Fallen Nation: Party At The World's End (21 page)

“
...Got it. Draw fire to their southeast, we’re go for
insertion. Maneuver and counter-fire
only
. Remanding the principals alive
is top priority.” Trevino swiveled the mic away from his face,
which he wiped with a sweaty hand.

“
You’re kidding yourself,” Lilith said. “They’re here for
blood.” She sat beside him, her hands still cuffed.

“
Those kids are armed. Can’t just expect us to take fire and
not–”

“–
kill every hippie terrorist you set eyes on?”

Trevino sighed. “We want
the same thing, here.”

“
I doubt that very much.”

“
You’re right. I could give a shit what you want, past those
three in custody. Show trials, martyrdom, I really, honestly, don't
give a rat's bleeding asshole. Bring them to me and this–” he waved
at the desert out there, and the idiots who were about to die
“–ends.”

“
Well, I’ll lead you to them. That, we agree on.” She lifted
her handcuffs, which Trevino unlocked.

“
We’re tracking you,” he said.

“
I’m leading you,” she said. Trevino was left to ponder that
as she disappeared into the rocks.

“
Fire teams, report.”

“
Beta, in position.”

“
Gamma, in position.”

“
Delta, in position.”

“
Awaiting authorization.”

“
God help you all,” Trevino said. “On my order.”

A girl blinked up at the
sun. Purples and yellows blended into a surreal orange as the early
light of the day passed through layers of dust.

“
Follow me,” her friend said, waiting for her to emulate his
motions. “This is Monkey Steals Apple. It’s a Bagua form that comes
from the Earth element in the five element cycle–”

The girl struck the same
pose as her friend and held it, smiling beatifically. Her head
exploded with a wet pop. A far away gunshot sounded, a moment
later.

In the seconds that
followed, there was a great deal of screaming and scrambling,
people grabbing weapons and aiming them at random. From the tent
behind her, Cody emerged, blinking. Gas grenades landed all around
him, adding dense, colored smoke to the maelstrom of
chaos.

There was more gunfire in
the distance. With each sound, a head or chest exploded. Soldiers
walked through the clouds, easily picking off anyone that moved.
Cody dropped to the ground, curled into a ball, and closed his
eyes. When they had passed, he began crawling away.

Lilith serenely walked down
a steep-walled canyon. Bullets pinged off the rocks around her,
explosions sounded in the distance. She continued as though in
meditation.

She thought fondly of
training the girls over the past year, firelight conversations,
half-remembered nights spent drinking salty kisses. The memories
didn’t haunt her. Alone, her mind was clear, like a mirror without
an expectant gaze. Her success demanded a blood
sacrifice.

She paused near a pile of
bodies to grab a blade, and moved on.

Jesus filled the tank of a
dune buggy with gasoline from a portable container. She topped it
off, and then splashed the remainder all over the vehicle, madly
duct taped a bunch of prepared dynamite to the chassis, and
prepared herself for an adequately flamboyant martyrdom. A radio at
her belt squawked. It was Loki’s voice.

“
They’re in the canyons, we’ve got 'em. Fall back to
rendezvous point A. They’re–”

Jesus shut the radio off
and dropped it. She strapped herself in and started it up. Taking a
deep breath, she gunned the engine.

Gunshots echoed through the
rocky faces of the plateaus. They lured the mercs back into dead
ends, coming at them from craggy overhangs and then slipping away.
They baited and teased them, using the landscape to hold off an
immediate slaughter. It was an old approach, old as Thermopylae,
but in this terrain the mercs had little choice but to either give
up pursuit or take the punishment as they struggled for an
advantageous position.

Loki perched silently on
the side of a plateau, surveying the pass below with
binoculars.

He spotted a group of
mercs. Apparently his mines had taught a harsh lesson. Caltrops, in
clusters every three or so feet. Bury the mines in the ground
in-between. This merc company was down to a handful of men. Artemis
flashed him a sign to wait until they were in the middle of the
clearing.

He made a couple quick hand
gestures to the group positioning themselves on the opposite bluff.
Artemis caught his signal and made signs to the rest of her group.
They moved into position.

Loki grimaced at his
radio.

“
I think they got Jesus,” he whispered to Artemis. She shook
her head sadly before turning her attention back to the group of
mercs moving in on them.

An engine roared from
overhead. Dionysus gawked as Jesus sailed through the air in a dune
buggy, arcing down towards the merc squad. They aimed and fired as
she descended in an explosive fireball that rocked the
canyon.

Chunks of metal and blood
fell around them like rain. A whirling, flaming cross – the dune
buggy’s roll bar – nearly speared Dionysus as he rolled to his
feet. It stuck upright in the ground.

Loki and Dionysus looked at
each other in shock.

A hawk circled above,
keening bitterly. Loki fired a single shot, drawing a merc’s
attention. He slipped from sight.

Artemis’ group, who were
positioned on the other side of the ravine, rained rocks on them,
the rest unleashing a silent volley of razor sharp crossbow bolts.
There was sporadic return fire. She dropped to one knee and took
aim.

Warm blood drenched all
over her before she could fire. She dropped immediately,
instinctively. Beside her was Amber's corpse, still spurting blood
but the personality had already left her eyes. .50 bullets blast
through a body, shred and explode soft tissue. Half of Artemis'
friend was quite simply
gone
.

No time to mourn, no time
to vomit on herself. Anything but machine-like detachment would
just slow her down.

Everyone else fell behind
cover. A sniper, and one merc approaching with a sub-machine
gun.

She gestured over her
shoulder and then counted. Closed her eyes and visualized the merc
walking towards them. Kept the image playing in her head.
One...two...THREE. Popped up a split-second to fire where the
imagined merc was. It lined up, and he went down with a gurgling
howl.

A chunk of rock exploded
behind her, sending a shower of pebbles into the air. The damn
sniper. They didn’t have anything that could take him out at that
range. “Fall back,” she said.

The group seemed to melt
into the rock itself.

As they wound their way
further into the cliffs and plateaus, Artemis held up a hand. The
narrowing crevasse split in two directions.

She glanced at Loki and he
nodded his head. They should break up. She pointed to herself, Mary
and three of the other girls who had worked security, and motioned
towards the left passage.

The rest clustered around
him. “We’ll regroup at the cave,” he said to Artemis, quietly. And
they were off.

Artemis’ group moved
through a winding path of loose rocks and shrubs. Ahead, Artemis
knew, there was a glen of squat trees with broad branches that
created a mostly sheltered canopy. Despite the far off sound of
gunfire, birds continued to chirp here. In the shadows of the cool
rock faces, many small plants and animals could find a daytime
shelter from the unrelenting sun. The space had the feel of
sanctuary to it.

“
Position over there,” she whispered. She could sense the
troops following them, but they were a little ways off. “Supporting
fire.”

“
Where will you be?” Mary asked.

Artemis pointed to a ledge,
maybe seven feet up the side of the wall, which was angled away
from the path they had just emerged from.

Mary gave her a concerned
look, but she waved it off.

“
I trained you, girl. Remember, they can only shoot what they
can see.” She smiled. “Just watch my back, okay? Move.”

The footsteps of
approaching mercenaries could be heard. Along with providing the
tactical advantage of location, the glen seemed to act as an
amplifier for sound within the stone passageways between the
plateaus. Eight of them entered the clearing.

Artemis took a deep, slow
breath. Time itself seemed to slow. Taking aim with her repeating
crossbow, the one in the rear went down with barely a
whimper.

One
.

As she predicted, the group
whipped around and fired a burst at her hiding spot, but she had
already dropped, falling into a roll, both to lessen impact and
make up some of the distance between them. A cluster of birds took
flight from the trees.

She came out of her roll,
firing another shot as she went. One more free tracheotomy.
Spraying crimson from the neck, he fired wildly as he
fell.

Two
.

She was in their midst.
Several sub-machine guns were swinging in her direction. Moving on
instinct, she dropped like a bag of rocks, wrapped her legs around
one of the soldiers and rolled, using her momentum to uproot him.
His head connected with a nearby stone with a dull
smack.

Three
.

She was on the ground, and
exposed. She made a mad leap to get behind cover.

The force of impact
twisted her around and nearly knocked her down.
Shoulder. Keep moving.
Bolts
whistled in from the trees, hamstringing one soldier and harpooning
another through both arms.
About fucking
time.

She let out a howl and
lunged behind one of the wounded mercs, wrapping her arm around his
neck as she slid past. One of his trigger happy comrades stupidly
slammed several bullets into his chest, blowing his organs all over
her already blood-soaked shirt. She shoved him into the soldier who
had fired, and shot him in the chest before he had a chance to
recover.

Four. Five.

The merc in front of him
grinned, thinking she had missed, only to see his comrades fall
face first beside him with bolts in both arms, and one in the
chest.

He looked back up in time
to see Artemis’ face rushing towards his, shrieking like a Valkyrie
as she came. At the last moment she lowered her head, head-butting
him and knocking him back several steps.

Sensing danger from behind,
she dropped and rolled behind a boulder. A hail of bullets
perforated the chest of the stunned soldier instead of her. She
twisted around and put another bolt into the neck of her would-be
assailant.

Six. Seven.

There was just one left,
and he had his gun trained directly on her. However, he didn’t
fire, as her semi-automatic crossbow was also trained on her
favorite target, the jugular vein. “How many shots you have in
those things?” he asked.

“
Eight. I guess there’s no chance you could just leave?” she
asked.

“
No way, bitch,” he said. When another series of twangs came
from the direction of the trees, she rolled to the side like a
barrel down a hill. The bolts found their mark. Sure enough, on his
way down, he fired off a burst where she had been, the bullets
shattering rock and skittering harmlessly around the
glen.

Eight
.

She groaned. Her arm was
stiffening. She gingerly peeled back the torn cloth around the
wound and was pleased to see that the bullet, though it had torn
some muscle, struck at an odd angle and didn’t embed or hit
anything vital. The proximity of so much gunfire had quite
literally deafened her, at least temporarily. The adrenaline was
wearing off.

“
Fuck. Guys–” she said, wearily.

The ground
trembled.

“
Take cover!” she screamed, rolling into a defensive
crouch.

Trevino’s SUV rolled
through the carnage of the main camp, towards the
canyons.

“
Lost contact with Gamma and Delta squads,” a merc reported
over the radio. “Beta reports zero casualties in main
camp.”

“
Hundreds.
Hundreds
in the main camp, you...” Profanity failed him.
He punched the steering wheel. “Beta, condition?” Trevino
asked.

“
Insurgent elements contained in canyons, mesa secured. We
have heavy weapons solution, repeat, have solution.”