Lord of Order by Brett Riley (the reading list book TXT) 📕

and a pouch of sidearm ammunition, three or four canteens, and a sack of jerky.

He stood. Bout time. Gabe alive?

Stransky peered out the nearest window. He’s goin after Tetweiller. How you gonna signal your people?

Let me take care of the other guards and I’ll show you. Pass this stuff out, except the pistol ammo.

As the whispering Troublers argued over who should get the guns, Stransky followed Hobbes to a bedroom with windows looking onto the side yard. The guards were visible through thin white curtains. Hobbes reached into his shirt and pulled out a pistol fitted with a long screw-on barrel.

Nice, Stransky said.

He aimed at one sentry’s head and pulled the trigger. The gun barked, the sound still too loud in the quiet house. A neat round hole in the curtains, the tinkling of broken glass. Hobbes shot the other guard as the man stood over his fallen friend. It took perhaps two seconds.

He turned to her. Gotta hurry in case the others heard.

He trotted to the sliding glass doors leading to the backyard, Stransky on his heels. He unlatched them and threw them open. Two Crusaders turned their way. One managed to spot the weapons and draw his sidearm before Hobbes shot them both between the eyes. As they fell over on their backs in the ankle-deep grass, Hobbes was already moving back through the house. Stransky stopped in the living room and shushed her people.

No sound from outside.

A moment later, Hobbes burst into the room. Ain’t nobody out there, he said. Must have heard us. Gonna have company soon.

He dashed down the hall.

Stransky turned to her group and shrugged. Well, okay. I reckon we’ll just stay here and wait on em to shoot us then.

Hobbes returned, carrying a bag that rattled as he walked. He dragged a spool of string, playing it out on the floor.

Damn, someone said.

Shit, said Stransky. You ain’t fuckin around.

Hobbes winked. It was like watching a rattlesnake walk upright. Let’s make some noise, he said.

What’s in the poke?

Two hatchets and a load of hacksaws.

She nodded at a Troubler, who took them from Hobbes. About ready?

Almost. He took a paper out of his back pocket and handed it to her. Here.

She opened it. He had drawn a crude map with positions throughout the city marked with a series of X’s. What’s this?

Locations for my caches, Hobbes said. In case I get blasted.

You’re too pretty to die, Stransky said.

Hobbes turned to the others. Got a fast fuse here, so hit the street shootin. Kill every Crusader you see and free as many prisoners as you can. Take any weapons you find and arm the freed folk.

A scraggly-looking man with a long black beard said, You ain’t gotta tell us shit. We been waitin on this day all our lives.

All right then. Hobbes took some matches out of his pocket and struck one on his boot. He lit the fuse and backed away.

You ready? Stransky asked.

Reckon so.

Outside, they fanned out toward either end of the block, shooting and reloading. Crusaders gathered at the intersections fell to the pavement in silence or screaming and holding their guts, their throats, their shoulders. Two or three returned fire. One of Stransky’s men cried out and fell on his face, his gun clattering on the street.

Stransky took the bag of blades from her man and tossed it toward the nearest captives. Free yourselves, she said. Grab the first weapon you can find and follow us.

And then, with a thunderous roar like what the ancients’ city-killing bombs must have sounded like, the house blew up, raining fire and brick and burning wood into the street.

32

Troy’s band was still approaching Tetweiller’s house when the explosion rocked the city. Guards and detainees alike turned to watch the ball of fire, the smoke. Even the men stationed outside Tetweiller’s front door ran to the sidewalk and pointed, arguing about what they should do. And in that moment, Troy drew his silenced weapon and shot them in the head. They fell like the two-hundred-pound sacks of meat they were and moved no more. A Troubler woman nearby raised one finger to her lips and winked. Troy trotted up the walk and opened the door, leading his little flock into the den, where they found Tetweiller prying up the floorboards with a crowbar and hauling out weapons, food, canteens, ammunition.

He looked up at them. You get the ones around the house?

No, said Troy. We just walked on in.

Tetweiller screwed a silencer on a Glock. Good to see you again, Gabe. Troy clapped him on the back and started loading down the Troublers with supplies while Tetweiller went from room to room, dispatching the guards through the windows as Hobbes had done. When he returned, he took his gun belt and favored sidearms from a Troubler. Sorry, boy. These have stood me in good stead longer than you’ve been walkin the earth.

Come on, Troy said. We got a lot of city between us and the lakefront.

Hang on, said the old man. He disappeared down the hall and came back with a set of burlap sacks filled with hatchets and hacksaws. He doled them out. Y’all distribute these to yonder chain gang.

Troy opened the front door, saw what was out there, and slammed it again, shouting, Duck!

He and Tetweiller hit the floor as a volley of shots splintered the door. Troy jarred his sore knee and groaned as the man behind him cried out. Blood spattered the floor, the wall. More grunts and moans. Troy looked up. The man who had been standing behind him and a bullet-riddled woman lay twitching as the rest of the Troublers crawfished into the den. Troy grabbed the dying woman’s hatchet and followed, crawling over her and through her blood.

What the hell? panted Tetweiller.

They’re convergin on your driveway. I reckon they saw the bodies.

Shit.

They let us bottleneck ourselves. We’re lucky we lost only two.

Stupid. Stupid.

Everyone gathered around the wounded. The woman made a horrible gurgling sound. She