Brigid scanned the dark sky, spying the pinpricks of light where the stars twinkled between the looming clouds. “It’s never that dark,” she assured Kane. “Not if you know where to look.”
In silence, Kane nodded his agreement as the line of locals continued to snake slowly into the church to collect the handouts the Cerberus team had brought. They were military rations, many of them recovered from certain storage centers and redoubts that Kane had recalled from his time as a Magistrate. The rations had been acquired in a series of perfunctory raids.
“Guess we should be getting back inside,” Kane said, “before Grant thinks we’ve deserted him.”
Brigid’s straight white teeth glinted in the moonlight as she smiled. “Grant knows you’d never do that, Kane. The pair of you are pretty near inseparable.”
“He says that about you and me, you know,” Kane said as he stood.
“No, he says we’re insufferable,” Brigid corrected him, slapping her hand against Kane’s rear to brush off the dust that clung to him from the step.
Kane laughed as he made his way past the milling crowd, through the shadow-filled porch and back into the church hall. Within, the hall was lit with flaming torches held in sconces, and a line of people stood waiting for their turn to receive their allocated rations from the crates that Kane, Grant, Brigid and what passed for the local authorities had off-loaded from the Mantas earlier that day. Other volunteers from the local area helped, ladling bowls of soup and distributing bottles of clean water that had been filtered clear of contaminants by a pump system operating in the back room of the church. The pump continued to chug as volunteers added more water to its intake system.
The people of Hope seemed buoyant despite their current plight, and an all-pervading air of “getting on with it” appeared to be the order of the day.
With over five thousand starving people in the ville, the process of allocation based on need was slow but necessary. Many of the locals had arrived carrying bowls and buckets, sacks and carry-alls to obtain as much as they could for themselves and their struggling, starving families. But the two young men at the front of the line hadn’t brought bowls or bags to transport the ration bars and purified water. Instead, as Kane watched from the far side of the room, a sixth sense triggering in the back of his mind, the two young men produced a pair of snub-nosed handguns and jabbed them in the face of his partner, the ex-Mag called Grant.
Chapter 2
“Gun,” Kane snapped out in a harsh whisper, taking another step into the vast hall with Brigid just a pace behind him.
But before Kane and Brigid could venture farther into the busy church hall, several more people stepped from the ranks of the queuing locals and brought arms out from the hiding places within their dirty-looking clothes. People screamed and shouted, and everyone in the room dropped to the floor in unison as if struck by a massive weight. Kane stepped backward as he dropped, disguising himself within the shadows of the door. When he looked around he saw that Brigid Baptiste was just across from him, similarly lurking in the thick shadows cast by the porch of the antechamber, her body taut like a coiled spring.
“Hand over everything you’ve got left,” the leader shouted as he waved his snub-nosed .38 at Grant’s face, “or you’re going to be breathing out of a third nostril.”
“Oh, no, son,” Grant growled, “you don’t want to be pulling this shit with me.”
Grant was a huge man, with broad shoulders and dark skin. Though heavy, his body was entirely muscle, with not an ounce of fat in evidence. His black hair was cropped very close to his scalp, but he wore a luxurious gunfighter’s mustache. Right now, Grant wore a black undershirt and loose combat pants, while his Kevlar trench coat remained hanging over the back of a chair behind him. For this rare occasion, curse the damn luck, he had left his wrist-mounted Sin Eater automatic pistol in the secure locker of the Manta vehicle parked around the back of the church grounds.
The lead stick-up artist thrust the barrel of his pistol closer to Grant’s face, and he cocked the hammer with a sadistic sneer curling his lip. He was a young man, no older than seventeen by Grant’s estimate, and already he wore a fierce scar down the left side of his face, cutting a white streak through the dark stubble and red acne that covered his jaw. Grant’s dark eyes flicked across the room, noting the man’s accomplices in an instant before turning his attention back to their leader. They were all dressed in muted, unwashed clothes, and none of them looked to be much older than twenty, maybe twenty-five.
“I done fucks like you for just looking at me, man,” the leader announced through gritted teeth. “I’ll do everyone in this room if you fuck with me, you understand?”
Grant fixed his dark eyes on the bandit leader as, somewhere close to the door, a dog barked anxiously. “Oh, yeah,” he said softly, almost conspiratorially, “I understand.” Hands held loosely at his sides, Grant took a step back toward the open crate of rations. “You want me to hand them over one by one, or are you and your boyfriends going to come here and carry a crate out?”
The gunman glared at Grant, irritation on his frantic features as he considered his options. “You. You can carry it,” the man decided.
Grant snorted, his eyes still fixed on the nervous young gunman. “Can’t help you,” he explained. “This is a two-man job, buddy. You want to feel the weight of this bad boy if you don’t believe me.”
Irritated, the gunman spit a curse and strode toward the line of tables, stepping onto the nearest desk and clambering over it, his hollow boot heels echoing loudly against the wood like the clip-clopping of a horse. As he did so, Grant seized his opportunity, his leg snapping out and his foot slamming into the front of the table as the gunman climbed onto its surface.
The table’s legs screeched as they dragged across the floor with the impact of Grant’s powerful kick, and the gunman found himself toppling forward, losing his balance as the table disappeared from under him. The young man snapped off a shot at Grant, a bullet blasting toward the huge ex-Mag with a resounding crack, several people screaming in its wake.
Grant felt the bullet cut the air just past his ear, missing him by a quarter of an inch, but he was already rushing forward to meet his assailant. All around the church hall, the gunman’s allies were beginning to react, turning their own weapons on the man who had attacked their leader.
“Bunch of amateurs,” Kane muttered as he and Brigid readied themselves in their hiding place in the shadows of the porch. As the gunmen targeted Grant while he was safely protected behind the tumbling form of their leader, it gave Kane and Brigid ample opportunity to mount a surprise attack from the rear.
Over by the line of tables, Grant pumped his sledgehammer fist into the lead gunman’s thorax, knocking the man back up into the air as he continued to fall, driving the breath painfully from his throat. The gunman toppled sideways, crying out in pain as he slammed against the wooden floor with bone-shaking finality.
A trained ex-Mag like Kane, Grant was working on instinct now, and his leg snapped out once more to kick the snub-nosed .38 out of the gunman’s hand before he could bring it to bear. A stray bullet powered out from the pistol’s barrel as it flew out of the gunman’s hand and across the floor, embedding itself in the side of the water pump, water spraying everywhere.
As the gunman fell, his companions began blasting shots from their own weapons at Grant, peppering the wall behind the ex-Mag with shots as he leaped out of their path and rolled behind one of the tables. From his crouching position behind the scant protection of a desk, Grant extended the outstretched toe of his booted foot, hooking the nearby chair and scooting it across the floor toward him. His long Kevlar coat hung from the back, and Grant would need that if he was to make it through the next ten seconds alive.
Grant scanned the area to either side of him, seeing the other volunteers ducking behind the furniture