Night and Day (Book 3): Bandit's Moon (28 page)

Konrad smiled. “Well, all right.
Enough talk. Let me show you a couple of things that are going to really
open your eyes.”

He closed the knife and stuck it
back in his pocket, then squatted and opened the black bag on the floor. He
dug around inside and came out with a small pistol.

“This is a .22 caliber automatic
pistol,” he said, standing. He held it up so everyone could get a good
look. “The low number of the caliber means that the bullet is small.”
Another smile. “Not so small that it wouldn’t kill one of you if I shot you
with it, but really too small to kill a skeeter. Even if I fired it
directly into his heart.”

Konrad spun, pressed the barrel of
the pistol against the center of Randolph’s chest and pulled the trigger.
Randolph jerked and groaned, staring wide-eyed at Konrad.

“Let me explain what you just saw,”
Konrad said. “First, let me assure you that I fired that bullet directly
into Randolph’s heart.” He flashed a lazy grin. “Believe you me, I’ve had
plenty of practice. So why didn’t Randolph die?”

Nobody said anything. Even I didn’t
have anything to say. I’d always believed that if you shot a Vee in the
heart, he’d die. End of story. Apparently the size of the bullet was
important too. That might be useful information. If I got out of the
Floresta alive.

“He didn’t die because the bullet
was too small,” Konrad said. “I hit his heart, sure. Bullet is probably in
the pole behind him, or lodged somewhere in his back. But a small bullet
like that, the actual physical damage to his heart wasn’t severe. His body
was able to repair the damage and the heart kept beating.” He smiled.
“Maybe it skipped a beat, but that’s about it.”

“Was that the noise he made?” a man
to my left asked.

Konrad laughed. “No, that was
Randolph feeling pain. Skeeters do feel pain, just like we do. Though we
believe they don’t feel it as intensely as humans, and it doesn’t last
long. Like a little twinge when you move your arm the wrong way. Little bit
of hurt, then it stops.”

He squatted and put the pistol back
in the bag. “So you need to be careful when you shoot a skeeter. You have
to use the right bullet, and you have to hit him in the right place.
Otherwise he’s going to open up a whole world of hurt on you.”

There was a much larger pistol in
his hand when he rose. He held it up. “Now this, as many of you might know,
is a Colt model M1911 .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol. Mainstay of the
United States military for decades.” He paused. “Bullet is about twice of
the size of that little peashooter I used the first time.”

Konrad pressed the barrel of the
.45 to Randolph’s chest. Randolph yelled something from behind the tape. It
sounded to me like he shouted, “Do it!”

I guess Konrad chose to hear it
another way. “Relax, buddy,” he said. “We’ve done this before. You know I’m
not going to do anything that’ll kill you. You do too good a job for the
cause to let anything happen to you.”

He turned sideways so he could look
at us, ignoring the wide-eyed stare Randolph was giving him. “If I pull the
trigger with this pistol next to his heart, Randolph dies. Pretty much
instantly. When a skeeter’s heart stops beating, they drop like a sack of
potatoes, and there’s no way to revive them.”

Another smile. Then he quickly
lowered the barrel to Randolph’s gut and pulled the trigger. Even with the
barrel firmly against the bound Vee’s shirt, it was loud.

Randolph jerked against the steel
bands and let out a loud muffled wail.

“But as you can see, if I don’t hit
the heart, even a pistol this big is useless against a skeeter. Might as
well use it as a paperweight.” He lowered the weapon. There was a scorched
hole in the tee-shirt, but no blood. Pink skin was visible through the
hole.

“Could you put a bag over his head
and suffocate him?” Sue asked. For a sales clerk at Rudy’s Bargain Store,
she was definitely bloody-minded.

“No, Miss Ward, skeeters don’t need
to breath. Only if they need some air in their lungs so they can talk or
whatnot.” Whatnot like yell.

Konrad turned and pinched
Randolph’s nose closed. Then he turned back to us, his fingers in place.
“You notice he’s not in any distress,” he said. “Just right as rain, even
though he can’t breath.”

“What about his head?” Johnny
asked. “What happens when you shoot him in the head. Won’t that stop his
heart?”

“That’s a good question, Mr. Ricci,
and unfortunately I can’t demonstrate the answer on Randolph without
damaging him.” He paused. “A skeeter brain is pretty much like it was when
the skeeter was human. That’s one part of the body that doesn’t change much
when a human turns. But most of the brain is devoted to thinking, talking,
remembering, that sort of thing. There’s only one part of the brain that
has anything to do with the heart beating, and that’s a little chunk right
back here.”

Konrad tapped the base of his skull
with the butt of the pistol. “Right here. Now, if I was to go behind
Randolph, put this pistol against that spot and pull the trigger, his heart
would stop and he’d die. Hell, I could probably do it with that little
.22.” He paused. “But if I missed, and if Randolph was an angry skeeter
instead of a cooperative test subject, there’s no telling if it would even
slow him down. He might just pull my head off or turn me into a
skeeter.”

He smiled again. “But like I said,
we don’t want to damage Randolph in any way, and putting a bullet in his
brain would do just that.” He paused. “Let me tell you all a truth, let me
show you what’s inside my heart. It’s my greatest hope that one day, when
the skeeters have been defeated and driven from this Earth, we can discover
a way to reverse this condition and return Randolph to our ranks. Healthy.
Whole. Human.” He paused again. “And if that is not possible, we will give
Randolph a final release so he can reunite with his fallen comrades in the
land of glory.”

A few people in the group began to
applaud. More joined in. Johnny. Finally I clapped myself. I was glad it
was Schleu’s army these people were joining, not mine.

Konrad held up his hand. “Please,”
he said. “Don’t clap for me. Clap for the real hero here, my good friend
and comrade, Randolph.”

We all clapped harder.

He let it go on for about fifteen
seconds. “Okay, that’s enough,” he said, grinning broadly. “Don’t want to
embarrass poor old Randolph here. Anyway, I got a couple more things to
show you.”

For the next hour or so, he pulled
a variety of items from his black bag of tricks. A shotgun. An axe. A
crowbar. Each of which he used on the bound Vee, while keeping up a running
commentary on why it was useless to do anything but stop the heart. Bones
were broken. Muscle split. Flesh torn by a close-range shotgun blast.
Through it all, Konrad kept smiling and Randolph kept glaring and
grunting.

Finally the horror show ended. He
put everything back in the sack and called, “Okay, take him
back.”

The same guy came up on the stage,
slung the bag over his shoulder, and wheeled Randolph down the ramp and
through the door.

Konrad watched, then turned back to
us. “Any other questions?”

“How do you feed him?” Sue
asked.

“Volunteers, Miss Ward,” he said.
“A bunch of us who were especially close to Randolph before he was turned
told the commander that we wanted her to use our blood to keep poor
Randolph alive.” He smiled. “Fortunately, skeeters don’t eat much. So none
of us are giving up a whole lot of blood for the cause. But it’s us, his
friends, who feed him. Giving back to a man who gave everything for
us.”

“That’s amazing,” she
said.

He nodded. “Anything
else?”

The room was silent. Everyone was
probably overcome with emotion at being a part of such a great group. I
didn’t have anything to ask, because I hadn’t believed much of anything
that Captain Konrad had said. Including that Randolph was a willing
subject.

“Good enough,” Konrad said.
“Assuming that you all pass your background checks, I’ll see you back here
tomorrow morning after your interviews with the commander.” He paused. “And
I have a special treat planned. As I told you at the start, you could
consider Randolph a practice dummy. But Randolph is not the only skeeter we
have. Tomorrow, I’ll demonstrate how to kill a skeeter, with a firearm or
with a machete.”

He smiled. “And some of you will
actually have your first opportunity to kill a skeeter, though
unfortunately not everyone.” He winked. “Like they say on TV, supplies are
limited. But there will be plenty for everyone. Because very soon, every
member of the Humans First Front will be hip deep in skeeter corpses as we
begin the first battle to take back our homes.”

You would have thought he’d
announced everybody was getting a million dollars and a trip to Europe in
the morning. Applause, shouts, whistles. The only thing missing was a game
show announcer.

I joined in. So did Johnny. What
else were we going to do?

Konrad let it go on for about a
minute, then held up his hand. “Now I’d like you to go back to the aides at
the same tables you were at before and pick up your billet assignments for
the night. You’ll be bunking with a veteran member of the Front tonight.
And tomorrow, your new life begins.”

Or my old life would end. Christmas
Eve was about thirty-three hours away.

Chapter
Eighteen

I thought I was in trouble when I
was handed my billet.

Konrad told us to go back to the
same table where we’d given our personal information, and Johnny lined up
at the table next to me. I was given a card with ‘205' on it. I stepped
away from the table and waited for Johnny to finish. He did and flashed his
card at me. ‘402'.

They were probably apartment
numbers. Which meant that I’d be bunking two floors below him.

It wasn’t a problem for me. I
didn’t want him in the Floresta anyway. But if he was going to be there, I
wanted him close by, so I could keep an eye on him. Zach and Gus had our
names, or at least our first names. If Johnny got himself into some bad
shit, I didn’t want it to flow down two floors and drown me.

While I waited for my card, I’d
noticed a second card on the table with ‘205' on it, probably for the guy
in line behind me. I showed Johnny my card and jerked my chin at the guy
who’d just taken the other ‘205' card. He was staring at it and slowly
walking toward the lobby.

Johnny moved to intercept him. I
hung back, but heard most of Johnny’s sob story. Fear of heights. Didn’t
want to wash out of the outfit if he had a panic attack. Better view from
the fourth floor. Quieter.

He probably sold it harder than he
had to. The guy with the ‘205' card didn’t seem to care one way or another.
He took Johnny’s card, handed Johnny his own, then wandered out to the
lobby.

Johnny came over to me,
smiling.

I shook my head. “Fear of heights?”
I asked softly. “Inside an apartment building?”

“He didn’t look real smart,” Johnny
said. He glanced around. “None of these people look real smart.”

I laughed and he followed me into
the lobby.

The people on the staircase,
including Nancy Haynes, were gone, replaced by a couple of men who seemed
to be taking the new recruits up to their rooms. We started toward them,
and were almost there when I caught a glimpse of police department blue out
of the corner of my eye.

A Metro PD uniformed officer.
Nobody I knew. Standing in the doorway of the vacant leasing office
opposite the staircase. Chatting with Katarina Schleu.

“You got your cards?” the youngish
guy wearing a black tee-shirt and cargo pants asked. His horn-rimmed
glasses were thick and distorted his eyes as he stared at us, hand
outstretched.

“You let cops walk around in here?”
I asked.

He looked past me and squinted
through the glasses. “Don’t worry about him,” he said. “He’s a friend.” He
smiled. “We got lots of friends, all over town.”

“Whatever you say,” I said. We
handed him our cards and followed him upstairs.

At the first landing, the staircase
ended. There were two staircases at the landing, one going up to the right,
the other to the left. He took the one on the right.

“I thought 205 meant were on the
second floor,” Johnny said as we climbed the stairs behind him.

“It does,” he said without looking
back. “Ground floor, first floor, second floor. You’re on two.”

We hit the top of the staircase and
the guy turned into a hallway to the left. Three doors down, he turned to
his right and knocked sharply. Then he turned and went back the way we’d
come without waiting for the door to be answered.

The door swung open.

“Well, hot damn,” Zach said with a
smile. “I knew I’d be gettin’ guys from today’s run, and I was hopin’ it
was you two. Friendly. Smart. Not like some of them booze
hounds.”

He turned and went into the
apartment. “Come on in,” he said. “Make yourself to home.”