It’s not going to be enough for them to have lift off, Eli. Come on, man. Think. Elias was stunned by his own thoughts. Yet he was right and he knew it. If Yim got to that plane and conveniently hijacked it where she could fly it out of here that would be great. She’ll never make it past the Blood City skyline at that rate. She needed something else. Something to slow First Street and company down. Something that would buy her a little time to make a successful launch.
Elias knew nothing about flying planes, other than what he’d seen in vague war films in his distant, murky past.
“No! No, I can’t be on that plane! I need to be on that one…” Elias stopped in his tracks. The rest of the team stumbled up to the landing feet of Air Force One. Elias craned his neck to look beyond what he saw. There, nested in the shadow of the massive presidential plane, was a trim little fighter jet from back in the day. If Elias remembered all the zealous scuttlebutt he’d heard about those things, then he knew that there was some kind of auto-pilot on them.
“What are you talking about, dude? Listen…We just found out about each other. Now you wanna split?!” Riff was hysterical. He gave Elias a mighty shake by his collar. Elias swung his hands around and grabbed Riff by his face.
“I just found you. Do you have any idea how long I’ve been wanting to know about my family? If there were any of you left? If you were okay? You’re alive. If it means a diversion and the heart of Africa to keep you that way, then I’m going.” Elias’s hands trembled. Riff’s eyes were wide and his pupils dilated. Blood smattered his bottom lip.
“You’re crazy! You will get killed and there goes the plan!” Riff thrust his palms into Elias’s chest. Elias didn’t let go.
“You’re not hearing me, little brother! I said this is a diversion. This is the plan!” Elias paused. He’d fought Riff to his knees. Elias looked up at Yim, who paused at the big plane’s landing.
“What are you doing, Walklate? Compose your friend and report for phase three of our mission!” Yim waved a rifle in Elias’s face. Elias shook his head.
“You know that there’s no getting past their line-ups. This was too messy a send-off, Yim! You need a diversion. Get this kid to safety. That’s my last request.” Elias grabbed Riff by the back of his shirt, forcing him forward a few feet by his back collar.
“No! I won’t leave you behind!” Riff swung his fists, thrashing and shrieking hysterically.
“Come on, damn it, Riff! I need as many men as I can get on board this old box of magnesium!” Yim beat her blazing palms into the rig’s old tail wing. It grew cherry hot by default and cast up the hangar’s dust in its wake. Bullets were deflected by the heatwaves.
“You have to promise to come back!” Riff shouted. “All the rest of them, they never came back. Not you, though. You don’t get the choice, dude. You’ll come back alive or I will find you in Hell and mess you up!” Riff snapped his fingers in Elias’s face.
Elias hauled his brother to his feet. He smiled.
“You’re a stronger man than me, Riff. Stay real.” Elias ruffled his brother’s hair compulsively, hugging him from the side. He didn’t care who saw it now. He’d never had the opportunity to embrace his kid brother before. This might be the last time he ever did. It was now or never.
“Hold it! I’m not a little kid, dude!” Riff was visibly mortified by his decision. His whole body tensed. They were supposed to be a team. Had Elias forgotten already?! It had only been two days!
Riff drew a knife from his belt. All the fibers in his body said to follow Elias into hell’s teeth. It was evidenced by the stance he took, legs apart in a gunslinger’s pose. Yet the screams of their company said to go with the boss and maintain the mission. Elias saw the divide in his brother’s mind, reflected in his wide, shifty eyes.
He knew that their underlying mission was more important than their personal sentiments. He knew that he’d never be able to tap into the power he’d been given if he didn’t understand how it was different from the evil he was fighting. Yet his heart wanted what it needed. Could he be blamed for that?
Elias knew the feeling. Riff would have his turn one day to strike out on his own. Just not yet. It wasn’t exactly pleasant, but for the first time in his life, Elias was allowed to make an independent choice. Not only allowed. Technically, this was his higher purpose. His divine responsibility. If anybody questioned that, he’d just have to refer them to his mother, his guardian angel in heaven. She was the authority thus far. The patron saint of all he did. The intercession that made it possible for him to choose.
Thus Elias Walklate’s first choice was a sacrifice that would redefine the world as he knew it. It was the beginning of his life; it was the end of his life. His hands went to his weapon’s belt. There was only one way through the countless ranks of Sweepers and that was straight ahead.
“Trent, haul this man on board. We’ve got a deadline to meet!” Yim dismissively snapped her fingers at her men. They crowded in to peel Riff away from Elias.
Madeline called out from their ranks.
“Elias! Thank you.” Madeline’s voice was lost in the sudden commotion. Elias looked back just in time to see Madeline and Riff shut up inside the massive plane.
Elias turned back to face the fight. His breath came in dull gasps. He wasn’t sure, but he had faith that they’d be safe.
“Okay, Eli. Time to give yourself some flying lessons.” Elias rolled his head on his neck, and crossed his blades in front of himself. Sweepers were crowding him in already. They hopped and pecked like sentient vultures, trying everyway that they found possible to drive a wedge in between Elias and his teammates.
Doubling back, making only quick cuts to parry the random pecking attacks, Elias dove on the fighter jet. He scrambled up into the cockpit.
“Okay, so this will work I think. Press all the random buttons.” Elias started punching everything on the control board. Nothing happened.
“Right, well here it might help if I powered it up.” Elias rolled his eyes, indicating the control panel to a Street-sweeper as he climbed up eye level. With a quick sweep, Elias severed the creature’s head. He turned over the key.
“Ah, yes. Autopilot. Adjust to GPS position this squiggle boot shape place that is Africa.” Elias punched some more buttons on the dust-stained screen. The plane shot across the ground, tearing through several sweepers. The nose pushed straight through the ranks and aimed for First Street, knocking him out of orbit.
“Wahoo!” Elias beat his fist against the closing cockpit window as the plane flipped itself on its head and shot off over what had once been Baltimore, heading east and over the sea. With flight, Elias had transcended. No matter what happened to him out there in the world, he was finally leaving his past behind for good.
*****
Chapter 10
Elias woke up in the Savannah. His living memory had been like a trance, but it had come to an abrupt ending when tormented animals shrieked from the distance.
“The Hell-Cats…Waking up.” Elias licked his lips.
Hell-Cat. That’s what he’d come to call the demented, intramuscularly suspended lion hybrids that roamed this wasteland. He had no good name for them or any clear understanding of what they were in all reality.
The machine sound grew louder.
Elias’s popped his neck. The distant razor tones were blood chilling.
Ouch. Elias felt his eyes ricochet all throughout his conscious being. Before it had been life on the highway, rubber to the road. Now he had a reason to survive this war. Someone who could potentially be his family.
That is, unless the kid didn’t make it out of this.
Damn you, Eli! Don’t think like that.
“Now for the smart money question. How do I ventilate these damnable felines?!” Elias drew a deep breath of the smoky dust as the wind stirred it up.
That’s just it. I don’t think you can.
There was a sudden human voice that broke like water over the rocks in this sandy c
learing. Out of a Joshua tree, a massive Hell-Cat sprang. Elias paused.
It had been a lion once. Probably a young female, just old enough to hunt. The elements and cruel mad-science exploits had been no kinder to the wildlife than it had been to humanity. The crude oil that bathed the world was sticking into her, making her once tawny fur now the color of undeveloped film. Her teeth had gathered enough metal grit from the continuous magnetic sand storms to look like saber-tooth fangs.
Yet it was her body that incited the most fear in them. It was far too long for any African lion they’d ever seen. Fused to the chassis of some forgotten vehicle, entangled with carrion bones of all the animals that had once been her food that had died on this plain, the lion’s living death was a constant reminder of the famine that had put her in this suspended state.
Elias had seen many different levels of hunger in his life. There was the hunger of humans that had survived the genetic “life support” and super-science genocide. This was a sad, desperate hungry that was pitiful and fruitless in its every effort. Then there was the hungry of his torment officers, which was gluttonous gratuity like ravens perched on the world’s husk. Then there was hunger like that of the Puppets and Sweepers, cold, calculating, and purely instinct based, killing because they were programmed only to feed, never to protest.
The Hell Cat’s hunger was something far more savage than all of these put together. It shared traits with these and yet it was psychotic, nihilistic even; it killed for spite, the sadistic pursuit of causing pain to scratch the itch at the thing’s own awareness of endless pain.
The Cat tossed her head toward the sky and chirped with the strange gulping chirps that bullfrogs make. She dug her metallic claws into the dust. Bloody steam was released from the clay, trapped there by the layers of dust storm that had hidden the slaughter of the plain from the casual passerby.
Elias shoulder his Thompson. He understood the creature and how she would fight. It would be hand to claw. No mercy. He pulled out the Bowie instead.
Elias felt his stomach constrict at the idea of being left alone here in this god-forsaken country. That horror beyond what he could imagine, even for a man with his track record. Still, he could take anything if he took it in stride. It was better just to focus on the one task he had at hand this moment.
He spun the knife in his hand like a cheerleader’s baton.
“Hiya, pretty lady. Bet you’ve never danced with a white boy before, huh?” He tilted his head to the side. The lion’s eyes were like his own. Haggard, hollow, full of past life treacheries. Dying by her jaws honestly felt like the most poetic ending he could have hoped for. He smiled, thankful for this. Thankful for everything.
It seemed so strange that in the hour that he found himself in, that Elias Walklate should find any gratitude for the hellacious life he’d led. Yet he was. Not in an ironic way. He was genuinely grateful that his life was a good one in reverse psychology. For in living through so much pain, he experienced the depth of antithesis of pleasure. Knowing how truly horrific the other end of life’s spectrum was, Elias could see the value of the things he’d fought for. If he’d fought for things that were so intrinsically worthy just because they counter-measured all the despair he’d known, then his life meant more than he’d dared to dream.
The Hell Cat chirped. From out of the dust fog, tens of hundreds of more came prowling, chomping their teeth, making bird-like whining sounds under their syncopated breath.
Elias broke out into hyper laughter.
“Ah, so here’s a party.” Elias swatted his hair out of his eyes. He held up a finger.
Any sudden movement was enough to seriously tick the Hell-Cats off. They screamed. Elias turned slowly to meet all their Chinese New Year’s lantern glowing eyes.
“So, let’s dance, right? What is love, huh, ladies? Your guess is good as mine.” He squared his shoulders, listening as the engines peeled away into the darkness and the curse of this wretched place.
It began to rain in torrents and lightning tore up through the trees. Elias wondered why epic battles always took place during lighting showers. He didn’t have time to contemplate any theories he might have had about it, though. They all bounced him with a unanimous shriek. He was taken under their tides, slashing and biting. There was a moment of dull consciousness where he allowed himself to think about the mystical journey of life. It lasted for around 30 seconds. He was in the middle of Hell on Earth and it’s not like anybody would be around to record this fight for the history books or to contemplate those theories when he was gone. Besides, he wasn’t dead yet.
“Got a few last good swings in you, Eli. Make it shine so that somebody might see it from space, huh?” Blood splattered from a lion’s jugular and into his eyes. He smiled as the lights went out.
*****
Chapter 11
Flying through the air felt like being raptured. Elias’s eyes were closed. He was convinced this was the end, that this was the death that he’d been longing for and dreaded for so many years.
His back collided with the Joshua tree. He felt branches pierce through skin and bone and stick him in place. There wasn’t enough breath left in him to cry out. The knife was still in his hand. He gritted his teeth and slashed out at the shadows of their shapes he could no longer make out clearly.
“Come on! Come on! I can do this until my brain fizzes out or something…” He muttered, smiling, feeling their blood and his own pouring down his skin, creeping across him like ants.
The Hell-Cats screamed and stood up on their back feet, humanoid in this respect. He was beyond fear now. Felt no pain. He was convinced this was the end. It had been epic. He thought it was a crying shame that no one had witnessed it.
The she-lion that had found him swung her paws like a boxer’s fists. His knife flew through the air and wedged between a stone and another tree’s root. He looked back over his shoulder making note of how that beloved defense mechanism had met its end.
Fine, he’d take his last stand with his teeth and head-butts until she chewed out his throat. He swung his hair out of his eyes. A sudden sickness passed through him and he realized that she’d dug one of her back paws into his abdomen. She was standing leaning against the tree, menacing and human like an alley gang initiation. Elias choked up blood and giggled.
“You and me are cozy now, right? I’ve only just met you. Doesn’t seem right we should leave together, does it, Matilda?” He brought his swatting fists around and grappled her head by both of her ears. She howled and tossed back and forth. He dug in his nails and brought his chin up heavy into her nose. If he kept tossing back, fighting back, her teeth wouldn’t reach him and her slow, feasting bites wouldn’t latch onto him. There’s no way he could live through this day. There were probably 200 hundred more just around the tree. But he had the strength to burn up and a potential kid brother on the run across the Savannah to buy a little time for.
He laughed when he thought he heard gunfire. Then the back of the She-Lion’s head shattered and with a low whine she slid away from him.
Elias panted, stunned. A fire bomb had been lit off around the foot of the tree. The Hell Cats were scattering.
There in the midst of the smoke stood a figure. His face was covered with a black turban, much like Elias imagined an Al Qaeda sniper would have worn. Yet his form-fitting, gray-on-black camo combat fatigues was the same uniform as the Neo-Mesopotamian Royal Army were issued. His movements were awkward but under control as he tripped down the slime mud path. He lifted the BFG-50A sniper rifle he’d killed the lion with over his head.
Elias didn’t register that this man had just rescued him. Wasn’t it obvious? Looks like a Bone Puppet, walks like a Bone Puppet. Probably a Bone Puppet.
Elias rolled backward and snatched up his knife. He groaned as he realized that he was bleeding heavily into the ground.
“Alright, pretty woman. I guess the Fates are just hell-bent on giving me a humiliating ending. Let’s make this count.” He growl
ed and tossed his head.
The man tossed the sniper rifle into a bank of ashes and balled his fists like a boxer. Elias’s tilted his head, confused. That wasn’t standard behavior for a Puppet. This guy must be one of their special breeds.
The mud was slick from the scrambling cats. The two men danced around each other in a make-shift boxing ring of tarry mud and paw-prints. It splashed up in their faces, making the Puppet’s mask slick to his nose and Elias’s golden hair run the color of dead straw over his eyes.
Elias balanced on his heels. He’d have to try and get in and get out quick and clean. It made no sense that he’d been saved, but one Puppet was a sight less than a legion of ticked Hell-Cats. There might be a light at the end of this tunnel after all. He might actually be able to survive.
He took a quick jab in. Puppets didn’t have the same fluidity of humans and couldn’t dodge full front attacks as well.
A bright flash met Elias’s fist. He tripped, landing heavily on his back in the sand. He may have laid there as long as an hour before he realized that the strange Puppet creature was gone, and so were the lions.
Elias was unnerved. It might be a sign that the Witchdoctor’s arcane power had sensed his presence. Maybe it was a sign or something else, a different power that had stakes of its own in the fight for the earth. Regardless, something or someone had saved Elias from his Fate.
Elias swallowed and sat up. His life had been allowed to continue. That essentially meant that it was altered forever. Whoever it had been that had saved him, he felt he owed it a life debt of sorts. If not that, then he owed it to his savior to at least try to carry on.
*****
Chapter 12
It was a matter of hours before the young vigilante came under death’s shadow again.
The Bone Puppets: A Hard SciFi Zombie Soldier Story Page 8