by Andy Remic
‘Down!’ screamed Carter as gunfire erupted all around - and he suddenly knew, remembered the digital avoidance of his own network back in Scotland, how a single Nex had evaded all his home-made electronic traps ... and the bastards had done the same here -they’d bypassed the security networks and were now—
Inside the canyon.
Why use tanks when subterfuge could carry the game off more smoothly?
And Carter knew: the tanks were a bluff. To draw their attention. After all, who wouldn’t hear a fucking tank coming?
Carter hit the dirt hard, Natasha beside him.
Gol slammed against a Pig as engines roared all around and machine-gun bursts echoed and screamed among the fumes. Carter glanced left and his eyes bulged like marbles from their sockets. A swarm of about a hundred Nex emerged from the trees and sped with incredible agility across the killing ground between the line of Pigs and the orchards—
Machine guns thundered.
‘Aim for their heads!’ bellowed Gol and, ducking low, charged behind a Pig and towards the wall of the white house. Carter rolled onto his belly, took aim with the SMG, and fired a burst. A Nex was picked up and slammed into the earth with a hole where the face had been. Carter chewed his lip grimly. To one side a Pig revved and charged at the Nex, guns blasting from behind the slits in the windows. The hefty front iron bumper smashed into two Nex and heavy wheels ploughed them into the ground, crushing their limbs and torsos. There was a click, followed by a concussive boom. The Pig was picked up and tossed spinning into the air to skid onto its side, slamming into a tree. Fire licked from the insides. Black smoke rolled skyward.
Carter could hear men screaming.
Insanity followed. The Nex came from everywhere, charging at the Pigs with guns roaring. More detonations sounded and Carter and Natasha backed towards the white-walled house that they had originally thought was Gol’s home. Both were firing, SMGs clattering in their grips. Carter sent bullets scything across a line of Nex -but they did not go down. Their attention was diverted his way and chips of stone and plaster were chewed from the walls behind him.
‘Fuck,’ he screamed, dropping to his knees and fumbling with the Sterling’s magazine. The Nex charged - but were cut off by a rumbling Pig that ploughed into them, scattering bodies, tossing them high in the air like limp rag dolls.
They hit the ground hard.
Most rolled to their feet.
‘I’m here!’ came Kade’s sudden triumphant crow.
‘You are not needed!’ snapped Carter within the asylum of his mind. He wiped more sweat from his eyes, -wiped his hands on his shorts and fired another four-round burst into the Nex, who were shooting from the edges of the trees - many had been forced back by the sheer volume of projectiles spewing from the Pigs.
‘You need me Carter; let me, let me do what I do best—’
‘Get the fuck out of my brain, Kade!’
Carter blinked.
Something dark and ominous crept like a nuclear winter across his soul: superimposed across the beauty before him was a dark shroud like nothing he had ever seen before and his senses flowed, time slowed, everything went—
Black and white—
‘We have to get back, get back inside the house...’ he hissed.
Natasha nodded, gun clasped tight.
They started to creep along the wall. Bullets were coming from all directions, and several Pigs were churning about in front of the house, their guns thundering. The bodies of men and women littered the ground. A Pig wreck billowed thick black smoke.
‘What is it?’
‘The tanks are coming,’ said Carter bitterly.
Suddenly, distant gunshots ceased. Machine-gun fire rattled to a halt. They heard the distant roaring of engines; an explosion boomed down the canyon, deep and rumbling, reverberating from the valley walls.
There came more exchanges of gunfire.
The sun beat down. Carter wiped sweat from his brow. His mouth was dry - too dry - and his ribs and several other minor cuts were nagging at him. Worst of all was his nose - broken one too many times, it impeded his breathing and the pain annoyed him.
There was a boom of heavy-calibre.
A Pig had been positioned between the trees - suddenly it was gone, disintegrated, a thousand panels of twisted steel spat up and out like a giant exploded grenade ... a black flaming mechanical carcass sat where the vehicle had been, three wheels attached to a fire-raped dented chassis. Carter shook his head, dropped his SMG and made a grab for Natasha’s hand.
‘This is fucking insane - we have to leave.’
‘Where’s my father?’
‘It’s too fucking late for that! Come on!’
‘I don’t want to die like this,’ said Natasha.
‘I don’t want to die at all,’ said Carter.
They sprinted for the door. Carter ducked as a phat phat phat smacked against the tiles above him, describing a diagonal down the wall. There was a scream to his left as a woman was punched flailing from her feet, scrabbling at her throat, blood pumping between useless grappling fingers, her gun and this war suddenly forgotten in her bright hot agony. She squirmed for a moment and Carter leaped up and emptied a full magazine into the charging mass, which spread out as if welcoming his bullets—
Natasha screamed.
Carter whirled - but too late, a figure was upon him... Natasha’s gun rattled in her hands and gunfire echoed inside Carter’s head and all around ... he slapped hard against the dirt, and for a second thought he was dead. Carter kicked out, heaved the dead body from him, rolled to see madness exploding around him. The Nex had charged again, and the men and women of Spiral_F were being slaughtered.
Carter pulled free the trapped SMG and shot the Nex - which had cornered Natasha - in the back of the head, watching the brains emerge in a spray and the figure toppling to reveal Natasha’s shocked visage staring dumbly at him. He reached forward, grabbed her, screamed, ‘Where the fuck is Gol?’
Natasha did not speak—
‘Are you hurt? I said, are you fucking hurt?’
A figure ran at them - Natasha whimpered - the SMG in the figure’s hands lifted a fraction and Carter could see the finger on the trigger, sensed the applied pressure, pushed Natasha away and squeezed his own SMG’s trigger at the same time as he dived—
Bullets skimmed past Carter’s face, so close that he felt the breeze of their passing; a line of bullets caught the figure and slammed it into the air where it spun for a moment, then landed twisted and dead.
‘Come on.’ Carter snatched Natasha’s hand and dragged her after him. To one side he could see a small group of men kicking at a Nex on the ground; two Nex leaped to its aid and there was a short and very bloody exchange. Carter sprinted to the house and stopped suddenly in the doorway. He checked behind him—
He wasn’t sure how many were still alive - how many of Spiral_F, or how many of the enemy - as he glanced down at Natasha, who had been dragged along behind him in his mad flight for temporary safety away from the gun battle. There were spots of blood on her face, and Carter could feel her hands shaking. He looked into her eyes and said slowly, ‘Don’t panic, Nats. Come on - I need you focused. We are not going to die - I promise you I will protect you—’
‘How can ...’
‘Shh.’ He put his finger against her lips. Then he leaned forward and kissed her softly, whispering again, ‘I promise you I will protect you—’
‘Liar...’
Carter heaved Kade away with such a blast of mental anger and hatred and violence that he felt Kade spat into a dark infinity - and calmness settled on his mind, an insane sort of calmness which he had only rarely experienced before in highly dangerous combat situations—
His brain ran to codes, to numbers—
Everything was clear—
Black and white—
Logical.
No emotion no panic no fear—
It was what had marked him out for the Demolition Squads in th
e first place.
‘Follow me.’
Carter led the way swiftly, Natasha close behind him. They entered the house through a narrow bullet-chewed doorway; behind them rattles of gunfire still burst through the orchards, decimating the trees. But the noises of violence were growing less. Spiral_F had been overrun.
Carter gripped his Browning tightly with his free hand and inched forward down the corridor towards the bright light on the other side of the room. He wasn’t even sure where the SMG had gone, which episode of the insanity had removed the weapon from him.
His hands were slippery with blood. Was it his own? Or that of a Nex?
Nex, spat his mind.
What the fuck had happened to the world?
Carter paused. Something in his soul howled into his consciousness, a warning as—
Three Nex came smashing through a huge patio-type window in a sudden flurry of movement that shattered the stillness. Their masked heads were down as a shower of glass vomited into the room directly in Carter’s path, scattering across the floor like diamonds tossed at his feet. As their boots hit the tiled floor and their SMGs lifted, Carter’s Browning snapped up and he squeezed the trigger - bullets ripped across the short space—
Carter leaped towards the figures. Two were smashed immediately from their feet, clawing at bullets in their faces. The third leaped at him as—
The Browning clicked on empty.
The dead man’s click.
The kiss of death.
A fist slammed forward, an inch from Carter’s nose and he twisted, left elbow coming around with incredible velocity to crack against the Nex’s head, hammering the killer’s head down onto his rising knee which connected with bone-jarring force.
But the figure still managed to slam a fist into Carter’s chest.
He was lifted vertically, pain smashing through his entire body, vomit splashing from his lips. He seemed to halt in mid-air, then fell suddenly and hit the ground hard with a dull thud, groaning in agony. The Nex stepped over him, moving towards Natasha—
Carter rolled over, foetal, disabled ...
—A punch to the heart... an induced heart attack—
Natasha cowered in front of the masked figure that was poised, ready to strike, a cobra with a fixed stare. The Nex stopped, swiftly bent to retrieve an SMG and pointed the dark emotionless eye at Natasha’s face—
Carter, unable to breathe, almost unable to move, fumbled in a time-vacuum to slot a fresh mag into his gun; then he dragged the Browning into his line of sight. He felt his hand, wavering, felt his vision warp for a split second and nausea screamed through him and he pointed the Browning and time had slowed and his calmness and his serenity had gone and this was Natasha, Natasha his love and she was going to die with hot metal in her brain and it would be all his fault and he had promised—
Promised to protect her—
Promised to keep her alive—
Seven bullets hissed past the Nex’s ear.
The figure whirled - but Carter kept on firing and the figure was suddenly jerked and kicked up and back, holed and smashed and bleeding, to twist and flip and land in a heap on top of Natasha. She screamed, a long low animal sound. Carter felt the Browning click on empty and he crawled to his knees—
‘Behind…’ came Kade’s warning.
Carter rolled, fast, faster than any human had a right to move. A line of bullets tore a strip of smashed tiles into the air in a cloud of brittle dust. Carter’s eyes fixed on the swaying figure of a Nex, chest torn open, a slick glossy organ visible through the scorched cloth, blood soaking the grey clothing and falling in heavy slow drips to the remaining tiles. The Nex’s cheek hung as a loose flap of skin.
Carter spun to his feet, and leaped.
The SMG barked once - and was silenced.
Carter took the bullet; it sliced across his side just below his ribs, a twisted trajectory tearing a path through flesh and leaving a line of red that spewed blood to soak Carter’s clothing. The force of the blow punched and slammed him around, spinning him and sending his face crashing forward to hit the ground.
There was no pain.
That’s fucking bad, he thought.
No pain is bad.
Enemy...
Got to kill—
Where are you, Kade? Where the fuck are you when I need you?
Don ‘t want to die ...
Pain ...
Don’t want to die ...
He tried to rise, but only managed to turn his head as he slumped forward. He lifted his hand in front of his face and saw that it was coated in a deep red that looked the wrong colour. It looked bad. It looked dangerous; the colour of something that shouldn’t see the light of day.
Fuck, mused his brain, suddenly calm.
His hand lowered. The torn bleeding holed Nex, in slow motion, fitted a fresh mag to the SMG and he watched it carrying out the action, swaying in its own world of pain but with nothing showing in those cold copper eyes. Carter could do nothing. The Nex stepped lightly forward, intense stare boring down into him and he recognised that gaze, from back in Scotland, from back at his house when it had been so rudely invaded—
‘Nice to see you again,’ he croaked.
‘Mr Carter. It has been a pleasure.’
The soft asexual voice held no pain. No fucking pain? screeched Carter’s confusion-riddled mind.
The finger squeezed the trigger—
And the Nex’s masked face exploded.
Carter watched, dumbstruck, as a huge hole appeared in a jagged shower to the tune of metallic screaming. Brain, skull, blood rained down on him with gentle pattering sounds. The figure folded slowly and neatly to the floor and was still.
Carter’s focus switched: from the corpse in the foreground to behind the corpse where Natasha stood, an SMG in her hands, a faint horrified smile on her lips.
‘You owe me one,’ she whispered weakly.
Carter coughed, and rolled onto his back. ‘I need a pad of cloth, or something,’ he wheezed, forcing himself into a sitting position. Warmth had spread across his torso and down to his crotch.
Natasha knelt by his side and dipped her hands into his lifeblood. Her gaze met his. She swiftly tore part of her shirt free and applied the pad and suddenly a world of pain fired into Carter’s brain and screamed at him in the huge echoing operatic hall of his skull—
And the headache pain in his skull, in his brain: it returned to burn.
Returned to burn bad.
‘It’s not my fucking day,’ he croaked.
Carter struggled to his feet, the pad of cloth clamped to his side. Natasha bent, retrieved his Browning and helped him to reload the weapon with blood-slippery bullets. They both took SMGs from the dead bodies of the Nex, slinging the weapons over their shoulders and then taking deep, deep breaths.
‘What now?’ hissed Natasha.
‘We need to find Gol.’
‘He could be anywhere ... it was so crazy...’
They moved slowly through the house, up the stairs, to Gol’s study. There had been a battle in the room and there were several blood trails but no bodies. Blood was splattered up the walls as if some mad artist with a loaded paintbrush had been let loose and told to inflict contemporary art; Gol was not there.
‘What were the emergency coordinates?’ asked Natasha softly, her shaking hands keeping the door to the study covered with the SMG.
‘551.222.222.340,’ came the pain-filled response from Carter, whose face had gone grey, eyes purple-ringed, nose crusted with blood. He gripped his Browning, but held the weapon as if he didn’t really understand what it was ... he had lost blood, was weak, was fading fast... losing the will to play the game.
Natasha gritted her teeth. Pulled free her ECube. Patched in the coordinates ...
‘Come on,’ she said, finding a new level of strength, feeling adrenalin surge through her battered weary blood-speckled frame once more. She sprinted to the window: outside, the world still raged ... black smoke
drifted on the horizon from a myriad of destroyed and wounded Pigs. She saw a tank, a Russian Black Eagle, squat among the trees, its huge camouflaged turret pointing their way, the muzzle of the mammoth gun a truly awe- and terror-inspiring sight. Machine guns rattled, a savage exchange between two groups.
‘Shit. We have to get out of here.’ Natasha allowed Carter to rest some of his weight on her, and they moved slowly - painfully slowly - back through the house.
‘This is madness,’ she said.
‘Madness,’ agreed Carter, coughing.
‘I hope it will be worth it,’ she muttered bitterly.
‘It never is,’ said Carter, drooling blood.
They stopped just behind the doorway, Carter leaning heavily against the wall bathed in sunlight. The fragrance from the orchards smelled good, even mingled with a wave of cordite. Natasha found it hard to believe that a battle was taking place here - in this paradise ... and that her life hung in the balance, suspended by a delicate thread of Fate.
Her gaze roved, searching for the Nex—
Searching for the fast-moving deadly killers... they were in the trees, behind the tanks, and as she watched a group sprinted towards a Pig, which mowed them down in a spray of blood, its heavy machine-gun barrels smoking.
How many are left? she thought.
Many of the Pigs had gone; Nats could see another two tanks, which had eased down from the canyon mouth after the battle had begun. Gunfire echoed in the distance, followed by more explosive rattles echoing within the shadow-haunted depths of the trees.
Her gaze snapped left and came to settle on a Jeep Cherokee. 4.0 litre. Big and sturdy; dented and bullet-pocked, but it was deliciously—
Near.
A hundred paces.
Only a hundred paces.
Under the heavy-calibre eyes of the Black Eagles and the machine-gun muzzles of the Nex.
Can we run faster than their bullets? she thought.
Our lives depend on it...
‘Come on, Carter,’ Natasha said. ‘The jeep. You see it?’
Carter lifted his head. ‘Yes,’ he croaked.
‘I need you to run. Can you do that?’
‘Yes.’