Not Against Flesh and Blood (The DX Chronicles Book 1)

by Brian Cody

  “How much more ammo you got?” the center-left passenger interjected as he looked to the individual to his right.

  “What?” the driver coughed.

  “Two clips”, the center-right passenger replied as he lifted his rifle and examined its body.

  “You’ve got to be s***in’ me! You can’t be doing that!” the driver wailed. “We’re drivin’ through neighborhoods. You flash that s***, and we’ll get reported!”

  “One”, the far passenger barked, “the windows are tinted; two—this road is empty; there’s literally no traffic behind or in front of us right now. The plan went down without a hitch. You need to relax!”

  “I need to relax?” the driver hocked. “While we traffic—one—stolen and—two—radioactive machine parts with the hopes of using them as ‘bargaining chips’? This was too risky for the possibility of no reward. The FBI won’t free the boss for stolen s*** parts!” The driver slapped the wheel and pouted. “We’ve already expended half of our ammo. This whole thing would’ve gone down smoother if we had taken the suits.”

  “The suits are too risky”, the center-left passenger interrupted, “Yeah, there’s no one around who could beat us down once one of us is wearing them, and yeah, we’re virtually invulnerable to any s*** the cops throw at us, but we’ve been hiding out for three days in this city. That’s three days of wearing one of those suits. You heard the boss’s warning last year. Wear one of them for that long without taking it off, and it starts eating at your_”

  “S***!” the driver bellowed as he drilled his foot into the brake. The truck responded in a thundering screech as it decelerated from sixty miles per hour, to thirty, ten, and then to a stop twenty feet from almost two dozen vehicles arranged as a haphazard, sixty-foot-wide wall.

  “The h*** is this?” the far passenger grunted.

  “The cops?” the center-left passenger inquired as he scanned those vehicles. “All the cars are empty. This could be a trap!” He turned to the driver, who breathed in slow but howling breaths.

  “Nah!” the driver coughed with a sway of his head. “Nah, the cops would set up a real barricade, cement or spike-strips or something. These cars”—he turned to the passengers—”these cars are abandoned.” He deactivated the engine. “There must’ve been an accident when a state of emergency was declared. All of the civilians abandoned their vehicles in the middle of the road and went indoors”, he continued as he opened the driver’s door.

  “Yo, what are you doing? We can nudge our way through; the truck has enough weight and horsepower!” the center-right passenger replied, while the driver turned into the open.

  “We’re stealing one of these”, the driver replied. “Now’s our chance to find another getaway. Then, we can ditch our disguises, hide our guns, and get out of this area before the cops set up traffic stops.”

  “There’s no damage on these cars”, the center-left passenger remarked as he slid out, “this ain’t right.”

  “Neither is this a**-backwards plan”, the driver scoffed. “You need to relax. We all need to relax, right?” He dropped to the ground. “Y’all are wasting time; let’s relax, pick the fastest thing, and get out of here.”

  The remaining three poured out of the garbage truck’s cab and dropped onto the road with their rifles under their arms. They glanced to the surrounding buildings, the pane-lined masses of steel and concrete which, more than likely, concealed a crowd behind their tinted exteriors. “This’ll work”, one of the passengers called as he stopped by an unblemished navy-blue Mustang. “It’s fast”, he remarked.

  “It’s conspicuous”, the driver replied as he stood by an off-white Durango. “We’re not worried as much about speed as we are getting spotted. If we’re too conspicuous, we’ll draw more attention to us than necessary.”

  “You’ve got that covered without the car.”

  The driver spun as a slight gust murmured behind him and preceded an earthen shake. He looked to Nate rearing up with his hood covering the top of his face, and he jumped back as Nate jabbed at his chest. The driver, wrenching over Nate’s fist, was launched backwards and against the side of a car.

  “Aye!” one of the gunmen exclaimed. Another beside the Mustang charged Nate and fired a burst of hooks and jabs. Nate lifted his hands and deflected, letting the blows slam into his forearms and holding firm as the gunman threw an uneven haymaker. Nate then ducked in a circular turn and jabbed his left into the gunman’s torso. The gunman heaved and bowed, and Nate reared up and thrust, uppercutting his right fist into the gunman’s jaw. As the gunman jolted into the air, Nate grabbed him by his shirt, spun, and pitched him for the remaining two, but both lunged aside.

  “A**holes forgetting we’re armed!” the left gunman bellowed as he lifted his rifle, spread his legs, and squeezed. Nate inhaled and tensed, with the vociferous cough of the first round sounding in time with the projectile spearing at Nate, but then, in a flash of pale-white, being repulsed by a webbing of electric bolts around his arms.

  The moment—the impact and the deflection—was too swift for the gunman to perceive; so, as he held the trigger, he remained steadfast and let fly a thundering bombardment. Nate too remained firm, his arms crossing and legs spreading as he strengthened his formation. Impacts are stronger than any pistol… Nate thought as he was rattled from the barrage. Several times more... he added, his arms stinging by the vigorous jostles. Semi-auto, modified storage—how long before it overheats, or he needs to reload? Two strategies: one for an immediate counter; the second for the pause when he reloads; just need to account for the other guy…but why isn’t he shooting?

  The second gunman, though his weapon lay in hand, focused on Nate’s shield, once mesmerized by the radiant sight but then held captive to discernment as he watched a bullet strike a vehicle several feet to Nate’s right—the shield was finite.

  The second gunman hissed and ran fifty feet from his compatriot, lifted his weapon as he faced Nate from an angle unimpeded by electric arcs, and wrapped the trigger. A tremorous stomp, however, halted him. Perceiving that quaking tone, he recalled the identical tone of Nate’s landing, spun leftward, and opened fire in a curving spray. His gyration, however, was halted—the barrel of his rifle being intercepted as Erik backhanded it from the gunman’s hold. The gunman recoiled askew, while Erik fired two jabs into his stomach. The gunman convulsed as two shockwaves launched him backwards. Erik leapt over the rearward-flung gunman, stepped onto his gut and the center of his chest, and kicked downward to whiplash him to the ground. As Erik stepped off, the gunman coughed.

  “Meh”, Erik grunted.

  “Holy_!”—Erik turned as the remaining gunman ejected his clip, spun to him while shoving another into his rifle’s heated chamber, and aimed. At the howl of the first bullet’s flight, a pillar of orange-red flames geysered from Erik’s position. The gunman, blinking from that deflagrant flash, opened his eyes and watched his ammunition slice through the blaze without striking flesh. Then, he slanted his gaze to his left, finding a trail of flames that extended from the column and towards him. The gunman turned, finding Erik milliseconds into his superfast race, with the back of his hands, arms, legs, and feet emitting those same flames, and his fists squeezed. Erik drilled his left against the side of the gunman’s ribcage and launched him back; he then stepped back before the gunman could leave the ground; and hook-kicked the top of the gunman’s left thigh, forcing his leg backwards and from under him, and sending the gunman tilting and falling. Yet, before the gunman could fall, Erik hammered his left against the side of the gunman’s back, swatting him to the asphalt.

  “Still meh”, Erik grunted as those flames dispersed, and the gunman bounced a second time.

  “You know I had him, right?” Nate inquired as he flailed and bowed to hide the bulge in his throat. A blur…Piekarsky was a…blurrier blur…but Erik’s still…they’re both faster…

  “Nate, check the truck; make sure we got the empty one”, Erik began.

  “W
e did; why else would they be willing to abandon_?”—the hoarse stridence of a Ford Mustang’s engine drove Nate to spin towards the line of vehicles, where he found the blue Mustang then active as two gunmen sat within. One swayed as he clasped his jaw, and the other, the truck driver, once more controlled the reins, with the side of his face littered in bruises, and his mouth agape as he glared at Nate. The vehicle screeched as its front tires gyrated with smoking haste, and its chassis jolted as the driver kept his foot on the brake.

  “Nate!” Erik called.

  “Don’t worry; I know how to take care of Mustangs.” Nate turned to the vehicle, some thirty feet off, clasped his fists, and thrust his arms groundward to loose an electric cascade. The vehicle darted. Nate smirked and flung his hands, with the surging brilliance circulating around the Mustang. By then, the vehicle had cleared half of the distance, and the driver, in the same moment, slammed his foot into the accelerator. Nate widened his smirk, tightened his arms to condense the surges into a beam, and, with a grunt, thrust his hands rightward. Engulfed in electricity, the Mustang rocketed in a spiraling, hundred-mile-an-hour ascension, above the road and partway through the glass of an office building’s third floor. Though coming to rest, its engine still ran, and its car alarm sounded as it hung in the open.

  Erik’s mouth gaped. He didn’t register the entire maneuver—the vehicle leaving the ground and spinning over his head—but heard the shattered glass. Then, as he waited and replayed his dorm-mate’s riposte, nearby cries blasted in his ears. Erik looked over his shoulder and to the gape in the office building where the Mustang sat, and as he looked, he inhaled, exhaled, raised his arms, and spun to Nate. “Oh s***!” he caterwauled.

  “Why is Piekarsky only around when I curse?” Nate groaned.

  “Nate, you just threw a car into the third story of an office building!” Erik bellowed. “You don’t do that!”

  “Erik, chill; it’s no big deal”, Nate replied with a shrug. “I’ve done it a couple times.”

  “There are people in that building!” Erik howled.

  “Erik, seriously; you notice that the car’s not in all the way? That’s because I threw it where I knew a pillar would be located. It hit the pillar and didn’t continue on; no one’s dead, the car won’t go anywhere, and the bad guys are captured. That’s what we’re here for, right?”

  “Nate!” Erik fired back. “I’m assuming you shorted out the car, right?”

  “If I didn’t, I’m losing my touch”, Nate replied as he crossed his arms.

  “And it’s probably still carrying a slight charge?” Erik asked.

  “The only people who have to worry about getting shocked are the Good Samaritans who try to help those guys. Give it an hour, and the electricity along the chassis will have dissipated.”

  “No, give it an hour, and the corpses will have cooled down a little bit”, Erik retorted.

  “Unless that Mustang failed its safety inspection, I’m about ninety-percent sure that those guys are alive”, Nate countered.

  “Your stupid electricity shorted the engine, and the collision damaged it and much of the front of the Mustang’s body, resulting in at least a small gas leak plus the electricity along the Mustang’s exterior. That thing’s probably going to blow.”

  “And, I call total crap_”—a drumming pop silenced Nate and diverted him to the Mustang, from where leaked a line of black smoke. “Are you freakin’ kidding me!?” he blared as he looked to Erik. “Fine, I’ll get the two guys and tell the office workers to run or something.”

  “Nope! Don’t you go near that car!” Erik bellowed as he pointed at Nate and turned towards the building. “Dang it!” Erik pushed off. A pyretic funnel erupted below his feet and shot him sixty feet skyward, before, with a pop, dispersing. Erik angled, and, diverting the remainder of his momentum, touched down on the building’s side and darted down the fifth story, the fourth, and then the third. He wound back sixty feet from the Mustang and pitched a bolide to shatter a glass pane. He lunged through that shattered pane, flipped along that building’s floor, and bolted for the Mustang’s passenger side, where, through its shattered window, he could see the bloodied and unconscious occupants. In the midst of his celeritous race, as milliseconds seem to him as seconds, he glanced to his right, locking onto the office workers on the far side of the floor and perhaps trying to perceive his phantasmal shape. They’re far enough…I think…

  He looked back to the Mustang and, by angling into a sagittal bound, sliced through the passenger window, grabbed the two gunmen by their shirts, and rammed the top of his back into the driver’s door at the same moment that a clank sounded beside him. The engine erupted as the passenger gunman cleared the Mustang’s interior, and, as the flames plowed through the dashboard and out of the hood, Erik looked back and focused on them. The fiery wall, by Erik’s will, curled around the gunmen without contacting. Erik then looked to the windowpane towards which he moved, wound back his left leg, and hook-kicked a fireball that pulverized the glass. Erik then lunged out to the open a second after rushing into the building.

  He stomped down behind the vehicular blockade, his arms raised to keep the gunmen from striking the road. He then lowered them and looked to Nate jogging to him.

  “Now what?” Nate asked. “And don’t forget, you said I wouldn’t have to move the cars back when I made that barricade.”

  “Cops”, Erik replied as he looked down the road, while police sirens increased in volume and occurrence. “Let’s get out of here and head for the rendezvous point. I’ll text Piekarsky and tell him we’re done.”

  “Sure”, Nate replied as Erik started into a sprint. As the police turned into view behind him, Nate followed Erik as they ran into an alley.

  ***

  “Anything yet, B?”

  “Still nothing.”

  “Now, B-money, as teammates, we need to hold accountability with one another. How are we supposed to catch these guys if you’re not looking hard enough?”

  “…I am not the one with an eagle-eye view.”

  “False, sir; I have to avoid being sighted, so I’m staying above five thousand feet, and, although I have pretty good eyesight, I’ll have you know it’s not sharp enough to pick out individual cars from this height.”

  “And what about me?”

  “What about you? The world doesn’t completely revolve around you, B. I feel like it’s every day that I have to remind you of this.”

  “…I’ve been running along buildings for five minutes. Someone’s going to notice me.”

  “Nah, you’re fine. That would be pretty funny, though. What if they thought they were losing their mind?”

  “He-or-she”

  “What?”

  “The singular ‘they’ isn’t…never mind”, Bryen replied as he bounded over a skyscraper’s ledge and landed on the center of its roof. Wheezing, he reared up with his phone against his left ear, jogged to the far side of the roof, and looked to the roads and dozens of buildings overshadowed by that colossus. He then glanced back to one mile off, where the nearest structures matching that skyscraper’s height could have provided any onlookers a clear, but distant, view of his form. “Okay”, he gasped as he looked over the ledge, down past thirty floors and nearly four hundred feet, before locating the obsidian pathway winding about.

  “You’re breathin’ hard; do you want a break or something?” Shawn asked.

  “Honestly?” Bryen replied, “yes…” His words trailed as he looked down. “Okay”, he repeated as he scanned the next road. “Okay”, he muttered as his eyes crisscrossed over the connecting roads.

  “Why do you keep saying ‘okay’?”

  “I hate heights”, Bryen replied. “I’m too high up.”

  “Well, why’d you pick so high a building?”

  “So I could get a better view, I needed to use the highest building”, Bryen stammered as he walked the building’s ledge.

  “What’s it like being able to see that far?” Shawn
asked.

  “You’re higher; you can see more”, Bryen replied.

  “I bet you wish you could fly”, Shawn remarked.

  “Nope”, Bryen replied as he paced to the other side of the roof.

  “Yep”, Shawn replied.

  “Bright colors, kids, heights, flying”, Bryen rattled. “I have a strong dislike for everything just named…” Bryen stopped as a green-and-white shape sped into the far-left corner of his view before passing a line of buildings. “Hold on”, Bryen called as he pointed along the obscuring structures and traced that vehicle’s eventual path. The garbage truck reappeared, swerving onto a connecting road for one hundred yards and turning left fifty yards from the skyscraper’s base. “Crap!” Bryen called.

  “Crap? What’s crap? This is not a good time for the bathroom, B-money.”

  “I’ve found the truck!” Bryen exclaimed as he strode thrice from the ledge, “moving in pursuit_”—he knelt—”now.” He cleared that same distance in one bound, inhaled, closed his eyes, and leapt. Outstretched and stiffened, he flung himself over the ledge and plunged alongside of the building. After several seconds, he angled for the skyscraper’s walls. His boots’ soles contacted and slid down the building’s exterior, with his shadow, below him, shaping into an obsidian line that trailed behind and led in front of him.

  Halfway down the building’s side, Bryen angled so that his feet rested evenly and his torso hung in the air. By shifting his weight, he angled his shadow to the side, causing him to slide perpendicularly. Then, before he could decelerate, he ran along the vertical surface. “Shawn, do you see me?” Bryen called as he lunged, clearing the fifty-foot gap between the skyscraper and a smaller building along which he landed.

  “I see you, alright”, Shawn replied.

  “Do you see the truck!?” Bryen gasped as he sprinted towards the garbage truck.

  “I see the truck, but, B-money, does that feel weird? I mean, you’re running on a vertical surface. That has to hurt your left side”, Shawn remarked.

  “It’s really annoying, but I’m kind of used to it”, Bryen replied.