—unknown grunt
—
“Aaaaah!” Constans screamed, pressing down on the rickety crossbow’s trigger.
For once, the scavenged bolt flew true…right into their savior’s chest.
George stood frozen, Constans stood frozen, their savior was frozen…and then his little sister’s empty crossbow clattered to the floor with a painful crunch.
He’d seen the bolt dig into the man’s —or was it a woman?— chest with a thump, yet they seemed more confused than anything. The soldier, and he did faintly look like a soldier, looked down at the bolt sticking out of his chest.
Out of the corner of his eye, George spotted more soldiers in the stairwell, and he could hear a hell of a lot more down in the street using their strange magic —the use of which in the city’s manaless enviroment had yet to register with him—. Yet his eyes were more focused on the first soldier and he lifted his chest armor, and it was some kind of armor indeed, of cloth or canvas, and the bolt stayed on it.
He let out a sigh of relief, thankful that the bolt hadn’t pulled, for that would’ve meant the flint tip had penetrated into the poor person’s chest. The soldier pulled the entire bolt out, fragments of what had once been its tip falling on the musty wooden floor.
Then the cries of his sister registered, and he rushed to her side. She had curled up into a ball, shaking. He tried to calm her down but felt lost for words as he looked at the confused soldiers.
“Uhm…does anybody have some sweets?” The soldier asked in a foreign language, looking back into the stairwell.
“I’ve got a brownie, but why do you need—”
“Shut up and give him the brownie, private!” Another, more authoritative voice, shouted, and the cries of his sister were growing louder…and he was too shocked to say anything about it as he looked at her reddened face and shut eyes.
“Wha—” He jumped up, feeling something poke him in the shoulder.
The first soldier took a small step back, but had already approached within whisper distance. He raised a strange…package? It glistered in the sunlight coming from the nearest window, some kind of wrapping giving it a gloss.
They slowly unwrapped the little bar-shaped object from its packaging, miming as if they were eating it then rubbing their stomach. Then the soldier slowly handed over the object, pointing at his sister.
Confused and more than a little eager to follow the powerful soldier-wizard-person’s directives, he took the strange bar and realized it was soft and a bit sticky, but smelled somehow sweet, like…
“Honey?” He mumbled, looking up at the soldier, who did the stomach gesture again while pointing at the girl, looking obviously distressed at her non-stop crying.
“I swear to stars, Ramirez, if you’re eating the brownie in front of a crying kid not even surgery will be able to fix what I’ll do to you!” The authoritative voice said again, and the soldier visibly flinched, before his gestures grew more frantic.
Very much not eager to find out why the mysterious soldier was angry, George urged the melting honey bar into his sister’s mouth. Her lips were quickly coated with the melting substance, and her eyes widened.
He flinches himself as his crying sister turned into a ravenous beast, swallowing the bar whole and biting the tip of his finger. She slowly climbed back up to a sitting position chewing on the sweet with confused delight.
“Thaaaak uuuuu…”
—
“Well, does anybody else have sweets?” The sergeant asked as she looked over the two confused kids —and they were kids indeed— sitting on the musty wooden floor.
Nick mumbled, pulling a pair of cereal bars from a pocket on the side of his plate carrier, right next to a grenade pouch. “I’ve got two breakfast bars from the cafeteria.” He said, handing them over to Ramirez.
The corporal carefully took hold of the crumbly bars and gave each to the kids, who eagerly took them and opened the plastic packaging with naked hunger in their eyes.
His radio headset crackled with noise, and Greene’s voice came on the speakers as the gunfire below intensified.
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The sergeant packed had heard the same words, because her face hardened. “Alright, people, Zack’s getting rowdy down there. Ramirez, you’re on babysitter duty. Pick up the little girl, I’ll grab the boy, we’re getting them out of here.”
As the corporal picked up the protesting girl, the sergeant turned to Nick. “What’s the play, el-tee?” She asked, grabbing the confused boy by the arm that wasn’t holding a crossbow.
“We’re getting these kids to safety. Get them to your Lynx, you’re now VIP transport.” He ordered, the squad filling back down the stairs as quick as the kids could be ushered down.
“2-6, this is 2-5, we’ve got two kids and no guardians.”
Nick sighed as they moved down. “Warm up the vics and get Overlord on the line, we’re RTB ASAP, understood?!”
The troopers-turned-bodyguards rushed out of the building, sergeant and corporal covering the children's ears as they rushed to a lynx. Outside, troopers and .50 cals where letting loose on either side of the road as zombies crawled out of doors, windows, broken walls and sewers.
“Pack it up!” Greene shouted to the entire platoon as he spotted them.
There were no more words exchanged as the entire platoon climbed back inside their vehicles. Within less than ten seconds they were packed up and rolling. The last thing Nick saw before the rear ramp of his vehicle sealed up was a few hundred zombies streaming in from side streets.
THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP
The driver let out a string of expletives as the convoy ran over the opposition, .50 cals letting loose into the crowd forward trying to clear a path. Nick took a seat as the grunts around him reloaded their rifles with fresh magazines and exchanged the empty ones for full from the storage bins under their seats.
Cav scouts did not bring a lot of heavy weapons to the fight, but each scout had little over five hundred rounds of ammunition to themselves…and that wasn’t even counting the squad automatics.
“Overlord, this is Hitman-2-5, we’ve got VIPs and are RTB. Status on the route?”
“You’re damned right we will.” Nick replied. “Understood, Overlord. Hitman-2-5, out.”
THUMP
Another zombie splashed against the bumper, and the driver cursed again.
…
They passed through the western gate little less than fifteen minutes later, the four Lynxes escorted by a platoon of Crocodile infantry combat vehicles.
There were a lot of jokes flying around about combat engineers, most about what they did with their trench shovels at night, but there was nothing anybody could say about their work ethic. Within less than an hour the rusted remains of the western gate had been turned into a fortified checkpoint, which formed a salient on the road surrounding the gate and splitting recently-named Main Street in half.
A platoon of personnel carriers coated in blood and gore formed up the checkpoint’s heavy armament with their heavy stubbers, while everything except a narrow band of space north and south was being covered by sandbags full of dirt and concertina wire.
The gate itself had been moved out of the way along with its demolished frame, likely taken to Reclamation to be turned back into molten iron, then steel and then a fresh armored gate to be reinstalled. Engineers —both combat and procurement— had a reputation for stripping down old stuff and recycling it into something meaner.
They passed through the Perimeter defenses, which looked much lighter than they were an hour ago, and parked in an impromptu parking zone replete with water tanks, fuel bladders and a crew of maintenance personnel who were currently in the process of putting a track back on the left side of a Crocodile covered in scratches.
“What happened over there?” Nick asked the maintenance sergeant who came forward to take charge of the vehicles.
“Zombies.” She replied. “Last I heard Odin is bogged down at the market—”
THUD
Nick flinched as a heavy mortar platoon a hundred meters away let loose.
“Lot’s of that right now, everything’s too close for the big guns to be of much help.” The sergeant pointed back at the 999s. “Anyhow, Odin is blowing its way through the market, but there are so many zombies that it’s causing problems for the vehicles.”
“The crew of this luckless bastard,” She gestured at the infantry fighting vehicle. “They tried to push through without a dozer blade, and got so much gore in their tracks that a recovery vehicle had to drag them back here for repairs.”
He shook his head at her words. “Well, at least they zombies don’t have buzzbombs, or we’d have to demolish the entire city. Thanks, sergeant, and take care of my babies.”
“Oh don’t you worry.” Her eyes glinted as she gazed at the bloodied Lynxes. “We’ll take good care of these bad boys. If you wait around long enough we might be able to fit dozer blades on them too; command just issued a directive for every unit not running with combat engineers to be able to blow through Zack anyway.”
After parking their vehicles, most of the platoon was sent off to decontamination, then food and rest. It was well into the morning now, and everybody was hankering for a serving of some actual breakfast instead of another serving of dasht; despite how well the cooks made it, it got old fast.
Most, because Nick, Sergeant Mink and Corporal Ramirez were quickly rushed through decontamination by a separate CBRN section, alongside the confused and scared kids. Mink and Garcia did their best to pacify the kids, and Nick managed to get the CRBN troopers to let the kids go by with a quick wash of their hands and a temperature check.
On the other end, they were greeted by half-a-dozen troopers who seemingly belonged to no unit at all…until one looked at the tiny markings on the side of their collar.
“Are these two responsible for the kids?” A sergeant asked him as his men handed the children candy bars and bottles of water with warm smiles.
Nick didn’t even try to ask the spook about his name, and the kids latched on to the candy bars before either Mink or Ramirez could do anything about it.
“Correct.” He nodded. “Are you taking them?”
“We’re just here to escort all of you inside.” The sergeant helpfully replied.
Left without choice, the three troopers and two mysterious kids were led inside the Victoria, the latter hoo’ing and ha’ing at every little thing. It made him realize just how backwards this strange world was; lamps and sliding doors were probably magic to them.
It was strange that they were both cooperative, but he spotted the apparently older brother holding his sister’s hand and whispering words in her ear. The kid had a look about him; while his sister was just happy to eat candy, he knew that they didn’t really have an option.
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