Grendel Unit 2: Ignition Sequence

by Bernard Schaffer

  "All right, listen," Hill said quickly. "Our business is done here, and we're leaving. I can see you're all fine, upstanding citizens and there's no need to cause you any trouble."

  The horned one's face twisted in confusion at Hill's words and he said, "You ain't supposed to be here, fool. This place off limits to fleshbags with badges. You leavin', that's for real, you just not leavin' like you think."

  A cold bead of sweat trickled down the side of Frank's face as he got enough of the pistol's grip between his fingers to start pulling it up, when he felt the cold barrel of another gun press against the side of his face. Frank let go of the pistol in his pants and turned slightly to see a large, darkly-robed alien standing beside him, shaking its head and wagging his finger.

  "What you doin' back there, fleshbag?" the horned one said, coming around Hill's side, glaring at Frank. "You tryin' to do us? He tryin' to do us."

  The rest of the modders laughed and Hill shouted, "All right, that's enough! We are Unification officers on official business and if you−"

  The female was a blur of motion as her arm flashed forward and her claws slashed through the air. Hill looked down in amazement as the silvery metal tips sliced him across the chest and arm, tearing through his shirt and skin like tissue paper. Blood sprayed the stacks of bright, glittering bottles behind the bar, dripping crimson blood into the swirling multi-colored lights.

  Hill looked down in stunned horror at the deep gashes open in his body, and his mouth fell open but nothing came out except sputtering disbelief.

  The horned one grabbed the gun and holster at Hill's hip and tore them loose with one ferocious rip. He tossed the gun over the bar and called out to the Buddha, "Hold this for me. I'm gonna keep it as a trophy." He smiled at the alien holding Frank hostage and said, "You down to kill some fleshbags?"

  The alien nodded.

  The horned modder glared at Frank, "You try to run, I'll rip off your kneecaps with my teeth." When Frank nodded that he understood, the horned one pushed the big dope with the metal jaw and said, "Go watch the front."

  Hill was about to faint, but the female grabbed him by the throat and kept him upright, dragging him away from the bar and into the crowd. Frank looked down at the smear of blood on the floor from Hill and felt the gun tap him on the side of the face, telling him to move too.

  There were dozens of aliens at the bar as Frank walked past, keeping his hands up, hoping one of them had the decency to call for help. None of them even bothered to look up from their drinks. The music was still blaring and the dance floor was still filled with twirling, twitching figures that had no idea two people were about to be murdered.

  The female modder shoved the back door of the club open, letting the murky light of the rear alley way into the club enough for Frank to get a better view of the alien walking him to his death. It was as tall as he was, but so heavily robed that it looked like a walking pile of rags. It wore a metal mask with narrow eye slits that was painted with a gruesome design. It could have been a hundred different aliens from a hundred different systems, but it didn't matter. It was the reason Frank was going to die.

  "You messed up our deal," the horned one said as he held the door open for Frank to come out. "My friend here come a long way to buy our Phennies and you two show up, makin' us look bad."

  Frank looked back at the alien holding the gun to his head and said, "I'm sorry. We weren't here for you or your Phennies. We were just looking for a friend of ours."

  The horned one grabbed Frank by the throat and yanked him through the doorway with terrifying speed and tossed him effortlessly into the alley. Frank crashed into Hill and the two men fell onto the dirty ground. Frank lifted his face in time to see Hill raise his hands and say, "Don't kill us! It's not worth it! We have a ship! We have weapons. We are worth more to you alive, I promise."

  "Oh, believe that we gon' find your ship," the horned one snarled. "We don' need you for that though."

  "Shoot him in the knees," the female said. "I want to hear him scream."

  The male reached around his back and his arm swung around holding the nastiest pistol Frank had ever seen. He smiled cruelly as he aimed the gun at Hill's left knee and Hill screamed like a terrified child, shrieking with fear, until Frank was forced to close his eyes to try and shut out the sight of the horned one shooting.

  There was a loud bark of pistol fire that echoed against the bricks with a deafening boom, followed by a long string of high-pitched cries by Hill. Frank felt something hit the ground hard in front of him, landing with a wet splat on the asphalt, but when he opened his eyes, he saw only the horned one sprawled out in front of him. Half the modder's head was caved in from being shot at point-blank range and his body was still twitching in the throes of death.

  Frank looked up, stupefied, to see his alien captor turn and point his pistol at the female. His voice was muffled beneath the heavy mask when he said, "You so much as blink and you're dead, cyborg."

  She stared down at her partner in wide-eyed wonder, and in one swift movement, spun on her black spiked heels and took off running. She was nothing but a blur in the alleyway, moving so inhumanly fast that even when the rag-covered figure fired at her twice, the bullets zipped past her, narrowly missing.

  "God damn it!" the alien shouted as he reached up and wrenched his mask off of his face. He turned and threw it down at Hill, hitting the lieutenant square in the chest. "You stupid son of a bitch! What the hell are you doing here?"

  Frank and Hill both looked up in amazement at the sweaty, red-faced Vic Cojo standing draped in his alien costume, and said nothing.

  The alley door behind him popped open with the Buddha holding Hill's gun in his tiny hands, shouting, "What the hell is happening out here?" He looked down at the modder's dead body and gasped, then started to raise the gun to shoot.

  Vic turned around and fired two rounds directly into the fat little alien's chest and sprayed the doorway with fine, red mist. As the door swung back on the body, Vic looked at Frank and said, "Don't just sit there, get your pistol ready while I take this stupid rig off."

  "Y-yes, sir," Frank stammered.

  Vic struggled to slide his left arm out of the large, cumbersome suit, when the club's rear door slammed open again. Without looking, Vic raised the gun and fired, blasting a hole through the face of the big modder, hitting him right in the metal jaw. There was a loud ding! like someone just won a prize at a carnival and the modder collapsed over top of the Buddha, his bright, silvery blood spilling down across the entranceway, more like engine synthoil than actual blood.

  Vic hurried out of the rest of his suit and looked down in disgust at the bodies and Lieutenant Hill, who still had not moved. "Get up," he snapped. "More are going to be here any second."

  7. Kill At Will

  Frank lifted Lieutenant Hill's chin to better inspect the gashes sliced across his chest, guessing they were an inch deep. The flaps of Hill's filleted skin were like drooping open pieces of beef. From the corner of his eyes, he saw Vic plant one foot on the side of the Buddha's small head and step up onto the large modder's back that was blocking the entrance. Vic had his gun raised as he checked the inside of the club for threats, but everyone was busy racing the other way. They were crashing into and over one another, a hundred aliens of varying shapes and sizes fighting to get through one modest exit.

  Vic grunted as he climbed back down and raised his weapon to cover the mouth of the alleyway. There was over one hundred feet of concrete and brick between the back entrance to the club and the street, with no doors or stairwells.

  The modders were coming.

  They are coming in force and they are coming in fast, Vic thought. If they catch us in that alleyway, it's going to be a short fight. He glanced back down at Frank and saw the medic screwing around with his bag and said, "What the hell are you doing? We have to move!"

  Frank's fingers were trembling as he scanned the compartments of the bag, searching for the right pouch. "H-he's in s
hock from the injuries and any movement is going to cause him to bleed out more. I have to stem the bleeding," Frank stammered.

  Vic snatched Frank by the collar of his shirt and twisted it, forcing the medic to look up at him, "If you don't get him on his feet and move, we're all dead anyway!"

  Frank was almost too terrified to move, but somehow, from a very tiny place in the pit of his stomach he said, "Then you go, sir, because I'm not leaving this man behind."

  Vic's eyes narrowed on Frank, as if he were about to drag him by the collar like a disobedient dog. Instead, there was something about the seriousness of Frank's face that made him let go and say, "You have five seconds to patch him up. Make it count."

  Frank dove back into his bag and said, "Got it! Cauterizing powder." He popped the cap off a jar of silvery powder that looked like crystallized ash and said, "Can you hold him up, sir? He's not going to like this very much."

  Vic grabbed the Lieutenant by the shoulders and forced him upright. Hill's head flopped down against his chest and his eyes were now half-lidded. He was moaning something nonsensical and spit bubbles blew out of his lips like a sputtering infant.

  "Hurry up," Vic grunted, trying to keep his eyes focused on the alleyway. "Any second, now, we're going to be up to our necks in leather jackets and fangs. They'll eat us, you know," Vic said, looking down at Frank. "I mean that. They will hold us down and eat us. Do you want to be eaten alive?"

  "No, sir," Frank whispered hoarsely. He grabbed a handful of the cauterizing powder and slung it across the lieutenant's chest. The result was immediate. The powder smoked gray and sizzled like frying bacon on Hill's chest, making his head shoot up as he screamed in agony.

  Vic bore down to keep him in place, and Frank nervously shook out another handful of powder and tossed it across Hill's stomach.

  It stunk like burnt meat as the powder flashed and sparked deep inside of Hill's open wounds, sealing them from within. Tears streamed down Hill's face as he held up his hands and begged, "Please, please stop. Don't do that again."

  Frank bent down and peered at the wounds quickly, "I think you're all right for now. Try not to move around too much or they'll break open again."

  A cluster of powerful-sounding engines growled to life from far behind Frank, so loud and sudden that they made him stop and look up at Vic with wide eyes. Vic's lips pressed together grimly as he let go of Hill and bent down to grab the dead modder's gun laying nearby. He raised both guns and stood up, aiming them downrange at the dozens of hoverbikes flying into the alley.

  They gunned their engines as they came to a stop, dozens of bikers all snarling and showing him their sharp fangs and glowing red eyes.

  Vic planted his foot against the body of the horned one and, while keeping his pistols raised, rolled it over with his boot until the body was turned sideways, making it perpendicular to the alley. He stepped over the body, and glanced down at Frank, whispering, "Grab that little bastard and the other, bigger bastard and drag them over here. I need a line of bastards going head to toe, from one wall to the next."

  Frank ducked low as he scurried over to the doorway and grabbed hold of the heavy modder with the metal jaw. He grunted as he heaved the body, trying to unseat it from the Buddha. "Help me," he hissed at Hill.

  There were dozens of laser sight dots covering Vic like fluorescent measles. Some were bigger than others. The dots from the handguns and assault rifles were the size of small coins and the ones from the anti-personnel cannons mounted to the front of the hoverbikes were the size of fists. He looked down at the dots and smiled and said, "All right, listen up, you second-hand bolt-on piles of scrap metal. Every single one of you is under arrest. But lucky for you, I'm willing to negotiate."

  The modders snorted in laughter and got ready to fire, but from the back of their ranks, a female shouted, "Do not shoot them! The first one of you who shoots will answer to me!"

  There was a bullet hole in the center of one of her bright orange spikes from where Vic had tried to gun her down, and she jabbed the air toward him with her sharpened claws and spat, "You ain't negotiating nothin', fleshbag! You and them are all dead! Those two behind you, they gonna die in bad agony, but after you watch that, I got something real special planned for you. I'm gonna skin you alive like a −"

  Two gunshots rang out from Vic's pistols on either side of her and she turned to see the bikers standing nearest her slump forward and slide off their bikes, dead.

  "Wait!" Vic shouted, shaking his head apologetically. "Wait, wait, sorry. You said, not to shoot, right? I couldn't hear you from back here."

  She screeched in outrage, spitting curses at him from the mouth of alleyway, and Vic glanced down to check Frank's progress. He'd gotten both bodies out of the entryway and placed them on the ground in the right positions, forming a line of corpses that stretched from one wall of the alley to the other.

  "You dare defy me!" the female screamed.

  Vic's gun fired again and another modder dropped. "Whoops!" he called out.

  She lifted her head and roared, "Bring them to me!" The horde of bikers gunned their engines and took off flying toward Vic, darting around the female with expert precision and closing fast.

  "Give me that cauterizing powder!" Vic shouted.

  Frank reached for the jar in his bag and said, "This? Why?"

  Vic fired with the pistol in his left hand until it went empty, throwing a barrage of bullets down the alley and hitting whatever he could. The bikers swerved out of the way to avoid being hit and smacked into one another. Vic threw the gun on the ground and grabbed the jar from Frank, quickly dumping its contents onto the three corpses.

  "What the hell are you doing?" Frank cried. "That's all I have!"

  Vic pushed Frank out of the way and looked up at the bikers coming toward him. They were close enough that when they grinned he saw the strings of black saliva stretching from their fangs. Just before they were on top of him, he aimed his pistol at the nearest bike's fuel tank and fired, sending a flood of dark fuel spraying out on the other bikes and ground.

  Vic lowered the pistol and fired into the center of the horned modder's back, putting a bullet directly into a pile of cauterizing powder.

  The air flashed with flame and instantly ignited the fuel on the bike as it flew over the bodies, setting off a massive explosion of hoverbikes and modders and scorched pieces of leather jackets that sprinkled down onto the remaining members like black rain.

  Inside the club, Vic slammed the heavy locking bolt across the rear entrance and shouted, "Go! Go! Go!" at Frank and Lieutenant Hill to get them moving toward the front. "Get Buehl on comms and tell him we need immediate extraction!"

  Frank leapt over an overturned table and glared at Hill, saying, "Well? Do you want to explain it to him, Lieutenant?"

  Hill ignored him as he stumbled through the dark club, clutching his chest and groaning that he felt like his insides were going to come spilling out.

  Vic came running up behind them both and stopped suddenly, "Oh, you have got to be kidding me. You idiots don't even have comms?"

  "Ask him!" Frank pointed accusatorily at Hill. "I said to bring them!"

  A loud crash rang out from the back of the club, shattering the frame around the rear entrance, and all three of them stopped and ducked down. There was another crash after it, and the steel door buckled inwards, followed by the repeated strikes of multiple boots, smashing it open enough for the modders to begin squeezing through.

  "Stay down and stay quiet," Vic whispered.

  The club was dark and filled with swirling gasses, but they could make out the figures checking behind and around the bar, beginning their search. "Get your gun out," Vic whispered to Frank. "If they get too close, kill as many as you can before you put a bullet in your temple."

  "Okay," Frank whispered, nodding quickly. "Wait, what?"

  Vic crept to the front door and pressed himself flat against the wall, using the tips of his fingers to pry the door open just an inc
h and make sure no one was waiting for them outside of it. Vic breathed out slowly with relief. They hadn't sent anyone around front and the street was clear. "Come on," he said, waving for the others.

  Lieutenant Hill elbowed his way through the door first and vanished around the side. Frank had his gun raised as he went through, but he stayed close, reaching back to hold onto Vic and make sure he came out. Vic looked back at him and said, "What are you doing?"

  Frank pushed the doors shut behind him and said, "Making sure you don't do anything stupid like sacrificing yourself so we have a chance to escape. We either all get out together or not at all."

  Vic grunted, "If you're the one with the job of keeping me from doing something stupid, we're all in deep trouble." He looked back at Hill, who was leaning against the wall, sheets of sweat pouring off of his face like a rain spout. "We need a way to get to the ship. Those bolt-ons are going to realize we're not in the club soon enough and come busting through that door."

  "We can commandeer a transport," Frank said, nodding at the cars flying past them on the road.

  "They're too high up," Vic said. "We'll never get one to land. Anyway, they'll run a human over if he tries to flag them down, just for the hell of it. We need a different vehicle."

  Both Frank and Vic turned at the same time to look down the alleyway. It was piled with dozens of hoverbikes, each of their engines tricked out and capable of incredibly fast speeds. Just the kind they needed to make a quick escape. Vic started to move toward the alley when Frank grabbed him and said, "Wait a second. You stay here. I've got this."

  Vic smiled condescendingly as he moved to pull Frank's hand off and said, "It's okay, rookie, don't worry. I'll be coming right back."

  Frank knocked his hand away and said, "You listen to me, you pompous bastard. I have been waiting years to get on this unit and it's all your damn fault! So far, it's been nothing but an absolute nightmare, thank you very much! Now, you are going to sit here and you are going to watch Lieutenant Hill and you are going to wait for me to go get us a bike, because I. Have. Got. This."