by Casey Herzog
Russell paused for the longest time as he studied the damage his bullet had done to the man’s skull. I wasn’t like this before, so rash and impulsive. I’m a shadow of what I was.
“Not yet…Give me some time…”
The man on the other side of the exchange shrugged off that final line from his leader and dropped the digital slate he was working on as he stood from the desk. Patrick pushed red hair out of his eyes and placed his hand to his chin in thought.
“You, you, you and…” he had never learned the name of Russell’s closest guards, those powerfully-built men and women who acted as his sentinels and rarely if ever left the building at all. To Paddy it was strange that they were still here, considering the danger that Russell was exposing himself to by walking around the building unprotected. “…You. Come with me, boss’s orders. We’re moving those prisoners up to the east wing of this floor.”
The four soldiers reluctantly left their posts and followed the red-haired fellow to the elevator. They all despised the man, his posh, arrogant nature a very unlikable trait that rubbed most people the wrong way. Nevertheless, he had a gift with numbers that made him more valuable than anyone else in the building and he knew it. It only made him more insufferable. Even after the world had ended, or actually especially now that the world had ended, trade was crucial to the economy. Patrick was just too good at what he did to be eliminated.
“I need one of you to help me remind the prisoners of their situation, just in case they try anything stupid.” He looked at the group and sneered as none of them spoke. “It’s better if you just talk, it’s not like staying silent will save you from being ordered around by me — something you clearly hate.”
A dark-skinned man called Heinz closed his eyes and nodded.
“I’ll do it. What do you need?”
“That brave one, the one that got her fingers chopped off by Russell…Hurt her.”
The elevator stopped and the doors opened. Paddy walked confidently towards the cells, humming a tune along the way.
The outermost entrance to the cell was a thick steel vault-like door that opened with a code. Russell had recently taken the technology from a bank vault and installed it after a prisoner managed to escape. It was practically impenetrable without very high-end explosives.
Patrick’s fingers tapped the code and entered the cells with a spring in his step. This much responsibility, being so close to the leader…In a time like this, when life isn’t worth a damn, I’m living the dream.
He ordered two of the four sentinels forward to open the door to the largest of the cells and hold the prisoners back, and they quickly obeyed. He carried a gun of his own in a leather holster, but it wasn’t like him to get his hands dirty. Why do it anyway, if these guys can sort any problems out?
Paddy smiled as the two guards pushed into the cell and lifted their rifles at the prisoners gathered inside.
“Hello everyone, I hope I’m not interrupting anything…” He spread his arms and looked around. There were more than twenty prisoners, their suspicious eyes looking up and wondering what he was there for, fully aware that most of the time when one of Russell’s men (or Russell himself) arrived at the cell, somebody ended up dead a couple of hours later. “You look miserable, cheer up for crying out loud!” Nobody said a word. “You’d think there’s nothing to smile about.”
The sentinel he’d talked to before stepped forth.
“They all look weak and frail. The one with no fingers, then?”
“Yes.”
The guard kicked several prisoners out of the way as he searched for the fingerless prisoner and cursed his luck at not having been called by Russell to accompany him on his chase.
“Which one of you lost her fingers to our leader?” The soldier’s voice was heavy with amusement. He fought not to laugh and Paddy smiled. He enjoyed tormenting the prisoners; it felt like a sort of revenge for when he was bullied and mocked as a child for his ginger hair and short stature. Nobody appreciated him. Well, they bloody well do now, don’t they?
“There’s a woman here with no fingers,” Paddy mocked, “You might as well show your face—Ah, here she is…”
They watched her stand from the floor and study each of Russell’s servants in turn. Heinz grabbed her and pulled her close, laughing as he did.
“Who do you think you are, girl? The way you look at us, pah.” Patrick said. “Worse things have happened to our prisoners, so stop sulking.” He raised his voice. “You’re all coming with us. If any of you tries anything stupid, Heinz is going to make this woman pay. She’s probably learned to wipe her ass with the other hand — try anything dumb and I’ll make it even harder.”
Some of the prisoners smiled, and Heinz eyed them strangely. Why are they so calm?
“Come with me, bitch,” Heinz said, and grabbed the prisoner by her maimed hand.
Johanna didn’t even cry out. In fact, Heinz’s eyes went wide as he felt her intact fingers grasp onto his. Patrick and his companions had already turned to leave. The sentinel opened his mouth to speak, but the sound of the door slamming shut cut him off.
Bang.
By the time the man hit the ground, a bullet hole cutting through one of his eyes, the prisoners were already standing, many of them pointing shiny new guns at Russell’s men.
Patrick cried out and pulled out his own weapon. It shook in his grip. The bodyguards weren’t as stupid as he was and lifted their hands.
A laugh echoed around the room.
“What a brave small man,” a rough voice chuckled as he crept from the shadows. Patrick swallowed hard and kept his gun up, if only to feel more confident in his current situation. The prisoners were grinning, and only now did he realize how rejuvenated they looked. The woman had recovered her fingers, the limping man with the broken leg was standing tall and straight…what had happened? “Not going to say anything?”
“I…How did they recover?” A smaller shadow stepped out from the darkness. At first, Patrick didn’t understand, but then he saw his eyes. “It’s you…The healer that the boss wanted to find!”
Johanna moved before the man could react, disarming him and punching her knife into his chest with force. Patrick’s fingers instinctively pulled the trigger several times, but there was no longer any trigger to pull at all. She stood above him as he gargled and moaned.
“Guess whose guns these are?” She watched Frank point a rifle at the guards at the door, who simply threw their own firearms down and kicked them over to him. “Your people are about to receive a massive surprise.”
“You’re not getting out of this building alive,” Patrick hissed through the pain and dizziness of blood loss. “You are morons, slamming that door shut like that. You don’t even have the code to get out of here again and I’ll be dead long before you could torture it out of me.” He smiled triumphantly and savored his last moments.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” the woman sneered.
Callum stepped forward and pulled something from around his back. The rifle was brutal — a long, heavy thing with a power supply attached to its enormous barrel. He turned to the fallen man and shook his head.
“We don’t need a key.”
BOOM BOOM
The vault door’s hinges were destroyed in a single shot, and it just fell outwards like a piece of cardboard. The guards jumped in shock and one of them tried to escape, but he was quickly riddled with bullets and died on the spot.
The prisoners poured out, some of them grabbing the remaining guards and leading them away at gunpoint. The healer walked past Paddy and even Johanna left with a smile. Finally, Callum stood above the man and whistled.
“If you knew what was coming for the rest, you’d be thankful.”
“Fuck you!” Patrick snarled defiantly, and a gunshot ended his life.
As Callum walked out of the prison cell with Paddy’s own gun smoking, he smiled and picked something up off him. It was a communications device.
He plac
ed it on his ear and cleared his throat, mimicking the dead man’s voice.
“S-sir?”
A familiar voice responded.
“Yes? What do you want? I heard a loud noise, have you c—”
“Sir, I’m dead. They’ve killed me,” Callum mocked, his voice returning to normal. “And you’re next.”
He tore the device from his ear and stamped on it. The elevator was waiting in front of him, open and functional.
“Community,” he said loudly, “Move out. We’ve got a mission to do before we leave.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Tables Turned
Russell felt a tremor run through him. The voice, it sounded like one he had heard before.
“Hello?” he growled. “Hello?!”
He screamed and smashed his fist into a wall, caving in the entire section of tiles. There was no fear in his mind. No, it was more of a fury at his own failure. He should never have let himself become a bystander to his own plans.
“I should have gone myself and killed all of those bastard prisoners,” he spat.
They were his people, the man realized. That guy from that fateful night. He came for the prisoners just like he came for the boy. Russell smiled despite everything. He had been waiting for a chance to get revenge on that mysterious soldier that had defied — and defeated — him in his own territory and in front of his own men. A new set of bones would decorate his throne soon, he promised himself.
He gave one final look at the fallen sergeant and his mouth twisted.
“I’m sorry, it wasn’t your fault. It was all mine.” Standing, he walked to the door and stopped. “But I’m going to fix my mistake.”
They only managed to travel two floors down before the electricity feeding the elevator was cut. The capsule came to a halt, and Callum groaned. He had expected to get further down.
“Alright guys and girls. We’re going to need to walk the rest of the way.”
With the help of a blade and brute force, they managed to tear the doors open. Luckily, the elevator had stopped on mostly open space and not between floors. Otherwise, they’d have been trapped.
They each crawled out onto the floor they’d landed on and began to fan out. It was an abandoned-looking level with mostly wooden boxes and empty space. Nonetheless, there were voices coming from the surrounding corridors.
“The fire stairs?” Dante asked with worry.
“Yes, but first we need to locate their leader.” He pushed one of the guards forward and began to walk. The two men and the woman were now prisoners, but they were also hostages with vital knowledge of the layout of the tower.
“What’s that smell?” Johanna asked. Without a doubt, there was a strange chemical odor in the air that made them all uneasy.
“They’re going to kill us all; he’s going to use it!” one of the guards blurted out.
“Shut up, Michael,” the woman snapped back at him.
Callum pulled Michael away from the group before his female companion could shut him up. “What did you mean by ‘use it’?”
“We’ve already planned for intruders in our building. If such a situation came to pass, Russell ordered us to put on our masks and fill the place with a military-grade chemical weapon gas that kills within minutes. It’s already begun to fill the building. It’s over for you and for us. Your little rebellion is finished.”
Callum simply smiled at him and patted him on the shoulder.
“Stick with us and nothing will happen. Our boy will keep us alive and well. Just point us in the right direction to where we can intercept your boss. You might even survive this ordeal if we pull this off and make it out safely.”
Dante overheard and turned to look at the thug as the man glared at him. Long before Johanna had spoken, he had already felt his body react to the effects of the gas flooding the floor, his gift freeing the mysterious energy that could bring life even in circumstances of certain death. He had felt great joy in seeing the adults from the community once more, Johanna’s eyes growing moist as she had picked him up and hugged him. All of the prisoners were grateful that he’d arrived to heal their injuries and illnesses — from which nobody had been safe in the cold, damp darkness — and they had thanked him. Frank had promised to make him a sword ‘or something’ once they returned.
He’d never been in such a deadly situation, but if his friends needed him to stay close and keep them safe, he wasn’t going to fail them.
“I’m sorry Susan,” Michael sighed at his furious companion. “It’s this way,” he nodded, pointing at one of the corridors.
“Thank you,” Callum said triumphantly as he shoved Susan forward before she could lash out at her fellow guard. With a group of armed and bitter prisoners behind him and a building full of violent thugs ahead, Callum silently conceded there was no other way this was going to end but in bloodshed. It was only a matter of who was going to lose more men…and who was going to lose his own life.
As they crept down the corridor, their weapons up and their eyes narrowed, Callum remembered similar times in the war. Darker times, surely. For all of Russell’s cruelty, even if he managed to kill them all by torture, it would be nothing compared to what the alien invaders did. It filled him with fury just to think of it, and he began to remember how the war had changed him, molded him into something entirely different.
I am no longer the same man I was when the war was raging, he admitted to himself in the darkness. Too many things had happened to make him harder and stronger, and only now did he realize how fragile and valuable a human life could be.
Despite the people surrounding him, he felt alone. Nobody could see things as he did, he who had fought the otherworldly creatures in the war. They had been defeated for a cause: to unite mankind once more and save the planet.
If only all of our heroes could come back and teach our new ‘leaders’ what being a great figure meant! You would have them begging for forgiveness through their tears.
His mind drifted, now reminded of what had taken place on that bloody battlefield and how he’d become what he was now. It was just a memory now, but it was one of the big moments in a man’s life that shaped him.
As the cold and unwelcoming corridor stretched out for many more feet, Callum began to remember.
Killing humans will never be easy, despite whatever they may have done to the world, but killing aliens was an entirely different situation all together.
He felt himself being pulled away as he walked, and finally, his mind seemed to understand what he wanted.
Callum wanted to remember.
Eight Years Ago
The machine blared again, its sound a shockwave that rebounded across each surface and seemed to amplify as it traveled.
Private Thorpe cowered behind the remains of the tank, his brow sweaty and his bladder threatening to release. The sergeant sitting beside him placed a hand on his shoulder and attempted to speak calming words to him.
It was not an irrational fear the young soldier felt, but an effect of the Outsider’s sound wave technology that hit humans — especially inexperienced humans — with a feeling of relentless and overwhelming terror that occasionally made them black out or even suffer panic attacks. Because of this, fights between the creatures and even the best human soldiers were usually over before they even began. Some, like the sergeant, were simply immune to whatever it was that caused the reaction.
The Outsider machine shifted and scanned the surroundings. Despite the darkness of a new moon night, it had no trouble locating enemies.
The battlefield was strewn with the bodies of human soldiers, very few Outsider soldiers or armor having fallen to the inferior weapons of their counterparts. An alien presence within the mechanized robot felt great pleasure at the number of dead, but it knew there were at least three more soldiers hiding somewhere. It had spotted them in a building through its visor and was aware that its burst of automatic fire hadn’t killed them.
Its radar caught a faint readi
ng behind the burning tank it had destroyed earlier, and the Outsider pushed forward towards it. The remaining soldiers were probably using it as cover, hoping that the burning fuels would mask their heat signatures. The alien savored the victory. The battle had been incredibly one-sided; it was only about mopping up the remains of the enemy force now.
“Thorpe, we gotta move; the mech is coming this way.” Sergeant Fuller managed to finally snap his soldier back to consciousness and Thorpe nodded nervously. He could hear the stomping of the enemy suit and felt the rubble around him quaking with each step. He and the officer had barely escaped the onslaught that had hit them so hard and ruthlessly. A drop-force of Outsider ‘mech’ suits plummeted from the sky and slammed into the center of their defensive formation, the death tolls multiplying in the hundreds in the first ten minutes of the attack. Although they had initially hid in the buildings and waited for the enemy to leave the area, they’d been spotted. Only Sanchez — the sniper ace of their squad — had managed to stay in the building undetected, his cloak keeping him invisible from alien radar.
