Night and Day (Book 3): Bandit's Moon (32 page)

In the end, the specifics of what
Schleu had planned didn’t matter. She’d gathered more than six hundred
people and she was going to send them against the Vees. Maybe the Vees in
the city, maybe someplace else, or maybe she’d gone completely nuts and
they were going to attack the Area Operations Center. Whatever her plan, it
was going to be big and it was going to be bloody.

And if it was big and bloody
enough, it would trigger what Redmond had called Armageddon. A second total
war between humans and vampires. It hadn’t worked out for us the first
time, and if it happened again, it would be worse. Because it would show
the Vees that living with humans was impossible.

I had set out to learn what was
coming. What kind of plan she had in motion. I’d thought it would give me a
clearer understanding of what I needed to do. If it could be stopped in a
way that didn’t require me to kill Schleu. If killing Schleu would even
stop it.

That had all become irrelevant the
minute I stepped the doors of the Floresta.

It was unlikely that I could reason
with Schleu, or somehow sabotage her plan. Which left only one course, and
only one reason to be there. To kill Katarina Schleu.

I needed to stop thinking like a
detective and start thinking like a killer. And that mind set was unnatural
to me.

I’m not saying that I’ve never
killed anybody. Before the war, that was true. But since the Vees swept
into the city, I had killed. Not many. A handful, mostly Vees. And in every
case, it had seemed like the right thing, and sometimes the only thing to
do.

This was different. This was cold
and premeditated. I wouldn’t kill Schleu in self-defense, or even for
revenge. This was murder.

It didn’t sit well with me. It
didn’t match my view of myself and what I was capable of. It wasn’t easy to
admit that I could kill somebody in cold blood.

But I could. And I
would.

And if I was lucky, I might even be
alive to feel bad about it later.

Johnny came back into the bedroom,
running a towel over his hair. “No shampoo, and the piece of soap is pretty
small,” he said. “But the water’s hot and you get your own
towel.”

“Gotta look on the bright side,” I
said.

After my shower, I dressed and went
out to the living room. The food wagon had already been around. Zach
pointed to a bowl on the table in front of the couch. “Gotcha some chow,”
he said.

I sat on the couch next to Johnny
and picked up the bowl. It was filled with grits, with chunks of sausage in
it. Johnny was already finished with his.

“Dig in,” he said. “It’s pretty
good.”

“Oughta be,” Zach said. “They get
enough practice.”

All cooking in the Floresta was
done somewhere on the ground floor. According to Zach, Schleu had decided
that it was more efficient to centralize the cooking instead of forcing the
occupants of each apartment to make their own meals. In the afternoons, the
cooks made stew. In the mornings, the cooks apparently made this. It was
delivered from apartment to apartment in a big, rolling steel cauldron.
They knocked, you opened the door and handed them your bowl. They filled it
and gave it back. Then on to the next apartment.

The stew had been bland, but
filling. This morning meal seemed about the same.

“So ya’ll wanna leave here a little
bit before seven,” Zach said. “Give you time to get downstairs and in your
seat by the time Konrad’s class starts. He can be a real dick with recruits
that can’t tell time.”

“No escort?” I asked, shoveling the
food into my mouth.

He shook his head. “Nah, you passed
the interview last night, so you’re one of us now. Still a recruit, of
course, but you don’t need no escort no more.”

“You going out today?”

“Hard to say. Gus is usually here
before breakfast if they’re sendin’ us out. We eat, then go down, get our
assignments and hit the street.”

“Is Gus your boss?” Johnny
asked.

Zach laughed. “Why you think
that?”

“They tell him when you’re going
out, not you. Boss usually knows first.”

“Nah, you got it backwards,” Zach
said. “Gus is the junior man. He has to get his ass up at five in the
mornin’, go downstairs, and sit in the briefin’ room with the junior men on
the other teams. That’s when they decide who’s goin’ out, who’s bein’
reassigned, that kinda thing. That’s about half an hour. Then he goes back
to his apartment and waits till around six-fifteen to come up here and tell
me.”

“Why does he wait so long?” I
asked.

Zach smiled. “Cause I told him to.
Gives me a little more beauty sleep.”

I laughed.

“Gus is a good ol’ boy,” he said.
“Joined up about a year ago, came in with some boys from Mississippi. Kind
of a hardass about rules sometimes, but at least he ain’t no nazi.” He
paused. “And speakin’ of nazis, you better get your asses in gear. Like I
said, Konrad don’t appreciate recruits showin’ up late.”

I stood and Johnny followed. “Guess
we’ll see you later,” I said.

“I reckon so,” he said.

The halls of the Floresta were
deserted. I guess it was a little early for anybody but the new recruits.
When we got down to the first floor, I recognized a couple of guys from the
day before, part of our recruit group. We joined them on the way down the
large staircase to the ground floor.

As we hit the bottom on the stairs,
I saw that it wasn’t too early for everybody. At the opening of a hall next
to the staircase, I saw a couple of people talking. A man and a woman. The
man was Dave, one of the Night Ninjas who’d come for us hours earlier,
still wearing his black fatigues. The woman was Nancy Haynes.

We started across the lobby to the
exercise room at the far end. Nancy glanced at the four of us for a moment
before returning to her conversation. It was a casual glance. I didn’t see
any recognition on her face before she looked away.

Having her in the building still
worried me, just a bit. It was unlikely that she’d know anything about my
post-camp life as a private investigator. I might be a good detective, but
not so good that I was known throughout the city. And she hadn’t seen me in
more than six years. The chances that she would even remember me, one cop
of many and probably one of the few that hadn’t shared her bed, were pretty
slim.

Captain Konrad sat on the edge of
the low stage, watching as we came into the room, a clipboard on the stage
beside him. There were already two other recruits there. He picked up the
clipboard and made a notation, then put it down.

I went back to the seat I’d
occupied the day before and Johnny slid into his chair next to mine. We
waited.

More people came in. I didn’t see
Sue Ward or the other woman among them.

At exactly seven by my watch,
Konrad pushed himself away from the stage. “It’s good to see that you all
know how to follow a schedule,” he said.“Congratulations. You passed the
interview, so you’re no longer provisional members of the Humans First
Front. That’s an honor. I want you to give yourselves a nice round of
applause.”

We all clapped. Some more
enthusiastically than others. But it was still pretty early in the morning,
probably real early for some of these guys.

Konrad waited for the applause to
die down, then said, “You will notice that your group is a little smaller
than it was yesterday. Sadly, Ms. Ward and Ms. Russo did not make the cut.
That’s no reflection on them. It takes a special kind of woman to do what
you’ll be doing very soon. But don’t worry. Ms. Ward and Ms. Russo are
still with the Front. They just have duties more in line with their talents
and abilities.”

His leering smile told the tale.
Both comfort women.

“So we continue on as eight,” he
said. “And as I told you yesterday, today we move from watching to doing.
Pay attention. This will be your one day of real training, and if you’re
not showing me that you can carry your own load, I will bust you out.
Guaranteed. Every person I pass must be able to do the job assigned them.
Our success depends on it.”

He paused, then looked to the door
in the back corner. “Bring out Number One!” he yelled.

The door opened. The same guy as
before pushed out another rolling pole with a man attached to it. Not
Randolph. This was a chubby black guy with close-cropped hair, stripped to
the waist, wearing blue jeans cut off at the knees.

Like Randolph, he was bound with
steel bands at the shins, waist, shoulders and forehead. And like Randolph,
he had a strip of duct-tape across his mouth.

The guy pushed him up the ramp and
positioned him directly behind Konrad. He dropped another black bag next to
the wheels, a smaller bag than the day before, then retreated back through
the door.

“Take a look at this sorry
specimen,” Konrad said, staring at us. “He’s not only a skeeter, but he’s
also a jigaboo. Too bad we can’t kill him twice, once for each.”

He laughed. A couple of the guys
around me laughed too. I didn’t. It wasn’t that funny.

“Let’s call him Jim,” Konrad
continued. “Nigger Jim. Just like in Huck Finn. Ever read that one?” He
looked around the room. “One thing you need to keep in mind about skeeters
is that they don’t think like us. They don’t understand racial purity like
we do.” He paused. “That’s why we’re going to win. Because you can turn a
nigger or a beaner or camel-fucker or a Jew into a skeeter, but they’re
still what they were before, on the inside. Corrupt and
inferior.”

Konrad stepped up on the stage.
Then he turned to us. “Take a good look at this skeeter,” he said. “Does he
seem like the kind of creature that should be your master?”

A few of the guys in the room
muttered, “No,” or shook their heads.

“I’ll tell you something,” Konrad
said. “He’s not. Not my master or your master or anybody’s master. He’s
just a target dummy.”

He dropped to one knee and came out
holding a dagger. Daggers had been a very popular accessory in Nazi
Germany, and I saw that this one was clearly modeled on those. Konrad held
it up. “In my hand, I hold my own personal dagger, given to me by the
commander of the National Socialist Union of America. I have blooded this
dagger many times in six years of battle against the skeeters. This
morning, one of you will have the honor of adding to it’s
glory.”

Konrad glanced down at the
clipboard at his feet. “Mr. Cronin,” he called. “Stand up.”

To my right, a young, thin guy with
wire-frame glasses and a receding hairline stood. “Yes, sir,” he
said.

“Get your ass up here and let’s see
what you got, son.”

Cronin worked his way to the aisle
and walked to the stage. He hesitated at the edge of it, looking up at the
Vee bound to the pole.

Konrad laughed. “Get on up here,”
he said. “He isn’t going to bite you.”

The young man stepped up on the
stage.

“Here you are,” Konrad said,
handing him the dagger.

Cronin examined it, turning it over
in his hand.

“It’s just a knife, son,” Konrad
said with a smile. “A little fancier than most, maybe, but just a knife.”
He paused. “So what do you think of Nigger Jim here, now that you’re up
close and personal.”

“Don’t like him, sir,” Cronin
said.

“That’s good,” Konrad said. “If you
liked him, I might be worried about you.”

Cronin laughed nervously and a few
in the audience joined in.

“But since you don’t like him, I
guess you should kill him, right?”

“Sir?”

“Kill him,” Konrad said. “Take my
dagger and shove it right into his heart.”

“Now?”

Konrad laughed. “Yes, now. You want
to look at him a little longer? Maybe you’d like me to pull that tape off
his mouth so you could talk to him a bit, get to know him.” He paused. “Put
the fucking dagger in this skeeter’s heart, Mr. Cronin. Now!”

Cronin stepped in front of the
bound Vee, hesitated for a moment, then plunged the blade into his
chest.

Jim roared in pain behind the
duct-tape and glared at Cronin. But he didn’t die.

Konrad laughed. “That was a nice
try, son, but you were about an inch to the left of the heart. It went into
the skeeter’s lung. But like I told you yesterday, they don’t need to
breath, so that isn’t going to slow him down.” He paused. “Okay, take out
the dagger and give it to me.”

Cronin pulled at it, but it was
stuck. Konrad smiled. “Hung up on a rib,” he said. “Don’t pull at it hard.
Be gentle, and just remove it slowly and carefully. When it gets jammed,
jiggle it a little and keep pulling.”

A moment later, Cronin had the
dagger out of the Vee’s chest. As the tip emerged, the wound quickly
closed.

“Just like a self-sealing tire,”
Konrad said with a laugh.

He took the dagger and held it up.
“Blade is clean as a whistle,” he said. “Skeeter blood doesn’t stick to it,
and their wounds don’t bleed. Whereas if he was just a plain nigger, he’d
be bleeding like a stuck pig.” He paused. “I know.”