“Tell me your name again, kitty-cat?” he says, hooking a finger under her bikini string.
“Death,” she says.
“Beth?” he says, frowning.
Louise slides her right hand down her hip until she can feel the scissors in her back pocket.
“No,” she says. “Don’t you remember? I’m Death. Destroyer of worlds.”
That’s when the gunfire starts.
*
Legolas is walking the perimeter when the Amazon truck pulls up to the service gate. There are three guards on duty. They watch it come up the drive, pull into the circle, and back up to the gate, beeping jauntily. The driver is mixed race, Black and Asian. He has his arm out the driver’s window, radio on, playing Sinatra.
Fly Me to the Moon.
The gate is a barrier of welded metal bars. Through it, Duane can see the main house down a short driveway. There are two more guards visible on the roof. Duane opens his door, steps down. He is wearing a blue Amazon shirt and white cargo shorts. He gives the guards a wave, walks to the back doors, whistling.
“It’s exciting, right?” he says to the guards. “When the present fairy arrives.”
He pats the back doors, Sinatra swinging, then pulls them open. Inside is a wall of boxes. Duane takes a scanner off his hip, scans a couple. The scanner beeps—wrong box. In the gap, two of the guards move toward him.
Duane speaks without turning.
“Lemme guess. The anticipation is killing you.”
He turns, smiles. “Must be up front.” He walks back to the driver’s seat. “Just be a sec,” he says.
The guards stand behind the van, waiting. The sun rises in front of them, and to keep it out of their eyes, the two guards take a step closer to the van, into the shade. To their light-flooded eyes, the inside of the truck is a black box.
And then, inside, something glints.
The first two shots hit them above the Kevlar. The closest, Dean, is killed instantly. Next to him the other, Morgan, is shot in the neck and falls to the ground, flopping, blood jetting. There is nothing clean or cool about the violence. It is brutish and messy. And fast. So fast. Inside the panel truck, Avon DeWitt takes aim at the guards on the roof and starts shooting.
*
A complex of tennis courts sits on the far side of the Wizard’s north wall. There are five in total, abutting the suburban subdivision that developers named Desert Glen. The courts are flanked by large cypress trees, watered at enormous expense. This is a desert, after all. At dawn, most of the houses are locked up tight, curtains pulled. Blond heads peer out from time to time to check if the apocalypse has arrived at their door in the shape of unruly mobs of black-clad Antifa come to destroy their American freedoms, or at this point who knows—maybe spaceships from above, or the rise of hidden lizard overlords. It’s August. Everything seems possible.
As the sun rises, a young woman in tennis whites pushes a Lobster Elite Liberty Ball Machine up the middle of the quiet main street. The Lobster Elite is loaded to capacity, with one hundred and fifty balls. It can fire them at adjustable speeds to a distance of up to one hundred feet. The young woman, Story Burr-Nadir, pushes it ahead of her on a set of rear wheels like a hand truck. In her right hand she carries a can of gasoline.
It is 5:25 a.m. and the temperature in Palm Springs is already 104 degrees. Ahead she can see Mobley’s fortress. Its perimeter wall stands ten feet tall, but from up the street Story can tell that the roof of Mobley’s guest house is maybe thirty-five feet away, the main house farther on a southwestern trajectory. She pictures the rain of tennis balls she is about to launch.
A pickup truck passes her on oversize tires, slows to a stop. The cab rides some six feet above the ground. There is a gun rack in the back window. The driver’s window slides down. Inside is a man in a baseball cap.
“Need a ride?”
Story looks up. Samson DeWitt sits behind the wheel. He found the truck in the parking lot of an IHOP. All the diner’s windows had been shot out, the bodies of diners mixed with fallen patriots, police officers, soldiers.
The engine was still running, keys inside.
God or luck?
“Stop fucking around,” Story tells him. “We’re late.”
“Yeah, yeah,” says Samson, pulling forward. He flips a bitch in the cul-de-sac, aiming his back bumper toward the chain-link fence that separates the center court from the street. He puts the truck in reverse, steps on the gas. The impact throws him back against the seat, but the chain link gives, the fence toppling. Samson parks the truck next to the net, tailgate aimed at the Wizard’s back wall. He jumps out of the truck, carrying a large plastic Super Soaker—the Soakzooka （$20.99 at Amazon）—which can hold ten gallons of water and fires a deluge up to thirty feet. It is designed to be shot from the hip, like some kind of pool toy weapon of mass destruction. Samson goes around back and lays it in the truck bed. He wears a Smith & Wesson 9mm on his hip for when the real bang bang begins.