Chapter Twenty-Seven – Onwards

Chapter Twenty-Seven – Onwards

“Yeah, they can be pretty weird.”

Professor Besters, after class interview, 2048

***

I pinched the tip of my tongue between my teeth. Lucy always mocked me when I did that while concentrating, but I had a full-face helmet on, no one could tell.

I pinched an eye shut, lined up the end of the barrel over the model three, then squeezed the trigger.

My bullcat thumped back into my shoulder and the shot I took flew off into the distance.

I shifted my grip on the front of the gun a little. Maybe if I leaned into the gun a bit more? I aligned the hovering red dot over the alien and kept my breathing calm. I was more careful as I tugged the trigger this time.

The shot tore apart a chunk of asphalt in front of the alien, spraying it with a ricochet of gravelly chunks that had it flinching back.

It, of course, started to run at a bit of a zig-zag after that. “Fucker,” I muttered.

I was losing patience a little. My finger stretched out and flicked the Bullcat from semi to full-auto.

I hovered the sight over the alien, then tugged the trigger back. “Dodge this,” I swore.

A torrent of buckshot roared out of the Bullcat, ripping apart the road, flying off into the distance, and by the time the gun clicked empty, a few of those had winged the model three.

It flopped onto the ground, injured enough that it couldn’t keep running at me.

I nodded as I stood up and checked the highway for more aliens. Other than the piles of unmoving corpses, there wasn’t much to see. Nothing running at us. It had been maybe an hour since the wave ended, and since then only stranglers came down the road .

The first wave of aliens had been decimated.

The second ran into the next row of bombs and traps, and the crossfire from the civilans behind our barricade.

The third made it past those and into the blender that Jolly Monarch’s drones created.

It was rather nice, seeing all those aliens get mulched. All in a day’s work, though.

“It’s still alive,” Jolly Monarch said as he walked over.

He was the last person, myself excluded, left near the barricade.

I looked at the model three. It was struggling towards us still, gripping the ground and pulling itself along with scrapping tugs that left a smear of its blood behind. “It’ll bleed out,” I said.

“You wasted more points in ammo than you earned there.”

I shrugged a shoulder. “It’s aiming practice.”

“I suppose practice doesn’t hurt,” he said. “Did you intend to stay here for much longer?”

“I don’t know. How’s the evacuation going?” I asked. I’d been sticking around the barricade for a while, only occasionally running off to patch a hole or to fuck up some cleverer aliens. The militia volunteers had packed up an hour ago and drove off, leaving just me and Jolly Monarch’s pawns at the front line. Not that there had been much to worry about.

“Well enough. We started with the streets nearest this edge of the city and we’re about halfway down. Another six to twelve hours and it’ll be clear,” he said. “Volunteers are going door-to-door to help people, and we have patrols moving all over to keep things safe.”

“Alright,” I said. “You going to stick around here?”

He nodded. “I will. I’m not much of a front-line fighter. Defensive battles are more to my liking. And I never planned on moving even this far from the city-centre. If you want, you can head over to where the action’s a bit hotter.”

“Yeah, this has been a bit anemic after the initial bombing,” I said. I still glanced over at my point total.

Current Point Total:
6874

Much better than what I had upon arrival, and pretty decent considering the number of points I’d spent on bombs and the like.

“Yeah, I think I wouldn’t mind heading out. Still plenty of daylight to burn. You sure you’re good with staying here?”