Freedom Incorporated

by Peter Tylee

  “Hey Dan!” Esteban relished taunting the man who’d ruined the most exciting part of his career. “I’m going to peel Jen like a juicy piece of fruit.” He laughed gutturally. “I’m going to tear strips from her body and feed them to my dog.”

  Dan lost his grip on whatever remained of his self-control, just as Esteban had planned – for an impulsive man made mistakes. He took careful aim and fired two shots.

  Esteban flinched when the splintering wall showered him with fragments of plaster. But he smiled broadly and thought, I’ve won.It was just a matter of time now.

  Dan reached down, grabbed Simon by the scruff of his collar, and pulled him to his knees. “Come on.” He dragged him to the central corridor, the one leading to the heart of the complex, directly toward the fray. Simon had to scramble to catch up but felt grateful for the rough treatment once they’d entered the mouth of the corridor. It felt safer in there – at least they only had two directions over which to fret.

  Dan pushed his friend into a nook and pointed back toward Esteban. “Make sure nobody comes this way.”

  Simon nodded, not yet in full control of his breath. He spoke in short gasps, “What… about… you?”

  Dan’s eyes were the most brutal Simon had ever seen. They had an alien quality. Few people ever understood it. It was something a person had to experience to understand – concentrated death. Every fibre in Dan’s body itched for carnage and virtually nothing could stop him. “I’m going this way.” He turned towards the centre of the Guild and started walking, casually replacing the magazine in his Colt. He had the Cobra-KT with a few hundred rounds for backup but preferred the Colt in cramped conditions. It was faster to aim and a sliver of a second could mean the difference between life and death.

  The transformation was complete. He’d become what he feared. His ugly past had resurfaced. A death machine, capable of unspeakable things. Something he’d tried hard to forget. And the worst part was that he enjoyed it. He was thriving on the thrill and needed to quench his thirst for blood. He’d been parched a long time.

  He strode confidently but insanely into the Guild’s core and obliterated their stronghold by tapping bullets to the foreheads of the four men there. They collapsed like rag-dolls, their dark-red blood bursting onto the pristine carpet.

  Two more witnessed the slaughter from a side corridor and sprinted for their lives, spreading terror like a disease. Soon everyone knew what’d happened and all desperately wanted to escape. They were fleeing for the portal chamber on the far side of compound.

  But Dan wasn’t finished. He pursued them until they’d all flashed away. When it was over, he’d slain six, critically wounded one, and given two flesh wounds. The critically wounded man lay gasping for breath through blood-filled lungs, abandoned by his fellow members and forgotten in the heat of battle. Nobody tended to his wounds and nobody heard his dying words.

  A body on the floor mesmerised Dan. The back of his skull was missing, blown away by Dan’s nine-millimetre round. He hadn’t honestly expected so much damage. Environmental trauma that caused bone disease? A genetic problem?It wouldn’t surprise him. Dozens of genetic catastrophes had snaked into the human gene pool, which dangerous chemicals were gradually eroding. Most people suffered the consequences of at least one flaw. Weak and decalcified bones were prevalent disorders.

  Now… Esteban.Dan wanted to gaze inside Esteban’s skull, to see if maybe he was missing his frontal lobes. He mightn’t have been a cyborg… But he’s certainly fucking insane.

  *

  Jen was feeling stronger. Now she wished the world would stop spinning for long enough to get her bearings. But she was thankful her headache had dulled to a background throb. It’d been the worst headache she could remember – and no painkillers to ease the suffering. It’d felt as if her brain was swelling inside her skull and had run out of room to expand.

  The shots have stopped.She wondered whether that meant Dan was dead. Or captured.She wasn’t sure what’d be worse. She wished she had a weapon and, with all the gunfire, she supposed there had to be guns lying around. Where’re the other women?The thought of orchestrating an uprising appealed, it was the most liberating thought she’d had in days.

  If I can just find some guns…She blundered into a laundry and squinted in surprise. Disorientated, she’d been expecting one of the lounge rooms. Where am I?Nothing looked familiar and that scared her. It was one of the withdrawal effects; everything was obscure in her mind. Her hands looked big and her feet looked small. She tried not to focus on the distortion lest she went mad, and she kept chanting her tasks in her mind. Find a weapon. Find Dan.It didn’t really matter in which order those things happened. As long as they both happen.

  An indiscernible amount of time later she found the room she’d been looking for, the one most of the shots had come from. And what a grisly sight it was. It pricked her nausea to new levels. Four men lay slain in a contorted exhibit of human limbs, a ghastly sculpture. Their skin was pale because much of their blood had trickled like thick syrup around their remains. Jen paled too, the vulgar sight sending shivers of revulsion through her body. She had to turn away and slapped a palm to her mouth to stifle a gasp and quell her uneasiness. Soon she symbolically shifted her hand to cover her eyes, her mind rendering the sight in equally horrid detail.

  She turned slowly back around, removed her hand, and opened her eyes, slitting them just far enough to survey the devastation through a haze of eyelashes. None of the handguns had escaped the splattered gore. That’s disgusting.But Jen was determined to fend for herself. She abhorred blood, but she hungered for survival and ordered herself to select a weapon. So, without even a grimace, she mechanically bent down and obeyed her inner voice.

  It was sticky and warm, just the way she remembered. The iron-like smell of haemoglobin assaulted her nose and brought bile to the back of her throat. She came closer to vomiting then than in the past four hours.

  She looked at the gun, her mind magnifying it to the detriment of her stability. She was so intent upon the weapon and the viscid feel of blood coating her fingers that she didn’t notice somebody creeping up behind her. One solid hit and the gun went sprawling from her fingers, knocked to the far side of the room.

  Wha…?But someone locked her into an abrasive headlock before she had time to finish the thought. Whoever it was, he was strong. He tipped her backward, taking her weight against his body. The lock around her neck was threatening to crush her windpipe and was already partially collapsing her arteries. She could hear the blood pounding in her ears like a base drum, slowed by the hallucinations in her mind.

  “Don’t say a word.” It was Junior.

  Ah yes.Jen recognised the ginger hair on his arm.

  He pressed the tip of his gun firmly into her temple and the pressure revived a painful memory of her earlier headache. Junior was focussing elsewhere and didn’t even realise he was close to strangling her. For him, she was a tool, and always had been. To be used as he saw fit and cast aside once he was finished. And right now, she was the perfect human shield, the one person Dan wouldn’t risk killing.

  A brazen smile snarled across Junior’s lips. Come on fucker… you and me. Right now.

  *

  “How the hell did you do that?” Simon asked incredulously, looking at Dan with a mixture of awe, respect, and concern.

  “You don’t want to know.” Dan’s eyes reinforced the statement and Simon knew better than to probe further. “Esteban’s still here. So is Frank.” He paused a second before adding, “Maybe more, it’s hard to say, this place is a warren.”

  “Not to mention they might just be regrouping,” Simon warned. “Or going for reinforcements.”

  Dan doubted it. “This isn’t their fight, so I don’t see why they would.” He was right. The Guild was all for unification against common threats, but it was mostly lip service to an ideal. No member was willing to die for another’s problems. They were on the run, and most of them wouldn’t come back.
They’d return to their cosy lives and sprout stories of their glory days to people who didn’t care and didn’t particularly want to hear.

  Someone was approaching from the left corridor and Dan whipped his Colt up, already squeezing the trigger. But recognition stopped him and he snapped the Colt away when he saw it was a woman.

  She was tall and slender, and supported enormous breasts with folded arms. “Don’t shoot.” She raised her hands to show she wasn’t holding a gun and her beasts visibly sagged, straining her back.

  Dan waved her close. “Is there anyone left down there?” He indicated the direction she’d come with his Colt.

  “No. They fled.” She extended a hand. “I’m Mindy.”

  Both Dan and Simon accepted the offer and warmly shook her hand. “I’m Dan.”

  “Simon,” the officer said, smiling politely. “We’re here to help.”

  “Yeah, I kinda figured that.” She looked around, hungry for revenge of her own. “You need a hand?”

  “You offering?” Dan asked, rather stupidly Simon thought.

  Mindy nodded. “I know how to shoot. I used to be in the Air Training Corps.” Her eyes hardened. “Seems like a millennium ago now, but back then I was on the rifle shooting team.”

  Dan snapped together the two halves of his Cobra-KT and undid the safety catch, selecting semiautomatic operation before handing it over. “There are only a few left – maybe two – but you’re welcome to help if you think you can.”

  “Come on.” Simon was eager to have things finished. “We know he’s somewhere back there, toward the portals.”

  “Ah…” Dan cleared his throat. “But there are two sets. He could’ve gone through those portals and appeared on the other side of the compound.”

  “So we have no idea where he is,” Simon summed up. “Fantastic.”

  “Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t suggest breaking up,” Dan said. Only a fraction of his consciousness was aware of what he was doing, experience and skill had taken over. He was on autopilot. “But there are three of us and three directions to sweep.”

  “I’ll take the left,” Simon volunteered, waiting for a nod from Dan before departing to check every room as he zigzagged down the corridor.

  “I’ll take the right,” Mindy offered.

  Dan held up a hand before she could move off. “Wait, my friend’s in here somewhere. She’s new. Her names Jennifer Cameron…”

  “Yeah, I’ve met Jen.”

  Good.“Okay, I just didn’t want you shooting her, that’s all.”

  The determined expression in her eyes momentarily softened. “Don’t worry, I won’t shoot your girlfriend.” She departed before Dan could explain.

  She’s not my girlfriend.The thought lingered in his mind while she vanished down her corridor. That left Dan with the centre. He slapped both hands around the grip of his Colt, having already fed a new string of bullets into the clip. They were his last rounds. After that, he’d have to find more nine-millimetre ammunition, find another gun, or fight with his fists.

  I’m coming Jen…

  “Dan Sutherland. Fancy meeting you here.”

  Dan swivelled, his Colt level before he’d completed the turn. A wash of alarm boomed in his skull when he saw who it was. Junior had Jen in a headlock and he was pointing a Browning semiautomatic at her temple.

  “Jen…” He froze, realising the outcome of the next few seconds would determine whether she lived or died. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded the best she could, more with her eyes than anything else. The pressure from Junior’s forearm squeezed her oesophagus and vocal cords so that she could muster only a choking wheeze when she tried to speak.

  “Let her go,” Dan ordered tersely, menacingly adjusting his aim.

  Junior shook his head. “Put down the gun, then I’ll think about it.”

  Dan judged his chance of getting a bullet into Junior’s head. He was perilously close to Jen. If his aim were off by less than one tenth of a degree, he’d kill her instead. Damn.

  “Let me make it easier for you, tough guy.” Junior pressed his muzzle even harder against Jen’s temple. It was going to leave a nasty bruise. “Put down your gun or I’ll spray her brains over the floor.”

  Jen’s stress hormones were a hundredfold above potentially lethal doses and her blood disorder began to react. The capacity for her haemoglobin to carry oxygen to her brain was dwindling fast and, even without Junior’s arm, she was choking. She wriggled, ignoring the pain from the cold steel against her temple, and freed herself enough to speak. It came in contorted gasps, “Take the shot.”

  Dan hesitated.

  Junior echoed her, “Yeah, come on Sutherland. Take the shot if you have the balls. Or aren’t you good enough?”

  If he’d still been suffering under Zyclone’s protective umbrella, he wouldn’t have hesitated. He missed the confidence it breathed into him, especially at times such as these. Now he was wreaked by doubt. He couldn’t hit Junior and be sure he’d miss Jen. The brute had pulled her onto her toes and was crouching low to give Dan as little as possible to shoot at. No… I can’t.

  Junior saw the defeat on his face and snapped, “No, I didn’t think so. So put the fucking gun down.”

  Dan was about to comply when he caught the disappointment in Jen’s eyes. He froze, thought, and steadied his aim instead.

  Jen took strategic advantage of nausea brought about by oxygen-deprivation and gagged on a jet of vomit that surged explosively from her mouth. It sprayed down her front and coated Junior’s trousers, assaulting him with its pungent acidic odour.

  He relaxed his grip and she twisted to face him for the next convulsion, spraying him in the face. Junior responded the same as most people would under the circumstances, instinctively swatting the vomit that clung to his mouth and nose and made it difficult to breathe. Jen crumpled to the floor and Dan shot Junior thrice in the head. He fell backward, away from Jen.

  He rushed to her side, oblivious to the chunky vomit puddling around her. “Jen! Are you all right?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  An irrepressible song of euphoria was whistling through Dan’s mind. He couldn’t explain why any god thought he was worthy of a miracle, but one had bestowed a miracle on him anyway. It was only then that he noticed Jen’s breathing was short and sharp, and a frown crossed his forehead.

  “What’s happening?”

  With Dan’s help, Jen rolled away from the vomit. “I have…” – she had to gasp for air – “…a blood disorder… can’t breathe…”

  A helpless panic replaced his euphoria. “What can I do?”

  Jen closed her eyes, trying to control her breath. The onset of haemoglobin-failure was itself a stressor and contributed to the downward spiral in her condition.

  “Nothing… just tell me… I’m safe.” Jen was calming down, but wasn’t yet sure she’d live. It would get worse before it got better. “Help… me get… clean.” She didn’t want to die in a puddle of vomit. The urge to be sick had passed, for which she was thankful, but she could feel the acid on her skin and didn’t imagine it would be pleasant for Dan.

  He helped her wriggle out of her shirt and jeans and cleaned the mess from her face. Afterwards she looked respectable, despite the fact she was lying there in her underwear. Naked would still have been preferable to wearing vomit-soaked clothes. Dan removed his coat and wrapped it around her, seeing appreciation in her eyes.

  Then he carried her to the couch and gently laid her down, brushing the hair from her forehead. “Shh… it’s okay now. You’re safe. You’re okay.”

  And Jen believed him. It didn’t even matter what he’d done to make everything okay. People had died, but in her mind it was justified. It was over and they were both alive, and that was the important thing as far as Jen was concerned. She was tired but stubbornly fought the impulse to sleep. Her dizziness was subsiding and that was a positive sign, it meant she might live.

  The not-so-distan
t rattle of gunfire snapped Dan’s head to attention. It was unmistakably the tinkle of a Cobra-KT, fired on fully automatic.

  “What’s that?” Jen asked, prising her eyes open and fretting the situation might not yet be as safe as she’d assumed.

  “Esteban’s still here,” Dan reluctantly admitted. Though maybe not anymore… that could’ve been the sound of his death.

  *

  Perspiration beaded unnoticed on Simon’s forehead. He was too distracted to sponge it away. She’s dead.He checked Mindy’s body again but still found no pulse. Esteban had killed her with a single well-aimed shot to the chest.

  He brushed her vacant eyes closed and took the Cobra-KT from her hands, and then resumed his merciless, angry pursuit of Esteban. The man represented everything he stood against as a law enforcement officer.

  For his part, Esteban was backing away. He knew the other Guild members had abandoned him and their cowardliness turned his stomach. There were only two! Surely a dozen men could overpower two intruders? He didn’t grasp that the two intruders were far more motivated than the Guild members would ever be. Dan was willing to risk his life to free Jen, a sacrifice no Guild member was willing to make.

  He fired a few lazy shots for cover while dialling the destination code and making his escape through a portal.

  Simon stood from cover and rotated his shoulders to release the tension. The entire assault had lasted no more than 15 or 20 minutes but it’d left him more exhausted then a two-hour ordeal in the gym. He meandered carefully back to the lounge room, still alert in case there were more.

  He found Dan sitting next to Jen, who was lying immobile on the couch. She looked pale. His first thought was that she’d been shot and she was dying. “What happened?”

  Dan was gently stroking Jen’s forehead and didn’t look up. “Nothing, it’s all okay now. Frank used her as a human shield, but he’s gone.”

  “So is Esteban,” Simon said, sounding less than impressed.

  “You got him?” Dan’s eyes flashed with that alien emotion again.