Walking Ghost Phase

by D. C. Daugherty

  Then gunfire.

  Emily collected herself and squeezed the trigger. Two defenders, who were trying to smother their flame-covered boots in the sand, crumpled when the bullets tore through their bodies. A3 and A6 picked off three more who had managed to escape behind the fence. The air now rattled with the sound of gunfire, of ricocheting bullets, of defenders screaming.

  A lone defender ducked below a mesh of pipes, out of the fire's reach. Emily placed the rifle butt against her shoulder and dropped to one knee. Peeking beneath a stretch of pipes, his boots glowed in the orange flame, and Emily's three rapid shots mangled the leather in a jagged mess of black and red. The defender flopped to the ground, shrieking, clutching his boots. Now in full view of every attacker's gun sight, he entered the darkness a moment later.

  As Emily's squad whittled away at the defenders' ranks, the oil, still spewing from the spigots, submerged the lifeless bodies. An amused smile crossed her lips. Her side was not just winning but humiliating the defenders.

  Somewhere, an Army general probably screamed at his peons, demanded someone's job, threatened someone's head. He wanted a better cheater. Emily gritted her teeth at the thought of the general finding that person. You can't win them all would soon become You can't win.

  “Get out of the doorway,” Matt shouted.

  For a moment Emily processed the warning. Matt repeated it. The subsequent sting felt as nothing more than a slight poke in her ribs, a friendly nudge from Sarah maybe. Move? Why should—Oh no. She patted her right hip and stared at her hand. A chocolate-colored liquid rolled down her palm. In the courtyard, pipes began to blur and twist. The rifle slipped through her fingers, but it oddly floated in front of her eyes as if gravity didn't exist.

  No. Not floating. She was falling with it.

  The instant the rifle clanged on the concrete, her cheeked smacked the floor. Now facing the courtyard, she saw the defender, the hole in the tip of his gun barrel, his finger pulling the trigger.

  “No!” Matt jumped in the doorway, between Emily and the defender, and grabbed her arm. Then his shirt puffed out three times. He dropped to his knees and glanced at his chest. Through his tinted visor window, Emily saw his bulging eyes. Three crimson ovals swelled in the center of his shirt. His arms flopped to his sides, and his head drooped like a scarecrow in a cornfield.

  Four more thuds shook him, and he fell atop Emily. “Matt? Matt?” No. Don't do this to me.

  In the courtyard, the defender convulsed as a slew of bullets entered his body. After he planted in the sludge, dead, the last pop of a gunshot echoed around the complex. “That's all of them,” A3 shouted.

  Soon footsteps clanked on mesh stairs and thumped on the cement floor. They approached the doorway, when the weight lifted from Emily's chest. A4 and A5 dragged Matt's body to the corner, where they leaned him against the wall. Under him grew a pool of red with the all-too-familiar glow of fresh blood. Emily saw her share of it during her time in the Sim: the unforgiving color, the metallic taste, the sticky sensation it left between her fingers.

  But the substance on her hand was not familiar.

  Damon stood over her. “Damn, Heath, your boyfriend was right. The Sim is accurate.”

  “What're you talking about?” she asked through her clenched teeth.

  He knelt and dabbed his finger against the brown swell in her shirt. “You've been shot in the liver. That's why the blood is dark.”

  Numbness throbbed across her spine. “How bad is it?”

  “That much blood loss?” Damon shook his head. “Ten minutes—maybe.”

  “Ten minutes?”

  “Until you're dead.”

  “Freakin' great,” A3 said. “We still got fifteen out there. Matt's dead. She'll be dead soon. Now what are we going to do?”

  “I'll take back command of the mission,” Damon said.

  Emily gasped as she stood. The room lights swirled. “No, I'll do this.” She leaned against the doorway.

  “Heath, you won't make it fifty feet. I'm A1. I'll handle this. Lie down and let go.”

  “Just like you wanted us to lie down with your other plan?”

  “Do you even have one?” Damon asked.

  Emily squeezed the wound, and the surge of pain forced her to bite into her tongue. Have to stop the bleeding, she thought. Need more time. “Someone help me upstairs?”

  A6 knelt, pulled Emily's arm around his neck and steadied her. As he slowly carried her through the maze of pipes, blood droplets trickled from her side, dotting the concrete in brown patches. Once they reached the control room, she limped to the broken window where Matt had left his binoculars. She picked them up and scanned the horizon.

  No black figures in sight. No dust trails. Just a single pipeline that crossed the barren desert and connected the two bases. Circular valves, identical to the spigot controls in the courtyard, sealed shut the pipeline covers. A black sludge moved beneath a square window on top, and yellow arrows displayed the oil's flow direction—toward the enemy base.

  Emily dropped the binoculars, slumped to the floor and propped her back against the wall, under the window. “Close the spigots outside. Find out how fast the flow in the central pipe is moving. Please, hurry.”

  A6 nodded and raced out the door.

  The black patches in Emily's vision began to push inward, and a breeze from the window chilled her flesh like the wind of a winter morning. A floor drain near her boots gurgled, collecting her blood. She looked at her hand, moved her fingers even, but couldn't feel them, couldn't feel anything. “This isn't so bad.” Her speech slurred.

  About five minutes later, A6 returned with Damon and the rest of her squad. “Fast,” he said between gasps for air. “Maybe thirty miles an hour.”

  “Damon,” Emily said. Her voice was low. “I know you want to move in for a frontal assault, but please try something else first.”

  He shook his head as if he felt disgusted with the idea of listening to her.

  “The oil flow is moving almost fifty feet a second. When you move within a hundred yards of their base, open a top seal, set your grenades to maximum fuse and dump them in.”

  “I'll think about it.” He motioned to the remaining squad members. “You five, let's move.” They rushed out of the control room, leaving her alone.

  Emily eased her hand off the wound. Her jaw trembled and chest shivered. Breath misted across the inside of the visor. Darkness coalesced over her eyes. Good luck, Damon.

  The world faded.

  You Are Dead!

  Overall time:

  Thirty-six minutes, nine seconds.

  State of death time remaining:

  Six hours, twenty-three minutes, fifty-one seconds.

  Emily's hip burned, and with every pulsating throb of pain, the images in her mind—her escape—shattered before any recognizable memories could form. She thought harder. Then the short, crooked-nosed man, whom she had imagined taking clothing measurements, sauntered in from the dark, but instead of a tape roll, he held a red-hot kindling poker. His maniacal laugh cackled in her brain as he stabbed the poker into her ribs. She wanted to squirm, bite her tongue even. Now her nose itched, and the little man laughed louder. Still, the unwavering timer counted off each second. She mentally tried to blur the numbers, but the little man slapped her. “No, no, no. You aren't leave—”

  Squad success!

  Ending ACES training.

  Thank you, Damon.

  The chamber lights glowed, slowly gaining focus as the frail white-coat leaned over the vat. Before the woman could remove the breathing tube, Emily bit into the plastic and clutched her pseudo-wound. The white-coat hopped back and waved her hand toward an MP. “Assistance needed on vat twenty-nine, please.”

  Later, Emily would make a mental note: never require help in the Sim chamber. The MP dug his fingers under her arms and yanked her over the vat side. Her feet slid across the electronics. The skin above her liver tightened. She wanted to scream, but her body apparently th
ought the stress was too much. Her vision began to fade and breathing slowed.

  “I got her,” someone said. The voice was familiar, but it didn't belong to Matt. A3, the only other girl in the squad, pushed her neck under Emily's arm.

  When the darkness around Emily's eyes receded, she looked down, watching her shaking legs take each labored step toward the locker room. “I don't remember it ever hurting this bad.”

  After A3 helped her dress, Emily hobbled back to the chamber. About halfway to the elevator, she saw Matt running toward her as he tugged his shirt buttons and fanned his chest. He held out his hands but didn't touch her. “Can you make it?” he asked.

  “I think so.” A burn rippled across her ribs. “Who the hell turned up the pain meter?”

  He pulled at his shirt again. “I didn't see that one coming.”

  “Should you have?”

  Instead of answering, he stared at the floor tiles.

  “You can't keep doing this. You asked me to trust you, but how can I when you seem hell-bent on hiding something?”

  Matt gently held her arm. “Em—”

  She shrugged away his hand, the act of which caused her to wince. “Do me a favor. At least let me know before they decide to kill us for real.”

  At the elevator, a chubby soldier's face lit up. “You two should've seen it.” Emily recognized his voice as A6. “We dumped our grenades in the pipeline, and a few seconds later—” He threw out his arms. “—boom! Their place went up in a fireball. Defenders ran out of the building. They were covered in flames and screaming. One poor bastard actually made it through the gates. He just stood there and watched us close in on him.” A6 looked at A3. “Did you tell him 'sorry' before you shot him?”

  “I kinda felt bad for the dude,” she said.

  A6 raised his hand as if he wanted to slap Emily on the back, but he seemed to notice her pained expression. “Awesome plan, sis.” He turned and slapped Matt's back instead. “You, too.”

  Matt cringed and Emily chuckled.

  Throughout the elevator ride, Damon cowered in the corner, not saying a word, while the other soldiers continued to brag about the victory. When the metal doors opened, he took off and never once glanced over his shoulder. The rest of the squad thanked Matt and Emily and then left for their rooms.

  Emily glared at Matt and walked off alone.

  Behind her, she heard his footsteps, and his shadow draped the carpet in front of her boots. She knew he had to follow her most of the way since their rooms were on the same side of base, but now she sensed him getting closer. A moment later she glanced down and saw the tip of his boots.

  “With you,” he said, “it was always two steps forward, one step back.”

  Then a muffled shout came from a nearby room. It was repeating the word No. Maybe a cry for help. She stopped and looked at the door, and the hallway went silent again. “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “The person screaming?” She pointed at the door beside her. “It came from there.”

  Without hesitating, Matt opened the door. The room was empty except for messy sheets, a wad of fatigues on the floor and the familiar smell of disinfectant.

  “Halt right there,” someone shouted. Down the hall, an MP jogged toward them, the baton swinging below his belt, grazing his leg.

  Emily clutched her side. Just the sight of the man made her pseudo bullet wound throb again. Anticipation of the inevitable beating. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she said under her breath.

  Matt stepped between her and the MP, who was now twirling his baton. “I'm sorry, sir. We thought we heard someone in trouble.”

  “Is this your room, Private?”

  “No, sir,” Matt said.

  “Do you know what the punishment is for entering any room not your own?”

  Emily clutched the back of Matt's shirt. “We only wanted to help, sir,” she said.

  “I wasn't addressing you, Private.”

  “Sir,” Matt said. “I—we apologize.”

  For a moment the MP, an unmistakable look of suspicion in his eyes, studied Matt. Then he holstered his baton. “Just this once I'm going to let you both off with a warning.”

  “Yes, sir,” Matt said.

  “Now get out of my face.”

  They did, and before Emily and Matt turned down the first corridor, she glanced over her shoulder. The MP was gone.

  “As I was saying,” Matt said.

  Another muffled scream came from a nearby room, but this time the words were clearer. “Don't do it!”

  “You had to have heard that,” Emily said.

  Matt nodded. “Care to check it out?” He twirled his wrist, as if he held a baton, and looked down the hall.

  Emily's ribs tingled again. “You were saying? Two steps forward, one step back?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Around you, I don't doubt it.”

  “Anyway, it was almost three years ago when I finally gathered enough nerve to ask you out—on a real date, that is, since we'd gone out as friends a hundred times before. I had the perfect spot for dinner. A great movie picked out. I even thought about flowers, but that seemed like overkill.”

  “They are. I probably would have turned and gone back inside my house if I saw you with them.”

  “You might, had you said yes in the first place. You got mad at me for even suggesting the idea. Accused me of trying to ruin our friendship. Stopped returning my calls. Wouldn't say hi to me at school. It took a few weeks before you talked to me. Not long after that, I asked you out again. Accusations, no calls, no hellos. Around our tenth back and forth, you gave in.”

  Emily froze as an image flashed in her mind. It was a girl wearing a pink dress, a white smock and a wig of flaming red hair. She could hear the girl's cheery voice. Hi, welcome to— “You took me to Pipi's.” Emily's stomach churned. “I got sick after eating the chicken.”

  “You were convinced it was an omen. Another three months passed before you gave me a second chance.” He grabbed her arm and spun her toward him. His eyes darkened. The cringe of pain in her face didn't seem to faze him. “As much as I look back on those times and realize how I loved winning your trust then, I don't have that kind of time here. So whatever you have to do, whatever lies you need to tell that stubborn brain of yours, you need to trust me now. It's the only way I can get you out of this place.”

  “Out of here? Like leave? How?”

  Matt glanced at her injured side. “Sorry. Wait here.”

  “Where are you going?”

  He pointed ahead to the mess hall entrance and walked toward it. A moment after he pushed through the swinging metal doors, a sound of clanging pans echoed down the depths of Greaver. Emily's head twisted as she checked the hallway, expecting a certain MP to come around the corner any second, his baton whirling, his eyes locked on an easy victim. She wanted to run, but the stiffness in her ribs would make it impossible for her to achieve anything faster than a crooked limp. Besides, the chase might just add to the MP's enjoyment.

  With the hall still clear of any MPs, the clanging of pans stopped, and Matt came out of the mess hall. In his right hand was a zip lock bag full of ice cubes. “Keep this on your side. It should numb the pain and make the swelling go down.”

  She glanced left and right and then glared at him. “Are you trying to get our asses kicked?”

  “No one's around.”

  “They don't have to be. I could have heard you from my room.” She shook her head. “Forget it. You probably have some insider knowledge of MP patrols. Still, can we get out of here?”

  “So you trust me?”

  “Maybe.” They walked again.

  “Good enough, I guess. You'll understand soon.”

  “Will I get a fat I told you so? You'd like that, wouldn't you?”

  He looked away. “No.”

  “Are you going to tell me the plan?”

  He stayed silent, walking along as if in deep thought, until they arrive
d at her door. “Em, please? I know it's hard, but believe me when I say you mean everything to me. I'm not losing you here.” He leaned in and kissed her on the lips. “Give me a few more days. I promise it will all make sense.”

  When Emily entered the classroom the next morning, she took a moment to process the unusual scene. It was 5:54, and Sarah had beaten everyone to class. Sarah, who had perfected the art of a last-second entrance, who probably milked every second of sleep, who always wasted precious minutes in a ritualistic stare-down with her shake. She hopped off the stool and met Emily in the front of the room. “Ooh, ooh, I have an awesome story for you.” Her face glowed through the shade of fresh red bruises.

  “Did your squad win?”

  “No, better.” She smiled, revealing white cracks in her dry lips. “Guess again.”

  Emily touched her side and winced. “Just tell me, Sar. I hurt too much to even think.”

  “Okay.” Sarah sighed, but her face soon glowed again. “It all started when—”

  “You?” Matt interrupted. “Early?” Emily hadn't noticed him standing beside her. He tilted his head and studied Sarah. “And you look—happy?”

  “Is that a crime?” Sarah asked.

  Matt didn't answer. He sat on the stool, staring ahead. “Doesn't make sense.” The words came through his lips as a mumbled whisper. Emily heard him. Apparently, Sarah did too, but Matt seemed oblivious to their glares, mesmerized by some deeper thought.

  “Holcomb!”

  Emily jumped from the sound of Damon's booming voice. A surge of pain raced up her back, and she yelped. If Damon hadn't roused Matt out of his moment of Zen, her shrill scream did. She gritted her teeth, freezing in place and waiting for the pain to fade, but Damon pushed her aside on his way to Matt. She screamed again.

  “You think your little stunt last night proves anything?” Damon asked. “Think you're better than me? Those morons might have given you the credit, but remember who sealed the victory.”