by Dalton Wolf
“The point is you’re all our prisoners now,” the leader inserted during the pause.
Fucking politicians, Calvin cursed internally. “No, we really aren’t.”
“They are here on an official secret mission. And members of the military cannot be deployed on US soil for military purposes. Only the National Guard can.”
“While you’re welcome to your opinion. Opinion doesn’t make fact. You do not have a clear understanding of the legalities included in such situations.” Calvin argued, but felt he was beating his head against a very stupid man’s skull. Suddenly he remembered something. “You know, the Army gives orders to the National Guard,” he explained. “So your opinion is flawed from the start.”
“I have a lot of guns that back my opinion,” the man threatened.
“We have fewer guns, but we’re better armored, have trained military and a shitload of ammo,” Calvin stated matter-of-factly, although nine-tenths of that shitload was currently useless. There was, however, no good reason for Reginald know that.
“We have two of your people,” the leader nodded and a dozen angry men dragged Scaggs and Gus roughly to the front.
Yup. You got me there, Calvin admitted silently. “I don’t suppose you’re just going to peacefully return them and let us go our merry way?” he asked, trying to sound truly hopeful.
“If anyone is getting out, we are,” the man slammed the butt of his rifle into Gus’ midsection as an emphasis to just how unlikely a release was. “One way or another.”
“No one is getting out of here,” Calvin stated firmly.
“You all look like you were going somewhere.”
“Only another few miles.”
“Doesn’t really look that way now, does it?”
“Look, I get that you’re angry that you can’t drive to Colorado or Wyoming or wherever else you would like to go today and join a local militia and take over the government, but that doesn’t really mean you can simply take the law into your own hands and claim private property as your own,” Calvin explained.
“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing all week?” Tripper whispered into his microphone. Sarah punched him in the arm with the butt of her rifle.
“I think it means exactly that,” the leader grumbled. “And here’s how much my opinion matters around here…” he turned to his grubby henchmen.
“Show them we mean business, boys.”
“What? You want us to kill them?” asked a tall, stocky man in dirty jeans and plaid shirt, clearly a farmhand of some sort.
“No, you idiot. Rough them up a little,” the leader snapped in annoyance, turning back to the train. “We’ll stop beating them when you open that vehicle up and let us start moving in. Get to it boys.”
The faces of the men changed from uncertain curiosity to something far less civilized. With leering grins and heaving chests, the small town lynch mob forcibly dragged the struggling Gus and Scaggs into the open where their friends could watch and began punching and kicking them both with enthusiastic brutality. Some of the men even tried out various hand weapons upon them, brass knuckles and some leather covered floppy stick that seemed to be filled with lead.
“Hef?” Calvin called desperately.
“We are working on it, Calvin.”
Scaggs cussed, kicked and fought through the rough treatment for several minutes, but only until one giant skin-headed man in a KU jersey slammed a bowling ball sized fist into her midsection, taking the air and most of the fight from her as she doubled over in agony, barely feeling the other men beating on her back and kicking her as her legs gave out. The next uppercut crunched the cartilage in her nose and loosened at least one tooth and another punch followed to her jaw that sent a sickening, jolting crack of chain-lightning through her entire skull, which quickly teleported into her fingers and toes and skittered inward again from there dragging hooked chains along her nerves and muscles as it went. Certain her jaw had broken, the pain would have forced a scream had even half of a breath remained in her crumpled chest.
* * * * *
“Damnit,” Calvin hissed. “Captain?” he asked.
“We’re ready,” she answered.
“I didn’t want to kill anyone, but we can’t let this continue. Ready weapons.”
“We don’t really have a clean shot on the ones around your friends as long as they’re all upright like that,” Sergeant Doogard warned him. “It’s gonna get messy.”
“Now you don’t want to shoot them? I wish you guys would make up your minds,” he hissed.
“I’m always against killing civilians if possible, Mr. Hobbes,” Doogard informed him emphatically. “But I’m ready to take these assholes out. I just need a clean shot.”
“There is a port window low in car two from which one of you can snipe,” Hephaestus informed them.
“I’m on it,” called GI Jane, already running through the engine.
“Ok, Wait til she’s in position. Just get the outside ones. Let her take those closest to Gus and Scaggs. Hold until I say fire,” muttered Calvin, squeezing the button for the PA system. “You’re making a really big mistake, Mr. Smith. We are here to help. Please let our friends go and clear the track. We are trying to save everyone…”
Calvin knew now that it didn’t matter what he said. He just kept talking, trying to stall, hoping for Hef to shout and tell him the nail guns were back online. He gave it ten more seconds, eyeing a digital readout on the wall as he talked…
* * * * *
“You’re making a mistake…” Calvin was saying.
Scaggs could hear his voice droning on from the intercom, but the pain washed out most of the conversation. She felt everything. Blow after blow. Fist, palm, knee, something metal slamming her shoulder. Both eyes puffed up and then closed after the first few heavy back-handed, iron-knuckled slaps had bounced each eye around the inside of her skull a few times. One guy stepped back and planted a forward kick into the middle of her chest. She felt bones pop, but wasn’t sure they’d broken. This knowledge became useless as she tried to take a breath and failed.
Maybe that’s for the best, part of her mind admitted as pain rocketed throughout her body. Her world darkened, but try as she might, she was unable to successfully pull the blanket of darkness over herself. All feeling in her legs faded away, but these cruel men with iron grips that bruised her flesh held her up and continued to beat her with an insatiable intensity borne of extreme fear and hate. For only the second time in her life, she prayed to God: Please, make it stop, she begged. Make it stop or take me away. I’m sorry for everything bad I’ve ever done. Please forgive me?
Gus watched his new girlfriend as an impotent rage built within his soul. While three men beat on his face, two with gnarly, scarred knuckles and one of brass, two more henchmen were breaking the fingers on his left hand, one-by-one, knuckle-by-knuckle. Another two were kicking his groin and legs and stomping on his toes as they laughed. But he didn’t scream, instead yelling a steady stream of obscenities until a boot slammed upside his favorite skull.
Apparently someone out there knows an art form that’s martially, his receding mind joked. Slowly fading away, he could hear Calvin trying to reason with the men.
“Just go!” Gus shouted, now looking the wrong way after the massive blow to his head—and consciousness—had knocked him out of the grasp of all of the men. Finally free, but completely powerless, he tumbled to his knees and repeated himself.
“Get out of here, Calvin!” he screamed again, before one final blow to the back of the skull struck him dark.
* * * * *
“I’m warning you,” Calvin said one last time. “I need you to let my people go and back away. We have some serious firepower onboard and will use it if we have to.”
“It’s illegal for you to fire on civilians,” the man crowed.
“Once again,” Calvin repeated. “We do not work for the government. We are just people, like yourselves, and we have the legal right to protect our
own. So let my friends go or we will be forced to kill you.”
“And I’ll tell you one more time. We want that vehicle. Unload all of your people and let us aboard or we start doing things your friends really won’t like.”
“I can’t do any of that. Please, if you have any compassion or humanity left in you at all, return my friends and let us go.
“Rape the girl,” the leader spat.
Though a few of the men seemed uncertain and stepped back, the rest rushed in, leering with uncontrolled passion, and quickly grabbed hold of Scaggs’ clothes and began trying to rip pieces off. Scaggs screamed and fought with renewed vigor, but at least two men held each limb, throwing her flat onto the ground as grasping, frantic fingers attempted to shred her clothes. Luckily, she had taken to wearing some tough cotton and leather materials under the armor to keep the chafing to a minimum so their strong fingers failed to tear the fabric. Unfortunately this was a mob, and someone in a mob always had a sharp tool. One man opened a box knife and started cutting at the material, not caring if he happened to damage a little flesh as he went. The grunting men smelled as bad as they looked. Several tried to lay on top of her at once and began jockeying to be the first to take her. The jockeying quickly changed to fisticuffs as the biggest man pushed his way into position over her.
Suddenly she wasn’t worried anymore. She knew this wouldn’t last. She didn’t know Calvin that well, yet, but she knew him well enough. The same steel was in his voice as she’d heard over her headphones from the shopping trip when he’d stood alone facing a dozen rifles with only his axes. He was done talking. And from her new prone position she could see that her friends had a much better firing line from the train.
Why aren’t you firing? Her mind screamed.
“Air is back on,” Hephaestus said into Calvin’s ear.
“Turrets, open up and let them have it. Not in the face, yet,” Calvin ordered, and thousands of tiny, silvery darts flew into the massed people surrounding Gus and Scaggs.
Ha ha, finally! Scaggs screamed in her mind, watching the flickering orange light from the burning barrels reflect from the shiny darts emanating from the top of the train, each dart glowing like tracer rounds from a machine gun.
“Now you’re gonna get the point,” she mumbled and everything turned all wonky and someone hit her in the face with a mud puddle. Drooling blood into the mud and unable to move, she lay on her side looking up at silvery-orange streams of light pouring out of all four train cars into the mob of assholes. Silently cheering, allowing the tears to fall uncontrolled.
It actually took the mob several moments for the angry villagers to realize that they were being shot. Several of the attackers were stuck from a dozen nails in various body parts before the pain finally registered. Still unsure why, suddenly everyone began to jump around and scream or simply fall to the ground crying in agony. The men around Scaggs were targeted first and each man fell with at least fifty nails jammed deep into tissue, nerves and bone. Within only a few seconds, two-dozen of the kidnappers were screaming and begging for help. The leader, yelling for his people to rush the train, fell in a hailstorm of nails from all four turrets, his face peppered with nails, eyes obliterated and brain mashed as any good zombie the group had fought this week.
In a microcosmic example of the entire interaction someone galactically-stupid within the crowd—and by this point the depth of idiocy required by this individual could not be measured on any modern or historic scales—screamed: “Get ‘em!”
The incensed mass of inhabitants charged, modern rifles as useless against the armored train as pitch forks against castle walls. But soon they would be climbing onto the train, and pitchforks and rifles could both fit into gun ports.
“Damnit! Everyone fire!” Calvin shouted and everyone with a gun picked a target. “Do what you have to do. Get them away from the Dragon!”
Damnit. I hope someone up there forgives us, Calvin prayed, aiming his own gun at a big farmer with no teeth who had helped break Gus’ fingers. The slug slammed into the man’s massive chest and carried him back three feet into the next person in line, knocking that person to the ground, and likely saving her life, because Calvin kept shooting and she just stayed down, hiding under the dead man for the rest of the night until it was clear again and these angry people had left.
Calvin became a robot. He saw someone charging; he put a bullet into them. And the others copied his thoughts with equal actions, clearing a wide path around Gus and Scaggs. The mob fired back, but the train’s outer shell reflected their bullets as if they were pellets and the port holes Calvin and the others were firing from were too small for the untrained masses to place a good shot into.
* * * * *
In the ensuing chaos, through bleary, bloodied eyes and flickering torchlight Scaggs saw a shadowy figure hovering over her. He grunted and wheezed and she knew she couldn’t stop this one; she didn’t have the energy to defend herself. She raised a weak fist to swing at the man, but there was no strength left in her tiny body. Then the shadow sharpened and Gus’ bruised face was there, staring down with his soft, loving blood-filled eyes and gently placing a jacket over her half-nakedness with his good hand, grunting from cracked ribs and wheezing through a broken nose from which flowed a waterfall of blood.
“Can you walk?” he wheezed.
“I thikickle rud.”
“In English?”
She grabbed her already swelling jaw. “I think I can run,” she repeated in a daze. “If I can keep my balance…and if I still have legs.” Of that she wasn’t so sure. Everything hurt, so it was hard to tell what was still intact.
“I’ll keep your balance, babe,” Gus grunted smoothly, smiling through bloody teeth and a split lip. “And your legs look as perfect as ever.”
She put her hand fondly to his cheek and as he helped her to her feet she instantly fell over to one side. His quick arms would have held her up, but the broken fingers his left hand failed to clasp, instead uselessly sliding up her arm. Gravity ripped her body from his grasp and he screamed for the first time since they’d been taken prisoner as he tumbled to the ground on top of her. Both grunted in pain and lay writhing in agony for a few moments as they kept grabbing each other’s broken parts to try and roll off or out from under the other. Eventually both simply began laughing at their own misfortune.
With the mob members screaming and dying all around them, working together the couple eventually managed to stand and stagger towards the train. Both dripped blood from numerous wounds and stumbled forward, hunched from strikingly similar injuries. It took an eternity to stagger two normal paces, but they were alive and apparently invisible to the lynch-mob.
“Athena, remember we have to check them out when we get a chance. You know how Gus tends to ignore his health,” Calvin ordered, watching his friends stumble in the general direction of the train.
“Says the man who was shot twice in the chest and an hour later wanted to go out on a zombie hunt.”
“It was really just a little sore,” he informed her.
“Sure it was,” she replied sarcastically. “That’s why you couldn’t perform on the night you proposed marriage.”
“Ooh, performance issues?” Tripper said as they all kept firing indiscriminately into the maddened crowd. “Have you tried your little blue friend?”
“It wasn’t like that,” Athena quickly shifted gears to defend her man. “He was too sore to be on top, so I had to take over.”
“First, place and time. Second, I have no problem with you doing that any time.” Calvin lowered his rifle as the wave of angry citizens washed away into the night and targets became scarce.
“Hold your fire,” he said as the last of the civilian army retreated.
“Cover me,” Boomer whispered, opening the heavy door and slipping down the stairs like a shadow in the deepening gloom. Helping Gus and Scaggs to the steps of the engine, where Sarah and Athena waited with concerned looks. He then slinked over to hide be
hind a barrel that had lost its flame, waiting, watching. For a few long seconds he sat there, making sure it was truly clear.
“What the hell is he doing?” Calvin demanded angrily.
“I’d say it looks like he’s trying to get himself killed,” Tripper replied in a dry rasp, full of sarcasm. “But maybe he calls it something else.”
“I’m getting our stuff back,” Boomer replied, demonstrating that he was perfectly able to answer for himself.
“Dude, what are you thinking?” Tripper asked. “You’re black, man. We’re almost at our destination. This is the part where you get killed for no reason.”
“Shut up, jackass!” Boomer grunted.
“Get back here and let me do it,” Tripper said, sounding genuinely worried.
“I got it,” Boomer insisted.
He ran out in a hunched jog and kicked over the dead leader, ripping from his death grasp the armor belonging to Scaggs and Gus and picking up the air gun backpack the men had dismissed as a useless toy. He was unable to find their swords, however, even after rolling over two of the other goons who had originally searched the couple.
“Look under the big guy, over there,” Tripper suggested, pointing to the one who had likely broken Scaggs’ jaw. He was, however, over fifty feet away and inside the train, well out of Boomer’s line of sight. Boomer managed to discern which body he was talking about, though, simply by the shear bulk of the man in question.
“Make sure he’s dead,” Scaggs mumbled through her sore jaw. “If not I’ve got something for that little bitch,” she held up a bruised and bloody fist.
“Are the swords there?” Trip asked.
“Yup,” Boomer answered with a nod.
He could see the hilts of both swords protruding out from under the biggest man to have hit Scaggs—the one who had enjoyed it entirely too much. As Boomer leaned down, the big man opened his eyes and screamed. Two massive arms reached out, clutching the young black man by the throat and holding him in the air despite hundreds of nails protruding from various parts of his body. The injured hick emitted a primal scream of rage and pain. Boomer grasped both hands and tried to rip them from his neck, but the nail-peppered psycho had the fingers of an iron vice and the jaws were closing fast, like the pages on the book of his life.