Posted: 2007-09-29 07:29am
More, moorreee...
Ask and you shall receive. The thirteenth chapter of DINO EATER!
Twilight now. The coming of dawn marked the beginning of a new day, but as the sun had yet emerged from the horizon, the jungle was still submerged in something that was less than darkness, but not quite daylight either.
Fidel listened. The jungle was alive, waking animals began making their morning calls. Birds cawed and hooted and chirped, filling the jungle with their calls and cries. From miles away, the yawns of lazy howler monkeys could be heard, their form of protest against the end of their peaceful slumber. Nocturnal creatures were now turning over for it was no longer their time, and so their sounds were replaced by new noises, so that no one would forget that the jungle never truly slept – that the jungle was always awake, always alive.
Fidel’s hard teeth crushed the rat’s bones and his canines sliced through flesh. In the Amazon, the rodents had a varied but balanced diet that contributed to the…grain of their meat. He chewed it up, one hard bite crunching the rat’s skull like some cashew, and he ran his tongue over it all – the meat, the fluids, the viscera, even the fur. Savoring the taste. The jungle never let anything to waste, and neither did Fidel.
He swallowed the masticated mouse with a series of gulps and moved on to his second course – disc-shaped jungle fungus he found growing on the bark of a felled tree trunk, a hollow tree trunk that was also the previous residence of a certain rodent. He was sitting on the felled tree right now and savoring the wretched taste of the mushrooms – it was like eating styrofoam.
Fidel unscrewed his canteen and took a sip to down it all and wash the taste out of his oral cavity. He placed the canteen back in its pouch and noticed the lonely can of rations in his other pocket. Its contents probably tasted leagues better than his course of mouse and mushrooms…but he didn’t want to eat it, at least not now. It would be just wasteful and uncalled for.
The essence of survival, Fidel reasoned to himself, was conservation. Sitting down while eating and drinking conserved energy, as did taking regular rests, and ammunition had to be spent carefully in the jungle, as well as battery power, for some of these things couldn’t be recovered or reused. Fidel would open that little tin can only when it was the right time. Right now, he would stick to skewering rodents with his survival knife (not his close-quarters combat knife – he carried more than one knife, for varied purposes).
Fidel tried the Enriques’ radio frequency again, but there was no response, just like before. Fidel contacted the Major, who was worried – with the Enriques incommunicado, Fidel just lost a vital means of navigation and exfiltration. The Major suggested contacting L, if that was possible.
“L…are you there?”
“Fidel, it’s you! Are you alright? I was worried… I’ve had to wait for hours, your friends won’t let me out until you finished ‘your mission’. Please tell me you’re done Fidel…” she sounded tired, exhausted. If only she knew.
“I’m sorry, L, but this is far from over.”
There was a frustrated sigh. “Why? What are you doing in the jungle, anyway? I know you’re not really a conservationist, what’s going on?”
“L, I can’t tell you what’s going on. Just hang on, okay? I’m… still on the trail of that Allosaurus.”
“Fidel…don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not-”
Suddenly, the exhaustion was gone from her voice and in its place was an edge Fidel wasn’t expecting. “Fidel, did you know that I was one of the paleobiologists the US government consulted after the incident at Isla Norte? They asked me and Grant, since we actually got to visit the island once, about GenInc’s dinosaurs. We were just consultants and they practically interrogated us. Why? Because the dinosaurs ‘got loose’. That was their explanation, but I know there’s more to it than that.
What they told us was just like any other cover story they feed people whenever some rogue experiment’s escaped, or when they don’t want people to know the damage the last extraterrestrial attack did. I told them GenInc was creating altered dinosaurs. I told them that Lemonde, the CEO, bragged about getting the interests of some governments. Let me ask you, Mr. Fidel Castro, what would governments want with recreating and altering dinosaurs?”
“I honestly don’t know, L.”
“Please. Before GenInc was preoccupied with its dinosaur park, it was an all-purpose genetics and biotech company, it had branches on everything including a bioweapons division. They might’ve not told us what exactly happened on that island, why none of GenInc’s employees managed to come back home, but I think I have a pretty good picture of what’s going on, don’t you?”
Though she couldn’t see it, Fidel was nodding his head and muttering something unintelligible.
“And now you’re in the Amazon, asking me about dinosaur ‘weak-spots’ and vulnerabilities. I can’t leave my room because I have help you through radio like it’s some life-or-death matter. Then, for hours, you were incommunicado. This radio has a call button, you know. I tried giving you a few rings, but I couldn’t raise you,” she snorted. “There wasn’t even an answering machine…”
“Heh…”
“When they told me that a ‘conservationist’ needed a radio contact with ‘detailed information’ on dinosaurs just days after the US government asked me about GenInc’s runaway experiments, I knew something was up. So, let’s stop pretending, Mr. Castro.”
“Alright. But do me a favor, Ellie.”
“Yeah, what?”
“Call me Fidel.”
The mercenaries were spread out in search formation. Nightvision goggles were of no use with the coming of day and neither were flashlights, yet nonetheless the twilight ensured low-visibility conditions in the deep jungle underbrush – conditions that obscured and hindered the hunt.
The mercs fanned out, for shortly after they found Eduardo’s neutralized team, Castro’s trail had run cold and disappeared completely.
Multiple squads were assigned to the search to increase the odds of finding Fidel Castro, and to decrease the odds of his survival. They maintained radio contact with the base, each squad having at least one radioman and each squad radioing in every few minutes – if a squad failed to make a routine transmission, then they would be presumed lost.
As they brushed through the rampant vines and bushes, the squads neared one of the Corporation’s ‘perimeter extenders’, a camouflaged tree platform made out of steel bars and railings, and the men posted to it shrugged. They saw no one pass through this way, they said.
The search party went on deeper into the jungle, splintering into units that were nonetheless composed of more men than a single squad.
They were wary in their search. Word had spread of their quarry’s unnatural ability to avoid detection, of how Eduardo’s squad had been felled by weaponless means. Of how Fidel Castro was shackled and restrained while dispatching the mercs with silent efficiency. Some of them had seen the squad leader, Eduardo, being hauled off in a stretcher, his face bloated and discolored, his mouth rimmed with froth.
Some of the men were superstitious and crossed themselves, others were having second thoughts about working for the Corporation despite the generous payments they would be sending back home to their families. A few were desperate city scum now regretting ever setting foot into the jungle. Most of them just wanted this to be over with.
They moved slowly and carefully, avoided making noise, silently placed themselves behind trees and other forms of cover and concealment. Their quarry had freed himself of his restraints and had relieved Eduardo’s squad of their gear, which meant he now had weapons. He could now strike at any time of his choosing.
They had to kill him first.
Like the rest, Mendoza had sheathed his machete and slowly crept through the bushes and vines, parting them with his hands. He had smeared his face with mud to conceal himself and carried on his back an RPK machinegun. He bent down to the ground to look for trails but found none. Slowly, he moved forward.
He was hesitant, a bit nervous, he looked to his side and saw a squadmate scanning the jungle with sharp eyes. Before becoming a mercenary, Mendoza was a government soldier and had heard stories about a named Fidel Castro who helped those pesky communist rebels, and he laughed, thinking they were talking about Cuba’s undying President. But now he knew.
He looked to his other side and saw the rest of his men, along with two other squads, silent in their careful progression through the jungle. There was a sound of rustling leaves and they all brought their weapons up to bear. A jungle parrot screeched as it flew off a branch high up in the trees, searching for breakfast perhaps, and the mercs collectively relaxed their trigger-fingers.
Someone laughed, someone else told him to shut up, and Mendoza shushed the both of them.
Mendoza wondered why that pale-skinned gringo didn’t send his little team of stormtroopers out. Probably thought they were worth more than ragtag latino mercs. But if that was so, then why were those other gringos sent out into the jungle as well? There was that guy in the cowboy boots…
Mendoza stopped when he noticed a torn vine hanging in front of him.
He held out a closed fist for all to see and the mercs became as still as the trees.
Slowly and carefully, Mendoza took the torn vine with his hands. It looked like it had been cut by a blade. He looked forward and saw none of the mercs ahead, and remembered that they weren’t using their machetes.
Then he saw something else, a broken branch, which told him that someone had just passed by recently. He looked down and saw what looked like a footprint in the mud.
Mendoza turned his head sideways. Puckering his lips, he made a high-pitched birdcall, a repeating tsi-sound, catching the attention of the squad radioman. The radioman looked and Mendoza made a hand-signal that told him to call the base. Then, after another hand-gesture, the squad drew their weapons and moved out.
Mendoza tore off the cloth cover of his RPK machinegun and slapped on a drum magazine – one hundred rounds of 7.62 mm full metal jacketed death.
The hunt was on.
“Did you get all that, Major?” Fidel asked.
“Yes. We knew L once visited GenInc’s dinosaur park and acted as a consultant, but we never thought she knew this much.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing. In fact, the more she knows, then the better she can help us. It’s not our fault if the Americans can’t keep a lid over their own dirty laundry, is it?”
“No, it’s not. Hrm…” Fidel got off the tree trunk he was sitting on, pulled the earpiece off his ear and crouched low. For several long seconds, he listened to the sounds of the jungle – the birds. Then he replaced his earpiece.
“Fidel, what’s wrong?”
“I just heard a Blackpoll Warbler…”
“Fidel, the Amazon is full of noisy birds. Are you hungry or something?”
“Those birds don’t migrate back to South America for another half-year. Major, I’ll call you later.”
The mercenaries were crouched low, camouflage blending in with foliage, gun barrels sticking out of bushes, between leaves and branches, each gunman making sure to intersect his line of fire with another while covering all angles. The squads had spread out, forming a wall that would have ambushed their prey. Had he actually been there.
“We’ve lost him again,” Mendoza scowled, spitting the words out like a curse. The tracks they were following had abruptly ceased to exist and, once again, they had succeeded in failing to find their mark.
“It doesn’t make sense,” a merc in a ski mask shook his head. He was down on one knee, examining a vestige of a footprint. “It’s like the guy just disappeared.”
“Miedra.” Mendoza sighed, turning on the safeties of his machinegun with a click.
“Someone should radio the base, tell them we lost him.”
“And have them think we’re idiotas? No way, José.”
“Then what do we tell them?”
“Just tell them we’re still on his trail.”
“But there is no trail.”
“Then we’ll have to look harder, won’t we? The man can’t just disappear without a trace…where the hell could he be hiding?”
“Maybe…” José trailed off. Slowly, he pointed to the trees and immediately Mendoza saw it too, a vine that was overstretched, hanging off a branch and ending just a few feet shy of the ground. “He’s using the trees.”
Mendoza turned off the safeties of his RPK and, as one, the mercenaries rose up to continue the pursuit.
Fidel waited for them to leave the motion detector’s range, counted the passing seconds, the passing breaths, waited for the tiny blips and dots to disappear one by one. He ignored the orange centipede as it crawled all the way up his backside, went over the rear of his neck, and then passed by his grimacing face.
Too close, Fidel thought. If that fake birdcall hadn’t given them away, the mercs would have been all over him – and he would have been dead.
In the battlefield, luck was often just as important as skill – survival often hinged upon the mistakes and failures of the enemy. But one should never rely upon the shortcomings of the enemy to survive, Fidel cautioned himself. That, in itself, was a grave mistake. In the battlefield, mistakes killed.
Fidel crawled out of the hollow tree trunk and crouched low.
He pulled out a map previously procured from Eduardo’s convulsing half-corpse, and a compass. N had given him coordinates – inconvenient coordinates that would take him hours to reach, factoring in the obstruction of the jungle and the evasion of enemy patrols. Maybe even a day.
There was no other choice though; he knew it and so too did the Major. In their heightened alert levels, the facilities would be impossible to infiltrate without assistance.
Fidel would have to detour around the patrolling search-squads…
“He’s not in the trees,” Mendoza said quietly to himself. He turned around to face José.
“What?”
“He’s not in the trees,” Mendoza repeated himself. “No broken branches, no trail, nothing except that vine that threw us off.”
“He’s a sneaky fucker…” José trailed off.
“Very sneaky,” Mendoza agreed. He raised a closed fist, signaling the search party to stop once more.
They stopped. Each squad was fanned out and divided into three-man teams spread over the underbrush, each man watching the other’s back as they advanced through the jungle. At Mendoza’s signal, everyone stopped moving. A few looked at him in confusion as he quietly rushed past them, going from the point of their formation to the rear. As he passed by the fire teams, pausing only to relay hand-signaled commands, so too did they alter their heading appropriately. José, Mendoza’s subordinate, relayed the message on to the others and went over to the radioman.
With another hand-signal, the search party changed course. Men about-faced while a few remained to cover their flanks, the rear-guard themselves about-facing and moving out only when signaled by shoulder-taps. No longer advancing as one, the mercenaries formed smaller groups and disseminated. Some of them advanced as point squads, while others were slower in their movements, staying back to provide distant cover. The squads didn’t proceed in a straight line, but instead opted for curved divergent routes that would temporarily fan them out, but their paths would lead them to converge some distance later – reforming back into one unit. By fanning out they would cover more ground, but by converging later on, they could perform headcounts and ensure that they weren’t getting picked off one by one.
They were going to flank their quarry.
John Doe walked carelessly through the jungle, humming a tune in his head and trying not to get lost. He was looking at his tactical radar, which was chained onto his belt like a fancy pocket watch, watching blips that represented the mercs fan out in a distinct pattern, as if they had actually found something – as if they actually had a clue as to where their mark was.
John yawned. He had spent the wee hours of the morning searching for some slippery spic and these mercs had spent the whole morning acting like they actually knew what they were doing, like as if they were on the verge of finding the guy, and their constant radioing was getting tiring. Three times now, they had found the mark’s trail, lost it, found it again and then lost it again – like some game of jungle fever hide-and-seek. John yawned. He was tired of the jungle, it was hot and miserable, the mud was messing up his (expensive) cowboy duds, and there was nothing to do but chase runaway prisoners and catch malaria. Why money-grubbing supervillains were out here tooling in the jungle in the first place, he had no clue, but he didn’t really care. He wasn’t paid to think about things, he was paid to kill things.
That’s what he did, the only thing he did. He was a completely average-looking guy, he wasn’t tall or intimidating or anything, lacked any menacing scars and evil deformities whatsoever, and the folks back over at the orphanage even had the bright idea of giving him a mind-numbingly unimaginative name (John Doe was his real name). But underneath that utterly unremarkable exterior, though, he had a really nifty trick. In such a competitive job market, you had to have a nifty trick in order to stand out.
His trick: he was so good that he didn’t even need a gun. However the hell that worked (he never really bothered figuring it out).
He was just that damn good. So good that finding a good self-respecting job as an evil henchman for a bunch of supervillain megalomaniacs was, to him, just a matter of checking the classified ads and printing out a resume on a piece of bond paper.
Hench-manning at a posh volcano island lair in the Caribbean, that’s what he was looking forward to when he got himself employed. Beforehand, he just went by doing nifty tricks and blowing people’s brains out back in Crowtalon City, US of A, doing small-time jobs for everyone with a shiny penny. How in hell he ended up in a shithole jungle without any malaria medicine, he had no clue.
Truth be told, he had a bad feeling about this. That kid Ted nearly had his eyes gouged out, or that’s what the mercs were saying. Poor kid.
“Heh,” John said to himself. “I’m not gonna end up like that, no way-” Then his earpiece microbead began beeping, prompting him to place a finger on his ear. “Hello?”
He heard the cold monotone of that albino. “Slinger, Number 13. Proceed to the following coordinates. The target has been acquired.”
“About damned time,” John Doe, the Slinger, exclaimed as he worked his hands and made clicking-cocking mechanical sounds with his mouth. “Click-click ka-chick-chick!”
As the hunt began for the Slinger, the sun slowly made its ascent over the horizon, casting golden beams of orange light that gently seeped through the canopy. He looked up and saw a flock of bright emerald green birds resting on a tree branch and as the sunlight glistened off their bright feathers, they started to sing.
Maybe the jungle wasn’t so bad after all.
Fidel placed three leaves in his mouth, underneath his tongue. After tasting them for a full minute and noting no reaction, which meant that they were safe to eat, he then chewed them up, swallowed them, and began picking more leaves of the same kind. With the recent rain and the coming of dawn, the leaves were moist with droplets of dew, making them ideal sources of quick sustenance.
After sucking the moisture out of a handful of leaves, Fidel chewed them thoroughly into green cud and swallowed. On a nearby tree trunk, a rare herbivorous monitor lizard greeted the rising sun with a throaty sound.
Startled, Fidel snapped his head sideways towards the noise but relaxed after finding its source. The lizard flicked its tongue at Fidel and enthusiastically slapped its tail against the tree trunk in rapid-fire succession, making even more noise.
“Heh,” Fidel scoffed. He returned his attention back to the direction he was traversing but quickly shielded his eyes from the sunlight’s glare, the orange-yellow beams of dawnlight that stabbed through the wounded jungle canopy.
The burst of machinegun fire went through the jungle like a stream of supersonic steel scything through flimsy vegetation, the rapport of deafening gunfire silencing the morning chorus of birds and bugs while a stray bullet turned a particularly noisy lizard into a spray of tiny guts.
In the instant the lizard exploded, Fidel was already in the process of throwing himself onto the ground. He landed behind a convenient shrub-shrouded tree and reflexively drew his CQC knife (not his survival knife) and his silenced pistol, and then began an immediate situation assessment – viewing his equipped motion detector while crouching low and trying to get a visual of his assailants.
Four mercenaries, one at the center-rear letting off suppressive fire with his RPK, two at the sides carefully advancing from the left and the right while pausing to fire off quick bursts, the fourth one far back with a radio.
Bullets hissed past Fidel’s tree cover, making snapping sounds as leaves were torn into bits and branches were pulverized into splinters. He could actually feel some of the bullets that landed into the trunk of his particular tree, felt the impact of three shots in rapid succession, exploding bark and splinters, and he could tell just from the vibrations how close the projectiles were to overpenetrating and finding their way into his torso. If they had armor-piercing bullets, it would’ve been all over. And if the two mercs got too close, the tree would soon lose its cover value entirely – they would know exactly where he was hiding, rather than just have a fix on his general location.
Fidel peeked, carefully.
“I see him!” the merc to (Fidel’s) left shouted and pointed. “Over there!”
“Behind that tree!” the one at the other left replied and fired.
The two of them went from shooting towards a general direction to shooting at their target’s tree-cover in particular.
Fidel fired three shots. The silenced pistol was but a whisper amidst the gunfire of three automatic rifles. The merc to the right fell with a sharp jerk, .45 rounds homing into the bright red bandana wrapped around his head.
The merc to the left turned to see his comrade jerk back sharply before crumpling to the mud. He screamed in disbelief as he saw the lingering red mist that came out of his friend’s skull, illuminated in the dawnlight. He was about to face the enemy and return fire when, three shots later, he joined his friend.
Mendoza, behind them at the center providing suppressive fire with his RPK, saw his two men fall in less than ten seconds. He was too far back to hear them point out the target’s location, so in a vain attempt to get their killer, he simply swept his machinegun from one side to the other, spraying all over the jungle and sending lead flying everywhere. The enemy had a silencer, his weapon didn’t make muzzle-flashes, so Mendoza couldn’t zero in on him. Mendoza ducked behind a tree just as a bullet whizzed past his head, he went down on his belly in a prone position and returned full-auto fire.
“We found him,” the radioman said urgently, pressing his walkie hard against his ear. “We’ve lost Lito and Tomas, but we’ve got him pinned down.”
“Don’t worry, we’ve relayed your location to HQ. We’re on our way, just pin him down. Don’t let him out of your sights, we’ll be there!”
“Miedra!” Mendoza cursed as he felt the hard recoil against his shoulder, the feel of his machinegun kicking as it spewed out lead. He paused to catch a breath and to shout, which helped in firing automatic weapons. “Maricon!” he cried as he resumed firing, an act that deforested the radius of foliage immediately before him.
Shrubs and ferns were torn to pieces, their flimsy bodies uprooted and scattered all over, while the larger trees were stabbed full of holes and had their branches brutally amputated. Dust, from the gunfire and the spent casings, was picked up and the dirt and mud exploded by the bullets was sent flying. Eventually a small mound of spent casing formed near where Mendoza was lying down.
“Motherfucker!” Mendoza gasped in finality. He ceased firing and slowly got up -
Then, from a mutilated tree, he saw something coming his way, something small and metallic that gleamed in the sunlight as it flew through the air in an arcing parabolic path. It landed near him and, instinctively, he cried out and threw himself as far away from it as possible. “Grenade!”
As the distant gunman leapt for dear life, Fidel got up and bolted for the jungle. He pulled up his sleeve and toggled his camouflage index, forgoing the pre-set patterns and setting it to active chameleonic instead. He would be, literally, a chameleon. As he disappeared into the underbrush, the Subsistence Suit turned into a living thing – its ‘skin’ blending and seemingly merging with the colors of the jungle.
Seconds passed. Mendoza was in the process of getting off his prone position when he had to unceremoniously leap out of the grenade’s possible blast radius. In that bad posture, he wasn’t really able to jump too far. But the grenade never exploded, and a confused Mendoza got up to find himself surrounded by backup. The cavalry.
The mercs had formed a ring formation, crouching low and covering every conceivable angle of attack –
“What the hell are you doing?!” Mendoza shouted, breaking whatever composure he had before.
José approached him. “Sir?”
“After him!” Mendoza roared.
As one, the mercs bolted into the jungle, their coordinated hunt now devolving into a chase, like hounds after a fox.
As the squads disappeared into the underbrush, Mendoza cursed at himself and was about to pick up his RPK machinegun when he saw the deadly ‘grenade’ he had so narrowly avoided. An old and half-rusted unmarked can of rations.
“Puta!” Mendoza screamed.
He shouldered his RPK and ran into the jungle.
The Subsistence Suit’s chameleon fabric synthesized the colors of the jungle with liquid reflex, like a living fluid thing, merging with and emulating the different shades and shadows of the surrounding environs. Fidel could feel himself blending in with the very jungle, his skin tingling, sometimes growing numb, as the suit absorbed bioenergy to sustain its active camouflage – coalescing colors flowing like some perpetual canvas of cloth.
He couldn’t outrun his pursuers. They had sighted him, they were too near, and they were too many. Who knows how many squads were in the jungle, converging from different directions towards where they thought he was. In the battlefield, when combat was the last recourse and evasion the objective, if you couldn’t run then you had to hide.
He pressed himself hard against the tree trunk, wrapping his arms and legs around it, insinuating himself upon the rough bark as he willed his pursuers to not see him.
He would wait for them to come and pass. If not, then he would wait for them to come, and then he’d strike.
Quiet now. The shuffling sound of boots crunching the jungle floor of dead and decaying leaves and plant matter. Labored breathing of panting mercs, exhausted by the chase. Whispers of squad-leaders communicating, radiomen muttering to their walkies. With the cessation of violence, the jungle once more resumed in making its noise. Birds sang, insects buzzed, tree apes howled over the distance, water dripped. Heavy weapons were prepped. Bayonets were sheathed.
“He’s hiding nearby,” Mendoza said silently. “Waiting for us to pass on.”
A bead of sweat, a tiny droplet glistening in the sunlight, landed on the ear of a seventeen year old from Peru who had joined the mercenaries with in a bid to earn good money. The salty droplet splattered and he reflexively got off the tree he was leaning on, to turn his head upward and -
Fidel leapt off the tree like a panther pouncing upon its prey. He landed just before the merc who had spotted him, the merc who had just been leaning on the tree. Fidel’s third knife, stolen from a dead merc, was now affixed onto the tip of the Kalashnikov’s barrel. With the momentum of descent, it easily speared through the merc’s neck, breaking through the collarbone and coming out the nape of his back.
A hard kick dislodged the bayonet from the merc’s throat and then Fidel went for the next one. The second merc turned around just in time to see his comrade hit the ground, but before he could even bring his weapon to bear, he felt cold steel slice right under his jawbone, severing his carotid artery. The blood meant for his brain spurted out of the small slit-like wound and, just like that, he was dead.
Fidel had no time to spare. The fourth merc had seen him and was drawing his firearm, and the third merc, upon seeing the reaction of the fourth, was just about to turn around. Before he could, though, Fidel rammed the bayonet straight through his spine, through the bone and deep into the abdomen. The merc looked down as a syrup-like mix of blood and bile poured from his mouth.
Fidel squeezed the trigger. The impaled mercenary danced like an epileptic as a full automatic fusillade of 7.62x39mm FMJs tore through his abdomen, overpenetrating his frame, violently exploding his internals outwards like visceral confetti. Despite this, the bullets were in no way altered or slowed in their trajectory and easily found their way into the fourth merc, less than ten feet away. The impaled merc danced and the fourth merc danced along, like jerky marionettes. A fifth mercenary, previously unseen, used the fourth as a human shield – just like Fidel with the one impaled on his rifle. With the still-standing dead men between them, the fifth merc reciprocated Fidel’s fusillade with his own automatic spray.
The deafening roar of gunfire that filled the air was accompanied by a fine red mist as neither Fidel nor the fifth merc ceased firing until their clips and magazines were fully emptied, and neither were willing to leave their gruesome covers, certainly not out of respect for the dead, to expose themselves to the other’s fire. Not until they both ran out of ammo and the two dead mercs finally ceased their jerking dance of death. The fifth merc ejected his spent magazine, which landed on the ground at the exact same moment as the two dead gunmen. Quickly, he pulled out a fresh clip and –
Leaving the Kalashnikov and the bayonet stuck on the impaled merc, Fidel went over to the fifth merc. Before the gunman could reload his weapon, Fidel summarily knifed him in the chest – sliding the steel blade between the ribs in an angle that went straight into his heart. Fidel retracted, withdrew and sheathed his CQC knife and then took the fifth merc’s weapon, reloading it for him.
Though the five mercs were dead, by now everyone else was well aware of what was going on. There were dozens of mercs spread over the jungle, some were too far away to be of any threat, but others were dangerously close.
Fidel got down to a crouch and went for cover as gunfire exploded the jungle foliage all around him and filled the air with the echoes of roaring reports. Bullets whizzed, hissed, popped and snapped, and Fidel winced as a few went past him too close for comfort, one of them even shearing off the fluttering tail-end of his bandana. He threw himself behind the largest tree he could find and returned fire.
A group of three were trying to flank him from his 3 o’ clock and he fired a semi-automatic double tap. Vietnamese tactics training taught that engaging enemies with a weapon set to full-automatic was wasteful, inaccurate and inefficient, with an unacceptable hit probability – in a gun battle like this, Fidel had to be accurate and efficient, maximizing the killing potential of every round that exited his weapon’s barrel, ensuring that every movement he made was for the ultimate goal of survival. The first round tore through the meager cover, the second landed dead center in a man’s chest, keeling him over as the tiny gunshot wound spurted copious amounts of blood. One of the mercs knelt over the injured man and began hauling him away; the other began spraying indiscriminately at Fidel’s general direction. The follow-up punched two holes in his chest, one in each lung.
Next, a group of six came in at Fidel’s 9 o’ clock and he spun around, firing another double tap. The burst punctured through the leading man’s abdomen, not killing him outright but making him an eventual dead man nonetheless. The rounds overpenetrated and knocked down the man behind him, who was either in a flak vest or very lucky, as he would later recover and drag his friend, screaming belly-bleeding point man in front of him, to a place where he could bleed out in peace. Fidel fired again, this time in single shots tuned in to the rhythm of his breathing – one shot per cycle. One shot went into a merc’s shoulder, the next through a neck, another into and out of a hip with a bloody explosion of fragmenting pelvic bone, then the next shots missed entirely – but the remainder of the group were already hitting the ground for cover, or hitting the ground because they were dead.
Then Fidel let out a short-spray, aimed at the largest and nearest group of mercs shooting at him. It wasn’t precise or efficient or accurate, none of the rounds found their mark, but the more cautious mercs intent on staying alive were forced into cover. Fidel left his cover and dashed as fast as humanly possible towards another tree, to establish distance. If they got too close, cover wouldn’t matter and they could just fill him with lead from all angles.
A well-aimed stream of lead, perhaps from a fixed or stationary machinegun, exploded the ground right behind Fidel, picking up a fountain of mud, dirt and decayed plant matter where his feet had just been half-seconds ago. Fidel did a baseball slide that brought him behind another abnormally thick tree.
Fidel panted, breathed hard, in and out, in sync with the rhythmic machinegun rounds hammering his cover. He got down really low, on his belly, just as some of the rounds overpenetrated the sides of the trunk. He took a peek and fired another doubletap and he was rewarded by the sounds of screaming. The rounds had struck a man in the leg and as he bled out, two of his friends tried desperately to keep him alive. Fidel kept count, he replaced the magazine, slapped in a fresh clip and fired more two-shot bursts, carefully calculated to break up the merc’s formations. There were screams and yelps as Fidel aimed to injure, to cripple his hunters as best he could. Then he tried to move on to another cover position before they could enclose him.
Mendoza gritted his teeth as he wrestled with the gun’s recoil, sending round after round in a torrent of steel at the pendejo, that running chickenshit. He screamed as loudly as he could as the RPK buckled, kicking his shoulder, spitting out brass casings from its side. He laughed as dust and dirt was picked up by rounds just missing the puta, he couldn’t make it to his cover and now he was lying on the ground. Cornered.
Mendoza whistled sharply to a merc with aviator shades who was smoking a fat joint. The merc, whose name was Meralco, grinned his rotten yellow teeth and brought out the tube-shaped weapon.
Mercs gathered around Meralco in anticipation as his buddy slid the rocket-propelled grenade into the launcher, and they all winced and covered their ears when the rocket ignited. The RPG screamed a high-pitched wailing and left behind a bluish contrail, streaking across the jungle and detonating in a blast of smoke-seared magenta.
“Whatcha gonna do now, puta?” Mendoza laughed. He turned to José and his squad mates, to tell the radioman to give HQ a final ‘status report’.
Fidel gritted his teeth, covered his ears and opened his mouth, as the concussion and blast wave subsided. Dirt rained down on him, while dead leaves floated in the air, swaying like in some invisible aerial current.
The sound returned to his ears with some ringing and he groaned. Sporadic gunfire whizzed by, aimed at his general direction, and he decided to stay down lest they realize he was still alive.
A tree had its base blown off by the RPG and it fell slowly, as if cut down by a lumberjack’s axe. It landed by Fidel, blocking him from the view of the mercs.
Mendoza saw the small metallic thing fly from where Fidel was, it arced down a parabolic angle and landed in a nearby bush.
”It’s a trick! It’s just another can of - ” Mendoza was shouting. And then he exploded.
At the sight of their leader getting blown into barely-recognizable shrapnel-encrusted bits along with some of their friends, the mercs gathered by Meralco wasted no time in loading another RPG into the launcher.
“Shit, Mendoza’s dead! Shit!” one of them cried out.
“Shoot the rocket, man. Blow the shitter up!”
“Shut up! He can’t shoot it if he doesn’t know where-”
“Fuck it!”
“We have to wait for…there!”
Almost groggily, Fidel got up to his feet and staggered. He shook the dirt off his head and turned to face the gathered mercs.
“Fire!” they screamed as one.
Fidel drew his sidearm and aimed.
The rocket motor ignited, blasting a tail of fire and smoke as it left the launcher with a violent shriek and streaked –
The .45 round slammed into the RPG’s impact fuse, detonating the rocket before it could even travel a meter’s distance.
The resounding explosion sent a plume of acrid black smoke and gouts of orange flame up into the air. As the dust settled, those who were not outright killed by the detonation were sprawled all over the jungle floor. The moans of those who were maimed and torn to pieces, screams of anguish over severed limbs, cries of pain. Those who suffered only minor cuts and wounds couldn’t carry on the pursuit of their target and instead just tended to their dying comrades.
Fidel staggered through the jungle, shaken but not quite stirred. If those mercs had any concern for their comrades, then they would abandon the pursuit to help as many of their injured as possible. Even squads composed of intact mercs wouldn’t carry on the chase, they wouldn’t leave their dead behind to be claimed by the jungle.
It was close, Fidel thought. But no cigar.
He leaned on a tree to catch his breath, to reconnoiter his new surroundings and get a bearing on his location. Even if the mercs were going to pull off, others would no doubt be sent to find him – he would have to move quickly to put some distance while he still had a temporary reprieve.
The terrain was going to get uneven, the trees and foliage were already thinning out, the ground was rocky, and all over were large stones, man-sized marble blocks partially covered in green mold, with their smoothened surfaces interrupted by lines seemingly carved onto its surface. Fidel could just barely make out the sounds of flowing water, a nearby stream maybe. Flowing water usually smoothened rocks, wearing their surface down in time, though they usually didn’t carve symmetrical lines into stones.
Fidel consulted his map. The coordinates N gave him led to this general area, which in turn led uphill. The map also showed a small stream nearby. Fidel re-checked his compass, just to be sure he was heading the right way.
There was a narrow path covered in flat stones leading up the inclination. Fidel scowled, the footpath and the carved marble stones looked like ruins of some kind. The path’s stones were covered in mold, just like the marble, meaning that they haven’t been used in a while…
Fidel decided to risk the path. The inclination was barely a hill and as soon as Fidel went over the top, the trek uphill became a half-slide downwards as the mold-encrusted ‘cobblestones’ of the pathway proved slippery. Fidel ended up sliding on top of a carved block, this one much larger than the previous ones on the other side.
“Ruins,” Fidel muttered, finding himself in an area of flattened ground dotted by similar marble blocks, decayed edifices that once stood high before the jungle reclaimed what was rightfully its, monuments something now long since dead. Below, the ground was covered in loosely spaced cobblestones that formed a kind of courtyard. Because the ground had been cleared, the lack of shade prompted lesser vegetation like grass - usually rare in dark forests – to grow out of the gaps between the cobbles in an outpouring of verdant green. Without trees to cling to, tendrilous vines snaked across the decrepit yard, some of them finding purchase on the scattered marble blocks. Bisecting the courtyard was a crumbled wall, a heap of rubble and bricks and flowering blossoms mounding at its base, though parts of it still stood in defiance to nature’s will. Here and there were stone pillars, some leaning limply, others lying on the ground.
Nonetheless, this was still the jungle, and surrounding the courtyard’s clearing was the darkness of the underbrush, and two streams running parallel on either side of the yard – forming a kind of moat. At the edges of the courtyard, the streams would overflow and water would seep between the outlying cobblestones. There in those shallows, tiny frogs and fishes swam, only to be scooped out of the water by swooping kingfishers.
From the crumbled mid-yard wall, a golden-yellow butterfly lifted off a flower petal and glided into the air, as if carried by the wind. Its wings fluttered and it flew high.
High up in the sky, the clouds that obscured the morning sun melted away, surrendering to the harsh light. Thus, the sun’s radiant light came down upon the courtyard clearing, at first touching the fluttering butterfly, and at this touch, the insect’s golden-yellow wings slowly wilted, like a dying leaf, turning brown and then scattering into many small pieces. The butterfly died, and so too did the vines and blossoms and grasses on the courtyard. As one they dried and wilted and turned light brown, as if the very ground was poison to their roots.
Then, Fidel grunted as he was struck by a hot wind, a harsh gust that carried clumps of dead dry grass across the courtyard. Whatever the hell was happening…Fidel readied to equip his .45 and CQC knife while protecting his eyes from the flying dust.
“FIDEL!” someone shouted over the wind.
“Huh?!” Fidel scanned the ruins for the source of the voice.
There, standing on a pillar on the opposite side of the courtyard, was a man in a brown leather jacket and…cowboy boots. He opened his arms, spreading his hands apart in a gesture. Fidel could see no visible weapons on him…
“Who are you?!” Fidel demanded.
“I’m John Doe, the Slinger!” he said with a cocky grin. “I’m here to kill you. And unlike that Bloodsucker kid, I’m gonna get the job done.”
“Hrm,” Fidel scowled, not liking the setup at all. “You’re unarmed.”
“Of course,” the jacketed wearing gunman said, before he spun around on a cowboy boot-heel, doing a 360 and then stopping to spread his arms again. “I’m the Slinger, the gunslinger who doesn’t need a gun.” He pointed the index and middle fingers of a hand at Fidel and bent his thumb. His eyes locked with Fidel’s, and then he smiled. “Bang.”
As if in reflex, Fidel hurled himself off the marble block he was standing on, curling himself into a ball. He landed on his back, and as he felt his spine scream in pain, he used the fall’s momentum to roll back onto his feet and then lunge forward into the cover of a felled pillar.
Fidel gritted his teeth, placed a hand on his sore back, and drew his weapons of choice – equipping his .45 and CQC knife.
That man, the Slinger, had no gun but Fidel felt a bullet just narrowly missing him in that half-second it took for him to leap off the stone block. Fidel knew he had just narrowly avoided getting his brains shot out the back of his head, but the man had no gun. He just pointed with his fingers and went…
“Bang!”
Shattered stone was sent flying; Fidel could feel a bullet striking the pillar. He could even make out the ping of the round ricocheting off the rock.
“Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!”
It didn’t make any sense!
John Doe grinned. Good way to start the fight, the guy actually didn’t pull a gun out on him while he was busy talking. John shrugged, he wasn’t usually talkative, but just this once… Well, if the positions were reversed, the Slinger sure wouldn’t waste time in plugging some noisy dick full of lead – albeit invisible lead. From an invisible gun.
“Bang!” John said, for emphasis. Then he fired a couple more shots at where his mark was pinned down. “Bang! Bang!”
The Slinger flicked on his microbead radio.
“Number 13 here,” came the cold monotone of the albino arch-henchman.
“13, Slinger. I’ve found him,” John Doe reported. “I’m in some kind of ruin…anyway, I’ve got him in my sights.”
“Good. Engage him, shoot to kill.”
“Great. Tell Mister Hunt to ready my paycheck, here I come!” John exclaimed, leaping off the pillar as a flock of doves, or some kind of dove-like jungle birds, flew past him and his swirling jacket. “BOOM!”
Fidel saw the Slinger leap off the pillar, and was barely able to get his head down on time when a large chunk of pillar was pulverized by more ‘gunfire’. This time, the effect was like a shotgun blast, from what Fidel could tell, but the gunman didn’t even have a shotgun!
“This doesn’t make any sense!” Fidel growled. He peeked and the man was gone, probably changed position to advance on him – standing on top of a pillar for everyone to see, not tactically sound. Neither was letting an enemy talk on, Fidel snorted, tactically sound.
The guy was no longer in the line of sight, so Fidel took this opportunity to move to another cover, this time one of those large blocks.
Fidel panted. He checked his camouflage index, still set to chameleonic, active camouflage used bioenergy, and that was draining his stamina. Fidel switched the camo into a pre-set one that blended well with the ruin’s environment, and then assumed his CQC stance and carefully –
His earpiece was beeping. Fidel flicked on his radio.
“Fidel,” came the garbled artificially-modulated voice.
“N,” Fidel’s voice was barely a whisper. “I’m being attacked by -”
“The Slinger,” N interrupted. “He can shoot invisible bullets from an invisible gun.”
“What?!”
“He can shoot invisibullets from an invisible gun,” N repeated himself.
“No, that doesn’t…” Fidel groaned internally. “Alright. Okay. I understand. Anything else?”
“Be forewarned, other Problem-Solvers are also after you. Slinger is not the only one.”
“Thanks,” Fidel muttered as the transmission ceased, and then he said to himself: “Really useful.”
Fidel switched over to another frequency.
“Major.”
“Fidel, what’s going on?”
“I’m being engaged by a freak mercenary, someone called John Doe, the Slinger.”
The Major thought this over, and then replied: “Name doesn’t ring a bell. Must be someone new, or imported from America. A freak mercenary, you say? What are his…powers?”
“Apparently he can shoot invisibullets from an invisible gun. I think…if he says ‘bang’, he shoots out handgun-caliber bullets. When he said ‘boom’, it was more like a shotgun blast.”
“Right.” though Fidel couldn’t see it, he could see Major nodding and taking what he just said at face-value.
“Well?” Fidel asked.
“I’ve never heard of a Slinger before, Fidel,” the Major said. “If he is new, then his only advantage over you might be just his powers, and if he’s not from around here, then he’s going to be unfamiliar with jungle terrain. Bang and boom, right?”
“Huh?”
“From what you’ve said, it seems like he has to say bang and boom to shoot his invisible bullets,” the Major thought out loud. “You might want to that…counter it, so to speak.”
“Hmm…”
“In any case, he might have superpowers, but you’re not totally unequipped either,” the Major concluded. “Use your abilities, Fidel, and you’ll gain the upper hand. End the fight quickly and decisively.”
“Right,” Fidel nodded, and then killed the transmission.
Crouching low, the Fidel carefully navigated between the two rectangular blocks, leaning his back against the engraved mold-encrusted surface of the stones. It was all quiet, save for the wind and the flowing stream.
Slowly, he peeked over the corner and scanned, and saw nothing.
Fidel made a silent dash for another one of those ruined blocks, this one with an uprooted pillar draped in dead brown vines leaning precariously on to it. Fidel got down to one knee and equipped his motion sensor.
There was a blip to the eight o’ clock. The sensor didn’t pick up the terrain, it only registered motion, so Fidel had to take another peek to correlate the blip and figure out where it actually was.
Standing behind a pillar.
Fidel slowly crept towards the pillar. The motion detector showed him getting ever closer to the blip.
Fidel stepped on a loose cobblestone, it made a slight noise and Fidel almost winced.
Fidel decided to strike, moving quickly and rounding the pillar, gripping both pistol and CQC knife, ready to kill –
John Doe gazed at his tactical radar and saw, to his surprise, a sort of rippling. He had read the manual that came with the radar device and recalled that ripples were like blips, except ripples where when the radar detected other sensors being used in the area, sensors that were too primitive to mask their own emissions. At the center of that ripple would be…
In one quick motion, John hoisted himself on top of a marble block, pointed both hands forwards and went:
“BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!”
The rapid-fire spray sent countless of invisibullets whizzing past Fidel and he let out a yelp of surprise he ran towards the nearest form of cover. Invisibullets rammed into his chest as he leapt behind a marble monument, knocking the air out of his lungs and bruising his already battered chest. Fortunately, the Subsistence Suit incorporated light body armor, protecting Fidel from some forms of small-arms fire. Didn’t stop it from hurting like hell, though.
“BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!” the Slinger went on. The auto-fire invisibullets were pulverizing stone and picking up dry dirt into the air, forming clouds of obscuring dust.
Fidel compartmentalized the pain, stuck himself out of the block’s other corner and returned fire with his .45. Silencers were less than silent and made a sound that was still louder than a person saying ‘bang’, but an unsilenced gun was truly a loud thing and with the muzzle flash, would’ve made Fidel an easier target to hit. He didn’t have an invisible gun, but at least he had a silencer.
The return fire succeeded in forcing the Slinger off his perch, his vantage point, but as before, midway through the air he let out a mighty: “BOOM!” then he panted, drew in breath, and carried on. “BOOM! Shack-a-lack-a! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!”
Invisible buckshot filled the air, forcing Fidel down into cover as the Slinger too relocated his position.
When the invisi-shotgun blasts ended, Fidel opted to dash towards another location as well. Static positions were ill-advised in the battlefield.
Fidel glanced at his motion-sensor. It was useless the last time, gave a false reading, but now it showed a moving blip that corresponded with where he suspected the Slinger was.
John Doe glanced at his tactical radar, the soliton signals were picking up the signature of Fidel’s motion-sensor.
Fidel got on top of a half-sunken block of marble, spotted a fluttering jacket, and emptied the rest of his .45.
The Slinger leapt forward and spun midair, and as things seemingly slowed down, he realigned himself, aimed both hands and went: “BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!”
Fidel laid prone behind cover as invisibullets whizzed overhead. Placing the knife between his teeth, he began to crawl.
“BOOM!” the Slinger shouted, invisible buckshot filling the air like shotgunners hunting quail.
He checked his tactical radar, the man wasn’t moving. Slinger knew he had tagged him, three in the chest, somehow he could count how much of his invisibullets hit. The ripple-blips were still.
Slinger cocked his hands with a ‘click-click’ and decided to launch some oppressive fire.
“BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!”
Gasped, breathed in and out. Ran forward.
“BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! CHACK-CHACK! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM-SHACK-A-LACK-A! BOOM! BOOM! BANG! BOOM! BOOM!”
Out of breath, mouth getting dry. Continued on.
“BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!”
John Doe leapt on top of the half-sunken block and found…
A motion-detector on the ground.
“Where the hell is he?”
“Shit,” Fidel cursed with the knife still between his teeth, realizing that he had just lost his motion detector. It was an expensive piece of equipment. Didn’t matter, he didn’t need any sensor to survive. In the battlefield…
Fidel got up to a crouch and saw Slinger just ten meters away. Fidel ejected his empty magazine and slid a new one in. There was a click as Fidel worked the slide, chambering a new round.
The Slinger heard, turned his head around, and met Fidel eye to eye.
Fidel brought his sidearm to bear as the Slinger leapt sideways. Things slowed down as Fidel squeezed the trigger in rapid succession, as the Slinger aimed his akimbo-invisiguns, as the ‘bangs’ and the ‘booms’ left his slow-moving lips and as spent brass casings were ejected from Fidel’s pistol.
In a swift motion, the Slinger rolled sideways and disappeared behind another ruin.
Fidel ejected the spent magazine, cautiously moved towards where the Slinger had just been, and found the motion detector. Found it right where the Slinger had stood mere seconds ago.
Motion detectors were active sensors, Fidel recalled. They detected motion by letting out pulses of sound, and those pulses could be detected as well.
Fide deactivated the device and unequipped it.
Now it’s going to be a fair fight, Fidel thought, and then the pillar right beside his head exploded in a shower of pulverized ancient masonry – shotgun-blasted by invisibuckshots.
Fidel hit the ground and got onto his back, crawled using his feet to push his body backwards, and getting behind the half-sunken marble block for cover. He took a quick peek, before the air was literally filled with a rain of invisible buckshots and exploding rock and pulverizing dry dead plants.
“BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!” the Slinger shouted with all his might, pumping and blasting with an invisible shotgun. There, he stood atop a standing-segment of wall that bisected the courtyard’s center. “BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!”
“Guy wants to shout,” Fidel growled, then he unscrewed the silencer and got up to one knee. As the Slinger shouted and fired shotgun-blasts from each hand, Fidel took careful aim amidst the flying debris and buckshots and fired a double-tap. No shout or cry of ‘boom’ could match the echoing retort of the unsilenced .45 rounds, and Fidel grinned in satisfaction as the Slinger gave out a yelp of pain and fell off the wall like a sack of potatoes.
“Now it’s going to be a fair fight,” Fidel repeated himself. Now the hunter was the hunted, and the chase became the pursuit.
Fidel re-attached the silencer and carefully, but quickly, made his way to the wall.
The Slinger panted. He was running out of breath and blood trickled down from somewhere in his body. He cursed, his jacket was ruined. He took it off, found a two holes, one at the sleeve and another at its side, looked down to his chest at the corresponding body part and saw the side of his abdomen was bloodying up.
“Shit,” he cursed and staggered. “Jacket’s ruined.”
John Doe checked his tactical radar and noticed two things. Fidel had switched off his motion detector, the clever bastard. And his mouth was really dry.
He could hear a stream nearby. He was really thirsty.
After scouring the maze-like courtyard and finding nothing, Fidel decided to search the perimeter of the area instead. Silently, he made his way, careful not to step on the wet puddles where the water seeped amidst the cobblestones. Nearby, one of the streams bubbled and flowed, its surface glistening in the harsh sunlight.
Dragonflies buzzed over its surface, some of them hovering in place, others zipping from one place to the next.
Overhead, the clouds had once more obscured the jungle from the harsh sun.
The vines that laced a nearby marble pillar was no longer dry and dying and wilting, but once more became verdant green.
Fidel saw the brown jacket and spared no hesitation, immediately firing three silent shots at the center mass before he even realized that the jacket was being worn by a small tree.
“Bang.”
A flash of white pain blinded Fidel as he felt the invisibullet’s impact on his shoulder blade, the kinetic force jerking him to do a half-pirouette, sending his ass to the ground. He grunted in pain, his weapons fell beyond his reach.
The Slinger dawned over him, pointing an outstretched index and middle finger at his face.
“Why don’t you die?” the freak mercenary asked. Then, with finality: “Ba-”
Like a cobra, Fidel lunged at him in an explosion of ferocity. Fidel twisted Slinger’s hand, disarming him. The Slinger yelled in pain and then brought his other hand, also with two outstretched fingers, to Fidel’s temple. But before he could say anything, Fidel rammed his own hand into the Slinger’s open mouth, and he gripped the gunman’s tongue as hard as he could.
The Slinger tried to let off a shot, but he couldn’t. His remaining hand made feeble clicking noise, but couldn’t fire.
He tried to bite the hand that was in his mouth, sink his teeth in hard.
Fidel winced.
Click.
Click.
Fidel twisted, despite the thirty-odd teeth cutting into the flesh of his hand and fingers.
John Doe tried to scream, tried to bite harder, muffled cries choking in his throat, his free hand trying to pry that vice-like mandible claw off his mouth. He couldn’t, so he tried choking Fidel, but couldn’t, and so he struck the man’s face, clawed, tried to gouge the eyes. The muffled cries and screams that choked in his throat intensified, his eyes were wide open in alarm and fear. He clawed at Fidel’s face, tried to gouge the eyes.
Fidel pulled hard.
There was a horrible wordless scream of pain and anguish as blood and spit spewed out of John Doe, the Slinger’s mouth, flowed out of his mouth so much like water from that nearby stream. He screamed, tears coming out of his eyes, and he fell to his knees and looked up. Looked up at the man who had his tongue in his hands.
Fidel held that slippery bloody thing in his hands, regarded it with disgust, and threw it into the stream.
“Fetch.”
