“What the
flying-titty-fuck was that!”
“Well, let’s go.” Dine looked at Pierce and Bronson.
When his gaze reached Nyx though, Griffin
had pulled the shotgun up to her face.
“Move,” Griffin
said loudly, “and your bitch will be missing a face.”
There was a stand-off. Bronson had the machinegun in
hand now, but he’d need his pistol to get the shot off in time. It sat in Griffin ’s belt, taunting
him. Dine and Pierce both raised their guns at him, Dine was still shaking.
“I can do it,” Dine whispered. “I have a shot.”
“He can’t take us all out,” Pierce added.
Bronson stepped in front of them, sure that they wouldn’t
be able to take out Griff without getting Nyx hurt in the process.
“Let her go Griff.”
“Sure, Bronson,” he sneered. “I’ll do that, right
after you three go feed yourselves to Samantha over there. She looks like she’s
about done chewing on George anyhow.” Nyx struggled against him as he spoke.
Dine pushed in the small button on the weapon he was
holding. A red dot appeared on Griffin’s forehead. He glanced quickly at the
guard Pierce had laid out who was still unconscious on the ground next to him.
“You really think I’m letting you out of here alive if
you harm her?” Dine meant what he said, not as much as a concern for Nyx as
there was a personal nature to this now.
A knock broke the tension, then a banging. That was
followed by several voices calling out to Griff and the others, asking if they
were alright. They were heard over the noises of smacking and chewing, the
occasional grunt from the feasting predator that Griff had once shared a bed
with.
“We heard gunfire!”
“You alright man, it’s Paul, open up!”
Sam was lunging at them, or maybe just Griffin . He had to
protect himself though. Griffin ’s
face tightened as he brought the shotgun up to Samantha’s dead face, the force
of the gun finishing what her first death had already started. Her head snapped
back, popping off the neck and hanging on by threads aa it beat against her
back.
Nyx’ hand was already wrapped around the handle of
Bronson’s .45. It had been securely resting in Griffin ’s belt. She had been eyeing it
eagerly since this had started. She didn’t take the chance, there was no time
wasted removing it from his belt. A loud boom broke the air as the six-shooter
erupted its payload into Griffin ’s
thigh. Nyx was hoping for a more painful angle but this wasn’t a time to
complain. Griff cried out in paid with a series of unflattering words.
“Move out of the way!”
Dine had ordered Nyx to move so he could take the
shot. That was when the gate busted open though. Nyx had trouble hearing Dine’s
order, two very loud guns had just fired way too close to her ears. She’d be
lucky if she didn’t get tinnitus after all of this. People were running to them
now. Nyx stumbled to her partner, to safety.
Dine was determined, still aiming. He was ready to
take his shot now that she was clear. He was biting his lip so hard that he
could taste blood. It may have been his own but to him, it tasted like Griffin ’s.
“No time, Captain,” Bronson yelled. His hand slapping
Dine’s shoulder then motioning, getting his attention to the fifteen or so
people running towards him.
“HELP,” Griffin
yelled. “They’ve killed George and Sam!”
Pierce was already jumping over the fence. He paused
and offered a hand to Nyx, pulling her up and over. Bronson took one last look
at Griffin and
his rifle, still slung over the shoulder of the madman who was now grinning.
“Get them! Get them for what they did!”
Bronson turned and jumped for the top of the fence. He
planted a boot firmly on the side and pushed himself over, falling to the
ground on the other side and rolling slightly back up into a kneeled position.
The drop down was a bit further, the way the quarry was carved out. Dine
reluctantly didn’t take his shot. He slung the strap of his weapon around his
neck and ran at the sheet metal covered wall. His jump over was with ease and
looked more sheer strength than parkour. He kicked up dust as his boots
skidding to a more stable landing.
“Captain,” Pierce said already ten feet in front of
him. “I’d suggest a tactical retreat into the woods.”
There was no argument.
They ran for some time, wanting to make sure they were
safe. Pierce was the first to stop. He slumped up against a tree. He was
breathing heavily, as were the others. Dine was still sweating. He looked
flush. Even though his hands had stopped shaking his right eye was twitching
noticeably. Nyx stopped. She arched her back, feeling a sharp pain in it. She
looked herself over to make sure she hadn’t been shot. There was the pleasure
in realizing that she hadn’t and that she could hear again. A bird off in the
distance played the sweetest song she had heard in a long time, letting her
know nothing was permanently damaged. Bronson coughed as he came to a stop,
chest heaving to catch up to him.
“Here,” Nyx said as she handed the long barreled
revolver back to Bronson, handle first. “I got this for you.”
“Thanks.” He took the gun and looked it over, “too bad
you couldn’t grab the rifle with it.”
“Oh yeah,” she said sarcastically. “Let me just run
back and get that for you.”
Dine coughed hard. Nyx was pretty sure if she could
have seen the palm of his glove there would have been small bits of blood
across it. He reached up with his other hand to offer her back her weapon. She
took it.
“Thanks,” her voice shook. She was still trying to
breath, still dealing mentally with how close she just came to dying, or who
knows what would have happened to her had they not escaped. Her wrists still
hurt from where Griffin
had grabbed her so hard, she was pretty sure it would bruise in the next day or
so.
Pierce reached over after he had ample time to rest.
He leaned the captain’s machinegun against the tree that Dine had slid down and
leaned against. Dine didn’t respond, he just stared forward and was trying not
to cough and shake. Pierce looked to Bronson who had his sub-machinegun.
Bronson pulled the strap from around his neck and held
it out with his left hand for Pierce.
“Guess I owe you this.”
Pierce reached for the gun and Bronson’s right hand
came up quick and connected with a fist right into his left cheek. Pierce fell
back against the tree but his body had barely touched down before Bronson
grabbed him again. He let the sub-machinegun fall to the dried leaves and his hands
were around Pierce’s neck.
“You,” he was angry. “You fell asleep on your watch
and all of that shit,” he had to stop himself from yelling, it was a bad idea.
“That was all because of you.”
“Let go of me,” Pierce’s words were muffled by
Bronson’s squeezing, fingers digging red spots into the skin. Pierce brought
his knee up into Bronson’s side. The soldier just took it. He let Pierce go,
staring at him.
“Strike three.” Bronson turned but he kept Pierce in
his peripheral vision. “As far as I’m concerned, you just became expendable.” That
man was going to get one of them killed. He was angry and had almost made a mistake.
This wasn’t the time to lose it. He was glad Nyx was there, standing in front
of him. She helped to keep things in perspective. She stepped closer and
whispered.
“I’ll keep an eye on the fuck-up. You need to take a
look at Dine. I told you something was wrong with him.”
Dine was slowly searching the multitude of pockets on
his BDU’s. His lip was quivering now and his eyes were blood shot. There was
something wrong with him.
“Captain,” Bronson addressed him before crouching down
in front of him. “Want to tell us what that was all about back there, what
happened to you.”
Dine’s hand reached into the right side pants pocket
on his cargo pants. He pulled out a metal case that was shaped like an octagon.
Nyx realized it was what she had seen him holding yesterday at the camp. It was
sectioned off and he popped open one of the compartments. A bright green and a
dark purple pill fell out into the palm of his hand. His hand began to shake
again and his fingers closed around the pills slowly bringing them up to his
mouth.
Bronson gave some serious thought right then to
stopping him. He didn’t know what that would do though and they needed Dine to
get through this, to finish their mission. He watched Dine’s throat move,
swallowing the pills. He decided to ask again.
“Captain…”
Dine swallowed hard again like he wanted to make sure
the pills couldn’t come back up. His shaking slowed followed by a series of
deep breaths.
“Feel better,” Bronson asked him.
Dine nodded. After his answer he looked through his
pack, finding that he still had a good bit of warm water left in the military
issue canteen. He drank thirstily, his body needing the water.
“Good, now do you want to tell me how you were able to
punch through that guy’s skull so easily?”
“It’s classified.”
Bronson and Nyx exchanged a glance at his answer.
“You’re going to pull that bullshit military card on
me right now? Do you think that means shit down here?” Bronson shook his head
and stood. “Right now it looks like you might be a hazard to the mission, an
unknown variable that could pose a serious problem.”
“That’s incorrect.”
“Really, how do we know you aren’t just going to keel
over from a heart attack or become useless to us during a combat situation
because you can’t find your happy pills?”
There wasn’t an answer at first.
“Fine,” Dine said rubbing his eyes. They looked less
red now. “I’m a part of a first wave of experiments on soldiers, chemically
induced performance enhancers that generate an almost unstoppable asset on the
field. The pills stabilize the effects.”
“And they sent you on what could possibly be the most
important mission in the past twenty years like this?”
“General De
Soto knows how good I am.” He took one last sip of
water. “He knew I’d get the job done. I just have to be careful, the chemical
and pills can screw with your emotional state, make you angry or jumpy.”
“And what a great start we’re off to,” Pierce muttered
from his position over by his tree, still sulking from the hit he received
earlier.
Dine almost jumped up at him but Bronson placed a hand
on his shoulder.
“You need to keep all of this in check. You could get
yourself or one of us hurt and we can’t let that happen until we do what we
came down here for.”
Bronson looked over to Pierce. “As for you, do you
need another reminder that you’re the main reason for that?”
Pierce didn’t say anything. He just stared at them and
held his weapon that he had retrieved from the leaves close to him. Bronson
stood and looked at the three people in front of him and then the forest around
him. It was time to get back on track.
“Dine, let’s check the map and see how far off course
we are.”
Dine nodded and uncovered the computer on his forearm.
Springing back to life the green lines of the map began to use the satellite
uplink to sketch out the land around them. It zoomed out to a much larger map
with a pulsing white dot showing their destination.
“We aren’t that far off course it’s just that we lost
over a half a days worth of travel, we’re behind schedule.”
Bronson nodded. “So we hoof it, less stops.”
Dine shook his head. “No, no we need to get back on
schedule. If there is even the slightest chance that any of the other colonies
or groups down here got wind of our arrival they might start looking into it.
Neo Tokyo and Valhalla keep tabs on everything
and everyone. We need to find a way to catch up.”
“Let me guess,” Bronson sighed. “You’re thinking about
that SUV we saw back there with Griffin
and the twenty-something odd other people who are near-maniacal cannibals
because of all the dead flesh they eat.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t going to put it quite that way but
yeah.”
Dine stood and took another look at the map.
“There are some back roads that we could use if they
aren’t blocked. We could beat our scheduled time depending on the gas
situation.”
“I don’t know,” Bronson said. Shaking his head, he
leaned his back on an old bent tree. “It’s dangerous. We know they have guns
and even if we have enough bullets to take them out not all of them deserve
that.”
“That may be something you have to swallow soldier,”
Dine reminded him.
“I’m not going back there.”
The three turned and looked at Pierce’s proclamation.
Dine was fast. He darted at Pierce with his hand outstretched, grabbing for his
collar.
“You’ll do what I say or I’m going to put a bullet in
your head myself.”
“Temper, captain.”
Jonah Pierce wasn’t a man of much pride, but his fist
was clenched, balled up and ready to punch Dine. Bronson’s warning calmed the
situation.
“Mind if I chime in here,” Nyx asked. “This may be
easier than you think?” Reaching into her pocket she produced Griffin’s key
ring with the three metal pieces hanging off of it. “I grabbed him when he was
using me as a human shield.”
“Clever,” Dine said.
“Resourceful,” Bronson threw his two cents in before
taking the keys and examining them. “The way that camp is set up a good enough
distraction could be all we need to let someone sneak in. You’d just have to
move that table and open the back gates. They wouldn’t know what had happened
until they heard you speeding off.”
“And you’re sure it wouldn’t be safer to just go in
and hold them up with the guns?”
“Dine, they’d fight back. You know that. It would be a
blood bath.”
Dine nodded. Nyx gave Bronson a nod as well to show
that she agreed with him.
“I’d like to see us do this as bloodless as possible
too,” Nyx said. “They have women and at least one child there. They may be,
what did you call them, Zhegans? They’re still just people trying to survive.”
“Yeah, Zhegans,” Bronson said checking his pistol
after it had been in Griffin’s care. “I had heard of them but never ran into a
group that large. They’re people who didn’t want to kill the few remaining
animals but realized they couldn’t grow everything they need in this harsh
environment. So they looked at their other option for food, dead meat. It was
still possible to cook, edible, and there was a lot of it. They believe since
it was already dead they aren’t harming anything.”
“Except for us,” Nyx reminded.
“It’s exposure to the meat, it does something to their
brains, makes them more aggressive.”
“It’s disgusting,” Dine said.
“May I remind you Captain, killer or not Griffin did
have a point,” Bronson said looking down the sights to check them. “Not
everyone had the opportunity to make it up to space. I know we tried, but even
the military doesn’t want to admit they got scared and stopped coming back for
people.”
Dine shook his head.
“I’m not trying to start a debate with you Sergeant,”
reminding Bronson of his own former military rank. “You can see it in their
eyes though, something is wrong with them.”
“Then we play it smart. If you’re convinced this is
the only way to finish our mission then we should make a plan.” Bronson paused
as he holstered his .45, “and I want my rifle back.”
Nyx shook her head. “I’m shocked you haven’t named it
yet.”
“How do you know I haven’t?”
Bronson walked over to Pierce who was close to sulking
in his silence over by the old tall Cedar tree. He paused and they stared at
each other for a moment.
“Are you with us or should we just pick you up on the
way back? This is going to require some coordination and cooperation. So can we
count on you or not?”
Bronson knew this was a mistake even before Pierce
hesitated to answer, but they did need him and there was always room on the
chessboard for pawns.
“No, I mean, no you don’t have to leave me.” Pierce
frowned. “I can be fucking useful, just tell me what you want me to do here
okay?”
“Why did De Soto send you, and don’t tell me because
they are short handed.”
“Well that is true,” he assured Bronson, “but he also
knows I’m loyal. You pay me well, I’ll do well by you.”
It was Bronson’s turn to frown. He didn’t have
anything else to say to him. He simply waved his hand, motioning for him to
follow.
“Alright, let’s go then. I think I have a plan.”
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