Villain (Gone 8)

Justin knew what Valhalla meant. It was the Norse heaven, the Viking heaven, where any Norse warrior who had died with a sword in his hand would sit at Odin’s table surrounded by other honored dead warriors and drink ale.

It made Justin think of ale.

It made Justin think of doing a series of mythology-inspired paintings. Someday.

It did not make Justin wonder why a Marine Corps master sergeant turned into an NRA wet dream of a cyborg would be referencing the celestial home of men who died in battle.

So Justin said, “Yeah!” with all the enthusiasm he could muster, and hauled himself up onto the flatbed, a young man thinking he’d just been handed a free pass out of trouble by an older man who saw his best future being a righteous death.

CHAPTER 21

With Great Power Comes Pure Malice

DILLON POE STOOD in the doorway of Triunfo, a tall, gold pillar of a hotel, now entirely under his control thanks to his voice and to the battering power of a Coors beer truck his Cheerios had used to smash in the doors.

He was furious that Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram had been taken down. Even YouTube! How was a desperate nation going to get its Jenna Marbles and PewDiePie fixes?

The major media were dumb but, sadly, they weren’t dumb enough to broadcast his video. The video would certainly have already reached a lot of people anyway—it had been two hours before Facebook had taken it down, and three hours before some bright person in the government had ordered a shutdown of all social media. But he knew without active social media he would reach only thousands, not millions.

The battle was coming, and he needed an army of his own. But Nevada was a small state in population, and as a practical matter the only large population center close enough to provide the huge numbers he wanted that was near enough to be useful was Los Angeles. How many Angelenos would hear his call in time? People coming from Kansas two days from now were not going to save his ass.

It amused Dillon to realize that at least some people overseas would have seen his video and were now desperately trying to catch a flight to Las Vegas. Well, good luck with that—the airport was closed. He imagined various Dutch or Japanese or Kenyan people spending the rest of their lives trying to follow his order.

Funny. Dark funny, like The Onion, or Frankie Boyle, but funny.

If only he could speak directly to the soldiers rolling up from the south, followed by news cameras and breathless news anchors as adoring as if the column was Jesus, Jehovah, and Mohammed all coming together to save the day. But how? He could grab a bullhorn, and maybe reach some of the troops, but they’d be in loud, armored vehicles, many wearing headphones . . . Yeah, that wasn’t a solution. Anyway, he wasn’t crazy about exposing himself physically to a column of tanks: he was all-powerful, but he was not bulletproof.

The Strip was largely unpopulated now aside from earlier iterations of his slaves still trying to carry out his old orders. There must still be lots of people in the greater Las Vegas metro area. But how could he reach them? Fear rose inside him like a sickness.

How did all this happen? Just because I got myself thrown into the drunk tank?

Notebook: Something about tanks and drunk tanks. Explosive vomiting like cannon?

He had moved from the stadium to the Triunfo, a hotel without a casino, on the theory that hotel security was less prepared, less trained than casino security. That had proved correct—the Triunfo’s security had ear coverings, but the staff and tourists milling like frightened sheep in the lobby had not been protected. They had made short work of the security team.

But even the relatively easy conquering of the Triunfo had left him rattled. One of his mind-controlled slaves had badly injured one of his Cheerios, and he’d had to leave him behind to be torn apart by the mobs Dillon had created. His mobs were greatly diminished in number, either because they’d been shot by police, or because they’d killed each other—it was very hard to speak orders that guarded against friendly fire, the killing of your people by your people. So, his army was diminished in number, but still comprised thousands, scattered up and down the Strip. Sadly, it was an army he could no longer reach with his voice, so some were insistent on eating any person they came across, while others were following his later order to attack anyone in uniform. They were disruptive and destructive, but cops in street clothes were mostly safe and had gotten quite used to shooting to kill any attacker, and Dillon did not try to fool himself into believing his forces could prevail.

After smashing the front door with the beer truck, he’d been able to get to the intercom at the hotel, and now all the staff and all the remaining tourists were under his control (or dead), but that wasn’t nearly enough.

He needed live bodies. Not in some other country, not even in Chicago or New York. He needed them here, now.

Here! Now!

“Who knew taking over the world would be so hard?” he muttered. “I’m the most powerful person in the world, and I can’t get anything done!”

After giving Kate and some of the other Cheerios orders, Dillon took the elevator to the three-bedroom penthouse suite he’d appropriated. The suite was complete with three bathrooms, a kitchen, and a great view. He still had six—or was it five?—Cheerios. And in his suite he had TVs everywhere, in every room, tuned to the cable news channels.

“This is very, very important,” some fool was babbling, “That you not look at any—any—new or unfamiliar video.”

“Not helpful,” Dillon muttered. He tried a work-around, dialing the CNN newsr

oom.

“This is Dillon Poe. Put me through to whoever is in charge.” The person answering had no choice but to obey.

Too late he realized he had given them his name, so when the person who’d answered announced to her superior that she had to take a call from Dillon Poe, well . . . click.

Local radio proved less well prepared, and in mere seconds he was on the air with some DJ named Ferris.