Sunrise

Ed was on my right, another squaddie on my left. All three of us aimed our guns up the stairs. Ed had the shotgun he’d taken from one of the warehouse guards—the only gun that was loaded. “You brought knives to a gun-fight,” I called up the stairs.

I fought to keep my hands steady, to keep the tremors rattling my i

The guy at the top stared at us over the tip of the larger knife. The smaller knife flashed in the lamplight, its motion unceasing. “Knives to a gunfight?” he said. “Really? That hoary old saw? It’s not such a bad strategy as you might think, bringing a knife to a gunfight. Within twenty-one feet, the guy with the knife can win every time.”

I didn’t believe him, but it didn’t seem like the time or place to argue the point. “Put your knives down. On the floor. Now!”

He continued in a conversational tone. “If there were only two of you, you’d be dead already. Julia, my throwing knife, would enter your body just above the suprasternal notch. It would puncture both the trachea and the jugular vein. You’d asphyxiate, drowning in your own blood. In the meantime, I’d charge the other guy. His hands would shake—like yours are. He might not even get a shot off, and if he did, it would miss. The first blow with Claudia, my gladius, would sever his arm at the elbow. It’s tough to pull a trigger when your hand isn’t co

The other two guys in my squad, Cliff in tow, clattered into the foyer.

“Shoot this guy, Ed,” I said. “I’m tired of listening to him.”

Ed raised the shotgun to his shoulder.

The guy dropped both his knives. They stuck, quivering in the hardwood floor, handles up, ready for fast retrieval.

I charged up the stairs, Ed and the rest behind me. The guy didn’t move, not even when I reached the top and grabbed his knives. When I stood, I was just inches from him, so close I could smell him—an alcohol scent like cheap cologne.

“Where’s Doctore?” I asked.

He smiled and said nothing.

“Ed, watch him. The rest of you, search this floor. Find Doctore. Make sure there’s nobody behind us.”

Ed took the lamp from the floor. I stepped around him to let the other guys past and tucked the gladius into my belt.

I was stowing Julia, the smaller knife, just as the front door near the base of the stairs burst open. A stream of guys dressed in black rushed in, guns raised. I stepped behind our captive and raised his own knife under his chin. He barely flinched.

A forest of rifles aimed up the stairs toward us. “Tell them to put their guns down,” I said, pressing the point of the knife into his chin.

The guy in the lead yelled up at us. “Orders, Doctore?” He very nearly growled his response. “Standish, you idiot. To start with, don’t give the enemy intel—the fact that I’m in charge, for example.”

“Tell them to put down their weapons,” I said. “S-s-sorry, Red,” Standish said.

“You know why they call me Red?” the guy asked. As he talked, the knife I held nicked his throat, a thick line of blood dripping downward.

“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” I said. “Tell them to put their guns down!”

“Red is the color of the knife, the color of blood, the way of iron, the way of the new world, the world of men. Our laws are the ancient laws, the Laws of Steel,” Red said. His voice crescendoed to a shout, “We are!”

“The Reds!” the men below us screamed in unison. “Johnson!” Red called.

“Sir!” a guy in the middle of the pack yelled back. “Standish failed me. You are hereby promoted.”

“Yes, sir!” he called back.

“Shoot Standish.” Everyone was still for a second. “Now!” Red hollered.

One of the guys in the front started to swivel, but Johnson was faster. He lowered his gun and shot, hitting Standish in the back with a three-round burst. Standish flew forward, crumpled.

“Jesus,” I yelled, “I almost stabbed you! If a firefight starts here you’re—”

“Cliff led them here,” he said. “Shoot him next.”

Cliff tried to move around behind me, but Johnson raised his gun and shot. Cliff was standing so close to me that I could hear the meaty thunks of the bullets hitting his torso.

“Tell them to put down their guns! Now!” I rammed the knife up into the soft underside of his throat, drawing more blood. “I’m this close to stabbing you.”

Red’s voice came out as a croak. “Do as he says.”

The men in the foyer below us—eleven of them now—laid down their guns. Drawn by the gunfire, the rest of my squad had returned. “Floor’s clear,” one of them said. “Just him up here.”

“Yeah, he’s Doctore,” I replied. “Tie ’em all up. We need to check on the other teams.”

Ly

That firefight had put the guards at the east gate on alert. They pi

“I thought you were going to guard the trucks?” I said when I finally caught up to her.

“I never left the truck,” she replied, giving me a shit-eating grin.

It took what little remained of the night to get organized. I sent Darla and Nylce back to the farm with our two remaining trucks to try to recruit reinforcements. Ed consolidated all our captives—including the guy I’d left at the warehouse—on the main floor of Doctore s mansion, tied and under guard. I split everyone else up into groups: three to guard the east gate, a pair to guard the west gate, a pair to guard the prisoners, two pairs to patrol the walls, and two pairs to patrol the streets of the town. I told the street patrols to enforce a curfew—keep everyone at home, indoors.

We were woefully underma

It was locked up tight. “Guess we’ll have to bust open the door.” I started hunting for a log to use as a battering ram—both the overhead door and pedestrian door were metal, and kicking them would only bruise my foot.

“Uh, boss?” Ed said. I paused to look his way. He held a ring of keys, jingling them so they glinted in the light of my lantern.

“Where’d you get those?”

“Took ’em off Cliff’s corpse.”

The third key opened the pedestrian door. Inside, we saw a huge stack of electric water heaters, their boxes forming a wall that blocked our view of the rest of the interior. We crept farther into the warehouse. Most of the racks were loaded with oddments—plumbing fixtures, pipes, electrical boxes, and the like. Along one wall, huge spools of wire rested on their sides.

Finally we found the food: a wall of nearly empty shelves with a few forlorn boxes scattered here and there. A case of sugar-free grape Kool-Aid. A dozen tiny glass bottles of saffron. Two cases of Sriracha hot sauce. A few hundred small paper packets of Sweet ‘N Low, Equal, and Splenda in a moldering cardboard box. I’d like to see the Iron Chefs do anything useful with those ingredients.

Farther along, we found the weapons—hundreds of them laid out in neat rows on floor-to-ceiling shelving. Old black powder rifles. Bolt-action rifles. Pump shotguns. Skeet shotguns. A huge selection of revolvers. I didn’t see any semi-automatic rifles, and the few semi-auto handguns looked old and poorly maintained. I also didn’t see any ammo. A huge section of shelving near the guns might once have held bricks of ammo, but the shelves were empty except for a bottom shelf that held three large wooden crates. I pulled the first crate out onto the concrete floor.