“It’s not going to work,” Mike said simply.
Kari stared at him for a long moment, and then nodded, tears spilling from her eyes. She didn’t trust herself to speak. They remained there for a long moment, feeling the sun slowly begin to warm the spring air. The Feeder sucked again, and Mike sank from his knees to mid-thighs. Kari flinched, her face losing all color, but she met his eyes steadily.
“Standard protocol?” she asked, her voice almost devoid of emotion.
Mike shook his head. “No,” he said quietly. “I want to deviate from the mercy shot, Kari. I want to take this one out myself, just to return the goddamned favor. You douse the bitch with gasoline and hand me the flame thrower, okay? I’m going to see this thing burn like a marshmallow in a camp fire.”
“Oh, god, Mike,” Kari moaned, and she no longer cared if he saw her tears. She went to him and hugged him, sobbing on his sweaty neck and filthy t-shirt. “I can’t stand this!” she exclaimed. “It isn’t fucking fair! This isn’t how it’s supposed to end! I love you, stupid, and we’re supposed to have at least some kind of chance together, even if there is no such thing as a fucking happily-ever-after!”
Mike pulled back slightly and grinned at her. “You love me stupid?” he asked, his eyes twinkling slightly with his own moisture disguised as teasing amusement.
Kari shrugged his arms off and leaned back. “You know what I mean,” she said, a bit defensively. Then her voice softened. “I love you.”
“I know you do, sweetheart,” Mike replied, his mind once again working as he felt the Feeder pressing against his legs. The pain in his calves was getting intense, and he didn’t want it to show in his eyes as he looked at Kari.
“You know?!” Kari huffed incredulously, a touch of irritation in her tone. “You know I do? Someone says I love you, and your answer is you fucking know?”
Mike grinned. “I love you too, sweetheart. I have since the moment you slid that beautiful ass into the seat of my mom’s SUV. I was just ... thinking. Sorry, babe.”
Kari nodded, and finally let her gaze fall to the ground at Mike’s thighs to the Feeder. “Does it hurt?” she asked reluctantly.
Mike met her eyes levelly. “No,” he lied, “but it does have me thinking about things. Important things now, and things you have to do. First, the dogs. Dogs are going to be important.”
Kari blinked. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Hershey knew.” Mike nodded over to the pacing hound. “Hershey could tell the Feeder was there, but I was too caught up in that damned fat rabbit to pay attention to the dog. Where is the rabbit, by the way?”
Kari jerked her head in annoyance. “Over there,” she snapped, not admitting to Mike that she would never, ever eat rabbit again. “Anyway, what about the dogs?”
“NFK needs to work on finding and re-domesticating as many dogs as they can, to get them working as Feeder detectors. Hershey pushed himself in between me and the damned thing, and I shoved him out of the way.”
Kari nodded firmly. “Okay, dogs to train. Check.”
“My sister,” Mike said, his voice suddenly very husky. Kari looked up at him, her lips pressed together tightly as tears rolled unnoticed down her cheeks. “Kari, I’m counting on you for this, okay, hon? I need you to take care of Jenn for me. Promise me you’ll get Hershey and Butterball back to Knox, and promise me you won’t tell her I went down this way. Okay?”
“Mike ...” Kari stopped, buried her face in her hands and rocked back and forth for several seconds before nodding in defeat.
They sat in silence together for several long minutes as the sun rose overhead, and the Feeder finally sucked again, dropping Mike to his waist. He hissed slightly in pain. There was no more time to do this.
“I have one more request,” he said soberly. “My last one.”
Kari looked up at him, her red-rimmed eyes and bright red nose almost distorting the beauty of her face.
“Kiss me, Kari.”
She nodded, wiping her face on the sleeve of her hoodie and moving closer to Mike. She poured her heart and soul into the kiss, taking every bit he returned until neither of them could breathe. Afterward, she stepped away and walked back into the building, swiping at her burning eyes. She pulled the flame thrower out of the sidecar, checking to ensure the fuel was mixed properly, and lugged it and the half-full gasoline can back to Mike. Her eyes burned, and her throat was raw. She also checked her sidearm while she was inside the building, ensuring that it shouldn’t jam when it was time to deliver the mercy round ... time to kill her lover and best friend.
Hershey continued to pace back and forth in front of Mike and the Feeder, but Butterball, exhausted from the work and the blossoming heat of the day, fell asleep.
Mike met her eyes levelly. “I’m proud of you, soldier,” he said quietly, “and I love you.”
He didn’t say goodbye, and neither did she.
Kari handed him the flame thrower. His hands were steady as he took the weapon, adjusting the fuel container awkwardly over his shoulder.
“Ok, slosh liberally, just don’t get any in my eyes,” he teased.
Kari snorted at him and pitched a liberal amount of gasoline onto the ground surrounding Mike’s trapped body ... the camouflaged Feeder.
The reaction was immediate and, for Mike, exquisitely painful. The Feeder’s muscles contracted and spasmed, over and over ... but they never loosened.
“Wait, stop, stop, stop!” Mike yelled. “No more, wait a minute!”
Kari waited, sobbing bitterly as Mike panted for breath, and Hershey barked hysterically, snarling and snapping again and again. His mind raced while the dog fought the impossible foe. There was something he was missing here, something important. Something Jenn would know. He held up a hand, asking for silence as he struggled to grasp a memory that danced just out of reach. Something Jenn would know ... It was almost there, on the tip of his brain.
“It’s like a snake,” he told Kari, thinking out loud and trying to list the objective information as methodically as he could. “It constricts around me. It has muscles, double layers of muscles like an anaconda. It also apparently has taste buds, and it doesn’t like gasoline.”
Kari nodded, sniffing. “One of the main components in napalm is fossil fuel. We’ve seen them react badly to gasoline before.”
“Like an anaconda,” Mike repeated, his brow furrowed in thought. “No. Not gas!” he suddenly whispered, a note of unbearable hope creeping into his voice.
“What are you thinking, Mike?”
“The Feeder reacted to the gasoline, see, but it didn’t let me go. But it did react violently, though, like a snake tasting something nasty while constricting its prey. Like that fucking six-foot long Burmese Python my friend Devon had in middle school, before his mother made him donate it to the zoo.” Mike frowned, the memory dancing ever closer. “Female snake named Clyde,” he muttered. He froze, the memory playing itself out in his mind like a scene from a movie. Jenn was seven then. Always an animal lover, she was stricken and horrified at the snake’s reaction. She had burst into tears, which pissed Mike off at his friend. Devon was a dick to let his little sister watch when he knew what the snake would do! Mike’s anger at the time was what made the memory so sharp now.
Devon went into full herpetology instructor mode, telling his group of friends exactly how to react if they ever found themselves in the unlikely position of being constricted to death by a python. “First, don’t panic,” he said, sounding every bit as priggish as Mrs. Quisenberry lecturing about the necessities of safer sex to a room full of hooting, jeering teenage boys. “Stop struggling. Get to your dad’s booze cabinet and pour just a splash of whiskey or whatever you got right on top of the snake’s snout. They hate the taste of booze. Watch what happens.”
He demonstrated, pouring a capful of Jim Beam onto Clyde’s nose. The reaction had been instant and violent, the snake writhing away from the alcohol and contorting itself into almost impossible posit
ions as it backed into the corner of its cage, spilling its water bowl and knocking over its tree-bark hideout. It wasn’t constricting anything at the time, but still, the message was clear. Jenni had sobbed, almost hysterically, and Mike had almost kicked Devon’s ass.
Now, if only the Feeders were enough like snakes ...
“Kari,” Mike said, his voice tight with excitement as he felt himself sucked down another several inches into the Feeder. “Run, as fast as you can. Bring the Maker’s Mark, and for god’s sake, don’t drop it. Go! Go! Go!”
She was off like a shot, coming back in less than a minute with the bottle firmly in her grip. “I’m sorry,” she panted, as she pulled up. “I should have thought of it earlier - I know this has to hurt like a bitch!”
Mike grinned at her, an expression of hope in his eyes. He tried to tamp it down. If this didn’t work, it would be doubly devastating to them both ... but something in his gut told him he might just be the luckiest fucking man on the planet.
“Okay, you need to be very careful,” he said, watching her open the bottle. “I want you to pour a splash onto the Feeder, from the edge of its camouflage to where I am. But don’t waste too much, because we may only get a few shots at this.” He grinned, and then played an imaginary rim shot at his own words with a cocky, “Ba-dum-bah!”
Kari looked at him uncertainly, crushing disappointment filling her chest as she prepared for what would certainly be another act of futility. Mike clearly had a brainstorm, but he would also need the alcohol to help with the pain when it got worse ... and it would get worse. She held her thumb over half of the lip of the bottle as she splashed it onto the Feeder.
Mike screamed in anguish as the Feeder went absolutely insane with movement. Kari screamed in reaction, Hershey barked and growled and snapped, and Butterball yipped ferociously.
When the chaos settled, Mike was buried up to his chest in the Feeder.
He was also less than a foot from solid ground instead of directly in the middle of the beast.
“Again!” Mike snapped. “Over here - do it fast before it can recover!”
Kari obeyed, and this time Mike was ready for the wild thrashing. Hershey lunged forward, and Mike grabbed the dog’s fur, using him to pull against while he edged himself to the very rim of the Feeder and then, like being on the edge of a swimming pool, he hoisted himself up and out. Just like that, he was free.
Hershey wasn’t satisfied. He growled, yanking Mike by the shoulder of his fatigue jacket and pulling ferociously, dirt coming up as the dog’s paws entrenched themselves. Mike forced himself to his knees, crawling after Hershey with sudden tears of pain, terror, relief and overwhelming joy streaming down his face. He was out!
When they were a good ten feet away from the Feeder, Hershey let go and they both dropped down onto the grass, panting. A few moments later, Mike heard Kari behind him and the sudden snarl of heat as she started up the flame thrower with a whoosh. Screaming every obscenity she knew, Kari exterminated the Feeder with extreme prejudice.
Several minutes later, covered with dirt, sweat and soot, Kari dropped down next to Mike and the trembling dogs, breathing rapidly. “Too close, too fucking close, too close!” she sobbed, the words almost hysterical.
“Kari, I -”
“Shut up!” Kari snapped. She threw herself into Mike’s arms, wrapping her fingers in his hair and kissing him passionately. As quickly as she started the kiss, she ended it, pulling away from Mike and stamping back into the rest area to get the first-aid kit.
Mike watched her leave, appreciating the view with new-found clarity, and slowly let his shaking subside. Yes, the girl had a point. It had been too fucking close.
He smiled wryly when he saw her come back with the first-aid kit. “No awesome magic floaty ball to spit healing goop on me this time, huh?” he asked, glancing around hopefully. Kari laughed, shaking her head in exasperation.
“Sorry,” she smiled. “I think we gotta try to patch you up the old fashioned way. We have a lot of booze left to kill your pain, if you want a swig.” She handed him his canteen and some Ibuprofen, looking ruefully at his acid-burned boots, the hole-filled fatigues and the angry red blisters showing beneath the holes. She used a pair of medical scissors to cut the pants, making long, slightly uneven shorts of the fatigues, and then applied burn ointment to the worst of the red blisters on his legs.
“No, we’re not touching the whiskey,” Mike said firmly. “When we get back to Knox, we can requisition our allotment of whatever’s available and get totally shit-faced, but that whiskey is definitely a weapon, not a good time. We’ve got to pass this information up and down the line of the Resistance, Kari. It’s important everyone knows this.”
Suddenly, he smiled, a note of pride and awe in his voice. “You know what this means, right? We finally have a real chance to go on the offensive and really take it to these assholes, as long as the Razers continue to be their last-choice weapon. We’ve found the Trois’ weakness, and now the Feeders,’ too! We have just leveled the goddamned playing field!”
“It means you didn’t die,” Kari countered, a catch in her voice. “It means I didn’t lose you.”
Mike pulled her close to him, hugging her for a long moment. When she smiled and pulled away, he took out the handheld and called in his reports, grinning broadly as the “Repeat, soldier!” and “Goddamn, boy!” comments came back from the USRF units he managed to reach. They would be passing the news on, and in a matter of hours, soldiers would be carrying a new ... well, not so new ... weapon in their arsenals.
He grinned at the thought of Ricochet and Fields. He could just imagine their faces when the Old Bear marched into their tent and commandeered their moonshine still for the war effort! Hell, booze was suddenly even more important in the Army than it had always been ... and that was one of those impossible contradiction things. An oxymoron. Yep. They had themselves an oxymoron! Mrs. Persky would be proud.
The rabbit, unfortunately, was incinerated beyond redemption. Kari gave them each a granola bar, and they were on the road by 0930. Mike’s legs were covered with burn salve and bandages on the worst of the wounds, leaving the less severe injuries to the open air. He looked ridiculous, but he simply didn’t care. They were on the road again, getting closer to home with every mile ... and he was alive!
Hershey
His humans were both extremely grateful to him, and even though Hershey knew he deserved their praise for saving Mike from the monster, he wasn’t quite sure how to react to it. He could feel a change in the way they looked at him now, watching him carefully as though they were actually trying to learn Dog and giving him extra pats and rubs every time they passed him. Kari came to him when Mike went inside the building to water the scented porcelain bowls, and she cried and held him around his neck and whispered, “You are such a good dog, Hershey, thank you, thank you, good boy, good dog,” over and over again until it was almost embarrassing. Sure, he was a good dog. Of course, he was a good dog - he was supposed to be! Still ... he had to admit he could get used to Kari’s outpouring of love. It was good to be a good dog!
Yippyface had done well too, Hershey reflected generously, sniffing the puppy and yawning at her with approval. She had growled a very ferocious puppy growl, and she had yipped sternly enough a few times that it almost sounded like a bark or two. Most importantly, though, she kept out of the way.
Hershey jumped into the sidecar and scratched the seat for a moment, looking for a comfortable position. It was definitely roomier now, since Mike and Kari rearranged everything again, and Hershey approved of the extra space. He hated to admit it, but sidecar was losing just a little bit of its thrill since the first few days. It was still absolutely one of Hershey’s favorite things ever, but he almost wished Mike and Kari would find wherever it was they were going ... their version of work, he was sure. Hershey loved the idea of sitting under Kari’s desk while she tapped her fingers on top and talked to other humans and gave them dogs. He didn’t know wh
at kind of work Mike could do, though, if Kari and Hershey worked with the dogs. Maybe Mike could bring Kari’s food to her, and he could tap his fingers on her desk when she went on potty breaks? Kari took a lot of potty breaks.
That issue resolved, Hershey turned around in the side car, and then turned twice more. It got easier each day, every time Mike and Kari re-packed in the mornings. He settled down with a heavy, contented sigh. The sun was up now, but it still wasn’t even close to noon. Hershey figured he could get in a good long nap before Kari or Yippyface would have to go piddle. He closed his eyes and did just that.
They made it through the snarls of Charleston and about ten miles past the city before stopping for lunch, pulling their bikes off to the side of the interstate in the shade of a several-vehicle pileup. Mike pulled out his small boom stick toy and checked the vehicles while Kari waited with her own sidearm out, looking everywhere. Hershey watched with paternal pride as Butterball managed to pull herself up to the seat of the side car and topple over onto the ground. He was pleased to notice the little pup sniff a few blades of grass before squatting to pee.
“Hershey! Come, boy,” Mike called after picking up the long foul-smelling tube and backpack. Hershey came up to his human happily, and Mike finished putting the reeking toy on, and then made a vague gesture out toward the trees. Hershey cocked an ear. “Go on, boy, check it out,” Mike instructed. Hershey sneezed. Mike sighed, and then took a few tentative steps toward the woods. Hershey walked along happily beside him. Mike kept stopping every few seconds, looking over at Hershey. Hershey sat down and had a long, satisfying scratch while he tried to figure out what Mike wanted. He finally did figure it out and loped off quickly, first to the east, then back around to the west. Nothing. He came back to Mike and arched up, his paws on Mike’s chest, as if asking for a good-boy scratch. Mike obliged, but he still seemed distracted, not pleased with Hershey’s all-clear.
Iron Mike Page 26