by Rie Warren
The ricocheting calls of birds sang a shrill Time’s up! Time’s up! Every snap of twig or brush of red, orange, gold leaf told our story. We had no time to cover our tracks. I didn’t like that.
With our packs’ weight diminished, we racked up the clicks. Most of our gear was left at the commune. We carried the basics: weapons, spare boots, a change of clothes, rations, water. The way I was used to, the way it was supposed to be.
Gnawing on some bread supplied by Eden, we jogged for a length, running through our plan, if by plan I meant knotting the noose around our necks with our own hands.
“Listen, big man, you keep us safe out here, and I’ll keep us safe once we reach the Outpost. Do your job.” Blondie was back in biz mode.
“And I’ve been getting the gold standard so far.” I nodded to the last small bandage on my shoulder.
“That was an accident.”
“Yeah, I accidentally got between you and a friendly hatchet.”
He winked. “Said I was sorry.”
“Fuck off.” I grinned. “You don’t get it, man. I rarely get wounded.”
“Jesus, your ego’s even bigger than your cock, isn’t it?”
He had a point.
My laughter joined his, and I sputtered, “Yeah and so’s the chip on my shoulder, baby.”
My laughter got derailed when we reached higher ground. It took a few seconds to survey the scene below us, a sight I wished we’d never come across. A half-day old, blood had pooled on the ground and congealed. The iron tang of it filled my nose. Anything but this. Not this.
He didn’t speak. He couldn’t. Neither could I.
In the lee below our feet, spread over the burnt-colored autumn grass was a slaughter. Bodies twisted in gruesome shapes, defiled by bullet holes, bludgeoned skulls, and all that blood.
Blondie retched.
While we’d been fighting and fucking in the forest, they’d been massacred at daybreak.
My stomach had ideas of doing the same as Blondie’s. I clamped my throat shut, but couldn’t cut off my emotions. Not this time.
This wasn’t the work of Freelanders.
This was the Freelanders.
The scene was grisly and could only be Corps work, a kind even I hadn’t witnessed before. Giant ugly birds black as sin cackled, cawed. Creatures fought over fingers and eyes, gore dripping from beaks and maws.
I ran at them. “Get off! Get off them!” Both SIGs raised, ready to blast, I stood over a body and ran my sights in a circle, checking the encroaching woods.
Kneeling down, Blondie gently turned a face. “They’re ours.” His throat bobbed and my weapons wavered.
Then I was with him, among the bodies, checking each one, waiting for a pulse, a cough, a lungful of air. Hoping I didn’t know the next person, praying I hadn’t sat beside them in the mess or shaken their hand or shared a story or two during the harvest festival.
“From the first wave that left with Darke.”
Oh Christ.
My stomach heaved, but I held it down. My hands were red, my vision the same color, swarming with violence to do unto others.
I spied a faded green cap askew on a bed of flax-white hair.
I stumbled across the field of the fallen, going to my knees. I touched the cap and leaned over. Not Micah, not Micah, not Micah…please.
It wasn’t his blank eyes I saw, but they were familiar nonetheless. Last time I’d seen this man, he was smirking, naked, ready to fuck Darke. Now he was naked, in death.
Wilde.
I pumped my hands to his chest, pinched his nose, and breathed into his mouth, begging him to come back to life. “Breathe, man. Just breathe for me.”
His lungs ballooned with air, though his eyes stared at nothing.
I startled when Blondie clasped my shoulder.
“It’s Wilde.” Closing his eyelids, I dropped my head.
My gaze glided down his arm to the hand he clasped in death. He’d held on to Tam to the end. She was curled on her side facing him, her free hand dug into soil; she’d dragged herself to Wilde. His other hand was thrown out, empty.
“Where the hell is Darke?” I searched frantically.
“He’s not here. He’s safe. He has to be.”
“That’s not better for him.” I gasped, openmouthed so I wouldn’t smell the death.
“Not one bit.”
Scanning the surrounds, I asked. “Where would he lead the rest of them?”
His voice was thick with pain, but his chin was held high with pride. “If I know anythin’ about Darke, he’ll have pulled his militia together. He’s tight, a warrior.” He stared into my eyes, his thumbs circling my cheeks. “He’s like you.”
“I don’t do this, Nathaniel. I am not this.”
“I know.”
I didn’t know how long we stood there, two men in a gory meadow saturated in blood and bodies.
Picking my way among the bodies, memorizing every face, I pieced it all together, wanting to scrub my brain of each image as it was recorded.
The Freelanders had been busting ass through the woods when their warning signal—a bird call—went up just before the forest came alive with bullets and brush fire. The Freelanders had been flushed into the open, sitting targets for the Corps killers.
A dozen or more would’ve been mowed down on the spot, the outer ring. Humans, with wild-eyed bleating animals caught in the crossfire, adding to the chaos. Then the real fight had commenced, close-contact combat backed up by sniper rifles. Superior firepower won out over skill and know-how. The Freelanders’ familiar terrain had been used against them, and, even overwhelmed and overpowered, Darke’s people would’ve kept at it, no matter what.
Duty, honor, loyalty, freedom.
My allegiance had completely switched now that I knew the truth about the Freelanders—now that I’d seen this violent reality.
Of the forty-seven who’d left the commune a day ago, twenty lay here, slain. Women, men, the returning Revolutionaries, too. In this one area, the Corps and CO didn’t discriminate.
I found a double-bladed ax, a short shovel with a broad head, too, and we set to work digging a communal grave. It wasn’t what either of us wanted, but time was short.
The last time I’d buried someone, it had been Erica, and I hadn’t gotten to say goodbye.
It took a couple hours before we lowered the perished.
Tam beside Wilde. Together beyond the end of life.
Over each man and woman, Blondie placed a wildflower and said their names. Wilde, Tammerick, Shades, Fen, Lil, Burne…
Our Alpha people were laid to rest with the same reverence once we’d found their ID tags: Jez, Amee, Hardy, Gray, Flint…
With lowered heads and hands held over a circle of death, we stood together.
The lack of Corps casualties was the final riddle easily solved. The Freelanders had put up a fierce fight. I scouted twelve wounded or dead as denoted by the tracks of bodies dragged from scene. Twelve to go.
“I guess that answers the question of retaliation.” I led Blondie away from the bloody scourge.
“Yeah.”
* * *
We moved on, dragging under the weight of the brutal extermination and what it meant. We stopped. Earlier than we should have. No comfort to be had, at least not from the bulkiest manmade materials we’d ditched at dawn.
No fires, no attention. The trap had to be set. I knew what toys the recon troops were using now. We’d seen their work and we were going to use the same tactics against them tomorrow. But all that mattered in this moment was at least we had each other.
No tent, fighting the cold the old-fashioned way—with body heat—and we were so cold after the day’s grief and despair. Bundling up together, I cradled Blondie against me.
“Hey, you okay?” I smoothed his hair back, but I could barely see the side of his face.
He gulped. “Yeah.”
“Turn around. I want to look at you, make sure you’re all right.”
<
br /> Rolling over, he stared down where I linked our hands, threading my fingers carefully through his. I sighed in anguish at the sight of a couple tears topping his downcast eyelashes. “You’re not okay. Don’t lie to me.” Relinquishing one of his hands, I cupped his strong jaw and angled his head up, damp blue irises making contact with my own troubled eyes.
All pretense of being tough guys capable of handling anything had disappeared the second we’d seen the slaughter. I stroked away the tears, found his mouth softly, slowly.
“Forget about it,” I whispered.
He sucked in a breath, pulling me closer. “I can’t.” His words were warm against my throat, fingers digging into my shirt.
Kissing along his temple to his forehead, I left my lips there, feeling how tautly strung his body was. “Then think about me, because I’m right here with you, baby. Be with me. Stay alive for me.”
He collapsed against me in deep, silent sobs, as we held each other as tight as possible. When he slumped against me, I waited until his gaze found mine. We touched each other with barely there, gentle brushes on hair and lips and cheeks, grounding ourselves in the feel of warm flesh and each other.
“Hold on to me.”
He nodded, curling around me. “I will. I’m not lettin’ you go.”
“Because I need you to live,” I said.
That night our kisses were long and profound, a deeper exchange than any we’d shared before providing the touch of solace we needed.
* * *
The next night, the world was on fire.
We’d scouted throughout the day, coming from behind the Corps subunit. Tailing them deep into the mountains, we waited for them to find a water hole and set up camp. They didn’t so much as sniff after Darke’s campaign to Alpha; they were gunning for Chitamauga.
We’d gotten north of them, pointed toward the Outpost. In the darkout, my eyes had adjusted to Blondie signaling to me with his fingers. Thirteen. There should’ve been twelve. I was never wrong. An unknown was with them.
Thirteen to two was a suicide mission; shame I wasn’t scared. We’d left them to their boisterous plans and big-boy brags about the fun they’d had fragging the humanoids. It seemed like their own casualties should have shaken their shit up a bit.
Half a click from Corps base camp, I laid a ring of fiery pits. We were doing exactly what the fuckwits had, only in reverse order. Using ourselves as bait, inside a flaming ring, we were gonna pull the Corps troops to us, then give ’em a little extra punch.
“Use what the earth gave us,” Blondie had advised.
I didn’t know how much I liked taking orders from him unless his cock was in my mouth, but I did as told, sharpening rocks until they were lethal shards, shaping thick splinters of wood into spears.
“Excellent. We’ll make a Freelander of you yet.” He’d approved of my handiwork, his own tasks with ampoules of acids and shredded fabric completed.
Packing for this most-recent vacation, we’d had similar ideas about necessities: bullets and bomb makings. Me with the guns, him with that home-cooked wonder, guncotton.
When I’d compiled a mountain of shrapnel, he’d set me to digging duty. I was a-okay with that, since I had dug enough holes in my lifetime, storing all my thoughts and feelings beneath a stratum of dirt so goddamn deep I hoped to forget where I’d buried them. The thing was, as he praised me, proving himself to be a battle-ready man, those emotions burst through, blinding me with hope.
Our trap ready, after we’d eaten quickly and quietly, we nodded to each other in agreement. Our lips met in a kiss that was deep and soft and something I never wanted to end. In the press of his tongue and the whisper of his stubble, the words went unsaid.
When our lips parted, we’d worked in tandem around the circle of bonfires. The strike of spark, the whoosh of fire, a fucking job well done, and one more to accomplish. For damn sure we were gonna pique Corps interest a hell of a lot more than a bunch of crude, rustic Nomads. We were going to give the troopers something better to chase, a bigger prize.
“Well, that’ll fix ’em.” Blondie’s beautiful face was lit in reds and oranges.
Walking toward him, I said, “I only want to fix you.”
“C’mon then, give it a shot.” He hooked a thumb into his waistband.
I met that challenge with all my passion. Chances were slim to none we’d make it out of this ensnarement intact, and even if we did, our asses would still be swinging in the breeze as long as the CO remained in power. My hand strong on Blondie’s neck, I pulled his face to mine. Watching gold eyelashes brush his cheeks and breaths stutter from his chest, I held off from kissing him by a few heartbeats.
Eyes softly smoldering, he looked up. “You just gonna tease me, honey?”
A swipe of my lips, then another. I groaned as his mouth opened, taking him in a kiss that shocked me to my very soul. Pressing away, I was struck by the twist of anguished longing in his expression. I ran my hands through his hair, down his back and to his hips, clasping him against me.
After all the years of being told my desires were abnormal, Blondie felt so natural, I didn’t want to let him go. We clutched each other, kissing and touching, aching for one more moment. The life-and-death situation gave rise to such intense arousal, I almost lost control.
When I jerked back, Blondie followed. “Caspar.”
I didn’t want to talk. Instead I moved my mouth to his ear, kissing the shell up to the doubled piercings at the peak.
“Caspar, I lo—”
I shook my head. I couldn’t hear this, not now when his life was on the line.
He shoved me away. “Goddamn you. Goddamn you for making me—”
A metallic whistle shrieked over Blondie’s outburst, the part when I thought he’d said he loved me. A crack was followed fast by another low-flying hum. Dirt blew up around us. Ping-ping-ping. Stampedes of feet headed our way with no fucking subtlety at all. As a commander, I was unimpressed. As a possible captive, I figured we better get the hell down and get out pronto.
I tried to bunker Blondie from the rain of bullets, throwing my body over him like a human shield when I dragged him out of the line of fire. “Well, that did the trick.” I grunted as I made impact with the ground.
Then he was silenced by the stream of ammo shot off in our direction.
“Blondie!”
Chapter Twelve
Blondie, fuck!” I bent over him, bullets ricocheting past my head at a rapid pace.
“Get off.” He slithered from under me, hand cupped to his formerly scar-free cheek. Great. Add another wound to my tally, this one mirroring my elbow blow the last time this kind of shit went down. Blood dripped between his fingers, red conduits increasing my rage.
He hissed, “Close your goddamn mouth and get the hell outta here.”
Easier said than done. I’d gone with his plan, and his plan had us surrounded by Corps. We were caught with our pants down, our emotions bared to the subunit.
Blondie’s eyes crackled as he listened to the first round of gay-hate chorusing from the troops, mocking our intimate kiss. I heard them with a hard head, deciding on a new strategy to up the ante. What better way to pump their beef than to serve myself up? A Corps commander proud of his homosexuality. Hell, I had half a mind to kiss Blondie again.
My plan changed in an instant.
Inside the ring of fire, we scrambled toward the trench we’d left, rolling into the dug-out ditch and up the other side. They had their night visors down, their vision crystal clear, but their aim was piss poor. Liz would’ve sheared my neck clean through from that distance. In spite of their victory over the Freelanders, the bulk of these soldiers seemed to be ninety-day wonders, not precision-trained operators. The Corps casualties in the Territories must’ve run deep.
I kept one eye on Blondie, the other across the fireworks, maintaining the brick fucking wall of my body between the wet-behind-the-ears battalion and him. They funneled into the hellish pit while I strode for
ward, providing the biggest, baddest target.
Blondie’s voice was a distant plea. “What the hell are you doing?’”
I was already handling the SIGS strapped across my chest, drawing more heat from the troops as well as taunts.
“Hands off the weapons, faggot.”
I stopped short of raising my twin buddies. “You might wanna rethink how you address me, soldier.”
With my face clear of shadows, I looked every bit the Alpha Elite tactical commander. I was a big badass motherfucker, and I’d been cameoed on the D-P enough so my status and face were known InterNations wide.
Whispers sizzled, shouts formed, my name clear amid a flurry of gay-bashing insults. Oh yeah, they recognize me.
Silencing his men, the soldier with the medals addressed me. “Commander Cannon. Stand down.”
“Suck my cock, Lieutenant.” I spread my arms and beckoned with my fingers, detailing the distance between the homemade minefield and me, figuring I was right on the edge.
Fingers scrabbled around my ankle. I kicked back, hoping I didn’t hit Blondie’s face this time. My lips didn’t move as I said, “You got a job; do it.”
Unsure of procedure, the troops shifted their aim to the movement behind me. Big mistake. I pulled a Liz move, grabbing my crotch. “Like what you saw, boys?”
Immediately, I was covered in twelve red dots, concentrated on my breastbone and my brain. Better.
The lieutenant stepped forward. His ugly one-sided sneer went with his skinny, scarred-up face. “Who’s with you?”
“My boyfriend.”
He advanced closer, the others in formation behind him. “That wasn’t Mr. Rice.”
I eased back a step, shrugging my shoulders. “Nah. Just my latest CO clone.” I made a show of lewdly licking my lips, tasting Blondie’s on my mouth, and casually slung a hand to my hip. “Always had a crush on that man.”
“Keep those hands in front of you, ass-drafter.”
“You giving me orders, Lieutenant?”
