by Schow, Ryan
In the command center, Tong kicked open the door and saw Kun at his post, sweating, freaking out.
He saw Tong and said, “We lost the valley!”
“I know,” Tong said.
“Well then what are you doing?” Kun screamed, the cords in his neck taut.
“Killing you,” Tong said. He lifted the weapon, shot the man in the forehead. Quan and Steve eliminated everyone else, dropped their empty mags, popped fresh ones home and finished the job.
“We won’t have enough ammo,” Steve said when everyone was dead.
“That’s why you have a blade,” Quan heard himself say. It was like he said it from a mile away, his own voice barely registering. He was seeing his mother, his father, Tong and him forced to join the PLA. “Use it accordingly.”
They left the command center, spent every last round, then broke out their blades and went to work. People were running by, hiding, just standing against a wall, hands on their heads, crying, sobbing, wailing at the bodies that were everywhere.
They grabbed those people, stuck them in the throat, tore the blade sideways to bleed them out quick, mercifully, methodically. Because they were in the employ of the communists, they deserved this, he told himself. They’d chosen the side of tyranny, dictatorship, human enslavement.
The three of them paused. Ahead, they heard automatic gunfire.
Tong said he’d check it out. Quan and Steve cleared the nearby rooms, picking up guns and ammo off the dead men in the hallways. Quan slipped into someone’s office, pulled Steve in with him. Steve’s face and body were sprayed, slicked and drenched with blood. He didn’t look right. It’s like there was the body intact, but the soul couldn’t stand to be there any longer. In a word, he was a zombie. But so was Quan. If Steve looked at him right now, blood dripping down his own face like a heavy sweat, would he see the same thing? Would he wonder if Quan’s soul couldn’t take anymore shame and left as well?
“This is what we signed up for,” Quan heard himself say.
Steve looked at him, blank faced and unblinking, a thousand yard stare in eyes that once held life, passion, purpose.
“You have enough ammo now?” Quan asked.
Steve gave the barest of nods.
Tong found them and said, “Chicoms from the valley. Someone else is in here with us, SAA or our people…I can’t tell.”
They kept the door slightly ajar, listening to the pace of the battle. They also needed to hear if other Chicom soldiers were headed their way. If they were, Tong and Quan could kill them. Steve, however, was standing back some, his gun at his side, hanging loosely in his hand. And his eyes? Quan looked back at him and saw Steve looking at a spot on the wall. Then something in the American snapped. He blinked hard, turned and pushed past them, then yanked open the door and started down the hallway.
“Steve!” Quan hissed.
“He’s going after the soldiers,” Tong said.
“I know!”
Quan wanted to survive this war, but he knew it wasn’t likely. Maybe he could hold out, let whoever was fighting kill each other first, then pick off the victor, but he couldn’t let Steve go into battle alone. So against his better judgement, but for this young man whose mind he wrecked bringing him there, he went after Steve.
The stink of cordite stung his olfactory senses high up in his nose. Bullet holes pocked the walls by the dozen. He caught up to Steve, then startled to a stop, his jaw just about falling open. There were Chicoms lining the hallway, all of them crouched down, rifles up. And they all had their backs to Steve and Quan, their attention squarely focused on the hallway ahead of them. Before he could say word one, Steve opened fire, punching red holes in their backs as he went. Quan fired with him, leaning on the element of surprise while they had it.
The rush of death, the killing high, swept through him with long, emotional waves. These were armed men, not women or desk jockeys. Every single kill was a piece of candy, a summoning of his soul back to his body. When he was out of ammo, he whipped out his blade, then rushed in and punctured necks, dug into armpits, slashed across faces. But then the lead shooters turned their weapons on Steve and Quan, prompting Steve to put on a burst of speed. The American hit the nearest shooter hard, burying the blade just above his collar bone as the gun went off. Five uncontrolled rounds threaded up the side of the wall close enough to Quan to have him ducking.
When Quan ducked, some of the Chicoms must have thought he was hit, so they turned their weapons on Steve. Tong was there, though, grabbing a rifle from one of the fallen, firing on the would be attackers. But one of the Chicom rounds got through. The perfect round. It caught Steve in the temple, and it was over for the American.
Quan was on the shooter like a heart attack. The second he started stabbing the man, he went into a bit of a blackout state, that’s how enraged he was. He was still stabbing the dead man when Clay pulled him off, told him the guy was dead already.
He hadn’t realized he was mentally gone again, that his body had taken over, but he’d held on to his rage for so long, the vessel was full. He shook off Clay, walked over to Steve. The man was lying on his side, making his own red pond this time.
Quan dropped down, felt that part of him he guarded so carefully starting to pry open. Before he knew it, he started to cry, but Felicity was there for him, blood all over her, but not hers. She hugged him as his body shook. A hand touched his shoulder, a strong, reassuring hand. He looked up, saw Tong.
“You can’t do this now, brother,” Tong said.
Quan nodded, thanked Felicity and wiped his eyes. Boone appeared, concerned. “We need to flush the remaining holdouts through the front door, right into Ryker and Skylar. Longwei is there, too.”
“Do they know what we’re doing?” Felicity asked.
“Yes,” Clay said.
The way Felicity was looking at Clay struck Quan hard. That was how his mother used to look at his father. There was a trust there, a deep seated respect.
And there was love.
He went with Boone; a few others followed while Clay, Felicity and Zeke stayed behind. Tong put a rifle in his hand and said, “This is a gunfight.” Quan sheathed his bloody knife, took the gun, then joined Tong in taking a position.
When the timing was right, they opened fire, killing a good half dozen weary Chicoms. The others ran, but there was only two ways to go—the front entrance back into the valley, or the hallway they just came from.
Gunfire erupted from the other hallway.
Clay, Zeke, Felicity.
“Move,” Boone said, looking nothing like the grieving husband and father he’d been in Five Falls. This man was a hunter. He had a big dog inside him, and even bigger teeth.
Quan and Tong advanced their position, eyes on Boone.
The Chicoms tried to come back their way; Boone put a round in the first man’s head. It snapped back and the man dropped. The rest turned and funneled out through the front door. The ferocious, almost non-stop torrent of gunfire was the sound of them winning the battle, maybe even the war.
Quan stopped, took a deep breath. Could it be? Was this the end?
Clay and Boone moved their teams forward, crouching, guns ready. One survivor turned in time to catch a three round burst from Felicity. He dropped and that was that.
“We’re coming out!” Boone said.
“Who is that?” a voice from outside HQ called.
It sounded like Ryker.
Quan felt that last tension of war bleed from him, but just before it was gone, he grabbed ahold of it. If he let it all go, the emotions would wash over him unchecked. For so long he’d held out for this day. Now that it was here, he knew he’d need to reflect on it in private. To reflect upon the nightmare that brought him here, those who died along the way and the very large parts of his humanity he left behind in the process.
“It’s Boone,” he called back, pulling Quan from his reverie. “We’re all clear inside. You clear out there?”
“As far as we ca
n tell,” Ryker announced.
They walked out, barrels to the sky, hands free. The group of men and women that emerged was a far smaller group of survivors than he’d hoped for. This was another spear right into his heart. He looked for Longwei, found him, caught him with a hug neither man could pull away from very easily.
He was sad to hear that only a few of Longwei’s men had survived. He didn’t see Lienna and this was what really got him. First Steve, now her? No.
“Lienna?” he croaked out.
Longwei’s face crumbled against the question. He tried not to lose it, but Quan felt it. He felt every loss his friend was feeling as his own. He wasn’t sure how he’d carry all this pain. He knew he couldn’t. Then he thought of his parents and knew they’d be proud of him. This, above all else, seemed to hold his darker emotions at bay.
Inside, during the mop up, Quan found men and women Logan and Skylar easily identified as traitors to America. Quan was relatively new to the country, having recently arrived, so he didn’t know the three Senators, two media people and the CEO of one of the big tech companies who was first to wipe his ass with the Constitution when he went on a censorship spree in 2018. The traitorous pack of rats pled for their lives, especially the big tech CEO. He introduced himself from his knees, begging first for their mercy, and then asking them what they wanted in return to spare him. He said money was no object.
“I know every single one of you,” Logan hissed. He was bloody, dirty, more pissed off than Quan had ever seen him. “You sold out your country for the promise of untold wealth in a new world. Their world! In doing so, you cut our legs out from underneath us. You gave us no chance!”
He looked at Skylar and she shot each and every one of them in the thigh.
Over the screaming, he said, “But what you forgot is that you don’t represent them, you represented us and we are not satisfied with the job you’ve done!”
“Where are the rest of you?” Felicity snarled.
“Overseas already,” one of the weeping women said. Holding her thigh with bloody hands, she said, “We didn’t know…”
“You didn’t know what?” Felicity asked.
She struggled for the words, but like every one of them Logan had ever known, when pressed for details, they only stuttered, realizing they were parrots to a party line, and without a single ounce of common sense or decency within reach.
“Well?” Felicity pressed.
She looked down, realized she had nothing to say for herself
Boone leveled his weapon on one of the media heads, his aim on the man’s heart true. With ugliness in his eyes, or perhaps a bevy of ghosts, he said, “The shelf life on lies always has an expiration date. As do you, sir, you damn liar.” He fired his weapon, punching a hole in the former news anchor’s chest.
“Now how many of you would like to try to be better Congressmen and Congresswomen?” Logan asked. “Show of hands please.”
They all raised their hands but one, even the CEO, who wasn’t in the news business.
“I suppose you’re going to be an honest journalist, right?” Ryker sneered at the surviving news anchor.
The man nodded his head, tears in his eyes, fear behind the tears.
“Well there’s no TV in the western United States because the Chicom assholes destroyed the grid, so I guess your value here is vastly overestimated.”
Ryker lifted his gun, shot him.
“As for the Congressmen and Congresswomen,” Logan said. “You brought this country to her knees, but you didn’t take her down. So by my estimation, you don’t deserve a second chance. But that’s not my choice. That’s the people’s choice. Isn’t it? Don’t you work for the people?”
When no one answered, he turned to the crew and said, “Who wants in on this?”
Every single one of them raised their hands. Logan nodded his head. Quan knew the traitors who turned the once great United States over to the communists were about to get what they deserved. And they did deserve this. They sold out the last stronghold of freedom on earth, the one country that actually worked in the pursuit of true freedom.
“On the count of three…” Logan said. The traitors started squirming, begging, hiding their heads. “One, two, three…”
The deafening chatter of a hostile, finite death caused every single one of those traitorous cocksuckers to shake and shudder. The smell of blood and smoked lead at the end of the firing squad was the cherry on top of this old, ugly cake. Even though there was a mop up to do, that was but a technicality to this fitting end.
Quan both loved it and hated this ending. But now, with nothing left to work toward, no one of significance left to take out of their misery, he turned and walked away, not expecting to see the things he was about to see as the smoke cleared and the battlefield cooled.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Turning to Logan, Skylar said, “Well that was a swift and suitable ending.” Logan simply stared at her, but all he could see was Harper, and Orbey.
“I have something to tell you,” Logan finally said. To everyone else, he said, “Can you guys give us a moment?”
The people there fell quiet, then they turned and took the celebratory talk outside.
Skylar asked, looking concerned. He was about to speak when she said, “Is Harper really gone?”
“It’s your aunt,” Logan said softly, “she didn’t make it.”
Skylar’s blood-speckled, dirt-stained, sweaty face transformed right before his eyes; he felt his own eyes grow moist, the prickle of tears adding shine to his already sorrowful expression. The stabbing, squeezing pressure on his heart made him feel like he was about to die from grief.
In that moment, he would have embraced such a death. In fact, he could already see himself returning to the barn in Five Falls, putting a gun into his mouth and pulling the trigger. What did he have to live for anymore? With Harper gone, and the Madigan family extinct, but for Stephani, was there really anything left for him but endless, mind-numbing grief?
“She’s dead, too?” Skylar croaked out.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
She shook hard, her chest jumping, her face straining against the pain. She started to cry, then she looked at the traitors they shot.
“Are you sure?” she asked through a hiccupping sob.
He nodded and moved to her slowly, the way you’d approach a tiger, one you weren’t sure would lick you or eat you. Slowly he opened his arms and she fell into them, the tears coming fast, the sobbing hard.
“Did you see Harper die?” she asked with a shaky, wet voice.
“We have to mop this mess up,” Logan said, “make sure the last roach is stepped on.”
She pulled back and said, “Where’s Harper?”
“I…I, she’s…” He couldn’t speak, the words wouldn’t come.
What did come was a rush of indescribable pain, an agony so deep he didn’t think he could make it to the barn before eating that bullet. In that moment he understood why Orbey went into war the way she did. She rushed to her end, taking down who she could before going back to Connor.
“I’m right here,” Harper said.
Logan froze, turning slowly, seeing the dirty, bloodstained ghost of his girlfriend past. Skylar turned, too, then ran into her open arms.
“I found this one taking a nap in the dirt,” Zeke said. To Logan, he said, “Thought you’d be happy to see her.”
“We’ll be doing mop ups when you’re ready,” Clay said, not realizing what was happening.
Logan didn’t feel himself nodding, but he was, his eyes locked on Harper. Skylar was hugging Harper, so she was real, wasn’t she? She had to be, for she was looking at him with heavy, happy eyes. He stepped forward, touched the arm circled around Skylar, then gasped.
“But you were…” he said.
“Unconscious.”
“You were dead,” he said, breathless.
Skylar moved out of her arms, looked at him, then back to her. “He said you wer
e dead.”
He nodded, the lump in his throat ginormous.
Harper pulled him into her arms, hugged him tight, drawing tears from his eyes. Felicity popped her head into the room and said, “We need help upstairs.”
Skylar was still crying. Harper wiped her friend’s eyes and said, “What’s wrong?”
“Can I have a few minutes with Logan?” Skylar asked. “I know you just came back from the dead for him, but I just need one minute, maybe two.”
Harper gave them both a funny look, then said, “Okay. I’ll be upstairs with Felicity.”
Logan had a hold on her and he wasn’t letting go. “It’s okay,” Harper said, patting his back. He didn’t budge a bit. Leaning forward, she kissed him and whispered into his ear. “I love you more than life, it’s okay.”
“As do I,” he said. “But…”
“It’s okay,” she said again, peeling away. “We don’t want any surprises upstairs. And they need help.”
When she left, Skylar looked at him and said, “I can’t be with this pain, Logan.”
“I know,” he said. “Best to let it out now.”
She grabbed ahold of him, hugged him tight. She cried there for the better part of five minutes, then she said, “I’m so sorry I hurt you.”
“You are who you are,” he said, just grateful Harper was still alive. “And thank God, because you also saved me and everyone else.”
“I helped,” she said. Then: “Are you happy with Harper?”
He felt himself smile. “I am,” he said.
She thought about this for a long moment, her hold on him firm. “I almost loved you,” she said. “That’s something for me, isn’t it?”
“Yes it is,” he said.
“I don’t love anything,” she confessed, stepping back and wiping her eyes.
“I know,” he said. “But you should try with Ryker. He’s a good guy.”
“You guys sure poke at each other a lot,” she laughed.
“It’s because we respect each other,” he told her. “I’m pretty sure we’ll end up being good friends, but don’t tell him that yet.”