Everyone Dies in the End #9

Anatol

“Contact.” The one-word announcement sent a spark through Anatol’s exhausted body. “Four M-113s, one jeep, unknown number of infantry, approaching from the east on Route 176,” the voice continued, scratchy in his earpiece.

Anatol resisted the urge to look for himself, to lay his own eyes on the box-like armored personnel carriers the Americans called M-113s. Doing so would entail leaving his prepared position in the library. He knew his men, knew every one, mourned each one’s death, and trusted them implicitly.  If the observation post on the east side of town said an American column was approaching, it was, and that was that. “Roger,” was his one-word reply.

“Nikoli,” he radioed the sergeant in charge of the Sagger, anti-tank guided missile team, “wait till we fire and then take out the trailing track.” For moment his ear bud hissed quietly, and then Nikoli confirmed the order. It was the only direction Anatol needed to give. His men knew to wait until he fired to spring the ambush, the rocket propelled grenade, or RPG team, at the end of the road would target the lead vehicle. With the lead vehicle in flames, and the trailing armored personnel carrier destroyed by the Sagger team, the Americans would be trapped and easy targets for his remaining men.

He could hear the squeaky drive sprockets of the M-113s growing louder from his position on the second floor of the library in what, once upon a time, must have been a children’s reading room of sorts. The two windows facing the street had been shattered, shattered before he or his men entered the town. The room’s child-sized tables now rested against the windows, and Spetsnaz troopers had further fortified the position with improvised sandbags made from the local citizenry’s pillow cases.

Below, at the end of the street, the first M-113 swung into view, behind it an old-style American jeep. Anatol placed his hand on the RPD machine gunner’s shoulder beside him. “Steady, steady…now!” The machine gunner squeezed a short burst, the slugs sparking off the flat metal top of the M-113, working their way back to the American machine gunner’s torso protruding from the hatch—the American machine gunner who even now was swinging his .50 caliber heavy machine gun toward Anatol’s library window—and ripped apart the American’s body with a hail of 7.62mm bullets.

The lead M-113 began to accelerate, but an RPG round streaming smoke from its tail slammed into it, and the M-113 smashed, obviously out of control, into the adjacent clothing boutique and crashed through the window. No one emerged. Anatol’s eyes didn’t linger long on the destroyed track. A bright explosion from the rear of the American column singled the success of Nikoli’s Sagger team. Shrapnel from the exploding M-113 spread like lethal spores through the column, one piece striking the brick facing of the hardware store adjacent to the jeep, another clanging against the side of a M-113 with a bell-like gong.

The two remaining M-113’s dropped their ramps and spilled their infantry onto the street, Anatol didn’t care about them…he wanted their leader. He tapped his machine gunner’s shoulder and pointed toward the jeep.

Cindy

If this wasn’t hell, Cindy was sure Satan’s playground couldn’t be much worse. The air vibrated from the pounding of guns and the exploding M-113s. Zipping noises like large, angry hornets filled the air. But of course they weren’t hornets, they were bullets, and they were much more lethal than a hornet.

In front of the jeep, an M-113 rested in the plate glass window of a small clothing store, a mannequin flaming against the side of the green metal, a human, it was the machine gunner she thought, smoldering on top of the vehicle. Oily black smoke seeped from the edges of the ramp she had seen the APC use but a few minutes ago to load a squad of laughing soldiers at Sam and Elle’s service station. The ramp was closed; she doubted there was anyone left to laugh.

Another explosion rocked the rear of the column, the brightness flashing on the buildings’ brick and glass facing. Something buzzed by her head, its sound reminiscent of a slowly whirring helicopter blade. An instant latter the brick of the adjacent store exploded, pieces of mortar and brick showering the jeep. 

Above her the “fiddy cal” began chugging, ripping fist-sized chunks out of the green double doors to her right. Dixon spun toward her. “Get out!” His voice was almost lost in the cacophony, past his head she saw a gun barrel pointing at them from a second story building. The barrel winked light, and she knew she was going to die.

She knew wrong. The winking barrel’s bullets traced a jagged pattern up the hood of the jeep—the bullets making solid thupts when they penetrated, sparking off the hood when they didn’t.  The jagged pattern reached the jeep’s flip-up windshield, shattered it, and then tore into the driver.  His body jerked in the seat, and his neck exploded, bits of flesh flying into Cindy’s face. Unlike the experience in the farm’s kitchen, she felt no revulsion at the gore, there was no time for that. A wave of gratitude swept over her, gratitude that it had been the driver, not her, who had his neck blown away. Fast in its heels came the guilt, hot and sexy. But no time for that either.

The fiddy cal chugged again, plaster spewed from the window of the neck-chewing machine gun, and then she dove from the jeep. The street was asphalt, uncompromisingly hard, and most welcome. To her left she could see nothing but the black asphalt, oil and gas dripping from the jeep’s underside, and—on the far side of the jeep—the tips of the driver’s fingers, blood rolling off of them in a steady drip. Above her the .50 Cal continued to chug, through the air the angry hornets that weren’t really hornets continued to zip. Cindy cringed, hugging the ground with all her might, terrified of the deadly chaos surrounding her, the smell of smoke, diesel and blood thick in her nose. To the right, Dixon hit the ground running.

Two bounds and he was over a pair of concrete barricades on the far side of the street. Relics from an unfinished construction job, he jumped over them as fire from the enemy machine gun traced his progress, bullets sparking white off the black asphalt. No sooner had he disappeared behind the barricades than he popped back up, his assault rifle tucked under his chin. Pop,pop, pop—he fired in the direction of enemy machine gun. Chugga, chugga, the fiddy cal dished lead above her.  Dixon looked back down the street, and she spotted blood on his cheek, his or someone else’s she didn’t know. Dixon yelled at a soldier behind her.

“Sarge, lay some lead on that RPD in the window!”

She turned her head, afraid that even that tiny movement would bring the hornets calling. It didn’t. She saw the man who must have been the Sarge tap two soldiers behind him and point to the window. Then three things happened, three events that would forever change Cindy’s life.

The first didn’t seem so bad. She spotted a pair of rifles, barely protruding from the second floor windows above Dixon’s head, across the street from the gun he had labeled an RPD. The second was much worse. With a flash, the M-113 beside the man formerly known as Sarge evaporated. One minute Sarge was there, directing his men, the M-113 a wall beside him, its machine gunner adding its fire to the rising level of American resistance, the next second they were all gone. There was no sign of Sarge or his men, and the twisted metal that had once been the M-113 burned brighter than a Halloween bonfire. Finally, the RPD, or at least she guessed it was the RPD, took out the soldier on the fiddy cal. One moment the big gun was firing. The next the RPD replied, she heard a series of slaps, like a plastic spatula on plaster, and the big, black man fell out of the Jeep, and onto the pavement beside her. He was dead, most assuredly dead, most of his head nothing more than a bloody morass. She wanted to scream, should have screamed, but the two rifles on the second story across from the RPD choose that moment to pump a pair of bullets into Zak Dixon. She saw them fire, saw Dixon drop behind the concrete barricades and her fear turned to rage. White hot, passionate, focused, rage.

She wasn’t a teleporter. Yes, she could leave this reality, but not shift her position. She knew that, or at least she thought she did, but then again, she had shifted position when she escaped the vampires, and then again she had never been this pissed in her whole freaking life. Her anger was hot, a ball in the pit of her stomach, a resolve in the stem of her brain. The shotgun, her shotgun, was hard under her body. She jacked a round into the chamber, looked at the two rifles, and willed it.

Anatol

The Americans were in bad shape. The explosion of the third APC and the demise of the .50 cal gunner in the back of the jeep were the telling blows. There was little left but to mop them up. At least that was what Anatol thought before he heard the screams from his men across the street. Through a lull came the screams, high, desperate, short. Anatol looked in time to see a flash, hear the dull pop of a shotgun, and the scream ended as abruptly as it began. An AK-47 burped, answered by another dull pop, and then nothing.

Anatol shifted his position, peering through the cracked glass of the library window. I must know what is happening, he thought. It wouldn’t take long to find out.

Cindy

 The two riflemen, she guessed they were Russians by their strange-looking uniforms, were dead. Across the street the RPD spewed a stream of bullets. She saw the room flicker behind it, visualized it, willed it, and…

…the world turned inside out, light bent, reality grew thin, and she was there, the RPD loud in her ears.

Cindy gasped. Each teleport felt like a punch in the stomach. But no one heard the gasp, the RPD was deafening and the three men in the room—the machine gunner, a leader pointing across the street, and another rifleman—were facing the windows. Ignoring her lurching stomach, she pressed the shotgun to her cheek. The stock felt cool against her hot flesh. She sighted the back of the machine gunner’s head and fired. The skull dissolved in a red mist, and he collapsed on his weapon, bright red blood and grey brain matter steaming as it flowed down the short white wall with pretty pink and blue books stamped on it. Amazingly there was no reaction from the other two. In the din of battle they must have thought the killing blow came from the street below. She was hot, excited, the thrill almost sexual. Breathing hard, she pumped, sighted, and shot the rifleman, the force of the buck shot throwing him out the window that he had been using for a firing port. Cool, her brain whispered. The coolness didn’t last. The remaining Soviet spun, pulling his assault rifle to his shoulder.  She envisioned the floor beside him and reality grew thin…

Anatol

Where the hell did she come from, thought Anatol as he swung his rifle toward the blonde behind him. Two more of his men lay dead, but they would be her last. He pointed his AK-74 at her stomach, squeezed the trigger, and…the woman disappeared. What the hell?

And then she was beside him, the shot gun barrel against his cheek. Her voice, sultry and deep, was the second to the last sound he ever heard.

“Go home, Ivan.”

The shot gun blast was the last.

Cindy

She stood at the window, vomit coating her lower lip, whether from teleportation-induced nausea, carnage induced nausea, or just self-loathing she didn’t know. She really didn’t care. The street was quiet. At any rate quieter than the ear-pounding cascade of sound that had enveloped it but five minutes before. Small arm fire popped half heartedly, but the ambush had ended as quickly as it had started. She had ended it as quickly as it started. Her breathing was still hard, her face hot, and her body tingled. She shouldn’t feel this way, shouldn’t feel thrilled.

She looked at the room’s two headless Russians and once again, vomit sprayed from her lips. She leaned out the window. Perhaps fresh air, the rancid, smoke laced fresh air of the street below, would calm her stomach. It was then she saw something that once again made it flutter. Standing behind the concrete barrier, talking to one of his soldiers as he pressed his hand against an obviously wounded arm stood Zak Dixon. She smiled, the expression mixing with the tears on her cheeks, a pang of reflexive guilt causing her to reach for the picture in her jeans. The picture of Eddie.