Chapter Fourteen
That same morning, Mandrake was sitting in his office aboard ISS, sipping coffee from a mug, when he felt a strange tremor, coursing its way through the hull of the station. He turned around, to face his massive window, which had an amazing view of the sun setting behind the earth.
All was quiet for a few moments, until a powerful rumbling, violently began to shake the entire station. The glass, separating Mandrake from the vacuum of space, began to shake and slightly crack. Confused and frightened, Mandrake slowly stepped backwards, away from the window and tripped over his desk, sending him falling to the floor. His coffee mug shattered beside him and scolding hot coffee burned his hand, as he discovered a group of seven Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, heading right for ISS.
“Callum, you need to kill this fucker,” he said to himself, as the missiles made contact with the station, obliterating it along with its remaining residents.
Callum and Richard saw the blast overhead, as they cautiously navigated the demolished streets of Houston, Texas.
“Was that what I think it was?” asked Richard.
“Fuckers just took out ISS,” Callum replied, as he came to a stop. “They’re all dead,” he cried, as he whirled around to face Richard. “Every last human being that was free…is now dead.”
Callum picked up a brick, off of the ground and threw it at a department store window, shattering it. Richard then became frantic and grabbed Callum.
“Are you fucking crazy?” he whispered. “Someone probably heard that. We don’t know who’s around.”
A second later, they were assaulted by rapid machine gun fire from across the street. Callum and Richard dove through the broken front window of the department store and took shelter behind some crude metal shelving. The gun fire continued for several more seconds. Afterwards, Callum and Richard could hear approaching footsteps and then the sound of three or four men entering the shop.
Callum spotted an open back door, leading to an alleyway behind the store. He motioned for Richard to follow him, but as soon as they started crawling for the exit, a tall muscular Hispanic man, dressed in a black leather vest and ripped blue jeans, entered through the back door and pointed a rusty pistol at Callum’s face.
“Levantarse,” he ordered, as his companions closed in behind Callum and Richard, with assorted rifles and pistols drawn.
Callum expressed confusion and replied, “What?”
“That means get on your fucking feet, pendejo,” the man replied.
Callum and Richard slowly rose to their feet, allowing for their attackers to see the NASA logo on their flight suits.
“NASA?” asked the man in the black vest, with confusion. “You’ve got thirty seconds to tell me who you are and what the fuck you’re doing here.”
“We’re with the government,” Richard hastily replied.
“The real government,” Callum added. “We’re not with Drellic. We were sent here from the International Space Station to get food and supplies.”
“Sounds like bullshit to me,” the man replied. “Didn’t you see the fireworks just now? All those people are dead, hombre.”
He then pressed his filthy, rusty gun barrel to Callum’s chin and added, “And I think you killed them.”
“We didn’t,” Callum insisted.
“Those were our people,” said Richard. “Drellic killed them. We only just got here. We set down in the park last night.”
“Which park?!” the man demanded.
“Sam Houston,” Callum quickly answered. “We can take you there. We can show you our ship and the bodies of four of the officers we came down with, that Drellic murdered last night.”
Suddenly the man’s eyes widened and he appeared more anxious than ever.
“Drellic? He was here?” he queried.
“Just last night,” Callum said.
“In the park,” Richard added. “There’s an underground supply shelter there too. We can show you.”
After Callum and Richard were finally able to convince their attackers to let them live for the time being, the man in the black vest identified himself as “Skulls”. His three companions were called, “Bloodhound”, “Duster” and “Mary-Axe.” They had agreed amongst themselves that in their new, unrecognizable world without their families, their birth names had lost their meaning.
Bloodhound was an older, tall and scrawny white man, with an impeccable aim and love for the Cowboy lifestyle. He wore a black Cowboy hat, which he never took off, and had an almost undiscernible southern accent. Duster was a shorter African American man, who was good with a rifle, but fancied grenades more than anything else. He had become notorious for blowing the enemy to dust with a flick of his wrist. Mary-Axe was an attractive Hispanic woman, in her late twenties, who wielded an old fashioned pistol, but was even deadlier with the axe she had strapped to her back. She also wore two long sharp knives around her waist at all times, one holstered on each hip.
The four of them walked behind Callum and Richard with watchful eyes.
“Are you all that remains of the resistance in this area?” Callum asked Skulls.
“Fuck you, homie,” Skulls replied. “You don’t get to ask questions, until after we verify your story. If we get to the park and there’s nothing there backing you up, my boy Duster will shove all his grenades down your throats one by one.”
Callum and Richard turned to see Duster, playfully juggling three grenades without paying them the slightest bit of attention.
Minutes later, the six of them reached the park and stood over the remains of Tim Sirus and Jake Barns. Callum and Richard then led Skulls and his companions to the wreckage of the ISS supply shuttle.
“This was our ship,” Callum explained to Skulls. “If you let me go down there, I can probably find the flight recorder. If it’s still intact, it can prove everything.”
Richard scanned the wreckage for a moment, then found Sophia’s body, which had become exposed by daylight, beneath a metal beam. Her neck was pinned by the beam; her eyes wide open and covered in droplets of blood, from a large gash in her forehead. Without thinking, Richard darted down towards her.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?!” Skulls screamed at Richard.
Richard quickly turned to see four guns pointed at his head.
“Just let me go down to her,” Richard pleaded, as tears streamed down his face. “Please. I loved her. Just let me say goodbye. I’ll get the flight recorder.”
“Just come back up here for a second, man,” Callum said to Richard.
“No one told you, you could talk!” Mary-Axe screamed at Callum, as she put a knife to his throat.
Richard paused for a moment, then turned back towards Sophia’s body and continued to descend into the wreckage.
“You know what? I don’t fucking care,” he said, as he wept. “Just fucking shoot me, if you want. I don’t care. But I’m saying goodbye to her.”
Bloodhound aimed his rifle at Richard’s head, but Skulls grabbed it by the barrel and pulled it back.
“Just wait a minute,” Skulls whispered to Bloodhound. “There’s something not right here.”
Skulls carefully watched over Richard, as he knelt down besides Sophia’s mangled body. Callum stared down at him, also in tears, Mary-Axe’s knife still pressed firmly against his throat.
“I love you,” Richard whispered, as he gently touched Sophia’s face and closed her eyes.
“You!” Skulls yelled to Callum. “Go down there and help him look for the recorder.”
“It’s ok. You can let him go,” he then said to Mary.
Mary reluctantly released Callum and allowed him to follow Richard into the wreckage. Skulls then approached Mary and whispered, “If these hombres were really working for the Big Man, they wouldn’t be risking their lives to say goodbye to that woman.”
“How can you be so naive?” Mary scolded. “You of all people should know that no one who goes to D
rellic, comes back the same. They are playing us. As soon as we let our guard down, they’re going to give away our location and get us killed.”
“They say Drellic can take a man’s soul,” Duster began. “And twist it…Then make it his fucking puppet. You can’t trust these fucks. If they can’t prove who they are, then they can eat shit.”
“We found it!” Callum called up to them. “We found the recorder. It’s badly damaged but the hard drive is fine. We just need to hook it up to speakers and a monitor.”
“We can’t waste any more time with them,” Mary insisted. “We need to end them now.”
“No!” yelled Skulls. “I’m telling you, something’s not right about these two. They’re not like the others. I know what the fuck I’m talking about.” “Bring them along,” he then called to Bloodhound and Duster, as Mary scoffed in disapproval.
The group searched and searched for the supposed underground supply bunker, and found nothing but a mound of dirt, ripped food wrappers and smashed electronics, sitting on top of where it had once been. It looked as though it had been raided and destroyed months earlier, meaning that the entire operation had been for nothing.
That night, Callum and Richard were brought into the basement of an abandoned apartment building. The basement was fitted with crude lighting and miscellaneous electronics. The flight recorder hard drive from the ISS supply shuttle was hooked up to an old laptop computer from the 2000’s, and was viewed by Skulls and his companions.
They observed, from the departure of the shuttle from ISS, to the landing in Houston Park. Richard looked away as Sophia’s panic attack came up on the monitor. Skulls and Mary listened to a few seconds of Sophia begging to be brought back to the station, before finally turning off the recording.
“We’ve seen enough,” Skulls said. “Put your guns down,” he ordered.
Bloodhound, Duster and Mary set their guns down and an awkward silence fell over the room.
“So what happens now?” Callum asked.
Skulls pondered the situation for a moment. “You say Drellic’s got your wife?” he asked Callum.
“He does. He took her last night,” Callum answered.
“Why would he take her and leave you two alive? That doesn’t sound like him,” Skulls said.
“That sounds personal,” Bloodhound added. “Drellic doesn’t do personal.”
Callum and Richard had no choice but to start at the beginning, and explain how they had first come into contact with Drellic.
“Are you telling me that you brought that fucker here?” Skulls asked Callum, in a hostile tone.
“Yes, we did. All of us,” Callum hesitantly answered.
“Mother fucker!” Mary screamed, as she quickly wielded her axe and kicked Callum’s legs out from under him.
She then stood over him with her foot pressed firmly into his chest, and the blade of her axe, inches from his face. Bloodhound and Duster kept their guns pointed at Richard, while Skulls joined Mary and stood over Callum.
“So, this is all your fucking fault then?” Skulls asked, in a distraught manner. “Did you really do this?” Skulls then got down on his knees and pressed his nose against Callum’s brow. “Did you do this?” he asked again. “Did you kill the fucking world?! Did you?!”
He then jumped to his feet, grabbed his gun and pressed it against the side of Callum’s head, as Mary still had her axe just barely touching the tip of his nose.
“We didn’t know!” Richard screamed. “They lied to us! They told us it was a rescue mission. So when we got there and found him, we didn’t fucking know any better!”
“Listen to this fucker, spitting out more bullshit,” said Duster, as he chuckled softly to himself.
“It’s not bullshit!” Callum screamed. “They wanted to study him! They thought he was just going to be a vegetable, when we found him. But he woke up, took over our ship and tortured us for months! He was playing us for months and the only reason any of us survived, was because he needed us to get him here!”
“And you did a fantastic job getting him here, didn’t you?!” Mary yelled.
“Look at yourselves!” Richard screamed. “Look at what you’re doing! Someone’s going to hear this! If you people don’t fucking calm down right now, we’re all dead!”
“That’s where you’re wrong, son,” Bloodhound said, as he pressed his rifle against Richard’s forehead. “The only people dying tonight is you two poor saps.”
“Holy shit,” Callum said to himself. “That’s why he did it. That’s why he let us go.”
“What?” Mary asked. “What the fuck are you saying now, you piece of shit?”
“It was to draw you out in the open!” Callum yelled to Skulls, from beneath the barrel of his gun. “He’s been looking for you four, hasn’t he?!”
Skulls’ eyes widened, as he slowly backed away from Callum.
Mary then turned to him and yelled, “For shit sake, not again! Are you really listening to this?!”
“Listen,” Callum began. “We have to get out of here, right…” But before Callum could finish, a series of loud, abrupt explosions were heard all around the building.
A group of Drellic’s surveillance drones that had been following Callum and Richard all day, were decimating the apartment building, floor by floor. Dirt and rubble began piling into the basement, as the entire structure was caving in above them.
Two of the drones eventually made their way into the basement and began shooting blasts of hot, white radiated energy at the group. The drones were small, fast moving metallic orbs that fired their deadly energy bursts from a gleaming blue eye, at their center.
The group scattered, and after missing their targets several times, one of the drones blasted a hole in a far wall, creating a small opening to the outside. Duster, Callum and Richard darted towards the opening, as Duster unleashed his assortment of grenades, which he had been wearing around his waist, upon the drones. He pulled pin after pin and threw grenade after grenade, in a seamless fashion, but the drones were simply too fast for him.
Skulls was huddled with Mary behind a heavy wooden bookshelf.
“We have to blow it,” he whispered to her. “We knew we’d have to one day.”
“We can still save some of the data,” she replied.
“No, we can’t,” said Skulls. “You know what we have to do. We have to trap these fuckers in here and blow this place.”
Skulls pulled Mary in close to him and passionately kissed her, before allowing her to make her way to the far end of the room. The drones continued firing fast continuous bursts at their human prey. Skulls then looked on, as Duster, Callum and Richard made their escape to the outside.
There were a total of four drones in the building, all of which were now in the basement. Skulls made it to a corner of the room, opposite from Mary. There was a small detonator hooked up to a long cable at both ends of the room. Skulls and Mary had to push down on their detonators, simultaneously, in order to arm the stockpile of C-4, hidden beneath the basement floor.
A moment after reaching their controls, Mary and Skulls witnessed Bloodhound being sliced cleanly in half at his mid-section, by an energy burst.
“You fuckers!” Skulls screamed, drawing the attention of all four drones. He retreated into a stone crawl space and gave Mary a wide eyed glare, as the drones proceeded to open fire on him.
He nodded to her, giving her the signal to push her button. Together, they successfully armed the C-4 stockpile. A red digital timer set for sixty seconds, gleamed from the explosive packaging beneath the basement floor.
“Now let’s get the fuck out of here!” Skulls screamed.
He quickly ran to Mary, while drawing the drones’ fire and grabbed her by the arm, pulling her towards the opening to the outside. They managed to crawl through the hole, leading to a field next to the apartment building, after taking one last look at Bloodhound’s body.
Callum, Richard and D
uster were hiding in some bushes, waiting for them. Skulls spotted them and shouted, “Run mother fuckers! This place is about to light up like the god damned Fourth of July!”
Together, the five of them ran into the night, as quickly as they could. Once they got to the edge of the field, Skulls abruptly stopped and turned, causing the others to do the same. The building was then engulfed by a brilliant explosion that sent pieces of wood and brick soaring into the night air, for miles.
“Do you think any drones made it out?” Duster asked Skulls. “What do you say we don’t stick around to find out?” Skulls replied. They then continued to flee the scene, into the early hours of the morning.
The Drellic Saga: Books One, Two and Three Page 17