by Jake Bible
Darby frowned at the thought of the lost ship. The Beowulfs hadn’t exactly been fun living for her, but each one had been like home. Especially the B3. To her, the B3 represented Max. And Max was everything at that moment because fuck Ballantine and Wire and the mess that family had created. Darby was on a rescue mission and her main goal was rescuing the Thorne extended family. To her, that was everyone except Ballantine.
Yet, Darby knew that if any of them were going to survive the ordeal with Wire, Ballantine would be needed. He had a plan. He always had a plan. And Darby needed to find him so he could complete that plan. Because she knew that’s exactly what he expected her to do. Her brain may have had a few misfires going on, but Ballantine expected that and had calculated for it.
Darby had zero doubt that when she showed up to set him free, it would be at the exact right time. It always was.
She left the dock and walked across a short breadth of sand before she reached the one and only road that led into the center of the island. A road that was lined by an extensive network of fencing. Darby’s eyes studied the fencing as she walked the rutted road deeper into the island.
Darby couldn’t see what was being held back, but she could hear movement. Whatever was in there was sticking to the shadows of the tropical trees and bushes that filled the landscape around her. Darby could feel eyes on her and knew she was being followed.
There were no surveillance cameras in sight, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t being watched. Darby was confident that she was. No point in creating a gauntlet to run if that gauntlet wasn’t monitored.
Her suspicions were confirmed when she heard the engine then saw the headlights approaching. Fast.
Darby took a knee and put the butt of the .338 to her shoulder. The headlights were still a good distance away, but were getting close enough that a solid shooter with an M4 could hit her. If they knew how to shoot in the almost dark while riding in a moving vehicle. Darby knew how to do that, but was glad she had the luxury of stable ground and all the time in the world.
A slow exhale and she squeezed the trigger once then again. Both of the vehicle’s headlights disappeared in an instant. There was the revving of an engine and the squealing of brakes, followed by the shouting of men and women. The light was pretty much gone and the road was nothing but deep blues and black shadows. There was no way to see her targets.
But they made so much damn noise that Darby felt sorry for the fools as she squeezed the trigger again and again and again. The noise of the guards didn’t stop, but it switched from a coordinated hunt to the crying and weeping of wounded. A flash of red hot anger flared in Darby. She was pissed off and disappointed she’d left so many wounded. She really only needed one guard alive.
Darby stood, ejected the magazine from the .338, replaced it with a fresh one, slung the rifle over her back, and withdrew the .45 pistol before she continued on down the road to see what she had to deal with.
Two men and a woman still lived and lay on the dirt road, all three bleeding from severe wounds. The rest of the guards were nothing but corpses cooling in the tropical air as much as corpses could cool in tropical air. Darby focused on the men first.
When she reached the first guard, she knelt down and placed the muzzle of the pistol to the man’s temple.
“Answer my questions and I put you out of your misery,” Darby said.
“Fuck you, cunt,” the guard spat.
Darby squeezed the trigger and a bright spray of blood, brains, and bone exploded onto the road. Darby stood, walked to the second man, knelt, and repeated the motions. The man winced as the hot muzzle of the pistol was pressed into the flesh of his temple.
“I have questions,” Darby said.
“You can go fuck—”
Darby didn’t wait for the man to finish.
The woman stared up with watery eyes filled with nothing but pain and remorse as Darby approached her.
“Why should I help you?” the woman gasped. “You killed them fast for not helping. Seems like the way to go, to me.”
Darby shot her in the left kneecap, obliterating the bone, cartilage, and flesh under the woman’s pants. The woman screamed at the top of her lungs. Darby sighed and planted a boot in the woman’s face to shut her up.
Moaning and dazed, the wounded woman struggled to reach for her destroyed knee, but even that amount of movement caused her to gasp and cry.
“Bitch,” the woman snarled. “Wire will rip you to shreds.”
“No,” Darby stated flatly. “She won’t.”
Darby crouched and placed the muzzle against the woman’s other knee.
“Where did they take Ballantine?” Darby asked. Her voice was calm, even, relaxed. It wasn’t void of emotion completely, but she didn’t sound any more worked up than if she was picking out a flavor of muffin to eat in the morning. “Answer that and you keep one knee.”
“Ballantine who?” the woman responded then spat a thick glob of bloody mucous onto Darby’s cheek. “Bitch.”
Darby wiped the glob off and looked at it for a moment then flicked it into the dirt. She wiped her hand on her pants and nodded at the woman.
“Do I bother with asking a last time?” Darby asked.
The woman started spitting epithets as loud as she could. Darby forced the woman to trade her epithets for screams of even more agony as the woman’s second kneecap went goodbye.
“I ain’t gonna tell you shit!” the woman roared. “Not one goddamn thing!”
Darby stood and took aim, but a noise caught her attention and she lifted the pistol and whipped around, taking aim at the fence line behind her.
People. People stood at the inner fence line watching Darby. They were a good six inches away from the fence itself and that’s when Darby noticed a lower noise. A hum. Electricity. She raised an eyebrow as she stepped close to the outer fence, her eyes studying the people. If she wasn’t Darby, it would have been impossible to make out any details. Twilight was gone and dusk had turned into night.
But she was Darby and had better than normal vision, so she moved even closer and looked the people up and down.
“Who are they?” Darby asked over her shoulder at the groaning woman in the dirt. “Prisoners?”
“I ain’t answering nothing, bitch!” the woman shouted.
Darby rolled her eyes and kept studying the people that stood there and stared. Dressed in rags, most of them looked extremely malnourished. All of them were moving their mouths, their jaws clicking up and down in a slow rhythmic motion.
Chewing. Darby realized they were chewing. Except they didn’t have anything in their mouths. If they did, it would have been falling down onto their chests then the ground. Only very quiet, very slight moans escaped past the people’s lips. Lips that were cracked and broken.
Or not there at all.
Darby took a couple steps back then moved to one of the guard corpses. She frowned then rushed to the truck, looking for something very specific. When she found it, she made sure the dying woman got a good look before Darby put the tool to use.
The machete was wicked sharp and hacked through one of the corpse’s arms with two whacks. Severed arm in hand, Darby hefted the limb, glanced at the woman, then threw the arm over the fence lines like a Hail Mary pass.
The people waiting there, their mouths moving even faster, dove onto the severed arm and began tearing at it. Blood went flying as strips of flesh were torn off and devoured. Then the fighting began as only scraps were left. The people grabbed at each other, their moans considerably louder than before.
Darby smiled.
She returned to the woman that was slowly bleeding out.
“Where is Ballantine?” Darby asked. “I’m being kind and giving you one more chance to answer before I let them out.”
“Let them out?” the woman barked. “You touch that fence and you’ll be nothing but ash in seconds, bitch.”
“I don’t plan on touching it,” Darby said and glanced at the truck. �
��No need to risk my life.” She patted the guard on her bloody cheek and leaned closer. “Ballantine. Where is he?”
“You open that fence and you doom us all,” the woman said, her pain and agony replaced by sheer terror.
“Ballantine?”
“Fuck off!”
Darby shrugged and walked over to the truck. She hopped in, started it up, cranked the wheel all the way to the left, and put it in drive before hopping out. The truck moved slowly, but that’s all it needed to do. Darby walked back to the woman and glared down at her.
“Ballantine?” Darby asked again.
“No.”
“Then I leave you alive,” Darby said and walked away, putting space between her and where there was about to be a very large hole in the fence.
“Wait!” the woman cried. “Don’t leave me here! Those dead sentries will eat me alive!”
“Yeah. I figured they might.”
“You fucking monster!”
“Ballantine?”
“Jesus fucking Christ…” The woman took a deep breath, whimpered a little, then let the breath out and stared at Darby.
“He’s secured in bunker thirteen.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure!”
“Bunker thirteen hard to get into?”
“It’s the most secure spot on this island.”
“Good call.”
The truck slowly began ripping the fence lines apart. Sparks exploded everywhere and the smell of ozone and burning rubber filled the air. The vehicle ran over a good half-dozen of the dead sentries before it reached a tree and came to a stop, its engine grinding, grinding, then stalling out.
The sentries not run over tried to navigate the mess of fence Darby had created. They weren’t chill anymore. They scrambled to get free and Darby realized that they were going to be fast once they got loose.
“Fucking kill me!” the woman yelled.
“They only attack the living?” Darby asked.
“Yes!”
“Why?”
“I answered your question before! Don’t let them get me!”
“One more question. Why only the living?”
“That’s how they are programmed! The devices in their brains run them and their entire objective is to kill and eat any living thing that breaches the fence line!”
“Devices? They’re tech controlled?”
“Yes!”
“Automated system or are they monitored?”
“Both! But mostly automated! Jesus fuck, lady! Kill me!”
The dead sentries were past the mess of fence and focused on Darby and the wounded woman.
“I don’t think so. You’re more useful to me alive.”
“What? You promised! You fucking promised!”
“I didn’t promise shit,” Darby said with a laugh. “You heard what you wanted to hear.”
Close to twenty of the dead sentries streamed out of the broken fence and headed straight for Darby and the wounded woman. The woman screamed over and over to be killed, but Darby ignored her. Her eyes were on the sentries, studying how they moved, how they interacted with their environment.
How they hunted.
“You’ll be as dead as the rest of us,” the woman said weakly.
“Not hardly,” Darby said.
“What makes you so fucking special?” the woman gasped as she started to cry.
“Because I know who I am now,” Darby said. “I’m Darby.”
With that, Darby melted back into the shadows, leaving the wounded woman as the only focus for the dead sentries. Once the things fell upon the screaming woman, Darby made her move and slipped inside the fence line, careful to avoid the newly arrived sentries that were being lured by the dinner bell.
***
“What happened?” Wire roared. “What do you mean there’s a major breach in the fence line? Both lines? A complete cut through?”
A tech shook as he sat before a video display, his fear stinking up the room. Before he could respond, Wire yanked him out of the way and took his seat. She studied the video display and the bloody scene that unfolded before her eyes.
“Shit,” she growled. “Fucking shit!”
Her fingers clacked at the keyboard and the image began to rewind at high speed. Wire slammed a thumb onto the space bar and the video paused.
“Darby,” Wire said. “Of course it is. Ballantine’s special pet always escapes. Always fucks up my plans. Always comes out on top.”
She hit the space bar again and the video moved forward at normal speed. Darby disappeared from view and no matter which camera Wire toggled to, she couldn’t get the woman back on the screen.
“The cameras are motion sensitive,” the ejected tech said quietly, well out of reach of Wire’s enhanced grip. “The sentries locked onto the screaming…target and the cameras followed their movement.”
“She moves too!” Wire shouted.
“She knows how to move,” Sterling said as he entered the security room. “Darby can confuse some of the best tech developed without a distraction. Our system didn’t stand a chance with all the activity she created.”
“All I’m hearing are excuses,” Wire snarled. “Bullshit excuses.”
“I have the prisoners, with the exception of Ballantine, of course, all lined up outside,” Sterling said. “Maybe you’d like to shift your focus to finding the item? Set a couple examples and see what we can shake loose?”
“What I want is Darby’s head on my desk within the hour,” Wire said. She turned to face Sterling and her eyes bore into him. “Can you make that happen?”
“Within the hour? Probably not,” Sterling said. “But I can have her head to you by dawn. That should be plenty of time to track her down before her skull is cracked open by our sentries. Will that work?”
“You don’t believe she can survive? Even being so very Darby?” Wire sneered.
“Wire, we both know that none of us can survive inside the fences. None of us. She’ll probably get pretty far. A lot farther than anyone else has, but in the end, our sentries will get to her.”
“That means they can get to you, Sterling,” Nigel said as he joined them. “Is there a reason our prisoners are standing in the dark directly outside the main entrance?”
“Because I want them to stand out in the dark directly in front of our main entrance,” Wire snapped. “Do you have a problem with that?”
Nigel and Sterling shared a look.
“What?” Wire shouted.
“I’ll let you field that question,” Sterling said. “I have a team to prep and drones to get up in the air. I’m not hunting Darby blind. And I’m not going inside the fences without knowing exactly where she is. I’ll report in every fifteen minutes.”
“Thanks,” Nigel said sarcastically as Sterling left. He sighed and gave Wire a weak smile. “Have you considered getting some sleep? You have been awake for over twenty-four hours straight. You know how you get when sleep deprived.”
“Oh, yes, I think I’ll take a nap while Darby roams the island free and the item still has not been located!” Wire roared.
She got to her feet and rushed Nigel, her left hand gripping him by the throat as she backed him against the wall. His eyes widened in surprise, but he showed no fear.
“Ma’am?” Nigel gasped. “I should oversee the repair of the fences. Now.”
Wire growled then let go. “Fine. Do that. I’ll go and motivate our guests.”
“A good idea,” Nigel said.
“Get out of my sight,” Wire said.
Nigel gave a quick bow of his head and left the security room fast. The terrified tech scooted his ass into the farthest corner from Wire as he could get. She glared at him then left also.
Wire stomped down the hallway to the command center and burst through the door barking orders. People scrambled around to appease her, but she was gone before anyone could even confirm that the orders were being fulfilled. Wire made her way from the command center and down
to a heavily guarded door.
“Open it,” Wire said.
The guards opened the door and moved aside to let her pass. Down a set of stairs and into a dimly lit hallway, Wire growled and muttered to herself the entire time. She walked half a kilometer before she reached a second set of stairs. Up she went and pounded on the thick door that blocked her way.
A bright blue light scanned her then a voice stated, “Password authentication required.”
“Mommy and Daddy should have known better,” Wire said in a crisp, clear tone.
The door clicked open and four guards greeted her before moving out of the way. Down another hallway Wire went before she came to the one and only door. No guards were posted there. All that was before Wire was a black screen in the center of the door.
Wire pressed her right palm against the screen and a green light scanned it. Then she pressed her left palm against the screen and the light was repeated. Finally, she leaned close and opened her eyes wide. A blue light streamed into her eyes then there was a loud klaxon and the door began to slowly open.
“There she is,” Ballantine said from a chair that could only be described as overkill.
His entire body was wrapped in metal straps while his hands were encased in thick gloves which were welded to the chair arms. His feet were encased and welded to the chair’s legs. The only parts of him that could move were his eyes and his mouth. And there was a metal strap hanging loose by his jaw that looked like it could end the mouth’s freedom quickly.
“Time to get to the truth, Ballantine,” Wire said. “We’re taking a trip outside.”
“You sure? I hear there’s a breach in your security,” Ballantine said. “Might get a little…nippy out there.”
He chuckled.
“Get it? Nippy. Like your dead sentries might try for a little biting action.”
“I got it,” Wire said. “How in the hell did you know there was a breach?”
