by Chris Lowry
“Now I’m a reasonable man,” Lt said.
He let his eyes drift down to Jake, Renard and Waldo.
“I can see where you made a mistake thinking we were something we were not. But now that you know what we are, just men in body armor, you can admit you were a wrong.”
Lt locked eyes with the gray bearded man, trading squint for glare.
“Takes a big man to admit when he is wrong and apologize.”
“You want me to apologize?”
Lt just stared at him.
“To you?”
“You did shoot him,” said Babe.
He kept his blaster locked into his shoulder, and aimed over the crowd.
Ready. Just in case.
“He was shooting at us,” the gray beard squirmed. “You all were.”
“Were we?” Lt called out. “Chief, you shoot off first? How about you Babe? Waldo?”
A chorus of no sirs echoed around the silent crowd.
“Alright then, that’s what I thought,” he motioned the gray bearded man forward.
After a moment, the man complied.
“I ain’t here to play the blame game or even to blame you for trying to kill me,” Lt said, leading him away from the crowd.
“It was a simple case of mistaken identity. Live and learn. I think that’s a good lesson to walk away from in this.”
The older man nodded.
“But, I did come to ask you a question,” Lt continued. “If you’re in charge here, did you give the order to torch that town back there?”
The man tensed, eyes going blank. His lips compressed in a thin line, and Lt knew that whatever he said next was going to be a lie.
“There’s a village back there?”
Playing dumb.
“That’s pretty much what I figured you would say,” Lt sighed. “Seems like you don’t like to do nothing the easy way.”
“We’re just trying to surviving in this world,” the gray beard said.
“Yeah? At what cost?”
“Excuse me?”
“Seems like we should be united in our fight against the Lick,” Lt said. “Not killing off the few of us left.”
“My people are hungry.”
“Did you ask them to share?”
“Who?”
“The town back there. You called it a village, but I think the population was enough to call it a small town, so that’s how I’ll refer to it. And you killed every last one of them.”
“I’m responsible for their well being,” gray beard pointed at the people huddled by the river.
“Oh yeah? You got them fishing for food? You got them hiding under trees? Out here in the open like this, seems like you would be ripe picking for the Lick patrols that use this road.”
“They leave us alone,” the man answered.
Lt snorted.
“How’d you manage that?”
“An arrangement,” said the man.
Lt watched his hand drift to the pistol he wore on his belt., nervous fingers scratching the scarred wooden handle of an ancient Colt Peacemaker.
“What kind of arrangement?” Lt murmured.
“We don’t have guns like you,” gray beard said. “We’re reduced to using whatever we can scavenge or build on our own.”
“What kind of arrangement?”
“We just want to be left alone,” he said. Fingers wrapping around the butt of the pistol and releasing. Spit flecked on the corner of his lips.
“Out here in the open, right next to a Lick corridor and you think you’re alone.”
“They leave us alone,” the man explained.
“The arrangement?”
Gray beard nodded.
“What do you have to give up to get that bargain?”
No answer.
“That town? Others like it?”
He didn’t nod. That would be too much of an admission. But his head moved. He breathed out and his fingers gripped the pistol again.
Trying to work up to something.
“How many?” Lt growled. “How many survivors have you killed? Traded?”
“As many as it takes,” the man glared back.
He didn’t draw though. Lt wanted him to do it. Wanted him to try to fight, try to make a run for it. Even if it wouldn’t do him any good.
Bonney stuck the barrel of his rifle under the man’s chin and pulled the trigger.
The laser blast seared a hole through the top of his head, misting the air with a puff of blood and smoke.
Gray beard stood up straight and stiff as the electrical impulses in his brain went into overdrive and shut down in an instant.
Lt reached out and gripped the Peacemaker, lifting it out as the man fell.
“I shot first,” he said as he turned to his squad. “When you retell this story, it’s always I shot first.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“I don’t have a stomach to kill all of these people,” Weber said and lowered his rifle.
Lt shoved the procured pistol into a pocket on his backpack and sniffed.
“I don’t aim to kill ‘em all,” said Lt. “They ain’t Licks.”
“But you killed that man,” said Weber.
“Yeah.”
“Do you think they’re going to stand for it?”
“You know what these people are, Weber? Slavers. They kill and capture their own people to give to the Licks to do God knows what with. But it’s as good as killing them once they give ‘em over.”
Weber let his eyes travel over the cowering crowd.
“There are women and children in there,” he said in a voice just above a whisper.
Lt sighed.
“I’ve got a woman and child up there. One’s a soldier, one’s an orphan,” he jabbed a finger at the crowd. “Made that way by them.”
“You can’t kill them,” Weber stated. “It makes us no better than them.”
Lt nodded.
“I don’t want to kill ‘em,” he said. “But I can’t leave them out here to block me when we come back with Lutz.”
“I hate this,” Weber groaned. “You should have just left us in the mountain.”
“Send ‘em back to the base,” Babe suggested.
Lt stared at the corpse with a hole in its head he had left several feet away.
“Might be like sending the fox into the henhouse, Babe.”
Babe shrugged.
“We can’t take a kid on a rescue mission, and we can’t leave these people here. They might not have real weapons-“
“Get shot with a giant crossbow and tell me how fucking real it feels,” said Lt.
“I meant ones that can hurt us.”
Lt tapped his chest.
“Fucking hurts Babe. Gonna leave a mark and everything.”
“You gonna let me finish or keep busting my balls, Lt?”
“I know where you’re going with it big guy. We spent way too much time together. Hell, I’m practically a mind reader now.”
Babe smirked.
“Tell what I’m thinking right now?”
“And fuck you too buddy. Listen up,” he turned to Weber and motioned the others to circle up.
The rest of the squad pulled a semi-circle around him, blasters ready for the crowd if they needed it.
“You two,” he pointed at Weber and Renard. “Get Crockett and take this bunch back to the base. Oakley’s gonna go with you, do the babysitting of that rugrat til you get there.”
He eyed Babe.
“That what you thinking Babe? Split our forces so we can do twice as much?”
Babe nodded.
“Chief, Waldo, Babe and me are gonna go get Lutz,” Lt continued. “And find you a fucking bat. You don’t look right without one.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Lutz was third in line as the Lick Commander led them into the bowels of the facility.
The base had once housed a military installation, but the invasion scoured the humans and their defensive measures upon arrival
.
Lutz had no idea where they were, but he realized the small warehouse that held hundreds of people was just a fraction of the base. He had been kept on the periphery of the grounds.
Now, he tried not to gape.
The facility was composed of a giant building, built around a massive spaceship.
It looked like a cross between the space shuttle pictures he had seen, and a massive cube.
Lutz had never been in space, and the last rocket to Mars the humans had sent was years ago. There were no televised launches back then, as if the world leadership wanted the population to forget an invading force was one planet over and a few years away.
Launches were done in secret, as was most of the weapons development used to fight the invaders.
Those weapons had been sent to the Red Planet, Lutz knew. And when the Licks made it to earth, they destroyed everything else.
Humans were reduced to fighting with rocks. Not literally, he knew, but in a practical sense. The drones were gone. Aircraft gone. Every thing more advanced than an RPG, disappeared or stopped working, along with cars, electricity, running water.
Hell, humans couldn’t even use horses and wagons any more. Lick patrols zeroed in on anything that moved faster than a run.
Now, here he was, staring in wide eyed wonder at a marvel from beyond the stars.
When it didn’t blast off into space in a roar of flames and the smell of rocket fuel, he got bored with it.
Sure, it was an impressive structure. Large and intimidating, it dominated the landscape, squatting like, well, like an alien structure that didn’t belong on the planet, thought Lutz.
Besides, it looked like a small skyscraper he had seen pictures of, and who could be scared of a building.
Even a building filled with seven foot scale skinned lizards.
He’d killed plenty of Licks to not be scared of them.
The man in front of him started moaning.
“Hey buddy,” Lutz whispered to his back. “Just be cool. Don’t attract their attention.”
But the man kept moaning.
“Shit,” Lutz groaned. “This is not good.”
It wasn’t.
The man launched himself at the Lick Commander’s back.
He was able to latch on, wrap his arms around the thick lizard neck and start squeezing.
Then his head vaporized, leaving a smoking stump on his neck and a scorch mark on the wall.
The body slipped off the Lick Commander and plopped to the floor.
The alien turned to the remaining four men.
“I hope he wasn’t the smartest among you,” the voice box hissed.
Then the Lick turned his back on them again and kept walking.
He wasn’t afraid of any of them, thought Lutz. But let me get a weapon and you will be.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“They’re gone,” said Babe.
Lt studied the three men in front of him. Jake, Babe and Waldo kept their visors open as he locked eyes with each of them.
“Some folks might argue a bigger force is better,” said Lt. “But I’m going to say it right now, this is a damn fine group of boys to have at my back.”
He turned to Waldo.
“Think you can fly this damn thing?”
Waldo nodded.
“If Crockett could do it, it’ll be a piece of cake.”
“I ain’t had cake in four years,” said Lt. “So maybe you’ll make it a little easier than that.”
Waldo nodded.
“No worries Lt. I got this.”
“We’ll go in along the road,” he said. “Stick with that part of the plan at least. I don’t know how this place is going to be guarded, I don’t know what the layout is like.”
He watched Jake for a reaction.
“What about you, Chief? Anything coming back?”
Jake shook his head.
“Still don’t remember anything about it,” he answered.
“Would help us out if you could.”
Jake shrugged.
“I’ll try.”
But he didn’t sound like he meant it.
Lt motioned the quartet to move forward, spread out in a line, single file.
He wasn’t sure how far they had to go yet, but the suits made the distance easy. Babe gave voice to his true concern.
“You think we’re enough Lt? You think the four of us can get it done?”
Lt nodded.
“Yeah Babe. We got a damn good chance, I think.”
“Even with him?”
Babe nodded to Jake’s back, just behind Waldo on point.
Lt didn’t know how to answer. Jake could be an asset or the distraction they needed.
“We’ll see Babe.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Lutz paused behind the man in front of him and sucked in a deep breath.
“Whoa,” he exclaimed.
The man behind him muttered an echo of surprise as he peered over Lutz’s shoulder.
“You seeing this too?” Lutz said, even though he knew the man was. “I’m not dreaming am I?”
“Make this work,” Lick Commander hissed from somewhere behind them.
They had followed a Lick Soldier into the bowels of the base, through a long dark tunnel that seemed to stretch for miles but was probably just several hundred meters.
There were no lights for the humans to see. Lutz shifted over to one wall while there was still a dim outline of the entrance where they could see. He put one hand on the wall and let it trail along, praying there wouldn’t be a break to throw him off or worse, some denizen of the dark reach out and grab him.
He felt rather than heard the other humans move closer to the wall too as the darkness turned complete.
Lutz had heard of the phrase, “You can’t see your hand in front of your face,” but had never known what it meant until they were deep into the tunnel.
He had always had starlight or the moon, or even firelight coals glowing to see by. This was the absence of all light, the walls complete with no windows, no doors, except the entrance they had passed through and an ending, he hoped. One they would reach soon.
Lick Commander hissed them to a halt when they entered a grand cavern and brilliant lights clicked on, flooding the building with lights that popped blue flashbulbs in his skull and made him wince and cover his eyes with his hands until they cleared.
When they did, he stood awestruck with the others.
“I’ve never seen one in real life,” said one of the men.
An XS-J Starcraft Shuttle perched on the floor.
It looked like a hornet, thought Lutz, except with on yellow or green on the body. Slick lines on a matte black skin, tiny windows where the eyes should be.
He knew it was an XS-J thanks to his brother. Before the Licks invaded, his older brother was obsessed with the war on Mars and built models of the military’s finest craft to hang from their shared bedroom ceiling.
The XS-J was not a fine craft. It looked mean enough, and the military touted it’s ability to destroy the enemy with stealth and precision.
But it had a greater than average odds of blowing up on takeoff, and so the production was halted and the proto-types mothballed.
Lutz bit back a quick feeling of missing his brother as he remembered the know it all lecture he got on every subject. His brother was an asshole, but he missed him.
Chalk another death up to the Licks. Lutz glanced out of the side of his eyes and calculated taking a weapon and opening up.
“Make it work,” Lick Commander hissed again and retreated into the darkness of the tunnel.
He was replaced by six Lick Soldiers who spread across the black opening to pen them in.
