Reckoning

by Mark Tufo

  Adams had taken his eyes off his station for no more than five-seconds to watch the filing cabinet dance to the riddle of bullets. That was all the opportunity the attackers needed. A single shotgun blast to the chest literally ripped his ribs off his exposed left side.

  For a moment, Adams realized the dire state he was in as he attempted to hold his lung into place. Sanity and life are fragile things; both slipped quickly away as his damaged lung plopped to the floor with an audible splat. Adams hadn’t even hit the floor before the frontal assault began. The first two never made it through the door, but managed to shield it long enough to let three of their team through. Now it was a full out dogfight in the holding area.

  Two of the men jumped off to the right and had Sergeant O’Bannon pinned down. The sergeant was sure that he had winged one of them, but it obviously wasn’t a mission impeding injury, because the man still fired back. The colonel dispatched the man who jumped to the left, where there wasn’t a stick of furniture anywhere in sight. The man’s eyes grew to the size of saucers when he came to the realization that he would never get a shot off.

  He, however, was quickly replaced by three reinforcements and the colonel found himself completely outgunned. The men began slowly advancing, each taking turns firing covering rounds. The sergeant and the colonel could not even get a single shot off now as bullets buzzed all around them. The sergeant did find humor in the fact that Private Monroe’s desk top was bulletproof, not that it was going to matter much soon, but it still provided some humor for him.

  “What are you smiling at, Sergeant?” the colonel said as he placed another clip in his weapon. The colonel did find that the sergeant’s grin was infectious and soon he was grinning at the corners of his mouth also. Stress can do funny things to a man, it can make him weep like a child or make him laugh like a loon. This duo leaned closer to the latter than the former.

  “Are you ready, Sergeant?” the colonel asked. Although the question was never clearly stated, it did not hinder the sergeant’s understanding. He knew without further clarification what the colonel had in mind.

  “On three, Colonel?” the sergeant replied as the colonel’s grin threatened to wrap around his head.

  “One,” the sergeant started.

  “Two,” the colonel added.

  Wordlessly, they counted to three in unison and popped up like Jack-in-the-boxes on crack. Sergeant O’Bannon was dimly aware of how close the attackers crept in. He had to adjust his aim as the men, mere feet away, froze in fear at how exposed they suddenly were. The sergeant’s senses were in overdrive as he watched, yes, watched the bullets come out of his barrel, like a high-speed camera.

  His first round reached the man closest to his proximity. The sergeant was amazed with the damage the bullet made upon impact. The man’s chest first collapsed around the bullet as it began its penetration through his chest bone. Then the superheated blood and bone began to expand and the chest literally blew out towards the front. As the sheer force of the impact hurtled the man backwards, the wound again collapsed in on itself. The sergeant watched as blood droplets arced downwards from the entry wound. He was astonished at how little blood came from the wound, but what the sergeant didn’t have time to contemplate was that the superheated round almost completely cauterized the wound upon impact.

  The sergeant turned to fire at anyone in his scope of view. A ray of hope surged in the sergeant’s chest as he realized just how completely they had caught the attackers unawares. They knew that they had been caught with their pants down, and there wasn’t a thing they could do.

  The colonel was laughing like a madman. The barrel of his M-16 was blazing as rounds burst through it. Four men fell by the time the colonel had exhausted his thirty round clip. Sanity did lapse for a split second when he realized he was dry firing his weapon.

  As he reached down for his next magazine, the first round struck home. The colonel turned towards the sergeant as the bullet tore through his heart. Pumping blood soared through the air as the sergeant realized the colonel’s aorta had been shredded. Death came quickly and honor followed.

  The sergeant also had unloaded his clip and with agonizing slowness, he reached down to replace his magazine. With his hand down by his belt, the sergeant attempted to pull the clip up from its resting place when he got shot in his left hand. It caught him in the index finger and ripped right through to his middle finger. Both fingers hung from his now useless hand by no more than the seven layers of skin.

  The sergeant could think of nothing left to do than heave his weapon at the men advancing on him. Rounds hit from seemingly everywhere. The sergeant collapsed in a heap on top of the colonel. As he fell, he hoped that his son would never see him like that. Then darkness folded in upon his senses.

  Three more men came into the room. One appeared to be the leader judging by his mannerisms and the way the men were deferential to him than by any insignia or obvious sign of rank. The sergeant gained varying degrees of alertness. He was bothered by something which he failed to complete, for the life of him, or lack thereof, he could not remember what it was.

  Between the incessant buzzing in his head from things he had not yet completed and the pain in his side from who knew what? The sergeant knew that right now would not be the end. He slightly shifted his weight to alleviate the pain from what was poking him, to no avail. His broken body could not respond to his commands. He slowly moved his arm and was happy when it did. He moved it under his side just as he closed his hand upon the source of half his problems.

  The colonel’s gun, still in its holster, was sticking straight up when the sergeant’s body fell on him. The sergeant reveled in his luck that he might just be able to satisfy some of his desires in this life before he moved on.

  “Check the cells,” the leader said as the smoke settled in the room. An eerie silence crept over the floor while Death smiled at its handiwork.

  Beth’s heart was slamming against her chest wall. How could they not hear it? She thought. At any second, she felt like her rib cage would begin to break under the thudding.

  The men advanced, slowly and cautiously, not wanting to get shot. Beth could hear the men’s boots as they came towards her cell. She listened in horror as the metallic sounds of bunk beds being turned over rang in her ears.

  She kept her pistol pointed straight up in the air so that when her bunk was upturned, she would at least get some measure of satisfaction as she watched one of her assailants die before she became their next victim.

  The men had gotten down to her cell and hesitated. The frightfully poor lighting was affecting them. The two men envisioned their worst fears as they stumbled into the dead zone at the far corner of the cell.

  The first man said a small prayer and did the sign of the holy trinity upon his chest as he took his first tentative step forward. A single shot broke through the silence and Beth wondered if she had done it. No, she realized, her finger wasn’t even on the trigger.

  The man who was approaching suffered the bullet as it passed right through the back of his knee. The bulk of the damage was inflicted as the bullet found its way out. The man’s kneecap exploded when the round exited. His bone fragments littered the floor as he fell, face first, into Beth’s cell.

  Beth panicked when the man looked right at her, and tense milliseconds passed before she realized that nothing cognitive flashed through his eyes. Shock had begun its slow demise and soon Death would have another partygoer. More bullets tore through the sergeant, but he had already left the world the moment his final shot exited the colonel’s handgun.

  “Detrick! Get Feyonovich out of here. Take him to the doctor,” the leader shouted. Detrick couldn’t be more pleased to get out of that hallway. Something sinister awaited him in that cell, he was sure of it, and he had no desire to find out first hand. Detrick hefted Feyonovich onto his shoulder and never spared a look back to see if anybody or anything was following.

  Death sat upon Beth’s bunk. A deep scowl lined
his face; two lives had been taken off his roster. No matter, he thought, they’ll be mine soon enough. He left with his bundle of souls, some to be delivered heavenwards, but the bulk of today’s would be headed down below. Again, this did not bother him, it was just another facet of his being. He, by definition, was neither good nor bad; he just was. As integral to the universe as air, fire and water and older than the cosmos itself, Death wandered the great vastness of time and space long before God and Satan began to play out their games.

  Death had always known that the souls of the dead could never truly be owned, he was merely the way station upon which the souls made their transformation. God had petitioned Death. “These are my creations and when their life runs dry, I wish to have their essences remain here with me.” Death acquiesced more out of curiosity than from deference. For not even God had power over the eternal one. Man had only to realize that no one nor anything could control his soul. First God and then Lucifer requested this and Death had obliged. It made no difference to him. All the souls he had collected over the millennia would be free again someday anyway.

  Everyone had an expiration date, everyone. And when their time came they, like everyone else, would again be reunited with the column of life force that pervaded the cosmos from one end to the other. Of all that Death had seen created and destroyed and recreated again, this life force column had always been there too, predating even him.

  Where it came from, he never knew. It was there when he came into consciousness and, as far as he knew, would always be there. After all this time, one thing he was sure of was that he never would know. It was just another part of the grand scheme of things he had to accept and expect. Death pondered for a moment more, but he did not have the luxury of time to dwell on such matters, his slate was full and growing.

  Beth listened as the rest of the men went around the room looking for anything of value. None came down Beth’s corridor and for that, she was thankful. For two full days, Beth kept herself cramped under the cot. During the majority of that time, she lapsed into fitful bouts of sleep, only to wake up twitching with her muscles painfully contracting.

  On more than one occasion, she had tossed her cot into the air, the clanging of which lingered for what seemed a small eternity. She had lain there, silently waiting for the approach of men that was sure to ensue from such a foreign noise. Fortunately, the men had moved on to a different part of the building where their prize waited.

  It had taken nearly a whole case of explosives and a bulldozer, but the men finally gained entry into the vault. Beth listened to them for nearly four hours as they celebrated their victory. She had been in sheer agony those last few hours, needing to partake of the most basic of bodily functions, elimination. She cramped in pain as her bowels and bladder writhed in agony.

  She contemplated just merely relaxing and doing the deed where she lay, but she feared that the smell would give her away if the men came around for one more sweep. So it was, when she heard the trucks, cars and motorcycles start up, that she began her exit from her cavern. It was a mighty effort for her to even get to her knees. Standing fully erect was not a possibility. The cramping kept her crouched over like someone more than triple her age.

  She waddled past the carnage that littered the jail floor, never stopping to look at the man who had briefly stolen her heart. Her eyesight was a pin holed focus. She knew if she didn’t make her destination soon, she would pass out and do what she was so valiantly trying not to do. Beth made her way out the door and took an immediate left. The rest rooms were mere miles away, at least her body thought so.

  Oh great! The ladies’ room is further down the hallway, was the first notion that passed into her mind. “God! What am I thinking?” she mumbled as she opened the men’s bathroom door. She had not one-second to spare as she fumbled with her jeans buttons.

  “Damn button fly!” she cursed. Beth rested her sweating head against the stall walls as she alternated between relief and cramping. She was sure she had not done her body any good by its long stint of abstinence. Even after she had finished, she stayed put, reveling in the normalcy that had been reinstated. Peace and tranquility overcame her, at least until she heard the whistle.

  The sweat on her forehead instantly turned to ice. Beth moved as quickly and silently as she could to stand back up and refasten her pants. ‘Oh my God, my gun!’ Beth panicked. She was defenseless. At least she was until she looked at the floor of her stall and realized she had brought the treasure with her.

  In her agony, she had neither the will nor the strength to unclench her hands, and one of those hands had been holding onto the pistol. She counted her lucky stars as she picked up the pistol and stood upon the seat of the toilet, lest someone look under the partitions and see her shoes.

  “Boady!” The mystery voice yelled. “Come on, Boady! The rest of the guys are leaving, man. Let’s go!” The man got closer, opening every door he passed to search for his friend. The man pushed open the door to the bathroom. “Boady! You in here?” No response. “Oh my gawd!” the man said from an obviously pinched nose. “Boady? Did you kill a skunk in here?” Beth blushed in embarrassment. “Can’t….get…my…breath,” the man stuttered, obviously thinking he was making fun of his friend. What Beth wasn’t prepared for was what the man did next. He approached her stall, the man’s face turned instantly ashen as he pushed the door open. Beth sat on her haunches with the pistol aimed squarely at his head, while his weapon had been placed on his back for comfort. He had not seen the reason to keep it at the ready, at least, not until that very moment. As the initial shock wore off, the man attempted to pull the rifle to the front. Beth fired, more out of instinct than knowledge.

  The noise was deafening in the small enclosure. Her hearing was toast and the only sound she heard were the bells that clanged in her head. Smoke filled the small cubicle. The recoil of the weapon pushed her down and thudded her back onto the seat of the toilet. The bullet had not pushed the stranger away.

  She feared that she had completely missed. With the disorientation that she felt, she didn’t think she would be able to get another shot off. And then she looked up to realize that the top half of his skull had given way to a gray and red, fleshy matter, which held no obvious shape she could recognize. The man seemed to slide down more than collapse, the outcome was the same though. She stared at his head as it pulsated out its remaining contents.

  The wheels spun in her head. She could not stand to look at him but neither could she tear her eyes away from the macabre event. His head took on the appearance of a soft boiled egg in a teacup. Shards of bone protruded all around his crown. His thoughts or, at least, his thought container was spread open for all to see.

  “Hammie?” she heard faintly. “Hamster! Where are you? Stop screwing around!” That was a little louder and sufficient to begin the sweeping process in the dusty regions of her brain.

  “Oh shit,” She intoned. Her reasoning took over. If she had been temporarily deafened by the shot, than the “faint” voice was a lot closer than she wished. Beth sprang over the folded body and nearly lost her balance as she slipped on the wet tiles. Tiles slickened by the material that once made the man she shot whole.

  She looked down long enough to make her footing sure, the sight was a nightmare to be revisited on another occasion. Beth opened the door and took a precursory glance out to see how close the man was. Thankfully, he had not rounded the corner, at least, not yet.

  She debated with the thought of going back and hiding in her cell, but she vowed to herself to never go back there. Anyway, she didn’t think that she would be able to handle the sight of the bloated and now blue body of her sergeant. She ran down the corridor towards the exit, heedless of the fact that the blood and brain on her shoes was leaving a telltale trail for someone to follow.

  ***

  Kuvlar, the interim supreme commander sat huddled in his chair, or throne, as he liked to think of it. Had he been wearing a crown, it would have weighed heavily ri
ght now. All was not going well in the planetary invasion. The ship, HIS ship, he reminded himself, had suffered a grievous wound, the likes of which had not been inflicted since the intergalactic war with the Stryvers.

  During that time long, long ago, all the Progerian ships had been fitted with distress beacons. Whenever a ship came under attack, a signal was emitted. For fighters, the signal went to the mother ship that launched it. In the case of the much bigger and thus more valuable mother ship, the signal traveled through sub-space folds back to the Progerian home planet. The ship had transmitted for no more than three minutes before Kuvlar had the foresight to shut it off.

  Three minutes was two minutes and fifty-nine seconds too long. The signal had not yet reached his home planet but it would, soon. And after that, at least one mother ship would be dispatched to see what the problem was. And then, Kuvlar feared, all hell would break loose. He was not responsible for the hu-mans’ attack on the ship, but in the eyes of his superiors, he would be blamed. That was a philosophy that killed more than one officer in the ranks. When one officer had the buck passed onto his desk, he would, more often than not, relinquish such responsibility to his immediate subordinate. Most times by a rifle blast to the underside of the jaw.

  Kuvlar, however, would not go down, not that way. He was much too resourceful and ambitious, he thought to himself. True, they had lost a much larger percentage of fighters than anticipated, and also true, the hu-man civilization had not yet completely crumbled under the stress of anarchy. He was determined to have the planet under his control and being productive by the time his so-called “help” arrived.

  It was only a matter of time before his Genogerian troops were ready for a ground war. He had only to wait for enough transports to send them to the planet’s surface to be effective as a fighting unit. Those hu-mans will run for their lives when they see my army marching towards them, the ISC mused. He knew that hu-manity was tough, but with no military left, his troops would have nothing more than mop-up duty to complete.