Last Man Standing

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Coyote made ready, and entered the dark streets. The field had been narrowed, the cream had risen to the top. Only SPEAR, Beauregard, Crouch and possibly Blackbird remained, though Coyote suspected several unscripted antics had been played out amongst some of the contestants throughout the night.

It mattered not. The endgame was coming. And Coyote was on the hunt.

She checked her equipment, particularly the tracking device. An accumulation of dots were flashing over by the supermarket, but they were already on the move. Her own device was a little more sophisticated than the others — enabling her to upload data onto the system. Such was her intent now as she stopped among the town’s many gravestones under a coal-black sky.

“As promised,” she whispered to the night.

The tournament’s most lucrative take-down (her own choice of course), masked the screen and tapped in a few commands. At first she’d been reluctant to trial Tyler Webb’s nano-vests, but when Kovalenko had failed the first test run in the tunnels beneath DC, Coyote had risen to the new challenge. Granted, they were strapped this time to the bodies of four unfortunate civilians instead of President Coburn, but that hardly mattered to her. Webb was influential, powerful, and intent on ruling the world. Coyote would gain the most formidable asset of her career if she tested them for him.

Of course, why me? Why here and now? She harbored the smidgen of an idea that she was being tested, as Webb tested all his allies, rather than the vests.

She tapped out a quick message on her burner phone, then sent it via text to the remaining contestants.

Coyote engaged. Nano-vests live. Look for the four green dots. Two hours to detonation — what fun!

That should get Drake tripping. The Yorkshireman was a big fan of the innocent, he hated getting anyone dragged in that shouldn’t be there. And he had every right to feel that way, of course. Many people that loved military men and women were innocent, and many of them died.

Coyote flashed back once again to the night his wife died. Coyote tended and nurtured an inner garden — or pit of despair — where all her worst regrets were buried. Alyson Drake was one of the biggest. And it wasn’t simply her death, or the accident of it; there was much more to the entire incident than that.

It was the only time as Coyote that Shelly Cohen had thought about giving up her evil persona. The closest she ever came. A last flirtation with redemption. The decision hung in the balance, a guillotine hanging by a frayed thread, and when the blade dropped it mapped out the rest of her life.

Good or evil?

Fate had taken all choice away from her. Shelly Cohen became Coyote forever on that horribly significant night. The façade had consumed her, eating away morals like a maggot devouring flesh. Now, the flashing green dots before her represented just that — dots. A means to an end. They were about as human to her mind as the piece of plastic they transmitted from.

Real people? She killed real people for breakfast.

With the text message sent, Coyote regarded her own tracking device. Another improvement was that hers updated in real-time, not every twelve minutes as the SPEAR team and Beauregard’s did. She watched now as four red dots moved quickly toward one of the green ones. How predictable. How admirable.

How insane.

The name of her tournament was Last Man Standing. It was time to claim the title.