The Purge of District 89 (A Grower's War Book 1)

by D. J. Molles

  “But…” Walter stuttered.

  I barely said anything important.

  What was I thinking?

  Why did my mind go blank?

  Why was I talking like this was a fucking fireside chat?

  You fucked it up, Walter! You fucked up your one chance, you stupid…!

  “Let’s go!” Getty had ahold of him and was moving for the door. “We might still be able to make it out!”

  Rat had his battlerifle in one hand, and the launcher tube in the other. The console and the backpack and all the little tools it contained were still sitting at the service bay, forgotten now in the rush to get the hell out of the kill box that they’d trapped themselves in.

  “Run, run, run!” Rat was urging them.

  “Bobbi, the feed got cut,” Getty was saying. “We’re exfilling now.”

  Walter staggered along dumbly.

  You stupid knocker!

  You wasted your life!

  Now you’re gonna die for nothing!

  Getty ripped open the door.

  The morning sunlight blasted their eyes.

  Getty out first.

  Walter in the middle.

  Rat directly behind him.

  Bobbi’s voice bursting on the comms: “Get back inside!”

  The world started as a narrow rectangle of light, and as Walter’s eyes quickly adjusted, it grew, and he could see the brownstones ahead of them, and beyond, the SoDro Offices, and the doorway expanded further. He was now fully in the frame of it and there, far off to his left, he could see three guntrucks roaring in their direction.

  And they were close.

  Way too close.

  He knew in an instant that they weren’t going to make it.

  “Ah, shit…” Getty tried to stop.

  His wounded leg buckled under him.

  Walter hadn’t taken his eyes off of the guntrucks. The lead one was only a hundred yards away now and nothing between them except for a chain-link fence.

  He watched that Lancer shift, watched it stare right back at him like a dead eye.

  It spat fire.

  Getty hit the ground on his ass.

  The doorway behind them exploded.

  Walter stumbled into Getty, then felt Rat hit him from behind, and that nearly toppled him. He somehow managed to keep his feet.

  Up, up, up! his mind roared at him.

  “Move!” Rat shouted.

  Walter realized he meant “get out of the way.”

  The rat-faced man had his battlerifle dangling by its strap from one arm—he hadn’t even had time to sling it all the way—but he had the launcher up.

  Walter grabbed Getty by the dragstrap on his softarmor and he bent low, knowing there would be a geyser-hot trail of smoke coming out the back of that launcher…

  POP-HISSSSSSSSSS

  BOOM!

  With his hand in Getty’s dragstrap, Walter straightened up. With his other hand he held the battlerifle against his shoulder and fired haphazardly in the general direction of the guntrucks.

  Then he started hauling. Hauling back. Back. Back. Into the dark, into the building, back behind the stone walls that would last for a little bit, but not very long.

  He was cognizant enough to stop firing as his muzzle drew close to Rat, who stood there spread legged as though he was immune to bullets, the launcher still affixed to his shoulder.

  Ah, fuck…

  Walter didn’t even hear the POP-HISS.

  Chapter 29

  He was thrown violently into the doorjam.

  He felt the blast of it turn his head to the right, yank it, actually, like he’d taken a hard punch. Felt his body tumble into the doorjam like his limbs were that of a ragdoll. He was only conscious of red light, and a sensation like someone had slapped him across the face with a hot skillet.

  Hold onto the dragstrap.

  That was what he thought.

  Don’t let go.

  He was stunned. His body wasn’t doing much besides flailing, but in his mind he was still pulling Getty out of danger. He could feel the drag strap in his hands, but he was just tugging uselessly at it, crumpled on his side, just on the interior of the door.

  Getty was crawling back over him, shouting something.

  It was difficult to hear.

  Getty’s torso was over his face. The dragstrap wasn’t in his hands anymore. It had been pulled out. The rough fabric that coated Getty’s softarmor rubbed harshly over Walter’s head, and all of the sudden it wasn’t dull pain anymore. His face was on fire.

  The two men tumbled into the dimness.

  The world was shattering around them.

  It smelled of rocket propellant and dust.

  Rat screamed.

  Injured?

  I think I’m injured too.

  We’re all injured.

  The pain, at first a nuclear explosion through his whole head, now began to recede and center around its true source—the left side of his face.

  In a stupor, Walter ripped out a breathless yelp, and his left hand went to his face, his right still clutching the rifle. It felt like there was burning acid on his face and his first instinct was to wipe it off but then he restrained himself. His fingertips touched his face and he felt skin that wasn’t his—it was slick and sticky and his touch jumped through him like electric sparks.

  He screamed. Tried to articulate something, but for a few seconds the pain was wilting all logic.

  Dimly, he could hear Getty’s voice.

  “Your face is burned,” he was yelling. “Stop screaming! Stop! You gotta fight! It’s just skin!”

  Just skin.

  Walter choked off his next scream as he felt it bubbling up in his throat. He forced his eyes to open, though he hadn’t even been aware that they were closed. The movement made the left side of his face feel weird, like it was cracking the skin.

  Daylight.

  From his right eye, crisp.

  From Walter’s left eye, things were foggy.

  He blinked painfully, trying to clear it.

  It didn’t clear.

  Rat was in the doorway, looking at him while the world turned to dust behind him. As he stared in horror at Walter, he was trying to get the door closed.

  My eye’s been burned.

  “Get up!” Getty was shouting. “Shoot back!”

  Get up. Shoot back.

  But my face…!

  Well, you’re dead anyways. Who cares about your face?

  Walter sat up, and it was like magic. Like a miracle.

  The pain didn’t leave him. But that sick, panicked feeling that you get when you know that you have truly, badly injured yourself, it fled him like a dark cloud suddenly burning off into bright sunshine.

  What did injured mean to him? It meant very little.

  He was dead anyways.

  Somehow he was on his feet.

  Rat had managed to close the door.

  Three giant holes suddenly erupted in the center of it, spilling shafts of light and making noises like a jackhammer had been put to the side of a car. Rat jumped back.

  Walter pulled his cement-block feet into action. Stumbled to one of the small windows. The glass was dirty but he could see the shapes outside. He could see the three guntrucks that had parked themselves about twenty-five yards to the north of the network hub, providing cover while the soldiers emptied out the opposite side.

  One of the guntrucks was smoking, and the front tire was gone, and the hood was rumpled. One of Rat’s missiles had struck true.

  To Walter’s left, Getty began to fire out of another window, the battlerifle chattering aggressively, but even in the enclosed space, Walter’s eardrums were too rocked to really be offended by it.

  This is insanity, he thought.

  And he wasn’t wrong.

  There was a madness coming over him. A rushing feeling of flowing momentum, of knowing that you cannot stop now, you cannot hesitate, you can only charge forward, carried by the flow. It was unstoppa
ble and it was terrifying. Because it did not care about the consequences. It only knew the spirit of a suicide charge.

  He knew the end, but the end didn’t matter.

  He saw a battleshrouded head peek up from around the front of one of the guntrucks, rifle spitting madly. He sighted almost instinctively, like he actually knew what he was doing, and squeezed off a flurry of shots. He saw them shatter across the fender of the guntruck and maybe one or two struck the head—he watched the soldier jerk back.

  It probably didn’t kill him.

  Only struck his battleshroud.

  The best he could hope for was some spalling to the face.

  It would take more than that to kill these demi-gods.

  Another shape, another move, another shift, another squeeze.

  The rattle, the rumble, the concussion of it slapping back at him in the small enclosed area, the blast of each cartridge spent, radiating out of his muzzle, bouncing off the wall and coming back at him, but it all just flowed, it all just melted and he was going, going, shifting, shooting—

  A Lancer pointing right at him.

  Shit

  He ducked.

  The window blew out with a horrendous noise.

  Chunks of concrete and mortar flew in over his head. A fist-sized piece of debris tumbled down, struck him on the side of the head, felt like it nearly ripped his ear off. But he found himself thankful that it was his right side and not his burned left, which was screaming as tiny secondary projectiles peppered it.

  “Rat!” Walter yelled. “Blow that fucking Lancer!”

  Rat was duck-walking along the wall towards Walter. Behind him, the door was shuddering as a few more rounds went through it, pushing the door open a bit as they passed through, letting in that harsh morning light that should have been golden but was instead bleach-white like a desert sun.

  Rat shouted something back.

  Walter couldn’t hear him.

  He stuck his gun over his head and blind-fired out the ragged chunk of concrete that used to be the window. A piece of glass gouged at his hand. He registered the sharp pain, but it was momentary, and it took a number at the back of the line to the rest of the things that hurt.

  Three bursts of fire.

  Then nothing.

  He yanked the rifle out of the space, stared at it dumbly.

  “You’re empty!” Rat yelled at him.

  I know that already, Walter thought, but then why sit there staring at his rifle?

  Rat punched him in the shoulder, hard. “Reload your rifle!”

  Walter jerked. He stripped the magazine out. Fumbled another one out. His hands were trembling and unpracticed. He tried twice to get it in the magwell and failed. Succeeded the third time—it’s a charm, as they say. Then he struggled with the bolt release and finally managed it.

  He moved to stand.

  Rat pushed him back down.

  A scattering of bullets chipped away a bit more mortar from the ragged hole over their heads.

  Rat was leaning into him, yelling in his ear to be heard. He could feel the man’s hot breath, could feel his voice poking at his eardrums, and yet it was still barely audible for some reason. “Take the left side of the hole. The left side. Shoot until you’re empty. Shoot at everything that moves. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  A storm of projectiles from the Lancer punched through the concrete wall, caving in a section. More small arms clacked away the bricks and brownstone directly over his head.

  Walter cringed and looked up.

  The sunlight was caught in a haze of dust. He could actually see the tiny little paths, like wakes left by boats, where the bullets had ripped through the dust. He had no other words to say as he gaped up at this. But he thought, They’re gonna splatter my face as soon as I stand…

  “Ready?” Rat said, shaking him.

  “Ayuh,” Walter called out before he could really think about it.

  “MOVE!”

  Walter sprang up.

  Too damn slow

  He punched his knuckles against the concrete wall. Smacked the rifle down.

  He watched tracers screaming at him, around him, but it was too late to do anything but what he had stood up to do and Walter wasn’t going to stop, he wasn’t going to fail again.

  He screamed in the face of the incoming barrage and he sent his own.

  The burned left side of his face screeched in agony.

  Bullets chewed concrete and spat it in his face. In his eyes. On his burned skin. He felt things hitting him and didn’t know whether they were bullets or pieces of debris, and it didn’t matter. He was still standing, and whenever he saw any of them move he would rattle out at them as his mouth filled with dry dust and he tasted it and it filled his nose and eyes and everything around him, dust and concrete and gunsmoke.

  POP-HISSSSSSSS

  BOOM

  Walter watched the Lancer disappear in a flash and a sudden cumulus of smoke billowing up from it.

  “Down!” Rat yelled.

  Hand on his shoulder, driving him back down.

  Walter hit the ground hard on his knees.

  He was empty again. He reloaded, a little smoother than last time.

  “Getty!” Rat was yelling across Walter as he worked. “How’s it look?”

  Walter glanced in Getty’s direction.

  Getty was posted on the other window, and his window had fared no better than Walter’s. What had been a perfect square opening had now been blasted into some hellish polygon, and Getty fought to just get his muzzle clear of the side of it and let out little bursts of rounds, then duck back in as a hundred more stormed back at him.

  This last time he pulled back too hard and lost his footing. He toppled backwards, barely catching himself on the service bay counter, and then, halfway into the fall, seeming to just give up and decide to let himself hit the ground.

  Two big, glowing hornets shot through the hole-that-used-to-be-a-window and shattered one of the towers of servers in a shower of sparks and a groaning, sizzling sound.

  Getty was cursing up and down, dropping the mag from his rifle and swapping it with an utter fluidity that boggled Walter’s mind. He was just now getting his back up. If he’d ever learned to gunfight like Getty had, maybe they’d be in a better situation right now.

  Shoulda woulda coulda.

  Getty didn’t get up when he charged his rifle. He sat there with his legs splayed out in front of him and he touched off his comms. “Bobbi! What the hell we lookin’ like?”

  Bobbi’s voice sounded distant in Walter’s ear and he realized that his own piece had come slightly out of his ear in all the tumbling. He pushed it back into place and her voice crystallized like she’d walked into the room with them, midconversation.

  “…pulling back right now. They’re at the corner of the building at your eleven o’clock. Two blocks north of your pos.”

  “Fuck,” Getty said, untransmitted. Then, to Bobbi: “How many? Did we get any?”

  “I see two down right now. There are six at the corner. Three behind the northernmost guntruck. There’s still one Lancer battery in commission.”

  “Any anti-sniper?”

  “Negative.”

  “Can you find the guy operating that last Lancer and take his ass out?”

  “Standby.” Her voice was strong, but strained. Focused. Like she was talking while trying to solve a puzzle at the same time.

  Outside, Walter heard the Lancer bark at them and a section of the concrete wall around them, a section that was about waist-height, and directly between the two windows, abruptly bulged, and then shattered inwards.

  Walter cried out wordlessly and scrambled away from it.

  He watched the bricks go tumbling and then disintegrate in the onslaught, and he watched the rounds careen off the smooth cement floor and go sparking violently in strange directions with sounds like the moaning of a large animal.

  A piece of ceiling collapsed a few feet from Walter.


  “Christ!” Rat was huddled against the wall, then pulled himself off of it, as though he didn’t want the next piece of wall that exploded to be the one that he had chosen to pin himself to. “They’re gonna bring the whole building down on us!”

  The Lancer fire abated for a moment.

  Getty to Bobbi: “Jesus! Can you find the guy? He’s gonna tear our ass out in a second!”

  “Hang on, I’m looking!”

  Another barrage slammed through the wall, about a foot left of where it’d struck last time. It started working its way left, towards Getty. Walter watched it encroach on him, his safe zone decreasing with every single round that punched through in a thundercloud of concrete dust.

  Getty already had his back to the wall. He couldn’t back up any further. And yet his legs kept on kicking at the floor, his eyes wide and bright, and he yelled over the comms, “Bobbi! Take him out! Take him out!”

  No response.

  Walter watched the gap between those horrendous rounds and Getty shrink down to a few yards, then just a yard, and as he watched it, he thought stupidly maybe he can just jump across it…

  Then the Lancer stopped.

  Getty was breathing raggedly, letting out little noises, like he was sliding slowly into water that was either too scalding hot or too ice cold.

  There was no audible report this time.

  Bobbi’s voice on the comms: “I got him, Getty. You okay? You there?”

  “Fuck!” Getty screamed out, just a release. Then he keyed up, his voice marginally more controlled. “Ayuh. I’m here. We’re good. What’s going on?”

  “Bad news,” she said.

  Chapter 30

  “What’s the bad news?” Getty asked levelly.

  At Walter’s side in the smoking, choking room, Rat was swearing quietly to himself.

  Bobbi sounded bracing, almost apologetic: “That squad is still at the corner of the building. They’re not maneuvering. They’re waiting for an airstrike, I can guarantee you that. And I got a flight of three, inbound towards you as we speak. Less than a minute.”

  Getty looked up from the pile of rubble that should have contained the parts of his body, and he met Walter’s gaze, then Rat’s. He sat there for a moment, still perched up on the service bay counter, his hand still on the PTT for the comms. He said nothing. He looked like he might be sick. The first sign of plain and simple mortality that Walter had seen in him all day.