The Gender Plan Read online

  The hood of the car dipped, and I turned to see Carl climbing on it. “Carl, don’t!” I shouted in warning as the man began to fire, but it was too late. He had barely squeezed the trigger when his body jerked and fell back. I squirmed back out of the car as bullets attacked the rear glass.

  “Is he alive?” I asked whoever was listening, belly-crawling toward the hood.

  I came around the corner where Tim was leaning over Carl, his fingers at his throat. He met my gaze over his shoulder and shook his head. I felt a stab of pain, and then pushed it aside, knowing that if I were to fixate on that feeling, I wouldn’t be able to move forward. I had to focus on the rush of battle, on the adrenaline surging through my veins, and feel as little as possible. I’d done this before, but it was never easy.

  “Take his ammo,” I said softly. “We’ll find him after the battle.”

  Tim’s lips shook, but he nodded, and began to search for the ammunition on Carl’s still form. I slid into a sitting position and looked at Gregory, who was leaning on the other side. “What’s going on?” I asked, my voice almost a shout over the sounds of the guns.

  “Mags is almost to the top, but she’s drawing heavy fire from our side,” he announced. “We need to make it to the next car.”

  “Right.” I pulled my legs up and went to a crouch, turning to face the front of the car. Taking a deep breath, I flexed my thighs and moved up a few inches, trying to get the lay of the land before we proceeded. My eyes were just making out the forms beyond the window when I felt something hot bite into the tip of my ear. I jerked back and down, my fingers reaching up and feeling the edge of my earlobe, coming away with the smallest pinprick of blood. A cold sweat came over me as I realized that if the shot had been any farther to the right, I would have been dead.

  “Viggo! Someone is in the first car!” Gregory’s sharp shout caught my attention, and I turned to watch as the first car that had stopped on the road, far behind us now, came to life and streaked back in reverse. The driver—whoever it was—rounded it out, and then barreled forward, shooting up the road.

  I watched it plow toward us, an idea coming to my mind. “Get ready to run behind that thing,” I shouted, squat-walking closer to him. Tim loped over on his hands and feet behind me, and I watched as the car drew nearer.

  Then it was past and I was vaulting over the corner of the car, one hand planted on the trunk as I flew over. I landed roughly on my feet and rolled forward to shed some of the momentum, and then I was running, my boots hitting hard and fast as I raced behind the vehicle. I kept my eyes peeled left, then right, and began firing moments later, managing to hit a woman standing just at the crest of the hill on the left.

  The ploy was working, and I heard Tim and Gregory’s guns go off around me as they followed. We pushed the last few feet up the hill, and then the car cut right sharply, just past the last car to make it to the top. I sprinted for it, my breathing coming in sharp gasps as the enemy fired upon us. I hip fired, trading accuracy for intimidation, as we ran.

  Just behind the person who’d raced up the hill, the final car’s windows were shattered, and I could see the bullet-riddled body of one of Drew’s men still slumped in the driver’s seat. I made it to the car and threw open the driver-side door, using it for more cover. Gregory followed suit with the door behind me, boxing me in slightly.

  Keeping my back to the interior side of the door, I quickly ejected a magazine and inserted a new one. I looked up to see the firelit figures of Matrian forces moving toward us, and leveled my gun at them, this time taking a moment to sight down the barrel.

  I caught one woman in the shoulder and neck, and another in the leg and stomach. Both fell onto the pavement, and I exhaled, lowering the gun for a second to wipe the sweat off my forehead, then freezing when I saw a long shadow cutting across the scarlet glow of the still burning fires littering the concourse.

  I hesitated, and then fired right through the door, not wanting to risk moving in any direction first. As I squatted higher up, I raised the gun, making sure I had hit her. I ducked back down and ejected the magazine, torn between exhaling in relief that it had worked, or grimacing at the sight of her twitching and gasping for breath as she slowly choked on her own blood.

  After a moment’s hesitation, I stood back up and shot her in the head, unable to let her suffer in her last moments. Then I ducked back down.

  Static crackled, and then Mags was there in my ear. “Viggo, they’re falling back into the industrial compound!”

  “Chase ‘em,” I replied, chambering the round. “But stay close to the main entrance. That’s the goal.”

  I shot at a form moving toward the car, and then inched forward around the car door. Several olive-clad women ran for me, and I fired on them, catching the one whose gun was swinging toward me in the chest, and the woman next to her as well. I heard Gregory give a triumphant shout and turned, watching as Alejandro crested the hill, his team by his side. He ran past the car, stopping to fire.

  Trusting he knew what he was doing—even though I wanted to scream at him for not seeking cover—I twisted around and stood, looking past the car toward the large circular dome of the plant.

  By now, women in Matrian uniforms were making for the entrance in a flat-out run, and I could see some of our lines pressing forward, making for it and using the industrial pipes that cut in, over, and out of the concrete concourse as cover.

  “C’mon,” I shouted to Greg and Tim, and moved around the car, running at a slight jog. The car that had led our way sat twenty feet ahead, the engine and hood wrapped around a wide pipe that had once been seated up out of the ground at a ninety-degree angle before joining an L-curve overhead. Water leaked from a bolted seam several feet above, spattering down on the shattered window and crumpled hood.

  I angled to move past it when a movement caught my eye, and I rapidly moved toward it instead. I jerked open the door, the remaining glass shattering with the motion and the hinge heaving and groaning. I looked inside, grimacing when I saw Cruz lying on his back on the glass-littered front seat, which had been tilted all the way back, blood streaking from a gouge in his temple, his shoulder bleeding badly through his fingers. The dash of the car had been driven forward and up in the impact, effectively trapping his legs beneath it.

  He jerked his gun up, and then relaxed it down when he saw it was me. “Did we make it up the hill?” he asked, his teeth clenched in pain.

  I nodded and ducked down. “Let’s get you out of this car,” I said, gripping him under his armpits.

  “Wait, no!” he shouted, but I ignored it and jerked him back, slowly dragging him. He grunted in pain as I strained around his bulk.

  “How did you even get into that position?” I asked through clenched teeth. “Were you lying on your back when you drove up the hill?”

  “I—madre de Dios—my shoulder is shot, pendejo!” He glared up at me, a muscle in his jaw throbbing.

  I ignored his snarl and focused on extracting him from the car as quickly as possible. I looked over and noticed Tim had followed me and was covering our position, but Gregory was nowhere to be seen. Good, he was sticking to the mission and getting the door clear. Cruz groaned as I continued to pull on him, his knees sliding free and spilling more glass on the ground.

  The gunfire was beginning to dim, and I became aware of radio chatter in my ear. It had been nonstop since the start of battle, but I had lost track of it in the intensity of the fighting in front of me.

  “The south entrance is clear,” Ms. Dale said into the main channel. “We’re heading in.”

  “I got a group pinned down behind some pipes by the west entrance,” Amber shouted over the din, gunfire blasting in her mic, indicating—I hoped—that she was firing. “But my team is keeping them in place.”

  I finally got Cruz out, unceremoniously dropping him on the pavement. I grabbed Tim’s attention, signaling to him, and we switched places. He started tending to Cruz’s wound, and I knelt by the trunk of the
car, peering around the corner.

  The dead littered the white concrete concourse, and I wished I could have been happy to see that it was more Matrian forces than our own—but ours were there too. Men and women in dark clothes, lying still, blood seeping out from their cooling forms. I knew most of their names, and I determined that if I lived through this, I would learn the rest of them, too. It was a bitter consolation.

  I looked past them, my eyes focusing on the metal door beyond. Our entrance. Several women were holding the door, hiding behind industrial barrels they’d hastily stacked around it. Muzzle fire came from small gaps in between them, and they had built them up to converge to a small point in between. It was well defended, and gauging by the muzzle fire, they had more than enough people and guns to hold it for a small span of time.

  Time we don’t have, and manpower we can’t afford, I thought, coming to a snap decision. “Wait here,” I told Tim, and I peeled away, heading for the car we had just abandoned back on the hill.

  I raced around it, noting the bullet holes that bit into the front of the car, and pulled Drew’s dead man out, laying him on the pavement next to it as respectfully as I could, given the circumstances. I slammed the rear door shut and then climbed in, closing the door behind me.

  The keys dangled from the ignition, and after a quick prayer, I twisted them. The car shuddered, the engine struggling to catch. I held the key down for a second and then, on impulse, tapped the gas. The engine roared to life.

  Throwing the car into gear, I slammed my foot onto the gas pedal and cut the wheel hard, turning on the inner axis. The tires squealed as I swung right, and I cut it back to the left, swerving past Tim and Cruz’s car and aiming directly for the barrels, squeezing between them and the massive black pipe on the other side.

  There was a moment’s lull in the gunfire as their barricade came into view, and then a woman stepped out into the gap between the barrels, a rifle leveled at me. I grabbed the handle and threw open the door, throwing myself out of the speeding vehicle just as she opened fire.

  I landed hard on my shoulder, rolling across the pavement as the car plowed into the barricade. I couldn’t see it, but I heard the shouts and the crash of barrels and the imploding sound of its mechanisms breaking. By the time the world had stopped spinning and I had come back to myself, Tim was kneeling over me, his face taking up my entire frame of view.

  My vision began to jerk to the right, and it took me a moment to realize that he was slapping me lightly on the cheek… and that he had been doing it for a while, judging by the concern lining the young man’s lips.

  I sat up, my shoulder aching fiercely, and allowed Tim to help me up, rotating the sore limb a few times to determine how damaged it was. It wasn’t bad, all things considered, but I couldn’t turn my neck as far as I would have liked, and was betting I had deeply bruised the muscle. I gritted my teeth, knowing I had to move on. As long as I didn’t let it stiffen, it should hold up through the battle.

  The car had smashed against the barrels, scattering them into the Matrian forces. One woman—the one who had fired on me—had rolled over the hood, but the others were down, barrels on top of them. The car blocked the door, but I could see Alejandro and several other people pushing it back, while Mags darted around, checking to see if the Matrian soldiers were dead or wounded.

  I pushed aside the feeling of weariness and hobbled over to the entrance, preparing myself to give orders and get inside.

  32

  Violet

  Morgan downshifted quickly, swerving left around a still burning car in the middle of the street. The tires made short squealing sounds as she cut the wheel back around, rounding out the turn, and I found myself gripping the overhead handle just to maintain my balance.

  “You know, for a girl who’s done very little fieldwork, you drive like a pro,” Owen said as the turn concluded. “Seriously, how’d you learn to drive like that?”

  Morgan’s attention was fully dedicated to the road, her eyes darting around as she kept a firm hand on the wheel. “Desmond cross-trained me a lot. I guess she really didn’t know what to do with me, so it was train on this, with that… over and over again. Until I got relegated to this sort of… security guard slash trainer.” She shrugged, and I chuckled.

  “Wasn’t what you were hoping for?” I asked.

  “When is life ever what you were hoping for?” she retorted bitterly.

  I started to reply when the sound of gunfire blared through the street and bullets clinked against the side of our car. I couldn’t help but jerk down in the seat, even though I knew I was overreacting. We had taken one of Ashabee’s special cars, a small vehicle with top-of-the-line body armor and bulletproof windows.

  The gunshots continued, on either side of the vehicle, and Morgan bit off a curse as the window went gray. We were driving into smoke. She slowed the car immediately, reducing our speed to a crawl. “It’s insane out here,” she said as she inched forward, trying to pick a path through the swirling darkness, the headlights barely illuminating our path.

  I moved back in my seat. The gunfire was still happening, but behind us, and definitely moving away from us, possibly even faster than we were moving. The haze was thick, obscuring most everything in soot and shadow. I peered through the glass, hissing as a dark shape passed close by the window, my hand tightening on the gun.

  “Can you pick up the pace, please?” asked Lynne, her voice taking on a high-pitched quality. She was nervous, not that I could blame her, and—

  “Violet?” Thomas’ voice in my ear cut my thought off before it had fully formed.

  I pressed my fingers together. “What’s up, Thomas?”

  “I got good news, bad news, and worse news.”

  “What’s the good news?” I immediately asked, and then regretted it. Amber always saved it for last, and maybe it was better that way.

  “I found Desmond, or rather, where she was as of two minutes ago. She’s definitely making her way to the plant, and you’re right on her tail.”

  I let everyone know the good news, and Morgan smiled—more a baring of her teeth—and said, “Good.”

  “What’s the bad and the worse news?” I asked.

  “The bad news is she’s on a safer road than you, so you might be delayed. The worse news is that the rioting in your area has gone from bad to worse.”

  I frowned. “Thomas, how do you know that?”

  “I’m still flying my drone,” he replied. “Ms. Dale and the other groups don’t need it at the moment. I’ve gotten all the intel I could for them, so she had me come over to help you with…” He paused, and I waited, keeping an eye on the thick, roiling clouds blanketing the street.

  He probably had gone to the other channel. I would’ve joined him, but now that my drone was down and I was in the field, I only needed to be in there if there was an emergency decision to be made. And even then, I trusted them to handle it. If I got on, it would only distract people from the can of worms they were about to open, if things were going according to schedule.

  “It’s finally lightening up,” breathed Morgan, her spine relaxing a little as she continued to move the car carefully forward.

  “Violet! Look out, there’s an enhanced human right in front of you!” Thomas’ line held enough alarm that I was already shouting for Morgan to stop, even before his warning was fully finished.

  She slammed the brakes, and I jerked forward a little in my seat as we stopped, expecting at any moment to see a figure with a gun emerge. The haze in front of us shifted and swam. “Back up,” I whispered, slipping the gun out my pocket.

  “Violet, you can’t shoot through the…” Owen trailed off as a bearded man lumbered into view, the mist parting and allowing us to see him face to face.

  His clothes were ripped and dirty, and blood dripped down half his face, making it glisten in the headlights. He was definitely older—maybe mid-twenties—which meant he would be more unstable than the younger boys we’d faced in the past
. Stumbling, he slammed into the car, and then screamed, spittle flying in large wads from his lips. He drew his hands together, lifting them high over his head, and then brought them back down.

  “Reverse reverse reverse!” I repeated as my whole body clenched, going stiff in preparation for the oncoming blow.

  Morgan clutched the gear shift and revved the engine, propelling the car backward just in time. The man stumbled forward as his target moved away from him, his fists landing on empty air. Morgan whipped the car around, and the man looked up and began to charge.

  “Go go go!” shouted Lynne, and Morgan went, her foot slamming on the gas as she cut the wheel hard. The man dove for the rear window, and I clicked the safety off of my gun and pointed it through the window at him in case he could break the bulletproof glass. Morgan pulled away too fast, and the man fell and rolled across the pavement.

  “Look at the map,” Morgan shouted, and Lynne rummaged in her bag, pulling out our map of the city. She spread it open as Morgan hit a hard left, and I found myself reaching for the handle, even though I was twisted around in the seat, watching the smoky fog. The car bucked as Morgan hit something, and Owen’s side of the car erupted in red as embers sprayed out across the window next to him.

  The fog suddenly cleared, and then we were speeding away from a thick gray cloud. “Is he back there?” Lynne asked shakily.

  I scanned the receding line, and started to shake my head, when the man darted out, leaping over an overturned car and landing on the other side. His face immediately moved toward us, like he was a dog who’d caught our scent, and he roared, cutting a path straight for us.

  “He’s catching up!” I shouted. “Why are we moving so slowly?”

  “There’s stuff in the road!” Morgan barked back as she yanked the wheel to avoid yet another obstacle.

  The man drew closer, and I felt my heartbeat increase. As much as I didn’t want to hurt one of the boys, the inevitability of it was a looming shadow in my heart. Suddenly the gun felt heavy, and I wanted to drop it on the seat.