I responded with a bloody vomit that spread across my face which was seemingly stuck to the floor along with the rest of my body, like a pain magnet.
For a few moments I was genuinely concerned that I was going to asphyxiate, but then Neysor started walking toward my mostly broken body and I stopped being concerned and started to hope that I’d choke on my own blood.
A half-hearted groan escaped me as he bent down and picked me up, “What’s wrong John? Feeling sick?”
I changed my mind with what I was going to do with the blood that had built up in my mouth and let it drool down my face instead of spitting in his awaiting mouth and nostrils.
What can I say? I’m an English gentleman.
Apparently my attempt at politeness was still unsatisfactory though. Neysor’s face contorted in disgust, “You disgust me, filth.”
Now that I think about it, that is the exact minute that I discovered that I didn’t like getting thrown around.
Not at all.
I collided with the ceiling and then landed on the desk with some of the panels following suit. That’s when Neysor made his first real mistake.
A monologue.
He started to pace around spouting some shit about honour and his glorious species, nothing I cared about. The only thing that I enjoyed about it was the fact that the moron was actually giving my body some much needed time to heal.
My distended… everything, slipped back into place, my broken bones reformed, my internal bleeding dissipated and, most importantly, my mouth and throat finally had the ability to make words again.
In the time it took for the overzealous prat to finish up and actually face me I was already doing a pre-yoga stretch.
“Oh no, don’t stop on my account, please continue, I think I still have a distended testicle and I could use the time.”
Flabbergasted didn’t quite cover the expression on his face, to be fair, neither did anger when it changed. That’s when he made his second mistake, blindly charging me.
I used my healthier body to my advantage, darting to the left wall and letting Neysor shoot past me and smash right through the desk causing him to stumble and fall.
“Much anger I sense in you young one.” I said as I got into a comfortable fighting stance. He snarled as he stood, staring piercingly into my eyes while I jumped from foot to foot, smiling away, “Well come on then, give us a dance.”
I barely ducked under a ceiling panel that he frisbeed at me before launching toward me. The reason escapes me, but for some reason I dropped to the floor just in time to have the alien commander whistle over my head and directly into the wall.
I started to feel like I really was in a video-game, with possibly the most predictable boss fight of all time.
I popped off the ground with an over the top push-up and turned to face said boss who was getting up. I took a few steps back and got back into my fighting stance in time for him to face me and dust himself off.
“Ready?”
Neysor nodded, seemingly accepting that he was going to have to actually go toe-to-toe with me, else I’d be playing that game all night.
“Fight!” I said in as deep a voice as I could.
We started by walking around in circles, occasionally one of us would take a step forward and then the other would step backward.
It was all very exciting.
Eventually Neysor made the first move, attempting to close the distance between us with a quick dash. Which failed after I double fly-kicked him in the face, knocking him on his arse and causing me to do a full cartwheel and land on my feet. “Woah… That was awesome. Did you see that!?” I shouted elatedly with my hands still in the air.
It became quickly apparent that Neysor was boring as he stood up and got into his fighting position again, spitting up small amounts of blood.
“Alright then, killjoy. Round two! Fight!”
The words had barely left my mouth and he was already on me. It was intense to put it lightly. High speed high impact attacks. The two of us were a blur as I met each of his attacks with an appropriate defence, I was tiring fast though, I’d become so used to just using guns that I’d forgotten so much of my hand-to-hand combat.
I managed to block a few more swings as we moved around and around, that was until he started hitting marks I didn’t expect, making my blocks less and less effective.
Finally, with an unbelievably fast king-hit, he sent me flying across the lobby.
I expected him to continue his assault but he didn’t.
Instead he stood exactly where he was and waited for me to get up. “Playing fair, are we?”
He shrugged and smiled. The fact that he refused to talk was more than a little off-putting until I realised that was the point.
He was trying to get in my head.
Both of us knew that after that last little bout one of us wasn’t getting up and he was counting on me losing out because of his little mind game that mirrored my own version of unending annoyance.
“Right then, round three!” I looked around the lobby and planned my dramatic escape as fast as I could before yelling, “Fight!”
It was back to circling for us, neither of us willing to give up our position. He knew that if he made a move like the first time I’d floor him, while I knew that if I showed even the slightest bit of hesitance or fear he’d be on me like white on Finnish rice.
Shut up. That’s a thing.
There was one thing that Neysor didn’t count on though, and that was that I had no intention of sticking around for the third round.
While he’d been throwing me around I’d been memorising the locations of the explosives that had been laid.
While he’d been looking for chinks in my armour I’d been positioning myself at the doors and, while he was preparing to strike I was pulling out the detonator.
I’m pretty sure that’s the first time that any human actually scared Neysor. He tried his best to get to me before I pressed that delightfully enticing button, he actually got kinda close.
That was until I used him as a kickboard, sending him backward into the exploding building and me out into the street.
But I wasn’t out of the woods yet.
Touchdown
Seven Minutes Post First Contact
Leaking fuel lured the dancing flames while Gabriel crouched down and tried his best to pull his C.O.’s legs out from under the chopper. No one other than him and the twenty or so approaching zombies from a crashed bus seemed to be conscious.
He silently cursed his luck, wishing that he could’ve been strapped into his seat and unwittingly waiting for an explosion or a quick devouring.
The soldier had been in chopper crashes before, he knew what he had to do. In the past a team of curious enemy troops or a medical team and fire crew were the ones approaching him and his squad. Not a group of hungry ice-heads, which he was still trying to convince himself that that’s what they were.
That at some point he’d hit his head in the crash harder than he thought and his memories were betraying him. The blood running from above his hair line into his right eye and already bleeding ear seemed to support that theory.
What didn’t was everything else. He had clear vision and a complete memory of every event pre-crash. That and the ice-heads he’d been exposed to were a bit more attack everyone and everything and less herd-y.
The closer they got the less it mattered to him what they were. He wanted to find a weapon and start picking them off, though if they were what he thought they were he knew that’d bring them in from miles around and he’d truly be in a pickle.
It had become clear that he couldn’t just pull Minks out, he had to somehow shift the helicopter enough to get him out from under it.
Knowing it was useless, he hooked his fingers under the helicopter’s bulky frame and tried to move it, lifting with everything he could.
He turned to face the zombies that were less than thirty feet from the smoky wreckage.
He
pulled out his sidearm from its holster, checked its full clip, slid it back in, stood up and took aim at what used to be a young university student. The creature’s arms seemed to have minds of their own, flailing around uncontrollably as the rest of the body made its way through the park toward easy food.
Gabriel stood there aiming for far too long as he gave his attacker a back-story. He told himself about how the creature had a girlfriend who missed him and a life that mattered, that before today he’d never hurt a soul and was a vegetarian and an artist.
That was a problem that Gabriel had never had before, he’d always been the kind of person to pull the trigger first and deny that there were any questions to be asked in the first place.
It was that humanity that led to him putting the muzzle to his C.O.’s forehead, deciding he couldn’t do it and then putting it to his own temple.
Then he heard stirring from inside the helicopter and dropped his arm, climbing up the side and reaching in without looking at who it was that was awakening.
A firm grip met Gabriel’s own and he helped to pull Mikael up and out of the wreckage.
“Give me a hand here, Jason’s trapped underneath.”
Mikael’s attention wasn’t with Gabriel as he straightened up and looked out at the approaching zombies and pointed, “Ours?”
Gabriel shook his head, knowing exactly what his friend meant, “No, bus crashed long before we got here, now hurry and help me. Chopper’s not long from going up in a whole lot of boom-boom.”
The less injured of the two men shook the stars from his eyes and started helping Gabriel try to lift the mass of metal from Minks’ legs. He planted his back on flat bottom and squatted and grabbed the frame, “They’re almost here Gabe!” He growled in between grunts.
“I know! Just help me!”
There was some shifting inside the helicopter, but neither Gabriel nor Mikael were interested with helping their vampire compatriots out at that moment.
Wolfgang and Kate climbed out and, upon seeing the approaching crowd, started pulling all the weapons they could out of the compartment and tossing them onto the grass around the three men before jumping out themselves.
“What are you guys doing? Let’s get out of here.”
Gabriel didn’t respond to Kate, instead he shot a look over to his friend who was quickly exerting himself. It took Mikael a second to respond with a shake of his head due to nothing but focus on lifting, “We’re good, thanks.”
“Don’t be like that Mike, come on, he’s dea-” Wolfgang said while trying to pull Mikael away from his task while he pushed him away with his shoulder.
“He’s alive! Now either help or get the fuck out of here vamp trash! I’d say you only give a damn about your own but that wouldn’t be true, would it?”
Gabriel had moved his focus to pulling on the still unconscious Minks while Mikael was on lifting duty, “Not the time, just ignore them.”
The two vampires argued for a few seconds in private before deciding that they weren’t convincing them and disappeared with a large portion of the guns.
Wolfgang stopped when they got a few dozen metres away and looked back for them, hoping that they were right there behind him with Minks alive and well.
He wanted to stay behind, he wanted to help, but Kate was right, even if they could help them, Minks wouldn’t last long in that world.
‘Survival of the fittest’ were the words that she had said to him. They didn’t know it then, and, for a long time, Wolfgang wouldn’t know after, but soon those words would echo through and affect every single decision they would make.
The humans refused to watch as the vampires turned their backs on them and ran for the city.
“I don’t think I can do it Gabe. I’m sorry.” Mikael said as he doubled over.
“It’s alright… It’s alright.” The soldier knew that for them it was an impossible task. There was no way that the two of them could lift the helicopter, but neither one of them could leave their pinned friend.
The zombies had almost reached them after being distracted by the runners and the two were about to start talking about taking the ‘easy’ way out.
It was at that exact moment that Gregorvich came charging through the small crowd of zombies, barrelling his way toward the helicopter covered in blood and stopping a few feet short of ramming the thing.
“You men look like you could use a hand?” He said with a massive grin on his face.
His happiness, though welcome, was unsettling to Gabriel, “Um, yes… You reckon you can do it while we pull him out?”
He nodded, “Da, easy peasy. Wait, where are the others?” His smile turning into concern.
Mikael and Gabriel shared a look, neither one wanting to tell him that they’d been left for dead, “Went to find some place safe for us to… take Minks once we unpinned him.” Gabriel said, trying to sound as convincing as possible.
Gregorvich didn’t buy it for a second, but he figured it’d be best if he just got to saving them, “Alright. Let’s get to work!” He said as he got into position to lift while Mikael joined Gabriel on either one of Minks’ arms.
For a second they all thought everything was going to be okay.
That was until Gregorvich lifted the helicopter with his incredible new strength while the two others tried to pull him out only to realise that,
“Jesus Christ… Put it down Greg! Put it down!” Gabriel shouted as he tried to process what he just saw while the others had been distracted.
“What is it?” The giant vampire asked while gently laying the helicopter down. That was before he saw the pool of dark red leaking out from underneath the frame where Minks’ legs were.
Gabriel rubbed his eyes and started pacing while trying to stop himself from retching, “His… his legs, they’re stuck to the frame, they were all that was stopping him from bleeding out and now it’s been shifted and… FUCK!” He shouted at the oncoming zombies, some of which actually retreated for a moment before returning to their original snails-pace course.
Gregorvich felt lost, unsure whether to try and get the others to leave with him or to just stay behind, but Gabriel didn’t let him decide, “You guys should go, find Wolf and Kate, try and get them to find John. I’m going to stay.”
The other men wouldn’t argue, they didn’t want to, they knew that Gabriel’s mind had been made. But so had Mikael’s, “I’m staying too. He’s our friend and he wouldn’t leave us.”
Gregorvich felt it was his duty to stay behind with the other two, despite not being as close to Minks as them it seemed wrong to leave them. Then he remembered John and that he was probably the only one who could convince the other two to try and find him.
He grabbed a sniper rifle off the blood-wet grass and tossed it to Gabriel, “You will come and find us when you get Jason loose. Then we will find John.”
The two shared a nod before Gregorvich ran off, clubbing a few zombies away when he reached them before disappearing.
“He’s still got a pulse Gabe.”
“What?”
“Jace, he’s still got a pulse, I think if we’re gonna get him out of here we need to…” The word ‘amputate’ didn’t come easy for either of them, but they both understood.
“How? We’d need to cauterize it and… hold on.” Gabriel said as he saw exactly what they needed.
It was a chunk of the titanium rotor blade wedged deep in the ground near the tail and surrounded by flame, they were less than two minutes from a fiery death.
‘Just enough time.’ Gabriel thought as he tossed his rifle to Mikael, “You keep them off us, don’t stop shooting until I’m done, alright?”
Mikael, still semi-stunned by the rifle being thrown at him, agreed with a nod and started lining the closest zombie in the scope.
Gabriel did his best to prepare for the gun’s whip crack but still flinched as he mentally prepared himself to grab the burning metal.
He took a deep breath, reached into the fire and immed
iately retreated in pain. He pushed past it, managing to grab the singeing metal shard, tug it from the ground and get it out of the flames before dropping it.
The pain was intense, even after a few seconds of holding it, but Gabriel wouldn’t have Minks die if he could do something about it.
He grabbed the red hot metal in both of his hands, wincing and growling as his flesh singed and whistled under the heat.
He crawled back over to his friend’s pinned legs, holding onto the metal the whole time for fear that he wouldn’t be able to pick it up again if he let it go, got onto his knees, and raised the shard high above his head, “Sorry mate.” He whispered under another gunshot and, right as he saw Minks’ eyes start to flutter open, brought it down.
Pretty Lights and Dominoes
66,684 Minutes Post First Contact
I watched the charges go off from relative safety as I stood in front of the building’s left neighbour. Sparks flew through the heavy rain that had just started as brilliant flashes of light and fire engulfed the concrete arena.
The sounds of collapsing floors alone were enough to make me smile. I’m not an advocate for destruction or anything! It’s just that I felt like I’d actually conquered something by burying Neysor in fire and rubble.
Unfortunately life has a habit of not letting these moments last.
I’d stopped enjoying the firework show and was too busy watching the street in a desperate attempt to assure myself that no one was surviving the demolition to realise what was going on fifteen storeys above me.
It wasn’t when the dust started to fall.
Or the paper, or even the broken glass,
It was when a printer landed not three feet from me that I looked up and saw a less than smashing sight.
Heh… ‘Smashing’.
…
You’ll get it in a second.
Due to what could have been a dozen reasons ranging from age to improper placing of the damn things. The reason didn’t matter to me though.
The Mulligan Planet 2 (The Mulligan Planet Trilogy) Page 7