by Pete Aldin
"Get the goddamn bat," Elliot snapped and added, "Elbows, head, hands", hoping the oncoming men wouldn't register it above the roar of the crowd and the snarling of the infected. He whipped the belt buckle at a set of fingers that grazed his boot, but the blow didn't strike hard enough to break anything. He moved two squares over. "Jimmy!"
The man with the trash can lid shifted back and forth between two squares, sidestepping a persistent zombie below him. His frantic dance drew raucous comments from members of the crowd. And Elliot was doing the same damn thing, skipping left to avoid the one hunting him, marking time—wasting time. His blood pounded in his ears. He was about to call to Jimmy again when a gunshot rang out.
Da Silva had fired into the air. Now he shouted at the women stalled in their starting position. "Move forward or the next round is in your heads!"
"Jesus," Elliot breathed as the women lost their footing. One of them had tried to obey Da Silva. The other had stayed frozen. The result was the first falling and pulling her friend with her. They sprawled awkwardly across the floor, gasping, limbs disappearing through the gaps, faces contorting with pain, with terror.
Jimmy came alive then, shouting, "No!" All danger forgotten, the kid bounced across grid squares like they were stepping stones.
Elliot's shout to stop him was lost in the screams from one of the women. Pinned beneath her friend, her lip ran with blood from banging it on metal. Both her arms were down through the grating. When her friend began to roll off her, she stayed there, anchored from below, now jerking and shuddering and squealing as the deaders tore at her.
As Jimmy reached them, the other woman started up her own wailing. A leg was through the grate. She yanked it up and got to crawling back to the path, bleeding from the calf and ankle. Abrasions? Or bites?
Jimmy tried to pull the first woman up, but lost his grip and had to do a little dance of his own to stop from toppling. She kept screaming, even as she tore free, rolling over onto her back. Her arms ran red. Flesh hung ragged above her wrists like torn sleeves
The second woman made it to the path and Da Silva was up and striding toward her. Would he shoot her? Shove her back onto the grid when she came off it?
A flash of light drew Elliot's attention away. The guy with the vacuum pipe was headed for him, light glinting off the metal. Elliot tightened his grip on his belt. Blinking, sweating, the man advanced in small steps; his length of steel was probably the deadliest weapon in the game.
"Same side, man," Elliot said to him, but pointlessly. The man snarled and pressed forward. A moment later, Elliot pulled away as the pipe's end sliced the air three inches from his nose. He stepped forward to whip the belt across the man's head, catching his ear, sending him crashing to the grate. The pipe fell through, the man landing over the gap. On the balls of his feet, Elliot considered hitting the man again. He was reticent to finish him. But this was The Battle for The Downs all over again. This was the goddamned Middle East.
Take him out and get to Jimmy.
The guy had a hand out near Elliot, scrambling for purchase. Elliot stomped it, breaking fingers. The man pulled it to his chest, but didn't make a sound. Braced on three limbs, he glared death at Elliot. Elliot raised the belt—
A blur of grey-metal and a loud clunk. The trash can lid did the job before him. The man with the broken fingers slumped, stunned as his former friend side-stepped him, changing his grip on the lid as he shifted attention to Elliot. Elliot moved a couple of squares sideways, watching hands reach up and clasp the fallen man's clothing.
Jimmy screamed.
The young man had fallen across the heavily bleeding woman's legs, trying to help her again. His own left leg and arm had dipped into the space below the steel struts. Hands snatched at his clothing. Jimmy wrenched the arm back up, swearing. His sleeve was ripped, the wrist oozing red. He scrambled on hands and knees toward the front, kicking and slapping at pusbag hands, reaching the path in moments and rolling onto it near where the first woman had come to rest. Rather than shooting them, Da Silva leaned over both of them, squinted, then gestured. Four cops came to wrench the injured people upright.
Elliot stepped away from his opponent as he advanced, watching the activity off the stage with teeth grinding. He fully expected Jimmy and the woman to get tossed back onto the grid, into the waiting arms of the undead; the mere act of falling onto that uneven steel could break bones. Instead, the four cops got a hold of their arms and armpits and dragged them down the path away from the arena.
What!
He got it then. They'd been bitten. The SERPs would let them turn, put them in their "jury".
"Wait!" he yelled. But nobody heard him.
The guy with the metal lid came in close. Elliot feinted at his head, reversed the swing of his belt as he put the lid up to shield himself, sliced at the guy's knee. The man cried out, faltered, wobbled as he lost balance, leaving his left side exposed. Elliot slammed his belt buckle across the guy's ear, flinging him onto hands and knees, the lid flying free as the pipe had for his former comrade.
Elliot vaulted closer to the dying woman still down on the grid near the path. She shuddered in shock as the undead pulled at her, trying to get her limbs back down within reach of their snapping jaws.
Jimmy was being dragged the opposite direction, face swiveling between the men carrying him.
"Take off his arm!" Elliot hollered at them. The two men hauling the teenager along slowed, blinking at him. Then they laughed and carried on hauling. "Above the bite! Cut it off! You got surgeons! He can still make it!"
"Shut up!" shouted a crowd member, a civilian.
Elliot's opponent had made it to his feet again, one arm cradled to his chest. The lid was firmly in the other hand. His breathing was ragged, his eyes wild. He knew the game, he knew the rules. Even damaged, he was committed. He moved between Elliot and Jimmy, got closer.
Already balanced right for it, Elliot delivered a straight kick to the guy's right knee, pulling back into a controlled stance as the leg crumpled. The guy cried out again, sprawling face down. A couple of shadows shifted below, coming for the man. Ideas flew through Elliot's mind, impulses, ways of killing this guy quickly to end his suffering—he saw the belt around the man's neck, pulling up, back and around ...
But Jimmy.
Elliot's gaze locked with Da Silva's. He was about to demand they take off the kid's arm again—but the message behind the faux sympathy in Da Silva's face was plain. There'd be no surgery for Jimmy.
"Sonofabitch!" Elliot roared and hopscotched across the rows of square to the path, tinnitus building, squealing, his vision going white around the edges, rage burning in his gut and pressing against the insides of his temples—and then he was off the gridwork, his feet on concrete, vaguely aware of cheers and applause. He was raising his belt, gunning for Da Silva, legs pumping—
A moment's disorientation. The crowd and spotlights swung around. His back was to the concrete. And he was spasming, convulsing. Confusion. Then the pain: a thousand burning needles. The second taser of the night hurt just as bad as the first had.
Somehow, he got enough control of his head to turn it, to turn it the way they'd taken the woman. And Jimmy. The kid was down, too, dragging along the ground, each foot in the hands of a black-clad cop. He thrashed, might've been yelling—Elliot couldn't hear anything beyond the roaring of his own agony. But the young man's face was turned his way, his mouth open, his bitten hand stretching toward Elliot. The same way the boy in the Al-Kasrah market had held out his hand toward parents who could never come for him, would never save him.
White mist and white noise closed around Elliot. As abruptly as the pain had come, it departed. Everything "Now" was gone and there was nothing but white static, dust and cordite, the ringing of tinnitus.
And the guilt.
Always the guilt.
16
The concrete path was cold, hard, rough. It should have hurt his back, his head.
Elliot was beyond h
urt.
The time he lay there—watched over by a sneering Erikson—was indeterminate. Everything moved at breakneck speed around him. As if in time-lapse, the crowd ebbed and shifted and flowed, some leaving, many more milling while finishing drinks and talking over micro-events from the "trial".
"Did you see that...?"
"How funny was it when ...?"
"Man, I'd hate to be ..."
"Next time, we totally should ..."
A chinking sound was Erikson kicking Elliot's belt away out of reach. Perhaps some fragmented part of his mind had commanded one of his hands to reach for it. He didn't know.
Then in the cloud of noise, he heard Miller discussing with a woman how long it'd take "the kid and the chick" to turn.
"I'll put a bottle of Captain Morgan's on one hour."
"From now? Bottle of scotch says closer to two."
"Where'd you take them?" Elliot's own voice sounded flat and metallic in his ears, like he was playing the game he and Tommy Harrison had played as kids, putting a can to their bottom lips, attempting robot voices and then army radio ones. "Where's Jimmy?"
Only Erikson caught it. She said, "Waitin' to join the jury." She reached out and slapped someone's arm. "How long I gotta stand here? Been a long day, mate."
The man turned, separated from the mob. Da Silva. "Can ya walk?" he asked Elliot. "Are ya right?"
Elliot closed his eyes to shut him out. The longer he lay here, the longer he rested, the more "right" he became. The more ready he became. Despite the cold night air and the hard concrete. Despite the second tasing.
"He's faking it," Erikson said. A boot kicked his glute. Not hard. Exploratory. But it should have hurt. He barely felt it. She said, "Get up."
Da Silva made a musing sound. "Two tasings. I think he cracked his head on the ground, too."
He hadn't, not that he could feel anyway. Elliot didn't feel concussed, he didn't feel injured. He just felt ready to kill bad people.
"I'm not standing here all night," Erikson complained.
"All right, ya big sook. Go get your baby sleep. I'll take care of it."
A scrunch of her boots turning on the pavement, retreating.
Da Silva called two names that Elliot forgot the moment he heard them. More scrunching and scuffing on the path nearby. "Put him away for the night."
"Rooster's not gonna like company," one said. The woman who'd been betting with Miller. "Gonna be interesting having two prosecutors for a while."
"True. Rooster's even less sociable than this prick is. So put him in the ice room."
Elliot kept the frown from his face, hearing that. A night in a freezer was not acceptable. Then the penny dropped: ice was what Aussies called crystal meth. There was a hospital right there, right behind the stage where these mouth-breathing toilet stains had just murdered five people. The ice room would be where they kept meth addicts in full freak-out in the old days.
"And his dinner?" Another voice Elliot didn't recognize, male this time.
"Make it breakfast." Da Silva's voice was already receding into the background buzz of other conversations, the clink of bottles and glasses. "Glenda can make it."
"Up ya get, buddy," said the male voice. Another prodding boot.
Elliot opened his eyes slow, blinking, then rolled onto hands and knees, got himself up on his feet in stages. He hoped he appeared less steady than he felt. Because he certainly felt steady—detached, but steady. On autopilot, he moved with them—a man and woman whose nametags he wasn't the slightest bit interested in. Elliot was an observer, watching on as two SERPs marched a former Army Ranger and PMC into the hospital proper. Moving. Across moist lawn. Through powered sliding doors. Along squeaky hospital floors, under low emergency lighting. Following signs toward the emergency department on the far end.
A slide show of death played in the peripheral vision of his mind's eye. His treacherous memory spewed up sights and sounds and stinks of violence—some from minutes ago, some from years ago—mixing it up, keeping him guessing about what and who would pop up next. Despite it, Elliot did not lose himself. His cold, dark rage kept the past at bay, kept it over there on his internal screen, rather than letting that past swallow him yet again.
His rage did another thing: it drew strength and focus from his past. From his ... his trauma, as the army psych had called it. Elliot the observer was in control. Elliot, the operator. Aware of hospital smells and the sounds of his captors' boots on linoleum. Noting each component of the two cops' relaxed and incompetent behavior ...
They bracketed him, the female behind, the male in front. Confident in their armor, their weapons, their location. And careless with fatigue, weary from another long day of psychopathy.
The woman whistled quietly, some pop tune from when the world had had the luxury of happiness. Her rifle was in front of her. But he'd seen the safety was on. And her dominant hand kept going to her hair, brushing it from her eyes. Or rubbing her neck. Her combat knife was sheathed on her chest plate, not on her belt. Her sidearm was clipped firmly in its holster.
The man had slung his MCX behind him like an idiot. A kid playing at soldier. An arrogant buffoon. The stumpy rifle lay against his lower back and ass, the strap loose across his left shoulder, under his right armpit. Elliot wasn't going to get enough control to take a shot with it. But he wouldn't need to. The idiot had a hand on his sidearm, but his holster was also clipped securely across the grip. He yawned frequently. And he'd bumped his shoulder against the doorframe when they'd entered the building; tired, ready for bed, sleep chemicals flooding his brain.
There were no sleep chemicals in Elliot's brain.
The woman was drifting a little behind now. One of her boots squeaked against the polished floor as she stumbled in her tiredness. She swore and laughed to herself. Elliot turned his head, side vision catching just how far she'd drifted back. He passed a fire extinguisher and counted the seconds between his passing and hers.
One one-thousand. Two one-thousand. Three one-thousand. Four one-thousand. Five one-thousand. Six one-thousand. Seven one-thousand.
That was plenty of time. That next corner would be the perfect opportunity.
They turned it and Elliot closed the distance between him and the leading cop.
He took firm hold of the rifle, snatching it back and twisting it hard and counter-clockwise. The strap yanked the guy's right arm up and pinned his hand tight against his neck. Elliot kept twisting, swinging the cop around to face the direction they'd come. The man's free hand went to the strap as he started choking. Elliot felt the trachea give under the pressure. One last twist. Then Elliot tugged the rifle hard. Speed, leverage with the strap, the rifle's weight, Elliot's weight—these conspired to snap the man's neck.
Five seconds' work. Done.
In the sixth second, Elliot was vaulting the falling corpse to meet the female cop as she rounded the corner, her eyebrows raised in query over the noise. Her eyebrows dropped. Her dominant hand went to her rifle as she saw him coming. Exactly what he wanted. He wrapped his arms around hers in a bear hug. His first headbutt broke her nose. The second headbutt ensured the shock set in good. As she crumpled, he let her go, one hand going to her rifle to keep it from swinging up. He followed her body down to the floor and kneeled on her hip, drew her knife. Her eyes had rolled up and she made little sounds like queries as blood poured from the shattered nose. A throat slash would paint him red, so with one hand pressing her head to the floor, he struck her twice in the temple with the knife's pommel. She went slack. He hit her a third time, then felt for a pulse. Weak for a few seconds. Then none. He waited a little longer to make sure. From where he knelt, Elliot paused, listening. No other sounds in the hospital at all. And yes, the woman was dead.
He straightened, considered the bodies a moment. The two of them were complicit, they were—
Murderers. Slavers.
No better than ISIS and all the other petty warlord psychopaths. No better than the Death Druids. No better
than Jock.
Blood from her nose stippled his left hand. He wiped it on his pants before dragging the woman's MCX off her corpse. Listening again: the distant sound of a car engine, nothing close.
Her rifle went on the floor for the moment, her handgun into his waistband.
Pausing every ten seconds to listen, it took a full minute and a half to strip the items he wanted from them both: armor-vests, the male's MCX and belt with handgun, their ammo pockets and knife-sheaths. He put on the vest and the belt. Slung the woman's rifle over his back and tightened the strap hard against himself. Stuffed the spare magazines for both her weapons into pockets. Got her sidearm holster off her belt and added it onto his new belt, put her pistol in it.
It took him a while to realize he was standing there now. Just standing there. Swaying on the balls of his feet. Clenching and unclenching fists. Repeating his new inventory over and over like a mantra.
Two .40 cal handguns, four spare mags. Two assault rifles, six spare mags. Two flashbangs, one can pepper spray, one combat knife.
Get yourself a vehicle.
Two .40 cal handguns, four spare mags. Two assault rifles, six spare mags. Two flashbangs, one can pepper spray, one combat knife.
Get yourself a vehicle.
Except he wasn't getting any closer to a vehicle. He was standing there in a dimly lit corridor, swaying and grunting. The slide show from earlier was still playing to the side of his mind. He could hear some of it now—McGovern asking Radler to massage his feet on the way to Al-Kasrah, the gunshot that heralded Birdy's death. Smell some of it—smoke and dust and Woodsy's cauterized flesh.
What now?
There was blood on both his hands now from the woman's nose and head wounds, a little on his boot. It was still quiet. The hospital didn't even tick with temperature changes. No air con humming. Silent as a tomb.
