by D. J. Molles
“Can you see?”
“Kind of.” Mitch pulled his hands away from his face, revealing half of it bleeding from a series of fine cuts and bits of gravel that had embedded just under his skin. His left eye was squinted shut and looked like it was bleeding.
“Can you blow that house?”
Mitch nodded. But his launcher was still in the truck. Hopefully not shot to shit. He’d bailed out with just his rifle. “Y’all give me some cover and let me get the launcher!”
Carl nodded. “Covering!”
He didn’t wait. He bent into an awkward shooting position so that he was aiming at the house from around the front tire and under the front bumper. He let out quick bursts of three-to-five rounds. Focusing on the windows. The bottom window. The top window. Back and forth.
Behind him, he heard the others firing, too.
And then, roughly at the same time, they ran out of ammo.
Logan was the only one still firing.
Three of them shouted, “Reloading!” one after the other, ducking back into cover and swiping at their extra mags.
Mitch yanked the launcher out of the back seat and brought it up, aiming through the open doors of the cab.
Carl slammed a new mag into his rifle, saw movement dead ahead and rocked the rifle into his shoulder pocket as he sent the bolt home on a new round. He fired a burst, and the shape hurtling towards them puffed red, but didn’t stop coming.
Carl kept firing, having to swing his rifle towards his teammates to track with the beast, and pulled his finger off the trigger just as the primal slammed into Rudy, crunching him against the side of the truck with a sound like a car crash.
Morrow reacted the second he was aware that Carl had ceased firing.
Rudy delivered vicious elbows to the primal’s face while the inhumanly strong arms wrapped him up like a constrictor, the blows to the face the only thing keeping it from sinking its jaws into his neck.
Morrow rolled out, away from the truck, landing hard on his left side and sweeping his rifle up for the only bit of flesh he could find on the primal that wouldn’t lead to Rudy being shot too, and he pumped five rapid-fire rounds into the things pelvis, breaking the bone structure, and causing it to lurch backwards off of Rudy.
Rudy spun with a cry and rammed the butt of his rifle into the stumbling primal’s jaw, causing it to lurch sideways as it tried to force its crushed pelvis to support it. When he had the arm’s length of movement, Rudy brought his rifle up and shattered its head.
Carl scanned. The street was clear. The houses beyond showed no movement.
They couldn’t keep doing this.
They needed to get out of there, now.
“Hit it, Mitch!” Carl yelled.
But Mitch was already moving again. He’d been knocked out of his sights by the primal attack, but now edged back into position, sighting through the open back door of the pickup, between the two front seats, and out the open driver’s side door, to the house beyond.
He fired his launcher with a heavy ka-thump!
At the same moment, a round zipped his collar.
Carl watched the cloth open up, and the blood spray off of him.
Mitch winced and jerked, but then came right back into his aim, his teeth grit, as though a bullet to the neck was something that only made him more angry.
His first round splashed, obliterating the second-floor window in a flash of fire and smoke.
He started firing as fast as the launcher could spin its cylinder.
Carl watched the blood spurting out of his neck.
The last four rounds went out.
The last four explosions rocked the house on the other side, and in the ringing stillness afterwards, there was no more incoming fire.
A quick look down the street revealed that the people had left, and the primals had gone with them, like a pack of hyenas chasing a herd of prey, picking off the slow and the weak.
Back to his team.
Mitch waggled around.
The anger had gone out of his eyes.
He looked scared. His bright red blood pulsed onto the side of the pickup, and across his hands, which were going to his neck to provide pressure.
“Get him in the truck!” Carl shouted. “Patch him! We gotta move, now! Morrow! Drive!”
Morrow hauled ass back to the driver’s seat.
Carl and Rudy pulled Mitch into the back, Carl going into the truck first and backing across the seat, pulling Mitch up with him as he went. Logan stayed outside, covering them. Mitch made groaning noises, but Carl didn’t think they sounded wet, or gagging.
At least it hadn’t punched his windpipe.
Though the clip to the carotid was a huge problem.
Carl pulled Mitch’s head into his lap and turned it so he could see the wound. The dome lights in the car were, somehow, still lit, and Carl evaluated the wound by the dim light.
Morrow slung himself into the driver’s seat.
Logan hauled himself into the truck bed and slapped the side.
The second Rudy’s feet cleared the pavement, he yelled, “I’m in! Move!”
The pickup lurched forward, all the doors closing on their own.
The truck still worked—miraculously—but for how long was anyone’s guess. Hopefully enough to get them to the rally point.
Carl made eye-contact with Mitch. The man’s eyes were wide and worried. And Carl didn’t blame him. A shot to the throat induced panic like almost no other wound. “You’re gonna have to stick your finger in it, okay?”
Mitch nodded, once, and his left hand came up, the index finger protruding.
Carl guided him to the hole in his neck.
He inserted Mitch’s own finger into his neck
Mitch screamed behind clenched teeth, and kicked out with his legs, hitting Rudy, but Rudy didn’t seem to mind, and kept calling encouragement to Mitch as he fended the boots off his chest.
Carl took one last look over his shoulder to see if there were any other troops in the vicinity, but this section of the neighborhood had turned into a ghost town. Elsie Foster’s hideout poured smoke, and the dancing flames at the front of the structure were the only thing that moved.
Had they got her?
He couldn’t say for certain.
At the moment, it didn’t matter.
“Get us to the rally point,” Carl said to Morrow. “I got a feeling this might turn into an evacuation.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
─▬▬▬─
DOWNHILL
Out in the night a person screamed.
Out in the night a primal howled, and was answered by many more.
Sam Ryder watched the bullet-riddled pickup truck bearing Carl and his operatives tear around the curve of the neighborhood street.
“Motherfuckers,” Billings whispered over Sam’s shoulder.
“They didn’t see us,” Sam said, and pulled himself back in and shut the door as best he could, seeing as how there was no longer a door jam to latch to after they’d kicked it in.
“Yeah, no shit they didn’t,” Billings mumbled.
From the back of the house, Jones and Chris were yelling at each other.
“Fuck! That hurts!” Chris yelped.
“It’s supposed to hurt! Quit moving!” Jones responded.
Chris had taken a round to the leg. Jones was applying a tourniquet for him.
There was a brief sound of scuffling.
“Don’t you fucking hit me!” Jones seethed. “I’m tryna help you!”
Billings stalked into the kitchen where Chris lay against the back door, Jones kneeling over him. “Both of you shut the fuck up! You want the primals to hear us?”
Jones said something back, slightly quieter, but Sam didn’t hear it. His attention had been drawn to a flash of movement in the darkness outside, lit only by the flicker of the fires burning in the house where Elsie Foster had been hiding.
“Hey. Corporal.”
Billings looked at him, irri
tated. “What?”
Sam moved towards the kitchen window, pointing. “Look.”
Staggering out of the back of the grenade-demolished house were three figures.
“Did they just come out of that?” Billings marveled.
Sam nodded.
It looked like a man and two women.
Sam didn’t recognize the man, but he recognized the two women, although just barely. Their faces were covered in soot and blood. But he knew them well.
Claire Staley and Elsie Foster.
Something lit up in Sam’s mind. It started between his temples, surged through his chest, and took control of his face. Gentle and kind and baby-faced Sam. His lips turned down. His teeth showed. It seemed like the child melted off of him in an instant.
The three figures staggered across the space between the ruined house and the next street over. Rifles in hand. Scanning around for primals.
Sam charged for the back door.
Jones held up a hand, but Sam simply reached over him and grabbed the doorknob. “Get outta the fuckin’ way,” Sam growled, in a voice he didn’t even recognize as his own.
“Alright. Geez.” Jones rolled out of the way and grabbed his rifle from where he’d leaned it against a counter. “Wait up.”
But Sam wasn’t waiting up.
He ripped the door open, even as Billings raised his voice, telling Sam to slow down.
The sound of Billings’s voice made the three escapees turn towards him.
Sam erupted out of the house, his rifle raised to his shoulder. “Get on the fuckin’ ground!” he shouted at them. “On the ground, now!”
Elsie Foster bolted.
Claire Staley and the man started shooting.
Sam juked sideways, firing off a clamor of rounds as he did. He heard the incoming rounds moaning as they passed close to him. Even over the slamming of the rifle reports, he could hear them thudding against the wall of the house behind him.
He looked for cover, but there wasn’t any.
Stand and fight!
Sam skidded to a stop. If he’d caught a round after stopping, that would have made him stupid. But he didn’t. And so he looked fearless. And in a way, he was. He wasn’t thinking. He wasn’t weighing consequence. And so he was a bit of both—fearless and stupid.
Claire and the unknown man were still firing at him when he stopped.
Their rounds tracking him…
A fusillade burst from the kitchen door of the house Sam had just come out of—Billings and Jones joining in, although their aim was wonky as hell, because even at twenty-five yards they didn’t hit shit.
Claire and the man turned and ran.
Sam fired at them, lava in his gut, spurring him to give chase.
His rifle locked back on an empty magazine.
Sam screamed swears, and took off after them, yanking a spare magazine from its pouch and replacing the empty one in his rifle. He had the presence of mind to yell, “Crossing!” as he ran in front of Billings and Jones’s line of fire.
He heard them yelling at him, but didn’t hear what they had to say.
He was all forward motion now.
Claire and the man were getting away.
They were running for another house, nearly around the front corner of it.
They were going to hold there and try to ambush him as he came around.
Sam, heaving air and growling like a savage, peeled to the left, to the other side of the house. They thought they were going to waylay him when he came around that corner.
They were mistaken.
For a flash he imagined himself coming around the opposite corner of the house, behind them. He saw their backs. And he didn’t hesitate. He didn’t give warning. He just pumped rounds into their backs until they stopped twitching.
He didn’t care that it wasn’t right.
These people had to see.
That they shouldn’t have fucked with him. That they shouldn’t have fucked with his family, with his little sister—even if she wasn’t really his blood.
That he wasn’t weak. That he wasn’t stupid.
That he could be just as downright savage as the rest of them, and God help you if you pushed him to it.
He came around the front of the house.
No one.
“Ryder! You fuck!” Billings screamed at him from somewhere in the backyard.
Sam wasn’t listening. Didn’t care.
The front door. It hung open, just an inch.
Sam ran for it.
When he kicked the door open, he saw two things.
He saw a man on the stairs, pointing a rifle at him, bleeding from the leg.
He saw a pair of feet, disappearing from the top landing into the second floor.
The man on the stairs fired.
Sam took the round with a grunt like he’d been punched. His chest plate stopped it. And then he fired back and slammed five rounds square in the center of that man’s chest.
And all the while he watched the man’s eyes, because they were wide with shock, and in Sam’s burning heart, that felt good. That felt righteous. The man had underestimated him. And he had paid the price.
They had all underestimated him.
Well, fuck ‘em.
The man wilted on the stairs, pouring blood.
Sam charged forward, his aching chest struggling for breath past his bruised sternum. He kicked the rifle out of the man’s dying hands with something like happiness, and shot the man in the top of the head as he sprinted passed, making sure that he would never get up.
Up the stairs. He paused only once he reached the landing.
He spun, bringing his rifle up, expecting someone to be there.
His tactics sucked—he knew it.
But no one was there. If they had been, he would be dead.
His breath ripping in and out of his dry throat, Sam sidestepped his way across the landing, gun up, chest aching, muscles beginning to burn, heart thumping like the steady rhythm of an automatic grenade launcher.
He decided that it was best not to slow down.
He didn’t know if that was a tactically intelligent decision or not. It just felt like the right thing to do. So he ran. He took the stairs in front of him two at a time, scanning about wildly as he reached the top.
“Claire!” he screamed, hoarse and winded. “Where are you?”
He had no idea why he called out to her.
Perhaps he thought she might say something and reveal to him which room out of the three doorways that faced him she had taken refuge in.
But she didn’t. The hall with the three doors remained silent.
Sam picked a door at random.
It was all random. Like billiard balls bouncing off of each other from an amateur’s break.
It was the door straight ahead.
He ran to it and didn’t stop.
He went through it, shoulder-first, nearly ripping it off its hinges.
He lost his balance with the impact of the door, and went down. The doorknob caught him on the side of the face as it rebounded off the back wall.
Out of the corner of his vision, he saw her.
To his left.
Claire waited for him, her rifle up.
She fired, but she was aiming for the doorway, at chest height, and Sam was falling.
He hit the ground as her rounds pocked the wall above him.
They began to track downwards.
He fired furiously in Claire’s direction.
One of the first few rounds found her foot, blasting it out from under her.
She lost her balance. Her shots lost track of where they were going.
Sam didn’t stop firing. He was honing in.
She hit the ground on her side, staring at him with shock and anger.
He fired into her chest. Watched her twitch. Watched the mist come off of her, visible even in the darkness. She was still staring at him when his rounds found her neck, her jaw, her face, chewing it all up.
For some reason, Sam was surprised when she died.
He stopped shooting her.
He stared in the ringing silence, sucking air so thick with gunsmoke that he could taste it on his tongue. In and out, his breath went. Claire Staley’s ruined face slumped onto the carpet, pouring its contents out like a broken pitcher.
“Claire?” Sam asked, and his voice wavered like a child’s.
He heard yelling.
He heard feet stamping up the stairs.
Sam sat up. Leaned against the wall where the bullets that had been meant for him had left a trail of holes in the drywall. His mouth began to sweat. He spit it off to the side. He couldn’t take his eyes off of Claire.
He felt horrified and elated.
It wasn’t just elation at being alive.
It was elation that he’d killed her.
And horror at the elation.
They yelled his name. Billings and Jones.
Jones saw him first. “Christ! Ryder! What the fuck’s wrong with you? Are you okay?”
Sam finally turned away from Claire’s dead face and looked at Jones like he’d just woken up. “What?” he asked.
“Are you okay?” Jones repeated, coming to the doorway, then clearing it rapidly as he went through. He saw Claire’s body. “Holy shit. Alright.” He went down on one knee and looked at Sam. “You okay? You hit?”
“No,” Sam said, his mouth lazy. Full of marbles. “No, the plates stopped it.”
“Goddamn,” Jones breathed. “Alright. Well. We need to get out of here.”
Billings appeared in the doorway. Gave the scene a quick inspection. “Ryder, next time I tell you to stop running, you stop running.”
“I got them, though,” Sam replied, hollowly, as Jones helped him to his feet.
Billings nodded at the wreckage. “Yeah. You fuckin’ got ‘em.”
Jones dusted Sam’s shoulders off, grinning and tittering. Jabbed a finger at the hole in the fabric of Sam’s plate carrier. “Damn, son. Hell yeah. Hardcore.”
Sam coughed. As an afterthought, he checked the hand he’d coughed into to see if it had blood on it—maybe that round had actually penetrated his armor but he hadn’t realized it yet. But no, there was no blood. He was good to go.
Sam looked at Billings. “Corporal, Elsie got away.”
“Is that who that other one was?”