Ham and Mike had found a couple of young men among the refugees who were planning to meet up with some others in the city, to share whatever knowledge they could put together. The two strangers were more street rats than resistance fighters the first time around, like Elias might have been if he hadn't fallen in with Mike, Julie, and the others.
"Slow down, hotshot," Ham cautioned the twenty-something Steve, who was already talking about gathering weapons and planning attacks. "Where we come from rushing in like that has another name."
"What's that?" Steve wanted to know.
"Getting your ass vaporized, that's what," Mike informed him. "Kinda new to this aren't you? It's important to find out what we're fighting before we go blowing things up. We need to set up someplace as a base for planning."
The other, only slightly older man was called Fred. He seemed to be the smarter and more aggressive of the two, and just hours after the recent attack had already found a safe place to for a few of his friends to hole up.
"There's this hotel in Hollywood, the Regis, hardly any damage. Probably because it was for all the richy-rich and collaborators who made out like bandits and tapped into their 'savings' after liberation. I'm telling you, there were plenty of humans who came outta the war clean as a whistle and richer than the pope. Some things never change, right? Anyway, too bad we'll never know who they are. Not like those creeps kept an address book."
Ham and Mike exchanged a look. "As a matter of fact, 'never' might be sooner than you think."
The "friendly humans" module that Angie had gotten during her undercover work with the Visitors had been kept safely stashed by Tyler with his personal weapons cache since the end of the war. Though the hybrid mix of Visitor and human language was almost useless on its own, one of the first things he and Farber had done as business partners was to employ Willie to turn it into the same kind of database that he and Angie and their late colleague "New" Todd had used to send their killer computer virus to the Mother ship, and everywhere else the visitors and their collaborators ran a computer. If it was still intact, it would be back at what remained of Tyler's home compound. They'd been too busy sorting through the bodies and weapons and searching for Angie to have had time to retrieve it the day before.
"You got something we don't know about?" Fred asked suspiciously. "Give. If we're gonna be working together, I wanna see what you got."
"Not yet, kid. You don't know us, we don't know you. If we find what we're looking for, we're gonna need all the help we can get to follow up. For now, we just get ourselves an ops center, and..." here Tyler paused, and offered his reptilian smile that doubled as a warning to anyone who thought he might be a pushover, "... get acquainted."
"Okay, okay, Dr. Mysterium," said Steve, "I got fresh wheels just over there. No sense hanging around here, nothing to learn and nobody much useful."
"Right behind you," Ham announced, but held back as the two new allies walked toward a dark, nondescript SUV recently "liberated" from the parking lot of a local (flattened) shopping center.
"Look, Gooder, I just saw my ex-client the porno prince back there, I'm gonna have him get a message to Angel to meet us at this Regis hotel. That way if it's a trap we'll trip it first, and get away."
Donovan had always known that Tyler and Angie were "different" than the typical couple but he couldn't believe Tyler planned to leave her behind to shift for herself after they'd searched so doggedly to find her.
"Seriously? Do you really think it's a good idea to split off and leave Angie to catch up?"
"I guess it has been a while hasn't it," Tyler laughed. "Don't worry about her, she ain't the girl she used to be, trust me. Now go tell Frick and Frack I'll be back in five. They're not what I'd call prime meat, but we gotta start somewhere."
Angie was surprised to see Jackie Bowdoin waiting for her at the rendezvous point where Ham and Mike should have been.
"Mr. Tyler asked me to give you this." He handed her a note, predictably written on the torn piece of a cartridge box.
"Regis Hotel, 1925 Santa Ana Blvd. Meet us later, not too slow, not too fast, cio." No name signed, because none was needed. She knew Tyler's handwriting like she knew her own. Because of his hatred of computers (born of crappy typing skills, among other things) his every memo, document, contract, and receipt was composed by hand for her to enter into the "geek machine".
"Cio... not 'ciao'?" Jackie asked, a little confused.
"It means 'checking it out', as in making sure it's not a trap. So if I get there no sooner than an hour or too, but not as late as tomorrow, whatever happens won't catch me in it."
"But what if..."
"Don't worry, Jackie. Whatever happens they'll find a way to let me know, kind of a commando scavenger hunt. We've had some practice in the past, remember."
Still obviously concerned, Bowdoin offered, "I could find you a lift, I was just looking for one myself, I saw some business contacts here who could probably some up with something."
Angie shook her head. "That's okay. I can't say I'm looking forward to hiking back into the city, but I'll be okay." She reached for the holster tucked inside the back of her jeans and pulled out a Ruger .380 . "See, no worries. I prefer the Visitor hand blasters myself, but they got pretty hard to come by after Liberation. I always thought it was a shame we couldn't hang on tighter to their more useful contributions, but that Science Frontiers place got it all wrapped up when they captured the Mother Ship. Damn those escape pods." She smiled before re-holstering the weapon. "Yup, my husband sure can pick the perfect birthday present."
When Bowdoin frowned a little she added, "Oh, don't worry, he also flew me to Rome, took me out to a squillion-star restaurant and to see 'Tosca' at the Colosseum, because the opera house had been flattened by the lizards. I'm telling you, if Tosca had a Ruger that opera would've ended differently. Hey, don't look so shocked, we're not all barbed wire and bulletproof all the time! We'll be in touch... somehow." She took a deep breath, grabbed a bottle from a random case of water, and hit the road.
"Well this is a step up from old waterworks and abandoned Coast Guard stations." Tyler whistled as they crossed the elegant, and remarkably undamaged, lobby of what had to have been at least a five star hotel. Not that he'd never gone first class - since the Liberation he'd kept his promise to Angie to show her just how much first class he'd been used to in his former career. But this place had been untouched by the first invasion and the second.
"What did I tell you," Fred boasted. "They had to keep some of the good stuff to 'reward' the human traitors. Don't know who owned it after liberation, but they split at hyper speed when the new cruisers swooped in."
Mike returned from a foray into the combination bar and ballroom. "Something tells me that about now they're looking pretty closely at how 'friendly' the friendly humans they left behind really were, and with which side."
Ham announced impatiently, "Okay, enough of house beautiful. Let's meet the rest of your friends, and see what they know about this lizard rerun."
Fred led the way for Tyler as Mike and Steve followed.
"Does he always talk like that?" Steve muttered to Mike, who nodded grimly. "Jesus, who is he, really I mean?"
Donovan was surprised that The Fixer's reputation hadn't reached everywhere in L.A. by now.
"Believe me kid, you don't wanna know."
It was after dark by the time Angie found the hotel. She'd managed to hitch a ride with a pickup truck full of random strangers after walking a couple of miles, but had them drop her about half a mile from the hotel. She had no idea what she'd find, and also had no idea whose side anyone was on. Better to stick with what little she knew; the fewer outsiders the better.
She drew up short at the entrance of the poshest place she'd seen since the last time Ham had taken her out for one of their "spend it while we got it" dates. The front foyer was lit, and she saw just one scruffy looking young blond guy lounging by the concierge desk. Keeping both hands in plain sight, she entered cautiously.
"Hey, I'm supposed to meet some people here," she told the kid. "They might've come in a few hours ago, looking to find some people who maybe had a handle on what's happening in the city, or maybe elsewhere too." The kid came around the desk and stood just inches away. For a sentry, he seemed pretty damned casual.
"Well let's just see what you're packing, babe."
Before she could respond he had both hands up her shirt with a firm grip on her breasts.
"What the hell..."
She tried to step away but he had one hand hooked into her belt, still feeling her up with the other. He flashed the witless smirk of a perpetual adolescent as he gave her right boob a sloppy squeeze. "Can't be too caref..."
The last word was cut off after Angie whipped one hand behind her back, and Steve felt the muzzle of a small automatic tucked tight under his chin.
"Right about that," Angie hissed. He withdrew both hands, otherwise careful not to move a muscle. "Too bad you're not an 'ass man'." She twisted the fingers of her free hand into the filthy, braided leather thong hanging around his neck. "Now why don't you take us to see your other little friends, okay?"
"Just me," he told her in a very unconvincing and shaky voice.
She gave the thong a jerk, making him gag. "Look, Lonelyhearts, I did not just walk way too far on way too little sleep and nothing to eat for two days to get groped by some greasy little weasel who can't lie any better than a twelve year old trying to buy a six pack. I came here to meet some people and I know they're here because if they weren't, you wouldn't be either. Or you'd already have been dead on this nice marble floor, which is still an option. So why don't you take me to where there are some other humans who can witness your humiliation, and my day will not have been a total loss." She loosened the leather garrote.
"Okay," he rasped, "let me go and I'll show you."
"Oh puh-leeze." Angie twisted the thong again, just a little this time, and rotated the muzzle of the Ruger harder against his neck. "It's obvious we did not watch the same movies growing up. Now, walk. And don't trip, because the trigger on this is a little unreliable, if you get my meaning."
Moving like the world's worst ballroom dancer, Steve haltingly led Angie toward the back office seized up like a dog on a choke chain, the muzzle of the Ruger embossing a tiny circle on his throat.