Wasteland Rules: Born to Fight (The World After Book 2) (20 page)

   As he spoke a figure moved out from behind the
throne. It radiated golden light as the sun struck its armor. The followers
gasped and fell to their knees blinded by the radiance. The Humek that had been
chasing them for days stood there in all his glory. He had a big smirk on his
face as he addressed the crowd.

   “True believers! Do not be swayed by the false
words of this betrayer.” He called out. “We must cast out this demon and
destroy the heretics he leads. We cannot let them strike at the Father.”

   The crowd roared in agreement and began to surge
forward. The Pope smiled with glee in anticipation of the spectacle of Derek
and Rora being torn limb from limb. The guards, Derek assumed them to be
Templars, leaned forward as well. He had to do something before it got out of
control.

   “WAIT!” He thundered, causing the followers to
flinch. “May god strike me down if I am lying! I am the true messenger! He is
the false one!”

  Derek moved forward and pointed at the Humek. He
hoped he was close enough for the signal to be blocked. When nothing happened,
the crowd shrank back afraid to anger god by attacking them. The Pope grew very
confused and looked at the Humek for guidance. The Humek merely glared at Derek
with raw hatred.

   Derek seized the opportunity. “We should prove
which one of us is the true messenger!”

   “How do we do that?” The Pope asked, curious.

   “Like they did in ancient times.” Derek told him.
“A trial by combat. The winner surely has God’s favor and is his true
messenger.”

   The Pope clapped his hands together. “Yes! That
is an excellent idea. You will fight each other and God will reveal to us the
chosen one by making him the winner!” He cried.

   “Are you serious?” Rora whispered to him. “You
cannot possibly beat a Humek in hand to hand combat no matter how enhanced you
are.”

   “It’s our only option.” He replied grimly. “Be
ready to run if it looks like I am losing.”

   The Humek merely smiled predatorily and began to
walk deliberately down the steps of the dais. Halfway down he launched himself
into the air and came crashing down a few feet from Derek. The impact shook the
ground and Derek involuntarily stepped back. The crowd reacted by moving back
quickly to create a large space for them to fight in. Their excitement was
palpable and Derek felt a little ripple of fear run through him, but he buried
it and drew his weapons. Rora shrank back into the crowd and tried to make
herself inconspicuous.

   The cyborg assumed a combat stance, and short two
foot long double-edged blades shot out of his gauntlets over top of his fists.
Derek readied the machete in his right hand and his combat knife in his left.
He assumed a combat stance as well and began to circle the armored Humek,
searching for a weakness. The golden armor covered every inch of the cyborg’s
body and Derek doubted he could penetrate it with his blades. The only
unprotected target was the thing’s head and face.

   The cyborg smile cruelly and advanced slowly.
“Time for payback Derek.” It snarled.

June 22, 2029

Outside NASA Complex at Cape Canaveral, FL

   That caught Derek off guard and he almost missed
the first attack. The cyborg lunged forward with the blade on his right arm and
stabbed at Derek’s face. It was all Derek could do just to avoid the strike and
dodge backwards. The cyborg followed with a spinning backhand with the other
blade. It came so fast that again all Derek could do was dodge. He circled away
from the spinning blades and moved around the impromptu arena.

   The cyborg smiled and almost casually stalked
him. There was a hint of madness in the Humek’s eyes that Derek found
interesting. These things were supposed to have left the weaknesses of the
flesh behind, including emotions. Yet this one seemed genuinely angry with him,
and it was more than just frustration at being thwarted. This felt personal,
yet he couldn’t remember ever having encountered the man before. He had
certainly never been involved with a Humek before so it must have been prior to
this thing’s conversion.

   “Do I know you?” He ventured as they circled.

   That triggered a major response. The Humek got
even angrier and if he could have killed with his eyes, Derek would have been a
smoking pile of ash. The cyborg’s movement got a little wilder and more
uncontrolled. Maybe this was a weak point Derek could exploit. He tried again
as he circled away fending off the cyborg’s repeated strikes.

   “I would think I would have remembered meeting a
freak like you.” Derek taunted.

   “I’m going to dice you into pieces, you coward.”
The Humek screamed, spittle literally spraying from his mouth. “You left me to
die, so you could live. I have waited so long for payback and now it is time.”

   That gave Derek pause. This was personal, very
personal. He tried to think of someone he had betrayed and left to die, but no
one came to mind. Who was this guy?

   “I really should thank you, you know.” The cyborg
continued as Derek frantically parried his strikes. “He made me the First
because you left me. Without your betrayal I would never have recognized my
true potential.”

   “What betrayal?” Derek asked confused. “I never
left anybody to die.”

   “You cannot even admit your treachery, even at
the verge of death.” The Humek snarled. “Do you have any idea what the Chinese
did to me, Major?”

   “Max?” Derek gasped in disbelief as he recognized
the man. “But you died on that mountain.”

   The Humek lunged forward with both blades. Derek
barely managed to block the strikes. The cyborg pushed forward until their
faces were inches apart over their crossed blades. Hatred raged in his eyes and
spittle dripped down from his mouth giving him the appearance of a rabid dog.

   “It’s Maximillian now. You left me there to die
so you could escape.” He spit at Derek. “They tortured me for six months before
they gave me back. I was completely broken until Father gave me a new life.”

   “I was in a coma; they told me no one else
survived.” Derek tried to explain.

  The mission had been simple. They were sent to
infiltrate a secret Chinese research base that the spooks believed the crop
virus had escaped from. Their main objective was to get proof that was the case
to provide to the U.N. The secondary objective had been to obtain samples so
the U.S. could synthesize a cure. Intelligence believed it was a golden
opportunity to regain U.S. supremacy. If the virus wiped out everyone else’s
crops but the U.S. and Canada, then they could have had a boom economy selling
food to the rest of the world.

   But the mission had been compromised from the
beginning. An entire division of the elite Red Guard had been waiting to ambush
them as they approached the remote base. Miraculously, they had managed to
fight their way free; but they had lost almost half the platoon. They had
escaped to the extraction point, but Chinese air patrols prevented the
helicopters from coming to pick them up. The Chinese had surrounded them on the
mountaintop and sent numerous sorties up at them.

   The Chinese troops had avoided using artillery or
air strikes and it became obvious they wanted some of the American special
operators alive. Derek and his men had used every trick they knew and every
weapon at their disposal to hold off the Chinese. The survivors had held off
the repeated assaults, resorting to using captured weapons when they ran out of
ammo for theirs. Out of food and water and all wounded in some way, they had
still managed to hold out for four days.

   Finally the Chinese commander had grown
frustrated and ordered an airstrike. The resulting blasts had killed everyone
under Derek’s command. He had been survived by some miracle, but had been
barely alive. The two countries had nearly gone to war over the incident.
Ultimately, cooler heads had prevailed and his comatose body had been traded
back as part of a larger deal involving the U.S. ceasing involvement in Asia.

   The mission had been completely removed from any
records and Derek had been forbidden to talk about under the threat of death.
They had sent him to a secret hospital in Oklahoma to recover. That’s where he
had been when the Collapse had begun. He had been told that everyone else died,
but not all the remains had been recoverable. And that he should just let it
go. But he had been unable to; so many men under his command had died on that
mission. Some close friends.

    Max Soriano had been a sergeant newly under his
command. The Chinese Mission had been their first mission together. He had been
one of the final survivors on that mountaintop, but he should have been killed
by the airstrike. If what he was saying was true, he had survived and been
captured by the Chinese. At some point he had been traded back, but no one had
told Derek. And then Doors had apparently made him the first Humek. Who knew
what they had told him about Derek and the mission. No wonder he was angry.

   “I heard about your rebirth, about how you were
now a superman and the poster boy for the U.S.T.G.” Max screamed at him. “That
should have been mine, but you stole it from me! They thought they were making
me a freak, but father showed me the light and I was reborn. Better than
before, better than you!”

  “If I had known you were alive, I would have made
them come get you.” Derek insisted. “They told me everyone died. I didn’t even
know they had altered me. I’ve thought about those days on the mountaintop ever
since.”

   The cyborg shoved Derek back with a mighty
thrust. Even with his enhanced strength he was sent flying. He rolled backwards
and came to his feet in one smooth move. Max moved blindingly fast towards him
slashing wildly with both blades. Derek spun to the side and narrowly avoided
being sliced.

   “Liar!” Max screamed. “You tried to take what was
mine, but now I’m going to take your life in payment.”

   The cyborg pursued Derek as he spun away and
dodged all around the circle of followers. Several didn’t move fast enough and
were cut themselves by the whirling blades. Max was like a dervish as he sliced,
slashed, and stabbed with both blades. Derek could do nothing other than parry
and evade; the cyborg’s offense too intense to counter. Even with his enhanced
stamina Derek was starting to tire and he knew it was only a matter of time
before the furious Humek cut him.

   “Wait a minute!” He exclaimed. “How are you even
seeing me? I should be invisible to you.”

   “What’s the matter Derek; you’re precious device
failing you?” Max asked nastily. “It was a neat trick, but I figured out a way
to outsmart the device.”

   “How could you possibly have done that?” Derek
panted as he continued to circle away.

   “I disconnected from the LINC.” Max informed him.
“It hurts to be disconnected from Father and it is so quiet, but now I can see
you with my own eyes.”

   He pressed forward and sent Derek stumbling to
the ground. Derek didn’t roll to his feet this time and lost his combat knife.
The cyborg approached triumphantly, an unnatural smile on his face. He poised
to strike a defenseless Derek, and that’s when Derek pulled the oldest trick in
the book. He flung the handful of sandy soil he had grabbed when he faked the
stumble, at the cyborg’s eyes.

   Blinded, the cyborg swung around wildly. An
unfortunate follower was disemboweled by the blind strikes and crumpled to the
ground. Wails of terror began from crowd as the out of control cyborg killed
more of them. They panicked and the makeshift ring devolved into a mob scene
with people running everywhere. Blind, unable to hear over the crowd, and now
disoriented by the mass of moving people; without his sensors to guide him Max
was easy prey for Derek as he slipped behind him.

   “Not so powerful without your all seeing sensors
are you?” Derek whispered in his ear as he slit Max’s throat with the machete.

   The Humek’s body slumped to the ground, his
throat spurting blood and fluid. Despite all the mechanical additions, he was
still human at the core. Derek felt some guilt about killing Max. Had he known
any of his men were still in China, he would have moved heaven and earth to get
to them. It saddened him to think that because he was tortured by the Chinese
and abandoned by his comrades, Max had chosen this path. Still, he had made his
choices; and you have to live with the consequences of your choices.

The crowd fell silent as Derek stood triumphant over
the fallen cyborg and cut off its head. They parted as he made his way to the
dais. Even the guards stepped aside under his angry stare. The Pope looked as
though he may have wet himself in terror as Derek approached, and the smell
confirmed it. Derek dropped the severed head in the Pope’s lap. The man flailed
about as he tried not to touch the bloody stump. He looked up at Derek in
befuddlement and terror.

  “Please forgive me!” He wailed. “You are the true
messenger. Tell me what to do.”

   “Take your people and go back to New Rome.” Derek
thundered. “Never come here again.”

   The Pope simply nodded, at a loss for words. He
watched silently as Derek turned and walked away with Rora at his side. Derek
couldn’t hear exactly what was said, but the followers suddenly jumped into
motion and they began disassembling the dais and packing everything into trucks
that Derek hadn’t noticed before. By the time he was almost out of sight, they
had packed up and left.

   “I understand killing him, Rule #3 and all, but
why cut his head off?” Rora asked, genuinely curious.

   “I wanted to make sure he was dead this time.”
Derek answered coldly.