by The Behrg
There was no greater good.
Verse XXXI.
A gunshot echoed through the tunnel, ravenous in its approach. Rojo and Kendall both paused, their movement ceasing. Oso cocked his head. Dugan held his breath.
A litany of blasts followed. Before they ceased, each of the men took off in a full sprint, moving toward the noise. Dodging curves and bends in the tunnel became an exercise in footwork, weaving in and out, back and forth, but always forward.
The gunfire died out but gave rise to a tumult of commotion ahead. Sounds carried in these stretched halls, and the element of surprise they had sought so carefully had now been compromised. Irreparably.
Kendall and Oso slowed as the tunnel merged into an open space, a cavern-sized room with wooden framing at its center.
“Go!” Dugan ordered, as he and Rojo caught up.
Both Oso and Kendall reacted without hesitation, stepping out into the open.
Shots fired.
The plink of bullets ricocheting off rock.
Oso dove into the air, landing in a roll while Kendall charged forward letting out a primordial scream.
Dugan joined them, assessing the room while choosing the nearest target. The corridor, he saw, continued on the far side of the cavern. The shaft at its center was an old mining elevator, ropes and pulleys holding it in place. Three soldiers were on the ground near them, a fourth on the other side of the shaft. All armed. Two firing.
Kendall barreled into the soldier closest to the elevator, driving him back against the wooden frame just as the man raised his Luger. The soldier Dugan had targeted spun around as if struck, one of Oso’s dark blades sticking out from the center of the man’s back. The third man collapsed to his knees, another hilt buried in his throat. Oso must have unleashed both knives mid-dive.
Dugan strode over to the man still standing, unfolding his own blade and raising it to the soldier’s throat. A quick slice ended with a wide spray of blood. The soldier went down hard. Dugan retrieved Oso’s curved knife from the man’s back, having to leverage his weight with one foot to pull it free.
A shot thwumped into the downed man’s leg, inches from where Dugan stood.
“Above,” Rojo shouted.
More of Gutierrez’ goons were being lowered on a wooden platform, targeting them like aerial snipers. Dugan ducked, slicing through the tangled gun strap wound around the dead soldier, in order to free the man’s rifle. It was an old SAPOS: Semi-Automatic Piece of Shit. He pulled the gun free, turning, just as two shots punctured the dead guard’s head. Pulp flew upward, bone, flesh, and blood, spattering Dugan’s neck and arm.
“To the shaft,” Kendall shouted.
Dugan rushed toward him, the landing at least providing some protection from above. He fired round after round as he ran, ignoring Rojo’s comment about Kendall and his ‘shaft.’ The fact that Kendall was fighting in his underwear only added to Rojo’s dark humor.
A wild shot screamed past Dugan just as he stepped beneath the lowering platform. Kendall returned fire at the guard on the other side of the shaft with the Luger. Two shots missed, clanging off rafters and a metal crank. Dugan brought his own rifle up, aiming, but was unable to find a clear shot. Across from them, someone ducked in and back out from the corridor, behind the man.
“More coming!” Dugan shouted.
“I’m out,” Kendall said.
Beside him, Oso held his hand out, palm up. Dugan slapped the curved blade back into his hand. “We need a plan.”
Shots rang from above.
“Distract them, yeah?” Rojo shouted.
Dugan turned back, realizing Rojo hadn’t yet joined them. He was crouched down near a pile of junk in the corner. Old gears, busted crates, rusted chains; all resting atop a pile of grease that had become a permanent part of the earthen floor. Partially covered by the debris, he was still a target for any marksman.
“Muku,” Kendall said, beneath his breath.
“Need a minute!” Rojo said.
Oso swung his blade at one of the ropes above their heads. It split, dust sprinkling down. The remaining rope shot through a pulley, a loud zing followed by metal creaking, then the platform above them tilted, one corner swinging down. The men above were unprepared for the sudden motion. One of them flipped backward, falling from the platform, his arms flailing in the air. He hit with a resounding thud. From that height, and landing on his back, he was either dead or paralyzed.
“Maybe two!”
Dugan tapped Oso on the arm, pointing at the soldier on the other side of the framing with his own lips. Oso nodded, moving around the side of the shaft.
Rifle raised, Dugan stepped just beyond the range of the platform, firing two consecutive rounds at the men above. Another soldier dropped, somersaulting in the air before his body compacted into the hard dirt. As the soldier across from them raised his own gun toward Dugan, Oso hurled his blade. The man turned just in time, dark metal slicing into his triceps rather than striking him in the chest. Still, he screamed, firing wildly at each of them. Shots ricocheted off beams and metal casing.
“The hell’s Rojo doing?” Kendall asked.
“I don’t know, but more are on their way behind us as well.”
“We’re the fish who just climbed into the barrel.”
Oso broke free a tooth from one of the larger gears he had been working at, palming the jagged piece of shrapnel. He pointed with his lips at both of them, then motioned for them to go around the other way.
The guard on the other side shouted something in Spanish so quick Dugan couldn’t even make it out. Sparks rang out from the trolley and gears as the men above them turned their fire below rather than at Rojo. Rifle barrels appeared over the edges, wild shots hoping for a hit. Dugan followed Kendall around the outer framing, hugging it tightly as they moved.
A round plugged right into a wooden beam directly in front of Kendall’s head. He glanced back at Dugan. “Rojo can kiss my ass.”
The crooked platform was now less than ten feet above them, gears grinding and groaning with its descent.
“Almost got this,” Rojo shouted.
A young soldier suddenly appeared upside down from the side of the platform, his torso swinging out over the ledge, assault rifle turning towards them.
“Shit!” Kendall dove between beams into the hollow center of the shaft, shielding his head with one arm.
Dugan dropped to the ground, rolling beneath one of the beams and turning his body sideways to make less of a target. Bullets ripped through wood, slivers and chips flying. Dugan felt a slug punch through his shoulder, a blast of hot white pain ripping through him. He watched with horror as the soldier with the wounded arm across from them raised his rifle, a clear shot now on Kendall, who stood unobstructed in the center of the rafters.
Oso appeared, moving like some disembodied specter. His hair whipped back behind him as he tackled the soldier, driving the chunk of metal through the man’s neck which bent backward as they fell.
A cry from their left. The young soldier was falling, head first, his legs flipping awkwardly behind him. He hit the ground with a crunch, body folding over itself before laying him flat. Whoever had been holding him must have lost their grip. A lucky break, though not for him.
Dugan rolled back out from beneath the beam. The young kid watched him, following Dugan’s movement, but his eyes were the only part of him that could move. His spinal column was severed.
“Thanks,” Dugan said as he picked up the kid’s fallen rifle and put him out of his misery. A single shot to the skull.
Just then a bellow of flames engulfed the upper platform, heat pushing against Dugan like a physical force. He shielded his face, involuntarily moving back, away from the flames. Screams sounded from above.
A body hit the ground on the other side of the railing and then the heat vanished, flames subsiding. The screaming, however, continued.
The soldier that had jumped was still afire, rolling back and forth on the ground in
an effort to squelch the flames. His uniform was melting to his skin, and with each frenzied movement his flesh broke open, blood bubbling out.
The platform and upper half of the wooden shaft was still burning, grey smoke streaking upward into the gap in the ceiling. Oso bent over the burning soldier, kicking the man’s gun away from him. Rather than kill him, Oso left him to burn. To suffer. He came over to join Dugan, blood splattered across the native’s face as if he had dipped his head in war paint.
At seeing the blood soak through Dugan’s shirt, Oso moved toward him, pressing tenderly into the split flesh.
Dugan grimaced. “I’m fine. It just grazed me.”
“Thought you’d be tired of getting shot by now,” Kendall said, still standing at the center of the scaffolding.
“Come on, no applause?” Rojo stood in the corner holding his contraption up like a trophy for them to see. A nozzle had been fastened to a small PVC pipe with two thin tubes extending down into a can of some kind of flammable liquid. Strapped to the front of the pipe was Rojo’s lighter, its small flame still flickering. Rojo squeezed the nozzle, liquid shooting up the tubing, and blue and orange flames exploding outward from its end.
He laughed, releasing the nozzle, the jet of flames immediately dying out.
“Boys should have named you MacGyver,” Dugan said.
“A little warning next time?” Kendall asked, as he stepped out from beneath the rafters.
Beside Dugan, Oso started laughing.
Dugan looked at him, unfamiliar with that sound. Then he turned back to Kendall, unable to hold back a grin.
“What?”
Kendall’s face was covered in black grime and ash, his open eyes giving him the appearance of a raccoon, but it wasn’t his coloring that had brought Oso to tears. Kendall’s eyebrows and eyelashes had been completely singed off, his hair closest to the front scorched to blackened short ends.
The sound of Oso’s laughter now had Dugan joining in.
“What!” Kendall demanded.
He reached up, feeling his hair, his eyes going wide, causing Dugan and Oso to laugh that much harder. “Rojo! You son of a bitch!”
But Rojo, despite having caused it, wasn’t in on the joke. With his back turned to them he let loose another inferno, flames spraying into the corridor from which they had come.
“We got company,” he shouted.
“Not another word,” Kendall said, his finger pointing at Dugan, then at Oso.
Oso wiped tears from his eyes.
“Back,” Dugan called, grabbing Kendall and pulling him to the side of the burning platform. At the opposite corridor, a shape had emerged. But there was no gunfire to accompany it.
As Dugan stepped out, the form retreated back into the corridor. But despite the filth and grime covering the individual like a suit of body armor, Dugan recognized who he was looking at. It was his daughter.
Verse XXXII.
Faye stared out at the man she thought she’d never see again. He looked whole; healthy even. Maybe a little disheveled, but of all the blood adorning his clothing and body, she would be surprised if any of it was his own.
As the shock of discovering a living phantom fully began to register, another truth sprang out at her, catching her by surprise.
Zephyr had lied.
Which meant he was no longer under her father’s thumb. He was running a rogue operation. And she had practically led him to the Shaman.
What have I done?
“You’re okay,” Dugan said, moving toward the tunnel’s entrance. It wasn’t a question. With him, it rarely was.
She became suddenly aware of the gore slathered over her own shorts and tank top, as if she were seeking her father’s approval for an outfit before going to school or out on a date. Not that they had ever had that normal of a conversation. Faye tried to form words, find an answer, but tears filled her eyes. She still had to shake herself free from the shock of what she had just witnessed; the gunshots ringing out, the gaunt looks of surprise and horror as the women registered what was taking place. Their hallowed screams.
Whatever innocence still remained a part of her, however small it had been, Zephyr had destroyed in that moment. The world, and everyone in it, was but a feeding ground. A trough. A banquet for demons and monsters.
Hari’chauk.
But where were the saviors? Did they exist? Or were they only monsters themselves, slaying lesser terrors in their way?
Her legs gave out and Faye fell to the ground, weeping like a child, blood and tears mingling on her lips. Her whole body shook, trembling beneath the weight of it all.
So much death.
How did her father live with it?
“Faye!”
She heard him running towards her. It only made her anguish more real. Her life, more broken. She had vilified her father for so long she wasn’t sure how to let him back inside, or if she was capable of extinguishing that hatred. Was it possible to revive a part of her that had been slaughtered? That no longer existed?
Before she could come to a conclusion, she felt Dugan’s arms around her. They were cold, and foreign. Stiff. And then that dam slowly began to break. For both of them. She let her head fall against his chest, felt his tears spill onto her head and hair. His body rose and fell with hers, arms squeezing tighter.
“You’re okay,” he whispered. “Everything’s okay.”
The words of a father. Comforting a daughter. Only they slid off her, rather than sinking in. She shoved him away, backing against the cavern wall. Wiped at her face. “I thought you were dead.”
“I should have been. He … the Shaman; he healed me.”
Do not accept the healing.
“He’s not what you think he is.”
“He’s more. What’s in him — that power? Faye, it will change the world.”
“Not for the better. There’s no time. You’re man, Zephyr, he’s … he’s going to find him.”
“You got away?”
She nodded, knowing Dugan meant from Zephyr and not the alcalde, or even the Shaman. Fresh tears shot down her face. “He wasn’t shooting at guards. It was women. Innocent girls. Prisoners!” A racked sob interrupted her words. “They’re keeping them here. Locked up. And he —”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay! They did nothing wrong.”
Dugan spoke slowly. “No one ever does. Death doesn’t wait for some checklist before it comes knocking. Look at your mother.”
“Don’t talk about her.”
“She didn’t deserve to die.”
“But she deserved a man who would stay by her! I can’t just forget what you did. Abandoning her. Us? Till death do you part, or just whenever it’s convenient?”
“Your mother knew why I left.”
“I’m sure that was real comforting as she lay in that bed, her body eating her alive.”
“You have it too. GSS. It’s genetic.”
Faye felt the color drain from her face. “You knew? This whole time, you knew?”
“Once Selah had been diagnosed, we … had you tested. I wasn’t sure if you were even aware, the signs don’t start showing until —”
Faye held out a hand to stop him, shaking her head and closing her eyes. It was all too much.
“There are no cures, no treatments to even slow its progression.”
“Stop,” Faye said.
“You think it was my idea to leave? She made me go. The thought of you having to suffer like she did …”
“I said stop! Don’t you dare lay this on me!”
“It’s always been for you, Faye. All of it. Don’t you see? Look at the world we’ve created. Disease, cancer … the percentages grow every day, and what do we do? Turn the other cheek. We accept it, like there’s nothing we can do about it, as we add our name — our lives — to the list of those who are dying. Terminal illness; I won’t accept it. And this man, this being, is the answer. He cured me, Faye. Not just from the fall, or the gunshot w
ounds, though God only knows that should be enough; but my cancer. It’s … gone.”
Faye felt the world tilt; the pedestal she had constructed to stand upon, crumbling before her. If it was true, if it was really true … it would change everything.
But did the means justify the end?
Could they ever?
Do not accept the healing.
“We have the chance to change the face of humanity, to create a future where there is no disease or pain. Maybe even death. Can you begin to comprehend what we’re fighting for?”
“It doesn’t excuse what you’ve done.”
“No, it doesn’t. But there’s not one name on my list of those who have fallen who I wouldn’t put right back on there to find what we’ve found. We’re talking all of humanity, Faye. Every single person on earth, and every generation to come.”
Faye shook her head. “It wouldn’t work that way and you know it. Less than one percent would have access to what you bottle — if you can even package it. Cures are never for the masses. They’re for corporations and stockholders. In essence you’d be granting immortality to slave owners, creating an elite race that would rule the earth.” She laughed callously. “Who’s to say it hasn’t already happened.”
Dugan looked disappointed. Like a child who just showed his mother a frog only to be reprimanded rather than praised.
“They put me with him, in the same cell, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s that he is not the answer. He’s only an end. And if you let him live you won’t be saving me or the world, you’ll only be speeding its destruction.”
Gunfire sounded behind her father, but Dugan didn’t turn, didn’t even flinch. Another roar of flames erupted that her father seemed to not hear.
Is he the same man he was or did The Shaman do something to him? Change him?
Her father pointed toward her. “When you have a child of your own, then … maybe then, you’ll understand.”
“I won’t leave without the women. The captives they’re holding here.”
“I can’t make that promise.”
“Then stop pretending this is all for me!”