The Fallen
Kite's knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. Her eyes remained glued on the backwoods road. She did not have to have her eyes open or her hands on the wheel. The cybernetics inside her skull could control the van through thought alone. When plugged into the interface she was the van. Overwhelming fear kept her eyes open and her hands cemented on the wheel. Her eyes, large as dinner plates now, stared ahead like some deer caught in headlights. Her hands had grown numb and ached from constant tension.
She kept telling herself it wasn't real. That what she had seen didn't happen. It was some kind of illusion brought on by magic or some local forest spirit. That was when the faces of Axle and Marquis forced their way back. The look of pure horror, fear, and utter agony as they fell. Then the ghostly, undead appearance in their eyes as they lumbered toward her. Axle's spurs extended with blood and puss oozing from a horrific wound in his chest. The way Marquis walked, like a stumbling wino, as he lurched out of the woods. His lower jaw slack from being broken. It hung they like a badly placed picture. Kite thought they were okay. Just hurt and in need of help. She had rushed up to them, trying to pull them to the van. Desperate to get them out of here.
Kite pulled her hand off the steering wheel and held her left shoulder. As she moved she felt the split skin open. The form-fitting body armor as split as neatly as the skin was. The blue color had been stained red with her blood. She grimaced at the razor-like signals of pain. Beads of perspiration formed on her brow. The smartgoggles, which had been sitting high on her head, slipped down. Her hair soaked with sweat from exertion and fear.
She need to stop, pull out a medkit, and tend to her wound. Yet she couldn't bring herself to slow down. Three hundred and fifty kilometers of hostile terrain, border patrols, paranormal critters, and spirits knew what else lay between her and Seattle.
Suddenly the van's wheels spun in the mud. The rear end fish-tailed to the left. Kite was caught off guard. She tried to compensate, shifting power from the slipping wheels in a frantic attempt to keep the Leyland Rover under control. Drive-by-wire components kicked in, struggling to keep the van on the road. Kite felt the back in violently sling from side to side, scattering the thick mud on the road. She gasped in surprised as the back wheels slipped into the ditch. She panicked, pressing the acceleration and spinning the rear wheels. The van switched to all-wheel drive and began pumping all four wheels with as much power as the engine would allow. Mud flew in all directions. The van wallowed like a pig for a few precious seconds before slipping completely into the ditch. Kite's stomach jumped into her throat as the van slid down the ditch. The rear slammed into an ancient oak, snapping her head back against the seat.
For a terrifying moment Kite did not know where she was. The sense of motion had stopped. She sat gasping in the driver's seat. Datacords ran from the jack at the base of her neck. It took a moment to get her breathing under control. After which she broke down into tears.
It wasn't suppose to be like this! This was a simple run. Drive out to Oregon's Butte and meet a drop off team. All she, Axle, and Marquis had to do was pick up their cargo and take it back to Seattle. That was all. Just a simple pickup. Now Marquis and Axle were dead or something worse than that. She didn't want to die out here!
Kite tried to calm herself. Panic was not going to save her life. She had to think. What to do? What to do?
The van was currently sitting in a ditch at nearly a thirty degree angle. The wheels spun uselessly against soft mud. Damn, what she would have given for off-road radials instead of runflats. There was no way she was walking out of here on foot. The nearest town was forty kilometers away threw heavy woods. They're no way she would make it in the middle of the night. Not with that.......thing out there.
The winch! The van had a winch on the bumper! If she could tie it off to a tree on the other side of the road it could give her the traction she was looking for. That would free the van.
Kite looked out the window and came to the unnerving realization that using the winch would mean getting out of the van. The van was armored like a Citymaster. Nothing was getting inside while she was jacked into it, but stepping outside was walking right into the darkness and the horrible things that lived in it. Kite chewed her lip. She had put a lot of distance between her and the pickup site. Surely she was save. If she worked quickly she would be gone before anything caught up to her.
She looked out the window. There was no choice in the matter. She had to go outside. She reached for her Beretta Model 70 with a trembling hand. There was a sharp bite of pain as she hefted the submachine gun's strap over her injured shoulder. She plugged the weapon into her smartgoggles. The weapon was half empty. She pulled out the flechette clip, which she had brought in anticipation of encountering unfriendly wildlife, and fumbled for a clip filled with high-explosive rounds. If Marquis and Killium appeared that was what it would take to bring them down.
Kite stepped out of the armored monster. Her foot sank deeply into the sucking mud surrounding the ditch. Thankfully there were creases in the van's armored plating to hang onto. Otherwise she would have slid all the way down. She paused only for a moment. The smartgoggles switched over to thermographic. Fear crept into her mind. She trembled as she scanned the top of the ditch. The mud had been scraped thin where the van had slid down. Nothing moved up there. Nothing gave off heat.
It took a moment to pop the winch's cover off and free the hook. She clipped it to her tool belt and pushed the submachine gun across her back. Painstakingly, she made her way up the ditch. Her hands grabbed fistfuls of mud as she clawed her way to the top. Her feet kept slipping from under her. Twice she fell flat against the cold ground. The stinging from the cut on her shoulder flared as filthy water trickled into the wound. She completely lost her footing halfway up. The ditch sucked her back down, rolling with the winch line and hitting her head against the van's bumper. She lay motionless for a time, wanting to stop and give up. Pretend that she was somewhere else far away from here. In her silent dispair the sounds of the forest seemed tranquil. They fueled her imagination. She wasn't in the trapped hundreds of miles away from home in the middle of the night. Instead, she was in a quiet park with the sun on her face. The insects buzzing and chirping on a hot summer day.
The crackling of twigs snapped her out of her daydream. Kite bolted upright, tilting her head ever so slightly to listen to the faint sounds of twigs breaking under foot. Her heart raced as her hands started to tremble. She sat motionless in the mud listening. Fear had paralyzed her will to move.
She had to get out of here!
Kite leaped onto the ditch and began fighting her way back up. Again she slid back to the van, but she didn't give up. she was back on the ditch and slinging her way through the mud and didn't stop until she reached the top. By then she was gasping for breath. The aching in her muscles was almost too much to bear. The stinging from her shoulder had become overwhelming agony. All this she pushed out of her mind as she ran to a tree on the other side of the road.
That's when she heard the sound again. It was different this time. Instead of snapping twigs it was more like someone trudging their way through thick mud. Her gaze shot down the old road. The goggles did not show any heat sources, yet she could make out the faint movement of something. To blurry to make out. She's almost too afraid to switch over the goggle to low-light.
As the goggles pull the shadows into figures a chill works its way down Kite's spine. Marquis and Axle are lumbering towards her. The grotesque wound in Axle's chest almost makes her retch. The ork's arm is limp against his side, yet his razor sharp spur is snapped open. Marquis's robot-like trot causes a thick sloshing sound as his boots trudge through the mud. His pale white hand holds a vibroblade. The faint hum of the weapon's tiny electric motor can be heard, spinning the micro-fine chain on the blade's edge. Kite shivers at the sight. She dropped to her knee, pulling the Beretta around her shoulder which cried out against the stretching movement. The smartgoggles lite up a targeting reticle in her vision.
A dreadful feeling overcomes her. Her breath condenses in front of her as the air's temperature plummets. Goosebumps pop up on her skin. The smell of rot and decay is heavy as a fog rolls in.
It lurches from the bushes. A form, human in appearance, but just barely. The skin hangs off its dry bones. Eyeless sockets on the face. Hands of raw calcium carbonate. The stench of the thing permeates every pore. It opens its mouth, showing raw teeth and a rotted tongue black and gray with disgusting bile. A guttural, primal howl flows forth.
Kite screams.
Suddenly her feet are pounding on the muddy road in a desperate attempt to flee. the pounding of her heart echos in her ears. Just a little further. They don't move fast. Perhaps if she keeps running she can get away.
A strong force pulls hard on Kite's belt and yank's her feet out from in under her. She falls face first into the mud. The thick sludge covers the goggles. She screams again at the fear of blindness and frantically rolls over, trying to fend off whatever grabbed her while cleaning over the lens at the same time. She became even more frantic when she felt something holding her legs together.
It was the damn winch line that made her fall! When she ran it was still clipped to her belt. At the end of the line it pulled her back down. Rolling over had wrapped the line around her legs!
A sickening sound urged from the lumbering corpse of Axle. He and Marquis were moving on her. The other, more disgusting and rotted corpse, moved much slower. Kite attempted to dart away, but the winch line only tightened.
"Shit! Shit! Shit!" She cried as her trembling fingers pulled against the line. All the while Axle and Marquis drew closer. The mud sloshed against their dragging steps. Kite could her the faint hum of the vibroblade.
Kite wrapped her hand around the Beretta. The smartlink interface lite up a targeting reticle in the goggles. The reticle centered on Axle. For a brief moment she thought about the ork's stories and humorous antics on the ride up here. He was so carefree and happy. Rare for a Shadowrunner. He spoke about how his little brother had made it into college. He was going to study art. Axle was so proud of him..........
The Beretta opened up in a spray of high explosive rounds. Kite kept the trigger down, fighting back tears as empty shell casings splattered into the mud. The rounds tore up chunks of the foliage, splattered around Axle's feet, bit fiercely into the darkness. The rattle of the gun didn't stop until the clip abruptly ran dry. They kept coming.
Kite held the trigger down in disbelief. For a terrible moment she didn't know what to do, but the urge to live pushed her into against. She hit the quick release on her belt and wormed out of the winch line. When she turned around Axle and Marquis were only ten meters away. Blood and gore dripped from Axle's spur. His glazed over eyes bore down on her.
Kite grabbed a clip from her belt and set her weapon to burst fire just as Axle brought his spur down. She tried to jump back, but felt the bite of the metal across her thigh. Marquis lunged at her at the same time. The elf's vibroblade humming of impending doom, but the deep cuts in his arm and damage to the muscles made his strike awkward and clumsy.
"Axle, no!" Kite screamed as the ork's mouth worked in some semblance of speaking before swiping with the spur. Kite brought the Model 70 up in time to catch the blade on the barrel. She slung it with all her might at Marquis. The blade stuck in his arm.
Kite backpedaled, quickdrawing her Browning as her feet threatened to slip on the muddy earth. Two rounds burst from the snub-nosed automatic and buried themselves in Axle's walking corpse. She kept firing. The heavy automatic booming in her trembling hand, sending chunks of metal into a person she had shared jokes with barely two hours ago.
But they kept coming.
"Leave me alone!" She begged before shoving her last clip into the Beretta. She had to make it count. She forced herself to take deep breaths, calming herself. In a practiced motion she dropped to one knee, resting the butt of the submachine gun against her shoulder. The targeting reticle quivered as it lined up on Axle. Her finger rubbing the trigger, she offered one final prayer, "I'm sorry, Axle."
She depressed the trigger. Axle's head came apart. He continued to move forward just as a second burst tore anything above his shoulders to pieces. The body twitched before collapsing into the mud. The spur retracted for the last time.
The barrel centered on Marquis. Kite took her time, making sure she had the weapon properly braced, aiming slightly beneath what she wanted to hit. High explosive rounds sailed from the muzzle flare.
All missed.
Kite forced herself to stay calm. Marquis was almost on top of her. The vibroblade was already preparing to swing. She let him have it at point-blank range. His chest exploded, splattering its contents in all direction as the automatic fire gutted his insides. His body jerked violently. The blade snapped out of his hands and stuck upright in the mud as the body collapsed on top of Kite who kept firing. He was so heavy, suffocating her in his rotting stench of thickening blood.
She actually laughed. They were dead, both of them. Had she really done it? All by herself? Without using a drone or remote?
With almost a giddy feeling she pulled herself from beneath the corpse. When she looked up a boney fist slammed into her. The strap on the goggles snapped and fell aside. Through the throbbing in her head Kite made out the rotting corpse of a man in a tattered military uniform from the early part of the century. His eyes had long since rotted away, leaving only empty craters in his skull. Boney fingers grab her hair. She screams as the diseased thing drags her across the road, slipping and sliding on the wet mud..
"Let go!" Kite pulls the Beretta around. A burst rips off it's decaying hand. The thing roars in agony and hatred as she stumbles to her feet, fighting with the submachine gun to bring it to bear on its head.
The dried corpse lashes out. It's bony fist hits hard. The air flees from her lungs. The stabbing razors of pain run through her stomach. A chilling sensation grows in the very depth of her being. The last view of the world is that of rot glaring at her face.
That's it for this story. Try going back to the Fiction Index and find something else. Thoughts, rants, comments? Email me and tell what you thought about it.