A four-foot, shining lance of energy flew past my ear with a loud hum… a magespear, but whether it was from an inmate or the creature, I didn’t know which. The energy blast tore the right arm and shoulder off a man standing nearby, and then kept going to blow the ribcage out of the guy past him.
I tried to turn and aim the shotgun in the direction of the creature, but there were still too many people jostling around me. I swung the stock around a few more times, trying to clear some room, and finally enough of the crowd had cleared out so that I could get a good look at the thing.
Part of me wished that I hadn’t. It seemed to strain the eyes to look at it; it was such an aberration of nature that my mind wanted to rebel at what my eyes were telling it.
It was made out of bodies; human bodies, all stuck together in a bizarre haphazard arrangement that resulted in a seemingly random splay of limbs and heads and torsos. Scraps of cloth criss-crossed all over the thing… the uniforms of the victims that the death mage had fused together to make this abomination.
Some of the limbs were no longer that of a human; they had elongated or twisted or fused with others to form a dizzying array of projections; stabbing, scorpion tail-like shafts, waving tentacles covered in thorn-like claws, and other organic weaponry. This must’ve been the thing that had gotten into the offices near Mickey and I back at the beginning of the riot; an earlier, smaller version of this thing, with less bodies stuck together to make up its mass. As big as this thing was now, as many bodies as it had absorbed, it probably couldn’t fit through the doorways of the cell blocks, which must be why the death mage had used teleportation to get it here into the middle of the crowd.
The heads were still mostly human, though, with faces twisted into snarls of pain and rage and maybe even horror at what they had been forced to become. The creature charged into the ranks of the fleeing inmates over and over, tossing some into the air, crushing others underfoot, impaling more still on the sharp ends of the stabbing appendages.
There was a name for this sort of creature… Cass would know it. She always made fun of me when I got stumped with the more poorly-known trivia of the mage’s Tricks we faced. You never study, meathead, she’d say, taunting me with that grin of hers. But I did study, I studied all the time… it’s just that she was always that much better at this than I was. Besides, neither one of us had ever actually seen death magic before; we’d only read rumors and reports of rumors as to the kinds of nightmares that necromancers could create.
Golem, I suddenly remembered with a little satisfaction. This patchwork monster of dead bodies was called a golem. Part of me made a mental note to brag to Cass when I found her.
Another lightning blast erupted out of one of the limbs… one that was still human shaped. The mass of the creature around that limb was covered in scraps of blue cloth… the uniform of a User… and I realized then that the piece of the golem which had been a User would retain the powers that the User had possessed while still alive.
The crowd had really thinned out around me at this point, fleeing from the golem, and I probably should’ve followed suit. I should’ve made a run for it and used the shotgun to shoot my way past the ghouls and out of the kill zone, but like I said, my blood was up and I wanted to fight. Before I knew what I was doing, I put a blast of buckshot into the center of the mass of the creature.
I immediately regretted my decision. Several of the heads spun around toward me, and one of the golem’s human-like arms raised up. A four-foot long glowing magespear appeared in its fist, and the arm cocked back like it was about to throw a javelin.
Oh, shit! I thought, which is about all you can think at a time like that, and I dove wildly as the magespear flew. Luckily, that disgusting thing’s aim wasn’t all that good. The energy blast sailed past me, humming loudly, and tore the leg off of a nearby fleeing inmate.
This was starting to seem less and less like a good idea. I found myself ducking and weaving, elbowing my way past other fleeing inmates as more magespears flew around and past me. I snapped off another quick shot at the creature… I have no idea whether I hit it or not… and was driven to the ground again when arcs of lightning tore through the air around me. They got so close that I could feel the hairs on my arm rise up from the close passage of electricity.
The body of an inmate fell over top of me, and as I struggled out from underneath it, the golem closed the distance between us rapidly. I knew I was screwed. There was no way I was going to be able to stop this thing, not alone, not with nothing but a shotgun and harsh language.
Still, there’s a special place in Marine Corps hell for guys who go down without a fight, so I set my jaw, racked the slide on my shotgun, and picked out a spot on the creature where I could hurt it the most before I went down. One of the heads, I figured, so I chose one that was in the middle of the blue scraps of prison uniforms and blasted it apart with the shotgun.
The creature recoiled in a sudden spasm of pain and confusion, stumbling in its approach on its many misshapen legs. One of those legs had gone dead underneath of the creature, and I noticed that the arm which had hurled the magespears at me was now dangling limply in the middle of the mass of the golem.
Kill the heads, I thought, in a sudden surge of epiphany. Kill the heads, and the part of the golem that was constructed from that body dies with it.
Great. I figure out how to kill the thing, about two seconds before it’s right on top of me. I barely had time to rack the slide on the shotgun again before the golem corrected for the useless leg underneath it and managed to regain its balance. It didn’t hesitate; it came straight at me once more, howling from the mouths of dead men, with its countless killing limbs waving in anticipation of tearing me apart.
I shouted back at it, screaming my rage and defiance, determined to go out fighting rather than cowering, but my voice was drowned out by the sudden roar of close gunfire. Lots of gunfire; automatic weapons fire, from multiple weapons, all kicking off on rock and roll like there was a fire sale on bullets and everyone wanted to spend all of their money.
The golem recoiled and halted its charge, spinning around, looking for the enemy that was punching dozens of bullets into the midst of its fleshy mass. After a second to let the idea that I wasn’t dead sink into my brain, I did the same thing; I searched the yard to figure out who it was that had just saved my ass.
They were on the far side of the golem…guards, perhaps, making a sortie from the hub, but I couldn’t tell. The yard was almost empty of inmates now… they had all either fled and were being chased down by ghouls, or were lying in bits and pieces all around me… but since my saviors were on the far side of the creature, I couldn’t really get a good look at them.
I took advantage of the distraction to get to my feet and reload the shotgun. The weapon had one of those shell holders on the side of the stock… five plastic loops to hold extra ammo… and my hands moved of their own accord, plucking the shells out of the loops and feeding them into the shotgun without my really even thinking about it.
Thank God for muscle memory and all those hours I’d spent practicing reloads over the years. Anyway, I circled right of the creature as I reloaded, crouching low and hoping I wouldn’t get hit by a stray round from whoever was doing the shooting.
Then I spotted them. Half a dozen figures blasting away at the golem, wearing tactical vests and dark blue uniforms… dark blue SWAT uniforms. It was a Wreck Squad.
Not just any Wreck Squad; I’d hit the goddamn lottery. Amongst the shooters, I picked out a familiar face who seemed to be leading the charge… my old squad’s Defense mage, Shifty.
Yes! I thought, a savage grin pulling my lips back from my teeth. This wasn’t just a reprieve, this was a Godsend, and I couldn’t wait to dive back in to the fight.
It was like walking past my old high school football field, and there was a pickup game going on, with one team who just happened to be my old squad waving me on to the field to join in. Part of me realized I wasn’t
SWAT anymore, part of me realized that I was really a prison inmate and wouldn’t ever be a part of that other team again, but it was so natural to slip back into my old role that I left all those doubts behind and ran recklessly into the middle of the madness.
The Wreck Squad was pouring gunfire into the golem, but with little effect. They were firing into the mass of the creature, and while they were definitely tearing gory chunks out of it, they weren’t hitting the heads and the golem seemed unaffected by their fire.
It charged into and amongst them, flinging one of them through the air and blasting another apart with a lightning bolt before Shifty was able to get a shield up for the others to take cover behind. The golem slammed into the shield, shoving its bulk up against it furiously, and I could see Shifty straining to maintain his defense under the assault of the massive creature.
One of his team looped around the right flank of the shield and hurled a magespear into the creature, but again, it impacted into the mass of the golem and didn’t take out a head, so all it did was piss the creature off. A heavy tentacle covered in claws slammed into the Striker mage, sending him flying, and the creature redoubled its assault on Shifty’s force field.
I fired into one of the heads, making the golem pause for a moment in its attack. I had to get Shifty and his team on the right page or this patchwork nightmare was going to overwhelm all of us in no time.
“Shifty!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, straining be heard over the gunfire. “Shifty!”
He didn’t hear me at first, and I waved my arms, shouting his name again and again. Finally, he glanced over at me and I could see the shock of recognition flood over his face.
“The heads!” I said, pointing at my head and then back at the golem. “Kill the heads!”
For a second, I thought he might not understand, that he might be so confused at seeing me in the middle of all this that he might not catch my meaning over the constant thunder of gunfire. But Shifty was an experienced operator, and we’d done so many ops together that we could practically read each other’s minds. After holding back another assault from the creature with his force field, I saw him grab his closest teammate’s arm.
“Kill the heads!” he shouted. “Shoot for the heads!”
They all started shouting it, then, spreading the word amongst themselves. “Shoot the heads! Shoot the heads!”
Gunfire spat out of their weapons and began tearing into the screaming heads of the golem. With every head that died, that portion of the creature died along with it, suddenly going limp. The golem began to stagger and sway, listing like a ship taking on water from legs suddenly going dead underneath it.
It kept trying to right itself, to get its balance back and return to the fight, but every time it recovered, another head blew apart under the withering fire from the Wreck Squad. I joined in, picking out my targets, hitting them with ease now that I wasn’t running and dodging from lightning bolts or magespears or one of those stabbing limbs.
The golem was barely able to move now, dragging half its inert form feebly, and we all started moving towards it, moving in with marching fire, blasting away with confidence now that we knew it couldn’t fight back effectively.
There’s a feeling that you get when you start to overwhelm an enemy, an elation that’s almost impossible to describe. You start to feel it, to recognize it, as the enemy starts to break. There you are, fighting back and forth, struggling, desperate, unsure as to who’s going to prevail, and then a crack forms in the enemy’s armor.
That crack forms, and you exploit it, and suddenly, you both realize that the tide has turned. The enemy begins to panic, because they knew they’re about to lose, and once you see that panic in them, there’s this rush of adrenaline and triumph that cannot be duplicated by anything else on Earth. If you could bottle the feeling that you get when you crush your way through a routing enemy, you’d be the richest person in history.
I felt that rush when the golem began to spin around, desperate to get away from the determined gunfire that was now actually killing parts of it, not just punching holes uselessly in the middle of its mass. The remaining heads howled in fear, in confusion, not knowing which way to turn or what to do, and I found myself laughing as I emptied my shotgun into the last few heads of the golem. I was so fired up, I had to restrain myself from charging the goddamn thing and clubbing it with the empty weapon.
There’s nothing like the calm after a storm. There’s nothing like a cold drink of water after a long, hot march through the desert. And there’s nothing like victory over a deadly opponent when you’ve been a prisoner held alone in a cell for months on end.
I couldn’t remember when I’d been so happy. I couldn’t remember when my heart had felt so full. I felt like I was alive again.
That feeling was barely dulled when one of the Wreck Squad charged up to me, weapon at the ready, shouting, “Drop that weapon! Drop it now!”
“Okay, kid,” I said, nodding as I set the shotgun down on the deck. “Take it easy. I’m on your side.”
“Now get down on your knees!”
Man, this kid was really starting to steal my sunshine.
***
“I said, get down on your knees!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Shifty said, hurrying over to push down the barrel of his teammate’s rifle. “Ease down, Ryan. That’s a friendly.”
Dread noticed that Shifty was keeping his voice nice and even to keep his teammate calm. Ryan had the look of someone raw and new to the Wreck Squads, and watching your friends get torn to pieces by an inhuman monster was bound to shake anybody’s nerves. It wouldn’t be the first time in history that someone cooked off and shoot a friendly on account of too much adrenaline.
Ryan looked back and forth between Shifty and Dread nervously. “He’s… he’s an inmate.”
Shifty shook his head. “That ain’t just an inmate. That’s Dread, dude.”
“Dread… the Dread?”
“The Dread, as in Wreck Squad Four Dread, as in took out Maestro Polonius Dread, as in big sonofabitch who they clearly have been feeding well in this prison Dread,” Shifty said with a smile, grabbing Dread’s big paw in a handshake and pulling him in close. “Get in here, big dog, hug it out with me.”
Dread grinned widely and slapped Shifty on the back in an embrace. “It’s damn good to see you, Shifty.”
“How’d you know to kill the heads?”
“Because I shot one with that,” Dread said, gesturing toward the shotgun, “and a piece of the golem went limp.”
“You took on that thing solo with a pump shotgun? You are clearly still crazy,” Shifty said, shaking his head. “Straight up savage, is what you are. My man!”
“You’ve got shooters down.”
Shifty looked around and nodded. “You’re still a squad leader at heart, Dread.”
“I was never the squad leader. That was always Cass.”
Shifty turned to his team and looked them over. “Who’s still with me? Who’s hurt?”
Two of the shooters from the Wreck Squad called out weakly from the ground, badly injured. Ryan paused in tying a bandage on to one of them to point out a body lying nearby. “That thing… that creature… killed Nguyen.”
“And Casey got blown apart by that lightning strike,” Shifty said, looking over at Dread. “Our Healer.”
“Sorry, man,” Dread said. “I may be able to help you out with that Healer part, though.”
“I’m down two people and I’ve got another two seriously messed up. I’m all ears.”
“We’ve got a guy, Jolly, one of the inmates…”
“We?”
“Cass and I,” Dread explained. “I linked up with Cass when this all started.”
Shifty grinned. “What a surprise.”
Dread was about to answer, but Ryan leapt to his feet and shouldered his weapon, shouting “Freeze!” at a figure that dropped down from the rooftop of a nearby cell block and started walking casually toward them
.
“Hold your fire!” Dread said, once he saw that it was Lysette. “Hold your fire! That’s a friendly!”
Ryan didn’t look convinced. “Boss?”
Shifty looked at Dread, who said, “She’s cool. She’s with me. And Cass. She’s tight with Cass.”
“Stand down, trooper,” Shifty said to Ryan.
“Are you kidding me?” Ryan said. “We’re…”
“Look, man, just… don’t,” Dread said. “Lysette is an Adept and former SOCOM. She dropped down like that as a courtesy, to let you see her. If she wanted to kill you, she would’ve dropped right on top of you and killed you before you even knew what was happening.”
Ryan looked from Dread back at Lysette, swallowing hard.
“He’s not wrong,” she said.
“She’s an Adept?” Shifty asked. “A Physical Adept? So she’s kind of strong and all that?”
“Really strong,” Dread said, moving his right arm around. “Trust me on that.”
“Okay,” Shifty said. “Whatever. If you say she’s cool, she’s cool. Take it easy, Ryan.”
“We’re really doing this?” Ryan asked. “Trusting all of these inmates?”
“Take a look around,” Shifty said. “We just got the shit kicked out of us, and Dread saved our collective asses. So yeah, if I can get a couple of heavy hitters on my side in a time of need, I say hell yes to that.”
“We can’t stay out in the open like this,” Lysette said. “Where’s Cass?”
“She’s not with you?”
Lysette frowned and bent to pick up an assault rifle that had been dropped by one of the downed Wreck Squad. As she checked the magazine, Ryan snapped his weapon back up toward her, shouting, “Freeze!”, but before he could even start to get the word out, she ducked and spun with inhuman speed, sweeping his legs out from underneath him. He’d barely hit the ground before she was on top of him, foot on his chest, rifle pointed at his head.
“Lysette!” Dread shouted. He knew there was no way he could move fast enough to stop her before she shot Ryan, even if he could somehow hope to disarm her.
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