by SD Tanner
He radioed Gears and as he expected, Gears certainly did want to meet the man. Within a few hours, Gears and Pax arrived and they were with a blonde woman who looked like she could have been Ip’s sister. Together they walked into the lounge kitchen area of the CDC.
Looking at the woman, he asked, ‘Who’s she?’
‘We think she could be Ip,’ Gears replied.
Shocked and thinking Gears had finally lost his mind, he asked, ‘What? Why the hell would you think that?’
Gears shrugged and said, ‘Mackenzie sent her to meet me.’
Even more shocked, he asked, ‘You found Mackenzie?’
Gears shook his head and said, ‘No.’
‘Then how do you know he sent her?’ He asked curiously.
‘I told him,’ the woman said bluntly.
‘Oh I see,’ he said in surprise. ‘New Ip can talk.’
Pax snorted and said, ‘Is new Ip like new coke ‘cos that wasn’t as popular.’
The woman huffed and wandered off into the corridor. Gears turned to Pax and said, ‘Keep an eye on her.’
Confused and slightly frustrated with the latest turned of events, he asked, ‘What the hell is going on?’
Gears shrugged and said, ‘She’s clearly infected with the designer virus and Isaac thinks she’s Ip. According to her, Mackenzie thinks she’s Ip and she’s the reason all of our infected people left. She told them to join her at the Ranch.’
Making a mental note that in future, he should keep a closer eye on his mad brothers, he asked, ‘How does she know about the Ranch?’
Shaking his head, Gears said, ‘She didn’t call it the Ranch. She calls it home, where the horses are, same as Ip did, but we’re the only ones who knew that’s what she called the Ranch. And she’s definitely been there and she knows everythin’ there is dead.’
He scratched his head, wondering just how mad Gears was and said, ‘Sounds to me like you think she’s Ip as well.’
Shaking his head again and sighing, Gears said, ‘I dunno what to believe, TL. Maybe she is. The world is kinda strange and I did say we need to go with the weird and this is weird.’
Lydia had walked in during their conversation and she said, ‘We could test her.’
‘How?’ Gears asked.
‘If she agreed, we could measure her brain waves. If she’s Ip, then there will be key markers that should be the same,’ Lydia replied.
Gears rubbed the scar on his face and said, ‘I dunno she’d agree to that, Lydia. New Ip doesn’t seem too keen on humans.’
Puzzled, he asked dubiously, ‘Really? Old Ip thought she was human.’
Sounding tired and resigned, Gears said, ‘Well, new Ip doesn’t.’
Before they could continue, there was the sound of commotion from the corridor and people were shouting. The three of them immediately ran for the door. The woman was in the test room, fighting against Pax who was holding her firmly to stop her from reaching the hunter that was tied to the table. Distracted by their entrance into the room, the woman pulled herself away from Pax and stood glaring at him.
Sounding annoyed, Gears asked, ‘What the hell is goin’ on?’
Turning on Gears, the woman asked angrily, ‘Why are you hurting the animal?’
Reaching his hand out trying to calm the woman, Gears said gently, ‘We’re not torturing it. We’re jus’ usin’ it to learn.’
Looking dismayed, the woman said, ‘That is cruel. You will hurt it.’
Pax snorted and said, ‘Hunters doan have feelin’s.’
‘Do not be stupid,’ the woman said in disgust. ‘All life has feelings.’
The woman walked over to the hunter, but not touching it she said, ‘You should kill it or let it go. You cannot punish it for being what it is.’
‘We’re not punishin’ it,’ Gears said patiently. ‘We need to understand our enemies better, so we’re usin’ it to help us understand.’
‘You should not do that,’ the woman replied. ‘They are what they are. They die easy and when they die, they are not missed. The animals can be used, but you must not be cruel.’
Without waiting for any of them to speak, the woman touched the hunter instantly killing it and turning to Gears, she said, ‘You have another one.’
Furious, Lydia said, ‘Get her out of here, Gears, before she kills all of our test subjects!’
Ignoring Lydia’s request, Gears asked, ‘Do we have anymore hunters?’
‘No,’ Lydia replied. ‘Only the super hunter.’
The woman looked surprised and shaking her head, she said firmly, ‘That is stupid.’
Frowning, Gears asked her, ‘Why’s that stupid?’
Looking at him as if he was crazy, the woman said in disbelief, ‘You sleep with your enemy.’
Curious, he asked, ‘Are they your enemy too?’
The woman looked at him with her blue on blue eyes and said, ‘They are not my kind, but they are not my enemy.’
Now Lydia was curious and asked, ‘So, you’re not the same as them?’
The woman huffed in reply and looked away, clearly she’d said all she planned to say. Gears obviously had enough of the argument and said, ‘Lydia, is this new guy awake yet?’
They left the dead hunter and walked to the room where the man with the buzz cut was lying, still strapped to the table and sleeping.
‘What’s the story here?’ Gears asked.
Lydia replied, ‘One of the scavenger teams found him by the side of the road screaming. They were worried about him and brought him straight here. I sedated him to calm him down and he’s been asleep for the past few hours.’
‘Has he said anything?’ Gears asked.
‘He said just one word,’ he answered. ‘Ruler.’
Gears grunted and asked, ‘Can ya wake him up, Lydia?’
From the bed they heard the man with the buzz cut say groggily, ‘I’m awake.’
Lydia immediately went to his side, unstrapped his arms and started to check his vitals while he picked up a plastic water bottle with a straw and handed it to him. The man acknowledged him with a nod and sipped water from the bottle.
Gears was standing at the foot of the bed and asked, ‘Who are ya?’
‘I was Colonel Logan Carter,’ the man replied. ‘But I’m nobody now.’
Walking over to the side of the bed, Gears pulled up a chair and said, ‘Tell me your story.’
‘Don’t stress the man, Gears,’ Lydia warned him. ‘This is my CDC and you don’t get to bully people in here.’
Logan waved his hand at her and said, ‘It’s okay.’ Taking another sip from the water bottle, he said, ‘I was with a disaster resolution team responsible for restoring the military in the event of catastrophic failure.’
Nodding, Gears said, ‘We’ve certainly had that.’
‘Yes we have,’ Logan agreed. ‘I was in a bunker near St Louis. We only had a third of the people we were supposed to have. A lot of people couldn’t or just didn’t show up, but we had some of our best nuclear specialists there. There wasn’t a lot we could do. We had fewer resources than we were supposed to have and we lost most of the satellites in a matter of weeks, so we were all cut off from one another. According to our orders, we weren’t supposed to leave the bunker until the situation stabilized, but it never seemed to. I went out a few times, but there was nothing near us to do anything with.’
Remembering the futility of their orders, Logan rubbed his eyes tiredly and continued, ‘There was a guy in the bunker called Barry. He was a nuclear specialist. He was alright, but one night he just got up and let the hunters in. Now he calls himself Ruler and he can control the hunters.’
‘That wasn’t Barry,’ Gears interrupted. ‘That’s an epic asshole and we’ve met him before.’
‘Yeah, I get it wasn’t Barry,’ Logan said bitterly. ‘This guy screwed with my head in a major way.’
‘What did he do?’ Lydia asked curiously.
Logan shook his head and said, ‘I don�
�t really know, but I felt…damaged all of the time. My head was foggy and all I felt was emotionally destroyed every minute of every day. Sometimes I thought I was sitting next my dead daughter in the hospital and other times I knew I was in the bunker. But no matter where I thought I was, all I could feel was intense grief.’
Feeling sorry for the man, he said, ‘That must have driven you insane.’
An angry look flashed across Logan’s face and he said, ‘Never. I knew it wasn’t real. I knew that motherfucker was doing something to me.’ Looking at Lydia, Logan said apologetically, ‘Excuse my language, ma’am.’
Lydia smiled and said, ‘No need to apologize to me.’ She looked pointedly at Gears and said, ‘No one else does.’
Gears rolled his eyes and said, ‘Go on, Colonel.’
‘Don’t call me that,’ Logan replied. ‘I quit.’
Nodding, Gears replied, ‘Fair enough.’
Logan continued, ‘Even though I was pretty fucked up, I did hear some stuff. I found out Ruler’s got control of nukes and he’s planning to use them.’
‘Can he use ‘em?’ Gears asked dubiously.
‘I don’t know,’ Logan replied. ‘But if he can then he will.’
Pax said excitedly, ‘Gears, we gotta do somethin’ about that. That’s even more of a problem than Major major asshole was.’
Raising his hand to Pax, Gears said, ‘Settle down, Pax. I hear ya.’ Looking at Logan, he asked, ‘Do ya know where Ruler is?’
Nodding, Logan said, ‘Yeah, he was in a missile silo just outside of Erin in Tennessee.’
‘What’s he doing there?’ He asked curiously.
‘He had a couple of nuclear specialists with him,’ Logan replied. ‘I think he was trying to work out how to use the missiles.’
Gears shook his head and said, ‘We need to remove the threat.’
Thinking his brothers were about to launch off into yet another ill-considered stunt, he held up his hand and said, ‘Getting rid of Ruler, assuming we can, doesn’t get rid of the nuclear missiles, Gears. There are nukes all over the damn country. We found some yesterday at that Navy Submarine base.’
Aggressively, Gears replied, ‘I get that, TL, but we know Ruler is a stupid little shit and he’ll use ‘em as soon as he can.’
‘He’s right, TL,’ Pax agreed decisively. ‘We need to kill him.’ Then looking at new Ip, Pax said, ‘Again, ‘cos Ip already killed him once.’
Hoping to capitalize on Pax’s point, he said, ‘Pax raises a good point. Killing Ruler doesn’t seem to get rid of him in any permanent kind of way.’
‘Maybe not, but it does get him away from that nuke,’ Gears replied bluntly.
‘You don’t know that,’ he replied, equally as bluntly.
Giving him a filthy look, Gears said sarcastically, ‘What do ya wanna do, TL? Nothin’? ‘Cos if we do nothin’ and then there’s a fuckin’ great big mushroom cloud over the US, ya can always be proud of the fact ya didn’t even try to stop it.’
Realizing his brothers were not going to back down and now not entirely sure they should, he muttered, ‘Alright, no need to get all bitchy about it.’
Pax laughed and said, ‘All Gears has these days is bitch mode.’ Pausing, he added, ‘Maybe you’ll cheer up now we got new Ip.’
Glaring at Pax, the woman asked, ‘Is he always this stupid?’
Gears grinned at the woman and said, ‘Yeah. All Pax has is stupid mode.’ Turning back to Logan, he said, ‘Get some rest. We’re gonna go sort Ruler out.’
‘Wish I could go with you,’ Logan said wistfully.
‘I wouldn’t worry about that,’ Pax informed him. ‘This asshole seems have more lives than Ip. Ya can kill him next time.’
CHAPTER NINETEEN: Lock and load (Gears)
‘Are you sure this guy is even there?’ Captain Ted asked.
‘Does it matter?’ Pax replied. ‘If he ain’t there, we’ll go home. If he is there, we’ll shred his ass.’
‘What if he detonates the nuke?’ Captain Ted asked dubiously.
Frowning, Pax shook his head and said, ‘Accordin’ to Logan, he’s in the bunker. We jus’ gotta kill him before he can fire the damn nuke.’
Captain Ted shrugged and said, ‘If it’s just one asshole in a bunker, don’t you think this is overkill.’
‘Nope,’ Pax answered firmly. ‘That sonofabitch has a hunter army and there ain’t no such thing as overkill with that kinda enemy.’
He was vaguely listening to Pax and Captain Ted and said, ‘I thought ya Marines like your force lethal.’
‘There is such a thing as a fair fight, Gears,’ Captain Ted replied.
He snorted and asked, ‘Who the hell taught ya to fight fair?’
With a big grin, Captain Ted said, ‘Fuckin’ nobody. I dunno any losers.’
Not wanting to underestimate Ruler, he was taking twenty assault vehicles, thirty HUMVEEs, twenty-five seven-ton trucks, four fuel tankers and two Strykers. The trucks each had twenty combat shooters with another five trucks carrying food, missiles and ammo. In total, there were about a thousand shooters and support personnel. In the air, he was bringing ten helicopters made up of three Black Hawks and seven Knighthawks, the latest addition to Hatch’s growing fleet.
He had no doubt Ruler would have surrounded himself with an army of hunters. Based on what he saw at the Ranch during their last combat, it would be safe to assume at least 100,000 hunters. He didn’t really have the firepower to deal with that, but all they had to do was shoot their way in, deal with the super hunters and the hunters would become blind again in the daylight. It worked last time and he was reasonably confident it would work again. Just to be sure, he tripled the combat force with three times the shooters, weapons and vehicles. Even if that little shit steps up his game, we can cut him down, he thought grimly.
‘Huddle up,’ he called to Pax, Captain Ted, TL and Nelson. ‘We need to get on road by oh four hundred. I ain’t too worried about runnin’ into hunters. I reckon they’ll come off worse for meetin’ us, but it’s gonna take eighteen hours to get to the staging location and then another four hours after that to get to the silo.’
‘Maybe we should try something more covert than this,’ TL suggested.
‘No, TL,’ Gears replied firmly. ‘I want this asshole to know we ain’t gonna pussyfoot around his BS no more. Ya saw what a demented little shit he was. He needs to learn we’re gonna keep kickin’ his ass all the live long day until he fucks off permanently.’
Pax nodded and said, ‘The combat shooters need this. Last time we met this asshole at the Ranch we lost twenty-three shooters, and we lost another forty-nine on the island. They want some payback.’
Captain Ted nodded and said, ‘Kicking ass is good for morale.’
Looking worried, TL said, ‘As long it’s not our asses that get kicked.’
‘Why would we get our asses kicked?’ Captain Ted asked. ‘We got the heat and we got the rage. It’s all good.’
With a big grin, Pax added, ‘And we got new Ip.’
TL frowned and said, ‘Old or new Ip can only kill hunters on contact. She’s not a lot of use against tens of thousands of hunters, Pax.’
Looking disappointed at his brother’s lack of enthusiasm, Pax shrugged and said, ‘Yeah, I know.’
Turning to him, TL shook his head and said, ‘I got a bad feeling about this, Gears.’
Feeling frustrated with TL’s ongoing resistance to his plan, he asked fiercely, ‘Whatdaya wanna do instead, TL?’
Seeming unconcerned by his anger, TL replied bluntly, ‘I think we should go in covertly. It’ll get the job done with less risk.’
‘Shit, TL!’ Captain Ted said loudly. ‘We’re going in with hell in our hands. Why are you so fuckin’ worried?’
‘I don’t know,’ TL replied honestly. ‘It just doesn’t feel right.’
He shrugged. He always thought TL was a solid fighter, but he lacked the aggression he and Pax shared. TL was efficient and effective, but he an
d Pax turned into savages when attacked. Even as kids, TL was more likely to try to negotiate his way out of problem whereas he and Pax would become angry, entrench and aggressively defend their position.
He looked at the lines of vehicles, loaded and ready roll, listened to the shooters excitedly calling to one another and said abruptly, ‘We ain’t standin’ down, TL. Ya need to get on board.’
TL nodded and he knew TL would do whatever it took. He would stand with him no matter how well or badly the engagement went and even if it went badly, there would be no recriminations.
‘Okay, shut ‘em down,’ he told Pax and Captain Ted.
Both Pax and Captain Ted walked towards the lines of vehicles, shouting orders at the shooters and sending them back to barracks. He turned and looked for the woman, but he couldn’t see her and, sighing, he wondered where she’d gone. She certainly looked like Ip, shared her mannerisms and Isaac was convinced she was Ip, but he still couldn’t wrap his head around reincarnation. That’s jus’ crazy talk, he thought, life ain’t that kind. Satisfied they were ready for their early morning start, he went back to his tent to pack his gear for the morning and get some sleep himself.
He flicked on the LED light and was surprised when the woman sat up in his cot, blinking at the light and she asked, ‘Why are you fighting with him?’
Laying out the items he would need for the next few days, he replied, ‘Cos he wants to kill us and, if you’re Ip, he wants to kill you too.’
The woman huffed and said, ‘He said you would try and trick me.’
Surprised, he turned to her and asked, ‘Ya spoke to him? What else did he say?’
‘He said I should join him,’ she replied sounding bored. ‘I said I would think about it.’ Lying back down on his cot, she added, ‘He called me imp and said he was a friend.’
‘Don’t trust that little shit,’ he said bluntly. ‘He wants to kill ya.’
The woman didn’t reply, he continued to pack his gear and he thought, even Ruler thinks she’s Ip. He had to admit the evidence was mounting, but he would reserve his judgement. He could accept the world being weird, but if he believed she was Ip and then she wasn’t, he didn’t think he could deal with losing her twice. Years of being in the army taught him to sleep anywhere at any time and not wanting to disturb her, he slept on the floor.
