The Search for Ball Zero (32 page)

L looked back and forth and shook her head,
her viking helmet mimicking her head movements a moment later.

“
Damn!” They both said
surprised.

Bob’s warstore quickly maneuvered behind the
warstore L just killed. The enemy warstore was trying to get a shot
off, but had to wait as Bob went behind cover. Instead the warstore
aimed to where Bob’s warstore should come out on the other side.
Bob hit the brakes and went in reverse, his warstore came out on
the opposite side of where the enemy was aiming. He had a free shot
and made it count, another main cannon shot to the chest. The enemy
warstore was covered in smoke and fire from the middle up, it
slowed down and stopped moving.

Bob’s warstore turned towards the tower and
accelerated.

“
BOB!?” Tony yelled. He
looked to his fellow Humans. “Should we follow em?”

Bob replied,”Sorry mon. We got ta do
dis.”

Tony hit the gas and their warstore
accelerated down the hill. At the bottom of

the hill there was a gate and checkpoint,
Tony went out of his way to run it over. The Elohssa guards
scattered like ants. “Fuck shit up L!” He reminded her.

Bob’s warstore was on a collision course
with the tower. Tony adjusted course

to meet them.

Another warstore engaged the Humans. They
took a few superficial hits. L fired back and did the same.

“
Ok L, I’m going to start
and stop moving randomly. When I stop, you shoot.”
“
Ok!” L replied.

“
I’ll tell you before I
stop so you’ll be ready.”
“
Ok!” She replied
again.

“
Ok.” Tony said slowly,
Now.” And the warstore stopped moving. L took a

second to adjust, fired the tank turrets and
scored some hits. Tony accelerated, a moment later the spot they
were in was hit with the enemy’s main cannon shell. It exploded in
the dirt.

“
Haha! Yea!” Tony yelled.
“Noob AI.” He was at full speed for a few seconds. “Ok, ready?” He
asked L.

“
Yea.”

He hit the brakes. L waited for the stop,
adjusted, and fired both the turrets and the main cannon. In rapid
succession like someone hammering in a nail, the shells ripped into
the enemy warstore body and twisted it into a explosive metal
wreck.

“
Ohh nice L!” Perry
yelled. Then quickly thought out loud,”Hey how come these nuclear
engine things aren’t exploding?”

“
I was just thinking
that.” Tony replied. Then he turned his attention back to L. “Okay,
now they might be waiting for us to stop again, so just fire while
we move.”

“
K!” She replied and
started zooming in.

A massive explosion hit right in front of
their warstore.

“
Ohh shit!”

L and the remaining enemy warstore exchanged
shots, mostly misses.

“
Do that stop thing
again.” L recommended.

“
Okay.” Tony replied, then
focused for a few moments,”Okay now.” He hit the brakes.

L aimed and fired. This time hitting the
bottom of the enemy warstore, it’s giant

tank treads exploded into a mess of metal
and that side of the warstore sank into the dirt. L was making this
look easy.

Across the way the Tribe’s warstore was
nearing the entrance to the tower. Its

front facing machine guns lit up the
entrance, guards scattered into the night. The warstore was running
full speed right up to the tower.

“
Ohh shit!” Perry
yelled,”Are they gonna ram it?”

“
No.” L said not believing
that was going to happen. Tony just looked and drove towards
them.

At the last second their warstore stopped,
almost touching the tower. From the Humans view, they saw the Tribe
members climbing down the warstore. King and Slash in front, their
rest of the Tribe sparkling behind them in their metal armor.
Lemmy’s Jeep pulled up and did a power slide next to the warstore,
its occupants jumping out. The warstore front facing machine guns
scanning the area. A group of about 20 Gorillas and Chimpanzees
entered the front door. Tony noticed Bob was not one of them.

“
Are we going in too?” L
asked.

Perry looked around,”It’s either that or
play tank wars out here.”

They all stumbled as their warstore was hit
in the back. The store rumbled and made unseen sounds of giant
metal bending, it sounded like the Titanic.

Perry didn’t like that sound, “Let’s go with
em!” He yelled.

“
Ok. Yea let’s go.” The
humans, Janis and Moon ran out of the cockpit and began climbing
down. Immediately the air of smoke and war overcame their smell,
the rough wind pounded on them and yelled in their ears. Leaving
the cockpit was like entering a different world. They ran for the
entrance. Tony looked up at the cockpit as he ran by, hoping to see
Bob or something. He didn’t.

As they ran up to the door there was a dead
body in the doorway. It was a

Chimp. Perry was the first one there, and
stepped over the body, shotgun out and ready. The lobby was a
bloodbath. Mostly dead humans. Blood splatters up the walls, some
even on the ceiling. There were hacked body parts mixed around so
much that it was hard to tell which part went with which body. L
almost slipped in a pool of blood stepping over some bodies. At the
other end of the lobby, the automatic door to enter the building
was opening and closing on a body. Tony grabbed it and held it open
while they walked through.

“
The elevators.” Perry
said and jogged down the hallway a bit. “Ohh shit

look.” He was looking at the digital
readouts above each elevator, they all read vastly different
numbers. One read 8242. He yelled in a high pitched voice, “Eight
thousand floors!?”

L pointed at an open door. It was broken
open, the door to the stairs. L and Tony ran towards the door.

“
I am NOT walking up 8,000
floors!” Perry told them before following.

They went up a few floors, following the
trail of blood and dead bodies.

“
Where the fuck are they
going?” Tony asked.

“
I think they’re trying to
free the lab monkeys they have here.” L said.

Perry was almost out of breath
already,”They’re not even real monkeys, right? They’re clones. The
only thing they're gonna find here is some Alien 4 Ripley clone
room shit.”

Tony looked back at him”Yea, you’re probably
right. Then they’re gonna be

pissed.”

L, stepping over a body whose head was
sliced off above the jaw replied,”They’re not pissed now?”

The Humans heard the sound of footsteps
above them. They all stopped to listen. Then they heard voices, it
was Humans. They were heading down the stairs, talking about
killing monkeys. Tony opened the door to the floor they were on and
silently waved them in.

The clanging on the metal steps got louder
as the guards approached their floor. Just as the last guy passed
the door, Perry pulled up his shotgun and Tony opened the door.
Perry blasted through the opening and blew a giant chunk out of the
last guy’s back. Tony and Perry entered the stairwell unloading
their weapons, dropping four of the guards before it became a
firefight. They had surprised the guards and they had the higher
ground.

L was looking in the stairwell doorway,
holding her axe, ready to switch to her guns if need be. In between
Tony and Perry’s gunshots she heard footsteps behind her. She
turned and saw a figure running towards her. It was a bloody guard,
he didn’t have a gun, but he had a sword and he was charging her
with it raised above his head. She was startled and went for her
gun, she tried to pull it out too quickly and the nose caught the
edge of the holster and she fumbled, dropping it to the floor. It
was too late to try and pick it up, the guard was on her and swung
down at her with a massive blow. Her vision was obscured by her
oversized helmet, but she attempted to dodge to her right. The
sword caught the left horn on her helmet, which almost knocked it
off her head, but she was wearing the chinstrap and it stayed on.
The guard’s charging body collided with hers and they tumbled.

As L was falling, her body hit the side of
the door frame and that kept her from

falling completely prone. She shook off the
collision and looked. the guard was face down on the floor, but
attempting to turn over and get up. She checked her holsters, both
pistols were now missing. The guard was scrambling to get in the
stairwell. L looked, in front of him was one of her glocks. She
could never get to it before him now, her other gun was no where to
be seen. She thought, “Fuck. This idiot is going to shoot me.” just
as she felt the handle of the battle axe on her leg. She grabbed
the axe as the guard grabbed the gun. Her face grimaced as she
lifted and brought the axe up over her head. In slow motion the
guard rolled over pointing the gun, as L brought the axe down with
all her might. The gun went off a millisecond before the crunching,
squishy, dead thud of a sound a battle axe makes when it chops
someone’s skull in two.

L had closed her eyes. She opened them and
saw wisps of smoke in front of her. She looked down and saw her
battle axe, one shiny, bladed side of the axe sticking up,
perpendicular to the ground, and the other side covered in blood
and stuck into the ground. On either side of the axe was a cross
section of the inside of a human skull. Below the axe blade, the
two sections of skull and face came together at his neck. She
actually chopped his skull in half. Both cross sections of the
man’s jaw twitched as he tried to say his last words. Only bubbles
came out.

She noticed blood in the lower part of her
vision and looked down. Her chain

mail vest was bloody and had a hole. She was
shot. Panic flushed over her and she felt her chest. He shot her in
the boob. She grabbed her left breast and felt it, her hand was
instantly covered in blood. There was a hole in the front of her
breast and another coming out the left side. The bullet went
through her left breast. Her first thought was that she was lucky
and probably wasn’t going to die from this, her second thought
was,”Fuck, there goes my nice tits. That was one of my best
parts”

She looked up, ready to yell for help. Tony
and Perry were standing at the edge

of the stairs staring in awe at the gory
skull she had created. Perry was engrossed by the brains slowly
seeping out of its skull bowl.

Tony jumped over the corpse, “Ohh shit are
you ok!?”

“
He shot me in the tit!”
She said and fell to her knees. Tony knelt near her and

they tried to clean and dress the wound as
well as they could right then. Perry had been grazed in the neck
also, but he didn’t seem to know yet. L looked up at Perry, “You
got shot too?” Perry looked over his shoulder, like she was talking
to someone behind him. Then he looked down and saw his shirt was
covered in blood. He stumbled back, trying to wipe off the blood at
first, then feeling around his chest for bullet holes.

Tony looked up at him,”I think it was near
your neck.”

Perry felt the graze wound on his neck,
“Awww shit!”

From above them, they heard more yelling.
Then gunshots. They all were looking up, waiting to hear
something.

Perry said,”Man this place has how many
thousand floors?” He looked up the stairwell. “What the fuck are we
gonna do?”

Tony looked down,”We gotta find them or get
outta here. Fuck.”

L looked around,”Hey, where’d Janis and Moon
go?” Tony and Perry had gotten caught up the moment, and both
looked around and shrugged.

A bunch of gorillas, chimpanzees and monkeys
ran down a Elohssa Corporation

hallway. King led the way. He pointed in
front of the group at the end of the hallway, “That it.” Above the
door read “Lab 9”. He didn’t even break stride and crushed the door
open.

They entered a long room that was part of
the cloning laboratory. There was one scientist fiddling with some
equipment. King picked him up by the face and walked towards the
far wall. King looked around, cages lined the lab. Macaque monkeys
in almost all the cages. The caged monkeys began noticing the
situation and started screaming. King looked at all the cages and
smashed the scientists head into a wall,

One Chimp was at one of the cages, reaching
in and touching the occupant. “Hello?” the Chimp asked. The monkey
in the cage just screamed, jumped up and down and ran in circles.
Slash was looking over his shoulder and examined closer.

“
Dey not us.” Slash
announced. He looked at King.

“
Let dem out. All.” King
ordered. The cages were quickly unlocked by the Tribe members.
Chaos took over the lab, screaming monkeys everywhere. A few of the
lab monkeys even attacked some of the Tribe. King held up a hand,
his hand saying”Do not retaliate.” After a few seconds of insanity,
most of the lab monkeys started flooding out of the
door.

From outside the lab, down the hall someone
yelled,”Look out! Here they

come!” and the rapid fire cracking of
gunfire filled the hallway. The Tribe quickly ran towards the door.
The Macaques were being mowed down by a few guards on the other
side. The Tribe had no choice and charged down the hallway into the
gunfire.

A chimp with a shield led the way, ducking
behind his shield and pushing forward, Slash was right behind him.
They were climbing over a pile of dead macaques. The chimps shield
absorbed some shots with dull thuds. He looked back at Slash and
smiled. Then he got hit in the legs. He fell to the ground but
Slash quickly picked him up and continued to plod forward, holding
the injured chimp. A quick tapping thud hit the shield again. Slash
lowered himself into the pile of dead macaques for some cover as
both guards focused fire on them. Slash took a few shots in the
legs and lowered himself deeper into the pile, hoping for some
relief from the constant fire. He roared. Behind Slash other chimps
and gorillas were attempting the same thing, leading with
shields.