Round for Round, tooth for tooth

Philip was watching through his NVGs up on the third level of a three-level rack mezzanine unit on the north side of the DC. From his position on the northwest corner, he could look down on the return pallets, a section of office cubicles, and the windows and doors to the back offices in the northeast corner. He had concealed his position with boxes and packages taken from the surrounding pallets and had his weapon aimed at the office door through gap in the cardboard.

EP had stuck a single low light on the wall disguised as part of an ethernet port, and it raised the light level just enough for his night vision to see what the fuck was going on. Which up until about three seconds ago, was absolutely nothing.

It had been maddening listening to Luke open up just meters away, while he sat there watching dust settle on a bunch of fucking cubicles. But he was a professional. A Hardworlder with over two decades under his belt, even if many of those memories were now under lock and key. Which meant he knew how to wait. Waiting, often, was most of the job.

So as the attacking squad stepped into the far office and EP talked him through their movements, he stayed just as calm as if he was watching water flow, and reached out for those memories, trying to slide into that middle zone of consciousness, halfway between watching himself and being in the driver’s seat, the convergence of what could be and what he wanted to happen, the unification of his selves, the fusion of Spirit and flesh.

A man in full fatigues, NODs, and face mask pulled open the office door and stepped through swiftly, covering the right as another one moved in behind him watching the left, and so on until all five were through the door, rifles moving like the batons of a high school color guard. Philip let them come in, get committed to the room, and sweep a few areas, then he got to work killing.

He had his grenades inside a Kevlar helmet with the pins tied by wire to the mezzanine frame. He took one in his hand, wound his arm back, and pulled the trigger just as point man’s IR beam swept across the mezzanine. The low recoil AMG was a dream, even in 7.62. He felt the gunfire in his chest, and the flash lit up the desks and high wall in sharp shadows.

He gunned down point-man while overhanding the grenade and dropped another before he had finished bringing his empty hand down to the foregrip in a single fluid motion.

He kept up the fire as EP’s drone flashed them with fake muzzle flash and IR beams. It was like watching them die on stage. Their only cover was a few fabric cubicles and plywood desks. He counted to four in his head and ducked back behind the barrier. Only in the pause of his own gunfire did he realize one of them had been laying into an M27 with what looked like a 60 round magazine. Luckily, most of its fire had gone after EP’s fake gunner.

The grenade went off and the roof sounded like it had caved in, and then there was just the screaming. He popped back up and finished off the last gunman with a short burst from the collarbone to the forehead, and it was quiet again. All five men had died within five seconds and Philip had expended almost fifty rounds.

“Stat,” Luke whispered.

“Got 'em. But I’m sure I was supposed to. They just wanted to know where we are.”

Before he had gotten the words out, an explosion blew in a bay door.

Lindsey was on the third level of the four-level conveyor mezzanine with her machine gun aimed at the south wall. She had line of sight all the way down the massive staging area in front of the bay doors, 200 yards of bare concrete and sparse pallets. Another hundred yards of bay doors stretched from the central truck office to the right, to the north side of the DC behind her, where Gradie dug through boxes and Philip was set up on the mezzanine adjacent to hers.

Her position was reinforced with barrier pallets and duffle bags of sand and plates, raised up by Sam’s forklift, and disguised and screened by carefully placed boxes and other warehouse debris. She had two 250-round belts linked together draping from her PKP-SP (an upgraded, lighter PKM with a fluted, and in this case shorter, barrel, and an attached suppressor) to an ammo box strategically placed not to cause her any issues if she had to change positions.

Which, almost immediately, she did.

A bay door exploded below, eighty yards away, right next to the north wall. It was the recycling bay door where they had placed the barrier pallet. It was also the one closest to Gradie.

Metal fragments sparked on the roof and racks around her and the compressed dusty air roared and shook again, like a direct reply to the truck office explosion and Philip’s grenade.

“Alan stat!” Michael said on the line.

“I’m fine.”

“Make sure!”

“Vehicle moving on that door!” EP said.

A SUV revved up the ramp outside, crashed through the hanging strands of shredded bay door, and slammed right into the anti-vehicle barrier pallet. The crash echoed across the warehouse.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

“Huh,” EP said with a smile in her voice. Lindsey bit back her own laugh as she swung the PKP around. They must have thought it was just a normal shipment of retail junk. The big pallet slid about a yard, but the SUV crunched to a halt with its back end stuck outside. The crash must have surely tripped the airbags, but the doors flew open and IR beams shot out anyway, though not as gracefully as they might have otherwise.

Lindsey, however, was the picture of grace. She brought the gun into the keyhole like a decorator placing a center piece and fanned the belt like it was an all-brass accessory to her evening wear. In under two seconds, she had transitioned from her previous position to the new target, and was still chuckling when the gun roared.

It felt like a second date. Bullets screamed off the hood and ripped through fragments of bay door. The side windows on the SUV turned white, and one crumbled like disturbed snow. Two men getting out of the passenger side died instantly. The others ducked down out of her sight on the driver’s side, but she kept up the fire, trying to skip rounds under the undercarriage.

One of the survivors was yelling at the driver to back up when Philip stepped out from somewhere to her right and put a burst through the top of his head. The windshield frosted over as both guns joined together, and the driver was just able to throw it in reverse before the glass gave out into sudden darkness. The SUV rolled slowly back down the ramp at an angle and bumped softly into the railing, completely devoid of life.

Lindsey breathed, and another bay door exploded to her left.

Sam had cover pallets and warehouse debris arranged around her in a triangle, less than fifty feet from Luke, in roughly the center of the warehouse, positioned to cover Lindsey’s blind spot, the bay doors closest to the truck office, which screened them from the PKP, or overlap fire with Luke or Lindsey as needed.

Waiting had been awful. Her own racing thoughts were always a thousand times worse than anything that actually happened, and her body shuddered with relief when the action finally found her, and she slipped into that almost automatic, thoughtless groove that made every other second in the Hardworlds worth it.

The explosion flashed briefly in her NODs and everything around her made awful sounds as strips of bay door hit metal. A pickup backed up to the jagged glowing hole where the bay door had been and five men in full kit shining IR illuminators stepped onto the dock floor, hugging the wall of the truck office to avoid Lindsey’s line of sight. Sam had the Ultimax resting on a sand filled duffle bag, and point man flashed her position with his IR as she opened fire.

It was a lazy rhythm compared to the high fire rate of Luke’s MG3, but it was effective, and after the initial kick of the first round, the recoil was non-existent, like using a lethal water hose. Point man fell in a flash of fire that glittered like fairy lights in her goggles and sprayed casings like slot winnings. The rest of the attacking squad dashed to cover under a stream of extra hot 5.56. Bullets sparked off the wall, tore boxes to pieces, and struck the pickup through the open door. Before she could savor the feeling of control, the survivors were behind pallets and pylons returning fire.

She never let her finger off the trigger. Another one fell, but it felt like years since the last one had died. Their bullets got closer to the mark, striking her cover and zipping past her ears like swearing bees. Second after second dragged on without another one dying, and a subtle fear rose up behind her jaw. It was like a bad dream where her gun fired only blanks.

The truck office wall next to the gunmen exploded in bursts of drywall and concrete as Lindsey’s PKP tore it to pieces. In a second the last two were dead. Sam only realized she had killed a third after everything was still and her earbuds adjusted to the quiet. She waited for another explosion, another attack.

Nothing, so she let her attention move to her breath, and her ammo.

“Reloading!” she whispered, and got another drum mag out of the bag. Her voice carried across the concrete floor like a ghost taunting the dead.

“Kate, fall back to the mezzanine,” Michael said, dead calmly, like he was advising of an upcoming turn. She got her ammo bag on her shoulder and made for the more heavily fortified position under the towering levels of metal. It seemed so soon, but as she got her things together, she noticed wide jagged bullet holes in the wood and pouring sand just inches from her, and was glad to be going.

“Update,” Lindsey said softly.

“They’re moving their vehicles,” EP said. “Getting ready for the next move.”

“They know where we are,” said Philip, softer than Sam had ever heard him. “Now comes the real fight.” He finished loading his AMG and racked the charging handle.

Gradie had found nothing. The boxes piled around him like gore. Fitness trackers, headphones, pod coffee makers, shoes, phone chargers, all-in-one printers, nameless things in tape covered boxes. The banal and everyday pooled at his feet uselessly while out in the warehouse, astral warriors waged war, their temporary vessels of flesh falling in instants. The gunfire and explosions clapped harshly in his ears while the kitschy boxes remained unmoved, as if the two existed in alternate dimensions, unable to interact.

EP’s illuminator drone flicked off the moment he heard Luke’s MG scream and he had been digging with only the low-level illuminator attached to his NODs. The team had set up extra pallets between him and the rest of the DC to screen him, but he still felt suffocatingly exposed, and ill prepared.

Is this my dream? My fantasy? A dead end dreamworld? Searching through retail pallets while things from my nightmares live and move just outside my reach?

His rifle nudged the pistol at his hip and snagged on plastic wrap strips. He had tried a million times to see the envelope peeking out from the boxes, told himself the next cut would expose it, that this pallet would be the last. Now, dusty and beaten, empty handed, he was sure it was all bullshit.

The Hardworlds, whatever they were, didn’t give a shit what you visualized, what you wished. Wish in one hand and shit in the other, as Philip might say, and his wishes piled at his feet unanswered. No. If they were so God damn magical, why was he here breaking down pallets? Why hadn’t Michael wished the coin into his hands when they had the son of a bitch in the car with them?

The world had felt far more malleable last night. He remembered how the building had seemed to morph to his will, allowing him to slip through the ceiling and out to Sam. He tried to recapture the feeling, but suspected he had imagined it. After all, had it ever really felt like he had done anything?

“Did you find it?” EP said in his ears.

“No,”

“Then why are you fucking stopped? This is all on you!”

Maybe if he acted like this was life or death, he would believe it. Maybe this kind of mundane task could feel like a gunfight if he tried hard enough. He tore into the next pallet like a madman and felt his knife catch on plastic. A rage inside him flared out and he forced it through. A woman smiled over a coffee cup, her mouth bent grotesquely by a crease in the cardboard.

No coin anywhere.