Somebody, Save Me!

by Steve Beaulieu

  “Not yet,” Amy’s answer came over the speakers. “There are about fifteen of them in that vehicle. I’ll tell the police to get there, and you can work on stopping the mercenaries.”

  Jason turned toward the stairs and started taking them two at a time before Amy’s voice stopped him.

  “Jay, there’s a call going through. Someone is giving out instructions.”

  Jason’s thoughts turned dark. “Who is it?”

  Amy patched the call through.

  “—take her out and make it quick. We need both of them dead before the night is through.”

  A second voice, softer than the first, cut in. “What about the one the cops have?”

  “We’ll worry about Goff later. Right now is about tying up loose ends.”

  “Consider it done.” The call ended.

  “Can you trace the person who gave the order?” Jason asked.

  “I think so, but that doesn’t change anything,” Amy answered. “You have to get to that vehicle before it gets to Ellen.”

  Jason turned to continue up the stairs.

  “What about the leader?” Alan asked after him. “We have to stop him.”

  “Work on figuring out who they are,” Jason said. “We’ll get him.”

  The ATV raced through alleys when it could, but sometimes the shortest route was to take to the streets. The Guardian ignored the calls of excitement from the few late-nighters. On the one hand, while he hated the attention being the Darden Valley Guardian brought him, he couldn’t deny its effectiveness. In the last year, he'd seen the city’s crime drop drastically just from fear. On the other hand, he feared people seeing him on the street would want to know where he was going and follow him. To avoid that, he took difficult to follow routes as Amy ran interference on any of his fans’ possible electronic devices.

  Amy also helped him track the vehicle, a large moving truck with the usual ads on the side removed. From the way it was riding, all of the mercenaries were in the back and Jason was sure they were prepared for a fight. That meant guns. Amy said there were at least twelve phones inside, meaning at least twelve guns the Guardian was going to need to neutralize.

  Following Amy’s directions placed him on a path ahead of the truck. As he approached the place on the road where his path would intersect with the truck’s, Jason jumped off of the ATV and Amy drove it away, leaving the Guardian standing in the middle of the road as the truck turned the corner and came at him.

  The driver saw him almost immediately and drew a pistol. He fired repeatedly from the driver’s side window. The Guardian watched the gun’s barrel and, using his superior mental powers, predicted where each of the bullets was going to hit.

  To the driver’s credit, he pulled his gun in and pressed his foot on the gas.

  While running directly at a speeding truck was normally considered insane, Jason’s enhanced perceptions and athletic skill allowed him the confidence to pivot his momentum only feet from the bumper, grab the side of the grill and swing his legs up and through the open window. His feet connected with the side of the driver’s head, knocking him out. Instead of worrying about the brake and stopping the truck, Jason yanked the wheel to the right from his prone position on top of the unconscious driver.

  In response, the truck twisted, its momentum shifted, and the truck tipped over onto its side. Jason never stopped moving, punching out the passenger side window and climbing out as the top of the truck slammed down onto the pavement. The sudden jerking motion as the truck came to a stop was missed by Jason as he had already leaped from the side of the vehicle. He landed in a roll on the pavement.

  The door to the back of the truck fell open, and seven mercenaries filed out of the truck as if it hadn’t just rolled onto its side. Each was dressed in the same armored vests and black pants as they came out with military grade rifles at the ready. Instead of the rifles, two of them had different guns. They came out in the middle of the pack of mercenaries. Their guns looked more like cannons with rifle grips.

  Time slowed for Jason as his mental acuity took over. He broke into a sprint and ran at the oncoming small army watching for the small movements that indicated that they were about to shoot and subconsciously tracking the aim of each gun. The Guardian wasn’t capable of traveling faster than normal, but his mind was, thanks to his sister’s altering of it. Using that asset, he dodged the bullets fired by the lead mercenaries as the two with the odd weaponry took aim.

  It was that same asset that allowed Jason to see he was being set up. The bullets were being fired in a staggering pattern, keeping the Guardian in a tight lane of attack as the weird weapons took aim. As they fired, and at a slower rate than the guns, Jason recognized what they were.

  Bolas launched at a rapid rate from each gun as the shooters moved the large barrels in a circular motion. Each gun fired three of the ball and rope weapons.

  The Guardian leaped into the air, twisting and drawing his tonfa from his back sheath. As he spun horizontally in the air, he managed to avoid some of the bolas and sweep two of them away with the tonfa. Unfortunately, he couldn’t avoid the last one as it wrapped around his knees and stopped his forward momentum.

  Jason landed on the road in a roll. While his legs were still bound, it didn’t stop him from adding the remainder of his forward momentum to the swing of his tonfa. The baton flew with unerring accuracy, connecting with the bola gun closest to him. It swung to the left and caused the two nearest gunmen to flinch and readjust their positions, buying Jason a brief moment.

  In almost a single movement, the Guardian pulled a knife from a pocket on his uniform and cut the nylon rope of the bola and allowed the blade to continue forward and into the hand of the nearest shooter. Jumping to his feet, he grabbed the top, formerly the left side, of the truck and swung himself over it. Bullets peppered the truck as Jason rolled toward the back of the truck and came down in the middle of his attackers.

  The Guardian came down on two of the weapons peppering the truck before pulling one of them away and thrusting the butt of the gun into the face of the gun’s owner before repeating the process on his nearest companion. As they fell, the hero ejected the magazine and pulled the slide to remove the remaining cartridge. He never stopped moving, bringing the gun around like a bat and taking out the nearest mercenary holding a bola launcher. As they spun around, the Guardian kicked out, propelling them toward their fellow bola user and beyond, into the mercenary still grappling at the knife in his hand. They went down in a heap, leaving one mercenary with a rifle on each side.

  As if their minds were synced, they both dropped their rifles and drew knives. Each knife consisted of a blade with a gap down the middle. A familiar whine filled the air and Jason recognized it immediately. These weren’t just knives, they were knives with an electric charge, similar to his own shocker sleeves.

  The mercenary on his left let out an almost inaudible laugh and wiggled his knife as he took up a stance with the blade high.

  “When in Rome…” he lunged at the Guardian.

  Jason spun and slapped the attacking arm to the side just in time to see the blade of the second attacker coming in low on his right. He continued spinning and brought up his knee while leaning forward. His move helped the second knife slide by him as his knee drove the second man into the back of the still opened truck.

  The Guardian slammed his knuckles together, but the move cost him time as the first knife wielder planted a foot in his back and pushed Jason into the truck as well. He almost lost his balance but managed to right himself as the recovered-second-mercenary lunged forward with his charged knife.

  They hadn’t tagged him yet, but they weren’t new to this form of combat. Even with the Guardian’s incredible skills and enhanced abilities they were managing to keep him off balance enough that it wasn’t a matter of if he would slip up but of when.

  He needed to end this quickly.

  No sooner had that thought crossed his mind when a bola hit him in the back. His a
rms were pinned to his sides, and he almost fell under the sudden shock of the attack. Using that momentum, he came up into a roll right next to the mercenary still in the truck. As he came up, Jason could see that one of the original bola launchers was in the hands of the man who had previously had a knife through his hand.

  The mercenary in the truck lunged at Jason with his shocker knife and this time Jason didn’t move out of the way. Instead, he dropped about two inches and twisted. The knife sunk into his armored vest and into the soft flesh underneath, mostly cutting skin and the thin layer of fatty tissue without hitting any vital organs.

  And also cutting the nylon cord of the bola.

  The blade of the knife was still charged and released a current into the hero. Waves of nausea and spasming pain surged through his body, and he couldn’t help but buck away from the blade.

  As the last of the charge left his body in aches and pains, Jason pushed past it and grabbed at the length of bola that had just been cut. The nylon cord was still attached to one of the large rubber balls, so Jason scooped it up and began swinging it.

  Jason had no practice with any sort of weighted weaponry like this, but he didn’t need it. He swung it wide as a distraction and watched as the mercenary at his back with the knife grabbed the nylon cord and let the ball wrap it around his hand.

  The hero gave a quick tug, surprising the mercenary with the simple maneuver and bringing him within reach of Jason’s electrically charged fist.

  The mercenary who had stabbed him stepped toward the Guardian quickly, jabbing quickly with the knife hoping to put a few more holes into Darden Valley’s self-proclaimed protector.

  Unfortunately for him, Jason had retrieved the now unconscious mercenary’s electric blade and in an almost invisible movement, threw it. It sunk into the shoulder of the charging attacker and he shook as the electricity washed over him. From experience, Jason didn’t expect the small charge of the blade to be enough to drop the man, so he stepped in and discharged his other gauntlet into the side of his temple.

  While only the mercenary with the wounded hand was up and fighting, Jason could see that the two original owners of the bola launchers were starting to get up. The mercenary started firing the bola launcher as the Guardian turned and ran straight for him. The Guardian ducked each of the rope weapons before tackling the man and punching him twice in the side of the head, putting him down.

  Standing, he spun and kicked the had of the nearest stirring mercenary. His head smacked into that of his nearby companion, and the mercenaries were all unconscious.

  Chapter 5

  The Guardian had taken all of the mercenaries and tied them with a mix of zip ties and the bolas from the launchers. All except one of them. The Guardian took the mercenary with the knife wound in his hand and tied him to the ATV. Then he dragged him into an alley about three blocks from the downed truck.

  Amy had called and informed the Darden Valley Police, and Jason could already hear the sirens.

  Punching the tied up mercenary in the stomach was all it took to wake him up.

  “Who are you?” Jason demanded.

  “Carl Sagan,” the mercenary coughed out.

  “Why Carl,” the Guardian raised his fist, the whine of the charged gauntlet echoing off the alley walls, “are you telling me that you’d like to see stars?”

  ‘Carl’s’ originally smug look fell away as his face turned serious.

  “We’re the Shock Squad.”

  “Is that supposed to mean something?” Jason demanded.

  Carl gave a smirk. “It will.”

  Amy’s voice came over Jason’s earpiece. “Jay, his real name is Ray Thorpe. He was once a member of the Shades.”

  That made some sense. Amy had forced the Shades out of Darden Valley by threatening all of their electronic funds. It only made some sense because she had threatened to eliminate everything from their financial records if they ever returned.

  “You’re a Shade.”

  Carl spit. “The Shades are cowards.”

  “No, the Shades were smart,” Jason countered. “Cowards blackmail innocent people into robbing banks.”

  Carl shook his head. “That wasn’t the plan.”

  “Then what was?” Jason demanded.

  “This,” Carl replied. “You hurt the Shades, and they left, but not all of us were happy about that decision. So, we decided to fight back.”

  “What’s he talking about, Jay?” Amy asked.

  “How?” Jason asked.

  “With better weapons and faster bullets. With advanced combat training and enhanced tools. We’re on the hunt for big game,” Carl started laughing as he spoke. “We don’t care about robbing banks. That was bait. We have an entirely different prey.” Jason didn’t have to ask what it was. Carl supplied it readily. “We hunt heroes.”

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Jason said quietly, “but you failed tonight.”

  Carl shook his head. “No, we didn’t. This was inauguration night. Tonight the Shock Squad managed to lure out the Guardian. There might be a few dozen Shades, but they’ve got nothing on us. Tonight we made you bleed. Tomorrow we bury you.”

  “Shock Squad?” Jason asked.

  “Oh yeah,” Carl answered. “That’s what we call ourselves now.” He nodded toward the Guardian’s gauntlets. “You’ve inspired us to bring our A-game. The Shock Squad will be the ones who kill the Guardian.”

  He punched the mercenary, knocking him out cold.

  Jason took the unconscious man and left him tied up in front of the Darden Valley Police Station.

  As he drove through alleys and dark parking lots back to The Hobby Trunk, Amy mulled over what the man had said.

  “So, there’s an army of well-trained and violent killers hunting you?”

  “And they have no problem using innocent people as bait,” Jason added.

  Amy was quiet for a moment before asking, “What do we do?”

  “The same thing we do with every threat,” Jason answered. “We’re going to end it before people get hurt.”

  A Word From Matthew Davenport

  Thanks for reading “Broken Nights: Shock and Awe.” I am a writer from Des Moines, Iowa where I live with my wife, Ren, and daughter, Willow. When my scattered author brain isn't earning weird looks from the ladies of my life, I enjoy reading sci-fi and horror, tinkering with electronics, and doing escape rooms.

  I am the author of the Andrew Doran series, the Broken Nights series (along with my brother, Michael), The Trials of Obed Marsh, and Satan's Salesman among other titles.

  I’m also a self-styled student of the Cthulhu Mythos and exercise that influence in my stories and as an editor at the blog Shoggoth.net.

  Follow me on twitter: @spazenport.

  I also update my blog from time to time at davenportwrites.com.

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