Maker

Chapter: 9-1

Chapter: 9

You know those news stories you sometimes see that report a gunman cutting loose in a crowded theater or something? There’s always one dead, seven dead, etc. I’ve rarely heard any number over twenty. My question is always the same; how many bullets did they have?

The reason is because killing another person is difficult. I learned that skill early, but I still sometimes felt the pangs of how hard it should be.

The theatre gunman is often someone who doesn’t use guns often. They unload too quickly, pouring several bullets into one target. Or just spraying the place without picking any specific targets. Inevitably, someone gets hit.

In most cases, that’s the first time that man or woman has ever heard someone screaming until their voice broke, knowing they were the cause. The effect is instantaneous—the next round goes wide, as does the one after that. The next is a hit, but not the place they were aiming. They start to pull to the left or right at the last moment. It’s as if their body refuses to let them commit another murder.

At that point, the gunman is committed. They know they are going to jail or going to die. They can’t just stop shooting. The crowd thins, the smell, the screams, the adrenaline… it’s all too much for any human being. You have to train; it has to be beaten out of you. The idea that you must strike first is a philosophy of the weak, and I was weak.

The grenades dropped from my hands. I ran for the door at the end of the walkway, hoping I wasn’t seen. But of course, I was.

The thought had occurred to me to wait a few seconds to cook off the grenades. To pull the pin and let the spoon fly, waiting two seconds before throwing them. That had the possibility of accomplishing two things. First, an air detonation would, in theory, give the shrapnel a few extra yards of range. Second, the enemy wouldn’t have enough time to throw it back.

I had never tested either of these theories. Giving a grenade a few extra feet of range meant it also had a better chance of reaching me. Things exploded in 360 degrees, after all.

Most grenades had a five-second fuse, but there was never any way to be certain, and I didn’t know about these. Trying to get a few extra seconds wasn’t a good idea anyway. You’re holding a live grenade after all. Five seconds isn’t a long time, and it’s an eternity.

I ran through the door at the end of the walkway, rifle at the ready. There was only one person in the room: a man in a lab coat standing over a bloody table. I didn’t hesitate; one shot to the head and he collapsed with a look of shock on his face.

I heard a cry of “grenade!” a moment after I hit the door. One gunshot, a cry of grenade and the cheers had stopped dead. Even for the ones who did hear the yell, there would be heavy casualties. Knowing there was a live grenade in the room didn’t tell you what to do about it. Only a few would react in time. Bullets came through the door. I wasn’t in their line of sight. Some tried to shoot through the concrete wall.

I heard some ricochet. The building was large, but it was still an enclosed space. With them outnumbering me fifty to one, they had a lot more to lose from wayward bullets than I did. They were already panicked. Good.

Then came the booms.

Four of them; right on top of each other. It wasn’t deafening. Explosions never are, but then again, I had never been in the same room as one when it went off either. From the other side of the wall, it was just enough to hurt my ears and set my guts to rumbling.

I heard screams and curses, commands to find the intruder, and someone crying; well, more like wailing. They were screaming at the top of their lungs because there was nothing else they could do. Gunshots and confusion; pain and despair. I couldn’t help but smile in a euphoric wave of relief. There was an odd peace to be gathered in the sounds of your enemies dying.

Despite the enjoyment, I couldn’t stay in here. I didn’t know how many had survived, but I had done my damage and my pack was nowhere obvious. Peace was quickly being replaced by fear. I already wanted to start running. The fact that I was winning was irrelevant. I made a beeline for the only window in the room when I heard a man scream in pain and another voice as loud as the grenades.

“My name is Zora Wade Teresa Kenpachi! Which one of you is the strongest?!”

I rushed to the door and the sound of the main guy from the stage screaming. “Retreat! Get out! Now!” I threw up my hood, pulled my mask over my face and ran back through the door, firing at everyone on the catwalks who were firing down at Zora. I got two before I had duck back in the room for cover.

There was one left, but she was splitting her attention firing at me and covering her allies on the ground. She paid for that mistake in the next second. They were heavily armed with superior numbers, but they didn’t know anything about fighting. They weren’t off making life and death decisions as often as Zora and I. The moves I saw were reflexive and defensive. Experience was everything in a fight. These guys didn’t seem to have any.

I moved out onto the platforms as I was firing. I dropped one man who was fumbling with a pistol trying to reload. My rifle wasn’t on full auto like theirs were. I almost never went full auto; I was picking shots. There were six left on the floor and a wild-haired goddess of death in the center.

Zora had one other power besides the insane speed: the ability to set up a sphere around her body. This took an even greater toll on her, but in a situation like this, she had to use it. Six people were sending bullets her way and it was all she could do to dodge them. Inside her sphere, she had what essentially amounted to clairvoyance. If a bullet, fist, or over-eager insect came inside that sphere, she knew. From the outside, it looked as if she reacted to things with a couple seconds head start—which was everything in a fight. She’d been training to make the sphere bigger. I haven’t checked with her lately on how successful she’d been, but the last time we talked about it she wasn’t dodging bullets with this much ease.

I took out two by the time she’d dropped the other four. The stage was empty, save for someone’s severed arm. Everything was suddenly eerily quiet. Without the yelling, gunshots or explosions, only the moans of the dying broke the tranquility.

I heard my heart pounding in my ears and Zora’s breathing. The wall behind the stage exploded inward. Zora moved with a speed that was hard to describe. An instant before I heard the explosion, she was up on the platform and had me turned around to shield herself from the blast. The pebbles from the wall hit like boulders. Without my magically enhanced clothing, they would’ve torn right through me. I grunted through blow after blow as Zora picked me up a couple inches and ran along the platform back into the room at the end.

“Good meat shield,” Zora said, patting my head and looking up with a half-smile. I narrowed my eyes and growled in answer before I realized that was playing right into her joke. The smile got much bigger.

I looked out into the main room for targets and saw none. Everyone out there that had been dying was now dead. The exploding wall had made short work of the injured. Dammit. I should’ve been aiming for the warlocks.

“The window,” I said. Zora climbed up and smashed it with the butt of her sword. She cried out and jumped clear just as a gout of flame came through the window, blowing what was left of it inside. Zora hit the table with the bloody sheet and knocked it over. A large man fell to the floor and groaned loudly.

“He’s alive,” she said with two fingers on his neck. Of course he was alive. This was obviously their infirmary, given the table of medical supplies and a trashcan full of used bloody bandages. Zora sliced through the cuffs as if they were paper.

“That’s more than I can say for us if they regroup.” I handed her the rifle to hold and she looked at me like I’d grown horns.

“You’re kidding, right?” She said. “That’s just like a sword, only slower, clumsier, and less efficient.”

“Fine,” I said slinging it on my back, “just watch the door.” She went over and stood by it, leaning casually against the wall. I dug through my satchel and rummaged around for the fork. It took too long. Way too long. God, I missed my pack.

“Please don’t fail,” I whispered, digging at the wall.

The concrete turned the consistency of pudding when it was in contact with the fork. It became the density of concrete again as I flung it to the floor. I heard myself begging the damn thing not to fail. “Just a little more; please don’t fail.”

I was through!

I grabbed the big stocky man and pushed him through the hole first—just in case someone on the other side had seen me and had something nasty prepared. Next, I crawled through as cautiously as I could. This room was dark. The fires from the door in the far corner said this was the upstairs office I’d been looking at before.

I grabbed a flare. An ordinary, average, everyday few bucks at any auto parts store type of flare. With a trickle of power, it ignited, and I threw it across the room.

In the center of the room was a feral vampire inside an open cage. Its pasty, lifeless white skin was dry and it groaned with a need for feeding. Two smaller shapes were there as well, placed in smaller cages on opposite ends of a summoning circle that took up the whole room. I saw a wisp of sandy brown hair on one.

There were four small things in layers and layers of dark robes standing around the circle, chanting. I didn’t know what they were. I leveled my rifle at one on instinct, but they didn’t immediately register to my senses as human. With all those robes, they looked like waist-high piles of dirty laundry. They didn’t react to the sounds of gunfire or acknowledge my presence at all. They could stay here and burn, for all I cared. I smelled smoke. Zora came up behind me putting her back to mine.

“What the hell is this?” She said.

“I don’t know,” I whispered, “but they lit the building. We gotta peel.” I gestured to the two smaller cages. “Get them out; I’ll cover you.” I walked up to the circle and stabbed it with the fork, taking a small chunk out of the floor. Circles were a great way to build up power. Feeling the power that had built up inside this one as it released was shocking. I jumped back, even though there was little reason to—the massive burst of power discharged into the ground. So much for that spell, whatever it was.

The all-black layered things still didn’t register my presence. They didn’t alter their motions at all, even though I’d disrupted the spell. They must’ve been homunculi of some type. Automatons made to do some simple task. Like, “sit here, provide a living presence for this circle to feed on, and never move.” The vampire didn’t react either. It sat in the cage and groaned in pain. It didn’t even react when Zora sliced it—and the cage—in half.

Homunculi were hard to make. Not complicated, though. They required raw power; the more, the better. At my best, I could make one the size of a flea. These were child-sized, and there were four of them?!

That was concerning, to say the least. Still, it was no more concerning than standing in a burning building with enemies on all sides.

I glanced out the door and still didn’t see any obvious movement in the main room. Zora soon joined me. She had the big man up on her shoulders and a child under each arm. I took the larger child, which turned out to be Theresa.

It was hard to know what to feel at that moment. I didn’t think they would be here, of all places. In hindsight, it made perfect sense. Stupid hindsight.

Mostly, I was relieved. There was a tension in my shoulders that left when I saw it was her; tension I hadn’t realized was there. Now that I had her and she was alive, all I had to do was keep her that way. No easy feat at the moment.