A Guardian Angel

by Williams, Phoenix

  Sergeant Winestock saw Barney watching him from across the way.

  “You've got two of them flanking you, Slechta,” the old man yelled as quiet as he could. He reloaded his M4 as he spoke. “I'll suppress them. Get ready to take your shots.”

  The thought that blanketed Barney's consciousness was one of fear. His body trembled and sweat made his skin itch as it forced its way out of his pores. Ill-prepared. That's what they'll call me, Barney thought. At my funeral.

  “You got this,” Sergeant Winestock nodded to him. “Ready?”

  The metal of the rifle in Barney's hands was cold to the touch, but still his hands were sweaty and shaky. It seemed like the gun was getting heavier and heavier as he became more aware of it, concentrating on how his muscles were going to move to lock the rifle into position. He drew in a heavy breath, warm and numbing, then nodded to his commander.

  Sergeant Winestock counted down with his fingers, dropping digits down from three. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, both men stood up on their feet and raised their guns. No time passed between when the weapons stopped moving and when the bullets began flying. The militants jolted as each round shredded through them, then dropped to the pavement without so much as a yelp. Blood stained the ground.

  Both of the Decree soldiers ducked down behind their respective covers. Barney felt relieved; felt horrified. His breath seized during the moment and rushed now to be caught. Blood pounded through his temples. When he turned his head and looked over at the Grandfather, a reassuring nod was relayed to him. For the time being, Barney felt safe.

  Breaths were drawn in slowly and strategies were fluid as Barney found sturdy legs. He fired his gun with all the deliberation he could. No great marksman, but his mind was calm. Again, he glanced over at his commanding officer.

  Deep concentration was on the old man's face. He held his body tight like a fist, crouched behind a short stucco wall. Barney became worried when he saw the distant and surreal form dashing up to them. Sweat began beading out from his eyebrows. It stung when it leaked into his eye, but he continued to watch as Sergeant Winestock popped up and took a few shots. They were well placed, but Guillotine danced away before the old man even finished squeezing the trigger. The sergeant began to perspire.

  “He's got no gun!” Sergeant Winestock hollered over to Barney. He looked back over his shoulder to the rest of his men. All but one of them was locked in combat with the Knights. Bullets zoomed through the sky like hornets, crisscrossing in a elegant jumble. Dust broke out and up in the air like fireworks, cracking aloud with the impact of lead. Sergeant Winestock looked back over at Barney, the only head that faced him. Worry dripped from his own expression.

  At the same time, both mercenaries fired at the frightening hulk racing toward them with a machete. Guillotine moved as if he put on a performance. The metal shot past him. The bullets seemed to bend around the man, refusing to hit him. One of them sunk into the side of Guillotine's hip, but still he ran.

  Terror burned the lining of Barney's veins.

  All Sergeant Winestock was able to do before being run through by Guillotine's blade was turn to Barney with an expression of hopeless shock.

  Barney's legs threw him away from the picture, though it burned on the insides of his retinas. His legs pounded like pistons over the black street. His eyes shook in horror and made it difficult to see where he went. He didn't care where he ran, though. Away was his only destination.

  He kept low, trying to remain uninteresting to the combatants. Shots were fired over the rise in his spine, but none hit him. Everything around him erupted with noise and undecipherable movement. Nothing made sense as he saw it. His eyes only looked in front of him, but his mind didn't have the available resources to identify the images that he rushed past. Heart pounding and breath suspended, Barney escaped the scene.

  Peeling off into an alley on his right, Barney's breath felt humid and hard. His legs started beating in a more relaxed rhythm. The world outside his eyes dimmed and brightened in slow pulses. His own exhalation was the only sound in the mercenary's ears when he stopped sprinting. Knees shaking, Barney leaned over himself with the fear of passing out. He had already suppressed the scene and his thoughts strove only to keep him alive.

  Footsteps got closer, got loud enough for Barney to hear over his own panting. His respiration seized in fear but his body stood petrified to the spot. His gun felt impossibly heavy. His arms were feeble. A rifle cocked behind him, much closer than he imagined his pursuer to be.

  He stood still and waited. He veiled his eyes in flesh and lingered to die. But death didn't follow.

  “Sergeant?” a woman's voice asked.

  Barney stood in silence for a handful of seconds with his back to the woman. He turned his face over his left shoulder. The Knight was a younger woman with taught and pale features. Her eyes were wild with adrenaline as her gun shook in her hands.

  “Sorry?” Barney asked after a brief pause of thought. His voice had startled her.

  “Are you a sergeant?” she asked. Her voice was pained. “You're retreating.”

  “I'm not a sergeant,” Barney replied with light words. His fatigue reflected itself in his tone.

  The air was thick with deliberate thoughts. Barney imagined that he could feel the heat of her thoughts radiating from behind him.

  “Drop your gun,” she said.

  Barney looked back at her again out of the side of his eyes. He grabbed the metal and lowered it. He could hear the Knight tense up, grasping onto her own firearm like a frightened critter. Barney's rifle was tossed to the ground. The air around the pair of them felt heavy.

  “My sergeant was killed,” Barney's dismal voice carried back to her.

  “Where?” she interrogated him.

  He could see a glow of worry in the woman's eyes. They seemed to dart ever so slightly as if making frantic escape attempts. He knew that this was important to her. “Why?” he answered.

  She raised the gun in front of her eyes, lining up Barney in the iron sights.

  “Alright, calm down,” Barney pleaded in as soothing a voice as he could muster. “I'll take you.”

  “Tell me where it is,” she insisted.

  “I can't remember,” Barney turned around to face her. She raised her weapon again, but lowered it when he stopped moving. “It was back on the corner somewhere.”

  The Knight was silent for a minute while she thought. Sweat ran down Barney's face, but his breath was cool and calm. He held still. The woman turned her eyes back up to him. “Lead,” she instructed. She waved her gun out toward the street, gesturing him to move.

  The sound was muffled from within the alley, but it boomed to a bone pounding volume once they left it. Few of the people that Barney had scurried past during his escape remained standing on their feet. Knights pushed straight to the door of the Decree Tower, where the mercenaries defending it were worn for supplies and tactics. The small number of them left huddled behind the most loose definitions of cover. Seldom did they expose themselves to take shots at the small herd of militants as they moved closer and closer to their position. Broken forms decorated the street in a scattered pattern. Voices buzzed in the air like the hum of electricity.

  Guillotine slid along the tower wall toward the remaining merc-cops from the side. The mercenaries were unaware of the large man's approach. The pressure that the militants placed on them occupied their attention away from the attack. Barney wanted to call out to them, warn them that a monster lurked behind them. Instead, he looked away and chose to ignore their fate.

  “Keep low,” Barney's escort commanded. “If anyone sees you, you'll be shot.”

  Barney kept his gaze outward as he followed her instructions, scanning the faces. Paranoia summoned images of them turning toward him, taking notice of him. Waves of icy blood washed over him, but he persisted.

  The area where he had left the Grandfather looked little like it had just a colle
ction of minutes before. It looked like what Barney imagined No Man's Land looked like. Blood, flesh and ragged cloth were all scattered on the ground, their sources gruesome to behold. Barney found his commanding officer, a bloody heap in the street. He was only able to recognize the remains by the sergeant's beard.

  “His keys,” the woman said. “I need his keys.”

  Barney bent down. His hands shook as he rummaged through the soggy pockets of Sergeant Winestock's uniform. In no time, his digits hit the keys. The Knight crouched next to him, her weapon raised to his head. Her eyes scanned over every movement he made.

  He continued searching through the pockets.

  Something moved in the corner of Barney's eye, a quick, dark form. The Knight noticed it, too. She turned her head to watch a crow fly up past a lamppost, circling above. At that exact moment, Barney gripped Sergeant Winestock's combat knife under his knuckles and rammed the blade straight into the woman's temple.

  He grabbed the keys and ran.

  This time when he ran, it was straight to the tower. He clutched onto the sergeant's keys, cold to the touch. One of them must open a door somewhere along the building. Once he could get inside, he might have a chance of being safe.

  Barney sneaked low while he ran, used anything over knee-height to conceal himself from the busy combatants. He swore to himself under his breath, wishing he had grabbed the woman's gun before he had left. There was a small squad of Knights who had almost complete control of the concrete steps, advancing ahead of him.

  Far off to the right of the building, just out of the corner of his eye, Barney spotted orange Decree uniforms. Three mercenaries had fallen back with little to no attention from the militants and disappeared around a corner to the tower's garage. They were gone faster than they had appeared.

  A Knight turned away from the door at the top of the concrete steps. Barney hit the ground, almost certain that the man had seen him. As quietly as he could, he pulled a dead body over him and hid his face down onto the street. Footsteps crunched behind, deafening loud in Barney's fearful ears. There was no sound for a dozen seconds except for the pulsing of blood rushing past his temples. The footsteps moved. The slow scratch of shoe on asphalt dragged like the sound of a creaking door. For a moment, Barney believed that the militant had moved along and that it was safe to come out. Just before he moved, the loudest, most ear shattering gunshot exploded next to his ears.

  “Hey!” a voice called from further up the stairs. “Stop wasting ammo and get up here!”

  Time crawled before Barney heard the Knight step away and rejoin his comrades.

  Barney got up, throwing the carcass the Knight had shot off of him. He ignored the fresh blood that speckled his uniform and started moving along the right. Barney continued turning a cautious eye toward the militants. They continued a search around the building, spreading apart. Barney made his way toward the garage.

  He turned the corner and went down a slight incline to the basement entrance. Gigantic, thick sheets of metal blocked the doors that vehicles drove through. The area was devoid of life. The surviving merc-cops must have made it inside the building safely.

  With only a slight delay for thought, Barney rushed to the man-sized high security door in the wall. He gazed over the electronic locking mechanism as he struggled with the keys in his pocket. It was a sturdy, shiny box that was bolted onto the concrete wall. The buttons on the keypad glowed with a blue light along the edges.

  Barney started to panic after he pulled the keys out of his pocket. He scanned it in front of the device and it beeped once, paused, then beeped twice rapidly. Barney pulled on the handle, but the door would not unlock. He tried it again, tugging on the door. Fear overtook him as he screamed, kicking at the door. Bitter tears collected in his eyes.

  “It needs a PIN,” a strong female voice explained from behind him.

  Barney turned around, his breathing heavy. All of the man's cool and calm had been squeezed out of him and all that remained was an avatar of fear driven by the concept of his own survival. His eyes were wide.

  “Are you a sergeant?” Rosa asked him, her gun aimed at his head. Two other Knights stood beside her.

  Barney exposed the keys in his hand.

  “Hand them over,” Rosa instructed him.

  Barney looked down at the collection of metal in his hand. Tears poured out of the man's scared little eyes. “Please don't kill me,” he pleaded in a broken voice.

  The Latina stood steady with her hand outstretched, demanding the keys. She said nothing.

  “Please!” Barney cried. “I'm on the wrong side here!”

  “I'm sorry,” Rosa said, trying to mask the sincerity in her voice.

  “It's war,” one of her lieutenants commented.

  Barney's voice ran at an intense speed. “You're trying to get Graves, right?” He looked back and forth between the three militants. “I've been to his office before.”

  Rosa shared a look with the man on her left. Barney could sense her interest. Try though he might not to, a small smirk bent his lips.

  “What're the fortifications on his office like?” Rosa asked.

  “You ever been in a bank vault?” Barney asked. No laughs were shared, but understanding achieved. “Look, I might know how to get in.”

  “Might?” Rosa said.

  It was true. When Barney had joined up with the Decree military, he attended a mandatory orientation for all of the new recruits. It was a decorated gathering in one of several of the large conference rooms within the tower. As many men and women that could fit inside the room stood around with small flutes of wine, socializing. The chatter died down once a large television had turned on and Leroy Graves' image smiled out at everyone.

  Memory didn't serve well on the exact words that Graves used, but Barney recalled an awe-inspiring speech about the importance of change and the Decree way of life ensuing. He had mentioned the faults of our current system. The words had been carefully arranged, the inflection rehearsed to its most effective form. Barney didn't feel one way or another about it, but he absorbed the impact it had on his peers.

  The man who worked somewhat as the instructor to the recruits led them around the tower on a tour. As they followed him, he would declare small fun facts about the building. Most of it was boring and vague, but at that exact moment, Barney remembered one in particular.

  They had gathered in a compound of cubicle offices, discussing the financial history of that department. “We deal with some sensitive information here, some stuff that is very confidential,” the guide started. “A lot of people's jobs can be at risk, not to mention their personal financial security, if any of this information were to leak. To prevent that from happening, the security crew has installed heavy explosives in ten key points on every single floor of the tower. In the case of an emergency, the personnel will be evacuated as quickly as possible and then processed at an outside location. The charges will then be detonated to destroy all sensitive materials.”

  Barney only remembered this because Paul, who stood next to Barney for the duration of the orientation, leaned in and said, “I don't believe they evacuate everyone.”

  Back in the present, Barney explained this. Skeptical looks hung on the Knights' faces, but they listened to his claim.

  “It's a tough door,” Barney continued. “But the wall can be demolished. Gather enough of those bombs and there's no way that it is still going to be standing.”

  Rosa glanced down at the ground while she thought.

  The guards stared at the television monitor that displayed the feeds of the outside security cameras with a scary intensity.

  “When the hell is Graves going to finish up?” one of them exclaimed in frustration to a coworker. The other man looked sternly in response to him with eyes worn by worry.

  “I'm sorry, but you know it's true,” the first one continued. “Him being here is putting us all in danger. This attack is about him.”
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  “Just shut up and pay attention,” the second mercenary replied. “Your whining is putting us in danger.”

  The buzzer for the garage door rang out, a bland loud noise. The men inside tensed up. Those who were sitting stood up and looked toward the door. Then they all looked at each other, at a loss for what to do.

  “Isn't that the one that goes off for sergeant clearance?” a third merc-cop asked to no one in particular.

  Another guard shushed him as the door buzzed again. “Who is it?” that one asked the guy nearest to the monitor.

  The adjacent mercenary hurried to the screen. He was joined by his three comrades. Barney was on the television set, standing outside the metal door by himself. He paced, pounding on the door in between steps. The men inside recognized the uniform, but all of them hesitated to move. The first one walked up to the door, but one of his peers held out an arm to stop him.

  “What're you doing?” the second guard asked.

  “We gotta let him in,” the first one replied. “We can't keep losing men.”

  “He's expendable. We can't risk opening the door.”

  “He's a sergeant though!”

  The buzzer went off a third time.

  “It's true,” the fourth mercenary started. “Graves wants all of the sergeants and higher ups inside the garage”

  “He does?” the second one asked.

  “He needs them so we can leave,” the fourth one emphasized.

  After a considering pause, the guard removed his arm and allowed his colleague to continue. When he came to the door, he pressed the intercom button and asked which sergeant Barney was.

  “Winestock,” Barney's voice cracked with static through the indoor speaker.

  The guard at the door looked over his shoulder at one of the other mercenaries who checked the registry on the computer.