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

by Brian Cody

  “Got it”, Erik replied.

  “Shawn”, David then began as he turned to Shawn, “I have an idea.”

  The colossus recommenced its race for the six as they, once more, stood in a straight line along the road.

  “Got it!” Shawn called as he clapped his hands and bent to place his arms on his knees.

  “Whatever it takes, get behind it! That’s all I’ll need!” David proclaimed as he took ten steps back.

  “Go!” Turrisi ordered.

  Nate, Erik, and Turrisi darted for the colossus, letting fly after only a few moments. Turrisi fired three shots before loading a grenade and shooting for the automaton’s head. Nate fired an electric blaze that struck the colossus’s feet and travelled up its body, and Erik shot a stream of flames at the machine’s chest.

  “Now”, Shawn whispered as he pushed off into a low-lying flight, with his speed and then his altitude increasing as he bolted for the automaton. The colossus, stepping back in the midst of the barrage, looked to Shawn and swung its mace. Shawn, then accelerating past two hundred miles per hour, jolted upward. He cleared the mace by feet, with the azure radiance churning below him. He grinned as he recalled his evasion, and his legs lowered as he passed that orb, but, as he looked back and then decelerated, he perceived a discrepancy—perhaps a miscalculation; perhaps an anomaly—an azure bolt lunged from the mace and surged through his legs. Shawn tensed at the sensation exploding through him, and he cried out as his form was illumined with that burning ether. After a moment, his feeling and his movement were lost; he dove, and, unable to brace himself, he crashed, chest-first, into the road and tumbled for several yards, while the automaton stopped and spun to him.

  “Shawn, move!” blasted in Shawn’s ears as he lay outstretched and hovered through a hallucinogenic pain. He coughed as he rolled onto his side, and he spread his arms as he became eclipsed. Shawn turned as he scurried to his feet, and he looked to the colossus standing over him with its mace lifted skyward. The colossus swung. Shawn lifted his arms and crossed them over his head. The mace hammered against him and launched a geyser of pulverized matter higher than the colossus was tall, while a tremor rolled along the road and threw Turrisi, Nate, and Erik to the ground.

  “Albert!” David howled as the debris fell, and the colossus stepped from the smoldering crater. In that canyon’s nadir, ten feet below the road, Shawn wheezed and writhed, engulfed in a pulsating agony that caused him to kick and squeeze his lips shut, while crimson streams leaked from his mouth, rolled down the black and blue sides of his face, and dripped through the cracks of his charred armor. Blinking, breathing, and shaking—all burned; yet, Shawn lived, and that fact was what kept the colossus from turning away. It glared; then, it spread its legs and lifted its mace for a second, final blow. A jolt to its head, however, stopped it. The colossus looked groundward, where a chunk of debris landed beside it, and it then looked down the road, to David rushing to an overturned vehicle, picking it up, and pitching it. “Hey!” David exclaimed, “here!”

  The colossus, with an ocular flash, incinerated the vehicle and rushed for David. “Yeah, that’s right!” David roared as he stepped back and sprinted for the nearing machine. The colossus lifted its right arm as David ascended, and it wound back as David accelerated; its wind-up, however, was halted—stopped by an impeder latched onto the back of its elbow. The colossus turned its head while detecting a grating roar, and it looked, with its empty sockets, to Shawn. Shawn, his cape nothing more than blackened strands, pushed against the colossus’s elbow. “Yes, Albert; yes!” David bellowed as he squeezed his fists and barrel-rolled to evade the mace and to collide, instead, with the colossus’s forearm.

  Shawn pushed forward, and David pushed against, and those two humanly forms, titanic in strength and unrelenting in drive, weakened the metal bindings of the calamitous limb after but a moment. Then, with a second more of herculean force, the elbow exploded in a piercing and metal-strewn blaze. Shawn plowed past the launched debris and dove, while, with David still pushing and with nothing holding it, the colossus’s forearm spiraled backwards. The colossus turned to but was struck by its own limb, with the mace, then engulfed in a dwindling navy blue, lancinating its face.

  David landed in a hard smack, while the colossus slammed into the side of an adjacent building, and while the mace bounced off of the ground in one last eruption. “Garcia, go!” David called. Erik, with katana in hand, shot into the sky, a chute of flames propelling him over the street and beyond view. Then there were four.

  With its left arm, the colossus hoisted itself out of the building’s gape, and, while stumbling to its feet, it looked down the road, tracing the line of torn asphalt that led to Shawn’s outstretched body. The colossus, devoid of its primary armament, armed its secondary, and, with that scarlet glow bleeding from its eyes and the lacerations along its head, it took aim.

  “Crap!” David gasped as he glared at that coalescing light.

  “Great job, Piekarsky!” Turrisi exclaimed as he jogged past David while loading an explosive round.

  “Turrisi!”—Turrisi looked back to David rushing him in a sprinting blur, grabbing him by one hand, and lifting him. “I’m throwing you!”

  “Wait, now? Piekarsky, now’s not a good time!” Turrisi exclaimed as David wound back.

  “Take out the eyes!” David ordered as he pitched Turrisi. “Klinge!” David then called.

  Turrisi sped into the air, his weapon sliding past his fingers as he rushed to fifty feet. He flung his rifle to eye level, and, as he sped over the machine’s right shoulder and looked to that brightening scarlet glow, he clasped the trigger to his grenade launcher, aimed for the right eye, squeezed, and, with a sleight of hand and a motioning of his barrel by a few centimeters, loaded, aimed, and fired the second round for the machine’s left eye. The two ovular rounds, moving a moment apart from one another, zipped through the eye sockets, and, within those heated crevices, bounced, ricocheted, and exploded.

  In a contorting jerk, the colossus’s head was thrust to its left as a cloud of flames geysered from the cracks on its face. Then, in a vomiting howl, a pulse of that red energy spewed out of its eyes in a discordant and haphazard rush that launched the machine backwards and against the building it had struck before. Turrisi’s jaw dropped as he watched the machine recoil, and his eyes widened with a sudden and rejuvenating radiance only interrupted by the wind resistance alerting him to his nearing sixty-mile-per-hour impact.

  An auburn flash erupted to his left as a bolt of lightning struck the side of the building he passed. Lunging, Nate rushed from that ethereal column, spread his arms, and swiped Turrisi out of his plunge. The two, after spinning, slapped onto the sidewalk and rolled to a halt.

  “Okay, that barely helped”, Turrisi groaned as he rolled onto his back and dropped his rifle.

  “Klinge, that was horrible!” David coughed as he sprinted past the machine and for Shawn.

  “What did you expect me to do!?” Nate blasted as he rolled onto his knees and stumbled to his feet.

  “Freakin’ use your lightning to whisk him to safety or something!” David proclaimed as he grabbed Shawn’s shoulders.

  “If I had been even slightly off in doing that, I could’ve vaporized him!” Nate retorted as he ambled into the road.

  “I think I’ll stick with being slammed into the sidewalk”, Turrisi muttered as he placed weight upon his knees and ascended.

  “Albert, you good?” David asked as Shawn dragged his right leg under his body to try and place weight upon it.

  “Can I be honest?” Shawn coughed, his face covered in burns and blood.

  “Sure; you’ve earned it”, David replied.

  “Then no”, Shawn hummed as he stood with a teetering push of his legs.

  “Guys!” Turrisi called as he stumbled to his rifle, lifted it, and pointed behind them. David spun, and Shawn turned after him in a gradual tilt, while the colossus’s left arm reached to the building and pushed off
in a gradual sway. It turned, its left arm hanging, and the remnants of its right jerking beside it. Plumes of black smoke ascended from its eyes and from the wounds on its head, and, as it stepped, it lumbered askew.

  Then, with a violent jerk, the colossus reared its head back and flung it forward. In a short flash, tongues of red, flame-like ether bled from its sockets before diminishing, and then, as the machine remained tilted, dissipating. The colossus stopped. David looked to Shawn, to Nate who was lowering his fists, and then to Turrisi who was beaming.

  “Yeah!” Turrisi bellowed as he leapt. “How about that!? Huh!?” he roared. “Who needs powers!? Huh, who!? Come on, say something!” The colossus replied with scores of apertures sliding ajar on its cadaverous armor. “What?” Turrisi coughed as he jumped back.

  “Huh”, Nate grunted as he crossed his arms. “That makes sense.”

  “What makes sense?” Shawn asked.

  “Why cutting off the left arm to the easy robots—the arm that fired the rockets—didn’t cause a huge explosion, whereas damaging the torso did”, Nate replied as he stepped back. “The rockets were stored in the torsos until right before they were launched, whence they would travel to the arms by some sort of delivery system.”

  “So…that means?” David asked.

  “Run”, Nate replied as he shot down the road. With a thunderous cough, two dozen rockets shot out of those open husks and sped skyward.

  “Why didn’t it shoot them straight at us!?” Turrisi exclaimed as he watched the blustering flock ascend past two thousand feet, spin, and rush groundward.

  “Why do you want to know!?” Shawn replied as he shot into a low-lying, aerial dash.

  “So they can detonate in unison!” Nate exclaimed.

  “So…that means!?” David wailed as he ran beside Shawn.

  “Run!” Nate bellowed as he looked up. The first rocket slammed onto the ground beside him, erupting in a plume of flames, and launching him to his left where he moved beside the edge of the inactive mace, and where a spare, azure bolt struck his arm. “Awe, s***!” he roared as he cradled his left, looked over his shoulder, and then spun to accelerate. The next four projectiles impacted at once, erupting in an expanding orb that launched debris and spare vehicles into the air but ten feet from the group; yet, before those flames could settle or diminish, the remaining twenty slammed into the road, the sidewalk, and the objects littering them and exploded in a devouring wave. Nate looked back as that blinding radiance slammed into the sides of buildings, and he turned as he watched the leading shockwave slam into and send Turrisi into the air. He pushed off, but seized as that same shockwave threw him off of his feet. He tilted as vehicles around him had their windows shattered and had their chasses launched, and he blinked.

  A hard tap pulsed through Nate’s back as David latched onto him. Nate turned as David accelerated with him in his right and Turrisi in his left. David sped past the edge of that blast-wave, clasped Shawn by his collar, and accelerated once more, bolting over the road, and then jerking into an alley. He stomped down, and, in the next moment, the shockwave bolted past, with the edge of that alley being shredded, and a sharp gust speeding through.

  As the smoke dispersed and the debris fell, the remaining four spread apart. Shawn knelt against the leftward wall and let a wad of blood and mucus drip from his lips; Turrisi slid along the opposite wall and sat along the ground; Nate backed against the far end of that wall and dragged his fingers through his hair; and David backed towards the opposite end of the alley, rearing forward as he rested his hands on his knees and looked to the smoldering roadway.

  “Any other brilliant ideas?” Shawn wheezed as he scanned the group.

  “Yeah”, Nate sighed.

  “I was joking, bud”, Shawn coughed.

  “I wasn’t”, Nate replied. “When the mace hit the robot’s face, it damaged it substantially. Aside from you guys ripping off the arm, and B-money almost cutting through said arm beforehand, that had been the most substantial damage to that point, and it, more than likely, is the reason Turrisi’s shots were able to break its lasers.”

  “That and my sick-nasty aim!” Turrisi coughed as he cradled his weapon.

  “Sure”, Nate replied, “Turrisi’s sick-nasty aim helped as well. My point is this: since the force-field covering the machine’s body uses the same energy as what was powering the mace, when they struck one another at a high speed, the force-field, being the weaker concentration, was cancelled out.”

  “So, that helps us how?” David asked.

  “While I was running by the mace, a bolt shocked me, probably due to my proximity and my powers. The mace still has residual energy, so, if I can charge it with enough of my own powers to create a temporary field at least mimicking the blue energy, we can swing it back. The force-field surrounding the giant will be temporarily displaced, and Turrisi can shoot at the white guy with one of his armor-piercing rounds.”

  “I’ve shot at it before, and it did absolutely nothing”, Turrisi replied.

  “But did you shoot at the cracks along its chest?”

  “Well, no…”

  “Why else would it have the strongest and most visible concentration of the force-field around it? Piekarsky, you did damage it; just enough for it to know that if it takes too many more hits, it could be destroyed. Turrisi, your round should at least weaken it enough for us to gain a greater advantage than we have now.”

  “Okay”, Turrisi replied, “sounds good, but one addition to your plan: in all seriousness, and not just because I want to (or because it would look cool) I would need to be thrown to guarantee a direct hit for where you want me to shoot. The angle’s too awkward from the ground.”

  “Huh; well, if that’s the case, I’ll throw ol’ Davey”, David replied.

  “Wait, then who’s gonna swing the mace?” Nate asked. “It’s too heavy for me to maintain the charge and magnetically launch it fast enough for the two fields to cancel each other out.”

  “I can’t”, Shawn answered. “I’m exhausted from ripping the arm off and getting hit head-on by that stupid thing. I’m better off throwing Turrisi, and Piekarsky can swing the mace.”

  “Will you be able to make an accurate shot?” David asked.

  “Don’t you worry, Dave”, Shawn replied with a nod. “I played baseball in high school.”

  “Nice, but that doesn’t answer my question”, David replied.

  “I got this”, Shawn finished as he looked to Turrisi pulling out one round from his M16 and shoving it into his Glock. “You ready to be thrown like no other, Turrisi?”

  “If you miss”, Turrisi began as he shoved the pistol into his holster, “regardless of what I bump into and-or land upon, I will shoot you instead.”

  “Okay then”, Shawn chuckled, while the ground trembled with accelerated footsteps, “I won’t miss.”

  “Shawn and Turrisi, you guys will have to be the distractions. Hold it back until we can get to the mace”, Nate stated, the ground shaking with greater vigor.

  “Of course we’re the distractions”, Turrisi groaned as he jogged out. Shawn followed, and, as they leapt into the road, over masses of rubble and charred vehicles, the volume and expediency of those stomps increased. David and Nate followed and moved alongside of them as one singular line charging for the black smoke and for the colossus concealed behind it.

  “Turrisi!” David called as he looked back to find the gunman some ten yards behind him, “I’m gonna need a little more hustle, bud!”

  “I don’t have powers!” Turrisi gasped.

  “Shawn’s just hoverin’ over there!” Nate exclaimed as he flailed towards Shawn’s aerial form.

  “Shut up, Nate!” Shawn roared while flying parallel with David and Nate—both of whom moved with only slight superhuman vigor.

  “Albert, get-the-frick on the ground and run with us!” David exclaimed.

  “I got hit by the stupid mace!” Shawn howled.

  “So did I!” David roared. “
Shawn, get on the ground and run, or I will drag you to the ground!”

  “Well_”—the colossus plowed through the smoke and bolted for those four.

  “Does someone want to pray?!” David blared.

  “Father God, I don’t want to die! Be with my friends as well!” Shawn fired off.

  “Can someone else besides Shawn pray for once?!” David howled, the machine’s stomps drowning out his words.

  “Not it!” Nate exclaimed.

  “Not it!” Turrisi repeated.

  “Not it!” David added. “Wait…”

  “Screw it, let’s do this, Turrisi!” Shawn proclaimed as he accelerated. Behind him, Turrisi lifted his rifle as he passed by the right arm, and he fired as he looked to that rushing machine, with his clattering burst slapping the giant’s chest and head for three seconds before ceasing.

  “Crap!” Turrisi barked as he emptied the clip, reached to his left, and yanked out his last packet of ammunition; he glared at it as he ran—standard rounds; armor-piercing does nothing, so these… Turrisi loaded the clip, and then looked up to the colossus. “It’s a good day to die!” he bellowed as he opened fire.

  “Nope!” Shawn replied as he righted himself into an aerial hover and launched a burst of tattered and burned papers at the colossus’s face. The colossus, in response, swiped its left arm and stripped those papers. Then, forsaking the clatter of Turrisi’s rounds, it turned to Shawn, jumped, and swung. Shawn evaded in a rearward tug, while the colossus landed in front of him, spun, and backhanded. Shawn evaded in a leap, and the colossus followed-through and kicked its left at Turrisi. Turrisi leapt aside and slid to the ground, the foot passing overhead and the machine completing its revolution by swiping at him. Turrisi jumped up, with the limb slicing through the asphalt as the colossus stood.

  The colossus swung at Shawn as he charged from behind, but Shawn dove, rushed past its legs before ascending, and ducked to evade a second swipe. Beyond its reach, Turrisi fired in half-second bursts, garnering the behemoth’s attention as it charged and launched in an underhanded thrust. Turrisi dove backwards and to the right, then back-flipped in an angled roll as the colossus’s left foot slammed behind him. He then jumped to his feet and ran between its legs as it stepped away and swung its arm.