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The Bloodless

Page 24

by Andrew Gibson


  “This is definitely FUBAR, sir,” Burns said with a slight grin. I’m not sure how he managed to smile at that point.

  “Two minutes,” Blink said out of nowhere. It took me a couple moments to realize what he was talking about, but when I did, a panic slithered up my spine.

  “Damn! All right, let’s fall back. Not worth dying now,” I said and I started to walk away from the warehouse.

  “I’m staying,” said Crowder and I turned to look at him and saw that he had a resolute look on his face.

  “Don’t be an idiot man.”

  “I need to see what’s so special about this place,” he responded.

  “Fine. Buggs?”

  “Stayin’.”

  “Good. Make sure the kid doesn’t get himself killed.” I made sure everyone else was heading in the same direction as me before I set off. I looked back at Crowder and he seemed a little shocked to be standing there with Buggs of all people.

  “So,” Burns said as we quickly made our way along the path, “do you think Pillar was with them?”

  I laughed, “Of course not! That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. She didn’t want to do the job that required very little enemy interaction, why on Earth would she want to go on a suicide mission? No, I’m sure she’s sitting back at HQ laughing her ass off at all us idiots throwing our lives away.”

  Whatever she was doing, the fact remained that we had managed to disable another substation and with very little resistance and effort, on our part anyway. Despite the massive loss of life that day, I felt pretty good as we made our way back to base. We had just narrowly avoided meeting the massive surge of Bloodless that stationed themselves at the warehouse. During the journey back I made sure Crowder and Buggs checked in regularly to keep me informed of what was going on and so I knew they were still alive.

  After some time, I left them to their own devices and killed the radio link so they could get a little closer to the action. I was eager for Crowder and Buggs to get back so I could hear all about what the hell those soulless lumps of flesh were up to.

  The sun began to rise as we neared the shack, at least I think it was beginning to rise. According to my watch it should’ve been. We were treated to a few rare glimpses of sun rays piercing The Cloud. Still, that day happened to be a little darker than usual, but maybe that was more due to the death black plume of smoke rising from the direction of the shack.

  CHAPTER 13

  Black Velvet Sundae

  I just remember running, getting to the shack was the only thing on my mind. Never before had I seen such dark smoke billowing up from that direction. I hoped against hope that it was just a random building that caught fire but my gut was telling me something else, something I didn’t want to hear. I ran as fast as I could and then I ran faster. I thought maybe if I moved fast enough I would spin the Earth backwards and reverse the flow of time itself. Unfortunately the only superpower I ever had was the ability to fuck up any given situation.

  When I arrived at the shack I don’t know what was yelling louder, me or my burning muscles. I say yelling, but it was more like a choking, gasping noise as my lungs didn’t have the energy to expand and take in oxygen anymore. Our base, my home, was burning bright against a gentle sunrise and filling what would have been a rare sky with all too common carnage. After a couple moments Burns and the rest of my team ran up next to me.

  “What the fuu…” Burns said as he came to a stop. He looked at the dancing flames in awe and shock. I knew he loved fire but I never thought the sight of our HQ engulfed in a torrent of flame would actually excite him. I suppose he couldn’t help it.

  I heard more running behind me and assumed it was a straggler but the running rushed right passed us. I vaguely remember seeing Saturn sprinting full tilt towards the shack. “There’s movement,” she yelled back at us. “Someone is out there trying to fight the fire!”

  I was running again, this time joined by Burns, Fox, and Liliya and her crew. We all moved as fast as our ragged bodies would let us. As we neared the burning shack, it was evident there was someone trying futilely to extinguish the fire. It wasn’t until we were within one hundred feet from the shack that I realized it was Pillar fighting the blaze. When we arrived we found Saturn fighting with Pillar to stop her efforts but Pillar refused to give up. She seemed crazed and unlike herself. Burns ran up to her and pinned her arms to her side and dragged her away from the shack. It was just in time too as the crated ammunition began to explode sending shrapnel everywhere. “Pillar,” somebody yelled, “what the hell happened?”

  She started to explain excitedly but I barely caught a word she said. My mind was numbed and ears deafened. The gravity of the situation was much more than I could handle. Why at a time like this? We finally had something go our way. Not so much Brantley and his squad’s way, but definitely our way. I caught little snippets about how it was already like that when Pillar returned. Apparently she had set out to gather a few things before we returned but didn’t get too far before the smoke began to rise.

  None of that mattered to me, however. Nothing mattered to me at that point to be matter of fact. I just lost everything. There were more than just things in that shack, there were memories. That was home to me, which meant safety and security. I had nowhere to go now, it was over. For the first time since I began my mission, I felt like truly giving up. My hope was rising away into the atmosphere along with the swirling black smoke.

  Pillar’s voice was the first thing I remember hearing clearly, “Daniel,” she said and the reason I remember it so vividly is because her tone was nothing I had ever heard come out of her mouth before or since. “I am so sorry, I shouldn’t have left, not with strangers around. This is all my fault.”

  “No, this is not your fault.” What I really wanted to say was, “Of course this is your fucking fault you dimwitted bitch! Why would you leave our HQ in the hands of unknown elements?!” Then I would’ve shot her in the face and I am sure that would’ve brought me some respite, but not much. But that’s not how it went, instead I said, “There’s no way you could’ve prevented something like this from happening, it was only a matter of time before this location was hit. Surprised it took this long.”

  We stood, well I sat on the ground while everyone stood around me, a couple hundred yards from the shack, well out of the blast zone and watched as the fire consumed everything around it. Luckily the shack was relatively isolated and it alone burned sparing Abiyah from another major catastrophe.

  The fire had plenty of fuel and burned well into the night. It wasn’t until sometime near midnight that it finally died out enough for us to go to the shack and snuff the flames out completely. Nothing was left, not even the frame of the shack. The fire had burned so hot that the metal skeleton melted into a pool of loss and despair. It hit the hardest when I realized that all of our maps containing scouting paths and security weak points were in the fire. It took us months to gather all of that. It was like turning on a video game only to find out the save file you’d been working on for some eighty odd hours was corrupted.

  “Fox,” I said as I floated over to his location, “please tell me you have backups of all our maps and scouting materials.

  “Of course, Daniel. I keep backups of everything,” Fox responded calmly. My stomach did a little soft shoe in light of this news. Good old reliable Fox was a god damn back up hard drive.

  “Can you please transfer your files to my communicator?” I asked. At least there was that, but even with that information happiness eluded me. Now, if Fox told me he had a backup of the shack and everything in it, then maybe I would have felt better, but that wasn’t the case, so I felt like shit. Burns offered to let me stay with him but I declined figuring I could just squat in one of the broken down buildings in Abiyah, or one of the many homes.

  However, Fox reminded me of the pitfalls of staying in any of those houses: they are routinely raided by scavengers and the occasional Bloodless patrol. The houses were a l
ittle further in than the rest of the setup so the employees who occupied them wouldn’t have such a lengthy commute. My shack, on the other hand, was on the outskirts of town in the opposite direction of the compound.

  I settled on setting up a tent just inside the tree line of a cluster of trees that were located near the shack. I went into town and took what I could find from one of the big box sports supply stores and set up camp in the later stages of the afternoon. Even though I was well hidden inside the trees, I still felt exposed. It was as if a big piece of me was missing. I had limited ammo which meant if I encountered any problems I had better shoot straight and hope for small numbers.

  “Shouldn’t we get started on takin’ out the next station?” Burns asked once everything was setup. He volunteered to stay and help me get situated while Fox began to scout the next station.

  “We could,” I replied. “Though I’d rather wait for everyone to get back.” It had been a few days since we parted ways with Crowder and Buggs. I tried contacting both of them to bring them up to speed on where they would be reporting back to but they never responded. Saturn was away either relaxing or helping Fox, she wouldn’t say either way. Pillar cursed us all out and took off to go be angry and offended somewhere. And as far as Liliya and her crew went, I hadn’t the slightest clue as to what they were up to or if they would even return.

  The prospects for taking down the next station in a timely manner looked very bleak at that moment and they didn’t get any better with Fox’s return. “Sorry,” was the first word out of his mouth when he walked up. “This one is going to take some time, Daniel. It would appear that they are on to us. Security has been ramped up around the next station and I cannot get anywhere near it.” That was awful news because if Fox couldn’t get near it then we had zero chance of even looking at it.

  The transition was harsh. I went from moving forward and knowing exactly what needed to be done next to not having any direction and no clue as what my next move was going to be. It made me feel very alone, too. I usually got by on the knowledge that I would see my crew again at some point because we had a job to do. However, now that there was no prospect of another sub-station take down, I wasn’t sure when I would see them again, if ever. Of course, the never part was the depression talking. We weren’t giving up, we would have to see each other again sometime. In fact, it would be sooner than I thought at the time.

  CHAPTER 14

  Warehouses & A Little Luck

  Crowder and Buggs peered out from behind a thicket of bushes at the still-empty warehouse. The android had told them the Bloodless were only a couple minutes out but they had been waiting longer than that. “What could be keeping them,” Crowder wondered aloud.

  “No clue,” Buggs said. “Ambushed. Detour. Who knows?”

  “Maybe they just dropped dead,” Crowder said, vain hope in his voice.

  “Already dead.”

  “You know what I mean. Hey, have you been having troubles with your communicator?” Buggs shook his head. “Mine’s been cutting in and out for a few days now.”

  “Do a reset,” Buggs suggested.

  “That’s a good idea, though I don’t like the fact it’ll be down for several minutes,” Crowder said as he began to shut down the communicator.

  “Better that way. More reliable. Backup?”

  “No, dammit,” Crowder said, “I left it back at my place. Oh shit, what’s that,” he added in a hushed tone as his communicator shut down.

  In the distance a low rumble began to sound and soon hundreds of undead bodies could be seen through the darkness approaching the warehouse. Large groups of the Bloodless began to file into the building through the rear loading bay and as quickly as they showed up, they disappeared into the warehouse. Crowder and Buggs waited for a few minutes to see if anything would happen or if there were any stragglers. However, nothing else happened. In fact, too much nothing happened and that’s what got them worried.

  “This ain’t right,” Buggs said quietly.

  “No, something definitely feels wrong, but kind of familiar at the same time,” Crowder said. They looked at each other for a couple seconds then made identical movements for their weapons, Crowder unholstered his sidearm and Buggs unsheathed his hunting knife.

  Buggs, being more skilled in close quarters combat, eluded the Bloodless grabbing for his neck and plunged his knife deep into its head via the temple. Crowder wasn’t as agile. A Bloodless wrapped its arm around his neck and started to drag him off towards the warehouse where more Bloodless were filing out en masse. Buggs came to Crowder’s aid and liberated the Bloodless’ head from its shoulders. The two men then turned tail and fled in the opposite direction of the horde now stampeding towards them.

  “We should split up,” Crowder yelled as they ran.

  “Why?”

  “It’ll be easier to hide! I’ll contact you as soon as my com comes back up!”

  Buggs nodded and they split up and headed in different directions. Crowder tried to keep an eye on Buggs as they separated and put distance between each other but it became harder as the darkness swallowed him. That’s when something strange happened. As the Bloodless got nearer to where they split up, they all headed in the exact direction Buggs went. This unexpected phenomenon caused Crowder to stop in his tracks. He couldn’t figure out how they knew exactly where to go. The Bloodless didn’t even attempt to go in his direction. Crowder watched as the last of the Bloodless changed direction and then noticed that his communicator had booted back up.

  He looked back in the direction of the Bloodless and his heart skipped a couple beats. The bodies at the back of the group broke off and started right towards Crowder. He knew himself to be out of sight but still they made a bee line for him. He looked down again at his communicator and understanding came to him like water escaping a broken dam. He began to run away from the oncoming Bloodless and held his forearm up to his face. “Buggs,” he yelled, “turn off your communicator! I’ll find you after a while!’

  Crowder shut his communicator down again and made some more sharp turns. Sure enough, the Bloodless that were coming after him became lost and stopped following him. They stood in one spot for a few minutes apparently trying to detect any kind of signal they could but when they ostensibly could not sense anything, they turned and headed back towards the warehouse. Crowder headed back towards where Buggs and he split up and watched as the other Bloodless made their way back to the warehouse as well.

  Several more minutes were allowed to pass before Crowder set off in Buggs’ direction. He felt a little helpless as he knew it would be next to impossible to find Buggs in a densely wooded area in the middle of the night. “Buggs,” he whispered as loud as he could in fear of any Bloodless lingering in the area. He called out a few more times and eventually Buggs answered.”

  “Here,” Buggs said in a normal tone. “They knew. Followed me exactly,” he added as he emerged from his hiding spot.

  “It’s the coms,” Crowder said as he regained his composure. “They’re somehow drawn to the signal.”

  “Electromagnetic.”

  “What,” Crowder said confused.

  “The electromagnetic signal emitted from our communication devices is long wave and in its inception was known to attract a certain amount of attention from simpler creatures. Bloodless’ reconfigured brains must pick up on the signal,” Buggs explained in a tone implying that he always spoke in long, eloquent, knowledge filled sentences.

  Crowder stood looking shocked at Buggs. He had never heard anything that loquacious come out of Buggs’ mouth since he met him. His responses were usually limited to a few words at the most. “Well that’s bad,” he was finally able to say.

  “Yes. Bad.” Buggs was back to his terse responses.

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Warehouse.”

  “Right,” Crowder said, “stick to the original plan. I think we’ll keep our coms off this time, eh?” Buggs nodded his agreement and the two men
made their way back towards the now-filled warehouse. The nearer they got, the more time they took to make their approach. Trial and error was not something they had time for, nor firepower. They knew they had to make it count, the only other option being failure followed by death.

  Leaving their communicators off this time around proved to be the missing link in the chain that pulled them closer to the objective at hand. Buggs offered to take the first peek into one of the many large windows on the side of the building. He looked longer than Crowder would’ve dared but it seemed to be just long enough.

  “Nest,” Buggs said.

  “Nest,” Crowder repeated. He didn’t really know what to make of that statement. Buggs did him the favor of elaborating.

  “Bloodless nest.”

  Delayed comprehension forced its way onto Crowder’s consternated face. “They have fucking nests,” he said aghast.

  *****

  “Of course they have nests,” I said slapping my palm to my forehead. A few days had passed without hearing from either Crowder or Buggs, but when they finally radioed in with this news, my fear and anger melted away. I’m not sure what took them so long to check back in but I had a feeling they wanted to be wholly sure of what they had discovered before reporting it.

  “It’s not like they are going to sleep in houses!” I couldn’t believe I never thought of that. The Bloodless being attracted to our communicators’ signals was obvious to me as well, though I never really connected the dots on that one. “Good job guys,” I said, my spirits soaring higher than a junkie on a twenty-four hour crack binge. I had to hand it to him, Crowder insisted on staying behind and it paid off enormously. This was vital information and it gave us new life.

 

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