Pahnyakin Rising (27 page)

Amos gasped for air and winced.  He collapsed to the ground.

“Amos,” Dodge repeated.  “Where is she?”

The man shook his head and sobbed.

“No,” Dodge pleaded.  His lips became dry and the world colorless.  “No, no.  Amos, where’s Dresden?”

He scraped his right hand through his hair and paced, waiting for a reply.

“Killed her.  They killed her.  Dragged her off.  Ambush.”

Dodge’s mouth hanged open and he lost his ability to breathe.

He sat on the ground as he did now, with his knees drawn, and he stared blankly to the dirt.

“Everyone.  Everyone is dead,” Amos wheezed.  “But I’m gonna live.  She told me I would.”

Dodge waited for Amos to speak again, but no other words came from the man’s lips. 

He struggled with life for a year and was utterly convinced what he was doing from day to day was anything but living.  The tears flowed like a fresh spring stream but eventually dried and he was left empty inside.  Every day without her he died a little more.  The hole where his heart had been grew darker and expanded until he was sure he was hollow, that even seeing her smiles in the pictures on the wall slammed against him like a hammer to glass and broke him into a million jagged pieces.

And there she stood before him, telling him to go through it again.

‘Okay.’
He thought of his reply. 
‘Okay?’

Was there a more
dispassionate
answer?  Was there a better way to make it sound like he couldn’t care less if she walked out of his life and never returned?  There were a thousand replies better than the one he gave.  And if she never came back, he wasn’t the only one who’d have to live with that answer, he realized.  She deserved more than the response he offered.  Even the fiercest, strong-willed women need more from time to time.   

A knot in his stomach throbbed as he wondered if she was as disappointed with his last words as he was.

He should have said more, held her tighter.  Maybe then he’d feel less regret and she would know, as she died, how much she was loved, admired, appreciated by that man. 

‘Okay.’
      

“They’re coming.  Oh my god, Dodge, they’re coming back,” the redhead shouted.

He turned his head to the left.  The troops that took Dresden were marching back to take the rest of Easton’s group.

Dodge stood and gripped the stun gun sword.  His shoulders were pressed back and his head was held high.

“What’s he doing?” Margaret squealed.  “They’re both just going to let us die here?”

The color of his eyes deepened.  He picked up his pace with each step.

Upon coming face to face with the first Magister, Dodge lifted his left leg and landed the sole of his boot against the creature’s stomach.  It fell against the ground and the others rushed to its aid, but Dodge had all the time he needed to plunge the sword in its chrome-plated chest. 

“I’m gonna kill you all,” he spit with his upper lip curled. 

He flicked the button on the sword and watched with sick pleasure as most of the creatures collapsed.  He yanked the sword from the Magister and walked with his strong arms bowed at his sides towards the remaining Pahnyakins.  They stood still, awaiting his moves.

The Absorber got the best of Dodge.  It layered its tentacles around his neck like a tight winter scarf and squeezed.  Dodge’s throat closed and his eyes bulged.  He struggled to raise his arm.  The Absorber moved in and if it had an expression under its visor, Dodge knew it was smiling.

The tip of the sword rested on the top of the creature’s foot.

Dodge’s eyesight came and went.  He thought, for sure, in all the time he’d ever had to think about it, he would only see blackness as he faded in and out of consciousness, but the color he saw when he was fading in and out was red…Dresden’s red lips after she guzzled down fruit punch when she finished sopping up gooey maple syrup with the muzzle from her teddy bear pancakes. 

She grinned at him. 

“Where did you even get this stuff?  Did you
really
go on a run for batter and juice?”

He nodded.  “I knew you missed it.”

“You’re good to me, you know.  I could do this for the rest of my life.”

Dodge forced the side of the sword’s blade against the Pahnyakin’s shin and pressed the button again.



Someone fired a gun at the army escorting her to the silo. 

She didn’t fight as they swarmed around her.  They collected around the girl to
protect
her.  She wasn’t sure she wanted to know why, but she had a feeling, as she was shuffled through the door with the Pahnyakins, that she would soon find out.

The beings spread out under the 40-foot-high slanted roof and went about their business as if they had never been interrupted.  Dresden, naturally, turned for the door, but was met by two Unies.  She briefly considered reaching for the screwdriver in her pocket, but resistance would probably leave her maimed or accelerate whatever it was they were planning for her, and she needed all the time she could buy. 

Dresden didn’t expect the inside of the silo to be so vast.  She looked across the floor and tried to quickly count the metal operating tables positioned around the open area.  Nearly every table had a Pahnyakin strapped to it and at least five other creatures worked in teams around the patients. 

She studied one particular table with genuine interest.

A Magister held a Uni’s head steady against the table as an Imperator used a miniature blowtorch to weld the Uni’s visor in place against its facial armor.  As soon as the Imperator extinguished the torch’s blue flame, another Magister stepped forward with a thin gray opaque plastic hose in its lobster-claw-hands and squirted the Uni’s hot metal with a strong stream of rusty water. 

She almost didn’t notice the movement along the walls to the sides above her. 

Dresden glanced to her left and saw smooth metal ramp that winded around the sides of the silo.  But that wasn’t what made her hunch over and gag.

It was the shirt cut down the center and exposing surgical wounds that gave him away, the yellow Me First and the Gimme Gimmes band name peeling from his green hoodie. 

Tim’s lower legs showed fresh red splices down the sides and frontal centers of his shins.  She could see, where the thick black stitches were bulging, traces of the long metal rods inserted in his legs.  His feet were either replaced or covered with pastel green metal plating, and he looked forward with hollow eye sockets.  Dried rivers of blood were trickled down his cheeks and over his wide-open mouth.  His tongue was pierced with three black metal bars at the back, middle, and front.  Two silver screws as thick as railroad ties were placed through his shoulders to hold him to the wall of the silo.  Dresden noticed on each of his temples were two bottle-cap-sized black dots protruding from his splotchy skin. 

And then he wriggled his fingers. 

What was left of Tim moaned in excruciating pain.

He was in the process of transformation and it suddenly became clear to Dresden what that meant for her. 

Dresden spit a goop of clear saliva to the blood-stained floor and staggered to the nearest table, one to her left that was surrounded by four Pahnyakins using a handheld grinder to smooth out the metal plating around the strapped-down Magister’s neck. 

The Absorber holding the tool did not stop her as she bumped against it.  The creature paused from its task and scooted to its right. 

With trembling hands, Dresden reached for the black visor covering the Magister’s face. 

And she hesitated. 

She’d been dying to tear the visor from any one of the Pahnyakins from the first day she’d ever seen one, but now that she could, she wasn’t sure she was ready for what she now feared would be there.

The girl gripped the bottom portion of the visor and peeled it upward. 

“No,” she cringed sadly.  “No.”

Judging by the high, soft cheekbones and thin, near-white lips, Dresden assumed the face underneath belonged to a woman no older than 22. 

Her skin, like Tim’s, was pale and speckled with flecks of gray.  The woman’s eyes, too, had been crudely scooped from her smooth sockets.  Thin metal crinkled tubing twisted out of the woman’s nostrils and down her throat.  She also had the black caps protruding from her temples and Dresden noticed a scar where the once-living woman must have worn an eyebrow ring. 

Dresden let the visor drop from her hands and she stumbled back.

“You’re using us?” she gasped.  “You’re using humans?”

Rapid clicking echoed from the top of the silo and swirled around her. 

Dresden tilted her neck back until it ached and she squinted.

A purple Pahnyakin paced under a criss-crossed spaghetti-bowl bundle of twisted black power lines that connected to generators circled around the uppermost level of the building.  The girl followed the wires from the generators with her eyes.  Clear tubes veined along the silo walls to each of the partially-transformed beings on the metal walls. 

She struggled to put the code together. 

In her bout of utter disgust and panic, the girl was sure her brain had broken.  Her thinking was cloudy and she couldn’t form a thought to save her life.

The Gaia barked another order to her subordinates. 

Her transformation.

Dresden’s neck ached as she lowered her gaze and shook her head.  The Pahnyakins surrounding her turned in her direction and closed in.

“No,” she begged.  “Please don’t do this.”

She took small steps back but was trapped.

“I don’t have anything to give you,” she tried to reason.  “There’s nothing I have that you’d want.”

The girl knew it was a lie.  She’d seen Dodge fight.  Just barely could he hold his own. She witnessed how her people had to team up in pairs or more to bring down even one creature, something it seemed she could do effortlessly.  It was part of the reason she died the first time.  The Pahnyakins took out their greatest threat and didn’t
have
to plan as many attacks against Easton anymore.  They only had to remind the people of Easton periodically that they would be next. 

If she were, Dresden thought, a Gaia, she too would order her transformation.  It was no wonder the people of Easton feared her arrival.  They had every right to.  They had every
reason
to.



“Run,” he told the remaining group.

Margaret looked confused. 

“Run,” he repeated.  “Go back to Easton.”

It was only a matter of time before more Pahnyakin troops attacked but he didn’t care about what they would do to him. 

“We’re giving up?  After all of this, we’re giving up?”

Dodge shook his head. 

“I have two grenades left.  One,” he motioned, “is going to take out one of these silos.  The other,” he pointed to the center building, “is going to take that one out and end all of this.”

Sheryl and Margaret looked nothing like one another.  If Dodge’s parents hadn’t known theirs, he’d have a hard time believing the two were sisters.  Sheryl was far from petite.  She stood eye-to-eye with Dodge and had curly brown hair so dark it almost appeared black.

“We’ve lost three people so far.  You’re telling us to leave now?” she demanded with a huff.

“You’re going to save yourselves.  Dresden was right, some of us are going to die.  But I’m choosing for you.  Go.”

Greg stepped forward and wiped his running nose with his bare arm.

“I’m not leaving yet.  Let me take out the generators and toss the last grenade.”

Dodge protested.  “That’s a death sentence.  I’m not letting you do that.”

“I’m not asking.  I want to do my part.  And if I die,” his voice trailed off and he shrugged.

Neither of the men were going to argue anymore.  They both knew it when their eyes met.

Dodge slipped the backpack from his shoulders and unzipped it. 

The group stood and stared at him.

“Why aren’t you running?” he questioned.  “If you want to live, now is the time to go.”

Sheryl was the first to make her move.  She grabbed Margaret’s hand and the two sprinted in Easton’s direction.

Dodge pulled the last M67 grenade from the bottom of the bag and handed it to Greg. 

Three more people from the group fled. 

Greg nodded to the others.  “You need to go.”

“The second you take out the generators and draw them out, I’m going in the middle building,” Dodge declared.  He didn’t care anymore to coax what was left of the group to go.  They could leave or stay.  It didn’t matter anymore.  There was only one person he needed to save.

“Okay.”

Dodge shoved the thermite canister in his left pocket.  His pocket bulged.  One hit from a Pahnyakin and he was done for, he knew.