Survival by Daniel Powell Read Free Book Online Page B

was cruelly efficient. The metallic points tore into the soldiers of the
resistance, cutting them into ribbons and spilling their blood on the stained
concrete floor. He heard men screaming, their cries terminating with muted
thunks as flesh met steel.
    Fausto shoved him into the door
and Bryan tore it open just as a volley of arrowheads—heat-seekers, he
supposed—sliced into Ruiz’s midsection. They exited through his stomach and
slapped into the wooden door with a sharp twang.
    Bryan screamed and pulled
Fausto’s limp form into the closet. Outside, carnage raged. He could hear
Verlander shouting instructions and then there was a furious explosion, the
building shaking as if it sat on an awakening fault.
    “Oh, Jesus! Fausto…can you hear
me?” Bryan knelt at the man’s side, applying pressure to his wounds. “Fausto!
Fuck! Come on, Fausto!”
    Those sleepy eyes opened. He
smiled, a thin film of blood coating his teeth. “Is it finished, Bryan?”
    Norton wasn’t sure. It had grown
still outside—particles of dust and grime drifted beneath the closet door.
    “Can you…can you walk? We’ll go
out together, Fausto. We’ll get you some help and get you home to your Carmen.”
    Ruiz’s smile widened. “My Carmen?
Yes, my Carmen…I think I can make it, Bryan Norton, for my Carmen. Let’s…let’s
walk out together.”
    Norton pushed the door open,
revealing a ruin of steel and concrete. The far wall was gone. The forest
loomed behind a curtain of dust.
    Norton supported Ruiz with his
arm around his shoulder. They picked their way over the bodies of the deceased,
around stacks of rubble.
    “Over here,” Verlander croaked.
He knelt near the ruined body of Stump, whose head and chest just peaked out
from beneath a pile of concrete. “He did it. Such a hard man, this little one.
We called him Stump, but his name was Jonathan. Jonathan Kenney.”
    “And now what? Now what do we
do?” Bryan said, his tone plaintive. He wept as he felt the life leaking from
his friend.
    Verlander stood. He bled from
multiple wounds. Three of the metallic shafts protruded from his thigh, held
fast in the solid bone there. When he opened his mouth to speak, blood washed
down onto his shirt.
    “Now?” he coughed. “Well, now we
finish it. Creen’s still here—I can feel him. He’ll go down with the ship, if
it’s starting to flag,” he gagged, a geyser of blood staining a crimson bib
onto his shirt. “Stump sent out a transmission prior to disabling the digital obstacles.
The world knows what we have done here. The world will bear witness. All that’s
left is to finish it.”
    They picked their way across the
floor to the stairwell, moving slowly, their footsteps echoing heavily on the
iron grating as they descended into the bowels of the brewery.
    There was a dimly lit corridor at
the bottom of the stairs. “A bunker…at the end of the hallway,” Verlander
panted. He was losing steam quickly. Fausto nodded in and out of consciousness.
    Norton was confused. How could he
do this himself?
    He stopped midway down the
corridor, propping Ruiz against the wall. “Wait for me, Fausto. I’m going to
get you some help.”
    The man with the sleepy eyes
smiled in return. Verlander slumped heavily against the wall, confusion
spreading on his features. “What are you…”
    “I need you both to wait here,
Alain. Wait for me. I’ll meet with the general.”
    Verlander looked exhausted, his
hooded eyes and gore-streaked beard telling the story of a man in his final
hour. “God be with you then, Norton.” He stumbled, caught himself against the
wall and slid into a seated position.
    Bryan smiled as the wounded men
leaned against each other, forming a crux of support in that dark place. He
shrugged out of his rifle, opting instead for Verlander’s sidearm.
    He walked to the end of the
hallway. The door before him had a pane of frosted glass— LABOR stenciled
on the front in black ink.
    “General Creen,” Norton called,
his