Revolution World (25 page)

"It's going to be alright," Seth soothed her without letting go. "Everything will be alright." Clio found comfort in his words, even if neither believed them.

Harmony leaned on a woman and began speaking. Clio couldn't make out what she was saying, but the gathered masses aimed their weapons right at the colonel.

"I had no idea the Junior League target practices were so popular," Seth said. Clio choked on a laugh.

"I think the colonel does not appreciate an armed populace," Clio replied. "You'd think a military man would be in favor of that sort of thing."

The colonel raged and bellowed as the soldiers formed a defensive line around the vans. Other soldiers ran back and forth from the labs with cages, boxes, and equipment. The mob advanced upon them with unmistakable menace while Harmony held her arms out to the colonel.

"Your mom is really scary sometimes," Seth said.

"The colonel doesn't think so," Clio said, trying to keep the quaver out of her voice as the colonel strode towards Harmony. Clio thought he might strike her down.

"He hasn't tried her waffles," Seth replied. "Those things will put the fear of god into any man."

Clio smacked him on the arm. "Stop trying to make me laugh. This is possibly the most horrible night of my life."

"Let's hope not," murmured Seth. She was grateful that he did not name the thing she feared. That this would be the night she watched a man kill her mother.

Now another soldier started pushing a line of Co-op employees out of the door. The people in their work clothes shuffled along slowly with their hands over their heads. Clio saw Harmony stagger forward, but couldn't make out what she way saying. Whatever it was sent the colonel into fresh bouts of rage. He gestured to the soldiers and they began pushing the people towards the vans.

Clio doubted that anyone within three miles failed to hear Harmony.

"Stop." she said in a terrible clear voice. Clio thought that if God ever objected to something, that might be what it sounded like.

The armed mob advanced. Clio could see the telltale motion of gun safeties flicking off. This was going to be very bad. She wanted to turn and hide her head in Seth's chest, but she couldn't. She thought about medical cases of hysterical blindness.

People who saw something awful would go blind, even though medically there was nothing wrong with them. They saw something so horrible that the only way their brain could cope was to turn off their eyes. They saw something so terrible that they didn't want to see any more, ever. Clio suddenly understood how that could happen.

Then the colonel stopped raging. He seemed to slump his shoulders in defeat. He barked at the soldiers. They immediately shouldered their weapons and raced to the vans, leaving their prisoners in the gravel of the parking lot. Harmony held up her hand and the mob stopped their advance. Clio thought it was rather like watching a silent horror film.

"He's giving up!" cried Seth. "They are leaving!"

The colonel slowly and belligerently got into one of the vans. He yelled some parting shot and the DARPA vans sped off. It would have been a very dramatic exit if the road were not completely blocked with cars.

As it was, the vans had to slowly pick their way through a ditch and drive on the shoulder. As people put down their weapons and began milling about, the vans finally disappeared over the horizon. Clio let out a breath she didn't realize she had been holding.

She pulled away from Seth and raced down the hill towards her mother just as Kalliope roared up on her steamcycle, armed to the teeth. Clio realized that her sister had mounted some sort of cannon on her cycle. That's probably what took her so long to get here, Clio thought. She thought about making some snide comment, but was too busy pushing her way through the crowd around her mother.

Harmony was white as a sheet. She stumbled as gracefully as she could towards the building. Blood soaked her shirt. Clio fought to her side and began guiding her to the building while trying to keep the crowd back. She didn't want any enthusiastic friend to accidentally bump her mother. Kalliope was close behind her, cutting a swath through the crowd with tears streaming down her face. When she saw the blood on her mother, she snarled. Dropping a few guns, Kalliope picked up her mother and strode quickly to the building, leaving the crowd behind.

The building was in shambles. Anything that had not been taken was ruined. Injured animals cried piteously. Glowing fish flopped on the floor, their tanks smashed. At least someone had put out the fires caused by the cows.

"We need to keep everyone out until we can make sure it is safe," said Clio as Kalliope gently laid her mother down on a lab bench. She grabbed a lab coat and wadded it up for a pillow.

"Get Terpsi here," Kalliope replied.

Clio shook her head. "She took the kids and ran. I'm not calling her until we are sure those DARPA guys are gone and not coming back."

Kalliope looked like she might hit Clio for a minute, but instead pointed to Harmony. "Then you fix Mom," she said, her lower lip trembling slightly. "Do it now."

"Girls, girls, no fighting," Harmony whispered.

"Get me a first aid kit. Over there, in that cabinet," replied Clio.

Clio could see that he sister would seriously lose it if she didn't do something soon. So she bent over her mother. Kalliope could never understand that genetics and medicine were two totally different fields. Now was not the time to educate her.

Clio took her mother's vital signs and began gently peeling off her bloody shirt. There was a bullet wound in her shoulder, close enough that it may have shattered a bone or torn the joint, but far from the major arteries that would mean death.

Clio poured rubbing alcohol over the wound. Harmony sucked in her breath sharply. As gently as she could, Clio pulled Harmony's shoulder up to see the other side. Harmony cried out in pain. Kalliope began cursing at her sister, the military, and the world. She did it thoroughly, leaving no one's parentage or personal appearance untouched.

"I have to check for the exit wound," Clio snapped when Kalliope moved to stop her. "We are in luck. The bullet went all the way through. Keep gauze on the wound and let's get her to the hospital."

Clio suddenly realized there were other people in the room. Joanna was in one corner, directing platoons of volunteers to get animals back in their cages and plants in their pots. She made sure the reporters were there, filming every detail of the destruction.

Clio looked around. She found Jason at her elbow and Seth standing anxiously by the door. Turning her head made her temples throb.

"My truck is right outside," said Jason. "Let's go."

"The closest hospital is an hour drive away," Seth objected. "We can take her to the Omerta facility."

Harmony shook her head feebly. "Public," she whispered. "Need to be in public."

"Mom wants to go to the hospital," announced Kalliope."Jason, let's move her. Now."

Clio and Seth followed them out the door. Harmony reached out to lay a cool hand on Clio's arm. "Need you to stay here," she whispered to her daughter. "Since I can't."

Clio wanted to object. She wanted to go with her mother. Instead, she squared her shoulders and stepped back to let them go.

Jason carefully bundled Harmony as Kalliope hopped in behind them. Jason paused to squeeze Clio comfortingly and then leapt to the driver's seat.

"That guy is always around," Seth commented. He almost laughed as Max appeared out of the crowd and slipped into the truck before it roared off. Seth wondered when Jason would notice the extra passenger.

"Who?" Clio asked. She had responded without thinking, her mind on her mother.

"Jason," replied Seth, his mind on her lab. "He never leaves. Even without the, uh, other project you two are working on, there's really no excuse for him to be around all the time like he is."

"Jason is a family friend. He's always around when I need him," Clio said, bending to pick up some broken glassware.

Seth studied her for a minute. "He was around this time because you called him, didn't you? You needed help and you didn't think I could do it so you called him."

"Oh, for the love of God, Seth. I can't bicker with you about my ex-boyfriend right now,"she cried, thoroughly annoyed. She stood up to look for a trash bin that wasn't already overflowing with a fortune in broken equipment. She heard police sirens.

"I could do with fewer sirens in my day, that's for sure," Clio sighed. She set down the broken glass, dusted off her hands and walked out to meet the police.

Seth caught her by the elbow. "Maybe you shouldn't go out there. What if this is round two? What if they are here to arrest you?"

Clio pulled away from him. By this time, her head was throbbing from a monumental headache. She was almost surprised other people couldn't hear the pounding in her skull. "Then they arrest me. If that will stop more shooting, then that's what I'll do." She walked to the door with Seth trailing behind her. Actually, a nice quiet cell sounded appealing right now.

Any ideas about preventing more shooting died at the entrance of the building. The sheriff and his men were lined up behind their cars, guns drawn and pointed at the hundred or so armed people in the parking lot. The mob had their weapons drawn and were pointing right back. The mob began shouting and shuffling towards the police cars. The police pulled out tear gas canisters and held them aloft in an unspoken threat.

"Everybody take it easy!" shouted Clio over the sirens. The impending doom paused. Clio walked out, but Seth held her back so she couldn't walk between the two groups. The sheriff edged over to his car and turned the lights and sirens off.

"Clio, what the heck is going on out here?" the sheriff shouted.

"Military men just left, sheriff. They destroyed our lab and carted off everything they could find. They shot my mom," Clio's voice broke for a moment, but she continued when she heard gun safeties switched off and muted cursing from her mob of protectors. "They would have taken a bunch of our people, but these nice folks here convinced them to leave." She gestured to the mob.

Joanna pushed her way out of the building to stand by Clio. "They had no warrants, sheriff. I asked to see some identification so we'd know they were really military and not terrorists. A soldier hit me over the head. Bob asked them to get the police. Legally, they should at least call you so someone would know we were taken. They hit him in the face with a gun."

Everyone looked at Bob and the crusted blood down his shirt. His nose was swollen to twice its normal size. Clio turned to look at Joanna and saw the blood crusted on her neck and the matted lump behind her ear.

Joanna leaned over to Clio and whispered, "I made sure the reporters filmed every disgusting inch of it." Clio almost smiled, but she almost started crying too.

The sheriff absorbed this information. "Nobody told me anything about the military having business here. Definitely no one told me that they would be raiding your lab today. I don't know what's going on here, but I think all these folks here need to put down their guns so we can figure it out."

"You aren't taking anyone today," shouted a voice in the mob. There were a few cries seconding that notion.

"I have no orders to arrest anyone," the sheriff declared loudly. "And if I did, I would wait until I was one hundred percent sure that they were legal and above board before I acted on them." His voice hardened and he took a step towards the mob. "But if any of you hotheads fires a single shot, I promise you are going to spend months in a hospital, wishing I arrested you today."

"Please lower your weapons," Clio called. "The sheriff is here to help." There was a little grumbling, but the guns came down. A collective sigh of relief went up.

"Now y'all get out of my way so I can do my job," the sheriff roared. He strode into the building with every policeman in the county following in his wake.

Clio's headache continued for the next hour as she went over everything with the sheriff. Then she needed to check to see how much of her lab remained. If anything, her headache got worse as she realized the full extent of the damage.

"I just don't understand why this happened," the sheriff said. "Maybe tomorrow they'll be back with a warrant to arrest everyone in town and Bigfoot Wallace."

Joanna put a hand on his shoulder as he looked around in a daze. "Sheriff, you are a good man in a troubled world. You need a hobby to relax you," she gently steered him towards the door. She felt that the sooner the police and everyone left, the faster the cleanup would go.

"I like fishing, but you know how the rivers are these days. If there's fish in them, chances are you don't want to be antagonizing them," he said, taking his leave.

"Can I suggest perhaps starting an online game like Revolution World?" Joanna replied. "I play it myself and find it quite soothing. Very easy to play."

"A lot of my deputies play. I may give that a try," the sheriff commented. Then he turned and began directing the removal of the mob and the police.

"We may have to lay some people off," Joanna said when she returned. She punched calculations into her handheld. "It's going to be very tight, trying to replace all the equipment and start over on the research that was destroyed. Thank God Seth was able to move our data so they couldn't destroy it. If it weren't for that, we may not be in business at all."

Seth gave her a small smile. He had been a ghost, shadowing Clio all night.

"And your other security features worked like a dream. Everyone was on alert the minute they kicked in the doors and the network snapped shut like a steel trap," Joanna continued. "It's a cold comfort, but they didn't find anything here they could use against us. Nothing to incriminate us and not a shred of our research protocols to steal."

Clio was on a call with Jason. He reported that her mother was stabilized and resting after having a few stitches and a synth blood transfusion.

"Kalliope is camped out in front of her door, glowering at everyone who walks by," Jason told her.