Edge Walkers

by Shannon Donnelly

  “What the ever-loving fuck was that?”

  Jakes glanced at Shoup and shook his head.

  They’d crouched low against a wall where they’d stopped, twenty meters away from a firefight that shouldn’t have happened. They weren’t in a secure lab—at least, this wasn’t looking like the inside of any R&D facility. Wasn’t secure, either. Or much like New Mexico. Jakes glanced at his watch—five hours had passed since they’d stepped into that lab, or that’s what it showed, and that couldn’t be right. He didn’t have time for more than guessing at what might get them through the next few minutes.

  He had Peters’ M16 in his lap since Peters wouldn’t be using it again and Jakes had spent everything in his sidearm. The M16 was still warm, so was Jakes. He hadn’t stopped sweating and his heart rate’d kicked high enough to stroke him out—crap did he hate being on the wrong side of forty. He also hated being proved right.

  He’d known this was going to be another of those days soon as he’d seen that goddamm security tape. But he’d stopped caring about bad days or much of anything seven months ago. Seemed he might have been wrong though about life not being able to suck any worse than after a call about a rain-soaked road that shouldn’t have had his little sister on it. Should have been him. But, hell, there was balance—he shouldn’t be here now.

  Glancing down at his arms, he noticed the faint white lines across his skin like he’d walked into spider webs, or had them scarred onto him. Overall, he was a little surprised not to be dead. Someday someone really oughta save the world from the goddamm scientists. This one needed more than prayers.

  Conscious, but with her eyes unfocused, Brody kept muttering some name over and over, her head turning and her body restless. Carrie Brody, PhD in geophysics, senior staff member, EM specialist, whatever the hell that was. He recognized her from her security photo and the lab footage. He’d also seen her around the facility before she’d gone missing. There was a helluva lot more missing now. Like a damn medic for one thing. He’d give a lot to have had one with ‘em, but they didn’t have much of anything except a disaster on their hands.

  “Whatcha got left?” Jakes asked, turning to Shoup and forcing his breath into regular, long pulls so his heart had to slow back down as well.

  Shoup wasn’t breathing hard and didn’t smile, but the sharp glint in pale gray eyes and the eager look on the man’s long, harsh face said it all. He was having himself a good ol’ time. He had his P90 cradled and Brody propped where he could grab her fast if they had to run again. He also didn’t have to pop his clip to check anything. He rubbed a finger across a dirt smeared chin where dark stubble was already showing and said, “Half full. Three changes on my belt, five with back up. Packed a couple extra.”

  Jakes nodded. If he knew Shoup—and he did—they’d be armor piercing rounds, not standard issue. The man would also have some kind of heavy ordinance on him that he should not have had for something as simple as a lab check. Jakes didn’t want to know where Shoup had that stashed. He’d find out when they needed it.

  Popping the clip from the rifle he’d grabbed, Jakes counted five rounds remaining. He’d pulled two spare clips off Peters, so they’d better make it enough for the job. Except he wasn’t sure what the job was anymore. This was supposed to have been a walk-in-the-park posting—a lab where not much of anything happened except experiments that cost the tax payers and produced paperwork for DC. Shouldering the M16, Jakes pulled out his Beretta, ejected the spent clip, slapped in his one full spare. Dammit, they didn’t even have a layer of Kevlar on them, because they’d cut through the door into that lab without any thought about stepping into a war zone.

  That had him thinking about the horror he’d seen stark on Teneb’s face when they’d been yanked through that wall and into…goddammit, what in sweet perdition was this?

  Shoup seemed to be echoing his thoughts, since he muttered, “Somethin’ still sounds like the fucked end of a car wreck back there. Think the others made it?”

  Jakes shook his head. They’d lost four—Andres, Teneb, Swanson and Peters. That screeching from the building had his guts in knots—it wasn’t all metal. But he glanced over his shoulder at what they’d left behind, didn’t see anything following. He spared another glance for the slumped figure next to Shoup and he hoped Brody had answers.

  “Shoup, peel an eye.”

  The man gave a curt nod, moved off to where he had a clean view back to the building. He looked pleased about it, but that was Shoup. Certifiable. Four tours to Iraq and three to Afghanistan, hadn’t done more than set the man’s liking for this kind of work. Of course, that kind of insane was shifting over to be an asset right about now.

  Crouching next to Brody, Jakes started a check for what was broken. They had one missing scientist back, another dead now—at least, he’d seen what had looked like a body wearing a lab coat go down back there. He added that to the previous count of one dead and one unconscious in the lab. All that was left would be to find the last missing geek and get home.

  Since nothing was sticking out—or oozing out—of Brody, Jakes reached into a pocket and slipped free his non-reg hip flask, the one he kept on him and kept full as a reminder of what this damn stuff had cost him. He cracked it open, held it under her nose. She stirred at the sharp aroma of Irish whiskey and muttered something he couldn’t make out.

  “Brody? Brody!” He rapped the words out sharp.

  She blinked at him and muttered, “Gideon?”

  What the—she wanted a damn bible?

  “Brody!” he let his temper crack in the word, but it didn’t get him anything. He turned to Shoup. “Let’s move it. We need better cover.” Shoup came over, started to reach for Brody, but Jakes shook his head. “No. Take point. I’ll take her.”

  She wasn’t exactly a lightweight, but she wasn’t fully out, so he made do with her arm draped over his shoulder and her staggering next to him. With the M16 banging his side and his boots kicking up dust, they stumbled into what was left of some city. Jakes had done tours in Kuwait and Afghanistan as well. This was worse. This wasn’t bombed flat—this was taken apart and left to decay. Had been for some time, he’d guess.

  A couple hundred meters into the ruins, Shoup found enough of a building standing that they had an inside, not lots of open backside they couldn’t defend. No windows, but it had two exits which made it a place where they wouldn’t get stuck inside. Brody had stopped muttering, so she might start making sense soon.

  Settling her on the barren floor inside the structure, Jakes put Shoup on guard. He knelt beside their scientist. He didn’t have a canteen. He hadn’t come through with anything except his sidearm, an extra clip, his flask, and twenty bucks and change in his pockets. And he could curse himself for not listening to his instincts and having every one of his people combat ready.

  Tamping down the latest pile of regrets that no one had any use for, Jakes offered up his flask again. “Brody?”

  She managed to focus on the flat silver. Hand shaking, she wrapped her fingers over his and managed a swallow. The fumes rose, strong and harsh, and she choked on the sip she got into her mouth. He took the flask back before she dropped it, capped it, and he wasn’t sure if he was going to get anything coherent from her. Ever.

  But she blinked and asked, the words slurred, “Ever fall outta a tree?”

  Okay, time to downgrade that bump on the back of her head to a concussion. He checked her pupils—yep, uneven dilation. Offering the flask again, he decided this wasn’t the best cure. She didn’t take him up on a second sip. Closing her eyes, she leaned her head against the wall. Tears had tracked clean grooves down her dusty face. Blood stained her skin, marking an abstract pattern down the front, drying into brown spatters. He wasn’t seeing bright red from her, so that was good enough.

  She started taking again, her voice raspy. “I was twelve. We’d just moved and had this elm in the back. Off-limits. Made the rest inev—inevitable.” She stumbled over the last word and opene
d her eyes enough for him to see the blue-gray and the pupils starting to even out and focus. “Ever have a dad at least?” she asked, the words still slurred and shocked.

  Jakes took her wrist. Her pulse hadn’t settled, but his had. “Not much of one,” he said.

  She left her cold hand limp in his hold. “Mine was. Up to the end. And I was doing fine ‘til I started down. Ever notice going up’s easy. It’s the down...”

  She let the words trail, took back her hand and wiped trembling fingers across her face, which smeared everything and showed how much she was trying not to shake apart. Fine tremors in her leg, where it pressed up against his, shook him, so he gave her an awkward pat. He thought of all the wrecks he’d ever made, every bad landing on his record. He’d walked away from all of them. Until a goddamm slicked road, and it wasn’t his wreck but it should have been. Only he’d unwound too much that night, so he’d passed that airport run to get his sister to a green idiot kid who didn’t know how to steer into a skid. Yeah, the downs were the hell of it.

  Brody’s voice pulled him back to the now and he shook off the rest. After seven months, it was almost habit. Seemed like talking was hers.

  “One second your feet are steady, then not, and everything hurts and my dad’s staring down at me like I’m dead.” Brody lifted her head and locked wide blue eyes on him. “Déjà vu. Which, I suppose, is a long way around to ask…who the hell are you?”

  She was still stumbling over the words, drifting a little, but he cracked a smile for her, figured if he looked as bad as she did—and he must—he wasn’t any kind of reassuring. “Jakes. Major, US Air Force. That’s Shoup, Airman First Class.” He nodded over to where Shoup stood at the open doorway, also not looking reassuring since he had a gun braced on his hip and a predatory grin crooked on that ugly face of his. Jakes didn’t add how many times Shoup had been given promotion stripes only to have them busted off again. But he did add, “We’re supposed to be your rescue.”

  Brody nodded, shut her eyes. “Oh, that’s good.”

  “Not so much.”

  Her eyes popped wide and her face went so stark he could count every freckle on her skin. “God—you shot him!”

  He winced at the anguish, raw and rasping, a fractured fury in the words. He really didn’t want to know who ‘him’ was. Not yet. But he had an idea. He’d counted the dead bodies they’d left back in that screeching hell before they’d had to book.

  “Brody, where’s your other guy? We get him, we can head home.” He grabbed her arms to put her focus on him, but she jerked away.

  A short, harsh laugh escaped, bitten off just this side of hysteria. “Other? No one—they’re dead. They’re all dead.”

  “No. We’ve got two down—one here now, one back home. Another back home may not make it, but we’ve got one more missing.”

  She stared at him, eyes glassy and blank. “We’re all missing, and you just shot our best chance at surviving.”

  With a shake of his head, he took a guess, “Gideon? Not a bible? Never mind. Doesn’t change what we need, which is to lay low until things settle, then we’ll take a quick recon and—”

  “Are you listening? There’s—”

  “Brody, I’m not real sure about where here is, so let’s—”

  “You crossed realities. Stepped through a…a doorway, a gap. Gid—Gideon called it the Rift. We…I opened a doorway, but it seems to be one-way right now and that…that could be a good thing.”

  “Good?” He knew he was parroting, but he couldn’t help it. He was having a hard time keeping up and he was about ready to downgrade Brody’s concussion to brain damage. Except for what he’d seen. Walking undead had hit his men—and balls of lightning had changed one of his guys into something else. All of that could make anyone a believer in the ungodly. He hoped like hell Brody knew how to deal with those things.

  Staring at him, she lifted a hand, rubbed still shaking fingers over her temple. “You want whatever showed up there to go back through with us?”

  “What in all hell was that?”

  “Gideon called them Edge Walkers.”

  “Gideon,” he said the name slow this time, dragged it out. It looked to be a name he needed since it kept coming up. And he watched Brody. Her eyes cut away from his and she caught a sharp breath, held it a beat too long before letting it out with a shudder that came from deep in her chest. Ah, something between the two of ‘em? Well, he was sorry, but he hadn’t known the guy. All he’d seen were targets, with Brody down and one of his down right off, too, which hadn’t put him in a mood to ask for introductions.

  “Brody, I need to know what’s what here.”

  Eyes narrowing, she stared at him. He began to wonder how out of it she was. He was also starting to think they were in this on their own. After the initial feed, the cameras in that lab of hers had gone out. That meant no one had seen them step inside the room. No one had seen Shoup put his hand through a wall. No one had seen his guys fall like hard-bitten Alices packing weapons down some kind of trans-reality rabbit hole.

  Goddamm, this had to be a nightmare. But the ache in his back and the burn on his thighs and the adrenaline still pumping said it was wasn’t. He also had Brody to look out for now. He sure as hell wasn’t taking a dead scientist back with him, not after the price his unit had just paid to get her.

  He gave her another pat. “We’ll hole up here for the—”

  “No,” she said and scrambled to her feet.

  He stood up so he could catch her if she went down. But she braced on the wall with one hand and told him, “Gideon…there’s a church. He said they wouldn’t come there—or didn’t.”

  Glancing around, she started to sway. Jakes grabbed her arm. But she shot him another narrow-eyed glare that made him think twice about unrequested help. When she pulled away again, he let her, watched as she swallowed and dragged in a breath, her back stiffening. Yeah, someone somewhere had taught her how to button it down but good.

  “Look, I know this sounds insane, but you—”

  “Brody, we just stepped out of a firefight with walking corpses and heat lightning that seems to eat people from the inside-out. Given that, you saying we’re in the wrong world sounds pretty goddamm plausible.”

  She started to smile, but it collapsed into a trembling lower lip that she bit down on. She shook her head and said, her voice flat and distant, “Good. Because I think we need to go make some Voodoo dolls.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The memories after Gideon was shot…they’re too fragmented to trust. Frankly, most of it includes things I don’t want to remember. But Major Jakes stands out—I don’t think I’ve ever met a bigger pain in the ass. — Excerpt Carrie Brody’s Journal

  With Jakes staring at her—his eyes dark and expression flattened—two thoughts found their way through the haze of Carrie’s numb exhaustion. He’d be a bastard to face across a poker table, and the slow burn in those eyes came from a man who was more than pissed off at everything. It wasn’t just him not understanding what she’d said that was ticking him off. Nice to know that. She knew, too, that she should care more about the state of her world right now, but she couldn’t find the energy or emotion for much of anything.

  They had shot Gideon.

  She couldn’t take it in—didn’t want to let it sink deep. So she focused on something else. On Jakes. Easy enough to sum him up as pared down and pounded into the shape the military needed. He had that paved-over look of a man who’d given himself to God and country with ideals about all of that, and it had probably cost his family more than it’d ever cost him. In her experience, that’s how it worked. She wasn’t betting on what kind of human being lived under all that tarnished belief in sacrifice.

  That wasn’t a good thought either, so she kept on thinking about Jakes as she turned away from him. Keeping her focus on him was better than putting it on everything hovering inside a pit she knew to be a step away—she was not going back to that last image of Gideon, not when it b
lurred her eyes, caught in her chest like the knife she still gripped tight.

  Leading the way, she staggered out of the building, her steps uneven and her head so light it felt likely to fall off her shoulders. She put a hand on the side of it, to make sure everything stayed attached. She needed a few days in a hospital right now. Had Jakes really said something about someone from her team being missing? She thought of the blood in her lab—how could they not all be dead. She should be as well. Or should be in a mental ward. Someplace quiet and empty—someplace hollow as herself. Jakes trailed after her, the heavy tread of his boots following, but he didn’t stay behind for long.

  Coming up on her right, he matched his stride to hers. He sent the other man—Shoup—to take a small lead. The man grinned at her as he passed, as if they were on an afternoon stroll. And her mind slipped to how she’d talked Gideon into taking her back to where he’d found her.

  Her fault—again. She’d seen him go down. She’d seen the blood. She had no hope he’d gotten out alive. No hope for Chand, either. Now she wanted to curl into a dark corner and never come out. That wasn’t possible, so she let the fatigue take hold, let it blank everything she couldn’t afford to feel. She hadn’t gotten over the last set of bruises—not the ones on her body or her soul. New ones stiffened her lower back, twanging her right hip, settled on her chest in a growing weight. Wetting her lips, she kept walking. They’d find water at the church—but not holy enough to wash away her sins. Her fault again, which meant she had to get these guys to someplace safe. She could do that. But, for guiding landmarks, all she had were half-fallen buildings and wreckage and a world that kept wanting to tilt.

  And the need for Gideon to still be here.

  Oh, god—Gideon…

  Her throat closed and the burning at the back of her eyes wasn’t due to dust. Whatever Jakes had given her to drink almost came back up. She choked on it and on the swell of something she didn’t want to name. It couldn’t be loss—she wouldn’t call it that. She’d known Gideon what—a day? But something sharp and ragged wrapped around her chest and spread out to numb her fingertips, and it felt too much like that winter afternoon when she’d put her mother into a grave. Cancer was a slow, pitiful way to die. Was a shot to the back worse? Maybe. But weren’t most deaths awful? She thought of Chand with his eyes glowing. She hoped it had been quick for Gideon, that she had not left him behind to bleed out in a slow puddle of red.