Freedom Incorporated (77 page)

“
Drop dead,
moron,” Dan said quietly to himself. He was surprised to discover
Esteban had heard him.

“
Aw, that’s
not a nice thing to say to your host.” Esteban was stalling. He
knew the other members were creeping forward and he held
aspirations of taking Dan alive – if wounded.

Dan knew it too. He
divided his attention between Esteban and the other three
corridors. He felt open and vulnerable, though Simon looked in no
condition to move yet. He was badly winded and struggling for
breath.

“
Hey Dan!”
Esteban relished taunting the man who’d ruined the most exciting
part of his career. “I’m going to peel Jen like a juicy piece of
fruit.” He laughed gutturally. “I’m going to tear strips from her
body and feed them to my dog.”

Dan lost his grip on
whatever remained of his self-control, just as Esteban had planned
– for an impulsive man made mistakes. He took careful aim and fired
two shots.

Esteban
flinched when the splintering wall showered him with fragments of
plaster. But he smiled broadly and thought,
I’ve won.
It was just a matter of time
now.

Dan reached down, grabbed
Simon by the scruff of his collar, and pulled him to his knees.
“Come on.” He dragged him to the central corridor, the one leading
to the heart of the complex, directly toward the fray. Simon had to
scramble to catch up but felt grateful for the rough treatment once
they’d entered the mouth of the corridor. It felt safer in there –
at least they only had two directions over which to
fret.

Dan pushed his friend
into a nook and pointed back toward Esteban. “Make sure nobody
comes this way.”

Simon nodded, not yet in
full control of his breath. He spoke in short gasps, “What… about…
you?”

Dan’s eyes were the most
brutal Simon had ever seen. They had an alien quality. Few people
ever understood it. It was something a person had to experience to
understand – concentrated death. Every fibre in Dan’s body itched
for carnage and virtually nothing could stop him. “I’m going this
way.” He turned towards the centre of the Guild and started
walking, casually replacing the magazine in his Colt. He had the
Cobra-KT with a few hundred rounds for backup but preferred the
Colt in cramped conditions. It was faster to aim and a sliver of a
second could mean the difference between life and death.

The transformation was
complete. He’d become what he feared. His ugly past had resurfaced.
A death machine, capable of unspeakable things. Something he’d
tried hard to forget. And the worst part was that he enjoyed it. He
was thriving on the thrill and needed to quench his thirst for
blood. He’d been parched a long time.

He strode confidently but
insanely into the Guild’s core and obliterated their stronghold by
tapping bullets to the foreheads of the four men there. They
collapsed like rag-dolls, their dark-red blood bursting onto the
pristine carpet.

Two more witnessed the
slaughter from a side corridor and sprinted for their lives,
spreading terror like a disease. Soon everyone knew what’d happened
and all desperately wanted to escape. They were fleeing for the
portal chamber on the far side of compound.

But Dan wasn’t finished.
He pursued them until they’d all flashed away. When it was over,
he’d slain six, critically wounded one, and given two flesh wounds.
The critically wounded man lay gasping for breath through
blood-filled lungs, abandoned by his fellow members and forgotten
in the heat of battle. Nobody tended to his wounds and nobody heard
his dying words.

A body on the
floor mesmerised Dan. The back of his skull was missing, blown away
by Dan’s nine-millimetre round. He hadn’t honestly expected so much
damage.
Environmental trauma that caused
bone disease? A genetic problem?
It wouldn’t
surprise him. Dozens of genetic catastrophes had snaked into the
human gene pool, which dangerous chemicals were gradually eroding.
Most people suffered the consequences of at least one flaw. Weak
and decalcified bones were prevalent disorders.

Now…
Esteban.
Dan wanted to gaze inside Esteban’s
skull, to see if maybe he was missing his frontal lobes. He
mightn’t have been a cyborg…
But he’s
certainly fucking insane.

*

Jen was feeling stronger.
Now she wished the world would stop spinning for long enough to get
her bearings. But she was thankful her headache had dulled to a
background throb. It’d been the worst headache she could remember –
and no painkillers to ease the suffering. It’d felt as if her brain
was swelling inside her skull and had run out of room to
expand.

The shots
have stopped.
She wondered whether that
meant Dan was dead.
Or
captured.
She wasn’t sure what’d be worse.
She wished she had a weapon and, with all the gunfire, she supposed
there had to be guns lying around.
Where’re the other women?
The thought
of orchestrating an uprising appealed, it was the most liberating
thought she’d had in days.

If I can just
find some guns…
She blundered into a laundry
and squinted in surprise. Disorientated, she’d been expecting one
of the lounge rooms.
Where am
I?
Nothing looked familiar and that scared
her. It was one of the withdrawal effects; everything was obscure
in her mind. Her hands looked big and her feet looked small. She
tried not to focus on the distortion lest she went mad, and she
kept chanting her tasks in her mind.
Find
a weapon. Find Dan.
It didn’t really matter
in which order those things happened.
As
long as they both happen.

An indiscernible amount
of time later she found the room she’d been looking for, the one
most of the shots had come from. And what a grisly sight it was. It
pricked her nausea to new levels. Four men lay slain in a contorted
exhibit of human limbs, a ghastly sculpture. Their skin was pale
because much of their blood had trickled like thick syrup around
their remains. Jen paled too, the vulgar sight sending shivers of
revulsion through her body. She had to turn away and slapped a palm
to her mouth to stifle a gasp and quell her uneasiness. Soon she
symbolically shifted her hand to cover her eyes, her mind rendering
the sight in equally horrid detail.

She turned
slowly back around, removed her hand, and opened her eyes, slitting
them just far enough to survey the devastation through a haze of
eyelashes. None of the handguns had escaped the splattered
gore.
That’s
disgusting.
But Jen was determined to fend
for herself. She abhorred blood, but she hungered for survival and
ordered herself to select a weapon. So, without even a grimace, she
mechanically bent down and obeyed her inner voice.

It was sticky and warm,
just the way she remembered. The iron-like smell of haemoglobin
assaulted her nose and brought bile to the back of her throat. She
came closer to vomiting then than in the past four
hours.

She looked at the gun,
her mind magnifying it to the detriment of her stability. She was
so intent upon the weapon and the viscid feel of blood coating her
fingers that she didn’t notice somebody creeping up behind her. One
solid hit and the gun went sprawling from her fingers, knocked to
the far side of the room.

Wha…?
But someone locked her into an
abrasive headlock before she had time to finish the thought.
Whoever it was, he was strong. He tipped her backward, taking her
weight against his body. The lock around her neck was threatening
to crush her windpipe and was already partially collapsing her
arteries. She could hear the blood pounding in her ears like a base
drum, slowed by the hallucinations in her mind.

“
Don’t say a
word.” It was Junior.

Ah
yes.
Jen recognised the ginger hair on his
arm.

He pressed the tip of his
gun firmly into her temple and the pressure revived a painful
memory of her earlier headache. Junior was focussing elsewhere and
didn’t even realise he was close to strangling her. For him, she
was a tool, and always had been. To be used as he saw fit and cast
aside once he was finished. And right now, she was the perfect
human shield, the one person Dan wouldn’t risk killing.

A brazen smile
snarled across Junior’s lips.
Come on
fucker… you and me. Right now.

*

“
How the hell
did you do that?” Simon asked incredulously, looking at Dan with a
mixture of awe, respect, and concern.

“
You don’t
want to know.” Dan’s eyes reinforced the statement and Simon knew
better than to probe further. “Esteban’s still here. So is Frank.”
He paused a second before adding, “Maybe more, it’s hard to say,
this place is a warren.”

“
Not to
mention they might just be regrouping,” Simon warned. “Or going for
reinforcements.”

Dan doubted it. “This
isn’t their fight, so I don’t see why they would.” He was right.
The Guild was all for unification against common threats, but it
was mostly lip service to an ideal. No member was willing to die
for another’s problems. They were on the run, and most of them
wouldn’t come back. They’d return to their cosy lives and sprout
stories of their glory days to people who didn’t care and didn’t
particularly want to hear.

Someone was approaching
from the left corridor and Dan whipped his Colt up, already
squeezing the trigger. But recognition stopped him and he snapped
the Colt away when he saw it was a woman.

She was tall and slender,
and supported enormous breasts with folded arms. “Don’t shoot.” She
raised her hands to show she wasn’t holding a gun and her beasts
visibly sagged, straining her back.

Dan waved her close. “Is
there anyone left down there?” He indicated the direction she’d
come with his Colt.

“
No. They
fled.” She extended a hand. “I’m Mindy.”

Both Dan and Simon
accepted the offer and warmly shook her hand. “I’m Dan.”

“
Simon,” the
officer said, smiling politely. “We’re here to help.”

“
Yeah, I kinda
figured that.” She looked around, hungry for revenge of her own.
“You need a hand?”

“
You
offering?” Dan asked, rather stupidly Simon thought.

Mindy nodded. “I know how
to shoot. I used to be in the Air Training Corps.” Her eyes
hardened. “Seems like a millennium ago now, but back then I was on
the rifle shooting team.”

Dan snapped together the
two halves of his Cobra-KT and undid the safety catch, selecting
semiautomatic operation before handing it over. “There are only a
few left – maybe two – but you’re welcome to help if you think you
can.”

“
Come on.”
Simon was eager to have things finished. “We know he’s somewhere
back there, toward the portals.”

“
Ah…” Dan
cleared his throat. “But there are two sets. He could’ve gone
through those portals and appeared on the other side of the
compound.”

“
So we have no
idea where he is,” Simon summed up. “Fantastic.”

“
Under normal
circumstances I wouldn’t suggest breaking up,” Dan said. Only a
fraction of his consciousness was aware of what he was doing,
experience and skill had taken over. He was on autopilot. “But
there are three of us and three directions to sweep.”

“
I’ll take the
left,” Simon volunteered, waiting for a nod from Dan before
departing to check every room as he zigzagged down the
corridor.

“
I’ll take the
right,” Mindy offered.

Dan held up a hand before
she could move off. “Wait, my friend’s in here somewhere. She’s
new. Her names Jennifer Cameron…”

“
Yeah, I’ve
met Jen.”

Good.
“Okay, I just didn’t want you
shooting her, that’s all.”

The determined expression
in her eyes momentarily softened. “Don’t worry, I won’t shoot your
girlfriend.” She departed before Dan could explain.

She’s not my
girlfriend.
The thought lingered in his mind
while she vanished down her corridor. That left Dan with the
centre. He slapped both hands around the grip of his Colt, having
already fed a new string of bullets into the clip. They were his
last rounds. After that, he’d have to find more nine-millimetre
ammunition, find another gun, or fight with his fists.

I’m coming
Jen…

“
Dan
Sutherland. Fancy meeting you here.”

Dan swivelled, his Colt
level before he’d completed the turn. A wash of alarm boomed in his
skull when he saw who it was. Junior had Jen in a headlock and he
was pointing a Browning semiautomatic at her temple.

“
Jen…” He
froze, realising the outcome of the next few seconds would
determine whether she lived or died. “Are you okay?”

She nodded the best she
could, more with her eyes than anything else. The pressure from
Junior’s forearm squeezed her oesophagus and vocal cords so that
she could muster only a choking wheeze when she tried to
speak.