The Beauty of Destruction

by Gavin G. Smith

  For a moment everything seemed to slow down for du Bois. It was clear what kind of micro society they had been trying to build behind their barricades. Slaves dropped down onto lawns to avoid the gunfire, their mounted overseers sliding off panicked horses and seeking cover, humans on leads being used as human shields, bodies hanging from trees. Yet all the lawns were immaculate, the cars gleamed. Du Bois’s finger curved around the trigger of the door gun and squeezed.

  Beth dropped down into the main cab of the ECV, and grunted as a ricocheting round caught her. She was putting a fresh belt of rounds into the Model 0. ‘The minigun’s empty!’ Another round hit her, and she slumped, but then struggled back up and climbed into the turret. He had no idea where Grace was. Beverly Hills was a bad place to be exposed on a bike. Ahead of them an SUV technical exploded. They bumped through the wreckage, fire and debris raining down on them. The ECV suddenly jumped as something exploded against it. Flame rolled over du Bois’s side of the vehicle, and the overpressure tried to suck him out of the cab. Behind him Beth ducked back down into the cab as the explosion rolled over the top of the vehicle as well. The ECV was surrounded by fire. Alexia drove through it. The convoy was turning right onto North Hillcrest Road. As Alexia slewed the armoured patrol vehicle round the corner, du Bois leaned out of the vehicle and looked back. There was a still-smoking crater in the armour towards the rear of the vehicle. He guessed it was from a 40mm high explosive grenade fired from a launcher. Had it been a HEAP he suspected the chase would have been over.

  They roared past more large houses with swimming pools and well-manicured lawns. There was less of an armed response on Hillcrest. A gate to one of the big houses exploded, parts of it bouncing off the ECV, and Grace’s Night Rod swerved onto the road behind them. The door MG ran dry. Du Bois started replacing the belt as quickly as he could, and got shot several more times in the process.

  Two of the remaining motorcycle outriders, in fact, possibly the only two remaining outriders, were falling back towards them. There weren’t that many vehicles left ahead of them: a couple of the dune buggies, a four-wheel-drive flatbed light lorry, armoured, with spikes, chains, skulls, and flayed skin hanging off it. It was enough to make du Bois think that they were trying too hard. Then there was still the Escalade with the HMG in the back and the Cougar.

  Alexia swerved towards one of the motorcycle outriders. The ECV clipped the bike, but the rider was already reaching for the bonnet of the armoured patrol vehicle. He grabbed the bull bar as his bike disappeared under the ECV. The outrider was holding on for dear life, his boots bouncing off the ground. He was stripped to the waist, his body and shaved head covered in gothic script. Alexia was looking for wreckage to scrape him off on. Du Bois reached for his carbine, but the other outrider was suddenly next to him, grabbing for the doorframe. Du Bois cried out as a large, very sharp knife was rammed into his right arm. A fist covered in rings hit him in the face. He could smell the man, see his flesh desecrated with rusted nails, human skin covering his mouth and nose, his hair shaved into a triple mohican. The second outrider leaned back for a kick. Du Bois drew his tanto, somewhat awkwardly, with his left hand. The folded steel of the Japanese blade sliced up through the outrider’s side and then through the tendons of his arm in a C-shaped cut. Alexia swerved the ECV up onto the pavement as the outrider was falling back. He hit a lamppost at speed.

  Alexia slewed the vehicle round onto Santa Monica Boulevard, following what remained of La Calavera’s convoy. The gothic script outrider swung one-handed through the passenger doorway and kicked du Bois in the face. The two-footed kick hit him with enough force to knock him towards Alexia, but his seatbelt caught him. The man was almost sat in his lap now, reaching for the Glock in his waistband. Du Bois’s hearing cut out for a moment. The sound of the Colt OHWS held right by his head was deafening. Blood splattered the windscreen and gothic script was a dead weight on his lap. Du Bois could barely move.

  ‘Malcolm!’ Alexia shouted. He had no idea what she was warning him about. Beth stood up again, opening the hatch to the turret. Du Bois heaved, and screamed as blood squirted out of the knife wound in his arm. Gothic script flopped out of the ECV. Du Bois had to lean out of the vehicle for a clear view, then he saw what Alexia was shouting about. The flatbed lorry and the two dune buggies were dropping back towards their armoured patrol vehicle, gunmen and women hanging off them or waiting in the lorry’s flatbed. It sort of made sense – the majority of their small arms could do little to the ECV’s armour, but du Bois still couldn’t shake the feeling that they were going through the motions of some post-apocalyptic fantasy. They were insane but they seemed to be obeying some obscene set of rules.

  Du Bois screamed again as he removed the blade from his arm, and dropped it onto the asphalt. The wound was already starting to close, his body feeding on itself, yet again. He had not had a chance to finish reloading the door MG. He heard submachine gunfire and Beth cursing. The dune buggy on his side of the ECV was almost on him, the hangers-on reaching with one hand for their vehicle. Du Bois drew his .45 with his weak right hand, and started firing at them. With his left he opened the grenade launcher on his carbine and removed the HEAP grenade. One of the hangers-on fell between the two speeding vehicles, shot multiple times. Du Bois found a 40mm flechette grenade on his webbing. Another of the gunmen leapt from the dune buggy, firing a MAC-10 submachine gun one-handed as he did. It was inaccurate, the weapon’s recoil making it climb too quickly. Bullets sparked off armour, but a ricochet went through the back of his seat. His armour stopped the bullet, but it still felt like getting hit with a hammer. He emptied the rest of the .45’s magazine at the gunman, who bounced off the ECV and fell under its wheels. Du Bois slid the flechette grenade into the launcher, and clicked it shut. He dropped the .45 into the footwell, and brought the carbine up, firing the grenade launcher. Needle-like flechettes filled the air between the ECV and the dune buggy. One of the gunmen fell off the other vehicle. The driver slumped forwards and the dune buggy swerved towards the ECV. The patrol vehicle clipped it and it went spinning.

  The flatbed lorry was bumper-to-bumper with them now. People were climbing onto the ECV’s bonnet. Others were jumping onto Alexia’s side of the vehicle from the other dune buggy. Du Bois heard the LMG firing from the turret. Boarders tumbled down the windscreen and rolled off the bonnet. Alexia was driving blind now, her face splattered in blood. A bearded boarder swung in and kicked du Bois in the face. He continued across, catching Alexia. The ECV swerved violently. A sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun was pointed at Alexia. Du Bois grabbed the hand with the shotgun and pushed it up. Both barrels fired. Alexia cried out but the blast missed her. Buckshot bounced off the cracked armoured windscreen and the interior superstructure, some of it catching Alexia in the face. The ECV cut violently to the right, but she managed to wrestle back control. Du Bois punched the man in the groin. If it hurt the bearded boarder he showed no sign of it. Another boarder leaned in and shot du Bois twice. He cried out as he was slammed back into his seat. His still-healing right arm went numb. The boarder lying across Alexia and du Bois was screaming and thrashing, repeatedly kicking Alexia in the head as she struggled to control the vehicle. Du Bois managed to get the punch blade from his belt buckle. He rammed it repeatedly into the man’s crotch, changing the pitch of the boarder’s screams. His vision filled with fire as he was shot in the face at point-blank range, his head pushed violently around. The bullet beat his hardening skin, and all but tore off his reinforced jawbone. He was screaming now, pain, anger, and probably fear. The boarder lying across them got stabbed in the face and then the throat. He grabbed Alexia’s pistol from her hip holster. She was sobbing through the blood of her torn-open face. Alexia jumped when du Bois shot the gunman inside the cab with them through the bottom of his jaw, twice. He swapped Alexia’s pistol into his right hand and leant out of the ECV, getting shot in the shoulder again in the process. He put another two rounds into the boarder kneeling on the boot with the pi
stol. He pushed at the one inside the vehicle with his left hand, shooting at anybody who tried to get in the cab with Alexia’s pistol. The bearded boarder’s head hit the asphalt, and he was dragged out of the cab. Du Bois dropped Alexia’s now empty pistol into the footwell. Behind him Beth was thrashing around in the turret. The LMG had gone silent. Du Bois was finally able to grab his carbine again. Someone tried to swing in and took a three-round burst in the stomach before du Bois helped him off the armoured patrol vehicle with his boot. He leant out of the ECV. There was an explosion on the other side of the vehicle. He caught a glimpse of the other dune buggy, a tumbling, smoking wreckage in the rear view mirror. He desperately needed breathing room. He could hear his sister sobbing next to him. No time to deal with that now.

  ‘This is fucking crazy!’ she screamed at him. Du Bois leaned out and started firing burst after burst from the carbine, shooting the boarders on the bonnet who were trying to clamber up the windscreen, firing on the other gunmen in the back of the flatbed lorry, cutting them down.

  Breathing room! The carbine ran dry. He flipped open the grenade launcher, the spent flechette round ejected. More gunmen were jumping from the back of the lorry and onto the ECV.

  ‘Fuck off! Fuck off!’ Beth screamed from the turret. He was vaguely aware of blood spattering the back of his neck from above. The boarders clinging on to the right-hand side, the driver’s side of the ECV, fell away as one of Grace’s fully automatic Berettas sounded. Du Bois leant down to grab his last HEAP grenade from the footwell. Someone hit him in the shoulder with a machete hard enough to get through armour and hardening skin. He howled out in pain and sat back, hard, in his seat. He had a moment to take in the grinning face of an obviously drug-fuelled muscle-bound psycho, as he swung the machete at him again. Du Bois parried the blow by hitting the boarder in the arm with the collapsible stock of his carbine hard enough to push the man backwards. He then rammed the stock into the boarder’s fingers, breaking them. He barely felt the bump as they ran over him. Du Bois grabbed the HEAP and slid it home. He leaned out of the ECV. One of the boarders was running across the bonnet towards him. Du Bois fired the grenade launcher. The velocity of the HEAP grenade flew through the boarder’s leg, taking it off at the knee. It flew across the flatbed, through the cab and into the engine block of the lorry. Then it blew. The ECV crashed into it. Du Bois threw himself back into the cab, narrowly avoiding being torn out of it by twisted wreckage. The ECV lurched horribly. Alexia screamed. It felt like the armoured patrol vehicle was in the air for a moment. A bloodied Beth was suddenly sat in the back of the cab, sidearm in hand, pointing it up at the hatch. The ECV landed, bounced. There was the sound of screaming metal, and then they were clear. There was wreckage and a body on the bonnet of their vehicle.

  ‘I’m stopping! I’m stopping!’ Alexia screamed. The roof hatch for the turret opened and Beth fired her pistol up through it.

  Du Bois tried to tell his sister to keep going, but it came out a slurred mush as he spat blood down himself. He reached up and pushed his jaw back into place, the flesh growing around it, holding it in place as his body auto-cannibalised for the matter to heal itself. The ECV was slowing down. It would be a few moments before he could speak. It was just the Escalade and the Cougar in front of them now. Tracer fire drew lines of phosphorescent light between the Escalade, the Cougar and their own vehicle. Sparks filled their vision again as rounds from the heavy machine gun in the Cougar’s remotely operated turret, and what sounded like a Russian made DShK from the Escalade technical, scored holes in the ECV’s armour, and cracked the windscreen. The body had been spread all over the bonnet by the impact of the large calibre rounds. As the ricochets spun off the armour, du Bois knew that there was only so much the ECV could take. Grace had swerved in behind them, riding close to use them as cover.

  Du Bois put his hand on Alexia’s shoulder. ‘If you stop now, this was for nothing,’ he managed through his not-fully-healed jaw, slurring some of the words. Then he turned away from her and reloaded the door gun. The heavy rounds slowly chewing through the armour sounded like a thousand jackhammers pounding on the ECV. He purposely didn’t look at Alexia.

  On his left was what had once been a golf course. It looked like a battle had been fought on it. The course was pockmarked with craters and even burned-out vehicles. On the other side of the boulevard were skyscrapers, a commercial district of some kind. It looked strangely open for business. One of the buildings had bodies hanging out of most of the windows. They were taking fire from another of the buildings. They had the road to themselves, however. It seemed this was too intense even for the crazies.

  He finished reloading. He looked back at Beth. She was holding her LMG now, her face healing under the blood. She was losing weight as he watched. It looked like she had been slashed, shot and extensively beaten with blunt instruments. Her right arm was bloody to the elbow. She nodded to him. Grace roared right up next to him.

  ‘Draw their fire!’ He only heard her because of his augmented hearing filtering out the gunfire and roaring engines. The gunners on the Escalade tried to target her, tracers chasing the fast-moving Harley Night Rod. Du Bois started firing long burst after long burst at the Escalade, tracers and armour piercing rounds sparking off the road and the pickup truck technical as he tried to suppress the gunners. He was aware of Beth climbing back into the turret. He saw tracers fired from above arcing over the Escalade to bounce off the Cougar’s thick armour.

  The Night Rod’s engine screamed as Grace dropped a gear and twisted the throttle. She cut a hard left across the front of the ECV, leaning in so low her shoulder all but touched the asphalt. The gunners in the Escalade followed her with tracers. The large rounds dug up the road before spinning into the air. Du Bois poured on the fire. The DShK gunner turned his attention back to the ECV. The other gunwoman in the Escalade’s truck bed was firing an M16 at Grace. The Night Rod wobbled as it took hits. Grace jerked and nearly lost the bike as she was shot as well. She straightened up. A pistol in her hand now, she emptied a magazine into the two gunners in the back of the Escalade. Both of them staggered back. The DShK gunner fell out of the truck bed and bounced along the road. The woman sat down hard. Grace’s pistol disappeared inside her leather jacket and she stood up on the bike’s seat, holding onto the handlebars. Then she leapt. She seemed to hang in the air for a long time. The bike fell away, tumbling along the road. Then she landed on the truck bed, grabbing onto the bolted down DShK. Going down on one knee she drew the Beretta from inside her leather, reloaded it, and put a three round burst into the gunwoman’s head. Du Bois was concentrating his fire on the Cougar now. Both the rear and the front passenger doors on the Escalade opened, gunmen leaning out of them, aiming weapons back at Grace. She calmly transferred the Beretta to her left hand, and stood up holding onto the heavy machine gun’s tripod. She put a burst into the two gunmen on the right-hand side of the vehicle. More bodies hit the road. A shotgun blast almost blew her out of the back of the Escalade but she managed to hold on. She crouched down and put three bursts into the final gunman, leaving him hanging out of the door, trailing along the road, leaving a red smear behind him on the asphalt.

  They shot underneath the San Diego Freeway. The houses were smaller, cheaper-looking on either side of the road now. Many of them had been burned out, badly damaged by small arms fire or explosives. There were few people on the street and even fewer on the road, and those were giving them a wide berth, though a few were taking opportunistic shots at the three remaining vehicles.

  The Escalade started weaving across the road, trying to shake Grace out of it. Du Bois was wondering what she was trying to achieve here. If she killed the driver then she was out of the fight, even if she took his place. The best thing the driver could do was stop, but that put the Escalade out of play as well. Grace knelt down and pulled her N6 carbine around her body on its sling, gripping onto the pickup with one hand, reloading the weapon’s grenade launcher with the other. The .50 calibre
HMG in the Cougar’s turret was still firing at the ECV. Alexia had taken to weaving their vehicle back and forth across the lanes of Santa Monica Boulevard, trying to avoid being caught in a constant hail of large calibre weapons fire. Du Bois and Beth had stopped bouncing rounds off the Cougar’s superior armour. Grace, kneeling down, brought the carbine to her shoulder and fired the grenade launcher. The grenade hit the remotely operated CROWS turret on the armoured truck, and the 40mm HEAP grenade exploded. Flame blossomed on top of the Cougar, whipped back by the speed of the vehicle. The HMG was just so much mangled metal now. The heat of the explosion cooked off the rounds, sending .50 calibre bullets flying off in every direction. The Escalade almost turned over trying to shake Grace off as she clung on for dear life.

  There was movement in the smoke, on the roof of the Cougar. Du Bois sighted the M240 door gun. The squat, huge, two-headed, off-kilter shape of La Calavera appeared through the smoke and quickly knelt down. Du Bois started firing the door gun. Tracers rushed to meet the gangland warlord. His new second head was female and screaming. La Calavera was stripped to the waist, his impossibly muscled torso on display, all visible skin covered by the skeleton tattoo. He beckoned the Escalade technical closer. The door gun rounds were driving furrows through his flesh. They were joined by rounds from Beth’s LMG fired from up in the turret, but the wounds were closing almost immediately. Du Bois had never seen such efficient healing on anybody, regardless of how much S-tech they had running through their bodies. Grace quickly reloaded one of her Berettas, holstered it and grabbed the DShK, and started firing at the Cougar as the Escalade closed with it. The heavy machine gun put craters in the truck’s armour. La Calavera brought a squat, heavy-looking weapon to his shoulder. An Objective Individual Combat Weapon, a hybrid assault rifle and semi-automatic 25mm grenade launcher. He pointed the weapon down, and fired the overbarrel grenade launcher twice at the Escalade’s truck bed. He raised the weapon and fired the grenade launcher twice more at the ECV’s turret, and then he shifted it again and fired at du Bois. An explosion blossomed above the Escalade’s truck bed, and then another, engulfing Grace. La Calavera leapt off the back of the Cougar, powerful leg muscles carrying him high into the air.