The Gender Plan Read online

  At the mouth of the city, a fire raged from inside the crop harvester Cruz had used to crash through the barricades. Angry red flames engulfed the cab, black smoke roiling off the top and pouring into the sky. With the windows of the buildings on either side of it, the image looked like a face screaming in anger.

  Right in front of it, resting on its side a few feet away from the burning, was the trailer we’d kept Solomon in, rolled on one side, like some offering to a dangerous god.

  “Stop the car,” I ordered. “I have to go look at it!”

  “Are you insane?” said Lynne. “Solomon could be out!”

  “Solomon could be hurt,” I snapped back at her, my fingers searching blindly for the handle. I met Owen’s eyes in the mirror. “You don’t have to come,” I told him as I successfully found and opened the door.

  “Yes, I do,” he said solemnly as he slid open the door and stepped out onto the pavement. “Keep it ready to go,” he told Morgan, and she slid out of the backseat to switch places with him, her face flushed but focused.

  Doubt diminished my certainty as I took a step forward on the road I’d witnessed a battle on hours earlier, and I paused for a moment, fighting through it. There were so many fears I could entertain, but unless I kept moving forward, I would never know what the truth was. After what Solomon had sacrificed for me—his very sanity—I wasn’t about to ignore him for the sake of convenience.

  Owen shadowed me silently as we cautiously walked up the road toward the trailer, his eyes darting around the overturned barricades and past a vehicle with half the roof missing. I didn’t blame him for being jumpy—I felt exposed and vulnerable in the middle of that road. The fire lit up the sky, but it created long, creeping shadows, cast by the broken things left over from the battle, which seemed to be reaching towards us. If Solomon was out there, we would step on him long before we ever saw him.

  “This is where she swerved the trailer,” Owen said suddenly, and I started. He held up his arm and pointed to a set of still standing barricades, set up in an L across half the road. “She took it left, and tried to hook it back around.”

  I saw what he was talking about. The L-shaped configuration had created a space to the left of it, but it tapered sharply back around. Desmond had smashed through many barricades by this point, and gauging by the view of the front of the cab, it had been smashed to pieces.

  Honestly, I didn’t care how she had done it. What I cared about was the trailer and the cargo it had been transporting. I pulled my gun out as we drew closer to the cab. With a nod at Owen, I pulled to the right and went wide, keeping my gun trained on the sideways rectangular hole where the windshield used to be.

  The cab was empty, deserted, but I kept my gun on it while Owen moved close, making sure no one was still inside. “It’s empty,” he called, and I let out a deep breath.

  “We need to check the back,” I told him, moving past him along the long metal shipping container we had been keeping Solomon in. The fire roared just behind it, only a few feet away, and I could feel the heat coming off it in thick waves, making sweat break out on my forehead. “This thing is a steel oven. He could roast alive.”

  “Violet, slow down!” Owen said, jogging up and catching my arm. “It’s my job to keep you safe, and while I knew you wouldn’t make it easy, I didn’t think you’d be this careless with your own safety. At least let me check the area around us first.”

  I exhaled and slowed down, but didn’t stop. We approached the corner of the trailer’s container slowly, but as it grew nearer, I realized that one door was open, the corner of it partially buried under a large mound of grass and dirt, indicating it had skidded slightly when it tipped over.

  I moved around it, almost as terrified of hearing Solomon’s guttural roar as I was of finding his lifeless, broken body inside—but not quite. Owen stepped in front of me as we came around the corner, keeping himself between me and the potential danger.

  The trailer was empty. I stared at it, unsure of my own eyes. “I’m not sure if this makes me feel better or worse.”

  “It’s okay for it to be both,” Owen replied.

  I opened my mouth, uncertain about how we could continue, when a soft keening noise drifted into my ears. It was barely audible, and I couldn’t be quite certain that I’d even heard it over the roar of the fire from the harvester.

  “Did you hear that?” asked Owen, his head snapping to the left, looking just past the corner of the smoking harvester and toward several barricades grouped around the edge of the building.

  “I was just about to ask you,” I replied, flexing my grip around my pistol. “Let’s check it out.”

  I let him go first, trying to be considerate of his new role as my bodyguard. It felt weird to even think of him that way. After all, I had been the one to save all three of us at Ashabee’s, and with a broken arm and a broken skull to boot. But I had resolved to make this work, for Owen’s sake, and that meant compromises like this one. Sometimes.

  Owen hunched over as he moved toward the sound, which was louder now—a choked, whining sound that made my heart want to cry out in sadness. He went wide as we came closer to the nearest barricade, creating distance between himself and the other side as he circled around it. I slowed my pace but didn’t change trajectory.

  The keening continued, and I slowly stepped around the broken edge of the barricade—and froze as I saw Solomon sitting a few feet away. He was rocking back and forth, his knees clutched to his chest, the soft sound that had caught our attention coming from his mouth.

  Owen clicked on his flashlight, shining it on the ground next to Solomon, and my heart seemed to stop when I saw golden curls stained with blood. Solomon flinched, his cries cutting off as he held up his hand to shield his eyes from the flashlight. Owen shifted the beam of light a few feet away, obscuring the damaged remains of Tasha’s face, much to my relief.

  Solomon sniffed, gave another cry, and began rocking again.

  “Did they know each other?” I whispered softly to Owen, and he nodded.

  “They were friends,” he said softly. “I don’t know if there was something more there.”

  I watched Solomon crying, my heart aching for his pain. I had no idea if he’d killed her or not, but the fact remained that he was crying. This was behavior he hadn’t exhibited before. Was he changing? Was that medication finally working its way out of his system? Or had the death of somebody he’d loved awoken those feelings in him as nothing else could?

  “I’m going to try to talk to him,” I whispered.

  “Violet, that’s not a good idea…”

  Owen exhaled sharply, but didn’t try to stop me. I moved slowly, making sure to avoid Tasha’s body. Solomon stopped his rocking as I began to approach, watching me with dark, glittering eyes. The wetness on his cheeks glistened red from the fire burning behind him, and it made him look like he was crying drops of blood, giving him a sinister appearance.

  I shook off the impression, remembering the man I had known. When I had first met Solomon, I had been intimidated by his brooding nature and massively built physique, but it hadn’t taken long for me to realize there was more to him than that. This was a bit like that… but this time, the danger was real. I channeled that apprehension as I took another step, emboldened by his lack of protest or aggression.

  “Hey, Solomon,” I greeted him gently, moving even closer. He growled, a sharp, angry sound, and I froze. He stopped, and I got the message, sinking down to my knees and sitting. “I’m sorry about Tasha.”

  I meant it with every fiber of my being. Solomon stared at me, and then his eyes drifted down to where Tasha’s body sat in the shadow, his eyes moving like he could see every horrific detail of it. He pressed his fists into his eyes, a high-pitched sound escaping him, almost like steam from a tea kettle.

  I watched the pain move its way through his body, my heart bleeding for him. “Are you injured?”

  Solomon lifted his head, his eyes a mixture of rage and des
pair. He struggled, squeezing his eyes shut and rocking his head back and forth, twitching madly. After a moment, he nodded, his eyes opening to watch me closely.

  “Will you let me look at it?”

  He hesitated. He closed his eyes, squeezing them shut tight. He took a shuddering breath in, and then exhaled, shaking his head no. I sighed, but didn’t argue. I could tell he was expending a lot of energy just trying to respond to my questions, and it was frustrating him. If I pushed him too hard, he could snap again.

  “Solomon… we’re going into the city. To chase Desmond.” His head snapped up, and his lips lifted in a silent snarl. “We can make room for you in the car. You should come with us.”

  Solomon leaned back, away from me. His eyes flicked from me, to Owen, to the car sitting on the road, waiting for our signal. He shook his head.

  I opened my mouth to say something new, but Solomon was clearly done, and he stood up in a fluid motion, so abruptly that it took me by surprise. I took in a sharp breath, trying not to move a muscle, worried that he might have reverted back to that angry, screaming monster that wanted to hurt everything around him.

  Instead, he vaulted easily over the barricade into the city, cutting through the long shadows, leaping up on the side of the trailer and then over the harvester and disappearing into the city on the other side. I watched him go, half of me still startled by his sudden movement, the other half relieved for so many reasons—but all of me worried about what Solomon would do in the city.

  Owen moved away a step and waved to Morgan and Lynne, letting them know it was safe. They pulled up quickly, and I moved to the car, sparing one last look at the rooftops, hoping to see Solomon lurking up there. Then I got in behind Lynne on the passenger’s side and fastened my seatbelt.

  “Catch us up with Desmond,” I told Morgan as she put the vehicle in gear, navigating us around the burning harvester and back onto the road into the city.

  31

  Viggo

  “Give me just a minute, please,” said Jeff over the line, polite as ever.

  “We don’t have many to waste right now,” Henrik warned in return. I lifted the binoculars back to my eyes, staring up the grassy park slope at the dark facility from my position on my stomach. In my sights, four women dressed in olive green and moving in formation approached the hill on foot, and I watched them as they began inspecting, their flashlights cutting across the curb-less road, and then across the grass on either side of it.

  We were hundreds of feet away, but there was no telling what other equipment they had on them. I scooted back slowly, dead leaves shifting under my body as I backed away from the tree line. “How’s it look?” asked Alejandro as I eased back into line with him.

  “Four guards at the top of the hill—a patrol. Jeff better get here soon. If they come down that hill, we’re going to have to take them out.” A new apprehension surged through me. Combined, Mags’ and my group still had around thirty men and women, the largest force out of anyone, and it still didn’t feel like enough, even with Thomas’ assessment that there were actually only twenty women milling around outside of the plant.

  My apprehension stretched as Henrik immediately came on the line. “All right, kids, this is it,” he announced gruffly, and I could tell he was feeling it too. I couldn’t blame him. It was his plan, after all. That was a lot of pressure to put on one person, and every life lost on our side was something he was going to carry with him for a long time.

  “Jeff, are you ready?” Henrik asked. Jeff confirmed, and Henrik continued, his voice firm and commanding. “You start your run in five, four, three, two, one.”

  I held up my fingers and began counting down as he did, raising my hand up high enough for my team to see. When I made a fist, nothing happened, at first.

  Then I felt the wind shift, and shielded my eyes at the dust the heloship kicked up as Jeff piloted it low to the ground, the weird whirring noise growing as the ship moved above us. The tips of the trees we were hidden in swayed under the force of the air displaced by the massive propellers, and I moved my binoculars back to the plant’s defenses in time to see one woman pointing up, then running back, disappearing behind the horizon of the hill.

  “Hold your position,” I reminded everyone, speaking loudly, since the wind from the heloship would mask any sound I made. “Don’t move until we see Drew’s team.”

  “Targets acquired,” Jeff broadcasted. “Lighting them up.”

  There was a small, barely discernable hum, and then a thunderous roar went off as the gun mounted to the wings of the heloship activated, cracking through the silence like a never-ending roll of thunder. Even though I knew exactly where he would be—to the left of us, hovering over some trees—I still couldn’t see him until the flash of the guns caught my eye, revealing the heloship’s boat-like underbelly. Something exploded just over the hill, the roll of smoke and fire illuminating the hillside in a bright orange flash, dragging my attention to the battlefield.

  “Fuel tank hit,” said Jeff. “Moving to secondary target.” I watched as Jeff adjusted the line of fire, expending every last bit of ammo we had left on the heloship. The line of bullets cut right, and then left, and several other explosions rocked the night.

  “Yeah, get ‘em, Jeff!” Amber crowed triumphantly over the line. “You are handling that thing beautifully.”

  “Just doing my part, Ms. Ashabee,” he replied, but I could hear the reluctance in his voice. Jeff didn’t enjoy violence, so this had been a compromise for him: hit the fuel reserves that helped supply the emergency generators of the plant, and hopefully stop some of the inner workings of the plant without setting it back so far that it would no longer be able to supply Patrus with water. This had the added benefit of making the Matrian forces pull back a little bit, and giving our assault team a chance to move in—before they realized how small our forces really were.

  “Good work,” announced Henrik. “Drew, bring your team in now!”

  “Roger,” replied Drew’s low voice. My heart began to thud, knowing our time was close, and I tried my best to move past it, settling into the cold and analytical feeling of true battle. I looked down the line, assessing, and saw that several of my people had let go of their rifles to cover their ears, trying to dampen the loud roar of the heloship’s guns. I tapped Alejandro on the shoulder, pointing down the line at them. He nodded, and turned to tap the next person down the line, alerting them to grab their guns.

  Jeff’s guns suddenly fell silent. “Ammo expended, returning to base.” The heloship began to pull away, and a dark movement on the road behind us caught my eye. I turned to watch a dark blue car speed up the hill past me and then swerve right, coming to a screeching halt perpendicular to the road, half on and half off it, the passenger side facing the plant.

  “Go go go!” Henrik shouted as the second car roared up.

  That was our cue. I stood, motioning my team to follow, and charged toward the car, not bothering to stoop over, as it would slow me down. The driver of the first car slid out, rifle clutched to his chest, keeping low. I heard heavy footsteps behind me, alerting me that my team was keeping up.

  The next car barreled up past me when I was just emerging from the tree line, the third hot on its tail. The lead car passed the first, and then cut hard to the right, replicating the first car’s position on the opposite side of the road, ten to fifteen feet past the first. The third one cut back to our side, staggering the line.

  And so it went, the next car becoming the next bit of cover that we could hide behind as we charged up the hill toward our selected entrance to the plant. I made it to the first vehicle and dove behind it as the fifth car passed. “Twenty seconds,” I announced over the transmitter on my team’s channel. “Mags’ team right, Alejandro’s team left… my team right up the middle.”

  Gregory gave me an approving smile from where he crouched beside me, while Tim’s face was neutral. The young man squatted behind the hood of the car at the wheel well, his silver e
yes watching Henrik’s plan unfold. I watched from behind as the cars continued to zoom past, the drivers not bothering to modulate their speed until the very end.

  Rifle fire shattered the calm that had settled in the wake of Jeff’s departure, sounding from the top of the hill, and I watched one car come to a screeching halt on the left side of the road, in the right position—but with no sign of the driver anymore.

  “MOVE!” I shouted, and swung around the back of the first car, charging up the middle. Gregory easily kept pace beside me, while Tim lagged behind, his pistol in his hand. The hill was steep, making it difficult to see the Matrian guards flooding out of the plant until they were at the top.

  Tim was the first to fire, three shots in rapid succession. Three women dropped, and I found myself envious of the young man’s heightened reflexes. More women took their place, however, and I dove for cover behind the third car as bullets began to spray down the hill.

  The next car in the line squealed past, driving directly into their line of fire in hopes of scattering them. The driver—one of Drew’s people—didn’t let up on the gas, even as bullets ricocheted off the hood and window. I fired my rifle around it, trying to help draw some of the fire off of the car, and then its tires squealed as the driver went over the horizon of the hill… and I lost sight of him.

  Gunfire filled the air now, bullets raining thickly on us and pinging and zinging off the cars we hid behind. I continued to press forward, leading the charge up the hill. I darted across the road to the opposite car, firing as I went, and then pulled the back door open. I belly-slid into the backseat, and then sat up, firing on the opposite side of the road from the backseat.