by M. E. Betts
"It would have blown eventually," the security member who had used the grenade explained. "I just wanted to hurry the explosion along, before it happened inside the building."
Shari shrugged from her position on the roof. "Probably for the best," she conceded.
She hurried across the roof of the concourse, crossing over Lake Shore Drive below, toward the roof of the north building. She wondered if any of the sadists had managed to survive the explosion and ensuing crash. She glanced northward briefly as she crossed the glass-enclosed walkway, her assault rifle raised. The rest of the fleet of sadists was on their way down the highway, and would likely arrive at the convention center within a few minutes. Shari uttered a perturbed titter of delirium as she ducked into the north building.
When they get here, she thought, I'll get to see how else I can fuck this up.
Merlin had already begun to to sneak away from Dr. Liu, backtracking toward the holding area,when the building was hit by the snow truck. The average person may have retreated, fearing for their safety, as the area was filled with sudden, intense heat and a black cloud of smoke and debris. For Merlin, however, that fear was easily overridden by his desire for the duffel bag which had been locked in the holding area.
"Merlin's kind of goodie bag," he said to himself, his tone sing-song and giddy. "The kind that will only fit in a duffel bag."
As he reached the holding room, he realized that half of it now lay downstairs, having collapsed on top of several cubicles on the first floor. He started across a vertical metal beam, spying the intact evidence locker containing the duffel bag on an unbroken section of floor on the other side.
As he balanced his way across the beam, it became difficult to lift his feet. He realized that the rubber soles of his old-school, high-top sneakers were becoming pliable and beginning to melt as he crossed the hot metal beam. He yanked his feet free, managing to narrowly avoid toppling off-balance, and then hurried the remainder of the way across.
He reached the locker, roughly four feet high. As he studied the lock, he realized that he was unlikely to either pick or break it. He inspected the locker itself in closer detail, noting its rather shoddy materials and design. In the distance, he heard McCormick security approaching. He took a deep breath, lifting the locker slightly off of the floor. He gathered his strength, edging it toward the border where the floor had been ripped away. He lifted the locker as high as he could, then slammed it with all his might down into the first floor below, striking it hard against a marble reception counter. Its structure buckled upon impact, like a piñata, spewing its contents among the litter already scattered throughout the ruined room.
Merlin slithered carefully down a diagonally-slanted section of floor, lowering himself until his feet dangled about six feet from the tiles of the first floor. He dropped down, crouching softly as he landed. He claimed his prize, the duffelbag, and perused the other items littering the floor. There had been more drugs in the locker, and he scoured the floor to find as many as he could. He stopped to inspect another object, catching the light from outside, pouring in through the hole in the wall. He crouched to look more closely at the shiny, metal instrument. It was an eating utensil, bearing a small engraving. TITANIUM, MADE IN U.S.A.
"Epic spork!" he breathed, tucking it into a pocket.
He stood, slinging the bag across his chest, and slipped away quietly into the smoky bowels of the north building.
Shari approached the smoldering snow truck, noticing the heat emanating from the vehicle well before she reached it. She lowered the shield of her riot helmet to protect her face as the temperature rose. She could tell from the sections of wall and debris enveloping the truck, undisturbed since the crash, that no one had exited the vehicle afterward. As she got closer, she realized that the interior of the truck was very much on fire. Upon closer inspection, the weak flames licking from the narrow windshield opening seemed to be dying down due to a lack of oxygen inside the nearly fully enclosed metal-fortified monstrosity. Ain't nobody alive in there, Shari thought, beginning to back away slightly.
"I'm at the site of the crash," she said into her walkie-talkie. "Who else is close by?"
"Myself and two others," responded a female member of security. "Give us about ten seconds, you'll see us."
"I'm headed up to the roof," Shari said as the three fellow security guards approached. "Everyone in the truck is either dead or near dead. Thank God it exploded before it hit the building, and not on the inside. It looks like the fire is contained, so at least that's one less thing to worry about."
"That's a major plus, all things considered," muttered a male security guard, ruffling his short, graying hair.
"Yeah," Shari concurred. "Keep an eye on that hole, though." She raised her walkie-talkie as she started toward a stairwell. "All snipers, continue to stand by. Everyone else, make your way to the crash site on the northeast corner of the north building."
She replaced the radio on its loop at her hip as she jogged up the stairs, taking the stairs two at a time as she made her way to the roof. Her dark brown eyes were glazed-over and distant, and she was only vaguely aware of herself as she uttered, "I want Kandi."
In the south building, Daphne made her way northward, to the former site of the holding cell, after helping to secure the civilians in a relatively safe part of the building. She passed Dr. Liu on her way out.
"Where's Merlin?" she asked.
The doctor sighed, raising his hand in exasperation. "He disappeared when the building was hit," he said. "I would have looked for him, but I couldn't see or breathe with the smoke and dust. I have no clue where he's gone off to, or what's happened to him."
Daphne nodded. "Don't blame yourself," she said as she started away. "I wouldn't. Merlin will do what Merlin wants if he has any say in the matter, right?"
The doctor snorted. "That's about right."
"And besides," Daphne added over her shoulder, "you and me both know he's likely to be fine. He's a damn cockroach."
Shari paced the roof of the north building, shielded by vertical windmills from the view of her fellow snipers to her rear. The snow had intensified even further, carried across the lake from the northeast.
Her radio crackled from her hip as she gazed out over the highway, at the advancing wave of sadists.
"You didn't tell us Jimmy's dead!" a young male voice anguished. It was the voice of R.J., who was around the same age as Jimmy. The two had been very close. Shari winced, hoping that R.J. hadn't been the one to personally discover his friend's corpse.
"I'm sorry, R.J.," she said into her walkie-talkie.
"I thought you told him not to do it!" the young man sobbed from the other end.
"I did," Shari uttered, her voice dripping with defeat. She panned the scope of her rifle up the highway, where the sadists were making their way toward the convention center.
"This is Enrique," her radio crackled. "Mindy and me are heading out with the frags."
"Do your thing," Shari replied.
A moment later, Shari saw Enrique and Mindy, the convention center's two resident parkour aficionados, cross the train tracks to the west, then follow the tracks northward toward the sadists. Shari panned the scope to her right, toward the highway, and was promptly greeted with the sight of Jimmy's corpse, badly burned on his front side and severely mangled from being run over. His left leg was crushed, nearly flattened in his pant leg, and the right leg was missing altogether. She uttered a cry of profound disgust and grief. How old was he? she thought. Twenty? Nineteen? Younger?
She removed her riot helmet, coursing her hands through her knotted, curly hair, which had accumulated a powdery dusting of fine, dry snow. She paused to dislodge the strands which she had uprooted, embedded beneath her fingernails as she thought, I told you, Jimmy. I did tell you.
Her radio crackled again.
"That's one down on your watch," said a low, gravelly male voice. "Should I get a scorecard?"
"Who the hell said t
hat?" Shari demanded, raising her voice into the mouthpiece of her radio.
"Said what?" a female voice enquired. "No one was saying anything."
"Down here," Shari heard the unidentified male voice say through her radio's speaker.
She walked a few steps to the edge of the roof. She peered down at the highway below, which ran north to south between the north and east buildings, with the glass concourse joining the two buildings at the second floor.
Standing in the road, grinning up at her, was the phantom sadist she had seen on and off during her journey from Kentucky. His black eyes, devoid of whites, matched his hair and his leather coat.
"Making the best use of your time?" he asked. "Helping your people to stay alive?" He smiled, dimples forming on his angular, stubbly face. "People like Jimmy?"
"Fuck off," Shari whispered, leaning over the edge of the roof to spit onto the spectre.
"What about Enrique and Mindy?" the imaginary sadist prodded, his black eyes gleaming. "You think they're okay? Or did they get decapitated, like poor Jimmy?"
"Bullshit!" Shari hissed. "I can't climb into other people's heads and control the shit that they do! Jimmy acted of his own volition."
She hurled her radio down at the figure, where it smashed upon impact with the asphalt road. She regretted the action immediately after she had done it, keenly aware that she was losing her grip on the last semblance of self-control. However, the most seemed to have been effective, as the phantom sadist was gone, at least for the time being, with only the fragments of her shattered radio lying in the road where he had been standing, taunting her.
She cracked her knuckles and raked her fingers through her hair, breathing heavily as she looked down the highway. The approaching sadists filled the highway as they steadily poured out of the east Loop.
"How far?" she muttered aloud, gazing through her scope. "Half a mile or less? If it's half a mile, I can hit 'em."
She realized suddenly that she had an intense need to urinate. She paused, deliberating whether she should attempt to get some early sniping in, or answer nature's call. She decided that she would prefer not to do battle with a full bladder, so she stepped between two rows of the vertical windmills lining the roof, lowered her pants and crouched. As the stream began, she heard voice coming from the edge of the roof, about fifteen feet away.
"You need to learn some things now that I'm back, princess," said the familiar female voice with the British accent.
Shari's eyes trailed the roof, seizing on a pair of weathered jackboots. Her gaze continued upward, taking in legs clad in military fatigue pants and a knee-length leather duster, its ends flapping in the chilled winter wind. Nearly every inch of the garment was covered in patches, some of familiar symbols, and others that Shari couldn't place. She was fairly certain one of the ones near the bottom said The Sex Pistols and one nearer the middle seemed to bear the image of the Jamaican flag. There were many, however, that Shari suspected to be imaginary symbols and imagery, not based on anything real that she knew of. Her arms and knees were capped with tactical pads visible above the fatigues and duster, and there was also a vest-like chest covering that resembled steel snake skin, with armored plates that looked like they would afford a good deal of movement. Her left shoulder had a small, circular metal pauldron, while the one on the right was more intricate, with several steel plates overlapping one another. The whole set of armor had a seasoned, lived-in feel.
The figure, whom Shari saw from a profile angle, was leaned back slightly, her fly open, and urinating in an arc off the edge of the roof, using two fingers placed strategically around her labia and pulling up on the vaginal mound. She turned, her familiar face gazing playfully at Shari, her black eyes twinkling. Her shiny, bouncy blonde curls were now replaced with a platinum mohawk. She continued speaking.
"Lesson number one: pee standing up," she said. "Much safer in battle than squatting to do your business, don't you think?"
Shari nodded, numb and stunned, yet distantly aware that she felt profoundly relieved. She shook herself out of it, remembering that she was in the middle of a task. She hurried and finished, pulling up her pants.
"You're here," she breathed. "I needed you."
Kandi smirked. "Eh, it seems you've learned your lesson."
Shari remembered what she had been doing before stopping to relieve her bladder.
"If you'll excuse me, need to do this," she told Kandi, raising the barrel of her assault rifle and fixing her sight on the closest of the motorcyclists.
"Of course," Kandi said. "Who am I to stop you?"
Shari took a shot at the sadist, missing by a narrow margin. She aimed again, peering intently through the whirling snowflakes. She steadied the shot, squeezing the trigger. A report echoed, and an instant later, the sadist slumped sideways, tumbling from the motorcycle, which skidded forward into one of many cars abandoned in the highway.
Shari let out a loud victory cry, aiming at the next one. She pulled the trigger, watching the driver slump lifelessly forward, his motorcycle slowing and idling. The driver of the ATV behind the motorcycle hit the bike lying in the road, after running over its driver. The operator of the ATV was ejected from the vehicle, the impact propelling the body through a nearby windshield.
"That's what they get," she told Kandi. "I didn't ask for this."
"You're explaining yourself to the wrong girl," Kandi said. "Why preach to the choir?"
Shari heard muted footsteps approaching from the stairwell. A moment later, Daphne's face came into view.
"What are you doing up here?" she asked. "I've been calling for you on the radio."
"Uh, yeah," Shari said, motioning to the edge of the roof. "My radio fell down there. And getting ready to snipe, to answer your question."
About half a mile away, they heard an explosion of a frag grenade as it detonated. Shari gazed through her scope, where body parts and motorcycle pieces rained down onto the highway. She grabbed Daphne's walkie-talkie from the other woman's hip.
"Alright, people on the ground. Make your way toward Soldier Field, but keep in contact with Enrique and Mindy on the way. I don't want any friendly frag action."
"I'll head out with them," Daphne said, sliding the visor of her helmet down over her face. "Let us know what you see up here with your bird's eye view." She paused, turning back and holding out her walkie-talkie to Shari. "Take this, but for God's sake, try not to throw it off the roof."
"The talons of the raptor are swooping in for a ground kill," Kandi said, regarding Daphne admirably as the young woman started away. As she disappeared into the stairwell, another blast could be heard from down the road. Shari surveyed the damage through her scope, counting just under a dozen sadist casualties. The dead and severely wounded littered the road as the rest of the group continued south toward the convention center.
"You and me, Princess," Kandi said from beside Shari, "we're gonna make 'em pay."
Through her scope, Shari saw her ground forces beginning to make their way north along the railroad tracks, west of the long line of abandoned freight cars which formed a barrier between sadists and McCormick security. Most of the latter carried riot shields, as well as assault rifles and varied close combat weapons.
"Enrique, Mindy," Shari said into her walkie-talkie, "move in behind them before they get any closer to our people on the ground. Hit them with a couple more grenades."
"Our pleasure," Mindy replied.
"I like this Mindy," Kandi said.
Shari watched as her forced on the ground continued advancing northward. She saw Daphne slinking along the line of leafless fruit trees lining Lake Shore Drive, nearing Soldier Field, ducking into the cover of a three-foot-high shrub line. As Shari continued to survey the area, she heard several more grenades go off, closer than the last one. She peered through her scope, taking in the carnage of dozens of sadists strewn across Lake Shore Drive. There were some intact and some in pieces, some dead and some alive.
A group
of undead began to make their way down the road, the victims of the first grenade who had died of injuries other than brain trauma and arisen in search of the living. All told, the dead, soon to be dead, and undead sadist casualties numbered around fifty. Losses on the McCormick side were limited to Jimmy, the shotgun-toting skateboarder. Shari knew all too well, however, that there would be more losses on her side. Her gaze flitted over the sadists who were still moving and functioning, estimating around a hundred more.
As she squinted, peering through her scope, she saw a wounded sadist slink off the road, limping into the relative cover offered by a covered bus stop. She saw him lift a long-barreled revolver, but from the distance, she couldn't be sure exactly what type of gun it was. The sadist lifted the barrel of the gun, pointing it toward a building to his west, across Lake Shore Drive. She lifted her walkie-talkie, drawing in a breath to warn Enrique and Mindy, whom she presumed to be in the building. Just before she spoke into the radio, she saw Daphne step out from behind a dormant, brown shrub in the well-planted median between the two opposing directions of lanes. Daphne raised her arm, her well-muscled hand gripping one of her sharpened wooden sticks. In one smooth motion, she flicked the sharpened wood at the sadist, propelling it into one of his eyes. After scavenging the body and slicing off the right ear, she ducked back into the thick, tangled barren winter brush.
Shari and Kandi continued to oversee the conflict, while the sniping squads scattered over the roofs behind them stood by, ready to defend the complex if the sadists got within shooting distance. Shari watched through her scope as the first wave of sadists met the first wave of McCormick security.
"We used all the frags," Enrique's voice crackled from the radio. "We're gonna stay north of the sadists, follow them south and help spot our ground guys with our irons."
