by Ric Beard
“Others?” Lucian asked, slipping his left arm beneath him, squirming. “What others?”
“Oh, we’re going to play it that way, huh? Fine by me, squirt.” The man stepped forward.
Lucian reached for his holster, but the man kicked him hard and reached down to flip him over.
“Nice try.” He kicked Lucian again, and the wind left him, but Lucian saw he was on a hill and used it to his advantage. He rolled away, using the momentum provided by the steep incline, jerked his hand into the speed holster beneath his jacket, and raised the small pistol given him by the woman in black named Sasha.
“We’re not going to play at all, today, squirt,” Lucian said between coughs as he tried to regain his wind. The man was standing a few paces away with the stick raised above his head. “Step the hell back!”
The man raised his hands, still holding the stick. He took two giant steps backward.
“More, squirt,” Lucian taunted. “Or that scar is gonna seem like a gift from a friend when I’m finished. And drop the fucking stick, retard.”
The man dropped the stick as an intense anger and red hue washed across his face. His backpedaling only stopped when he banged into the wall of the building.
Nursing his rib and sore torso with his free hand, Lucian slowly raised himself to one knee and took a quick look around. He didn’t see anyone else. He waved the gun at the badlander.
“Inside, asshole.”
“Yo—” the badlander started.
“One more word,” Lucian favored his side with one hand while waving the pistol with the other. “Please say just one more word.”
The man clammed up and stepped out of the sunlight, across the threshold, and into the building. Lucian urged him further inside before reaching for his Tab and flipping on the flashlight. He stepped in behind him, pulling the door closed. The man stood in the far corner, eyeing the stairwell just across from him.
“Try it,” Lucian shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t mind. I like to test my reflexes, squirt. How are yours?”
“That’s okay. I’ll pass.”
“What did I tell you about talking?” Lucian lowered the gun, inhaled slowly to steady the trembling of his hand against the pain in his ribs, and fired.
A green beam fired from the weapon, sliced into the man’s foot, and turned it into a fiery ball as it disintegrated the flesh, then the muscle and then the bone beneath, before cauterizing just short of the heel. The man fell to the floor and started to scream, reaching for his foot but apparently afraid to touch it. He grabbed his ankle instead and rolled back and forth. Lucian felt his thirst for vengeance burning pleasantly in his chest in contrast to the shock of pain rattling through his ribs.
“Your head is next if you don’t stop screaming.”
The man bit his lower lip so hard that blood trickled down and rolled past his chin. He rocked back and forth with his hands wrapped tightly around his ankle, just above the cauterized remains of his foot.
“How many at the camp?” Lucian asked. He walked to the wall on his left and leaned on it, knowing it would only inflame his rib to sit on the floor.
“Fuck you, man!” the man growled. “Fuck you and your unholy fucking mother, you city piece of shit!”
Lucian waved the gun in a circle. “Want to keep the other foot so you can hop out of here?”
“I don’t know how many! A thousand? Maybe more?”
“When are you hitting Triangle City?”
“I’m a foot soldier. They don’t tell me that shit. Oh God, it hurts! It hurts so ba—”
“I don’t care. Go look in the street. I’ll bet it hurt for all those people you tied up out there, too.”
“They didn’t cooperate with the boss. Horace doesn’t like it when people don’t bow, man. I didn’t do that!”
So, the boss’s name is Horace. What kind of name is that for a mass murderer? Then again…
He lowered the gun and tried to even out his breathing and push the pain away.
“What am I, stupid? They’re spread out like they were running for their lives. Most of them are face down. Nobody gave them the chance to bow. If your precious Horace had done that, they would’ve cooperated. Besides, as soon as I stepped out of here, you cracked me one good, didn’t you?”
The man had no response.
“You better start talking, you taint stain. Do you or don’t you know when the attack on Triangle City is planned?”
“Naw, man. No idea!” He continued to growl and rock back and forth.
“I believe you. Like I believe worms can fly. When!” He shook the pistol at the man and stuck his finger back inside the trigger guard to show he meant business.
“Three days!” The man yelled, holding up his hand. “Three days! Don’t shoot me!”
He doesn’t know. No way are they going to amass that many people and have them in Statesville to join up with the others, recharge their vehicles and roll all the way to Triangle City with the heavy weaponry I saw thundering into that camp. But at least I know they’re moving as fast as they can.
Lucian stepped forward and leveled the gun at the man. “Tell your boss a squirt named Miles Copeland says hello. Tell him I want him to remember that name so that when I’m standing over him right before I cut his throat, he’ll know why. You got it? Tell him my people are coming for all of you and that we plan to wipe the whole fucking lot from the earth. You got that? What you did here today, it started a war. No more passivity. No more waiting for you to come back to the gates. We’re coming for you, squirt.”
“Yeah, man,” he said, raising a hand in the air. “I’ll tell him.”
Lucian felt the anger consuming him. These people tied him to a pole, tortured him, boiled his hand in scalding water, massacred the town, and this fuck might have broken one of his ribs.
“What’s my name, asshole?”
“Miles Copeland.”
“Good. Here’s one just in case your Neanderthal brain tries to forget.” He aimed the gun and fired at the man’s left arm, the one in which he’d held the stick after striking Lucian. The arm below the elbow turned into a fiery blob and disintegrated into a black sticky mess that oozed onto the floor as the energy burned to the wrist before dying out. The hand plopped into his lap.
In spite of the screaming, Lucian walked through the door, looked around, and turned the corner at the back of the building.
“There’s more coming, you some bitch! Lots more! Horace is going to burn that city to the ground!”
The man’s screaming faded as he trudged downhill, ensuring each painful step so he didn’t go for a slide in the moist grass as he struggled back to Sasha’s Black Cat Prototype.
Book Three
Part Nine
The Badlands
Lieutenant Moss
Chapter Thirty-Two
Ain't Gonna Be No Cleanup
Day 5
Saturday, Mar 23, 2137
The Badlands
At three nights past full, the moon illuminated the tops of the towering pines standing like sentries against the backdrop of a starry sky. Silence surrounded the gazebo in the center of the roundabout. The suddenly windless world was still.
The cold air bit at his face as Lieutenant Moss magnified his goggles to get a better look at the two men in leather coats who were standing watch on either side of the gazebo. At the end of the street running south out of the neighborhood, a lone sentry wearing a leather vest picked at his fingernails with a knife. Moss adjusted his view to focus on the lone watchman. He raised his finger to zoom closer. He could’ve used voice commands, but his team would hear him in their earpieces and start whispering chants like, “zoom-zoom.”
They were smart asses, but they were his smart asses. They’d watched his back for years now, surviving encounters they’d had no business walking away from. None of them had families at home. It was a pre-req. So, they were each other’s family.
He gave in to a moment of whimsy. “Zoom four times.”
“Zoom-zoom,” the voices whispered in unison.
Moss grinned.
It’d been two days since the report came from Jenna while Moss and his crew were laid over in Little Rock Outpost. She’d only managed to get a few lines out before the storms cut comms again, but the relative position she provided and the strength of the beacon’s signal as it sat on the side of the beaten house at the end of the cul-de-sac had eventually led them here.
The vest worn by the guy to the south was actually pretty nice; it looked like it could have originated from one of the leather shops that fronted the tanneries in Oklahoma City. Moss wondered whose corpse the bastard badlander had lifted it from because there was no way they’d made it here. Maybe he traded for it at MidEast’s trading post in Blacksburg, in The Chain’s territory. He looked back at the gazebo, where the rifles resting on the shoulders of the two men appeared almost exactly as Jenna had described them in the initial Tactical Advisory Planner, or TAP. To Moss, her ability to paint pictures in his mind with text was one of a million reasons she was worthy of his protection. And protect her, he would. That was the job. Even though she hadn’t gotten the complete message out, it had been more than enough.
Taking a final look up and down the street feeding into the cul-de-sac, Moss’s eyes fell on a black tower standing over the cleared concrete footprint of a building burned down long before. He smiled. Clearing the cross street that wore the gazebo like a festoon with his eyes, Moss tapped the microphone held snugly to his Adam’s apple by a nylon strap.
“Non-lethal. Team two, Lone Wolf is yours. Team three, position near the gazebo. See if you can get a good angle on those two. Lone Wolf drops first and when the other two pop up, team three sends them for nappy time. My team is cleanup.”
“Ain’t gonna be no cleanup, boss,” Brady said in his ear. “You’ll be so bored, you’ll need the nap. Standby.”
Moss watched as his team crawled on their bellies through the wet grass, closing half the distance to the gazebo on the north and south. He waited until team three was in position and flashed the OK sign. He turned his attention to the guard at the end of the street.
“Two, plant him.”
The man in the vest slapped at his neck. He turned his head toward team two before his knees buckled, and he crumpled in a pile to the ground.
One man in the gazebo shot up, readying his rifle. He nudged his partner, grunted something, and motioned. The other stood and turned to follow the direction of the first man’s gaze. He reached up for a rope that climbed into the pagoda at the top of the structure.
“Three, fire!”
“Roger.”
A splash of bright blue light flashed into the gazebo and punched the face of the man holding the rope. His fingers spread as his muscles convulsed for a second before he collapsed to the deck. His partner swung his head around and looked down. Then he started padding around the gazebo bent at the waist, looking into the surrounding darkness with his weapon ready.
As Moss raised his weapon to do cleanup duty, the man stumbled and plopped down onto his knees before falling to the gazebo boards face first.
“Jesus,” Moss said.
“There’s no Jesus here, squad leader. Just us.”
“Take the gazebo, smart ass.”
“Smart ass, Roger,” Brady replied.
“Two, get limp dick out of the middle of the street and park him somewhere dark. Preferably somewhere wet and uncomfortable. Oh, and pull that vest off him for me and bring it over when you’re done.”
“Limp dick, wet spot. Roger that.”
Moss snickered.
Fuckin’ guys.
Moss and Sanchez converged with Hudson and Brady behind the half-wall of the gazebo. Chapman and Darren, team two, dragged Lone Wolf behind a house. A grunt sounded in Moss’s ear-piece.
“Two. Do I detect you beating an unconscious prisoner?”
“Roger, boss.”
“Good. Tie him, gag him, and get your asses over here.”
He slung the strap of his rifle so the weapon crossed his back and reached down, coming up with the rifle the guard had been wielding. Brady grabbed the other one and bounced it up and down in his hand.
“These are nice,” Brady said through his overgrown beard.
Hudson nodded his agreement as he peered at the weapon over Brady’s shoulder.
“Yeah,” Moss said. He turned the weapon over in his hand. It had a red stripe that ran the length of the barrel all the way to the stock along the top side of the rifle.
Brady read the insignia, “JenCorp. 8080 Series.”
“Ever heard of it, boss?” Sanchez asked.
“Negative.”
Hudson squinted at the one Brady held before stammering, “I think that’s the maker in Triangle City.”
Brady looked at him and chuckled, “Thanks for that analysis, new guy.”
“Yeah, yeah, and a merry fuck you, Jerk-O,” Hudson said.
Team three bounded up the steps behind the protective barrier of the wall. Chapman, the tallest of the unit, tossed the vest to Moss. The smooth leather vest had a fur lining and edges that were well sewn and hadn’t seen a lot of wear. Yet another item that seemed out of place among these people. Coupled with the guns, the vest gave Moss an eerie feeling that the Triangle City forces might be having a hard time out east. That could screw up a lot of plans.
“Orders?” Sanchez asked.
“Clear the houses, and wipe the fuckers out,” Moss answered. “We’ll come back and question one of these three when the tranquilizer wears off. We’ll do a two-team config. Brady and Sanchez on me.” He looked around his team. Each man nodded in turn. “Weapons check.”
He pushed a button on the side of his rifle, and the charging arm popped out. He pumped furiously, as the other men followed suit. After a minute, Moss checked the digital display at the top of the stock.
95%.
Good enough, considering the tendency of batteries to degrade over time in the older models.
Moss motioned to the three JenCorp rifles. “For now, we stow ‘em. Use what we’re trained on.”
Moss and Sanchez left Brady standing watch behind an overgrown bush at the front corner of the house as they took the stairs to the back porch. Sanchez stood straight as a board with his back against the wall on the left side of the door while Moss knelt down and checked the doorknob. He looked up. Sanchez gripped his weapon and nodded down at him. Moss opened the door and Sanchez slipped into a kitchen.
Their goggles lit Moss’s field of vision like it was noon under a green sun. Small pieces of trash littered the tables next to a ratty sofa in the living area on the other side of the kitchen, but the space was otherwise well-kept—for a two-story shack. Bright embers glowed in the fireplace. The space smelled something like ethanol.
Moss heard a snort, tapped Sanchez, and turned, approaching the back of the sofa. A badlander was sprawled out with one arm and one leg dangling toward the floor; the other hand rested on his chest. Sanchez tiptoed closer. Moss winced and waved a hand as the mixture of liquor and body funk entered his nostrils. Sanchez pulled a knife out of his belt and squeezed his hand over the man’s mouth. A hollow pop sounded as Sanchez separated the badlander’s spinal column via his windpipe. He jerked the knife away and wiped it on the man’s clothes.
He turned and moved down the hallway. His nose was assaulted by ethanol as he pushed the bathroom door open and peered into the tub.
A bathtub still...no wonder.
Across the hall, they found two lumps beneath a blanket on a queen bed that smelled like boot socks two days after a hike. Sanchez fingered an ashtray on a rickety nightstand with hand-rolled cigarette butts in it. He whispered into his throat mic and, though it was too quiet for the occupants, it registered in Moss’s ear.
“That shit’ll kill ya.”
“And if not, you will.”
Sanchez chuckled, and one of the lumps shifted under the blanket.
Sanchez
raised his knife, but Moss held a hand out to stop him, holding his finger and thumb slightly apart.
“Kid.”
They stood still and waited until the lump settled. Moss realized he was holding his breath and released it. Sanchez looked across the bed at Moss and raised his rifle with one hand while grabbing the top of the blanket with the other. Moss did the same before mouthing a countdown.
“Three, two…”
They yanked the blankets down and froze.
A woman in a t-shirt and boxer shorts slept beneath Sanchez’s rifle. Across from her, a child with a mop of wild brown hair drooled down from her open mouth, across her chin, and onto a rolled-up piece of fur. With a nod, each man shouldered their rifles and reached into their holsters for the side arms with knobs at the top. Each turned the knob to the low setting and held it above their targets. There was another countdown. They pulled the triggers and blue electricity flowed through the sleeping females. They jolted once and fell still.
“We’ll come back after we clear the other houses.”
“Roger that, boss.”
They found no one upstairs. Most of the other houses came up empty, three occupied, each with women and children, each with a lone guard downstairs. They executed the guards. They roused the women and children in the order they were disabled and took them to the one porch behind a house at the end of the cul-de-sac that was still standing. They restrained all the women before starting medical checks on the children.
The kids mostly suffered from cuts and bruises. One had a chest cold and couldn’t stop coughing for the life of her. Brady knelt in front of her and dragged his pack over, looking down at her. She was a blonde-haired little runt with pudgy, high cheeks, and bright blue eyes.
“We’ll get that cough looked at.” He offered her a piece of wrapped candy.
Root beer. Kid’ll probably hate it.
The little girl looked up at the woman next to her. The woman looked at Brady, then back down at the girl. She gave the girl a little nod. Brady held out the candy, and the girl snatched it from him. In seconds, she had it unwrapped and shoved in her mouth. Moss had been wrong. She sucked away at it with a huge grin. Both the girl and the woman smiled at Brady. Brady smiled back and turned the smile on Moss, who was tending to a cut on a boy’s arm. Moss looked over, saw the shit-eating grin on Brady’s face and shook his head.
