Ranallis
24-08-2005, 05:57
Life's a funny thing, you know. One second, you're alive and drinking from a bottled water, and the next, you're flopped over the dashboard, blood streaming from the volcano erupting from your cranium. Or, at least, someone in your car is.
KAKAKA-CRACK-SL-BAT!
The Land Rover jerks, braking and twisting to the side as Mac hauls the wheel over, raising his arms against the spray of glass-
Hog slams forward, crashing into the passenger dashboard, crashing into the spider-webbed glass and sticking halfway through the glass collar; he's left mounted on the hood like some morbid, bleeding ornament, decorated with multiple wounds that stitch from his chest to his forehead.
I hold onto the passenger chair, trying to brace into the back seat as the vehicle tips and almost rolls. Swagart's swearing, trying to force his rifle out the sunroof, trying to return fire at the phantoms that are shooting at us. Mac tries to pull back onto the road, fixing his grip, but another vehicle looms up in front of the speeding Rover, and there 's a sudden smash and thud-
The chair rushes at me, and I hear Swagart yelling something; the horn is blaring out-
My vision goes black.
---------------------
Bra-a-at. Bra-a-at. Bra-a-at.
That's a funny alarm.
Bra-a-at. Bra-a-at. Bra-a-at.
It sounds like firecrackers.
Bra-a-at. Bra-a-at. Bra-a-at.
Oft'ly fast sounding, though... and there's that horrible ringing in my head. Did I drink too much?
Bra-a-at. Click.
Click? Alarms don't click, nor do firecrackers.
“Shit! Shit!” Fumbling noises.
That's some alarm they got-
----------------------------------------
And I'm awake again, lying smashed between the seats in the back of the Rover. I'm covered in glass, and there's smoke drifting through the blown out windows. Swagart has his Colt Commando out missing rear windshield, and he's just ramming the charger home, firing again-
Bra-a-at. Bra-a-at. Bra-a-at.
Swagart chooses his targets carefully, I can tell from down here. He leans onto the stock and squints into the red dot scope, and he swings it rapidly but gently, choosing targets that I can't see. The sound is dull and removed, and the white light of the muzzle flash is polarizing. The hot shell casings are bouncing down the seat, singing the covers, rolling onto my chest-
“Hot!” I yell, jerking my Kevlar away from myself so that the casings roll to the Rover's floor.
Swagart glances back at me, his blue eyes widening in happy surprise. There's dirt stains on his face, and powder burns on his nose and cheek. The Commando he's using has a bad sear, and it tends to blow gasses, but Swagart hasn't seemed to notice. He flashes a smile, and I notice he's missing teeth. Blood is flowing from a cut under his sandy-brown hair, but he's still going strong.
He's yelling at me now, but I can't hear him. I pull myself up from the floor and the casings and the bent metal, trying to pry my rifle free from the seat.
Swagart's yelling again. I can't hear him.
“WHAT?” I focus.
“YOU... LOOK... LIKE... HELL!” he points to my face, and I turn to the mirror in the front seat. My face is a mass of blood streaming from a broken nose, and mouth. Now I can taste the blood. It doesn't taste bad. For some reason, all I can think of is when I was a kid, and I used to eat play-do in the kitchen when Mom wasn't looking. It tastes salty, like that.
Mac is strewn over the steering wheel, his legs pinned by a sheet of metal. One of his arms is bent back, under the firewall. His head hangs at a funny angle, but he's breathing. I can see his chest rise and fall in ragged motions, and his mouth moves in silent murmurs of pain.
The front of the car is gone, mangled by some sort of impact or blast. The front windshield is completely gone, and there's no sign of Hog.
Bra-a-at. Bra-a-at. Bra-a-at. Swagart must be shooting again.
All of a sudden, I can smell. My body must have accustomed to the stench of my own blood, because I can smell burning rubber and gunsmoke. There's a waft of gasoline in the air, and I know that the tank is leaking below. Coolant is cooking in what remains of the engine.
My perceptions fade for a second. Everything gets dark, wobbly. A wavering tunnel closes around me-
Swagart is poking me.
-hard.
-with his rifle.
-with the hot barrel of his rifle.
“GYAAAH!” And I'm awake again.
“NOT... NOW... JACK! STICK WITH ME!”
I must have a concussion.
Brilliant observation, that last one. I'm in a wrecked SUV, being shot at, rolled, exploded, collided, and I think I might have a concussion. If that's all I have, I'll be the luckiest sumbitch in the world.
Bullets are whizzing by, I notice this now. I can feel the bumblebees snicking by my face, the supersonic crack slapping my agonized nose. I never knew pain was cold, but it is. It's minty-fresh and cold, like frost bite against the warm ache of blood and bruise.
I know I need to fire back, to join Swagart in a window, but I have more important things I have to know. I slap Swagart on the shoulder, and he whirls to me for a second, never moving his gun.
“WHAT?”
“WHERE IS HOG?”
And Swagart points out the front window, that broken window. Twenty feet away, I see Hog, or what's left of him, piled face first into another vehicle. He went straight through the window of a taxi, and his feet are hanging from the driver's window while his corpse dangles inside. I should be horrified. I should be terrified. I should be something.
But I'm not. All I can think is that the sumbitch owed me money.
He owed me money, and now he's a piece of roadkill.
That's twenty-fuckin'-dollars down the shitter.
Swagart is still shooting, and I join him, shoving my FNC out the window and blazing blindly into the crowd.
There's a lot of them out there, a seething morass. Most of them are civilians, gawking and staring. But gunmen hide inside the crowd and shoot from the human wall, the bullets ricocheting from what armor remains on the vehicle, occasionally bouncing through a window. We can't shoot back or we'll strike civilians.
We keep shooting.
It's their own fault. If you let someone cheat from you, you're a cheater. If you let someone fire from behind you, you're a gunman.
There's a horn in the distance, a thump of a heavy weapon. The crowd is parting-
There's another burst of gunfire, and Swagart spins away from the window, blood and bone fountaining from his collar, a sudden sinewy blast that knocks him into me. I fire back, and I get the bastard who shot. I know it, because I see the Kalashnikov tumble from his hands as his head snaps back and brain matter sprays onto a woman behind him-
But there's too many of them firing now, all at me. They're closing and shooting. I drop one.
Another.
Third. Fourth. Fifth.
The carbine is clicking empty, and I grab Swagart's Commando.
Sixth.
A round skips from the trunk, shrapnel hits above my left eye, and my vision begins to fade.
I keep firing. Seventh. Eighth.
----------------------------------------------
They say that you never see the one that gets you.
They lied.
----------------------------------------------
I'm back between the seats, and my vision is tunneling again. The leather is slicked in blood- mine and Swagart's, and I can feel my heart pumping me dry, a draining well in my chest. The Great Murphy calls a gaping chest wound “nature's way of telling you to slow down”. I was going fast, wasn't I? I can't feel anything anymore.
Sound is fuzzy, but I can hear a thumping pulse, and there's someone yelling. Vision is dimming. All I can taste is copper and iron. Gunpowder and gasoline mix in my nostrils. There's a heat now. The fire must have started in the gas. It's about time.
It's black again.
KAKAKA-CRACK-SL-BAT!
The Land Rover jerks, braking and twisting to the side as Mac hauls the wheel over, raising his arms against the spray of glass-
Hog slams forward, crashing into the passenger dashboard, crashing into the spider-webbed glass and sticking halfway through the glass collar; he's left mounted on the hood like some morbid, bleeding ornament, decorated with multiple wounds that stitch from his chest to his forehead.
I hold onto the passenger chair, trying to brace into the back seat as the vehicle tips and almost rolls. Swagart's swearing, trying to force his rifle out the sunroof, trying to return fire at the phantoms that are shooting at us. Mac tries to pull back onto the road, fixing his grip, but another vehicle looms up in front of the speeding Rover, and there 's a sudden smash and thud-
The chair rushes at me, and I hear Swagart yelling something; the horn is blaring out-
My vision goes black.
---------------------
Bra-a-at. Bra-a-at. Bra-a-at.
That's a funny alarm.
Bra-a-at. Bra-a-at. Bra-a-at.
It sounds like firecrackers.
Bra-a-at. Bra-a-at. Bra-a-at.
Oft'ly fast sounding, though... and there's that horrible ringing in my head. Did I drink too much?
Bra-a-at. Click.
Click? Alarms don't click, nor do firecrackers.
“Shit! Shit!” Fumbling noises.
That's some alarm they got-
----------------------------------------
And I'm awake again, lying smashed between the seats in the back of the Rover. I'm covered in glass, and there's smoke drifting through the blown out windows. Swagart has his Colt Commando out missing rear windshield, and he's just ramming the charger home, firing again-
Bra-a-at. Bra-a-at. Bra-a-at.
Swagart chooses his targets carefully, I can tell from down here. He leans onto the stock and squints into the red dot scope, and he swings it rapidly but gently, choosing targets that I can't see. The sound is dull and removed, and the white light of the muzzle flash is polarizing. The hot shell casings are bouncing down the seat, singing the covers, rolling onto my chest-
“Hot!” I yell, jerking my Kevlar away from myself so that the casings roll to the Rover's floor.
Swagart glances back at me, his blue eyes widening in happy surprise. There's dirt stains on his face, and powder burns on his nose and cheek. The Commando he's using has a bad sear, and it tends to blow gasses, but Swagart hasn't seemed to notice. He flashes a smile, and I notice he's missing teeth. Blood is flowing from a cut under his sandy-brown hair, but he's still going strong.
He's yelling at me now, but I can't hear him. I pull myself up from the floor and the casings and the bent metal, trying to pry my rifle free from the seat.
Swagart's yelling again. I can't hear him.
“WHAT?” I focus.
“YOU... LOOK... LIKE... HELL!” he points to my face, and I turn to the mirror in the front seat. My face is a mass of blood streaming from a broken nose, and mouth. Now I can taste the blood. It doesn't taste bad. For some reason, all I can think of is when I was a kid, and I used to eat play-do in the kitchen when Mom wasn't looking. It tastes salty, like that.
Mac is strewn over the steering wheel, his legs pinned by a sheet of metal. One of his arms is bent back, under the firewall. His head hangs at a funny angle, but he's breathing. I can see his chest rise and fall in ragged motions, and his mouth moves in silent murmurs of pain.
The front of the car is gone, mangled by some sort of impact or blast. The front windshield is completely gone, and there's no sign of Hog.
Bra-a-at. Bra-a-at. Bra-a-at. Swagart must be shooting again.
All of a sudden, I can smell. My body must have accustomed to the stench of my own blood, because I can smell burning rubber and gunsmoke. There's a waft of gasoline in the air, and I know that the tank is leaking below. Coolant is cooking in what remains of the engine.
My perceptions fade for a second. Everything gets dark, wobbly. A wavering tunnel closes around me-
Swagart is poking me.
-hard.
-with his rifle.
-with the hot barrel of his rifle.
“GYAAAH!” And I'm awake again.
“NOT... NOW... JACK! STICK WITH ME!”
I must have a concussion.
Brilliant observation, that last one. I'm in a wrecked SUV, being shot at, rolled, exploded, collided, and I think I might have a concussion. If that's all I have, I'll be the luckiest sumbitch in the world.
Bullets are whizzing by, I notice this now. I can feel the bumblebees snicking by my face, the supersonic crack slapping my agonized nose. I never knew pain was cold, but it is. It's minty-fresh and cold, like frost bite against the warm ache of blood and bruise.
I know I need to fire back, to join Swagart in a window, but I have more important things I have to know. I slap Swagart on the shoulder, and he whirls to me for a second, never moving his gun.
“WHAT?”
“WHERE IS HOG?”
And Swagart points out the front window, that broken window. Twenty feet away, I see Hog, or what's left of him, piled face first into another vehicle. He went straight through the window of a taxi, and his feet are hanging from the driver's window while his corpse dangles inside. I should be horrified. I should be terrified. I should be something.
But I'm not. All I can think is that the sumbitch owed me money.
He owed me money, and now he's a piece of roadkill.
That's twenty-fuckin'-dollars down the shitter.
Swagart is still shooting, and I join him, shoving my FNC out the window and blazing blindly into the crowd.
There's a lot of them out there, a seething morass. Most of them are civilians, gawking and staring. But gunmen hide inside the crowd and shoot from the human wall, the bullets ricocheting from what armor remains on the vehicle, occasionally bouncing through a window. We can't shoot back or we'll strike civilians.
We keep shooting.
It's their own fault. If you let someone cheat from you, you're a cheater. If you let someone fire from behind you, you're a gunman.
There's a horn in the distance, a thump of a heavy weapon. The crowd is parting-
There's another burst of gunfire, and Swagart spins away from the window, blood and bone fountaining from his collar, a sudden sinewy blast that knocks him into me. I fire back, and I get the bastard who shot. I know it, because I see the Kalashnikov tumble from his hands as his head snaps back and brain matter sprays onto a woman behind him-
But there's too many of them firing now, all at me. They're closing and shooting. I drop one.
Another.
Third. Fourth. Fifth.
The carbine is clicking empty, and I grab Swagart's Commando.
Sixth.
A round skips from the trunk, shrapnel hits above my left eye, and my vision begins to fade.
I keep firing. Seventh. Eighth.
----------------------------------------------
They say that you never see the one that gets you.
They lied.
----------------------------------------------
I'm back between the seats, and my vision is tunneling again. The leather is slicked in blood- mine and Swagart's, and I can feel my heart pumping me dry, a draining well in my chest. The Great Murphy calls a gaping chest wound “nature's way of telling you to slow down”. I was going fast, wasn't I? I can't feel anything anymore.
Sound is fuzzy, but I can hear a thumping pulse, and there's someone yelling. Vision is dimming. All I can taste is copper and iron. Gunpowder and gasoline mix in my nostrils. There's a heat now. The fire must have started in the gas. It's about time.
It's black again.