Resistance Read Online Free PDF Page B

well-dressed entourage getting too close. As they had done since leaving New Orleans, his SEAL escort merely tagged along, just making sure he didn’t disappear on them. Foxy Knoxy kept up a steady barrage of news bites and factoids she thought he needed to know. Hospitals in New Orleans were over capacity. There had been such a run on guns and ammunition that even the biggest retailers were being forced to ration what they could sell to individual customers. Fourteen cities had imposed curfews. The Feds were denying a second outbreak in New York. The president was still hiding somewhere in a secure and secret location.
    ‘Oh, and we’re getting unconfirmed reports of someplace in Georgia . . .’
    She frowned at her phone as though somebody had sent her a porn link.
    ‘This can’t be right,’ she said. ‘Look, Reuters has picked up some Internet chat, Facebook posts or something, out of someplace called . . . Buttecrack,’ she frowned again. ‘Something about them fighting off a demon horde on their own.’
    Igor chuckled.
    ‘I think it’s pronounced beau-cray, ma’am.’
    ‘Boo what now?’ she asked.
    ‘Beau-cray,’ saidIgor. ‘But sure, yeah, everybody calls it “butt crack”.’
    The faces of Igor’s companions obviously needed further particulars. He shrugged.
    ‘Dumbass small town names is my party trick. I got one for every state. And yeah, Buttecrack – beau-cray – is in Georgia. Beat out some real competition from Beaver’s Lick too.’
    Foxy Knoxy shook her head as they arrived at the Bellagio’s media suite, or some room they had set aside as a media suite. ‘Just go with the French name if you have to,’ she told Dave. ‘It sounds like the sort of podunk shithole where Fox makes out like bandits.’
    Then she stopped so quickly Dave almost tripped over her.
    ‘Shit! The hammer! We forgot the big hammer.’
    ‘Lucille? She’s downstairs. Want me to get her? She’d love to be on TV.’
    Foxy Knoxy gave him a sidelong glance that may have spoken to a lack of faith in his sanity. ‘Damn it,’ she said. ‘They’re gonna want to see the hammer.’
    ‘It’s a splitting maul, technically. Marty Grbac’s –’
    ‘Yeah, whatever. We don’t have time for you to go get it. Alec, you got any . . . splitting mauls in-house?’
    Alec, the hotel suit, stood by a double door, waiting to run a swipe card through the electronic lock.
    ‘I can ask, Ms Knox. But I don’t think so. There’s probably a sledgehammer somewhere, or a fire axe.’
    She frowned.
    ‘Maybe not. Fucking Jon Stewart would probably find out and do us like a drunken frat girl. Okay. Forget the hammer. Let’s just go with Dave.’
    Alec shrugged and swiped open the doors. He ushered them into a lounge room where two technicians and another nattily dressed man were waiting for them. The man carried armfuls of clothing.
    ‘Armando!’ Foxy cried out. ‘I love you. You are my new favourite.’
    Armando, narrow of waist, thick of shoulder and long of ponytail, smiled and dipped into a strangely formal little bow. Could he have been any more gay? No, Dave thought. No he could not.
    The room looked as though it was normally used as business lounge, but the techs – a camera guy and sound man to judge by their equipment – had pushed a lot of the furniture up against the walls to create a small, makeshift studio space. The video camera wasn’t a big studio unit, but it was a lot bigger and more expensive-looking than the camcorder Dave had used to capture his boys’ Little League games in happier times. Cables snaked across the floor. Harsh white lights burned inside spindly looking silver umbrellas, illuminating a chair perched in front of a bookshelf where he presumed they wanted him to sit.
    The Bellagio goons deployed across the entrance to the suite, and the SEALs took up position inside, blocking any chance of access for the trailing entourage. Their cries grew louder for a moment as Dave stepped inside, but were