Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (69 page)

“How’d you get it through their
armor?” Joel asked.

“Most of the armed groups we’ve
seen have been wearing Kevlar, so we’re using rounds designed to penetrate.
They’ll hurt for a few days, but at least they weren’t hit by live rounds out
there.”

“Big news, Colonel,” Athena argued
as she ran past the officer, scooping Calvin’s limp torso into her arms and
shaking him. “We just came from a live-fire battlefield. We’ve been there for almost
two weeks and we got out ok.”

The colonel snapped her fingers and
two soldiers ran out and dug Lucy’s limp form from the mud and carried her back
into the compound, gently laying her beside Calvin and Trip. “Yes, you held out
well inside there. But that was before you were under our protection. I’m
sorry. I don’t like this any more than you do, but you must stay here where it
is safe.”

“And you’ll keep us safe if you
have to shoot us yourselves?”

“Yes.”

“Then send someone out there!” she
demanded angrily.

“At this time, I do not have the
authority to do that. The orders are that you have to reach this facility to be
under our protection. And once inside, you are to stay under our protection
until the tests are over, or you decide to leave. But we cannot enter the
neutral area.”

“Then we want to leave!” she
shouted.

“I was told that only Calvin Hobbes
can make that decision for your group.”

“More big news, you just zapped
him!” Scaggs screamed at the woman. “Hef’s almost here. He’s just thirty yards away
out there!”

“Yes, in the middle of a neutral
zone where either side has range with weapons.”

“So? You’re the fucking military!”
Sarah shouted angrily. “Get out there and be all that you can be! Save our
friend!”

“I’m sorry. I cannot,” the colonel
apologized, looking truly regretful. “We will have our snipers keep them out of
our side of the zone. But he must find his own way out of there. On a good
note, it appears he has reached the safety of those fallen trees.”

“He won’t have that protection for
very much longer,” Athena noted sourly.

Hef had tried to run, but he had
taken one round in the foot and had to hobble into a stack of trees the
military had clearly cut down to keep the neutral zone empty. The biggest log
in the stack was being systematically ripped to pieces by excessive gunfire
aimed at it. The military steadfastly refused to fire on anyone not entering
the safety zone and attacking the walls. But this mob was shooting from just
outside the zone. They could sit there 24 hours a day in shifts and keep him
pinned behind these logs while slowly ripping the cover away. Captain
Batmouche’ ran over to the gate and demanded four of the guards there take off
their Kevlar.

“This is our personal gear,” one
private complained.

“It’s going to save a life,” she
insisted and the man conceded.

“Gimp Bait!” she shouted at Private
Baldwin. “You’re with me. Do what I do and one of us might make it back alive.”
She took a second look at him and added, “I’m not going to lie to you, soldier.
It’s probably going to be me.” She smiled and he returned an even broader grin.
Quickly fastening two vests together, she slipped her arm into the shield she’d
made while the private copied her motions. Taking a deep breath, she nodded to
one of the guards, who opened the gate for her to run out.

“Oh,” the colonel standing with
Athena noted as an afterthought. “Well there you go,” she pointed to the
captain and private rushing across the field. “Or the good Captain can still go
out there. She has her own mission parameters and can do…basically whatever she
wants, I suppose.”

“Woohoo! Go Buttmunch and Gimp
Bait!” Scaggs shouted.

When the others looked crosswise at
her, she scowled. “What? Oh my God, that’s not their real names, is it?”

She seemed absolutely serious, so
someone had to answer. “It’s Batmouche’, actually,” Sergeant Doogard answered
her. “It’s French. But to tell you the truth, we’ve been calling her Buttmunch
ever since y’all started it.”

“Right on,” Scaggs pumped fists
with him.

“But don’t get too cocky, Sergeant
Dogood,” she said dryly as an aside.

His delight turned to shock as he learned
that they had a name for him too, but he quickly shrugged it off. “I’ve been
called worse,” he responded with a nod.

“Look at her go…” Athena whispered,
watching as she held Calvin’s head in her lap and waited for him to return to
reality.

“Oh, the captain didn’t get her
rank by being a bad soldier. She’s got all the skills,” Doogard enlightened
them in admiration. “Poor Gimp Bait might not make it, though…” he murmured
quietly, scratching his chin before loading his rifle and taking it off safety.
He walked up to the open iron gate and watched the scene unfold with the others
coming over to join him. A group of soldiers stepped in front of the civilians
to ensure none of them could try to repeat what Calvin and Tripper had
attempted, so they were forced to watch over shoulders or between arms.

The captain was fast. Sarah had run
track for most of her life and she would swear she had never seen anyone so fleet
of foot, especially under fire and sinking halfway up her shins into the mud
with every stride. She dashed in a straight line into the open field, bullets slapping
up mud on either side as she bolted as if she herself had been fired from a
rifle—a smart round, straight and true to her target. Her lead increased so far
ahead of Gimp Bait the shooters weren’t paying him any attention at all, so the
fear finally eased some and he was able to run faster, to close the gap a
little. Ten feet, twenty, thirty, unbelievably both were still unhurt. Then one
bullet struck the double Kevlar shield the captain held and everything changed.

The captain had unwittingly—or
maybe not quite so unwittingly—forced the hand of the soldiers on the wall. It
was one thing to let the civilians shoot each other in the Quarantine zone,
because the normal rules of civilized society were temporarily suspended. Civs
versus Civs wasn’t their problem at this point. It was, however, another thing
entirely to let one of those civilians, or especially a hundred, shoot one of
their own.

“Open fire. Defend those soldiers!”
the colonel yelled, pointing to the tree line.

The top of the Quarantine Wall
opened up like the defenses on the beaches of Normandy. The trees and parts of
the barricade on the Ogden Wall side that miraculously remained solid following
the tornado now exploded in blasts of splintered wood, steel and plastic as the
Guardsmen and Militia fired into the walls to force the ‘enemy’ from them. Batmouche’
reached the logs and took aim at the men firing on the log pile from the
nearest tree line.

“Ok, go! I’ll cover you!” she
shouted to Hef, who hobbled out into the field and started into a gimpy run,
sinking deeper into the mud with every step. Batmouche’ emptied a clip into the
tree line, forcing many of the Ogdenites to flee. Now with cover-fire from the
Quarantine wall, she turned to follow Hephaestus, planning to get him safely
back to the base; she had a particularly intricate mission she wanted to try
later that night and would need him mostly healthy to successfully achieve all
objectives. But perhaps that just was not to be. As she slogged through mud and
muck, slowing, but still quickly closing the distance between herself and
Hephaestus, Batmouche’s body spasmed once, then twice and something forced a
ragged grunt from her chest. Both Hef and Gimp Bait heard the impact of bullets
slamming into her Kevlar. Her body careened first to the left, then to the
right, slowing down with another thwap as another bullet struck. She faltered
into a stumbling stagger and started to fall, but the private was there. Hef
instantly stopped and slough-hopped back to help and both men had her up to a
stumbling run. The two men held most of her weight as they ran, but allowed her
to help them by thrusting her legs under her own power as if she were running
in the air.

“Just go!” she yelled. “Leave me!”
she coughed and blood trickled down her chin. Both men ran on. “That’s an
order,” she coughed a bloody spray onto Hef’s shoulder.

“See, I’m already dead,” she
blurted, looking at the blood.

“You bit your lip, Captain,” Hef
explained with a grin.

“Leave me and save yourselves!” she
ordered again.

“Sorry, ma’am. You said Calvin
Hobbes was in charge until the mission is over.”

Hephaestus laughed. Two more steps brought
them within the gate, which was quickly closed and fortified with a rolling, concrete
wall. Once behind the smaller wall they were guided to the side where a medical
squad waited. The doctor there rushed forward to inspect the injuries. Three
bullets had smashed into the Kevlar vest. He motioned for them to remove it, which
they did, revealing the second Kevlar vest.

“That’s promising,” the corpsman
muttered under her breath. On further inspection, she found that the holes went
through the second vest as well. “Take that one off too,” she ordered with a
less optimistic sigh and the techs cut it free.

“What the hell is that?” someone
asked.

 Scaggs leaned in and explained. “It’s
chain mail armor.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“Will she be ok?” Hephaestus asked
in concern.

“Maybe. The bullets went through
the armor, but I can feel them here very close to the surface and flattened
out, intact, but not shredded. I think it will depend on how much internal
damage the impact did. We’ll have to keep her under observation, but we’re
going to be doing that with all of you anyway,” he laughed. “Her vitals are
steady. I think she should be fine, but don’t quote me on that.” He assured
them. “You’re in much worse shape than she is,” the medic reached down to look
at Hef’s injured foot.

“That is good.” Hef nodded and
squeezed her hand. But then his black eyes were drawn to the unconscious Lucy
laid out on a gurney and his heart stopped. He jerked his foot from the grasp
of the medic and rushed over to where Boomer, Joel and Gus and several of the
others stood around her. “What happened?” he demanded, leaning down and taking
her hand in his, the other hand stroking her hair with the tenderness of a
father to the forehead of a sick child.

“She just went running out there to
save you,” Felicia explained.

“What? Why would she do something
like that?” Hef asked in absolute surprise.

“People do crazy things for the
people they love, Hephaestus,” Gus said, then he blushed and paled almost
simultaneously.

“What do you mean?” Hef asked.

“I—just—it’s—I’ve always thought
she had a crush on you,” Gus tried to steer into the skid.

“You are mistaken,” Hef said. “She
told me she could never date me,” he explained. “I know she is out of my
league, so I never forced the issue.”

“Out of your—” Scaggs blurted in
abject incredulity, but Gus shushed her with a hand on her arm and a subtle
shake of his head when she looked. “I mean, yeah, of course she is. Yeah, out
of your league…whatever.”

“Maybe she told you no because she
thought Lola was in love with you,” Athena suggested, fingering her chin as
this knew knowledge sank in. Gus narrowed his eyes at her in some meaningful
signal that she shrugged away, but Calvin groaned and opened his eyes and
everyone was distracted again.

No one noticed the battle raging within
Hef as he tried to decide which stretcher he should be standing beside, the
trained soldier who had charged onto a battlefield and brought him back to
safety, or one of his best friends, the untrained girl, daintiest of princesses
who had attempted to do the same thing and failed.

“What happened?” Calvin asked the gathered
blurs in his vision.

“You were tasered,” Athena
explained.

“Hef?”

“He’s here.”

“And…everyone else?” he asked from
deep within a daze.

“Our group is fine. We’re not sure
how many on the other side were hurt during the battle.”

“What battle?”

“The battle to rescue Hephaestus.”

“What happened?” he asked again.

“You were tasered.”

“Why?”

“Welcome to Camp Funston in the Q,” Athena kissed him on the forehead and rubbed his shoulder.

“The Q?” he asked quietly, slowly
fading back into unconsciousness

“The Quarantine Zone.”

“Oh…”

“We’re safe now, my love. Sleep for
a while; you have certainly earned it,” she whispered softly into his ear just
before the comfortable darkness took him once again.

The End…