Chapter 5 #2
The man was brash, brave, and strong—great qualities for a soldier.
Terrible for a leader. He had that burnish about him, the kind of effervescence men couldn’t help but follow.
A passion that was so infectious, men would die for it.
But it wasn’t sustainable. There was only so much vigor could get you, before you looked up and realized you were in a fight strength alone couldn’t win.
It was the folly of many great men. Take Alexander the Great. He had the spark and the brilliance to back it up, but he didn’t plan for the one fight he couldn’t win—death. And after he died, with no plan in place, his kingdom crumbled.
No, the true leaders worth following weren’t the ones history romanticizes; it was the ones who brought their men home. Those who retired with accolades and died peacefully, surrounded by family, and a legacy that stretched past the battlefield.
But that wisdom could only be achieved through sweat, blood, pain, and time. All things Alvarez would never have. Not unless he stopped chomping at the bit and took a step back.
“Tell me, what’s the range on an Off Formers shoulder gun?
” Alvarez blinked once, then opened his mouth.
Gabriel cut him off. “Or the ordinance a Drone carries? How about the turning radius of a FUD at a full run?” he stepped closer, flushing in pleasure when Alvarez swallowed and looked at his feet.
“Which ear does a Monkey Cat receive its information from? How many usually cluster together when not attacking?”
The silence was painful. Gabriel let him sit in it for a minute.
“Why don’t you let your balls drop before you start throwing insults?”
For a second, Gabriel thought he would swing. He kind of wished he would. It had been a while since he’d put a kid in his place, but years of military training won over, and Alvarez shrank back, his eyes blazing.
Gabriel smirked.
The competition continues.
Irving cleared his throat. “By establishing their life span, we can get a better understanding of the Monkey Cat’s leader’s tactics and troop deployment.
” Irving continued, ignoring the outburst. “They only live three days, which means they have some way of replenishing their troops. Either by cloning or some sort of breeding program.”
Alvarez moved away from Gabriel, crossed his arms, and looked down at the notes and photographs lined up neatly on Irving’s desk. From where he was standing, Gabriel could make out the neat rows of impossibly small block letters.
“So, you think, what?” Alvarez asked, trying to piece it together. “They’ve got some kind of Beam me up Scotty thing going on?”
Blake would probably make some reference to Kirk fucking a Monkey Cat, but Gabriel hadn’t had enough coffee today for that visual.
Irving looked like he was thinking the same thing. He pressed his lips together. “Perhaps. But if we can find out what that is—”
Alvarez threw his hands up. “More pussyfooting around in the name of intelligence?”
“Clearly, intelligence has never been your strong suit,” Gabriel sneered as he leaned back against the doorway.
Whirling toward him, Alvarez snapped, “Fuck you, Lennox. You’re so busy worrying about taking your man on dates that you can’t be bothered to actually soldier up!” his left eyebrow twitched. “Just because you were in DC when the shit went down doesn’t mean you’re better than me.”
With that, he stormed out, slamming into Gabriel’s shoulder as he passed.
“That was productive,” Irving said dryly.
Gabriel shrugged. “Soothing fragile egos isn’t part of my job description.”
“We need him.”
“He’s not going anywhere.”
Alvarez would hiss and spit, but he’d stay. Because as much as he and Gabriel butted heads, they both wanted the same thing. And they believed this was the group of people to get it done.
Irving left it at that and started going over every detail of the things Gabriel had seen while in DC.
Victoria had kept some good notes as well as taken photos, and that helped.
Irving had interviewed them all with varying results—he insisted on speaking to Judd outside because, in his words, ‘his voice is the living embodiment of inbreeding and my office is too small,’ which Gabriel did not share with Judd.
His sacrifice hadn’t been for much. Everyone knows that to solve a puzzle, you need to find the corner pieces first. The problem was, as many pieces as they had, they had no idea which ones were the corners.
They didn’t know what their puzzle was supposed to look like.
And the indecision was becoming impossible to ignore.
Alvarez was right about one thing—they needed a plan. Something to get them up in the morning. Whether that was making this place a long-term home or continuing to pick away at the aliens, waiting for an opportunity, remained to be seen.
As for making this place a home, it had the foundations.
They had water, shelter, and the ability to hunt and fish.
The couple of trucks they’d found were holding out with whatever diesel they’d been able to siphon.
Even the boat had its uses. The only problem was the proximity to the city.
If the aliens began to expand, they would be right in their path.
Something he’d mentioned to Irving.
“We need to set up a Beta site. Even a Charlie Site. Someplace with a cache of supplies we can retreat to, if needed.”
Gabriel nodded. “I can set Alvarez’s team on that. Beaumont has a nose for scavenging, and Smith knows the area.”
Irving leaned back in his chair, tapping his fingers on the zip ties they’d used to fasten the cushion to the support.
Originally, he’d had a fancy electric wheelchair.
They’d stored it in one of the unused rooms, hoping to eventually rig up a solar battery to it.
For now, he had to use an old chair they’d pulled out of a busted hospital lobby.
“Judd is our best shot,” Gabriel said, stepping to Irving’s desk so he could lean on it.
Irving said there was no room in his office for a second chair, but Gabriel thought it had more to do with a perverse sense of justice—Irving couldn’t stand, so he wouldn’t let anyone sit.
“He can bag more than one deer at a time if we can find a way to preserve them.”
They went back and forth on logistics for a while, but as it always did, it led them right back to where they began.
“We can’t keep this up,” Gabriel admitted.
“It seems not.” Irving straightened a page Gabriel knocked askew. “Perhaps if you would allow us to use Mr. Lewis to his full advantage—”
“No.” Gabriel snapped before he even processed the question.
Irving sighed. “For the sake of our working relationship, I have allowed your protectiveness of Mr. Lewis to go unchecked. But, as much as I didn’t want to believe you when you told me, his hyper-observance is a rare skill. One we could be using.”
“He’s not an asset for you to utilize.” Gabriel knew exactly how that went.
As much as he liked Irving, he didn’t trust him.
Not when it came to decisions about his team, and especially not about Blake.
Despite his intelligence—or hell, maybe because of it—Irving looked at people as a list of parts.
If the parts added up, they were useful to him. If not, discarded.
With a cool look in his dark brown eyes, Irving sized Gabriel up. Listing his parts. “We wouldn’t send him alone, of course. He could go as part of your team. Or even Alvarez, if you didn’t think you could maintain professionalism.”
Gabriel flinched at the insinuation. Of course, he couldn’t be professional. Not when every time he closed his eyes, he saw half-melted bodies sparkling in frost. Or flinched at every clap of thunder, so sure it was the sound of a Monkey Cat slamming into an Off Former.
He knew what they were. He’d had flashbacks since his first deployment.
But these were different, fresher. Rawer, somehow.
Maybe because they were more recent or because it felt more personal when it was a war against the entire human race versus some geopolitical conflict that seemed so far removed from boots on the ground.
It was the thing he tried so hard to keep from Blake.
The shit he tried to wipe off like mud on the front mat.
He made sure Blake fell asleep first so he wouldn’t notice the way he twitched, the panic that gripped him so tight sometimes he woke up with his sweat icy on his skin where he’d kicked off the covers.
…Judd found a caved-in building to rest in for the night.
They’d only been in DC for a week, still riding high on adrenaline and the desire to do something.
Gabriel kicked aside some boxes, clearing the room, when he came across a dead body.
Then another. And another. It was a family, huddled in the corner of the commercial building.
A woman was cradling a child, pressing them to her chest. A man stood over them, a hole in his head, and the gun still in his hand.
They’d slept outside that night.
Swallowing back the memory, Gabriel tried to ignore the rising fury. The desire to demand why. To beg those husks of dead bodies to hold on. To wait for his team. They would have saved them. Scrapped the mission and done everything to get them to safety. He would have done anything to—
Physically shaking himself, Gabriel forced himself to look at Irving. To take in the creases around his eyes and the smooth skin around his lips—evidence of a lifetime of watching, not reacting.
It wasn’t as grounding as he would have liked, but he could hear his rough breathing instead of blood rushing in his ears. Good enough.
Gabriel vowed to be better for Blake, and he would. But he didn’t apologize for keeping him safe. For not letting him into the field, because he wasn’t sorry.
His voice was cold when he spoke again. “You ask Blake to leave this camp, and I won’t waste a bullet on you. Do you understand? He is not your asset. He is mine.”
A thrill of satisfaction raced down his spine when he saw Irving swallow. “And the rest of your team?”
Gabriel crossed his arms. “Team Oh Shit is mine, too,” he said, knowing just how much Irving hated that name. “We’re a mess, but we get it done.”
Irving rolled his eyes. “That’s not something to be proud of.”
He reached down to flick one of the Polaroids at Irving’s head. It was a perfect shot of the dead Monkey Cat, a splash of hot pink, a perfect shot.
“Maybe to you.”