Surviving The Theseus
Page 19
She raised her arms halfway. Her whole body shook.
"Oh, now, come on Baby Cakes, you can do better than that. Reach up. Come on."
She closed her eyes; tears poured down her face.
Regina didn't watch. The hawk watchers got all her attention.
"You can do it," Strange Man said.
The brunette woman kept her eyes closed, slowly reaching up.
One of the hawk men looked at the brunette.
Strange Man clapped his hands.
A gunshot rang out from outside. Regina prayed it was not Michael.
None of the pussy pack paid any attention to it.
The brunette stopped moving.
"A little more, Muffin," Strange Man said, still clapping his hands.
Another hawk man's eyes turned to the brunette. Only two men were left, still watching Regina attentively.
The brunette raised her arms as high as they would go, spread her fingers, and opened her eyes. "Please," she begged, her body still shaking, tears still cascading down her face and dripping onto the floor.
"That's it. You've got it." He gave her a few more big claps and then braced his hands together as if in prayer. "Now, you are going to have to stop shaking, Honey, because if you don't that gun is going to rip you to shreds. I'll give you three seconds, and then it's coming on and I highly, highly recommend you do not move."
The brunette took an audible deep breath.
"One," Strange Man said.
Another gunshot from outside. Nobody moved or looked towards the sound, not that Regina could see.
"Two."
A third hawk man looked at the brunette woman, the other two continuing their front row viewing of the main event. One more to go.
"You might want to hold your breath, Honey."
The brunette took another audible deep breath and did not exhale.
"Three."
The young man with the remote pressed a button, and then another. Both guns came to life.
The brunette, somehow, must not have been shaking, because no gunfire erupted. Regina watched the hawk men. Still one more to go, his finger on the trigger of the rifle he pointed at Regina, his eyes locked on her. The others also pointed their guns at Regina, but their eyes continued to gaze at the brunette.
The brunette woman let out a puff of air, not able to hold her breath for more than a few seconds, her nerves too far gone. The gun went off.
The fourth hawk man looked over at the brunette. That was it.
In the span of time it took Regina to slam her right hand onto the front of her belt and her left hand onto the back of her belt, the brunette woman was ripped to shreds by the facing sentry gun.
Regina kept her eyes on the hawk men, one of them noticing her movement, but it didn't matter. She accomplished her first goal. Her belt was an inch thick and wider than any she had worn before, a little gift from TRAST to keep her quiet.
From the front and back of her belt, two separate oval discs popped out, the size of Regina's hands. And then two more, and so on, until there were forty on each side, eighty total. Before the hawk men had the chance to depress their triggers, the discs were out and moved at the slightest motion from anything around Regina, a multi-plated motion sensitive shield with each plate hovering two inches from her body.
Regina ran towards Strange Man. Bullets flew at her. The sentry gun arced from the dancing, bullet riddled woman over to Regina's motion. It moved fast, the bullets firing so quickly and powerfully, a line gouged through the wall as it made its way to Regina. The hawk men followed suit, each of them holding their triggers down, beading on Regina.
The discs whipped around Regina, anywhere movement was detected around her, protecting her whole body, moving faster than a speeding bullet. Any bullet came at her, or near her, and a disc moved to intercept it, taking the impact. The bullets from the sentry gun pushed the discs in further than the hawk men's bullets, but none got any further. The discs moved furiously around Regina, around and around, in and out like shock absorbers. Impacted and shattered bullets dropped all around her as she ran.
Strange Man stared, mouth gaping. "Everybody," he yelled, "fire on her. Now! Now! Now!" He didn't have a weapon, so he turned and grabbed the guns he had given to one of the other men, Regina's guns.
All the others, but the two guarding the door, fired at Regina.
As she ran toward Strange Man, the sentry gun arced back and forth from Regina and then to the shredded corpse of the brunette falling to the ground. Back and forth.
The discs crisscrossed one another frantically, guarding her right side, back, and front, a fury of silvery movement.
Regina knew the belt had limited power. How much time? It had to be enough. Had to, or it would be over fast.
The din was enormous, her ears rang, drowning some of the noise, the side effect disorienting. She veered to the right; bullets pelted the dancing discs and the wall behind her.
From the time she started running to the moment she got to Strange Man, who uselessly pulled on the triggers of her guns, took five seconds.
Regina dropped to the ground, the discs dancing out of the way of the floor's impact while still guarding her from the barrage of bullets. She kicked her foot out to trip Strange Man.
He dropped like a stone, putting his elbows out to break the fall, landing hard on his ass, the guns popping out of both hands. Regina grabbed both her guns and then rolled to the left, to the table with her jacket. Dropping the guns beside her, she pulled the jacket off the table, reached into an inside pocket, and pressed a button on a remote.
The sentry gun stopped firing, the din dying down slightly. The others continued shooting, reloading, firing, endless noise and destruction.
Regina flipped the table on its side, using it as cover for when her shield’s power ran out.
Strange Man got up and jumped over the table to get to her before she could grab her guns up.
The others stopped firing.
The discs moved towards the motion of the Strange Man as he reached out to strangle her, blocking the movement, once, twice, and then they stopped and retracted back into the belt. No more power.
Strange Man shook his hands, which must have hurt from the impact, and then came in for the third time.
Regina had both her weapons up when he did, pointing at his face. She pulled both triggers as she whipped her head away from the blast, closing her eyes. She felt the spray from his exploding head wet her hair and the side of her face.
She dropped the gun in her right hand, and pressed another button on the same remote that she placed beside her after she pressed the first button.
"Why isn't the gun working?" said a voice from one of the pussy pack.
And he got his answer. The distinct tat! tat! tat! of the sentry guns told Regina what she wanted to hear. Both guns were firing, and the screams of the pussy pack brought a smile to her face.
Regina glimpsed around the edge of the table, just in time to see the two men guarding the door open it and dash out.
She stood up, the sentry guns continuing their attack on the men with the fucked up sense of justice. None of them were standing, most of them she assumed were dead, and some were moaning and groaning.
Had Regina not grabbed the sensor from Roy's calf on Pyramid, she would likely be dead; either the sentry guns or the men would have taken her out. But, with some help from TRAST, they were able to lock in on the frequencies of the sensor and set up a remote that could not only disable the guns, but set them on the very people that were supposedly protected from them. Guns had no sensibility, no reason, no morality, and neither did this crew, not to Regina.
The guns stopped. She could still hear a couple of them moaning in pain. The crowd of lounge patrons stayed as they were, watching intently but not going anywhere, probably nervous that the guns would still kill them, even though Regina knew that the only thing the guns would fire upon would be any of the people with a surgically implanted sensor capsule
in their calf. None of these people, only men as far as Regina knew, had ever been caught before Roy, so their little protective capsule was genius until now.
There was no time. The men who ran out the front door would go get help, and Regina guessed that instead of running into a deadly situation, they would likely torch the building and kill everyone inside while blockading any way out. She had to move on them before they could coordinate any sort of retaliation, and she couldn't afford to have one of them escape. If there were any of them left elsewhere, any survivors would let them know that the capsule was no longer a viable protective solution, they would come up with something else, and the killing would go on and on.
Regina stepped through sticky, bloody pools, and, unless any of the men were missing their heads, regardless of whether or not she thought they were dead, she shot each of them once in the head. The goo and then the pin immediately after. She didn't hesitate, didn't watch, but just did what needed to be done. Any groaners left were soon silenced, regardless of a couple futile pleas to let them live, their words bubbling out of their mouths. In a matter of seconds, there was silence in the lounge, other than some weeping noises from the patrons.
The look of some of the patrons was not unfamiliar to Regina. The open mouths, scrunched eyebrows, that look of disgust at what she had just done. Not all of them had this look, but many. She needed their help and there was no time to play the console-their-feelings game. She hoped some of them realized that if she didn't do what she did, they would have all died. Surely they had all heard about the carnage the dead men had released upon so many innocent lives.
"I need three volunteers to move one of these guns over to the doorway," Regina said, gesturing at the sentry guns. Nobody moved. "Look, people, two men ran out of here who are right at this moment getting help, and I'll tell you right now that none of them have any intention of letting any one of you live. They will likely burn this place down to the ground. If you want to live, please help me. All I'm asking is that three people move a sentry gun, which are now set to only fire upon them, to the door and then please go back to where you are now. The rest of you need to stay there."
One younger gentleman, maybe twenty, stepped forward. "I'll help you," he said. Six others followed suit right after.
"Thank you," Regina said. She pointed at two bigger men, behind the first volunteer. "You two." The others fell back.
The three men picked up the sentry gun nearest them, the one that slaughtered the poor brunette woman, by the tripod arms. They all seemed to be ignoring, as much as they could, the blood bath surrounding them.
Regina walked over to the doorway, windowless like the rest of the place, and waited for them. Had the planet been more hospitable and not fraught with constant storms, there probably would be windows, but, as it was, not having windows with a constant barrage of bad weather was safer and gave the illusion of calmness.
After the men slowly shuffled their way over to Regina, she got them to place it down in front of the dark mahogany double doors, the barrel of the gun facing the doorway, an inch from it.
"Thank you, gentlemen," Regina said. "I really appreciate this. Please go back to the others, because I don't know what's going to happen when this door opens up."
They nodded. The first volunteer looked at her for a bit, at her eyes. He looked sorrowful. And then he reached around her and hugged her. She didn't hug back right away, feeling awkward, and then she made the best attempt at a hug she could, which was a weak embrace, barely bringing her arms around him. "It's okay," she said. "Everything is going to be okay."
"How do you know that?" the volunteer said.
She didn't answer. He waited for a couple of seconds, nodded his head, and walked back to the group.
Regina knew from when she walked into the place that the doors would not stay open by themselves. She shot goo at each of the four door hinges. Wood was not a good conductor of electricity so she couldn't risk it, and she needed all four to go at the same time. She used up a clip of goo, drawing an x on the door to connect all four hinges. She dropped the empty clip, reached in her jacket, and then slammed in another one.
There was no sound coming from outside so they must have either left, hopeful thinking and not realistic, or they were surrounding the building to torch it. If they were smart and they had enough men, there would be at least one person in cover, watching the door. He would likely move at the explosion the goo would cause, and then the sentry gun would take him out. And then, she would have to run at them, as fast as she could, around the building, and kill every last one of them. It was them or her and the patrons, and in Regina's mind, it was them. Her mind had played it out already, more than once, how it would happen, and none of the killers lived.
Time to go. No time to waste. And she didn't. There was no hesitation in her mind. It was as clear as things were before Pyramid and she knew it would remain that way. Some people just deserved to die. Some people offer nothing to society but pain, misery, and suffering, and don't deserve the air they breathe.
Regina backed up from the doorway, aimed her weapon -- now set to an electric pin fire mode -- at the center of the x, single shot only, and squeezed the trigger.
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Thanks for purchasing and reading my book. This novel gestated for quite awhile before I finally put my nose to the grindstone. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thanks again.
Randy Noble
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