Survival (6 page)

From the corner of his eye, he
saw a cloud of energy moving toward the moat. It was Stump, crouched beneath a
night cloak, two soldiers flanking him with weapons at the ready. Brazenly,
they made their way to the edge of the digital obstacle, where Stump fell to
his knees. He opened his briefcase, plugged a cord into a box in the ground and
began to tap the keyboard of his computer.

Bryan watched all of this, breath
frozen in his chest. He let it go in a torrent when Fausto lightly tapped his
right shoulder. “You’ll be fine, Bryan. We’ll make it. When that digital
obstacle is gone, we run. We do it for our families—for our children.”

Norton nodded. “Thank you,
Fausto. I…I owe you my life. I’m here because of you.”

Fausto smiled in return. “I look
forward to meeting Maggie when this is all done. We’ll be ok, kid.”

Just as he said it, the digital
obstacle disappeared, triggering an alarm. Warbling sirens polluted the air
with their cries of calamity; Verlander growled the men forward and their
forces sprang into action.

Bryan felt a cry bubble from his
lungs, and then he was sprinting toward the camp, bullets snapping from the
muzzle of his rifle. The powerful spray went wild at first, but he soon
controlled it, feeling a sick elation as he watched his ammunition plow into a
group of men sitting around a fire.

The bulls shrieked in surprise.
Their cries surprised him and made him feel sick—they were the high and
perfectly startled cries of ambushed men.

As the bulls returned fire, he
became aware of his comrades falling away. All around him they fell, torn asunder
by violence. Bullets whipped past him like buzzing hornets. Fausto took a round
in the shoulder and fell to the ground with a sharp cry.

Bryan stopped to help, just as a
round caught him in the thigh, passing through his leg and punching out the other
side of his blue jeans. He shrieked in pain and disbelief, and then there were
hands on them both, half-dragging and half-shoving them toward a little dip in
the turf. They fell into the hole as a fresh wave of gunfire perforated the air
above them.

“Fausto!” Bryan shouted.
“Fausto!”

“I’m here! Aw…shit! I’m ok, I’m
ok!”

The man who had rescued them, one
of the bulls who had chosen to stand with them, angled up and snapped off a
volley of gunfire. He put his back to the ground as bullets chewed the terrain
above them. “Three doors on the east side of the brewery,” he panted. “We go in
at the corner. There’s more cover there. Can you two keep going?”

Bryan clutched at his leg. The
wound seeped blood—thankfully, it wasn’t arterial. There was a groove in his
flesh. He pressed down on it, agony flaring through him. “I think so.”

“I’m good,” Fausto said.

“Ok, then stay low. We crawl.
Follow my lead.”

They did, and they moved like a
trio of phantoms across the scarred ground. Bryan tasted dirt; he felt stones and
sticks and grime grinding into his belly. Fausto’s boot inadvertently slapped
his cheek more than once as they struggled toward their goal.

All around them, the battle was
losing steam. Bryan thought the surprise of their attack had led to an
advantage, but he knew soldiers were converging on them from other parts of the
brewery.

The bull, their hero, looked back
at them. “I’m going to blow the door. You’ll have to fight your way in. His
name is General Creen and he’s in the basement.”

Fausto nodded, his face deathly
pale. He’d lost a lot of blood.

“Listen to me. Please. My name
was Ryan Butler. The Authority took me when I was eight years old.
Eight
years old
. I’m so sorry…” he said, pausing to gather himself, “I’m so sorry
for what I’ve done.”

With that he peeled the adhesive
strip from the face of the grip charge he’d been holding and threw it toward
the fortified door of the brewery. The charge buzzed through the air, drawing
shouts of surprise from the guards stationed there. They dove for cover but it
was too late; the explosion obliterated concrete and flesh alike, leaving a
gaping hole in the side of the facility.

Butler was on his feet before the
charge had found its mark. He ducked the burst of debris and, when the smoke
had cleared, filled the space with gunfire. Stunned bulls returned fire,
cutting the man down, but his bravery had better than evened the odds for Ruiz
and Norton, who easily cleaned up the few remaining bulls.

Norton was unnerved by the
stillness inside the brewery. The three of them had killed at least ten
bulls—maybe more. He scanned to his right as Verlander guided a group of about
twenty remaining soldiers through the campground. Verlander fired single shots
from his sidearm into injured bulls along the way.

“Unbelievable!” he said, joining
them in the brewery. “I knew you two were something special. Let’s move, men!
The basement!”

Enormous vats stood rusting on
the warehouse floor. The Authority occupied offices against the far wall but,
if anyone remained inside of those rooms, Norton couldn’t see them.

The remaining fighters formed a
loose phalanx, Stump and Verlander and Ruiz and Norton in the center. They
crept toward the offices. Verlander stopped them; he motioned silently for his
company to make their weapons ready.

Then, as if cued from some
producer backstage, armor-clad bulls funneled into the distillery, fanning out
behind the vats. Fresh rounds of automatic gunfire erupted in the confined
space and Norton understood, in that moment of perfect fury, what the end of the
world would sound like.

Norton gulped air as the
firefight raged all around them, but they were outnumbered and outgunned.

When the smoke cleared, the room
fell silent. “Alain Verlander!” called one of the bulls. “The general requests
a conference. We guarantee your safety.”

“Don’t do it, V,” Stump warned.
“Shit in staggering amounts is what these ones are full of.” Bryan thought he
could detect the lilt of an accent—Irish, maybe?

“General Creen guarantees my
safety?” Verlander replied. “Is he here? Is he here now?”

“The general is close, Verlander.
We can take you to him. Show yourself. Your men will be spared.”

In that moment, Norton was all
but assured that they would all be slaughtered. The bull’s words dripped with
treachery. Norton bit his lip, suddenly heartsick for his wife and parents.

“Ha!” Verlander shouted. “Ha, ha!
You open, weeping, godforsaken
sores
! You stains upon the face of the
good goddamned Earth! You abortions of justice and nature!” He spat the words
in a guttural snarl.

“Have it your way,” the bull
replied calmly. “Archers.”

The room went still again, and
then Verlander was shrieking at his men. “Cover yourselves! Take cover,
men—move!”

There was a flurry of activity
and Norton felt Fausto’s arm on his shoulder, and then they were sprinting
toward a storage closet, the air around them filled with a buzzing like a great
swarm of locusts.

Norton didn’t know the weapon,
but it was cruelly efficient. The metallic points tore into the soldiers of the
resistance, cutting them into ribbons and spilling their blood on the stained
concrete floor. He heard men screaming, their cries terminating with muted
thunks as flesh met steel.

Fausto shoved him into the door
and Bryan tore it open just as a volley of arrowheads—heat-seekers, he
supposed—sliced into Ruiz’s midsection. They exited through his stomach and
slapped into the wooden door with a sharp twang.

Bryan screamed and pulled
Fausto’s limp form into the closet. Outside, carnage raged. He could hear
Verlander shouting instructions and then there was a furious explosion, the
building shaking as if it sat on an awakening fault.

“Oh, Jesus! Fausto…can you hear
me?” Bryan knelt at the man’s side, applying pressure to his wounds. “Fausto!
Fuck! Come on, Fausto!”

Those sleepy eyes opened. He
smiled, a thin film of blood coating his teeth. “Is it finished, Bryan?”

Norton wasn’t sure. It had grown
still outside—particles of dust and grime drifted beneath the closet door.

“Can you…can you walk? We’ll go
out together, Fausto. We’ll get you some help and get you home to your Carmen.”

Ruiz’s smile widened. “My Carmen?
Yes, my Carmen…I think I can make it, Bryan Norton, for my Carmen. Let’s…let’s
walk out together.”

Norton pushed the door open,
revealing a ruin of steel and concrete. The far wall was gone. The forest
loomed behind a curtain of dust.

Norton supported Ruiz with his
arm around his shoulder. They picked their way over the bodies of the deceased,
around stacks of rubble.

“Over here,” Verlander croaked.
He knelt near the ruined body of Stump, whose head and chest just peaked out
from beneath a pile of concrete. “He did it. Such a hard man, this little one.
We called him Stump, but his name was Jonathan. Jonathan Kenney.”

“And now what? Now what do we
do?” Bryan said, his tone plaintive. He wept as he felt the life leaking from
his friend.

Verlander stood. He bled from
multiple wounds. Three of the metallic shafts protruded from his thigh, held
fast in the solid bone there. When he opened his mouth to speak, blood washed
down onto his shirt.

“Now?” he coughed. “Well, now we
finish it. Creen’s still here—I can feel him. He’ll go down with the ship, if
it’s starting to flag,” he gagged, a geyser of blood staining a crimson bib
onto his shirt. “Stump sent out a transmission prior to disabling the digital obstacles.
The world knows what we have done here. The world will bear witness. All that’s
left is to finish it.”

They picked their way across the
floor to the stairwell, moving slowly, their footsteps echoing heavily on the
iron grating as they descended into the bowels of the brewery.

There was a dimly lit corridor at
the bottom of the stairs. “A bunker…at the end of the hallway,” Verlander
panted. He was losing steam quickly. Fausto nodded in and out of consciousness.

Norton was confused. How could he
do this himself?

He stopped midway down the
corridor, propping Ruiz against the wall. “Wait for me, Fausto. I’m going to
get you some help.”

The man with the sleepy eyes
smiled in return. Verlander slumped heavily against the wall, confusion
spreading on his features. “What are you…”

“I need you both to wait here,
Alain. Wait for me. I’ll meet with the general.”

Verlander looked exhausted, his
hooded eyes and gore-streaked beard telling the story of a man in his final
hour. “God be with you then, Norton.” He stumbled, caught himself against the
wall and slid into a seated position.

Bryan smiled as the wounded men
leaned against each other, forming a crux of support in that dark place. He
shrugged out of his rifle, opting instead for Verlander’s sidearm.

He walked to the end of the
hallway. The door before him had a pane of frosted glass—
LABOR
stenciled
on the front in black ink.

“General Creen,” Norton called,
his tone even. “Come on out of there.”

There was a moment of silence,
then: “So…Norton is it? Come in, come in. You will not be harmed.”

Norton considered the situation.
He closed his eyes and saw his wife. He saw his father and his mother—pictured
the little house he and Maggie shared in the Sellwood district. He saw the
ruined bodies of the men who had fought for the rights to raise a family.

His hand went to the doorknob. It
was as though he were outside himself—watching himself enter the lion’s den.

He was not afraid.

Creen was very old. He looked
frail, his face a story of time and hardship. Still, aged or not, sharp eyes
peered out from beneath wild, gray eyebrows. He couldn’t discern their color,
but they were unwavering.

“Please. Sit down,” Creen said,
motioning to the chair before him.

Norton did, the muzzle of
Verlander’s sidearm fixed on the general’s chest.

“You have nothing to fear from
me, Bryan Norton. You can put that gun away. Or you can keep it out. It doesn’t
matter.”

“Do you have children?” Norton
asked. He was surprised by the strength in his voice.

Creen smiled. “I do. My daughter
is thirty-six years old. She works for the authority. My son is twenty-four. He
will face Labor in four months’ time.”

“Why? Why would you condone
this…this barbaric exercise?”

Creen put his palms up, as if to
say
what are my choices?
“This is how it’s always been, Bryan. How it’s
always gone.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t
change it, Creen! We’re talking about your son’s right to have his own family.
Don’t you see the flaws inherent in this…this
torture
?”

“My son is strong. He will win
his family. Just like you, Bryan Norton. You have navigated the contest. You
have survived Labor, and your prize is somewhat grander. Do you mind if I show
you something?”