“Well,” said John, taking a drag from his cigarette. “I’m not sure whether to be relieved or not.”
I scratched my chin, trying to let the adrenaline bleed out. “I’d say this is a good thing. Crazy fucks with guns is exactly what you’ve trained for.”
He sighed. “I suppose. But this whole defense was made for things that don't shoot back. If I had known..."
"You couldn't have, and you know that, so stop bitching about it."
John flicked away the ashes. "Right. You saved our asses out there.”
I nodded. “Yes, I did.”
Bradley laughed and then groaned as he helped a group of people push a vehicle out of the way. “Maybe, but did you see Goro firing a fucking .50 from the hip, full auto? That was the greatest thing I’ve ever witnessed in my life.”
His voice shook a bit. But not too much.
Goro grunted as he lifted two corpses to go to the pile. “I missed most of my shots. I’m not good with firearms.”
Dmitry chipped in, joy and excitement in his voice. “Are we ignoring my heroic moment? I saved your asses too!”
”You get paid to save asses,” said John.
”Not anymore I don’t.”
John looked sheepish. “Oh...right.”
I shrugged. "I'll work on that, once we have an economy and all."
It was an odd atmosphere, the levity after a brush with death. Even I, with my mostly dead body, felt it, if only a little. The fear leaving the body, the subtle shake, the slow steadying of the heartrate. Some cried out of relief, while others did because of the adrenaline.
The people on the walls looked to us as examples, and our little group knew it. Seeing us joke around as we piled bodies went a long way to keeping the militia in the right state of mind. Well, it was relative of course. Many were vomiting, crying, or otherwise non-functional, but it hadn’t devolved too far.
Darius marched up to us, a bandage around his lower arm. His face made it clear what he was here to announce.
”Reporting 5 fatalities and 14 casualties.”
The group fell silent, though I didn’t think those were bad numbers at all. I’d call this a roaring success, even, but I knew it was probably best to act solemn as well.
I decided to drag the subject away from the dead. “We’re good to act,” I said. “We need to retaliate before they have a chance to regroup.”
John happily latched onto the change of subject. “We’re making a lot of assumptions. The portal could lead to somewhere else from our side, the atmosphere could be unbreathable, or, and I’m voting for this one, there could be an army of cannibals on the other side, guns pointed at the portal.”
I glanced at the gate. It revealed nothing but hazy sand...right up till an army of assholes drove through. “I suppose the visual is more symbolic than us actually being able to see through it.”
“I also vote for a trap,” said Bradley, raising his hand.
Slowly, Goro, Dmitry, and Darius rose theirs.
”Right,” I said. “Someone's going to have to check.”
Darius gave his opinion, a wee bit late. “We could just set up a fatal funnel and defend the portal.”
I shook my head. “No. We aren’t going to play this reactive.”
John gave me a look of appreciation. “Agreed. Waiting for them to regroup would be dumb as hell, and sitting on our hands without information is even worse. We need to know who, when, and how many.”
”Hesitation is defeat,” piped in Goro. “We can ponder all we want, but we have no choice but to brave the gate. Cowering will get us nowhere.”
It was nice to have people with their heads on straight. “Which, again, means someone’s going to have to check.“
”I’ll do it,” said Goro.
” How's your driving?” I asked.
Goro frowned deeply, answering my question.
I clapped my hands together. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to stick the front of the humvee through the portal and see what‘s on the other side. If it's an empty desert, we’ll form a party and explore it. If it’s cannibals, we’ll slaughter them to the last.“
Bradley scratched his neck nervously. “Shouldn’t we at least try a little diplomacy?”
I looked towards the crying militia and smoking corpses. Bulletholes and bloody chunks littered every bit of open space, and the zone in front of the portal ran with gore and twisted corpses.
“No.”
----------------------------------------
Two hours later, the humvee rolled back out of the portal, front-end with dozens of new scratches and dents. John stepped out of the driver's seat, with Dmitry coming out of the passengers, whooping with laughter.
”Oh yeah!” yelled the Russian. “Definitely a trap!”
”It’s a...pit,” explained John. “Like a colosseum, maybe. It's absolutely packed full of cannibals, spikes, and probable explosives. No way we’re getting through that in one piece.”
”How big is the Pit?” I asked.
”About...50 feet across I’d say.”
I smiled. “And how are we on explosives in the armory?”
John looked almost sad, while Dmitry looked the opposite. “...We've got enough.”
Then the solution was obvious. “Well, kids, I have an idea, and it rhymes with V.B.I.E.D.”
”Hey guys,“ mused Bradley. “Has anyone noticed that we’re fighting like a bunch of terrorists?”
I shrugged "It's only terrorism if we lose.”
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Darius cleared his throat awkwardly. “Actually, it's, by definition, just guerilla-“
”Shut the fuck up.”
----------------------------------------
The vehicle-borne improvised explosive device was ready. It was an unmarked white van with a trunk full of boom that I didn’t quite understand. All I knew is that it would explode with a high kill radius upon detonation.
”Alright, people, this is it,” I declared from atop my pedestal of a ruined car. “Once this goes off, we go in hard and fast, and we wipe them out. John will drive Goro and I in the humvee, with Bradley on Crows, and the rest of you will follow behind once we clear the way, babysitting the militia. Understood?”
The boys nodded resolutely all at the same time.
I looked over at the nervous-looking militia. They were the most diverse crowd I’ve ever seen. Young, old, male, female, and of every ethnicity I could imagine. I saw turbans, robes, tube-tops, and trench coats.
Now would be the time for a motivational speech. I could stand atop a wrecked car and inspire them, speak to their hopes and dreams, their desire for survival. I could tell them that they were doing this for a grand purpose, foster a sense of unity, and declare the cannibals as a blight to humanity that must be exterminated.
But honestly? I couldn’t be damned. In times like these, when people lose what little control they have, they always look for someone to follow. Someone better, more in control, more substantial. Someone willing to make decisions and accept the consequences. The kind of person who has a ten-page Wikipedia article.
That person is me, in case it wasn’t obvious. I’m still working on the Wikipedia article though. I bet most of the moderators are dead by now anyway, so I can just write it myself.
I signaled to John before climbing into the humvee. “Send it.”
John gave one final look of general concern to his teammates, lit the fuse with a lighter, and then tossed a brick onto the pedal of the vehicle. He immediately ran to the humvee, and the mobile bomb rolled straight into the portal.
The crowd watched from behind cover, while John tried to choke the steering wheel to death. Nobody spoke, as everybody counted the seconds in their heads.
10 seconds passed, and Bradley slowly began to speak. “Did you measure the-“
The resulting shockwave rattled the humvee, and popped my ears. The blood that had pooled on the ground spread out in an artistic splash against the walls, wreckages, and the few people stupid enough to stick their heads out.
Oddly enough, we heard no sound, and no shrapnel came through the portal. Why that is, I do not know, though I will have to find out eventually. Now wasn’t the time for idle musing.
John slammed on the gas, and we found ourselves on the other side of the gate. It would seem that John downplayed what he saw before.
It was definitely a colosseum. It couldn’t really be called anything else. Stands lined the sizeable encirclement we resided in, walls tall enough to deny anyone from within an opportunity to escape. Everything, and I mean everything was made of metal, consistently rusted.
More obvious to the intention of this place were the many weapons lying in the sand, mostly makeshift swords and spears made of metal, as well as the occasional scrap gun. Dried blood mixed with the bright sand, evidence of violence long past.
And the many, many bleeding corpses were evidence of violence as of five seconds ago.
The VBIED had gone forward until it hit the gate directly infront of the pit, which was, as luck would have it, where the cannibals were gathering their vehicles, weapons, and munitions. Several rust buckets were knocked over or otherwise destroyed, and almost all of them were coated in a fresh layer of red paint.
I understood now why John wanted to put piles of scrap metal, nails, and other sharp implements into the van. That, I suspect, was what did the real damage. The corpses near the center were charred, sure, but mostly liquefied from the sheer velocity of the projectiles. The damage had gone so far as to cover most of the stands, which had a good number of cannibals in them as well.
I even noticed several man and woman pairs in the stands, as hard as it was to identify through all the black, ash, and blood. Yet I saw no children nor elderly.
That was probably for the best, though it was questionable.
Still, the blast didn’t get them all. Save for the mewling, screaming, and crying audible even through the humvee, we could see a few of them still standing, pointing weapons in our direction.
Bradley controlled the Crows and began to rectify that with extreme prejudice. His aim, despite the now drifting Humvee, was impressive. He took short bursts of fire to conserve ammo, raking the shots over his targets. The heavy-caliber bullets put down everything it hit, as the scrap metal they wore did nothing to stop it.
”Break through the gate!” I yelled over the chaos, gripping the grab bar by the door. “Leave the cleanup for the backup!”
John complied, swiveling back and bashing through the ruined, bent gate. We soon emerged into what I struggle to call a ‘town’ proper. Not even a village.
It was...small. I could only see a few dozen other buildings, practically a block's worth. Most of them were completely haphazard and looked as if you’d decapitate yourself if you forget to duck under the doorway. The only building of note was a large, maybe gym-sized building, of notably better construction than the rest.
The entire community was half-nestled under a massive rock, the only thing providing some degree of protection from the glaring sun overhead, brighter than the sun on earth could ever be. Beyond that, clearly visible through the gaps in the buildings, was an endless, perfectly smooth desert, reflecting light so strong that it hurt to look at.
None of this was all that important, however, as one specific point was.
Not all of the vehicles were in the colosseum. In fact, I’d go so far as to say most of them were on the way. Meaning that we now faced many of them, full of cannibals, all armed, and all angry.
Bradley stopped trying to conserve ammo. He just started shooting full auto, immediately lighting up the closest vehicles. The rusty scrap armor did little to nothing to stop the CROWS, which punched straight into the driver's seat of two vehicles, killing them instantly. One flipped over, gouging a pit into the sand, and the other one outright exploded.
Every cannibal in a five-mile radius began shooting at us, using a different weapon for practically every individual. The gunshots, even with their low-yield gunpowder, were deafening in their volume, and the windshield began to crack while John floored it.
While the ground in the colosseum was hardened with blood, use, and age, we weren‘t so lucky outside. The sand made for poor traction, and caused the humvee to slide and lose grip, forcing John to desperately compensate while Bradley attempted to keep his shots accurate. He lit up another driver, but not before the passengers riding on the back leaped onto ours, or attempted to.
One managed to get a good grip on the CROWS, holding onto it for dear life, while another’s lower body was pulverized between the scrap car crashing against the rear end of the humvee, which caused an uncontrollable high-speed spinout.
John began to yell curses as he struggled to countersteer, and Bradley was shooting air with most of his shots, the CROWS struggling to keep up with the rapid spinning. He managed to blow up another one, as I saw several flaming bodies leaping from a rust-bucket.
And then, with resounding finality, the CROWS stopped.
”I’m dry!” yelled Bradley.
John didn’t bother responding as the spin came to a stop by virtue of the side smashing into a building, crushing yet another cannibal between the wall and humvee, smearing my viewport with too much gore to even see. I looked out the front window, only to see a very similar vehicle to the one that crashed through our defensive line heading towards us.
Rather quickly, I might add.
I got an odd sense of deja-vu, but I suppose the best tricks work twice.
I didn't bother yelling, because John was already swerving, trying to avoid the inevitable hit from the improvised battering ram. For a moment, the wheels failed to find grip. Then I heard something tumble from the roof, the sound of meat being crushed, and suddenly we were free.
How nice of him to serve as optimal grip for the vehicle. Too bad it was a bit too late.
The vehicle smashed into the passenger side of the Humvee, denting it inwards as the humvee proceeded to cram itself into the ’alleyway’, if you can call it that. It’s funny to think that if it hadn’t been for the cannibal on the roof, we would have been crushed between a building and the ram. That would have been certain death.
It was a reminder, and a cause for reflection, as the humvee sailed through the air. This chaos, this violence...it wasn‘t really my scene. I’d rather not do this kind of thing, ever. I’m more of a sit in my office and tell other people what to do kind of guy, but what choice do I have? The best leaders lead from the front, and I’m really desperate for some leadership points right about now. Besides, I can create forcefields and shit. Can I really justify sitting back while the boys do the hard work? Well...I am missing a leg. I absolutely could have justified it with that. In fact, maybe I should have. Just played up the whole ‘I'm literally fucking disabled, so maybe I shouldn’t go into an active warzone?' angle.
I find it easy to muse on these things, in overly-long paragraphs, once the course of events is set in stone. There’s not really anything I can do about the rapidly approaching ground, nor the force in which we would hit it. All I could really do is brace for impact and hope it doesn’t cause too much damage.
Oh, who am I kidding? This is definitely going to suck.