There was no return fire.
“Goddamn it, I think we got their asses!” Grayson thought. He stood up straight.
Nothing. Not a peep from the outbuilding.
“We got ’em. WE GOT ’EM!” Grayson roared. He smacked Dome on the back.
“Go drag ’em out. We gonna make an example of these fuckers,” Grayson said. Dome stood up but hesitated a moment. He really didn’t want to see that little girl’s dead body.
“Don’t make me have to tell you again,” Grayson said. Dome forced his legs to move. The rest of the members of the club that weren’t dead or injured followed him as he stalked toward the building.
Dome kicked open the front door that was to the left of the roll-up door.
When the orange flash filled his entire field of vision, one word appeared in his mind seconds before he was vaporized.
Karma, Dome thought.
Then everything went black.
* * *
Ike almost cried out for joy when his hands found the cool metal rungs of the ladder that sat at the bottom of the faux privy. He pulled himself and Arianna up one rung at a time until they emerged inside the outhouse. Ike pushed the door open and took great deep breaths as he and Arianna stepped out into the sweltering night. Buddy Lee followed them covered in soot and coughing up a lung. Arianna was sobbing uncontrollably.
“It’s okay, baby girl. We gotcha,” Ike murmured as he held her tight.
“Jesus H. Christ, you’d think Chet would have put a better ventilation system in that tunnel. It’s got everything else but an easy chair down there,” Buddy Lee said.
“I’m gonna take her to the truck. She’s scared,” Ike said.
“I’m gonna stay here and see if I can catch me a breath. When you get back we’ll go on down there and see about our friends,” Buddy Lee said. He started coughing again.
“Be right back,” Ike said.
“I’ll be here,” Buddy Lee said as Ike and Arianna made their way up the path.
Ike strapped Arianna in the passenger’s seat. He pulled up a game on his cell phone that involved flying pieces of fruit and put the phone in Arianna’s lap.
“Grandpop gotta go check on something, okay?” he said. Arianna ignored him as she moved her tiny fingers across the phone’s screen.
* * *
Ike and Buddy Lee walked back along the path to the compound in silence. Ike could smell the results of their handiwork on the breeze. A witch’s brew of immolated flesh and a harsh chemical scent halfway between chlorine and alcohol.
“Fucking hell,” Buddy Lee said when they reached the compound. More accurately, when they reached the place where the compound had once stood. A flickering ring of flames one hundred feet in diameter encircled the former militia headquarters. The steel outbuilding was gone. The concrete footing that it had sat upon was cracked in the middle and scorched from end to end. The tactical shooting range had been obliterated. Piles of burning hay from the target backstops littered the ground in all directions.
The motorcycles that had been parked in diagonal lines with military precision were formless clumps of metal more akin to amoebas than machines. Here and there were recognizable parts. A handlebar, a foot peg, a front wheel, but for the most part the bikes had been reduced to twisted amalgamations of leather, steel, iron, and chrome. Their owners had suffered a similar fate.
* * *
Ike carried Gatsby’s pistol. Buddy Lee had his knife and the AR-15 slung over his chest on a strap. They moved through the bodies ready to finish what they had started, but Ike soon came to realize that wouldn’t be necessary. The Breed was done. The ones who hadn’t been torn asunder by the initial explosion had found their insides liquefied by the subsequent shock wave.
Bodies and body parts were strewn across the clearing like party streamers. Buddy Lee glanced up at a pine tree near the tactical course. There were two arms in the tree. They were both left-handed. Buddy Lee shook his head.
“I think this chapter of the Rare Breed done got closed down permanently,” Buddy Lee said.
Ike was about to respond when they heard a pitiful whimpering coming from the direction of the SRX. Ike and Buddy Lee looked at each other, then walked over to the vehicle. All the windows had been shattered from the force of the blast. Ike peered inside the car.
Gatsby was lying over on his side. Blood was dripping from his ear. His lower torso and lap were soaked in red. Ike could smell the pungent odor of shit wafting up from the inside of the car. Ike reached his hand inside the window and put his fingers to the older man’s neck. There was no pulse.