章 35: Chapter 35: 'Neath a Desert Sun
Guardian
a Worm/Destiny Crossover
Chapter 35: 'Neath a Desert Sun
They walked down a suburb street devoid of life. Not just human life, any of it. No calling birds, no buzzing insects, no barking dogs, nothing. It was the sort of utter silence that only existed in the prelude. In the moments before, building into an explosion of sound and fury. Narwhal was in the lead, standing on a flat pane of silver-blue, crystalline energy that floated along a few inches above the road. Spike and Skjoldur followed, he with shield in hand and she with helmet on. Foil walked behind and between them, sword out. She'd put up her hair in a bun, held in place by a steel hairpin. In a contrast to the others, Taylor wasn't actually on the street. She was running the roofs of the cookie-cut houses. Scouting, and keeping a wary ear on the silence around them.
She pounded down one side of an A-frame roof, planted a foot on the lip and pushed off. Cleared the gap with ease and slid to a stop, cloak flaring behind her before coming to flap against her calves. This house had a weirdly shaped roof, a flat top with angled sides and an odd, Spanish mission style to the whole construction. She padded across the roof, boots falling silently on the clay shingles. Across the street the neighborhood came to an end, sprawling out into small office buildings, gas stations, grocery stores, and restaurants. They were all of them dark and empty. Some had broken windows, other missing doors. An SUV, tongues of fire licking out from beneath the warped and crumpled hood, had crunched into the metal pole of a stoplight before the driver fled. He'd dripped blood as he ran, a trail of dark, drying stains on the road before ending in a thick, gummy puddle on the double yellow line.
Dropping into a crouch, curling her gloved fingers around the lip of the roof, she focused her senses. She narrowed her eyes and looked. There, on the threshold of a gas station, its sliding doors twisted and broken, was another large dark stain. The missing windows of a cigar shop wept blood down the bricks in long, stick streams. Cars with missing doors, jagged edges stained. Windows and windshields splashed with arterial sprays. The signs were everywhere. People had died by the dozen, and yet...
Where were the bodies? There weren't even pieces. The evidence was everywhere, but not a single body to be found.
She inhaled deeply, focusing on the sweet-rot stench of death and decay. She found it blanketing the entire area like fog. Too thick to track. Damn. Nothing good came of missing bodies, not ever, and especially not with these monsters. She growled in her throat and dropped off the roof, taking the fall with a flex of her knees. Then, she headed back to give her team the bad news.
It didn't go over well. It also wasn't a surprise, given how Narwhal nodded. Her eyes, forehead, and mouth formed a grim mask. "That matches up with the reports."
Spike's voice rang deep and hollow from within her helmet. "So we find people alive, or we don't find them." A grumbling, angry sigh. "Wonderful. Do we know where the bodies are taken?"
"The hive." Narwhal, Foil, and Taylor answered simultaneously. After an exchange of startled glances, it was Narwhal who continued. "Our information states the bodies are taken there to be...changed. Broken down and rebuilt into what we've been fighting."
Skjoldur, who was facing away from their little talk circle, spoke. "Smoke. Near our objective."
Sure enough, a spire of gray-black fumes was twisting into the sky. A call to action, and to movement, for the five of them. One that was answered.
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It was a car – a school bus, to be precise, a little less than six blocks from the police station. Torn to shreds and burning. Ribbons of yellow painted steel curled like peeled fruit rinds while tongues of orange-red licked and consumed the bus' cab. Glass, melted into a puddle and changed to semi-solid ooze, was all that remained of the windshield. The seats were beginning to light as they arrived, but not before Taylor saw them – cracked, brown false-leather soaked with blood. There were other scents, but the acrid stench of smoke overpowered them. As before, there were no bodies. "Spread out," Narwhal gave a crisp series of orders. "Foil, check inside the bank. Skjoldur, go with her. Spike, you and Guardian go a block down the street and set up. We won't be more than ten minutes. If we take longer, come back ready to fight."
There was a small prickle of resentment, a knee-jerk reaction to being told what to do that Taylor could easily acknowledge as being part of a Hunter's vicious independent streak and ignore. "We're on it." she said, sharing a look with Spike, who nodded. They set off at a quick walk, giving the bus and its flames a wide berth. As they left, Narwhal rose into the air, carried by the pane of energy she'd been standing on the entire time. She moved to the center of the street, keeping away from the smoke, and started a slow spin while Foil and Skjoldur made their way into the building.
As she and Spike moved down the street, Taylor's hands drifted to her weapons. Curled around the hilt of her knife and the handle of her gun. The streets were quiet, save for the crackle of the burning bus behind them and the impact of Spike's boots. The buildings here were taller, more official. More sculpted concrete and tinted windows. Double doors either gone or hanging by hinges, revolving doors reduced to shattered panes and empty frames. Moving away from the wreck, the smell of smoke started to fade, allowing other scents to start filtering in. Smoke and blood behind, burning rubber and motor oil. Gunpowder, both ahead and behind. Exhaust from a diesel engine.Trails of stench, so strong as to almost be visible, hung in the air. Dozens of them, crossing and overlapping and intertwining. Each the path of a screamer, or a shooter, and utterly impossible to describe beyond that. They traced from the police station five blocks ahead to the bus, where they were lost in the smoke.
It was...unpleasant. To say the least.
After several moments of long, loud inhales, Spike noticed. "What are you doing?"
"Tracking. I've got good senses, so I'm trying to find out what I can."
"Oh?" Curious, but not surprised. Maybe she'd met a cape with jacked up senses before? "What have you got?"
Taylor told her, including the theory she'd come up with. That the bus was a last ditch escape attempt, and a failed one. That the most likely place they'd come from was the police station. That they probably wouldn't have left anyone behind.
"So you think everyone's already dead." It wasn't really a question.
Taylor nodded. Spike sighed.
"Great. I really hate these things."
Taylor agreed.
There was a lot to hate about them. But nothing that couldn't also be applied to their creator. She'd never met nor seen Jamie Rinke, and found herself hating him anyway. Everything could be laid at his feet. All the people who had died. Everyone who was dying now to make more of the enemy. Everyone who would die because she and the others weren't in time to save them. It was like fire in her heart and ice in her blood, and the vicious, cruel corner of her mind filled with visions of a protracted, agonizing death for Rinke.
Yeah, this was probably hate.
The sound of two pairs of feet, moving at a fast walk, drew her from her angry, spiraling thoughts. Almost thankful for the opportunity for distraction, she turned and knew from seeing them she would not find it.
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Foil looked like shit. Pale faced, sunken eyed, a streak of blood following her jaw up to her temple. No visible wound meant it wasn't hers. Her sword was in hand, dark red dripping down over her whitened knuckles to the ground. There was a tightness in her shoulders that brought shivers to the tendons in her neck. Her breathing varied between slow and measured and fast and panicked. There were some tears on her costume, and a chunk dug out of her vest. She didn't say a word, just moved past Taylor and stopped half a dozen paces down the street with her head bowed. Her shoulders started to shake.
Skjoldur looked as he had before. No blood, no tears. He seemed to be fine, but his face. It was like all the life had been drained from it. He too didn't say a word, just walked steadily towards Spike. "What the fuck happened?" She didn't sound angry, just confused and a little lost. He didn't answer, just folded his arms around her, armor and all, and breathed deeply.
Narwhal came last. If she had looked slightly inhuman before, there was nothing human about her now. The air around her crackled and whispered, fragments of crystalline energy winking in and out of existence at a rapid pace. Her eyes were solid blue slits, seemingly lit from within by sheer fury. "There were children on the bus," was all she said. It was enough.
In that moment, Foil began to weep. Taylor turned away from Narwhal to touch the girl's shoulder. Gave a gentle squeeze. Her free hand came up to grip Taylor's. They stood there, a minute of silent memory and an unspoken eulogy. It was just a moment, not nearly enough time and all that they could offer.
Then Foil wiped her eyes, Skjoldur released his wife, and they moved on.
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The first thing Taylor noticed, in contrast to earlier, was the presence of bodies. Screamers and shooters, almost a dozen of each, littered the front and lobby of the police station and oozed black ichor onto the scuffed tile floor. Empty shell casings littered the floors, islands among the black, in the thousand. Bullet holes filled corpses and left pockmark-holes in walls. A barricade of hastily stacked furniture had been put in front of the doors and smashed through. Splinters and fragments lay scattered and crunched under Spike's boots. Boxes of ammunition, flimsy and empty now, had been thrown around with impunity, those using them rather preoccupied with other things at the time. The bodies thinned as they moved towards the doors to the halls, one on either side of the entry desk. A vicious battle had been fought here, gunpowder thick and stinging and –
Wait. She stilled. Could she have – could it have been a trick? A desperate attempt by her brain to have one single spot of light in the mire that today was turning into?
No. There it was again. She almost cried. She almost laughed. She wanted to dance. But she settled for a smile, quick and bright.
Foil took notice. "What is it?"
Beyond the hallway doors, behind another barricade. The scrape of a shoe on tile floor. The in-and-out of men breathing. A whispered word. She said, "Survivors." and then raised her voice. "Hello in there! We're with the Protectorate, please don't shoot us!"
Behind her, Spike's helm-covered head whipped around from where it had been studying the marked walls. "What – how do you know?"
"Thank you, God." Narwhal murmured too quiet for most anyone to hear. Skjoldur simply grinned and gently rapped the knuckles of his free hand against his shield. A moment of silence stretched out, and Taylor heard more feet shuffling and the solid thunk of metal meeting wood.
Then a voice. Cracking, wavering, projecting a casual sort of weary irritation. A man's voice. "Well, you guys took your damned time! We about won the whole thing for you!"
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There were nine of them; eight police officers and an off-duty SWAT member who'd come in on their day off to teach some kind of health and safety course. All of them bore some kind of injury ranging from the minor – scrapes and bruises – to the not at all minor – a missing right hand. One of them had a broken leg, going from the splint-and-bracing on his right leg and how he leaned somewhat heavily on the man next to him. The floors were clear, empty boxes and spent shells swept into corners with a broom Taylor spied leaning on the left wall. A quartet of desks had been pushed together to make a loading table, atop which rested still-full boxes of cartridges and empty magazines waiting to be filled. The rest of the desks had been moved to make another barricade, built just on the inside of the room. Three officers stood in front of each door. Two stood in front of a third, with enough of a gap between them so as to give that third an opening to shoot through. The man with the broken leg and his human crutch were standing by the loading table. Between the two groups of three, and in front of that group of two, was the man who had called out. From the way the other eight looked to him – glances every few seconds, too quick to see unless someone was looking for it or was Taylor – he was the leader.
"Gonzalez, Smitty, Yu. Get that barricade out of the way so they can get through." He gave the order, and the three troopers in front of Taylor and company hastened to comply. Well, not hastened, she suspected they were a few hours of constant assault beyond that, but with commendable alacrity. It took the three of them two minutes or so to take the desks down and move them out of the way. Once the way was clear, Narwhal led them in, and it was clear that at least one of them knew who she was.
"Shit," the broken-legged man had a rough voice, roughened by shouting and fatigue. "Narwhal's here? Narwhal?" He turned to the man next to him. "Told you this shit was bigger than some idiot Tinker."
"Yeah, yeah, you were right." The man replied. "Happy?"
"Thrilled."
The leader, who had a possibly stereotypical mustache, turned to the bantering duo. "Cut the shit, you two, and get to loading those mags. We're due some guests soon, and I don't want to be the kind of host who doesn't have anything for them!"
Taylor was about to ask what he meant, but was beaten to the punch by Narwhal. "Can you explain, Mr...?"
He grunted. "Name's Frank. And yeah, I can explain. Since two days ago, when this all started, we've been getting hit every two and a half hours by those things. It's been two hours since the last attack and a quarter hour less than that since we sent the bus out with the civilians and wounded, except Hardison over there. So if they keep to their schedule, and they have so far, we've got half an hour before they hit us again."
The bus. The fucking bus. What was the right thing to do? Tell them, because they deserved to know? Don't, because they're hanging on by a thread and the slightest push could snap it? Or was there something else, something Taylor wasn't considering because –
Wait.
What was that? She went still, hands drifting to her knife and pistol. She didn't dare breathe, waiting to hear it again, to prove that her mind wasn't playing tricks on her.
"Something wrong?" Spike asked. Taylor shook her head, not in answer but dismissal.
Scrape, scrape, scrape.
There. It was coming from beneath their feet. Taylor drew her weapons, Light racing down her arms to infuse them, and shouted, "They're coming up from below!"
Frank reacted immediately, reaching for his weapon and snarling an order. One that he was prevented from giving by the wooden floor in the center of the room, right underneath the loading table, exploding upwards in a howling blast of wood splinters and writhing horror. The battle for Las Vegas had been ongoing for some time, but for Taylor and company, it had just begun.
Finally.
=+= Chapter 35: 'Neath a Desert Sun =+=
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