By Mole’s count there had to be at least a dozen Familiars serving on patrol duty alone.
The four of them, up against an unknown number of selectively bred soldiers whose chief hobby in life was to wipe out transgenics — and Max was the snake-cult poster child of all transgenics, the “Messiah” the Conclave must smite.
Yow.
Funny thing was, troubled though she might be by the prospect of the apparently lopsided battle ahead, she didn’t feel particularly frightened. They had faced long odds before and accomplished their missions; Manticore had instilled that ability, that attitude, within them.
But being up against an army so close to being their equals, and being decidedly outnumbered, did give her pause. This would definitely take a plan that didn’t suck. They would need not only a solid scheme, but a diversion that would allow her to get Logan out.
She sat next to the car. Bostock, trussed up in duct tape, lay on the ground next to her, Alec sitting Indian-style, loosely training the pistol on their prisoner. Joshua was taking his turn at the watch post, and Mole was reclined in the front seat, catching z’s before the fun.
“Cooperate with us,” Max said to the gagged Familiar, “and I might help you stay alive.”
He stared at her defiantly — or at least that was what she figured he was trying to do; mouth duct-taped like that, it wasn’t really clear.
“You give me a rundown on the inside of that joint,” Max said, “let me know how many of your fellow Snake Scouts of America are in there... I’ll help you survive this. Interested?”
Still gagged, Bostock wriggled — like a snake, actually — and said something loud and angry, two words, the first one guttural, the second a vowel sound.
“I’m gonna take that for a no,” Max said.
She walked over to a tree and withdrew her cell phone and punched in Dix’s number, back at Terminal City. She got him on the first ring, and he was excited — relieved and worried — to hear her voice.
Max settled him down and filled him in, telling him where they were and what she had in mind.
“When?” he asked.
“Around midnight,” Max said, and gave him more details. “Can you make it happen?”
“If we book,” he said.
“Why don’t you, then?”
“Roger that.”
And Dix broke the connection.
For the rest of the day, they maintained their watch. A small basket of cold cuts and canned soda, brought along from the Cale mansion, provided sustenance — a rather grisly picnic, considering the basket had ridden in the trunk with the two corpses. The Manticore-trained soldiers weren’t bothered by such trivialities, though, and an eerie calm touched their hilltop camp.
Alec, returning from his rotation, came up to Max and said, “You better take a look.”
She joined him from their vantage point and saw a car rolling into the parking lot from that private lane — a black stretch Lincoln. The parking lot was now brimming with vehicles of many varieties — mostly expensive numbers, but not all.
“I make out license plates from all over the West Coast,” Alec said. “Also, rental vehicles. What do you make of that?”
Max lowered the binoculars. “We’re gonna have a full house of Familiars tonight. Comin’ from miles around...”
“Why?”
She gave the X5 half a smile. “Big night for ’em.”
“You mean, it’s the annual snake-cult Christmas party?”
“No — it’s the End of the World Fling. Comet’s comin’, remember?”
“Oh yeah... and, the good news is, Jesus is comin’ back, right?”
She nodded. “Only they don’t know the bad news: she’s pissed.”
Alec grinned and nodded. Then he looked at the sky. “I think we might have a white Christmas.”
“Let’s hope not much of one.”
Around dusk a dusting of snow did arrive, but nothing troublesome; and then, after the dark came, its charcoal hand caressing the compound, they made their preparations for the coming battle.
They would have only one chance to free Logan — and it vexed Max that the fate of the man she loved depended largely on the whim of Ames White. But — though nothing was said, not directly — all of them knew that more than Logan Cale’s future was at stake tonight.
For the cultists below, midnight marked a new future for their own twisted kind, and the beginning of the end for mankind. Whether there was any truth to it, Max couldn’t say — what the hell could she do about a comet? On the other hand, the sick bastards below, who longed for the death of all ordinaries, and prayed for the death of transgenics, particularly herself, represented the kind of problem Max and her boys were eminently qualified to correct.
The transgenics had been bred to be soldiers to protect the United States from enemies foreign and domestic, and tonight, on homeland soil, they were finally going to get the opportunity to put those skills to use for their own country... at an insane asylum.
She watched them prepare now, her offbeat commando squad — Alec casually doing push-ups to burn off excess energy and stay limber; Mole checking the clip from his pistol (the presence of the weapon still troubled her); Joshua sitting on the ground, back to the car, legs straight out in front of him, his mouth yawned open in a silent roar as he slept.
Funny. They had come so far, the transgenics at Terminal City — their hometown finally accepting them, Alec about to run for city council, the arts and crafts mall revealing an entrepreneurial spirit, and a surprising well of creativity from within creatures trained to fight and to kill. They had come so far...
... and they had come far, making it to this hilltop, too. To fight. And to kill.
About ten minutes before midnight on Christmas Eve, Max stood with her three friends at the edge of the hilltop. The other messiah had three wise men to attend his birth: she had two wiseasses and a not so cowardly lion. Well, she’d take what she could get.
Nearby were the two corpses — the dead Familiar, rigid with rigor mortis; and the boy wrapped in the white sheet. She spoke to Mole and Joshua, telling them that when they reached the edge of the woods, they were to wait for her signal before emerging with their grim cargo. They nodded somberly.
Then she went up to Alec, who was tending to Bostock, keeping the gun snugged in the man’s side. The private secretary still had not only his mouth but his arms and ankles duct-taped.
“Ready?” she asked Alec.
“Ready,” Alec said. “But Max... before we do this...”
“Second thoughts? Like maybe you’d hate to see your political career nipped in the bud?”
“No. I have no second thoughts about helping take these sons of bitches down... but Max — consider.” He gestured with his head to the trussed-up Familiar. “If this guy is right... if these snake cultists are correct about this heavenly biotoxin... your blood is where the vaccine would come from, that would... you know.”
“Save the world?”
“Something like that. Are you sure you’re the person who ought to be walking up to the front gates of Snake City, ready to pick a fight?”
She didn’t say anything for a moment.
Then she put a hand on Alec’s shoulder. “I have considered that. But we’re here to save Logan. I’m not prepared to believe anything these wackos say... but just in case, I’m putting you in charge of gettin’ my carcass on ice, toot sweet.”
He grinned at her. “Sure you wanna hand me a money-making opportunity like that?”
And she had to laugh. It felt good.
Then the two X5s exchanged serious nods, and Alec said, “Let’s go wish those serpents a Merry Christmas, what do you say?”