Voyager: Chapter 7
#48 of Hidden (Series)
Bad assery is not always enough.
Voyager: Chapter 6
I steadied my crosshairs over the man's head. He had his hands raised up in the air with that ridiculous beacon of a flashlight. He was ready to fight. It was stupid, but admirable. Still stupid though. He was so determined to get through, I would have laughed if the situation wasn't so dire.
I took a deep breath in and filled my lungs with the cold night air. My cross hairs wavered slightly and crossed over his head for a split second. I could hear some noises all around me, but I drowned them out and focused on my own heartbeat. Each thump made the crosshair flutter ever so slightly. The perfect shot would require me to fire in between each beat, a tall order. Though through years of practice, waiting for that fleeting moment was second nature to me.
The air in my lungs slowly began to leave and return from whence it came. A slow, steady breath trickled out of me. I was perfectly still, my finger adding slightly more pressure to the trigger. Not enough to pull it all the way back, but enough that it slowly did go back. Let the gunshot surprise you. That way you didn't push into the stock of the rifle with anticipation. Another heartbeat went by, leaving that pause where everything in your body was still and quiet.
The silence was shattered by the deafening boom of the .50 Cal. It kicked back and the butt dug into my shoulder. I held my ground and gazed through the scope. The crosshair was aimed half a notch above the man's head, right between those raised arms of his. If I was off even by a hairs breadth, I would miss and hit the wrong target. It would spell disaster and utter failure on my part.
I didn't miss. The bullet went straight and true like I knew it would. There was no target that I could not hit. I could see the vortex of displaced air the bullet carved into the night as it traveled at nearly a kilometer a second. Should have been impossible to see since the bullet was only in the air for a quarter of a second, but I saw how it went straight between the arms and collided with the small sliver of the collector that I could see in front of the man.
Barely a sliver of it was visible in the darkness, only being illuminated by the man's flailing flashlight. Now that sliver was gone and the man kept running. He was safe, any other collectors in front of him were too far away to get in his way. He would make it, but in my attempt to clear his path, I had cut off my own escape.
I lowered the gun. I stood atop a car in the middle of a sea of disfigured creatures. When we had run, they seemed to have just appeared out of nowhere. Where there were only a few at first, there were now hundreds.
They wouldn't take me without a fight though. One of them was shambling up the hood of the car. Too easy.
I simply kicked it in one of its many faces with my boot as hard as I could. The dirt on my boot left a print on its face and it fell back into the horde of bodies. They were getting close and more tightly packed. There was no point in aiming now, how could I miss.
I didn't even bring the gun up really. Holding it loosely with both arms, I just fired it into the crowd. The collector, a green one, which was directly in front of me vanished and the next three behind it didn't fare so well either. I pulled the trigger again only to get a flat click.
"Well." I laughed. "This is where the fun begins." They weren't amused one bit and surged at what they thought was my vulnerability. They would pay for their ignorance and stupidity with more blood and destruction.
I raised the gun above my head, now holding it by its steaming barrel and let it come crashing down on the nearest target. Sadly the collectors head wasn't on the top of its body, so my improvised club bashed into a meaty mass. It was enough to force it back and I immediately focused on the next one.
I was doing surprisingly... well until the gun broke in half. It simply snapped at the part where the barrel joined the main body, the fiberglass body cracking just as spectacularly as the collector's head it just hit. My range had just been seriously shortened again.
It was only now that I was beginning to worry. With nothing more than the barrel of the gun and the bag that had a flashlight strapped to it on my back, I swung madly to keep them at bay. There were too many to keep off the car.
Another one began to climb up behind me and one got the great idea to climb up in front of me. I was being flanked! Those clever bastards though they would get the drop on me? No, I would show them.
I did what every part of my reasonable mind screamed at me not to do. Using the collector in front of me as a launch pad, I bounded over several of them. They looked up at me like a bunch of hungry birds waiting to be fed, but all I fed them was the middle finger. Though, my ability to cause them pain and death was unmatched, my short legs and bulky frame severely limited my jumping capabilities.
I landed short of where I wanted to be. It was a small opening that I had spied where they began to thin out. Instead I went right into a great pile of them and we all fell over. If I thought it was creepy just looking at a collector up close, it was much worse to actually touch them. They were so sweaty and a kind of transparent slime was oozing out of the crevices where the different bodies of the people that made up the older generations came together. The green ones were just slimy in general, covered in what I could only describe as lube.
Their slow wits would prove to be my saving grace at that moment. I used my newly created club to stab into the collector that was right beneath me before it could react and use the top of the barrel that now stuck out of it to force myself onto my feet.
It was a slightly better position, but not by much. Instead of being on top of car and surrounded, I was just surrounded now. They pressed their advantage of both position and numbers and I was instantly pressed up against their sickening bodies on all sides. The heat and the smell was overwhelming me and my vison began to cloud. With so little room, they couldn't grab me, but I couldn't breathe either.
We squirmed, them trying to turn so that an arm could grab me, my trying to get out. Somehow, I squeezed out of the worst orgy ever due to a combination of sheer determination and maybe some of that lube they seemed to secrete in copious amounts when they got excited.
I was away from them and I wasn't going to stick around to see how they would react to earning the worlds' worst employee award.
It was my turn to run the gauntlet to get to the sub way entrance. There were more facing me than Liam, but Liam wasn't a professionally trained soldier. I ran at a dead sprint, which I admit wasn't that fast. Damn short, stubby legs. Only if they could just move faster or just jump farther, this would be so much easier. Alas, that was not to be. I had the cards I was dealt and I had to play with them.
I easily darted between the collectors in my path now that the main group was probably still scratching their asses over where I had gone. Another disturbing thought to invade my head since their asses weren't always where they were supposed to be. The green ones didn't even seem to have asses or really any distinguishing body part other than heads, legs and arms. Entirely asexual in appearance. Could have been a small mercy, I definitely didn't need to see any more penises or boobs flopping about randomly on the bodies of the older collectors.
To think that just a few moments ago they were rubbing against me. I shivered at the thought. I needed a bath to wash this lube and filth off of me. Sadly, that was a luxury I didn't have at the moment, the only luxury that I did have was the possibility of escape.
I saw one a green collector begin to walk down the stairs. I would need to deal with it before rendezvousing with Liam again. It was just ahead of me and if I got it so that it fell down the stairs and that would be it. The tumble would kill it and if not, I would finish it off on my own way down.
I was getting close to it and prepared to simply push it down like a bully. A shock of pain welled up at the base of by back that just sucked out every bit of energy in me. I was stopped dead in my tracks, something had grabbed my tail, nearly tearing it off as it did so.
I looked back to see a collector with an array of heads that reminded me of a daisy. Each head smiled and watched me, its new prey. One of its many arms that sprouted like weeds from its body had a hold of my tail. Somehow the thing had reacted fast enough and got me just as I passed by. I had underestimated them.
It gave a harsh tug that threw me back. I bounced off of it and fell to the ground, ass raised in the air as if I was presenting myself. The shock and pain was crippling and was like nothing I had ever felt before. No one had grabbed my tail before, people knew that it was both rude and inconsiderate. These weren't people anymore, they didn't care for the etiquette that seemed to no longer exist now that the people who used to enforce such things were gone.
Everyone was gone. There was no one left that I knew from before that I knew was still alive. Krauss and his brothers... They had disappeared long ago into the vastness that was now Hawthorne Medical. My old boss, Admiral Anderson was with the fleet that was supposed to protect Earth. The fleet never showed up as far as I knew. Not a single ship made even a fleeting appearance over the months to tell any of the survivors they were still out there.
I'm sure they had their reasons and I didn't blame them. I only worried that someplace up there in space, there wasn't a shining armada of ships, but a floating pile of wreckage that was being combed through by some different version of a collector for bodies.
Now I was in the hands of the enemy, a race of aliens that didn't even care to make single appearance. All they did was send their armies of mutated people to do their dirty work. Killed by an enemy that didn't even think we were worthy to even see them. What a way to go.
More pain shot through my body as I was being dragged off. I was on the verge of passing out, blackness teetered on the edge of my vision, slowly closing around me. I stared at my paws as they slowly drug through the dirt along with my head, all sensation was fading. That pain had simply become so intense, it just went away.
Liam had escaped. There was that collector that I saw heading down into the subway, but Liam was a capable man. He would make it...