chair over as I stood. “Progress update team.”
A few seconds of silence was eventually a flurry of voices and sounds, “Multiple primary targets down! Moving up to fourth!”
I picked up my rifle, “Affirmative, keep me posted.” The audio of the fight happening a few floors below me cut out just in time for me to hear a whisper a few metres from me.
I began sniffing the air in an attempt to trace those sharing the room with me but the mask was constricting my senses, “Come up nice and slow so we can talk about this.” I checked my clip as I crouched into the cubicle. “I guarantee I'm much better at hide and seek than you.”
Another whisper found its way to my ears but I still couldn't pinpoint them. Finally deciding that the cons outweighed the pros I tore off and tossed the mask across the floor. “Can't say I didn't warn you.”
There it was, the final whisper, I closed my eyes and tracked the sound back to its source. Five men, sweating. Four wearing a cheap deodorant while the fifth had a rich cologne sprayed heavily over a sweet, floral perfume in an attempt to hide the scent of what I'm guessing was another woman from his wife.
“I know you're guarding him, I know you're probably depending on this job. But believe me when I say it's not worth it. If you stand with your hands up I'll tell my team to let you go.” I waited for a response that came in the form of semi-automatic gunfire smashing the wall ahead of me.
I switched my rifle to semi-automatic while keeping my breathing regular and counted the gunshots that tore through the white walled cages of work-a-day men and women.
'What are the normal people doing today?' I thought as I rose, firing four death sentences in a second that immediately put the suited guards on the ground before they had the chance to reload.
Releasing the breath that I had held in during my brief shooting left me open to another strong scent, “Oh that's disgusting. Really? Are you going to get up or am I going to have to come and get you piss pants?”
The Korean man from the slides shot up with his hands in the air, “Plea-” I squeezed the trigger before he could finish the word. A smoking hole sitting between his eyes as his arms dropped uselessly beside him, dragging his body with him.
The dust started to settle as “Explosives are all set!” Crackled though my ears, I ran back to the fire escape and began to make my way back up.
“Then pull back, everyone to the roof, and get that chopper up there!”
A door slammed open a few floors below me producing Kate and Wolf, “One left sir.” Kate wiped blood from her lips.
“Let’s get him then.”
They smiled at me, “Yessir.”
We moved up the final three sets of stairs before ramming through the roof's doors to find a cowering brown haired man in a blue suit. He was crouched in the corner of the roof. The terror in his bright blue eyes when he looked at me was kind of depressing really, “Go away! Just leave!”
I dropped my gun, “No.”
Wolf was the first to reach him, moving the fifteen metres between us and the target in a blur, “I’d be sorry if… No, even then I wouldn’t be.” Wolf lifted him up by the collar, staring into his sobbing eyes for a moment. Right before tossing him off the edge like he was a rag-doll. His screams echoed but quickly became submerged by the chopper rotors tearing through the rain.
The rest of the team joined us as the helicopter landed between Wolf and I, “The police have this place surrounded, let’s get out of here.”
The team started to get into the chopper while I bent over to pick up my gun, “Hey John, your mission, you should get the fun part.”
I looked up just in time for me to barely catch a small cylindrical detonator that Minks had thrown at me, “I thought this was the fun part!” We laughed for a second while the helicopter lifted a few feet in the air and I started to make my way over, sliding the detonator in my pocket.
I was a few feet from the chopper where everyone sat when a massive sound rattled me to the core. It was like a whale call mixed with a fog horn amplified a hundred times.
The chopper pulled away from the building as the pilot lost control.
Kyle, young Kyle, I never got to know him, I watched as he tumbled out of the helicopter while hands reached out to catch him and missed.
I tried to make a sound but everything was muted as I looked up to the location of the sound to see a black, cigar shaped… ship purging through the black and grey clouds.
It would’ve been at least a kilometre and a half long, a thick blue smoke was pouring out of its sides.
“John!” Sound had returned to me, I switched my gaze to the helicopter, Kate’s hand outstretched “We have to go!”
They were twenty feet away, 'Easy. Jump, grab the skid, get in' I took a step back, ran for the ledge and leaped, why didn’t they come closer?
My hands made contact, but my grip was lost immediately. The soaking metal was too slippery, I swung, making the chopper rock as I flailed, and then I crashed through one of the opposite building’s windows.
The chopper sound began fading while I rolled on the carpet in pain. They must’ve thought I was hanging on.
“Lucy, contact Kate.” Nothing.
“OLHUD, track Kate.” Nothing, no static, no beep, nothing, I was alone.
I felt like I was going to explode but get torn inward at the same time. I rolled over, my legs were filled with broken glass, “Where are you John? Come on, you know this, you’ll be fine, you just have to find out where you are…”
I clambered to my feet, removing the glass in the process which healed instantly. What normally took at least a few minutes closed over in a second.
I was in a dark, white room, no furniture, no pictures, just an empty room with a broken window. Wind sprayed me with the hard droplets raining down as I moved over to the window and looked down to the street.
The blue haze was dissipating over the street where people ran, some screaming, some collapsing. Focusing was becoming an impossible task. The sound and the head first connection with the window had shook my brain to the point that my enhanced senses were next to useless against my pounding heart and the almost painful adrenaline amount of adrenaline slipping through my system.
I pulled off my backpack and scrambled through it for a few seconds before making purchase on my binoculars. Well, monoculars now, I’d smashed one of the lenses and bent the sight. After breaking off the broken half and discarding it I looked down to the street again with the aid of a visual enhancement.
Those who’d collapsed were getting back up and following the others. But they weren’t following, no… they weren’t the stumbling and screaming masses. These people were chasing the others down and… grabbing them, one man came into my vision more prominently than the others, a vagrant, he had grabbed a woman and was…
“No way…”
Yes way, he was biting her. I retreated from the window and bumped into someone whose arms wrapped around me.
I swung my head back, connecting with hard skull wrapped in soft flesh, my would-be assailant crumbling at my feet. When I turned to face him he was still moaning despite the smashed in skull, his jaw snapping violently.
“Nonononono…” His pressed suit coated in fresh blood, I held my head and rocked slightly, “WakeupJohnwakeupJohnwakeupJohn…” I stuffed the broken binoculars in the backpack. Pulled out the detonator from my pocket, flipped the clasp and traced the button with my finger, “…Later.”
I closed it again, put it in my bag and slid the straps over my arms. My first contact still twitching on the floor, this wasn’t a person, not any more.
‘It’s not your fault John.’
A roar pulled me out of my moment of self-reassurance, it was from inside the building.
The door.
I sprinted across the room and slammed the wooden door shut as fists and heads slammed on it from the other side. Ok, so I was less concerned by where I was and more where was I going to go.
The slams getting harder, the door creaking against the force and weight, “SHUT! UP! I’m trying to think!”
The suit moaned again and I lost it. I scooped him up and took him to the window. Then it hit me as I looked over his shoulder to the ground, seven floors. Give or take. “Oh thank you.”
I smiled and gave him a light slap on the cheek, I’d need my rope.
A fist went through the door as I pulled out the nylon weave and wound it around my new friend. The hinges of the failing white barricade creaking, I propped him against the window, tied the other end around my waist and stepped out onto the windowsill as the door burst open. Black, dead eyes staring into mine, her teeth gnashing together, blood and gore dripping,
“So that’s how that feels.” I let myself fall backward as I began my descent. Roars below and above me, I looked over my shoulder to the street and the… well, the zombies had started massing near my landing zone.
“Oh good.” I was going to have to go through a window. The first floor was the safest, I decided before dropping about a metre without me loosening the rope. My suited friend was now peering out over the windowsill.
“No! Sit! Bad zomb-” Too late, he’d flipped over the sill and I was falling into the open maw of the beasts below. I didn’t enjoy the idea of being ripped apart, sounded painful and not altogether heal-able. But as I fell onto them I felt arms crack and splint under my weight, ‘Roll and run John.’
Using the broken arms and skulls as a sort of slide I managed to
The Mulligan Planet Page 18
