Cherry Blossom: Revisited Chapter 4 - (04/05/2009)
I know! I'm as stunned as you are! An actual update!
Maybe it's the muse's birthday present to me?
Title: Cherry Blossom: Revisited (chapter 4/?)
Author: That'd be me. *grins* Andrew, Obsidian, call me what you want. But only if it's nice. ;)
Rating: R. And not for the usual reason, either. ;)
Comments: Most of you already know why I haven't updated in ages, so let's just move on, shall we?
Legal Disclaimer: I do not own 'D.E.B.S.', Angela Robinson does. Though if I had my way, there would have been a sequel or two by now. ;)
"Stop that."
The two words were simply spoken, in a calm, level tone. Even so, Scud, who had been drumming his fingers on the armrest of his chair, froze. He deliberately laid his hand flat on it before turning to the speaker. "Sorry. I'm just..."
"I know, Scud," Lucy assured him. "I'm worried about her, too." Worried enough to break out one of her newest toys, a V-22 Osprey she'd "acquired" from the United States Marine Corps and equipped with a still mostly experimental stealth technology.
It wasn't the fastest mode of transportation that she had - that particular honor went to the SR-71 Blackbird that she'd won in a poker game - but it had been the best choice, given the available limitations. All of her other available choices either took too long to get ready, needed runway space that wouldn't be available on the island, didn't have enough passenger space for Diane to fit onboard (which would have rather defeated the purpose of going at all), or weren't fast enough.
There hadn't been much in the way of conversation on the flight to the island. Her comment to Scud had been the first thing either of them had said in hours. All things considered, that was hardly surprising.
It had only been a few months since Diane had joined Lucy's organization, but in that time she'd really become part of the group. Lucy didn't let people in all that easily after what had happened to her family, so that was no small feat. Diane had just fit in so perfectly, almost becoming the sister that Lucy had never had. Diane and Scud, though...
Shortly after Diane had left for her current mission, Lucy had decided that if one of them didn't make some kind of move soon, she might just have to lock them in a room and have done with it. Of course, whatever it was that was happening on the island might just take care of that for her. If they didn't get together after this... Well, they just wouldn't get together, period.
Given that they were flying headlong into a dangerous situation that had rattled the unflappable Diane, that thought ended up being a lot more ominous in her head then she'd intended.
Shaking it off as best she could, she refocused on the situation at hand. They were about ten minutes out from the island, now. The jamming field was still in place, though the fluctuations had become more severe. That likely indicated something was wrong with the power source, though the fact that no one had fixed the problem was puzzling. Diane hadn't exactly sounded like she'd had Black Dragon on the ropes when they'd talked, so if something was wrong, it was unlikely she'd had anything to do with it.
Which wasn't good. Getting her out of there alive and in one piece was going to be hard enough without adding in any unpredictable variables. And while chaos of any kind might just make it a little easier to sneak in and out before anyone knew they were there, it would also make it harder for Diane to stay alive until they could get there. And she didn't want to think about the alternative.
That was hard, though. Ever since they'd taken off, the pilot had been trying to raise Diane on the radio. Yet, even when the jamming field was at its weakest, they hadn't gotten any kind of response. Frankly, given the sheer volume of radio signals they'd been sending at the island, she couldn't help but feel that someone should have heard something. But there hadn't been any replies.
At all.
From anyone.
She'd known other 'supervillains' in the past - either working with them or against them - and she knew that even without any interference from the good guys, accidents or sabotage could happen. People died. But when the entire base went silent, something was very, very wrong.
She leaned toward the pilot's station. "Has there been any activity to or from the island, that we've been able to see?" she asked, having to raise her voice a bit to be heard.
"No, ma'am," he replied. "Of course, we have been in radar range for only about twenty minutes, but we haven't picked up on anything."
If there was trouble of the kind she was imagining on the island... he should have. Black Dragon wasn't stupid. If he was, she would have been able to take care of him years ago. If everything was going to hell, he would not want to stick around and watch from anything less then a safe distance. Unless he has stealth technology, too... She swiftly dismissed the thought. The kind of technology she was using was experimental, after all. Not to mention, the Osprey came with sensors that let it see right through anyone using the same kind of tricks. Which meant that anyone in the military or government who had the same thing would be able to pick her up, of course, which was another reason she hadn't used the Osprey for anything before this.
So either he'd escaped long before the situation had become critical... or he hadn't escaped at all.
She didn't know which of those would be worse for Diane. "Are you sure you're going to have enough fuel to wait around long enough for us to pick up Diane, and make it all the way home?"
"You're just asking about that now?!" Scud cut in, eyes wide.
She hid a smile. Actually, no, she wasn't just asking about it now. She'd checked and double-checked before they'd ever lifted off that they'd be able to make it home, she just needed to make sure that there hadn't been any unforeseen problems that would have changed things. But maybe she'd wait until later to mention that to Scud. His reaction was priceless, and she had the sneaking suspicion that humor would be in short supply for a while.
"Don't worry, ma'am, there's a small, uninhabited atoll a few miles to the east where we can set down. It'll take a couple of minutes after you call for us to get to you, when you're ready to go."
"Why are you landing anywhere else at all?" Scud demanded. "We're just going there to pick up Diane and leave... right?"
"Of course we are." Lucy had no intention of trying to launch any kind of attack against Black Dragon until she'd thoroughly debriefed Diane on what was going on, and that wouldn't even begin until they were at least several minutes away from the island. "But it's been five hours, and she'd not answering out transmissions anymore. Obviously, she had to leave wherever she'd found that radio she called us on, so chances are that she had to keep moving. She may not have been able to make it to the rendezvous point, in which case we'll have to go looking for her, and I don't want out ride home compromised." Black Dragon had almost caught her once that way, after all, and Lucy Diamond was not the sort of woman who made the same mistake twice.
Scud didn't look happy, but he nodded, seeing the sense of it. That didn't seem to be the case when the pilot informed them that they were three minutes away from the drop zone. ""Drop'? What do you mean, 'drop'? Why aren't we landing?"
"This way saves time and fuel," Lucy told him. As expected, though he still didn't look happy, he didn't argue, wanting to get to Diane as fast as possible.
Of course, Lucy didn't mention the other reason she wanted to do it this way. Even during the best of times, Scud wouldn't have really appreciated it.
Even if it wasn't from all that high up, jumping from a plane was just more fun.
"Ma'am!" The shout from the pilot caught her in the act of rising to go strap herself into her chute, and she turned to see what had caught his attention.
"Well..." She shook her head as she laid eyes on the rising pillar of thick black smoke rising from one corner of the island. At a loss for anything else to say, she continued, "...that can't be good."
All any of them could do was hope that Diane hadn't been anywhere near whatever was producing all that smoke.
**********************************************
Her ears still ringing from the deafening blast, Amy stumbled through the bush. Her head felt a bit hazy, leading her to wonder if she hadn't been momentarily knocked out. She didn't think she had a concussion, though, which was definitely a good thing.
After the mission in Wyoming - frankly, she was lucky she hadn't fractured her skull - she did not want to go through that again anytime soon.
Unfortunately, the sound of the explosion had attracted whatever zombies - oh, that still felt weird to think - that hadn't already been after them, and in their dazed and confused state, they'd gotten separated as they ran for their lives.
Bobby was with her, but she wasn't sure which way everyone else had gone, and she must have smacked her comm harder into the ground then she'd thought, because she couldn't get it to work. Bobby's had vanished as well, and a tiny streak of blood coming from his ear indicated that the disappearance hadn't been all that gentle.
"Where the hell are we going?" she demanded as they raced through the jungle, trying to ignore the omnidirectional sound of hungry moaning.
"If we can find Black Dragon's compound, we might be able to find a way off this island," he replied, only glancing at her occasionally to make sure she was still with him. "Or a radio, or more ammo... something!"
"At this point, I'd take anything." She didn't enjoy being reminded that they were now limited to whatever ammunition they'd been carrying during the search. Sure, that meant they each had several spare clips, but... Against an entire island of those things?
Where was a minigun when you actually needed one?
"I just hope the others are thinking the same thing," she said, trying to pretend that it wasn't getting harder to breathe as they ran along at top speed... and just kept running. "That Diane person should know where it is. Hopefully, she can get them there safely." Assuming she hadn't made use of the distraction to slip away from the government agents. It was obvious that she wasn't exactly on the right side of the law, even though they might have had the same goal at the moment. "It'd be nice if they could be there waiting for us."
"Yeah, but we can't count on that."
She shot him a dark look even as she ducked under a low-hanging branch. "I'm not 'counting on it'. But forgive me for not wanting to think about my friends being murdered and eaten."
"What, you think I do? But we have to be prepared for that!"
"Being prepared for it and thinking of nothing but that are two different things!"
"I'm not-"
"Shh!" Alerted by the abrupt change of her tone, he looked back to see her slowing down as she raised her gun, peering suspiciously off into the jungle. "I think I see something," she said softly.
He jogged back a few steps to join her. "More of them?"
She shook her head. "No. Looks like another cave opening."
"Right, because the last one was so much fun."
She cocked her head at him a bit, one corner of her mouth pulling up. "The last one didn't have an armed guard."
That seemed to catch his interest. "Sounds worth a look. How do you wanna play this?"
She considered that for a moment. "I need your backup weapon. I'll go out there, pretend to surrender, and try to get him to talk. If that doesn't work, or I can't restrain him after I question him, I'll give you a clear shot."
"Sounds like a plan," he agreed. "Why my backup, though," he asked as he fished it out from his leg holster.
"In case something goes wrong, and I'm still in the way."
Plan decided, Amy quickly headed toward the small clearing around the cave, while Bobby got into position as fast as he could without sacrificing any stealth. Both were far too aware of the hordes that could be bearing down on them even at that moment.
"Hello?" Amy called to the guard, who had to be sweltering in his dark green pants and camo T-shirt. The guard turned to face her slowly, and given everything they'd both gone through up to that point, they could understand his wariness. "Look, I don't want a fight," Amy told him, holding onto her gun's barrel as she extended it out away from her, then lowered it to the ground. Keeping her hands raised where he could see them, she continued forward at a steady pace, making no sudden moves. "There's no way in hell I'm staying out there with all of those... those things wandering around!"
The guard didn't reply, though it did begin heading her way. Bobby began getting a bad feeling about the whole thing.
"I think that..." Amy trailed off, freezing in place for two long seconds as she studied the guard closely. Then she suddenly reached behind her, grabbed Bobby's backup 9 mm from where she'd tucked it into the waistband of her pants against her spine and pulled her shirt over it, and proceeded to whip it out and fire off one shot that caught the guard right between the eyes.
Shit! He'd been afraid of that. It was surprising that the zombified guard had actually stayed at what was presumably his post while all the other activity on the island had been going on, but weird things happened. Unfortunately, that gunshot was bound to draw more attention down on them, so he abandoned his cover to dash forward, scooping up Amy's abandoned gun as he ran.
She turned to face him, even as moans started up again from what sounded like a few yards away in every direction. No sooner had he tossed her gun to her - earning him something of a dirty look for being so careless with live firearms - then a veritable army of the things began shuffling out of the foliage. "Into the cave!" Amy called, gunning down a few of them before fitting action to words.
They might be able to hold them off for a while that way, he knew. At the very least, it would make it a bit harder for the horde to get at them, and would make picking them off easier. The problem was, he was fairly certain there were more of them then they had bullets. And the closer they got, the more the time that lining up shots and reloading would cost them. They had to try something else.
Luckily, the cave opening itself did give them a few options. There was a gate that could be drawn across it - likely what had prompted Amy's decision to fall back into it in the first place - but there was no way it could be sturdy enough to take their determined battering for long.
Only one thing for it, then.
He ran for the cave opening, and pulled the gate shut... while he was still outside it. Ignoring Amy's shout of "What are you doing?!" he broke off the key in the lock, then dashed forward. "Get farther back in the cave, see if there's a way out!" he shouted at her, not bothering at all to keep his voice down anymore. "I'll draw their attention! And for the love of God, keep quiet!"
A moving target would be harder for them to get a hold of then a stationary one, so he charged toward a thin spot in their lines, shouting at the top of his lungs and blowing the heads off of two of them. Amy, either accepting his decision or going into shock, said nothing. A quick look back at the cave showed she wasn't at the entrance, though he did catch sight of a shadow on the wall near where it curved to the left that indicated she hadn't gone far.
Well, hopefully that would do. He couldn't spare any further attention to worry about her.
There were just so damned many of the things! Before he could even escape into the jungle - if that would have actually provided any shelter - he was surrounded, and no matter how many of them he put down, two more always showed up to take their places.
Then came the sound he'd been dreading hearing: the quiet click, click of an empty weapon.
They dragged him down before he even had a chance to reload.
**********************************************
To Lucy's annoyance, whether it was the warm air from the burning helicopter - it looked like it might have been one of those big cargo jobs, which told her nothing about who it belonged to or what had happened to it - or just a tropical air current, she and Scud had been carried away from each other, without enough time to correct their descent before they hit the treetops.
She detached herself from her harness, dropping a few feet to the jungle floor. "Scud, you still with me?"
"Copy that, Boss," he replied. The comms, thankfully, had survived intact. The faint crackling static in the background, though, indicated that Black Dragon's jamming field was still in place, and that Scud's hastily set up attempts at countermeasures wouldn't be as effective as they'd hoped.
Well, as long as they could hear each other, she'd take it. "I think I'm about a mile away from you."
A faint, rueful chuckle. "We did drift a bit, didn't we?"
She snorted. "Yeah, one might say. I saw a little clearing with what looked like a cave opening as I was coming down. It's not that far from me, so I'm going to go check it out. You head for the rendezvous point. Yell if you spot anything - and I mean anything."
"Copy that." A pause. "Good luck, Luce."
"To us all," she replied, then closed the channel.
She had a feeling they'd be needing it.
That feeling was reinforced when she nearly tripped over a few bodies laying along the path she'd been taking. They looked like natives, and judging by how decomposed they seemed, they must have been there for a while. It struck her as being senseless and tragic, but there was nothing she could do for them, and she still had to find Diane. She gave the corpses a last, apologetic look as she walked around them and continued on her way.
A few minutes later, she came upon two more. This time, she noticed that both had been dispatched by gunshots to the head, and that at least one had obvious evidence of having been... bitten, by something.
Really not liking the possibilities that suggested, she again hurried by them.
She did, however, take a moment to make sure the safety on her gun was off.
She was being silly, she told herself. Not about keeping her gun ready - on Black Dragon's turf that was only common sense - but about the ideas trying to creep into her head. If there was one thing she was certain of, it was that there was no such thing as-
The thought was cut off as a zombie lurched out of the bushes at her.
She wasted three shots into its chest. For a moment, she thought that would put it down - it certainly was enough to make it stagger back and gurgle, blood flowing freely from the bullet-inflicted wounds - but it recovered and started for her again, moaning in hunger, seemingly unaware of the fact that all logic demanded it be laying on the ground, dead.
Fuck it. She shot it in the head.
She almost moaned herself when it did, indeed, fall to the ground, lifeless.
"Oh, now come on!" That probably should have been quieter then it had been, but she couldn't help it.
Zombies? Seriously? Zombies? She wanted to believe this was some kind of joke, but... Well, the evidence was right there in front of her eyes. And - her face screwed up in disgust as the breeze picked up for a second - her nose.
It would also go a long way to explaining why Diane had sounded so panicked when she'd called them. Fucking zombies would rattle anyone's composure. Flicking on her comm, she said, "Scud, you there?"
"Yeah. Was that you?"
She inhaled deeply, regretted it almost immediately, and set about putting some distance between her and the no-longer-walking-dead. "Yeah. I think I know what had Di so spooked." As quickly as she could, she outlined the encounter she'd just had for him.
There was a long pause, then, "Are you shitting me?"
She gave a humorless laugh. "Don't I wish. The guy wasn't actually dead before I put one in his brain, but if you ignore little things like his still breathing, he made one damn convincing zombie. And if those other bodies I found were the same thing..."
She could almost hear him shudder. "Yikes. Well, if we needed any more of a reason to find Di and get gone, I think we just got it."
"Definitely. I'm almost at the cave. You be careful."
"I'd tell you to do the same, but I do remember who I'm talking to."
"Cute." She closed the channel, allowing herself a small smile. It faded quickly enough when she got to the clearing.
There were more bodies, these evidently killed by a larger caliber weapon. The cave looked like it had been covered by a gate of some kind, which had been knocked inward. There wasn't any noise.
At all.
She frowned at that. She hadn't noticed it at first, but this was the quietest damned jungle she'd ever been in - and she'd been in quite a few. Even the normal jungle sounds were missing. Scared quiet by whatever those things were?
That wasn't a pleasant thought, given how many of them there'd have to be for that to be the case.
The destroyed gate indicated that a number of them had obviously been intent on getting into that cave. To her, that indicated that someone might just have been hiding in there.
Someone like Diane.
Taking a moment to wonder what the hell she'd been thinking wearing black to a tropical island - that much was easy to answer; she hadn't been thinking, she'd just wanted to get to Diane as quickly as was possible - she carefully trudged forward.
The cave was almost twenty degrees cooler, which was a profound relief. Keeping her gun at the ready, she moved forward. She was so intent on watching for any sign of those things that she almost didn't notice when the floor abruptly stopped in front of her.
She jerked to a halt just in time. It looked like a five-foot section of the ground had just given way, leaving a hole that dropped down about seven feet. She did have the rope to get down there, as well as means of anchoring it. And if Diane had come into this cave, then that was likely where she'd gone. And even if it wasn't, she had to make sure. And whatever was in these rocks was screwing up her infrared detector's sensors, so she had to investigate it the old fashioned way.
Securing her rope carefully, she slowly descended into the cave beneath the cave. The subcave? Oh, whatever. She hesitated for a long second before unclipping herself as she just stood there, listening.
Nothing.
I am so taking a vacation after we get home, she decided. She unhooked herself from the rope, took a chemical light out of her pack and activated it, then slowly moved forward. Interestingly, the tunnel dead ended right below the hole, indicating that the above cave floor was so weakened that it had collapsed as soon as someone had stepped onto it. That supported the theory that Di hadn't gone any further in the cave above.
She followed the claustrophobia-inducing tunnel for about half a minute, until she almost tripped over the bodies. A number of the things were laying in a heap at the opening to a wider cave. The greenish light from the plastic tube in her hand made their partially decomposed skin look even more disturbing. But why were they all draped atop one another like this, as if-
Understanding dawned even as the figure in the cave, slumped down against the far wall, raised a gun and fired right at her head.
I could apologize a thousand times for how neglected my poor stories have been, but I'm not sure that would be enough. So I'll just try to make it up to you by giving you quality updates. ^_^
Maybe it's the muse's birthday present to me?
Title: Cherry Blossom: Revisited (chapter 4/?)
Author: That'd be me. *grins* Andrew, Obsidian, call me what you want. But only if it's nice. ;)
Rating: R. And not for the usual reason, either. ;)
Comments: Most of you already know why I haven't updated in ages, so let's just move on, shall we?
Legal Disclaimer: I do not own 'D.E.B.S.', Angela Robinson does. Though if I had my way, there would have been a sequel or two by now. ;)
"Stop that."
The two words were simply spoken, in a calm, level tone. Even so, Scud, who had been drumming his fingers on the armrest of his chair, froze. He deliberately laid his hand flat on it before turning to the speaker. "Sorry. I'm just..."
"I know, Scud," Lucy assured him. "I'm worried about her, too." Worried enough to break out one of her newest toys, a V-22 Osprey she'd "acquired" from the United States Marine Corps and equipped with a still mostly experimental stealth technology.
It wasn't the fastest mode of transportation that she had - that particular honor went to the SR-71 Blackbird that she'd won in a poker game - but it had been the best choice, given the available limitations. All of her other available choices either took too long to get ready, needed runway space that wouldn't be available on the island, didn't have enough passenger space for Diane to fit onboard (which would have rather defeated the purpose of going at all), or weren't fast enough.
There hadn't been much in the way of conversation on the flight to the island. Her comment to Scud had been the first thing either of them had said in hours. All things considered, that was hardly surprising.
It had only been a few months since Diane had joined Lucy's organization, but in that time she'd really become part of the group. Lucy didn't let people in all that easily after what had happened to her family, so that was no small feat. Diane had just fit in so perfectly, almost becoming the sister that Lucy had never had. Diane and Scud, though...
Shortly after Diane had left for her current mission, Lucy had decided that if one of them didn't make some kind of move soon, she might just have to lock them in a room and have done with it. Of course, whatever it was that was happening on the island might just take care of that for her. If they didn't get together after this... Well, they just wouldn't get together, period.
Given that they were flying headlong into a dangerous situation that had rattled the unflappable Diane, that thought ended up being a lot more ominous in her head then she'd intended.
Shaking it off as best she could, she refocused on the situation at hand. They were about ten minutes out from the island, now. The jamming field was still in place, though the fluctuations had become more severe. That likely indicated something was wrong with the power source, though the fact that no one had fixed the problem was puzzling. Diane hadn't exactly sounded like she'd had Black Dragon on the ropes when they'd talked, so if something was wrong, it was unlikely she'd had anything to do with it.
Which wasn't good. Getting her out of there alive and in one piece was going to be hard enough without adding in any unpredictable variables. And while chaos of any kind might just make it a little easier to sneak in and out before anyone knew they were there, it would also make it harder for Diane to stay alive until they could get there. And she didn't want to think about the alternative.
That was hard, though. Ever since they'd taken off, the pilot had been trying to raise Diane on the radio. Yet, even when the jamming field was at its weakest, they hadn't gotten any kind of response. Frankly, given the sheer volume of radio signals they'd been sending at the island, she couldn't help but feel that someone should have heard something. But there hadn't been any replies.
At all.
From anyone.
She'd known other 'supervillains' in the past - either working with them or against them - and she knew that even without any interference from the good guys, accidents or sabotage could happen. People died. But when the entire base went silent, something was very, very wrong.
She leaned toward the pilot's station. "Has there been any activity to or from the island, that we've been able to see?" she asked, having to raise her voice a bit to be heard.
"No, ma'am," he replied. "Of course, we have been in radar range for only about twenty minutes, but we haven't picked up on anything."
If there was trouble of the kind she was imagining on the island... he should have. Black Dragon wasn't stupid. If he was, she would have been able to take care of him years ago. If everything was going to hell, he would not want to stick around and watch from anything less then a safe distance. Unless he has stealth technology, too... She swiftly dismissed the thought. The kind of technology she was using was experimental, after all. Not to mention, the Osprey came with sensors that let it see right through anyone using the same kind of tricks. Which meant that anyone in the military or government who had the same thing would be able to pick her up, of course, which was another reason she hadn't used the Osprey for anything before this.
So either he'd escaped long before the situation had become critical... or he hadn't escaped at all.
She didn't know which of those would be worse for Diane. "Are you sure you're going to have enough fuel to wait around long enough for us to pick up Diane, and make it all the way home?"
"You're just asking about that now?!" Scud cut in, eyes wide.
She hid a smile. Actually, no, she wasn't just asking about it now. She'd checked and double-checked before they'd ever lifted off that they'd be able to make it home, she just needed to make sure that there hadn't been any unforeseen problems that would have changed things. But maybe she'd wait until later to mention that to Scud. His reaction was priceless, and she had the sneaking suspicion that humor would be in short supply for a while.
"Don't worry, ma'am, there's a small, uninhabited atoll a few miles to the east where we can set down. It'll take a couple of minutes after you call for us to get to you, when you're ready to go."
"Why are you landing anywhere else at all?" Scud demanded. "We're just going there to pick up Diane and leave... right?"
"Of course we are." Lucy had no intention of trying to launch any kind of attack against Black Dragon until she'd thoroughly debriefed Diane on what was going on, and that wouldn't even begin until they were at least several minutes away from the island. "But it's been five hours, and she'd not answering out transmissions anymore. Obviously, she had to leave wherever she'd found that radio she called us on, so chances are that she had to keep moving. She may not have been able to make it to the rendezvous point, in which case we'll have to go looking for her, and I don't want out ride home compromised." Black Dragon had almost caught her once that way, after all, and Lucy Diamond was not the sort of woman who made the same mistake twice.
Scud didn't look happy, but he nodded, seeing the sense of it. That didn't seem to be the case when the pilot informed them that they were three minutes away from the drop zone. ""Drop'? What do you mean, 'drop'? Why aren't we landing?"
"This way saves time and fuel," Lucy told him. As expected, though he still didn't look happy, he didn't argue, wanting to get to Diane as fast as possible.
Of course, Lucy didn't mention the other reason she wanted to do it this way. Even during the best of times, Scud wouldn't have really appreciated it.
Even if it wasn't from all that high up, jumping from a plane was just more fun.
"Ma'am!" The shout from the pilot caught her in the act of rising to go strap herself into her chute, and she turned to see what had caught his attention.
"Well..." She shook her head as she laid eyes on the rising pillar of thick black smoke rising from one corner of the island. At a loss for anything else to say, she continued, "...that can't be good."
All any of them could do was hope that Diane hadn't been anywhere near whatever was producing all that smoke.
**********************************************
Her ears still ringing from the deafening blast, Amy stumbled through the bush. Her head felt a bit hazy, leading her to wonder if she hadn't been momentarily knocked out. She didn't think she had a concussion, though, which was definitely a good thing.
After the mission in Wyoming - frankly, she was lucky she hadn't fractured her skull - she did not want to go through that again anytime soon.
Unfortunately, the sound of the explosion had attracted whatever zombies - oh, that still felt weird to think - that hadn't already been after them, and in their dazed and confused state, they'd gotten separated as they ran for their lives.
Bobby was with her, but she wasn't sure which way everyone else had gone, and she must have smacked her comm harder into the ground then she'd thought, because she couldn't get it to work. Bobby's had vanished as well, and a tiny streak of blood coming from his ear indicated that the disappearance hadn't been all that gentle.
"Where the hell are we going?" she demanded as they raced through the jungle, trying to ignore the omnidirectional sound of hungry moaning.
"If we can find Black Dragon's compound, we might be able to find a way off this island," he replied, only glancing at her occasionally to make sure she was still with him. "Or a radio, or more ammo... something!"
"At this point, I'd take anything." She didn't enjoy being reminded that they were now limited to whatever ammunition they'd been carrying during the search. Sure, that meant they each had several spare clips, but... Against an entire island of those things?
Where was a minigun when you actually needed one?
"I just hope the others are thinking the same thing," she said, trying to pretend that it wasn't getting harder to breathe as they ran along at top speed... and just kept running. "That Diane person should know where it is. Hopefully, she can get them there safely." Assuming she hadn't made use of the distraction to slip away from the government agents. It was obvious that she wasn't exactly on the right side of the law, even though they might have had the same goal at the moment. "It'd be nice if they could be there waiting for us."
"Yeah, but we can't count on that."
She shot him a dark look even as she ducked under a low-hanging branch. "I'm not 'counting on it'. But forgive me for not wanting to think about my friends being murdered and eaten."
"What, you think I do? But we have to be prepared for that!"
"Being prepared for it and thinking of nothing but that are two different things!"
"I'm not-"
"Shh!" Alerted by the abrupt change of her tone, he looked back to see her slowing down as she raised her gun, peering suspiciously off into the jungle. "I think I see something," she said softly.
He jogged back a few steps to join her. "More of them?"
She shook her head. "No. Looks like another cave opening."
"Right, because the last one was so much fun."
She cocked her head at him a bit, one corner of her mouth pulling up. "The last one didn't have an armed guard."
That seemed to catch his interest. "Sounds worth a look. How do you wanna play this?"
She considered that for a moment. "I need your backup weapon. I'll go out there, pretend to surrender, and try to get him to talk. If that doesn't work, or I can't restrain him after I question him, I'll give you a clear shot."
"Sounds like a plan," he agreed. "Why my backup, though," he asked as he fished it out from his leg holster.
"In case something goes wrong, and I'm still in the way."
Plan decided, Amy quickly headed toward the small clearing around the cave, while Bobby got into position as fast as he could without sacrificing any stealth. Both were far too aware of the hordes that could be bearing down on them even at that moment.
"Hello?" Amy called to the guard, who had to be sweltering in his dark green pants and camo T-shirt. The guard turned to face her slowly, and given everything they'd both gone through up to that point, they could understand his wariness. "Look, I don't want a fight," Amy told him, holding onto her gun's barrel as she extended it out away from her, then lowered it to the ground. Keeping her hands raised where he could see them, she continued forward at a steady pace, making no sudden moves. "There's no way in hell I'm staying out there with all of those... those things wandering around!"
The guard didn't reply, though it did begin heading her way. Bobby began getting a bad feeling about the whole thing.
"I think that..." Amy trailed off, freezing in place for two long seconds as she studied the guard closely. Then she suddenly reached behind her, grabbed Bobby's backup 9 mm from where she'd tucked it into the waistband of her pants against her spine and pulled her shirt over it, and proceeded to whip it out and fire off one shot that caught the guard right between the eyes.
Shit! He'd been afraid of that. It was surprising that the zombified guard had actually stayed at what was presumably his post while all the other activity on the island had been going on, but weird things happened. Unfortunately, that gunshot was bound to draw more attention down on them, so he abandoned his cover to dash forward, scooping up Amy's abandoned gun as he ran.
She turned to face him, even as moans started up again from what sounded like a few yards away in every direction. No sooner had he tossed her gun to her - earning him something of a dirty look for being so careless with live firearms - then a veritable army of the things began shuffling out of the foliage. "Into the cave!" Amy called, gunning down a few of them before fitting action to words.
They might be able to hold them off for a while that way, he knew. At the very least, it would make it a bit harder for the horde to get at them, and would make picking them off easier. The problem was, he was fairly certain there were more of them then they had bullets. And the closer they got, the more the time that lining up shots and reloading would cost them. They had to try something else.
Luckily, the cave opening itself did give them a few options. There was a gate that could be drawn across it - likely what had prompted Amy's decision to fall back into it in the first place - but there was no way it could be sturdy enough to take their determined battering for long.
Only one thing for it, then.
He ran for the cave opening, and pulled the gate shut... while he was still outside it. Ignoring Amy's shout of "What are you doing?!" he broke off the key in the lock, then dashed forward. "Get farther back in the cave, see if there's a way out!" he shouted at her, not bothering at all to keep his voice down anymore. "I'll draw their attention! And for the love of God, keep quiet!"
A moving target would be harder for them to get a hold of then a stationary one, so he charged toward a thin spot in their lines, shouting at the top of his lungs and blowing the heads off of two of them. Amy, either accepting his decision or going into shock, said nothing. A quick look back at the cave showed she wasn't at the entrance, though he did catch sight of a shadow on the wall near where it curved to the left that indicated she hadn't gone far.
Well, hopefully that would do. He couldn't spare any further attention to worry about her.
There were just so damned many of the things! Before he could even escape into the jungle - if that would have actually provided any shelter - he was surrounded, and no matter how many of them he put down, two more always showed up to take their places.
Then came the sound he'd been dreading hearing: the quiet click, click of an empty weapon.
They dragged him down before he even had a chance to reload.
**********************************************
To Lucy's annoyance, whether it was the warm air from the burning helicopter - it looked like it might have been one of those big cargo jobs, which told her nothing about who it belonged to or what had happened to it - or just a tropical air current, she and Scud had been carried away from each other, without enough time to correct their descent before they hit the treetops.
She detached herself from her harness, dropping a few feet to the jungle floor. "Scud, you still with me?"
"Copy that, Boss," he replied. The comms, thankfully, had survived intact. The faint crackling static in the background, though, indicated that Black Dragon's jamming field was still in place, and that Scud's hastily set up attempts at countermeasures wouldn't be as effective as they'd hoped.
Well, as long as they could hear each other, she'd take it. "I think I'm about a mile away from you."
A faint, rueful chuckle. "We did drift a bit, didn't we?"
She snorted. "Yeah, one might say. I saw a little clearing with what looked like a cave opening as I was coming down. It's not that far from me, so I'm going to go check it out. You head for the rendezvous point. Yell if you spot anything - and I mean anything."
"Copy that." A pause. "Good luck, Luce."
"To us all," she replied, then closed the channel.
She had a feeling they'd be needing it.
That feeling was reinforced when she nearly tripped over a few bodies laying along the path she'd been taking. They looked like natives, and judging by how decomposed they seemed, they must have been there for a while. It struck her as being senseless and tragic, but there was nothing she could do for them, and she still had to find Diane. She gave the corpses a last, apologetic look as she walked around them and continued on her way.
A few minutes later, she came upon two more. This time, she noticed that both had been dispatched by gunshots to the head, and that at least one had obvious evidence of having been... bitten, by something.
Really not liking the possibilities that suggested, she again hurried by them.
She did, however, take a moment to make sure the safety on her gun was off.
She was being silly, she told herself. Not about keeping her gun ready - on Black Dragon's turf that was only common sense - but about the ideas trying to creep into her head. If there was one thing she was certain of, it was that there was no such thing as-
The thought was cut off as a zombie lurched out of the bushes at her.
She wasted three shots into its chest. For a moment, she thought that would put it down - it certainly was enough to make it stagger back and gurgle, blood flowing freely from the bullet-inflicted wounds - but it recovered and started for her again, moaning in hunger, seemingly unaware of the fact that all logic demanded it be laying on the ground, dead.
Fuck it. She shot it in the head.
She almost moaned herself when it did, indeed, fall to the ground, lifeless.
"Oh, now come on!" That probably should have been quieter then it had been, but she couldn't help it.
Zombies? Seriously? Zombies? She wanted to believe this was some kind of joke, but... Well, the evidence was right there in front of her eyes. And - her face screwed up in disgust as the breeze picked up for a second - her nose.
It would also go a long way to explaining why Diane had sounded so panicked when she'd called them. Fucking zombies would rattle anyone's composure. Flicking on her comm, she said, "Scud, you there?"
"Yeah. Was that you?"
She inhaled deeply, regretted it almost immediately, and set about putting some distance between her and the no-longer-walking-dead. "Yeah. I think I know what had Di so spooked." As quickly as she could, she outlined the encounter she'd just had for him.
There was a long pause, then, "Are you shitting me?"
She gave a humorless laugh. "Don't I wish. The guy wasn't actually dead before I put one in his brain, but if you ignore little things like his still breathing, he made one damn convincing zombie. And if those other bodies I found were the same thing..."
She could almost hear him shudder. "Yikes. Well, if we needed any more of a reason to find Di and get gone, I think we just got it."
"Definitely. I'm almost at the cave. You be careful."
"I'd tell you to do the same, but I do remember who I'm talking to."
"Cute." She closed the channel, allowing herself a small smile. It faded quickly enough when she got to the clearing.
There were more bodies, these evidently killed by a larger caliber weapon. The cave looked like it had been covered by a gate of some kind, which had been knocked inward. There wasn't any noise.
At all.
She frowned at that. She hadn't noticed it at first, but this was the quietest damned jungle she'd ever been in - and she'd been in quite a few. Even the normal jungle sounds were missing. Scared quiet by whatever those things were?
That wasn't a pleasant thought, given how many of them there'd have to be for that to be the case.
The destroyed gate indicated that a number of them had obviously been intent on getting into that cave. To her, that indicated that someone might just have been hiding in there.
Someone like Diane.
Taking a moment to wonder what the hell she'd been thinking wearing black to a tropical island - that much was easy to answer; she hadn't been thinking, she'd just wanted to get to Diane as quickly as was possible - she carefully trudged forward.
The cave was almost twenty degrees cooler, which was a profound relief. Keeping her gun at the ready, she moved forward. She was so intent on watching for any sign of those things that she almost didn't notice when the floor abruptly stopped in front of her.
She jerked to a halt just in time. It looked like a five-foot section of the ground had just given way, leaving a hole that dropped down about seven feet. She did have the rope to get down there, as well as means of anchoring it. And if Diane had come into this cave, then that was likely where she'd gone. And even if it wasn't, she had to make sure. And whatever was in these rocks was screwing up her infrared detector's sensors, so she had to investigate it the old fashioned way.
Securing her rope carefully, she slowly descended into the cave beneath the cave. The subcave? Oh, whatever. She hesitated for a long second before unclipping herself as she just stood there, listening.
Nothing.
I am so taking a vacation after we get home, she decided. She unhooked herself from the rope, took a chemical light out of her pack and activated it, then slowly moved forward. Interestingly, the tunnel dead ended right below the hole, indicating that the above cave floor was so weakened that it had collapsed as soon as someone had stepped onto it. That supported the theory that Di hadn't gone any further in the cave above.
She followed the claustrophobia-inducing tunnel for about half a minute, until she almost tripped over the bodies. A number of the things were laying in a heap at the opening to a wider cave. The greenish light from the plastic tube in her hand made their partially decomposed skin look even more disturbing. But why were they all draped atop one another like this, as if-
Understanding dawned even as the figure in the cave, slumped down against the far wall, raised a gun and fired right at her head.
I could apologize a thousand times for how neglected my poor stories have been, but I'm not sure that would be enough. So I'll just try to make it up to you by giving you quality updates. ^_^