“Shit, I count at least twenty, thirty. You?”
Vern’s estimation of three armed soldiers had apparently been off. “I don’t know. I can’t see anything. Stand behind me.”
Vern pressed forward.
“Halt,” they shouted.
When she did not, she heard someone shout the order to fire. She’d been in this position before, and it had ended with her and Gogo’s capture, but her will would not be broken. By the time the bullets—and they were bullets this time—launched forward, she’d already flung her exoskeleton in a protective shield around herself and Gogo.
The assault of rifle fire would’ve blown anyone else to the ground, but the bottom spokes of Vern’s carapace punched into the dirt, steadying her. Hundreds of rounds slammed into the white bone sheathed around her, the pain of it rattling.
Vern couldn’t break the stalemate without risking Gogo. She needed to find a way to make them stop.
“What the fuck?” said Gogo. “What happened?” The shooting had ceased.
“Let’s go,” said Vern. She didn’t have time to explain that simply by wishing it, she’d released spores into the air that forced the soldiers to enact her will, temporary vessels of the fungus.
She hadn’t wanted to do that. A mind was a private thing, and Vern had no business in anyone else’s. In the moment, it had been a matter of protecting herself and Gogo. She could forgive herself for using the ability defensively on reflex. It had been as much the fungus’s doing as hers. It had been guarding its conked fruit.
“Stay down,” Vern said, but for good measure she shoved Gogo toward a massive oak to the side of them for cover.
“Here!” Gogo called, and tossed Vern Ollie’s semiautomatic. The lights impaired her sight, but this close, it didn’t matter. She shot each soldier one by one, hurrying as fast as she could, not knowing when the spores would wear.
Gogo tossed her another clip after she emptied the first, then followed Vern’s lead and fired with her hunting rifle. When the last of the soldiers were dead, Gogo ran toward her. They held each other tight.
Such senseless life-taking did not feel good, but the military had opened fire first. They’d aligned themselves with the nation that had made the Blessed Acres of Cain, and that was one of its smaller sins. They’d been foolish if they’d come out tonight thinking Vern would offer mercy.
“Let’s go, more will be coming,” said Vern. Gogo chased after her.
Vern tore the metal gate from its hinges. “Carmichael!” she yelled. “Mam!”
A helicopter whirred overhead. “Fuck,” said Vern.
“It’s KXVTV,” said Gogo. She showed Vern the screen of her phone. Live: Shootout at the Black Power Cult “Cainland”—another Waco? Gogo’s network had come through.
Vern ran toward the buildings that formed the Blessed Acres’ main town area. She stopped when she heard a fresh burst of bullets. They came from in front rather than behind, and she ran toward the sound. “Carmichael!” she called.
More bullets.
“No!” Vern shouted. “Carmichael! Mam!”
Another helicopter joined the first, but what did its presence matter right now when inside the very buildings Vern had called home more than half her life, government agents were carrying out a massacre? “They’re doing it! They’re killing them,” Vern cried out.
“You don’t know that,” said Gogo, but Vern felt it, a cord snapping. It stilled her in her tracks.
Her breaths sounded like sobs, syncopated and shrill as air rushed in and just as quickly rushed out. Gogo’s arms wrapped around her, but Vern couldn’t stop herself from hyperventilating.
Outside the compound gates, Vern saw the flashing lights of police cars. News vans came next and then finally civilians, each of them with a phone, recording the sight before them. “The cops,” Gogo said, shaking Vern, trying to wake her from her stupor. But what did it matter if she died?
“Vern, I’m so sorry,” said Gogo, squeezing her hand.
“It’s my fault. My leaving caused this.”
“No. By leaving you saved yourself. Who knows what would’ve happened if you’d stayed?”
“If I’d gotten here sooner, I could’ve stopped it.” She was the same stupid girl she’d always been, no wiser for the years she’d lived on the run. How naive she had been to think anything she did mattered.
“You can stop it now. You can shut it down, whoever did this, CIA, FBI, I don’t give a fuck,” said Gogo.