Children, I guessed.
The scent of grilling steak caressed the air and flooded my mouth with saliva. Hunger hit me so hard, my knees buckled and I almost fainted. Two bouncers, titans in tuxes, flanked the entrance to a steakhouse, the name Olympia scrolled in glowing crystal on the frosted glass door. A 3D graphics board on the left tantalized with displays of sumptuous meals, the food appearing so real, my hand twitched before I controlled it. Below each dish, numbers appeared. It didn’t take long to figure out the numbers were prices. My gut wrenched when I calculated one dinner here would cost more than a year’s rent for the crappy apartment I shared with Chelle. Once upon a time.
“You coming, Joe?”
John’s question penetrated, and I realized I’d stopped in front of the display. The bouncers were giving me the fisheye, and the other Children of Liberty were staring. “Yeah, no problem. I’m coming. Just trying to decide between the porterhouse and the ribeye. It’s so hard to know how hungry you’ll be after a police beating.”
I offered John some muffin crumble from my sack. He declined, so I finished it off myself. I gulped the cornbread in a rush and of course couldn’t swallow for the next ten minutes.
Oak Street crossed Michigan where it changed into one half of North Lake Shore. The two halves of North Lake Shore came together somewhere up north, after diving through tunnels and doing all kinds of crazy things that made drivers scream obscenities and shoot themselves. In the triangle created by the two sections of Lake Shore on the sides and Oak Street at the base, a patch of greenery with trees and benches had survived years of urban decay. Here, we were right against Lake Michigan; if we kept marching east we’d get very wet.
On the other side of Oak, the Drake reared up against the Chicago skyline, giving tourists a nice place to sit and admire the aging beauty. The Drake used the same red neon sign for the last hundred years or so, believing it gave the place a sense of old-world tradition. I sensed old-world tacky instead. The building was lit up like kilowatt hours would build a stairway to heaven.
A gaggle of people approached Millie, and it took a second, but one of the faces clicked and matched a memory. “Goldie!”
“Hello, Joe.” The white-haired woman waved and smiled. “I’m surprised to see you here.”
“Everybody is,” Tim muttered behind me.
“How’s Snowflake?” I said. “Her hips still bothering her?”
“The vet tried her on some new medicine,” Goldie confided. “It’s helped her a lot, but poor dear, she gets tired so easily now.”
“Joe,” Millie snapped. “Catch up on the pets later, okay? Anything yet?” This last she addressed to Goldie.
The seventy-year-old Child of Liberty shook her head. “Nothing, dear. More patrols, though, and the security people are wound up tight. Oh, and more cops are showing up. Any minute now, I’d say.”
“Good.” If I had any doubts Millie held a leadership position, they dried up in the next few minutes. Speaking to the group around her, she issued orders like firing bullets. “John, you and Joe take that bench and keep watch. The cops may come and roust you along; if they do, go ahead and move, but stay in sight of the service entrance. Tim, Sterling, Ramon, do the same on that bench across the way. Goldie, take your people and keep circling the park. Do not use your phones. I’ll pass the message along to the rest of our people scattered around the park in person. When the security team gathers at the doors, that’s our cue. Everyone rush across the street, line the sidewalk and link arms. Got it? Go.”
The clump of people scattered, and I hunkered into a seat next to John. Millie strode away, her short legs pumping, a blond pixie on a mission.
“She’s something else, ain’t she?”
“Yes,” John grunted. “Millicent is amazing.”
I slanted a look at him. “Do you and she... have something...?”
He frowned for a moment, then his face cleared, and he smiled. “No. I’m married and have two kids back in... back at our home base. Millie doesn’t date. Says she doesn’t have time for it, but I think there’s another reason.”
“Such as?”
“I think...” John paused. “I think she’s afraid they’ll use anyone who gets too close against her.”
He didn’t have to explain who “they” were. Ramirez and his pals in the Homeland Security Agency. Two months ago I would not have credited the idea that the feds would resort to blackmail to reach their objectives, but that naïve ideal shriveled to a crisp the minute I saw Signe and Deandre turned into living slaves.
“I don’t like the looks of this,” John said. He hunched forward, eyes fixed on the activity to our right, along the western half of North Lake Shore. Our vantage point had an excellent view in two directions: North Lake Shore in front and Oak to our left. We could watch both streets without turning our heads more than a fraction. We were set back from the street by a short patch of grass, concealed by the darkness under the limbs of a billion-year-old oak tree. In the length of time since we’d arrived, six sedans with Homeland markings had parked along North Lake Shore, and seemingly at John’s words, all the doors popped open, and men wearing dark suits boiled out.
I scanned to our rear; more Homeland guys piled out of cars there as well. Three black, boxy panel trucks with HSA emblems screeched to a stop behind the line of sedans. A covey of Homeland agents clustered at the back of each truck.
“Is this normal?” I asked.
“No.”
“Somehow I knew you’d say that. Look.” I pointed. “Millie and the other folks are moving. We have activity at the Drake.”
A phalanx of six Drake security men spilled through the double doors and deployed around the service entrance. No weapons that I could see, but the guys appeared tough enough, bullets would bounce off their chests. They wore suit jackets over collarless shirts, black slacks and mirror-shined shoes.
“Nguyen’s coming,” John stated. He divided his attention between the Drake and the street behind us. “But something’s not right. The cops are here in force.”
“Should we abort?” Abort. Listen to me, I’m a covert ops guy.
“I... don’t know.” The big man bit his lip and twisted to check behind us. I did the same. The doors to panel trucks hung open, and ramps lay against the rear decks. A clot of men in black tactical gear milled about, some barking orders, some standing around in typical thumb-in-butt posture, and others trotting up and down the ramps.
Millie and a group of twenty-plus Liberty people lined the Oak Street sidewalk, their backs to the hotel, facing the park. Hopefully, they saw the same thing we did, which was a bunch of nasty-looking Homeland troops deploying on the far side of the green space. Millie must not have seen the deployment; she and the would-be rebels linked arms and lifted their chins, appearing as though they’d wait through Armageddon for this Nguyen guy to show up.
“Come on, John.” I hopped up, trying to see in all directions at once. This most definitely did not feel like a good place to be. I shivered from more than the chilly wind blowing in off the lake. “Let’s get Millie and book it outta here.”
John dithered. “She’s in charge, Joe. What if she doesn’t want to go?”
“Hey.” I clapped the big man on the shoulder, injecting some badass mojo into my voice. “You’re six times bigger than she is. She don’t want to go, you pick her up and carry her midget ass. You gettin’ me?”
His eyes tightened, and his head bobbed in agreement. “Let’s go.”
We loped across the grass, hopped a low, decorative fence, and jogged to the other side of Oak Street. A small part of my—admittedly—small brain noted all the civilian vehicular and foot traffic in the area had mysteriously dried up. And oh-deep-fried-shit, the hotel’s security guys no longer stood at the service entrance. They had vanished.
It turned out the blond leader of the rebellion was way ahead of me. Her blue eyes narrowed, studying the distant activity.
“Something’s not right,” she said. “I’ve never seen this kind of response.”
“There’s a couple of battalions of Men in Black on the other side of the park,” I said, “and more on east and west. They’re unloading some big-ass trucks, something needing ramps to get down. I don’t know what, but I’m thinking tank.”
“A tank?”
“I’m just saying, it’s something big as a tank if it needs a ramp. That, or Godzilla.”
The Children on either side of Millie who were close enough to hear traded glances. Some craned their necks or hooded their eyes like Apaches to get a better look. A low murmur ran along the line.
Her jaw clenched. “I don’t like this at all. We need to abort.”
“What is that?” someone muttered, and the others joined in.
I spun around to follow the pointing fingers.
The intensity of light behind us created deep shadows under the trees. Sporadic landscape lighting hindered more than helped, as the lights always managed to be in the exact wrong place. Shapes bobbled in the darkness. Awkward-looking. Shambling...
No way.
John said, “Are those...?”
“They can’t be,” stated a guy farther down the line. I think it was the one Millie called Sterling.
“They’re—”
“I don’t believe it.”
Wind whipped my hair into my eyes. I shoved it back with a curse and cupped my hands around my eyes like I held binoculars. It didn’t help me see, but by that time I didn’t need to. The figures were close enough, I could confirm my earlier guess as to their identity.
“Revivants. Shit.”
A marching line of eight, no, ten Revivants shuffled through the park like a squad of wind-up toys let loose on the lawn. Dressed in flak jackets and black parachute pants, they were a mockery of tactical cops, stumping around obstacles with a side-to-side, stiff-legged gait. The middle group passed through a floodlight, revealing a tubular contraption wrapped around their heads. The device resembled a neck cushion people used when they flew, a collar around each dead man’s skull, blunt ends pointing forward, glistening of metal and plastic. I had no idea what they were for.
More disturbing than the silent march of zombies with headgear, each one of the revived carried a—
“What is that?” Millie said in disbelief. “Are those guns?”
“Yes, Millicent,” John the Literal stated. “The Revivants are armed with automatic weapons.”
“I would like to run away now,” I said.