Chapter Four
The Unhappy Gays
Chloe Steel-Williams felt antsy. Buck had been gone longer than expected before, but his messages were more cryptic than normal. One thing that they'd worked out together was code words when communicating. "Strangers" meant people who were not confirmed Christians but showed interest in the faith, or at least suspicion towards the Global Community. "Friends" meant confirmed believers—brothers and sisters in Christ, fellow Tribulation Saints. "Business" meant anything related to his official job as publishers of the GC Weekly. "Pleasure" meant any non risky activities not strictly sanctioned by Carpathia or one of his underlings. "Work" meant dangerous, anti-Carpathia stuff that could get him in serious trouble.
Using code words like these, and others, Buck was generally able to get pretty detailed in text, email, and phone messages without any complications.
Which made his most recent series of text messages deeply troublesome.
Chlo, got to take care of some more business. Writing a lovely article for GCW website, check for it in a few hours. Will be home as fast as possible.
Lovely was another code word, indicating the article was 'full of shit', an old joke from time wasted on the Horrible-Much-Dot-Com message boards during his Princeton years.
Then,
Change of plans. More work. Follow-up stuff. Keep safe.
And finally,
Working harder than normal and with stranger friends. Call u when I can. Gotta fly.
Stranger friends—what could that mean? Had Buck slipped up and mixed code words accidentally? But stranger friends was an unusual turn of phrase. It wasn't something that he'd say in regular conversation, especially a pithy text message.
The more she thought about it, the more it worried her, and if all she could do was pace around her penthouse fretting, she knew she'd go mad. She sat down at her own computer—an old notebook she'd taken to college, not much for power or security—and drew a sheet of paper from the drawer. She'd copied down the numbers and security info on Buck's Global Community credit card. Amanda and some of the other women back in New Hope Village church had formed a series of shell companies—with names implying vices: Escorts, Breweries, Casinos—to channel large sums of money and other necessary goods from the Global Community into private channels. The goal was to keep the channels open for believers. Chloe didn't know exactly when the legendary Mark of the Beast was supposed to come into effect, but if those who didn't take it couldn't buy or sell, they'd need an underground economy. Currency was easy enough to come by—the billions of US, Mexican, and Canadian dollars rendered officially inert by the new Global Community dollar were just as good as 'real' money in most contexts—and better in some. And with the GC credit line Buck had, digital currency was never going to be a problem—at least, not as long as Buck kept the pretense of loyalty to Carpathia up. Chloe wanted to suck as much blood from Carpathia's fat neck as she could before Buck's credit line was severed.
The trick now was, Chloe had to find one of the Tribulation Force shell companies in the LA region—she didn't want Buck to have to explain why his wife was ordering hookers and blow in New York while he was on assignment on the other side of the continent.
Robin wasn't surprised when the lights flashed on and the guns raised and pointed his direction. He knew Maxwell Collins. He knew to expect an ambush—and it didn't hurt that Raven's empathic link had given Robin a taste of the emotional ambiance of this room, a tiered antechamber with a line of guards on the mezzanine overlooking a pit.
What he hadn't quite expected as to see Maxwell himself in the room. Raven reached out further with her senses, and Robin felt apprehension, confidence, denial, and above it all Maxwell's towering self confidence, a prickly arrogance that his wealth and genius had awarded him. Robin knew he was already painting an image of himself in the mogul's ever-turning mind—naïve, do-gooder, exploitable. Time to reinforce that notion.
"These men need medical attention," Robin said by way of opening dialog. Starfire still bore the heavier of the two guards behind him, while Robin sat the guard he carried down gently on the ground in front of him. Two guards, one a young woman with a combat shotgun, the other a large man in his forties or fifties, hopped down from the mezzanine. While the latter dragged the two guards over towards a culvert in the wall where a motorized platform allowed access to the mezzanine, the former kept the shotgun trained on Robin's head.
Once all four guards were on the platform, Maxwell flipped a switch and the motor whirred to life, taking the platform up to the higher level. As the wounded guards were carted off, Maxwell stepped onto the platform and rode it down until he was standing before Robin.
Collins was an imposing figure—not egregiously tall, but wide like an ox and with a deceptively calm demeanor. His hair, was deep red, much like that of his son, while his beard and mustache, though starting to show signs of gray, were so neatly trimmed that they looked almost sharp enough to cut glass.
"I must ask," Maxwell said, "what your intentions were here. Following a Global Community squadron into a tunnel so secret I can only assume a traitor sold them its location? Taking down that squad of trained peacekeepers, and taking the time to save my guards in the process. You have skills, children, but if you meant to impress me, if you intended to threaten me, you'll have to try harder."
"Don't play coy," Raven said. "We saw your broadcast. You wanted to find us. Recruit us."
Raven's accent seemed jarring, her harsh tones and her inflections—not Indian as her disguise would suggest, but unearthly. Perhaps it was her native accent—Raven had always spoke fluent English, but she spent her first fifteen years in a parallel dimension called Azarath. Maybe her multilingual fluency was even more impressive than Robin had thought.
"Hire you," Maxwell said. "I did not get where I am today by expecting favors for nothing, my dear."
"We're listening," said Robin. "What do you want us to do?"
Maxwell's thin smile curved like the Grinch. "Tell me, Redbird, do you believe in God?"
It was not a question Robin had expected. "The jury's out for me. I've seen enough to know there are things in this world bigger than us."
"Bigger than you, perhaps," said Maxwell. "Before, I thought I had it all figured out. Religion is a crock. Believers of all stripes are hypocrites or useful fools. The only thing in this world that matters is perception—and the power to shape it."
"You feel differently now?" said Starfire.
"Oh yes. Millions of adults around the world vanish, all of them Christian fundamentalists. Every child gone with a pop as the air fills the vacuum they left. And a mad man from a tiny armpit of Europe becomes the king of the planet, and makes a treaty with Israel. I've had dealings with the self-proclaimed prophets—the John Hagees and Franklin Grahams of the world. I don't forget they existed like all the masses that worship the Romanian oaf."
"Maxwell Collins is a believer?" Beast Boy said. "I don't buy it. You're the Grand Asshole of Corporate America. Or were, back when America existed."
"My reputation precedes me, yes," Maxwell said. "I admit I've had regretful dealings in the past, that my ambition has outstripped my compassion. But to answer your question, I'm a believer in the sense that I've come to see the obvious: that God exists. But faith, trust? These things are the refuge of a coward. God has revealed the truth to the world, and that truth is that God is a bastard. He took his sycophants and gave the world to the devil. I want you to help me take it back."
Gerald Fitzhugh was once the President of the United States. People still called him Mr. President, sure. And his official title was still President—President of the North American Executive office. A shiny title for a shiny decoration on Nicolae Carpathia's desk. Fitzhugh was a goddamn war hero, the second black president of the United States, and the least divisive son of a bitch in the White House since Richard Nixon—who was hated by Red and Blue States alike.
Now it was all meaningless. There was no more war to honor the heroes of, no more United States Constitution to defend, and no more Red States and Blue States to reconcile. There was just Carpathia, just the Global Community, and the traitors that made it happen.
Well, that was the narrative Carpathia would have you believe. But America wasn't digested by the Beast, not yet. Not by a long shot. And neither was the U.K. or any other self-respecting country. Fitzhugh had always abhorred the right wing militias, but they were the only ones left with the hardware he needed. The CIA was disbanded and the FBI swallowed by the GC bureaucracy, but there were plenty of dissenting agents who still believed in national sovereignty. The DHS had practically imploded over night, with a skeleton staff left behind for the GC to disband. The rest of the department had gone underground. Together, they'd been named the American Agency—using the double meaning of Agency to signify that Carpathia would not determine the fate of the free world.
So here was the game plan: most of the world's remaining armaments (which sources assured him were far greater than the ten percent figure Carpathia officially prattled about) were thousands of miles away in Iraq, or en route there, in no condition to be deployed. The last of the former UN Ambassadors were clearing out their offices either to return home or move to New Babylon; they'd be gone by the end of the week. Much of the GC infrastructure still operated out of the UN buildings in New York, the loyalists and collaborators. As soon as the allies were clear, the President would call an attack on the UN. Cripple the New York nerve center while the British went after the European command in Brussels. The Egyptians would sack the military forces in New Babylon—which were none too popular among the Iraqis themselves.
Other key personnel his Agents had identified were located in the Chicago and Ft. Worth areas, and would be hit in smaller militia-based strikes. There would be casualties. There would likely be retaliation in some form. Though nominally Methodist, Fitzhugh hadn't been much of a religious man before. Now, every chance he got he would pray—pray for success, pray for courage, and pray for forgiveness for what he was about to do.
Collins' physical examinations were surprisingly non-invasive. No ultrasound, so Starfire's nine stomachs went unnoticed. The X-rays the CollinsCorps scientists administered were somehow absorbed by Starfire's alien physiology—Tamaranians did not normally absorb anything higher on the spectrum than UV rays. Robin gave her a quizzical look after she'd explained the results, but Starfire's expression, even through the make-up and contacts, had given Robin the hint: don't ask.
The general lack of interest Collins showed in probing and dissecting his freak squad perplexed Robin as he and the three other Titans made their way down the hall towards what Maxwell referred to as his 'command room', but when they arrived the picture became clearer. They stood above the tower's lobby on a mezzanine overlooking a clearly struggling operation. Several dozen men and women darted about the room, and half again that were inactive, leaning against walls, crumpled in corners, or laying out on stretchers. Many were wounded, others children. Few looked combat ready.
The Titans were Maxwell's gift horse and he was afraid to look it in the mouth.
"Friends," Maxwell announced from the edge of the mezzanine. "Brothers in arms. I told you not to believe propaganda. Buck Williams and his Global Community Weekly sought to assure the world that the viral video of super powered individuals was a hoax. Well, look, see for yourselves. Does this look like a hoax to you?"
Maxwell stepped aside, and motioned the Titans to step forward, and Robin signaled for Raven and Starfire to hover, display their powers. Beast Boy shifted his face into that of a large wolf and let out a growl; the makeup held through the transformation, for the most part, so that no green noticeably broke through.
A small cheer grew from the ground floor, and rolled towards the back. Many of the people stood and looked up at the Titans in awe. Robin felt the sting of their admiration, the guilty knowledge that they hadn't come to Maxwell to inspire the poor souls he'd wrangled into his rebellion but simply to get help and material resources for their own ends.
When the impromptu ceremony was over, Maxwell led them to a room off to the side where several far more competent looking members of the militia sat gathered around a holographic map of the city. Three of them stood up and saluted Maxwell. The others bristled, glaring at the Titans with suspicion. Maxwell pressed some buttons on the console that switched map to a globe, then zoomed in on North America, showing three red flashing lights—one near Dallas, another just west of Chicago, and a third on Long Island.
"The Carpathian government has amassed three sizeable caches of the supposedly-decommissioned military hardware our government oh-so-inexplicably surrendered." Maxwell turned. "Heavy armaments, including small scale tactical ballistics, are part of the arsenal. No resistance against Carpathia and his forces can be mounted as long as he has the capability of nuclear retaliation."
"You want us to shut down the nukes," Robin said. "We can do that. We'll need hardware and transportation."
"They'll be provided," Maxwell said. "Your friend—Empyrean—seems uniquely resistant to radiation."
"His friend is capable of speaking for herself," Starfire said, hovering closer to Robin and Collins. "The pain I endured in becoming this way will never let me to forget the cost of my power."
"I'm certain," Maxwell said with a smug grin, which quickly transformed into affected sympathy when Starfire's hands lit up with green energy.
"You have no need to fear torture or experimentation from me," Collins said. "I would love to study your abilities further non-invasively, no doubt, but the fact of the matter is, time may be running out. They've already come after me once—likely searching for the four of you. Eliminating the threat of the Global Community is my highest priority. But I must make myself completely clear, I do not want you to kill them. I want the people of this country, this planet to see that I am not the villain here, that the devil is in the dictator. Traitors to the human race will be tried for their crimes in the years to come, but if you decide to make yourselves executioners, the people of Earth will never be swayed to our side."
"Don't sweat it," Beast Boy said. "That's not how we operate to start with."
"Yes," Maxwell said, stroking his silvered beard. "You're perhaps the most peculiar mercenaries I've ever seen."
"Seen many?" Raven said sharply.
"More than you'd think." Collins motioned towards a nearby door, which slid open. "The lift down to the armory is this way, children."
Buck paced nervously in the predawn hours as Tanya and Michelle edited, scrubbed, uploaded, proxied, and mirrored their video out the proverbial ass. He was already knee deep in perhaps the most damaging expose of Carpathia ever published, his wife and father in law could be, at that very moment, in grave danger thanks to his suspicious activity, and the Guy Fawkes mask on his face had rough straps that had chafed raw patches on his face. Patience was supposed to be a fruit of the Holy Spirit, but right now the only fruit he had left was Self Control—it took all he could muster not to storm out of the hotel room that minute and get on a plane to New York.
"Okay, done," Michelle said at last, sliding her laptop across the bed to Tanya. "The video is live and viral. They're never finding out whose computer it came from, but they'll know we're in Los Angeles. We have to get out of here and lay low."
"Reece said we could crash with her for a while, though if we do that I'll probably lose my job." Tanya said. "And Buck needs to fly home."
"Then we'll drive him to LAX on the way out of town," Michelle said. "And, love, your job is not worth your life."
"Okay," Buck said. "Let's think logistically. I'll take a quick shower here. I show up in New York disheveled and rank and that's just more suspicion thrown my way. I guess your friend can accommodate you both."
"I think she might have a house big enough," said Michelle. Some sort of in joke between them, he guessed, from the laughs they were fighting off.
"Then we'll get to it," Buck said.
Thirty minutes later, Tanya's van jerked to a stop. Buck, already antsy, leaned forward from the back seat.
"What now?"
"Roadblock ahead," Tanya said, pale. Michelle, in the seat beside him, clutched the sides of her seat., tensing up until Tanya put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. Buck's mind lurched, simultaneously touched by the caring and hostile towards the deviant sexual nature of their relationship.
"Those are Peacekeepers," Michelle said. "This isn't just some regular police action. They're already looking for the source of the video."
"No. Can't be, not this soon. Probably they want to find the super-hero squad."
"It's probably both," Buck said. "I know how this works. They'll have shut down all outgoing flights. Shit!"
"What do we do now?" Michelle said.
Tanya took a deep breath, leaned her head down against the steering wheel. "Michelle," she said. "Slip out the back and flip the plate over."
As Michelle clambered into the back, brushing by Buck, he leaned into the front. "Flip the plate?"
"Fake license plate," she breathed. "Or rather, a real license plate ripped off from someone's car."
"Won't that put them in danger?" Buck said.
"Not likely," said Michelle. "The plates came from a car that belonged to Crystal Davenport-Collins."
The van jerked and shook as Tanya backed it over a curve, lurched as she drove it over the opposite curve and across the median.
"Who?" Buck said, clutching his seatbelt so tightly that the edges hurt his hands.
"Dead wife of Maxwell Collins," said Michelle. "Guaranteed not to have an APB out on them at least."
"Collins' wife died years ago," Buck said, recalling a brief article Verna Zee had filed with his former boss Steve Plank. He had thought the sentence structure needed work. "So shouldn't her tags be expired?"
"Expired tags are the least of the police's worries," said Tanya. "We're in the middle of the damned Apocalypse. I don't think pedal-to-the-metal down Santa Monica Blvd. would get you pulled over-"
Black, red, white, and overwhelming noise. The crunch of metal and shatter of glass. And pain, all over, pain. And the dizziness. The world upset, stomach turning. Blood, the smell of gasoline. Silence.
No, not silence. Sirens, the beep, beep, beep of the door being open while the keys were in the engine. Buck tried to reach down and take the keys but found his arm seemed unmanagbely heavy. Then he realized it was because the keys weren't down, but up. His sense of gravity and equilibrium fought to reassert themselves. He wretched and thanked the Lord he hadn't eaten anything.
"Buck!" Tanya's thick voice was raspy and strained. "Can you hear me? Oh Jesus, let him hear me."
"I don't see you!" Buck called up from the crumpled van. His brain had finally worked out that the majority of the pain he felt was coming from his right leg. "I see Michelle."
Book looked closer. Smoke had started to fill the front of the van. Michelle's arm hung limp at her side, pale and bruised, the fishnet sleeves ripped.
"Oh no," he breathed.
"She's out cold," Tanya said, adding a string of profanities for good measure. Buck heard squeak of the front seat's leather and saw Tanya clamber over, smack at Michelle's seatbelt button. The latch disengaged but the belt couldn't fully recoil as it slid under her arm.
"I'm going to try and pull you out," said Tanya. "Do your best to climb!"
She lay belly-down in the seat and reached an arm out. Buck grabbed hold of it, and pressed off the damaged cable control console, then used his own chair to boost himself out, He clambered up, saw something looming behind the cracked glass of the windshield, and finally pulled himself out. The driver's side door of the van was gone altogether; Buck pulled the keys out of the ignition just to silence the interminable beeping, then finally tumbled out of the van onto the wet street.
The water from a fire hydrant ran down the street, soaking his clothes. But worse still, he saw what had hit them: A Peacekeeper armored personnel carrier, bearing the logo of the Global Community on its side. The driver appeared to be unconscious, and the passenger was trying to revive him.
Buck's mind began racing; his first instinct was to hide his face, make sure nobody recognized him. His second was to use his security clearance to get the Peacekeepers to help him. But what if the crash had been no accident? From the back seat Buck hadn't even seen them coming. They might have intentionally run them off the road.
Three armed Peacekeepers clambered out of the back of the APC and moved toward Buck and Tanya, and the crashed van.
"What is wrong with you!" demanded the man on point. "You stupid fucks blew through the red light. You're lucky you weren't killed."
"Please, I'm sorry. My wife is still in the van. I can't get her out." Tanya seemed on the verge of tears. Buck wished he could help, but how? Blow his cover? Did he even have his security clearance on him?
"That's not our problem," the Peacekeeper spat. "Show us identification and registration for the vehicle."
"My I.D. is at my house you sick fucks," Tanya spat. "My wife is in that car. She's injured, she needs—"
The sound was defining, the muzzle flash blinding. One shot, fired into the air silenced Tanya. Buck frantically searched his pockets for his own ID, for anything that might get them out of the scrape.
"Your fucking wife can fucking rot," the man growled. "There are dangerous cyber terrorists on the loose and if you don't show me some damn ID in the next ten seconds you're both under arre—AAGCKK!"
Tanya had leapt forward in the blink of an eye, grabbing the Peacekeeper by his throat; she smashed the gun aside with her fist, and it thundered twice more, Buck's heart seizing with each shot. The other two Peacekeepers raised their rifles at Tanya, but couldn't get a clear shot through the wide man and his black-and-blue armor.
"Listen to me you bastard. The love of my life needs medical attention and I'm not letting some pig with a gun keep me from helping her."
"Ma'am!" the rear guard said. "Let him go or we'll be forced to shoot."
The other, who up until now Buck hadn't noticed was a woman, stepped to the side and pointed her rifle towards the van. "How about this: let him go and I don't pull this trigger."
Buck's gut twisted into a knot. "NO!" he shouted, pulling out his wallet. "Listen I'm—"
BLAM BLAM BLAM
Buck saw Chloe's face in the muzzle flashes as the rear guard opened fire. He closed his eyes, and prayed death would claim him quickly, and that Chloe could forgive him for getting himself killed in such a stupid manner. The funny thing was, he didn't even feel the bullets. Or maybe he had, and just forgot as his soul departed for heaven…
"What the fuck?"
The profanity jarred him back to plain old Earth. His eyes snapped open.
There, hovering inches in front of his torso, the three bullets coated in a writhing black light.
The sound of rockets flaring to life filled Buck's ears, and an enormous black tank flew overhead, launching itself from a shattered overpass. The tank landed with an immense crash behind the APC, then revved up again, slamming into the APC and pushing it off the road. It rolled into a ditch, the driver and passenger shouting as it rolled over.
Redbird and Empyrean leapt out of the Tank, each taking one of the two guards, while dark power erupted from the asphalt and coalesced into the one called Blackbird.
"Peacekeepers," she said disdainfully. Blackbird raised a hand and the thug's gun flew apart, the pieces scattering all over the ground. She made a whip-like motion with her hands, and the dark energy slammed into him and threw him on the ground.
"Jesus Christ!" exclaimed Tanya.
"Not quite," said Blackbird. She scanned the area. "The other woman that followed us into the CollinsCorp tunnel. Where is she?"
"You knew?" Buck said, though he was immediately interrupted.
"My wife," Tanya said. "She's in the van. She hit her head. Please, we have to get her to a hospital."
"Hospital's locked down," said Redbird. "We've been monitoring the channels. They're after us hard—and if you three did what I think you did when you followed us into that tunnel, you'll be on their hit list too."
"But—" Tanya moved toward the mercenary.
"Empyrean, get her out of that van, then blow it up." Redbird motioned toward Blackbird.
"I can heal her," said the woman in black. "But you need to come with us. Los Angeles is not safe."
"Nowhere is safe," said Tanya.
A series of strategic metal rendings later, Empyrean had freed Michelle from the car. Lines of blood ran down her face, and the right side of her head was badly bruised. Buck winced; Tanya sobbed. No vehicle, possible fugitive status, fifteen hundred miles from home. Sure, why not get in the car with strange beings with superpowers? He'd done crazier things since the Rapture.
As Empyrean's green flames seared the news van down to slag, Buck started towards the mercenary tank. In his exhaustion, he scarcely noticed the impact as his soggy boot kicked his cellular phone into stream of hydrant water, and didn't miss it until long after it vanished into a storm drain.