by D. J. Molles
Walter couldn’t see what was on the monitor. But he could see a flashing red glow reflecting off the man’s pale skin. Something like a warning beacon.
The man at the computer turned fully now, just as Tria was finishing telling Virgil every reason why he wasn’t going to get out of the District by himself.
The man at the computer leaned into the monitor, then looked up at Tria.
“Uh…” he said.
Tria was taking a breath to say something else.
Virgil was standing, hands on his hips, eyes looking at the ceiling like a petulant teenager.
“Uh, hey,” the man at the computers said. “Tria.”
She looked at him. “What?”
“Drones,” he said in a strange monotone. “Incoming.”
Virgil took a step towards the man. “How close?”
Tria took a bigger step, intercepting Virgil and poking him in the chest with a bony finger. “Check your dick, Cowboy. You’re not running shit.” She turned to the man at the computers. “Hank, are they coming here, are they armed, and how long do we have?”
The man named Hank frowned, swiped at his eyebrows with a hasty finger, then leaned even closer to the monitor while his fingers flew across the projected controls.
Virgil stepped back away from Tria and spoke quietly to Walter. “We may need to leave.”
Virgil turned more and made eye-contact with Getty. He gave the man a little nod, and received one back.
Walter took this in, then returned his focus to Hank.
Tria had moved around the desk now and was looking at the monitors over Hank’s shoulder. She jolted up and looked to the man that was still standing at the door, strapped with a battlerifle that there was no way in hell it was legal for him to own. “Get Merko inside,” she snapped.
Hank extended a finger and traced it across the monitor. “Two drones. Small munitions. Hard to tell if they’re heading here, but they’re certainly not heading away. We’ll know for sure in about three minutes.”
Virgil cleared his throat. “Small munitions is still enough to level this house. And in three minutes, we’re not gonna have time to get out.”
Tria stood up straight and glared at Virgil. “You said you weren’t followed.”
Virgil was angry in a flash. “I wasn’t followed, Tria. I’m not just a weekend warrior, I do this shit for a living, unlike you. Don’t you think I know when I’m being followed?”
Tria took another glance at the screen and Walter could see she wasn’t watching those two incoming drones peel off course to another apparent destination. She was watching them get closer and closer. She shook her head, her eyes slightly wider in her gaunt face. “How’d they know where to find us then?”
“How do they ever know where to find us, Tria?” Virgil actually laughed. “It’s kind of their fucking job. Now are you going to get us out of here or not? Time’s a-wastin’.”
The old man Merko came through the front door and slammed it behind him. “What’s goin’ on?” he demanded.
“Two drones inbound,” Tria said.
“For us?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“Shit.”
Virgil started snapping his fingers and stamping his foot to the same rapid beat. “Let’s go, Tria. No reason to stick around. You wanna be the leader of this clusterfuck, then make a decision.”
Walter watched Virgil’s words pass over her face like a violent summer squall.
She’s gonna refuse to move, just to screw with Virgil, Walter thought. I think they hate each other that much.
“Oh.” Hank jabbed a finger at the monitor again. “Flight of gunships. Same bearing. One mike behind the drones.” He craned his head to look at Tria from where she was still hovering over him. “You know what that means.”
Any sign of anger with Virgil was suddenly stricken from her face.
She was moving. “We need to go now.”
The words were no sooner out of her mouth than Hank started grabbing the computer modules that surrounded him and shoving them haphazardly into a bag, the components clacking together heedlessly. As he grabbed them, the projected monitors winked out of existence.
Walter realized that the small of his back had begun to sweat. “What are we doing, Virgil?”
Virgil ignored him. “Tria,” he called, but she was hauling a big black pack out from a corner and yanking out what looked like three sets of soft armor and two battle rifles. She wasn’t listening, and she didn’t respond.
“Tria!” Virgil repeated, louder.
She looked up, white hair hanging in her face. “What?”
Virgil spread his hands. “We can’t take the cars.”
Tria checked the chamber of one of the battlerifles, then twisted and smacked the thing down on the table where Hank had already cleared most of his computer equipment. “We have to.”
Virgil’s face contorted. “Oh, come on, y’knocker!” he nearly shouted. “Don’t be a fucking idiot! We’ve got less than two minutes and we got five miles to the nearest road. There’s no way they won’t know it’s us! We get in those vehicles they’ll send a missile straight up the tailpipe. We gotta run, Tria.”
Tria was shaking her head. “We have a roadblock,” she was saying, almost like a litany, almost like it was an incantation to ward off evil spirits, and Walter could hear the doubt in her voice, he could see the tremble in her features, those tiny micro-expressions that told him everything he needed to know.
Tria knew damn well if they got in those cars they were dead, but she was mentally stuck on the plan.
“We have a roadblock we can bribe our way through,” she continued. “But only until shift change, which is in two hours, which means we can’t hike it, we have to drive, it’s the only way, it’s the only way we can—”
“Fuck that.” Virgil spun away from her. “Getty, Walt, let’s roll.”
Tria stood up, halfway into a set of softarmor that swallowed her small frame. “Virgil! Don’t you walk out on this! Your uncle is calling you back.”
Virgil didn’t even turn back. He had his hand around Walter’s upper arm and was pushing him for the back of the house, and Getty was close behind. “My uncle’s syndicate is on life-support, Tria. I’m not going down with the ship. And unless you want to die or DTI in the next two minutes, I suggest you follow me.”
Virgil stopped as they entered a defunct kitchen. There was nothing in it except for an old stovetop that looked nearly a hundred years old. Walter looked back into the living space they’d just come from, and saw Tria yanking her softarmor into place as she stared balefully back at them. Merko was appropriating one of the battlerifles, and Hank was latching his go-bag shut.
Walter looked at Virgil. “What’s going on here, Virgil?” He hissed under his breath. “How’d they know where to find us?”
Virgil shook his head. “We don’t have time to figure it out.” He looked right at Walter. “We’re gonna hit those woodlines, Walt. Just like when we were kids, okay? They’re gonna come after us, you understand that?”
“Yes.”
“We don’t stop.”
“Okay.”
“We keep moving. I can get up with my team when the air clears a bit and find a way out of this place. But right now, we need to get out.” And then, quite suddenly, as though he was remembering something he’d forgotten, Virgil raked his fingers back through his short, graying hair and swore loudly. “Un-fucking-believable.”
Like his brain had just finally reached out and touched the fear that was already coursing through Walter.
“Virgil,” Walter said.
“What?”
“I need a gun.”
Virgil looked him up and down, quickly. Then he shook his head. “I don’t have one to give you right now, and you wouldn’t know what to do with it if you had it. Best thing you can do is stay on my ass and do whatever I say, understand?”
Walter felt his blood rising, a steady warm sensation creeping up h
is neck.
That feeling of being a kid again, which ran into the reality of his adulthood like a car smacking into a concrete wall. He still thinks you’re a kid. He still thinks you don’t know what you’re doing. He thinks you’re a knocker.
“Just don’t get in the way,” Virgil said, as though to rub salt in the wound.
Tria leaned into the defunct kitchen, armored and slung into a battlerifle. “Virgil, don’t run. These are your uncle’s orders.”
Virgil leaned into her and, for the briefest of moments, it seemed to Walter like he was leaning into give her a kiss. But he put his mouth close to her ear and he spoke, just loud enough that Walter could hear his words.
“I know about what you’ve been doing, Tria. So let’s cut the shit. You’re not loyal to the man, and neither am I.”
She stared at him. Her face moved, just slightly, and then was stony. But in that slight movement, Walter perceived the look of a person who has been caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
Virgil didn’t wait for a response. He turned and stalked for the back door. “Let’s go,” he said. He opened the door and took one glance out into the night sky, and then to the woods that lay just a few yards off the old concrete back patio.
He didn’t waste any time. He hit the ground from the back porch, and then started running. Walter hurried to keep up. He could hear Getty’s footfalls keeping pace behind him.
The backyard was dark. The woods beyond were a sea of pitch. Walter heard the wet swish of the grass as he ran through it, the smell of the dew, and the spray of it hitting his face as Virgil kicked through the grass just ahead of him.
They hit the woods. Virgil slowed just enough so that they didn’t plow into a tree. Now inside the woods, Walter could see just enough of the trees that he could dodge around them.
After maybe fifty yards of running, Virgil came to a sudden stop.
Walter stuttered to a halt, nearly slipping in the forest leaves. “What?” he breathed. “Why are we stopping?”
Virgil dropped to the ground and started pulling leaves and vegetation over himself. “Get down!” he snapped.
Beside Walter, Getty was doing the same thing. Like two animals bedding down for the night, except there was nothing quiet and sleepy about it. It was fast and hectic and panicky.
Walt dropped and mimicked. It was all he could do.
Grab giant armfuls of leaves and scoop them over his legs.
Squirm into it all.
An errant thought about spiders and who-knew what else, crawling through those leaves, but it was peripheral, a not-so-real concern when compared to the monolithic fear they faced.
“Stupid bitch is gonna get herself killed,” Virgil was griping as he covered himself.
“Why are we stopping?” Walter repeated.
In the darkness, he could just make out Getty’s face, smiling back at him.
Smiling? Really? What the fuck is wrong with this guy?
“Don’t wanna be moving when the drones get visual,” he said. “They’ll scan thermal, but if we were moving it’d make it that much easier. Cover yourself and put your head down.”
“Shit,” Walter dove further into the leaves and loam.
“Ayuh,” Getty mumbled, and his voice was teetering on a chuckle.
“Stay still!” Virgil said from the lump of leaves about a yard to Walter’s right. “Don’t fucking move.”
Both Walter and Getty stopped moving.
The rustling of the leaves quieted.
But there was another noise.
More rustling. But further out.
“Oh, you stupid bitch,” Virgil whispered to himself.
Getty made a noise back in his throat. “She better get down.”
Walter craned his head up, despite Getty’s advice, and he looked through the night-darkened forest and he could see the dark shapes, darker than everything else, moving towards them through the woods.
Tria and her crew got close enough that Walter spied her pale hair in the darkness of the forest, and then Virgil called out in a strangely high-pitched whisper-yell: “Tria! Stop moving!”
Tria, who was in the lead, trotted to a stop about five yards from them. She looked around in the darkness, not seeing them, perhaps expecting them to be standing, and not nestled into the leaves like animals. “Virgil! Where’d you go?”
“Get down!”
Tria lowered herself, slowly.
Her team followed suit.
But only to their knees.
And then a new sound hit Walter’s ears, one that was both familiar and strange, and he knew what it was the second that he heard it, but he’d never heard it like this, he’d never been this close. It was a ripping sound, like the air itself was being rent.
And then, far back through the woods in the direction that they’d come from, he watched a small sun being born in two pulses.
Those pulses rumbled through the ground, through his chest, and as the light bloomed, he watched the house that they’d just occupied inflate like a balloon and then pop into a million shards and pieces.
Then a whu-BOOM smacked him in the face.
His ears buzzed and his sinuses tingled and his eyes watered.
Tria and her group were no longer interested in being on their knees.
They toppled to the dirt almost the second that the shockwave hit them.
Sprawled out on her belly Tria’s eyes stretched wide. Her gaunt face lit up with the white light of the explosion, almost like a lightning strike, and then for a flash, it was orange, and then it was gone totally, plunging them into light-dazzled blindness.
In the few seconds to follow, Walter remained plastered to the dirt, balancing on a chest full of air that he’d not bothered to exhale just yet, blinking in the darkness, and listening to small pieces of debris rain down into the forest around them.
They didn’t even bother with a strike team, he thought. They weren’t even gonna try to take us to DTI. They just hit the house with two mini bombs.
What the fuck have you dragged me into, Virgil?
Overhead, the distant whir of a drone passed by. It must’ve been passing at low altitude. Usually you couldn’t hear them.
Then there was another noise, and this one Walter was intimately familiar with. It was the aggressive, choppy sound of rotors, of gunships. The distinct, machine-gun sound of them as they pulled up into a hover.
Walter thrust himself to his knees. “Virgil, they’re putting boots on the ground,” he said, numbly, and he was glad that his voice sounded so calm, because inside, his stomach felt like it was on fire, or frozen, he couldn’t tell which. “They’re coming after us.”
Tria and her team were already on their feet.
Virgil launched himself out of the leaves and stomped towards. “Tria! What the fuck were you thinking?!”
Tria squared up to him. “I was thinking I didn’t want to get a minibomb up my tail pipe.”
Virgil stopped in front of her, hands shaking in the air. “You could’ve given us away!”
Walter couldn’t take any more of the two of them. Surely they could put aside their dislike of each other enough to keep themselves alive.
“Virgil! Tria!” Walter strained, his voice somewhere between shouting and trying to be quiet. He jabbed a finger back towards where the house had just been disintegrated. “They’re going to fucking come after us.”
“No shit, Walt!” Virgil snapped.
But finally, they started moving again.
Walter stood there for a moment more as Virgil stalked passed him, and then Getty, and then Tria, who shouldered him out of her way, and then her crew. And at that point, Walter started moving with them.
He fell in alongside Hank, the computer guy, who was looking back over their shoulders with a shell-shocked expression on his face and mumbling, “I don’t fucking believe it,” although Walter wasn’t sure what about it he couldn’t believe.
Chapter 12
What time was it?<
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Walter’s hand went to his wrist without thinking, and he felt his finger slide over the soft, hairless skin where his PD used to be. He glanced down at his wrist. In the darkness of the trees, his arm looked naked.
“Stop, stop, stop.” It came out a wheeze.
Walter guessed it was from Virgil, but couldn’t be sure. Virgil was a few paces ahead, and he’d pulled to a halt and had his hand up, gesturing the others to stop with him. The group compacted from a strung-out line into a tight gaggle in the middle of the woods.
Seven of them. They were all breathing hard at this point. Walter’s legs ached, knees and ankles and quads, and he had a stitch in his side. He was glad for the stop, but his animal brain was still pressing for movement—keep going! Keep going! The danger is still behind you!
In the cool night air, the seven chestfulls of breath huffing in and out created a thin fog around their group.
Walter bent over slightly and spit gummy saliva into the leaves.
Someone swore and it sounded like Tria.
“How much farther are we running?” That was definitely her, although the exhaustion of the run had taken the edge out of her voice. Maybe she didn’t have the energy to be pissed anymore.
Walter straightened, winced at the side cramp, and looked back behind them through the silvery-lit forest, the moon just a half of a pie, hanging bold and blank and watchful above them, like the unblinking eyes of a man on stims.
Somewhere in the distance, just barely audible over the huffing of their breaths, Walter could hear the chatter of gunship rotors. They were back there. Circling around. Scanning through the woods. Looking for them.
They were being hunted, right now.
The CoAx was pulling out the stops.
They weren’t messing around.
Someone had poked the wrong thing, had pressed the wrong button, had messed with the wrong person, and now the CoAx had decided they’d had enough of it.
Sickness roiled in Walter’s stomach.
