“What are we going to do now?” Blart whined. His piggy vocal cords helped in the endeavor, allowing him to reach irritating high pitches with his whining. It was the sort of thing I wasn’t equipped to tolerate, given my still-low blood alcohol content.

  “We’re going back to my house. I’m gonna call my boss, and I am going to turn myself in,” I stated firmly. Blart gave me a look like I was two meters of stupid in a one-piece jumpsuit.

  “Didn’t you hear what he said? They found the body. We can’t go back there!”

  “What, the body of the girl you killed? You made her a zombie, you piloted her and got me drunk and- And we slept together!” The thought had only just occurred to me, and I found myself disgusted.

  “What? No, you killed her. She was still alive when I was piloting her! She even thought-”

  “What the fuck!” I looked over at him, horror and revulsion on my face. “She could still think?”

  “Like I said, we can’t take over someone who’s dead. Generally speaking, the subject gets used to one of us inside them, and even grows to enjoy-” he started, but I backhanded him in the face. He squealed and recoiled.

  “What the hell is wrong with you? You can’t go around stealing people’s bodies and using them as meatsuits!”

  “It’s how my species evolved! We can’t survive without-” I swatted him in his piggy face again before he could finish.

  “Maybe your species shouldn’t survive! You’re downright evil!”

  “Stop that, you ape,” he whined. “I saved your life back there and I’m going to be saving you from a life of dull, boring tedium! You could at least be a little bit grateful.”

  For a moment I stared at him, stunned at the audacity of the little porker, but then my wheels buzzed as I veered over the median. I jerked the truck back onto the road.

  “You also made me kill some poor college girl after you stole her body!” I fumed at him, once we were back on track.

  “Oh come on, you’re already a barbarian, what’s one more body?”

  “That’s different!”

  “How?”

  “Every person I killed was a member of, or related to a group breaking the Development Laws! She was some random innocent!”

  “Oh, so everyone in every village you called orbital strikes on was guilty?”

  “For all I know, yes!” I shouted at him. “Besides, I am not taking moral lectures from a literal pig!” Right then I was beginning to feel like stabbing him to death and he must have been able to detect that, because he shut up. Something about his words was eating at me though, and I grumbled darkly under my breath. “Hold the friggin’ steering wheel,” I told him, and turned around to pop open my cooler. Only two beers greeted me when I fished around inside, and this didn’t do anything for my mood. Still, when I cracked the top one and took that first sip, it started to work on me instantly.

  When we drew closer to my house, I saw that there was a cop car posted outside, and a van parked in the back. There was a nice, wide line of yellow crime scene tape strung up in a perimeter around the site, and my front door hung halfway open, one of its hinges torn clean off. I grunted in dissatisfaction. It was bad enough that the cops were technically part of the same armed forces that I was, but having them operate like it on my property was a step too far in my book. I rolled past slowly, making sure that there wasn’t an officer sitting in the patrol car and parked across the street.

  “You’re not gonna gonna leave me in-” I didn’t let Blart finish, slamming the car door. I tore the tape apart and stomped up to my door. Once inside, I was more than a little irritated at what I found.

  My house had never been a clean place. Empty beer cans were always here and there, some dishes in the sink, and a few stains, but altogether the place wasn’t completely filthy. Now, though, it was a wreck. When the cops came through, they’d torn everything up. No piece of furniture was left unsmashed.Tthey’d broken open my flatscreen, and even pulled up my rugs and cut them apart. That seemed petty.

  I went into my bedroom and picked through the clothes that they’d thrown on the ground, grabbing a pair of jeans, a nice shirt, and my black leather jacket. I’d barely gotten finished lacing up my boots when that damn pig started honking the horn on my truck.

  “What the hell is wrong with that friggin’ buttsquid,” I growled, standing up and starting for my bedroom door. After two steps forward, my gut screamed at me that danger was close, and I paused and instinctively brought my hands up.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  Typically, it was a good precaution, and it would serve me well if someone tried to hit me in the face. That being said, when the policeman hooked around the corner, he jammed his nightstick into my gut. The strike was tuned for a one-legged thirty year old with a beer belly, not a man in the absolute prime of his life, though, so all it did was kick me into fight-or-flight. Adrenaline dumped into my system as he hit me, and it seemed as if everything slowed down.

  Instincts honed from nearly a decade of combat across four theaters kicked in, and I snapped my hand down to grab his wrist. For a brief moment I saw his eyes widen inside his helmet before I yanked him towards me and swept his feet out from under him. The next guy in line activated his weapon, and the stun rod in his hand crackled menacingly as he moved to jab me with it. Unfortunately for him, my leather jacket ate the prongs of the little weapon with no problem at all, and I felt only a light jab when he stuck me in the side. I grabbed the side of his helmet and slammed his head through the drywall.

  The last guy in the stack had his gun at low ready and looked like he wanted to shoot me. Preferring myself unshot, I yanked the stunned man out of my drywall and heaved him onto his partner. The both of them went down in a tangle of limbs while I moved back into my bedroom. The cop I’d swept onto the ground was pushing himself up, so I delivered a swift kick to the face with the tip of my steeltoe. That seemed to sort him out pretty well for a second while I went over to the wall behind my now-destroyed bed.

  Over the years as a drop marine, a man got a lot of chances to pick up souvenirs from all over the world. Technically, we weren’t supposed to take anything home with us. For a couple of decades there, the USAS was all about secretly using targeted virus bombs. That ended when one of them backfired and San Francisco had to be quarantined, then firebombed. After a few million people caught a modified hemorrhagic fever or were burnt to death, they’d decided to go back to good ol’ boots on the ground, which, was when they’d ramped recruitment for the Drop Marines back up. San Fran during the fires was my second drop, first after the practice run, though it would never show up on any record. After the people’d realized that they were cut off, things became a madhouse, and the fires and virus probably only ended up doing half the killing in the whole zone.

  Anyway, the eggheads said that there could still be pockets of all sorts of viruses running around, which seemed like nonsense to me. They didn’t ask me my opinions on the matter, instead being certain to have us collect and turn in any enemy equipment we happened upon for decontamination. Drop Marines got some privileges, though, and every time I took a little souvenir I took some pains to hide it after giving it my own version of a decontamination.

  Which was why, when I got over to my headboard I jammed my fist through the drywall and pulled out a kukri I’d taken off a body from my second deployment. The thing was absurdly sharp, and I’d never figured out what it was made of. The USAS was constantly trying to hunt down whoever was supplying these rebel flare-ups with items like it, or AP rounds that cut through armor like butter, but they hadn’t had any luck whatsoever. Me taking one home wouldn’t hurt anyone.

  Well, it hadn’t hurt anyone until today.

  I returned to my hallway a second after I’d left it, and saw that the two policemen were still getting up. It was an unfortunate situation for them to be in, and I leaned down, swinging my kukri once. It passed straight through the man with the gun’s shoulder with a meaty chunk and a gout of blood, not slowing down until it buried itself in the chest of the man below him.

  “Oops,” I muttered as I yanked the blade out. I’d kind of forgotten how sharp the damn thing was. I reached down and pulled the gun out of the newly dead cop’s holster and straightened up.

  When I got into my living room and looked out the door, I saw that there were two cops wrestling Blart out of my truck. He’d latched his teeth onto my steering wheel, and one cop was attached to each leg with a third standing by and watching. Blart was making the most awful squealing and shrieking noises, and the cops weren’t having a great time of it. I stopped to watch and weigh my options, finding that letting them have the irritating little critter was seeming pretty appealing.

  As luck would have it the third cop, a lieutenant by the bar on his shoulder, shook his head in disgust and turned around before I could make up my mind. Maybe he’d intended to come into the house and see what was taking his goons so long, or maybe he was sick of watching the clusterfuck going on before him. Which of the two didn’t matter to me though, seeing as he’d probably take rather severe umbrage to my having killed or maimed three of his boys. My stolen pistol snapped up, and I pulled the trigger as soon as he inhabited my sight picture.

  The pistol went ‘click’ instead of ‘boom,’ and it was right about then that I realized I’d fucked up. I probably should have expected it. Guns which were assigned to us were locked with an RFID chip which matches up to an implanted one, or in the case of these coppers, in their glove. Don’t have the proper RFID signal? Bangstick no worky.

  My opponent’s gun probably wouldn’t have the same issue, but I still had the drop on him, so I chucked my gun as he drew his own, and sprinted after it. My stolen gun made a pretty nice ‘crack’ noise as the butt connected with his helmet, and he reared back, his sidearm going wide as he let off a shot. He didn’t get a second one before I reached him and cleaved downwards. The blade of the kukri practically sang as it split the air, and my target’s shriek of pain followed its whistle. His hand fell off as dark, arterial blood began to pump from his newly acquired stump, and he fell back a step.

  His two minions noticed the commotion about then, and as one they decided that maybe Blart wasn’t such a big deal after all. Tragically for them, I had my kukri in hand, and the both of them didn’t even have their limp dicks to work with. I relieved the one on the right of his head with a quick swipe, while the other guy fumbled to get his knife out. I brought the kukri back around at about the same time he stuck me in the side. Getting stabbed sucks, so I returned the favor with a sideways chop that passed through the arm he’d put up to defend himself, then his ribs, and then his spine. It was about that time that his legs went out from under him, and he took my kukri with him.

  Grunting and cursing, I leaned over and yanked the blade out of him with a sound like a hatchet being pulled out of a melon and straightened up, feeling a little bit dizzy as I did so. The butterbar on the ground kept screaming and clutching at his bleeding stump, so I gave him a kick in the face to shut him up.

  “You’ve been stabbed, ape,” Blart said. “Can’t you do anything right?” He looked like he wanted to continue, but then I glanced meaningfully between him and the blood-covered kukri in my right hand. He decided it would be best to shut up. I looked down at the knife blade sticking out of my hip and frowned. My jeans were getting absolutely soaked in blood.

  “I’ll be right back,” I finally decided, turning and running back into the house. A few choice items made their way into my possession, and then I booked it back out to my car. I heard sirens blaring in the distance while I crossed my yard for the last time.