by Casey Herzog
The message began to repeat, and Callum looked nervously around them. The sound of pounding feet approached them. Callum turned and grabbed the child by the wrist.
“Run.”
CHAPTER NINE
Treasure Trove
Johanna whimpered as she trembled and turned on the spot she laid. She had wrapped her fingers in a piece of cloth, but she knew she’d never get the chance to recover them. The blade had almost sliced her hand in half, the machete cleaving it in a single slice and barely hurting until she’d realized what had happened. Frank had dragged himself over to her and tried to comfort her when she returned to the cell, but she told him to stay away in case they singled him out for abuse. Russell is a fucking psychopath, she thought, as tears ran down her eyes. Even her silent promise was looking too good to be true. She wouldn’t get a chance to kill him, it was clear.
She caught sight of the guards as one of them pointed at her and laughed. An insult formed in her mind…but the alarm began to sound, and they all turned at the sound of Russell’s voice echoing throughout building. The guards looked nervous, and Johanna couldn’t help but smile through her pain.
“Go and find them,” she said with her voice thick from the discomfort. “Even you can’t screw up finding a man and a kid inside your own building!”
She laughed with the rest as the guards left, but then the smile on her face faded.
Frank, too, realized as he looked at her.
“No, surely not,” he breathed.
“What?” another prisoner asked.
Johanna’s face fell into her hands and she winced as she was reminded painfully of her amputated fingers.
“It’s them. They’ve come for us.”
“Them? Oh, wait…Callum and Dante?”
Johanna sighed.
“It can’t be anyone else. Fools. Actually no, Callum is a fool. I’m sure the kid followed him, but he should have tied him up and thrown him back into his room or something.”
Frank laughed nervously.
“We don’t know—”
“It’s obviously them!” Johanna cried, and the other prisoners turned. She fought to calm down and closed her eyes. She was suddenly more worried about the two intruders than her own safety or the rest of the prisoners. It made her smile, despite the terrible situation. Grabbing the cloth containing her fingers, she stood slowly to avoid losing her balance — the blood loss had made her weak and dizzy — and prepared to rally the prisoners and prepare them to fight.
As she opened her mouth with a triumphant smile, the door opened behind her.
“Johanna,” Frank whispered, his eyes wide and his face pale as he looked over her shoulder.
She didn’t turn, already knowing who stood behind her.
The booted steps approached her, and she felt the man’s breath on her neck.
“What is this?” Lord Russell asked. Johanna trembled in fury as she felt his presence so disgustingly close to her. The stumps of her fingers ached painfully as she fought the urge to turn and slam her fist into his face. “I asked you a question…”
She imagined his black eye, the natural one, pulsing with hate as he stared at her.
“Look, you,” Frank blurted out, throwing away all fear and caution and struggling to stand with his bad leg. No! Johanna’s mind screamed. Sit down, you fool!
“Hmm?” Russell asked with amusement as he stepped away from Johanna. “We’ve got a hero, lads.” The two thugs beside him laughed.
“Leave her alone,” Frank said with a powerful voice. The man had never been fearful, but since being wounded he’d tried to avoid confrontation. “You’ve hurt her enough. Bastard.”
The room went silent.
“What did you call me?” Russell asked, his voice a dangerous whisper.
Frank took a step forward.
“If my leg weren’t a useless piece of crap, and you didn’t have your little puppies here protecting you, I’d throttle you like the cowardly little shit you are.” Some of the prisoners laughed softly. Russell smiled.
“I see.” He took a few steps closer, slowly closing in as he approached a livid Frank. “Unfortunately, your leg is useless and my pups are protecting me.” His bionic fist shot forward into Frank’s gut and the man gasped loudly as all of the air was smashed out of him. Russell lifted the man’s face and head-butted him with his enhanced skull, emitting a sharp crack from Frank’s now broken nose. Johanna cried out as he caught Frank before he could fall, elbowing him in the throat and kicking him in the head as he collapsed.
“Please!” she screamed, but Russell took a gun out of his holster and put it against Frank’s bruised temple.
“Get ready to die, you fuc—”
A distant burst of automatic gunfire made him turn back to his men. One of them put his finger to his ear and his eyes went wide.
“Bad news,” he said.
Russell growled angrily and kicked Frank onto his back.
“I’ll be back once I’ve dealt with them, I swear. We’re not finished here!” The tall criminal ran out of the room with his men and slammed the door shut as he sprinted away to the fight.
Apart from Frank’s painful moaning, nobody else talked. They knew what was coming.
When the night ended and Russell returned, they were probably all going to die.
Dante fired a shot and a man’s leg buckled under him as he cried out in pain, clutching his knee. He fired another shot and hit the man in the head, killing him.
The healer got back into the cover and Callum looked at him with respect. He hadn’t expected such accuracy.
“Weren’t you a horrible shot before? Liar.” They had been spotted, despite their efforts. It had taken a while, but on the seventeenth floor an idiot guard who had been taking a dump in what looked like an abandoned bathroom had stepped out of a cubicle as they hid inside it to avoid a patrol. The man had managed to scream before Callum cut his throat, and now the entire building knew where they were. The bathroom was getting less friendly by the minute, the enemies slowly but surely making their way towards the corridor they were in. Callum had handed the rifle over to Dante and got to work pulling out a ventilation grille’s screws with his knife, but it was taking longer than he had expected.
“I learned from the best,” Dante smiled as he peeked out and fired a warning shot at two armed women approaching from the east. He knew he’d been lucky, but kept it to himself. “Hurry up, sir. We’re sitting ducks.”
The metal grating budged and Callum grunted as he pulled it from the wall and sat it on the floor.
“Time to go Dante; throw me my rifle and get into that shaft!”
The lad fired off another couple of shots and ran into the opening. Callum jumped in after him and replaced the grille.
The healer crouched in the darkness. There was only one way to go from here — up. The ventilation shaft ascended up the building in a steep ramp. They were going to need to climb it. With a sigh, Dante pressed his hands and feet against the walls and began to push himself upward. It all comes down to this or being shot in the head.
Angry screams echoed from outside the bathroom as more of the men arrived to find their dead companions. They tore the bathroom door open.
“Where are they?!” a furious voice screamed. “Find those fuckers or I’ll have you all hanged!”
The sound of pounding feet echoed from below, and both Callum and Dante relaxed.
Suddenly the beam of light arced up in their direction, the ray illuminating the shaft as it moved from side to side. The two intruders froze, their hearts beating hard in their chests as the man crouched awkwardly and attempted to look up the shaft. His eyes narrowed as he seemed to spot something in the darkness, but eventually he cursed quietly and turned off his flashlight and left the room below.
“Wow, that was close,” Dante whispered as he fought back the bile that had been rising in his throat. The feeling of certain death had almost made him wet himself with terror, yet he began to climb once more. There w
as light up ahead, though the shaft seemed to be growing longer.
“Don’t bother stopping,” Callum said as he pushed himself further up the steep shaft with effort, “This is our ticket to the prison and after that, the top floor.”
They climbed for a long time, Dante’s arms eventually getting tired. Even where the shaft connected with other rooms — mostly empty dormitories or storage chambers full of food and tools — there was no flat surface, no place they could rest for a few moments. It was either climb or slip all the way back down.
At the ninth room, Dante stopped.
Callum groaned. He had no patience for this anymore.
“Dante, do you not understand how dangerous this situation is? You need to keep going, even if your arms threaten to fall off. Don’t be a sissy! Come o—”
“Sir, shut up and look.”
Callum’s eyes widened in outrage and he climbed up to cuff the child around the head. As he mouthed the insult that Dante deserved for his disrespect, he managed to look over the healer’s shoulder into the room he’d stopped at.
“No…I can’t believe this…”
Dante grinned and pried Callum’s knife from his grip and began to work on the screws holding the grille in place. He grabbed it before it could fall and slipped out of the shaft onto the floor, landing softly like a cat. Callum leapt out and landed beside him. The soldier sighed and lifted his hands to his head.
“I can’t believe this…” he said again.
They hadn’t just found any room. They had found the gang’s armory.
There were pistols, rifles, grenades and portable missile launchers around them. There were swords, axes, hunting crossbows and other more gruesome tools as well. Dante picked up a dagger and pulled it out of its sheath, stabbing the air with it and enjoying how it felt as he picked up an oversized gun with his other hand and looked down its barrel.
Callum walked past the child, spotting something on a table. He couldn’t help but shiver with nostalgia as he saw a weapon he knew all too well from his days as a soldier. He picked up the relic and lifted its scope to his eye, calibrating it and taking aim at an imaginary enemy. The memories of the powerful kick and the loud bang as the projectiles flew out of the barrel at incredible speeds came rushing back.
He looked around at the ammunition table and knew he was unlikely to find any rounds for the thing…but there it was. A full magazine, lying on its side among other lower caliber ammo.
“What kind of weapon is that, sir? It looks dangerous,” Dante said as he grabbed a common submachine-gun and loaded it with dexterity.
Callum smiled as he took the strap off his rifle and put it on the other firearm instead.
“It’s an aircraft killer, an Outsider’s Bane…It’s a railgun, my boy, and we’re going to use it to kill this enhanced bastard once and for all.”
CHAPTER TEN
Armed and Deadly
They had fought their own childish wishes to grab everything they could and run, but Callum had urged Dante to leave while he finished something off inside the armory.
“What were you doing?” Dante finally asked as he saw the man edging his way up after him a few minutes later, the railgun wrapped in a dark material to avoid rattling against the metal shaft as he climbed.
“Just making sure they never get to use the armory again; I hope you got enough ammo, kid.”
Dante smiled, and they continued their ascent. Next stop: the cells.
The sergeant saw Lord Russell’s fist a moment too late.
The bionic knuckles slammed into his left cheek like a freight train, the metal cracking his teeth and jaw as if they were little more than glass. The man cried out in fear and lifted his hands to protect himself, but the leader grabbed him and threw him through a toilet, smashing it and causing all of the water to pour out onto his pants and boots.
“Sir…” he moaned, his head swimming with pain and the shards of molars swimming out of his busted mouth in a line of drool.
Russell paused and lowered his fist. It wasn’t a moment of mercy — he knew he needed the man to be alive to show him his stupidity and incompetence.
He pulled him by the scruff of his neck and threw him onto the wet floor in front of the grille.
“Do you see that, you fucking moron?!”
“Lord…I do…of course…”
“They were inside this bathroom, cornered and firing at our men — killing five of them no less — and somehow when they disappeared, you didn’t think that maybe they used our ventilation shaft to escape?!”
“I did,” the sergeant said with great difficulty, “They weren’t inside…I’m sure…”
“They were! You idiot, you sent my men out to chase shadows and let the fuckers escape!”
The sergeant wept and shook his head in disbelief.
“I looked up, stuck a light up there…they weren’t in there…” He had thought of it at the time, but the shaft had been empty…hadn’t it? Suddenly, he doubted even his own memory.
The gun pressed against his head and the sergeant screamed for mercy.
Bang.
As hard and cruel as they were, everybody else in the room and outside corridor kept their silence as their leader crouched on top of the man’s body and fought to refrain from emptying his clip into the man. One of his hands went to the bionic side of his head and he tapped it hard several times, increasing in force as he fought to cool his anger. It was a sort of nervous tick he was often seen doing when angry. Nobody was sure if it worked, or if there was something wrong with his enhancements that the man wasn’t telling them about.
A lieutenant stepped forth, his blue eyes shining in the darkness. The others moved as he passed. They knew that ‘The Whisperer’, as they called him, did not fear Russell at all.
“Sir, we’re wasting time. The intruders have probably left the shaft by now and are probably already moving to free their friends or assassinate you. We need to act.” The man even looked impatient as he glared at his superior, shifting on his feet and tilting his head. He was the closest thing to a second-in-command, his famous motorcycle squad a force that had taken more prisoners over the years than any of the teams put together. Many were kept within the walls of the tower as servants, but others were sold to the warlords in other cities to do what they wished with them. The Whisperer didn’t give a damn; all that mattered was his recognition and the reputation of his band of misfits. The ‘Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ were a real scourge to the survivors of this world.
Russell shifted and stood, his hands clenching into fists. Some of the others took a step back.
“Yes, I know. You’re right.” Russell turned and pointed at them all. His focus returned, slowly but surely. His bionic eye seemed to make a quiet whirring sound. “A handful of you investigate the ventilation grilles on every floor from here on up. They must have left some sign of their escape behind.” He paused, before continuing, “The rest of you begin the search. You know the drill. Get the gas and get your masks. We’ll force them out of their holes and corner them. Once you find them, leave their main people alive. I want to hurt somebody badly, and I’d rather it be them…” The threat hung in the air and everybody understood.
The Whisperer immediately looked back at his men and rasped the order at them.
“You know what to do. Go and do it.” The battle-hardened thugs walked out of the bathroom and got to work. Their leader looked one last time at Russell. “What about me?”
Russell looked the man up and down. He almost laughed out loud. He’s getting arrogant, the little shit. I might have to sit him the fuck down before he becomes a problem.
“What about you? You were part of the orders I just gave, or are you above everyone else?”
The Whisperer’s mouth tightened and he fought the urge to lash out. He nodded and walked away.
As his men hurried to follow his orders, Russell breathed heavily. He put his finger on the device beside his ear and looked at the dead sergeant’s b
ody. I’m losing myself more often now. He was having trouble controlling his aggression.
“Paddy?”
The man on the other side replied almost instantly after.
“Sir. What’s going on? Have you found them yet?”
Russell continued to look at the corpse.
“No. They’ve slipped out of our hands. You should take a couple of my guards and check out the prison cell. Relocate the prisoners; take them up to the east wing of our floor. You know, specifically where there aren’t any of these damn ventilation shafts or back doors!”
“Will do, sir. Are you coming?”