The Way of Death

by James Von Ohlen

  The first time he’d shot a man through the neck, he couldn’t stop smiling. The warping of the man’s slanted features had been particularly funny, until Tod remembered the man making the same face while in mid-rape. That had stopped his smile cold in its tracks.

  He’d been ready to kill another man when the potential target came slowly walking out of the metal building and back into the sand. Bow drawn and tracking the movement. He’d paused when he realized who it was. Reiji, he knew the man’s name. The right way to say it. But whenever he tried all that came out of his mouth was ‘Rage’.

  Not the good guys. Definitely not. But not the bad guys either. The ones who had hurt his sisters and his parents. He was the only one that hadn’t. In that second he decided not to kill him. And that decision had likely saved Tod’s life and led him on this path of rebirth and revenge.

  The men before him seemed to move in slow motion as Tod watched them. According to Reiji they were trained killers. Hunters of men who had claimed dozens of bounties each. Not to be trifled with. To Tod, they looked like meat that needed to be cut.

  The two men moved apart, angling to Tod’s sides as they did so. To split his defense and then gut him as they closed on him again. He responded by charging one of them, Ryan the man had been called, and putting the two in each other’s way.

  A blade flashed out towards him and he slapped it aside, reversing the direction of his blade, and slamming the edge of it into Ryan’s fingers. Wrapped tight around the grip of the incoming blade, they made a good target. There was a moment of resistance and then metal met metal, Ryan’s fingers fell away alongside his blade. Another quick reversal of direction and one of Tod’s blades chopped into Ryan’s throat. The other slashed across his abdomen, opening it with a spray of blood.

  Tod pulled both blades back, hard, and sent the man falling face first to the concrete floor. Gurgling through his own blood, Ryan tried to push himself up from the cold floor, but slipped on the fluids rushing from his body and fell again.

  Zhou remained.

  The other man sized up Tod, taking a step back and weaving his blade back and forth before him. Looking for an opening, but now not quite so eager to rush in. Tod had no intention of waiting for him. Both blades swinging, he rushed into his opponent.

  A series of strikes fell towards Zhou, and the man deftly picked them off, blocking them with his own blade, but being left unable to counterattack. Tod didn’t relent, continuing his assault with a fury. When he was sure that Zhou’s attention was focused on the blades, Tod kicked him as hard as he could, striking the man’s exposed groin with the toe of his boot.

  The man groaned and double over in pain as Tod felt at least one testicle rupture beneath his foot. A knee strike with the same side leg shot up and took Zhou in the chin, crumpling him to the floor. The man grunted and tried to reach for the broadsword he had dropped as he fell.

  Tod slammed one of his blades down with a fury, neatly cutting Zhou’s hand away at the wrist. There was a moment of silence from the man and then he began to scream. Tod knelt on Zhou’s back with one leg, pinning the man in place with all of his weight.

  The twin kukris struck again, and the man’s other hand spun away from him across the concrete floor. A flick of each blade and Zhou’s hamstrings were severed, effectively immobilizing him. Tod stood and ripped the man’s sweaty stained shirt away from his body and then grabbed a handful of the skin on his back.

  Tod pulled hard and one of his blades flashed again. The entirety of the skin covering Zhou’s back came away in Tod’s hand. He threw it back over his shoulder where it spun, flinging gore as it fell to the ground with a wet splat somewhere behind him.

  Zhou’s screams tore at his throat and echoed through the room, sounding over the clash of the steel monsters battling somewhere beyond the tall stacks of boxes. Zhou tried to rise from the floor, but slipped repeatedly in his blood. Tod kicked him a few times, and then cut the man’s pants away.

  “What was it you did to my sister?” He asked, his voice clear but twisted with anger. “You fucked her in the ass, didn’t you?” Tod already knew the answer. He’d seen it with his own eyes. He knelt on the squirming man once more and began to insert his blade in the named orifice. The wounded man’s screams reached a fever pitch as Tod twisted the blade, wrapping it up with a good chunk of colon, and ripped it out, taking the majority of the organ with it.

  Zhou’s voice broke and the screams degenerated into gurgles. He would bleed out soon enough, Tod thought as he rose and hurled the offending offal from his weapon. Steel ringing against steel echoed throughout the chamber and sparks flashed, briefly illuminating the darkness as blades struck one another.

  Onryo glared in the instant of light, showing no real damage. He struck the other exoskeleton, seemingly at will, sending another shower of sparks into the air. Reiji seemed to have things under control. The exoskeletons might not be able to really harm one another with the weapons they had, but Tod had no doubt that Reiji would win this fight.

  Everything in the way that the steel monsters moved pointed to it.

  Steel monsters, the thought coursed through Tod’s mind. The twins. He’d known they were machines when he first saw them. Inanimate objects. But that did nothing to diminish his hatred of them. They were Gavin’s weapons. The man who had orchestrated the death of Tod’s family. Without them, who knew what might have happened?

  He wanted to destroy them, regretting that he couldn’t make them feel pain like Zhou. The man lay on the floor, still whimpering as he slowly died. No, they wouldn’t feel it, but they could be turned into scrap.

  The blades in his hands wouldn’t do though. They were no threat to those two. And once he attacked them, he would likely be torn to pieces in short order. Desperate and with nothing left, not knowing what else to do, Tod had nearly thrown his life away following these men and machines into the wastes of the desert. Then and there, though, he had no desire to die.

  The twins stood still. Seeming uninterested in the fight taking place within two dozen meters of their position and the two men just slaughtered even closer. Standing beneath a mechanical hoist which held several boxes aloft directly above them. There was no logic in their positioning and lack of action, but Tod wasn’t going to turn the opportunity down.

  Scrambling through the boxes and stacked equipment, Tod head-checked back for a second to see Zhou, twitching feebly. A smile spread across the boy’s face, and he turned his attention back to ascending the heavy lift. He passed within arm’s reach of the twins. As he neared they turned their heads and faced him, glaring at him from behind dark glasses, but did nothing else.

  A machine roared in anger somewhere in the darkness, but he couldn’t tell if it was Onryo or the other exoskeleton. Steel clashed on steel and the top of a pile of boxes vanished from view as it fell.

  In his mind’s eye, Tod saw the twins springing to action, blades and worse popping out of their bodies in a dozen places and reaching up for him as he climbed the ladder. Hairs standing on end on the back of his neck, he could almost feel their hands closing around his ankle, ready to yank him back to the ground and tear him to pieces.

  The platform atop the heavy equipment lift was higher than he’d expected and he felt dizzy for a split second as he looked back down. Still, the twins hadn’t moved. A control panel with manual input stood near him on the platform and he began hitting switches at random, unable to decipher the symbols that identified the individual functions.

  Rubbing at the surface of the control panel, some ancient deposit of grease came away on his fingertips. Beneath he found the illustrated functions he had sought as well as words he recognized. EMERGENCY RELEASE leapt out at him. He placed the palm of one hand over the button and leaned off the edge just far enough to see below. A single large box was locked in place, directly above the twins. He slapped the button with the palm of his hand and nothing happened.

  Shit, he thought. It was worth a try. Maybe there was somethin
g in all of the equipment below that would allow him to put these two where they belonged. An industrial cutting torch or something like that. Tod returned to the ladder and began his descent. As he did so, something caught his eye. A small yellow paddle, just barely within reach of someone on the ladder. It was labeled clearly as BRAKE, and appeared to be in a locked position.

  He reached out, blades dangling from his waist and clanging against the ladder as he did so. He pushed against the paddle and met a second of resistance that vanished as the brake popped out of position. The noise caused the twins to look up, both looking at the mechanism and then at Tod.

  Before Tod knew what was happening, the huge box was slamming to the ground, sending up a cloud of debris, and burying the twins beneath it. Crushing them to scrap, he hoped.

  Halfway down the ladder, he grew impatient and Tod leapt the rest of the way to the floor, feeling a jolt in both of his knees and hips as he did so. Somewhere in the chamber, the fight between Reiji and Gavin continued. Now, he would see what he could find that might be of use and then do his best to help. That was another one that needed to die, of that there was no doubt.

  Groaning wood caught his attention and he turned to look for its source. The broken box dropped atop the twins. Of course that wouldn’t have finished them off. What had he been thinking?

  The pieces of the box were roughly cast aside and the two machine-men emerged from the wreckage. Battered, scarred, and bent in some places, but still very much in one piece. Both turned towards Tod and their forearms split apart with a pneumatic hiss. Hands folded back on themselves and were replaced with projected forcefield weapons.

  Good job, retard, Tod thought. You just got yourself killed.

  One took a step forward, limping hard on one leg and the other attempted to follow, its movements equally awkward. Both had been damaged when the heavy box was dropped on them, but the job hadn’t been finished. But if they couldn’t move any faster than him, Tod figured that he might still have a chance.

  He knelt and grabbed a pipe-wrench and hurled it at them, hitting one in the head. The synthetic hardly seemed to notice as the heavy tool bounced away. Tod judged their reactions damaged as well. Definitely still a chance, he concluded as he drew his blades.

  Tod surged forward, swinging both blades in a slash at the nearest of the twins, digging a deep groove in a plate of armor that showed through the torn synthetic skin of its chest. He moved and launched another attack, leaping back almost too late as one of the projected forcefield weapons snapped up and cut one of his kukri in half.

  The other blade struck again, cutting a deep gouge through the neck of one of the synthetics. Tod saw a blow moving at him from the side as the other attacked. He ducked just in time and slashed the other across the abdomen. He was rewarded for his efforts with a kick to the thigh that nearly broke his leg. As his weight shifted another punch took him in the chest and sent him rocketing back into a pile of crates that rocked and swayed under the impact, but remained upright.

  The muscles in his chest seized and Tod struggled to breathe, tasting and smelling blood. Something inside of his head was screaming at him. They are going to kill you. Run away. Now, it said forcefully. But something else inside his head was screaming even louder.

  Through a curtain of laughter it roared words of its own.

  Kill them. Kill them all.

  Tod rocketed forward, delivering a punch of his own to the head of the nearest synthetic, landing with a solid impact that sent it stumbling backwards. Without pause in his motions he ducked an attack from the other and countered with a series of blows from his blade. Hits scored on the neck and chest and forearms.

  A man would be dead from such an attack. But these were not men. Another blow rocked Tod and he felt something pop hard in his mouth. He didn’t just taste blood. His mouth was full of it. Pain flared through his tongue where’d he’d just bitten through it, and his teeth felt loose.

  Another blow from his blade glanced harmlessly off of a synthetic’s head. It followed up Tod’s attack with one of its own. A projected forcefield blade cut into Tod’s abdomen as he launched himself backwards. An instant of hesitation more and he would have been gutted. Instead, he would probably just slowly bleed to death.

  The voices in his head became silent and Tod clasped at the wound across his stomach. Feeling the edges of it begin to close beneath his fingertips. What the fuck is happening there? A memory danced through his thoughts of himself naively injecting some unknown substance from a pre-filled syringe into his body. Somewhere he dimly remembered grinning like an idiot and proclaiming that it was medicine.

  What had the syringe said on it? The word leapt out at him. Experimental. He burst into laughter and his voice echoed throughout the chamber, but was ultimately lost in the clash of steel monsters raging nearby.

  The wound in his stomach closed and he launched himself at the twins once more. Why the fuck not, he thought as he kicked the legs from underneath one and ripped into the other with his blade. When it did nothing but tear open the synthetic skin, Tod began exchanging punches with the machine-man. Blade and broken blade still gripped in his fists.

  Maybe not a great idea, he thought as he was sent tumbling backwards with blood pouring into his eyes from a huge cut across his forehead. He coughed and pain shot through his chest again. This time a tooth flew from his mouth. One of his eyes began to swell shut.

  The two limping machines came for him as one. Tod just managed to move out of the way of a strike that would have decapitated him, and instead cut through a heavy crate. Rolling, he barely avoided a series of stomps that shattered the concrete floor beneath them. As he regained his feet a kick found him in the back, landing with the dull pop of something inside of him breaking, and sent him forward a few steps until he regained his balance.

  He struck out with the blade in one hand and the remains of the destroyed blade in the other. The synthetic skin was ripped away from one’s face, revealing the metal frame beneath. Like some weird skeleton, he thought.

  There was a pause in the fighting as the machine-men and Tod faced one another.

  He took a few steps back, dropping the ruined weapon as he did so. One of the twins knelt next to the other and began working at something within the other’s leg. There was a loud pop and suddenly the leg was straight again. The repaired unit turned its attention towards the other and began to work likewise. As Tod watched, the synthetic skin began to stretch itself out and close the wounds in its surface.

  Bad news.

  Tod turned to flee. Where would he run to? The darkness of the chamber and maze of towering boxes stretched before him. If he could make it to Reiji, would he be able to deal with the twins and Gavin at the same time? Maybe. Or the three of them might overpower and kill him. Fuck, he thought.

  His hand brushed against the pouch still tied to his belt. The pistol he’d asked for from Reiji. The mental fog that had been his perpetual companion for so long was on its final legs as the gears began spinning. There had been a reason he had asked for it. What was it?

  Had he planned on killing himself with it? Like some suicide bomber using Overlord to take out his enemies? That didn’t seem quite right.

  Tod darted into a passage just in time to avoid an attack from one of the twins that passed as easily through a steel box as it would have the air. Running now, with the twins giving chase, he saw something written on the wall with an arrow pointing to his right.

  EMERGENCY EXIT.

  The mental gears spun again as he fled. The old idea was lost, but a new one took its place. He almost smiled as he ran, but the footsteps of the twins behind him forced it away from his lips. Some wire, some shoe laces, perhaps even his belt and that would be all he needed.

  Following the arrows towards the exit, Tod plunged into absolute darkness. Pulling a small LED light from his pocket, he shone it back to see the twins still advancing towards him. He shone it in their eyes, making sure they saw it. Maybe they don�
��t even use their eyes, he thought as he turned and ran again.

  As he rounded a corner, one of them surged forward and grabbed a handful of the back of his shirt. Tod clenched his teeth in pain as steel fingers dug into his flesh and drew blood. He kicked back as hard as he could, making solid contact and shifting the weight of the synthetic man and his own just enough to avoid having his spine severed by a projected forcefield blade.

  The skin of his back split open and blood began to flow freely as he growled in pain. The shirt that Tod wore ripped and suddenly he was free of his would-be assassin’s grasp. He stumbled and his head slammed into the wall, sending the world spinning and causing him to stumble. A steel fist slammed into the concrete wall where his head had been, only a fraction of a second after he moved, shattering the wall and sending fragments through the air like shrapnel.

  Run, you fucking retard, he screamed inside of his own head. Fucking run. Tod sprinted headlong into the darkness. If this turned out to be a dead end, he thought, I’m fucked.

  The twisting and turning of the tunnel made it difficult to tell how close the twins were getting to him, but he could hear them. Still there. Still giving chase. Good, he thought and laughed. His laughter was cut short by a stabbing pain in his side, drawing him back to reality. He would need to gain some distance if this was going to work.

  And if it didn’t, he was going to be very dead.

  Ahead of him the tunnel gave way to a narrow view of moonlit desert beyond. All jagged rocks and dust and sand with the random piece of scrawny brush hanging onto life by a thread that was always just a dry wind away from breaking.

  The vista came courtesy of the empty doorframe where the steel door had but cut away. Tod paused to look at the floor but found no suitable place. Just outside though, he noted with satisfaction as he exited, were a large collection of rocks that could work just fine. Approaching footsteps echoed ominously behind him.

  This was going to be a close call.