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Finally the association gave up. Most of the owners fled. The remaining few spent small fortunes on wards, fences, and ammo. Now having an address in Sibley Forest meant you had money, you liked privacy, and you didn't mind weird shit on your lawn. Sometimes literally.
We turned down Twig Street. Ahead the forest rose like a massive wall tinted with pale green. Here and there flowers bloomed. The buds in the rest of Atlanta were barely waking up.
"Are you seeing this?"
Andrea bared her teeth. "I'm seeing it. I hate this place. It smells wrong and strange shit jumps out of the bushes and tries to gnaw your legs off."
The only thing I could smell was the troll blood staining our shoes. Folklore said two things about trolls: they turned to stone at dawn and they regenerated. The troll definitely hadn't gotten the petrifying memo, but regeneration he performed with huge success. We'd ended up herding the beast back into the ruined bunker and then keeping him there until the PAD arrived. But now we were a grand richer. The road passed an enormous oak. Huge, its bark scarred, the massive tree towered over the street, and the Jeep careened and swayed as it rolled over the waves in the pavement made by its roots. The branches facing us shivered with narrow green leaves, still sticky from being rolled up in their buds, while the branches facing the forest were sheathed with bright green and clusters of long yellow threads, the oak flowers, busily sending pollen into the air.
A wooden sign sat by the oak roots. Letters cut the sign, sliced into the wood in sharp strokes.
SIBLEY
LIONS & TIGERS & BEARS
OH MY.
We rolled on, down the road. Brush rose on both sides of what once was a curvy subpision street. In the weak light of the overcast afternoon, the woods looked surprisingly ethereal, as if ready to float away. Tall trees touched with green moss vied for space. Small clumps of flowers bloomed in bright patches here and there: yellow dandelions, purple henbits, tiny white blossoms in a nest of green--they looked like hairy bitter cress, but I wasn't sure. My knowledge of herbs mostly broke down into two categories: those I could use for medicinal or magic purposes and those I could eat in a pinch.
A wide island of forsythia bushes flowered on the left in a froth of vivid yellow, as if dipped into whipped sunshine. On the right, a nameless vine dripped from the branches, threatening to spill delicate lavender flowers. Downright idyllic. You half expected Pooh Bear to waddle out through the brush. Of course, knowing Sibley, Pooh would open a mouth full of deep-water teeth and try to take a chunk out of our tires.
Andrea flipped open Rene's manila folder. "It says here the dead guard's name is Laurent de Harven, thirty-two years old, hair brown, eyes gray, four-year stint in the Army, MSDU unit, six years as a cop down in sunny Orlando, Florida, and four years with the Red Guard. Promoted once, to the rank of Specialist. Expert swordsman, prefers tactical blades. Krav Maga, black belt, Dan five." Andrea whistled. "Tough guy to kill."
"What else have we got?"
"Let's see, Guard in Charge: Shohan Henderson, Marines eight years, Guard eleven years, expert in a list of weapons a mile long. We can also look forward to meeting Debra Abrams, the shift supervisor; Mason Vaughn; and Rigoberto `Rig' Devara."
Andrea kept reading the notes. After fifteen minutes, it was clear that the four guards and their master sergeant could fend off an angry mob, would throw themselves into a bullet's path in the blink of an eye, and had records so stellar, they had to lock their r?sum?s in a drawer at night, so the golden light streaming from the pages wouldn't keep them awake. Directions said two rights, one left, then straight. The first two turns were easy enough; the left was a tight squeeze between two pines. Beyond the turn, tall bamboo hugged the road, forming a dense green tunnel. I steered the Jeep through it.
"Are you sure you know where you're going?" Andrea frowned.
"Would you like me to pull over and ask that bamboo for directions?"
"I don't know, do you think it will answer?"
We peered at the bamboo.
"I think it looks suspicious," Andrea said.
"Maybe there is a heffalump hiding in it."
Andrea stared at me.
"You know, heffalump? From Pooh Bear?"
"Where do you even get this shit?"
The bamboo ended abruptly, spitting us into a gravel driveway leading up to a large modified A-frame. Wrapped in a railed porch with the roof extending all the way over the porch steps, the house looked like it had grown from the forest: stone foundation, dark cedar walls, brown roof. Shrubs hugged the porch steps. No unnatural colors, no ornaments or carvings.
"Look at all that window space. Built pre-Shift," Andrea murmured.
I nodded. I could see eight windows from where we sat; most were as tall as me and none had bars. Modern houses looked like bunkers. Any window larger than a bread box was barred.
I drove midway up the driveway and stopped with the engine idling. Good guards didn't prance around the perimeter making themselves into easy targets. They hid.
"A sniper in the attic," Andrea said.
It took me a second, and then I saw a dark shape, obscured by the gloom under the gable--a black outline of a rifle barrel stretching from the attic window.
I stepped out of the Jeep and leaned on the bumper. Andrea joined me.
"Pine, nine o'clock," I said.
Andrea glanced to where a man in a camo suit did his best to blend with the foliage. "Bushes at two." She inhaled deeply. "Also, someone is behind the Jeep."
"That makes three. The fourth is coming up at us from the left," I said. "Should we go meet him?" Andrea arched an eyebrow.
"I think that's poison ivy over there. I vote we sit here and wait until they ask us for the code."
The bushes on the left parted and an older black man stepped out. His graying hair was cropped into a severe high-and-tight. Henderson, looking exactly like the picture in the file Andrea had shown me. Judging by the hard lines of his face and the flat look in his eyes, he'd left the Marines, but the Corps hadn't quite left him. The Red Guard shield patch on Henderson's shoulder had two red stripes--he'd been promoted twice as a sergeant, which made him Master Sergeant. Rene oversaw this job, but she probably oversaw others, too. Henderson quarterbacked only one job at a time, and while he had it, he owned it. His guys had screwed up and lost the body they were guarding. He looked like somebody had pissed in his sandbox, and he was none too pleased that we'd come to dig in the mess.
I nodded at him. "Afternoon, Master Sergeant."
"Names?"
