Page 75 of Song Bird Hearts

The crowd behind me has grown. People stand in clusters, quiet, tense, and armed. Locals, members of The Crows, fans. The streets around the park are fully barricaded. The statue of Frederick E. Savage casts its long shadow over the folding table like a blessing or a curse. I haven’t figured out which yet.

“I’m not scared,” I say into the camera. “I’m furious.” I stand slowly, my arm aching where the bullet had grazed me before. The wound still isn’t fully healed, but it hardly bothers me. “The people I love have bled for this. Good people. People who didn’t ask to be part of some conspiracy war.” I tilt my face toward the sky, soaking in the final rays of the sun as it sinks behind the buildings. “And I will not let them bleed for nothing. If I have to drop every name in this book, I will. The world will know just who controls it.”

Knox steps forward from the side and places a hand on my shoulder. I don’t need to look to know that Wolf and Gilden are behind me, too. Knox’s eyes search the perimeter, watching for any sign of trouble.

“They’re here,” he says. “Outside town.”

I turn my gaze toward the road, watching as black SUVs all pull over and start to line up. Rows of them move into place, and as soon as the cars turn off, men in black clothing start to climb out. Many of them look like government officials, military men, and federal agents. I wonder how many of them are exactly that.

They don’t pull all the way into town. They keep to the edge of town, waiting, watching as they line up like we’re preparing for war.

“They’re measuring us,” Knox says. “Looks like we’re gonna have our very own cowboy shoot out.”

I don’t stop the livestream. I let it run. Looking at the camera, I blow a kiss. “You’ve all been here with me since the beginning. I love you. But now, it’s our time to fight back. Remember, you’re all Stagborn, no matter what happens here today.”

And then I turn away and walk with my men toward the front of the line.

I take the shotgun John gives me without a word. Despite his arm in a sling to keep his shoulder from moving, he holds his own rifle loosely in his hand, prepared to protect his town even if his bullet wound hurts.

“You know how to shoot that thing?” Gilden asks.

I raise my brow at him. “I was raised in the Green River Basin,” I say, “Of course I know how to shoot a gun.”

“I just thought with all that glitter?—”

“That what? I can’t have a little gun smoke with it?” I grin and start loading the gun. “Just because I look like a country barbie doesn’t mean I am one.”

The standoff doesn’t last long. The Foundation must be tired of this game we play, because the moment we start walking toward the edge of town, all hell breaks loose. The first shots ring out near the Steele Avenue barricade, the bastards trying to circle around behind us before we’ve even started. We’re prepared for that though. The Foundation sends in a few drones, high tech ones that there ain’t no way they have unless someone in government gifted it to them. The drones have guns attached to them, like this is some sort of insane Spy Kids movie. But they underestimate our town’s grit and the Crows’ weaponized creativity.

Locals raise their rifles and their shotguns and take aim at the drones. They don’t last long when we have the best sharpshooters in town. Hell, I watch Dakota Steele take aim and knock two drones out of the sky at once.

We’ve got snipers on the rooftops of the buildings around us, those who served in the military or who are just damn good shooters holding their breath and taking out enemies one at a time when they’re not being fired at.

The barricades and the area around them are booby trapped even, the lines laid out by the best trappers this side of the Wyoming Range. It doesn’t matter if it’s an opossum or a person. They all yell the same when them snares get around their ankles.

I watch as all of the drones are shot out of the sky one after another, useless even if they are high tech. I can’t believe the Foundation thought those were really a plan. We’re still making our way to the front line when the first explosion hits.

“What the fuck was that?” I growl, worried that someone literally threw a grenade.

“Goddamn it,” John grumbles. “I told Oak not to pull out the explosives. Fuckin’ idiot.”

I’m pulled back by Gilden, his arm tight around my waist as he directs us down a different street. “Time to move,cher,” he says.

I don’t argue. We move street by street, back toward the Rancher’s Reserve Bank on Main Street. There’s a fire over near the Boot Skoot, but we can’t do anything about that right now. I just hope we can finish this before the whole city burns down.

The sound of screeching tires fills the air as the town starts to fight back like hell on every block. No one backs down from the danger but despite that, we try not to risk anyone. We’d set up barricades, hide aways, anything where we can keep our people from being shot. We won’t be losing any more people today. Any blood that sheds will be their own.

I see Indie Chen helping civilians into the Steele Shipping Warehouse, a military grade helmet on her head and a bullet proof vest on. Where she got them, I don’t know, but her cowboys run at her side. The rodeo clown whoops as bullets whizz around him and fires back a crossbow in the direction of the bullets. A literal crossbow.

John, his shoulder still trying to bleed through his bandages, barks orders from the courthouse, trying to keep the chaos from going into utter lack of control. I’m watching him, my eyes on the way the blood starts to bleed through his shirt again, when I see the Black Suit ease out from behind one of the trees. He points his gun right at John, who can’t see him from his vantage point.

“No!” I snarl, desperate to not loose anyone I care about. I raise the shotgun up, praying like hell we’re not out of range. We shouldn’t be, but it could be a nasty spray if we are.

One shot. That’s all I fire. The man goes down. I don’t know if I hit him in the heart or the head. I just know he’s not gonna get up again.

I just killed someone. But there’s no time to feel it. No time for tears or worry or a breakdown because of it.

It’s only war right now. Only survival.

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