Theo pointed at several of the rebels. They did not hesitate but walked over to him. "We are going to mount an assault at the front of the building," he said. "I don't think they would expect us to be so bold, and I don't think they would expect us to split into groups so soon after coming back together. Keeping them confused, outsmarting them, this is the way we will win. We're going to hit them with a big blow right up front, and I need all of you to move right in and start firing. Catch them while they are disoriented…whoever ends up being there. Does that make sense?"

  "Theo," said Wes, "man if you told me to run into the ocean and keep my head underwater for an hour I'd say it made sense cause it came from you. I'm with you."

  "Thank you, Wes."

  He took Ryan by the shoulder. "Ry… I'm so sorry. You can sit this out if you want."

  Ryan shook his head. "No. I'm not sitting anything out. Those bastards are going to pay for what they did."

  Theo stretched his tired muscles. It was time to move. Now, while Tiberius and his men thought that the rebels were demoralized and wouldn't possibly stage an assault. He took off at a brisk pace toward the front of the Palace, following the ramp where cars had once pulled up for valet service in a very different world. His people trotted behind him, all armed and armored from what they had stripped from the Security Force. Bill carried the massive bazooka. Wes was carrying a small box of grenades Theo had removed from the SUV. Kylee's group was going to rely on stealth and manpower. Theo's was going to be the distraction, and that meant explosive destruction.

  They stood in front of the massive doors. They could see a contingent of the Security Force in the lobby. It was only a matter of time before they were spotted. Theo ordered them into positions. He raised his gun, as did the others with similar weapons. Wes carefully removed a grenade from his box while Bill knelt with the big rocket launcher.

  "Everybody understands what to do?" Theo asked. They all nodded. "Okay, Bill, time to wake some people up."

  "With pleasure, fearless leader." Bill steadied his aim and fired a rocket across the car lanes and directly into the front door. The door exploded with a force far greater than Theo had anticipated. Fires licked at the flammable portions of the entrance.

  For a moment, Theo and the rest simply stared in shock. "Whoa," said Bill.

  Finally, Theo snapped out of his trance. "Let's go!" He ran the distance to the smoking entrance and darted in to the fray. The Security Force agents had been thrown into disarray by the explosion. Theo fired his gun and dropped two of them before they had a chance to raise their weapons.

  Theo heard the gunfire erupting around him and he ran as fast as he could through the lobby to the nearest hallway he could find. He knew the others would follow him. Just before he reached the edge of the lobby he felt a powerful stinging sensation in his right shoulder. He ducked into the hallway. "Get as far down as possible," he yelled to the others. When they reached the far end of the hall he shouted, "now, Wes!"

  Wes launched a grenade down the hall where it landed perfectly, rolling just into the lobby. With an eardrum pounding explosion the grenade destroyed the passageway between the lobby and the hall. Debris fell as the ceiling in that section collapsed. They had successfully sealed off whatever part of the Security Force that was trying to come through the lobby.

  "Theo…aw crap, you're hurt." Bill came rushing over.

  "No, I'm fine," Theo said, but then he saw the blood spreading on his shirt from where he had been shot in the shoulder. "Oh."

  "Does it hurt?" Ryan asked.

  "Not as much as I would have thought," Theo responded. "Maybe it's the adrenaline or something. I don't know. My arm is feeling a little weak though."

  Bill pulled off his own shirt and tied it tight around Theo's upper arm, applying pressure to the wound. "You're going to need to get that looked at."

  "Later. Let's keep moving."

  Kylee's mind was spinning. The image of Michelle's death, captured on the enormous screens outside the Palace, was plastered on her retinas. She had tried so hard to understand Theo's loss when Mark died. She thought at the time she really got what he was going through but now she knew: she hadn't had a clue. This pain, this confusing jumble of memories of a decade of friendship, threatened to overwhelm her completely.

  And Carlos… was it true? Had the Security Force murdered three of their own and a handful of severely injured civilians? Anything was possible with Tiberius in control. Kylee felt horrible pangs of guilt. She had allowed Carlos to go with only a small support contingent. She hadn't made any effort to get Michelle out of danger, instead choosing to assume that she would be safe as long as she seemed loyal to Tiberius.

  The rebels marched down to the garage entrance to the Palace. Under normal circumstances there would be two guards at the gate. Kylee didn't know if Tiberius would be ramping up protection around the building. If anything, he seemed to think he'd effectively defeated the rebels through demoralization. He would realize how wrong he was when she shoved the barrel of her gun down his throat.

  "Kylee," said Joseph, "we have one small problem." He pointed up in the distance. A sniper was positioned in a tower overlooking the spot they would have to pass to make their way to the garage. "I'd take him out but we don't have guns with silencers. As soon as we fire we lose the secrecy of our approach."

  Kylee thought about it. Her mind was surprisingly eager to have a problem to solve. "Hold the troops in position until I get back." She ran through the line of rebels until she found what she was looking for.

  In the dark where the glaring lights of the Palace could not reach, Kylee scaled an emergency ladder mounted to the side of the building. She entered the garage on the third floor above ground and moved to the stairwell, on the lookout for Security Force agents. There was no opposition here. Tiberius might still have precautions in place to intercept the rebels, but he did not anticipate any maneuvering through the upper levels of the parking deck.

  She leaned out the side of the fifth level. There, only maybe a hundred yards away, was the sniper's perch. She pulled out the bow she had borrowed from one of the other women. She took careful aim, and felt sadness as a memory of summer camp took her by surprise: she, Michelle and Jamie goofing around at archery lessons. Kylee pushed the memory away. This wasn't a game, and now was not the time to be sentimental. She could take all the time she needed to reflect, remember and mourn after this war ended. Slowing her breathing, she released the tension on the bow. The viciously sharp arrow flew silently through the air and impaled the sniper who tumbled forward into the half wall in front of him and then backward to the floor.

  Kylee was disappointed she hadn't seen the guard fall out of his tower to the ground below. As soon as she had that thought she regretted it. What was wrong with her? What was she letting Tiberius do to her mind? She hoped with everything in her that with Tiberius's demise she would be able to get some of her old self back.

  Just then, she heard an explosion in the distance. Theo. She smiled. She hoped that Theo, Bill and Ryan were raising hell.

  She worked her way back to the ground and reunited with the troops. "Are we in the clear?" asked Joseph.

  "For now," she said. "We still don't know what's down by the garage opening. Let's be careful."

  Joseph watched her carefully as she spoke. When she finished, he nodded, looking satisfied. She thought he was reading her mental state as much as he was listening to what she was saying.

  She led the rebel army to the entrance. There were two guards positioned on either side of the opening. Her people dispatched them with almost no hesitation. The rest of the garage looked empty. The army proceeded in and Kylee began to strategize the next part of the mission. Suddenly, she heard doors opening throughout the garage. She heard running feet. "Down! Take cover!" she shouted to her army.

  The Security Force was swarming the garage. Tons of them. More than she had time to count. They were firing wildly as they took positions behind concrete pillars and barriers. Kylee started shouting orders to her troops, instructing them to fire in bursts from the limited cover they had found. She wished the garage had been full of cars, but she would make do with what she had. That method had brought her this far.

  She saw a door across the expanse of the garage deck. That was going to be her goal. It was not going to be an easy task. She saw very little opportunity to get past the Security Force without taking the majority of them down, if not all of them. She knew it could be done. She'd seen what her soldiers were capable of accomplishing, and she knew that the men Theo had led to freedom and the refugees from the camp were just as willing, if not as trained as her women.

  She moved her people little by little, one barrier at a time as the Security Force fell. She saw some of her troops get hit and collapse, but that was in the periphery of her vision. She would identify them after. Now her goals were the door in the distance and each successive agent of evil in her sights.

  Theo and his small group continued to face opposition as they moved through the building. Tiberius was hiding out in the executive quarters, Theo knew. The access, which he had used several times, was in the center of the building and not easily located.

  They worked their way down hallways, through vast rooms that still resembled the majestic casino of the past, through the school where Theo and his friends had spent such a short, but important time. In every new area, they were presented with two or three Security Force agents. The bulk of the Force was somewhere else. Theo worried that "somewhere else" was wherever Kylee was right now.

  They continued to kill the agents as quickly as they encountered them. Wes was prepared with additional grenades, but Theo saw no sense in continuing to demolish the path behind them. They weren't leaving anyone alive to follow. He didn't want to risk damaging the structure too greatly, now that the entire rebel army was likely in the building.

  "How much farther to the executive wing?" asked Bill.

  "Not too much farther, but I don't think the elevator is going to work. That means going up the stairs. I don't feel great about it."

  "So we fight to the top and confront Tiberius?"

  "We fight to the top and then Ryan gets to work on setting up a broadcast to Atlantic Island, to let everyone know that we have taken the Palace and will be running the show from now on."

  "And Tiberius?"

  "He's mine."

  Though Theo's voice came out strong and confident, he was anything but. As he had protested to the vision of Sam Lucas, he was scared of Tiberius. Scared of the man's bizarre strength. To make matters worse, his dominant arm was feeling numb and when he tried to lift it he felt as if he had a hundred pound weight attached to his wrist.

  They came around to a section of the Palace that had been a gaming floor of the casino. The machines were all gone. Perhaps they had been melted down to provide material for construction. He really didn't know. In the back he saw glass doors that had once led to the boardwalk. That section of the boardwalk no longer existed, demolished by the leadership to prevent civilians from being able to approach the Palace from that side. The skywalk above that was also gone, though that connection between the casino and the mall had fallen victim to the Event.

  "We need to come back around on the far side of this room," Theo said. "I think there are stairs there that will get us into the upper levels, if not all the way to where Tiberius is. I think we should sit for a minute and catch our breath."

  "You boys tired of fighting?" a voice said.

  "Bertier," said Bill. "Just the guy I was looking to kill."

  "Don't be cute, princess. You may have killed some of them Security boys, but me? I'm the real deal. The Supreme Leader didn't put me in charge of all this for nothin'."

  Theo looked around. He couldn't see Bertier anywhere. Where the hell was he hiding?

  "Really," said Bill, "I thought he promoted you to show people he had a sense of humor."

  "You keep talkin', loser." Bertier's voice said. "I'm gonna knock out them pretty teeth and wear them for a necklace."

  "And what are you going to do with the rest of me?" Bill asked.

  "Bill, enough!" Theo whispered.

  "I'm gonna mount your head above my desk," said Bertier.

  "Show yourself, Bertier." called Theo.

  "King Crap!" Bertier laughed. "I dunno how you got out before, but I'm gonna enjoy taking care of you for good this time. The only question… do I kill your ass now or do you get to see the Supreme Leader in person?"

  Theo heard a series of clicks. He felt a barrel pressed to the back of his head.

  "On your knees, King Crap." Bertier came walking around to the front of them. Theo saw that a squad of Security Force agents had guns to all of his men. They dropped to their knees.

  "You," Bertier said to Bill. "You come with me, princess. I've been waiting for this." Bertier had a pistol in his hand. He gestured toward the glass doors. Bill got up and walked in that direction as Bertier followed, his gun trained on Bill's back.

  "Ima figure out whatta do with all them others in a minute…but I'm gonna kill your ass right now, son." Bertier said. "Your friends can watch."

  He made Bill kneel down in front of them. The moonlight illuminated their silhouettes through the glass.

  Theo didn't know what to do. He couldn't sit back and watch Bill die, but he was completely helpless.

  "Time to die, loser," said Bertier. He aimed the gun at Bill's head.

  "Oh crap, Bertier, look! It's Tiberius!" Bill pointed behind Bertier.

  The big teen turned around. Like a giant cat, Bill pounced, catching Bertier around the legs. Bertier fired his gun but the shot went wild, hitting the ceiling. He stumbled back as Bill drove forward in one smooth motion. Bertier's back smashed through the glass door, and the two of them disappeared, dropping the several feet to the beach.

  Theo didn't waste any time. His weapon was still in front of him. While the guards were distracted, staring at the space where Bertier and Bill had vanished, he fell forward, grabbed his gun in his left hand and rotated onto his back. He shot the guard who had held him captive and shifted to take out the next. He rolled onto his bad shoulder and screamed in pain.

  The others had taken his lead in the commotion. Within seconds, the guards were dead. The entire scene beginning with Bill's move against Bertier had happened in a flash. Theo realized this night had been a succession of incredible good luck followed by horrible misfortune. This nightmare had to end.

  His men stripped the Security Force agents of their weapons.

  "Would you look at this," Ryan said, "all of Bertier's buddies were here. This was his elite squad? Man, did Tiberius botch this one."

  Theo smiled. Ryan sounded much better, at least for the moment.

  "What do we do now?" asked Wes. "We should follow after Bill."

  Theo shook his head. "We can't."

  "Theo!" exclaimed Ryan. "We have to help him!"

  "I wish we could. If we drop down to the beach we'd have to come all the way back through the garage. We can't afford to start over, not after making all this progress. It kills me, Ry, but Bill's got to handle this himself. We need to get to the executive floor."

  Chapter 33

  Bill and Bertier fell to the sand, eight feet below the doors to the casino. Shattered glass rained down around them as they plunged into deep dunes. Bill tried to spring to his feet but the slipping sands kept him off balance. He moved laterally instead, trying to fight out of the side of the dunes. He had just made it out when Bertier tackled him sideways. They sprawled onto the beach in the shadow of the massive screens that not much earlier had shown Tiberius's murder of Michelle.

  "I'm gonna make you die slowly," said Bertier. He punched Bill in the face. Bill grabbed onto him and rolled him over. He went to deliver punches of his own but Bertier grabbed a handful of sand and tossed it at him. Bill covered his eyes with his arm and Bertier pushed him off.

  The leader of the Security Force scrambled to a safe distance and back to his feet. Bill got up slowly, rubbing sand off his face. A small cut had opened above his right eyebrow, where Bertier's wild haymaker had glanced off his face.

  Bill cracked his knuckles and rotated his neck, loosening up his muscles. "You sure you want to do this, Bertier?" he asked. "Why not just give up? Admit that you're an inbred skinhead and you've got nothing productive to offer society. I'm sure the new regime will go easy on you after Daddy Tiberius falls."

  "You don't get it," said Bertier. His eyes were wide and wild. "The Supreme Leader isn't going anywhere. He's our lord and savior!"

  "Oh, Berty, Berty, Berty, have you been fed a load of malarkey. That gunfire we heard just a minute ago? I bet you ten bucks that was Theo and the rest killing your goofy friends. Guess who they are going to kill next? Your false messiah."

  Bertier let out a scream of rage like a mindless beast. He rushed at Bill, who connected with a powerful right hand. Bertier buckled and fell over. In a second, Bill was on top of him, unloading shot after shot. He hadn't known he had so much anger in him but here, now, every wrong thing he had experienced: his arrest, Mark's death, Dale, Menendez, Michelle, everything that had happened to his friends and to him since they had made the mistake to come to the shore, all of that went through his mind. He took all that rage and frustration and channeled it into his fists. Bertier's face, never much to look at, dissolved into a bloody, misshapen mess.

  Bertier reached into his pocket. Bill felt a sharp pain on his arm. He stopped his onslaught. His arm was bleeding from a shallow cut where Bertier had slashed him with a knife. Bertier went to stab at him and Bill knocked the knife away. Bertier brought his other hand up and hit him in the temple. He saw flashes of light in his vision. His own, private Event. Bertier rolled him and got back on top, and now it was Bill who was trying desperately to cover up.

  They rolled over and over, each landing shots to the face and body. Bill felt cool water and knew they were at the edge of the ocean. Bertier flipped him into the water and grabbed him by the throat, pushing his head under the waves.