Battle in the Shade

[FullAuto]

Bear in mind, I've never played the game, so don't cry if I get anything wrong, 'kay? Comments? PM me.

 

Day 1

 

"Shut up, Baker."

Baker shut up.

Parry continued staring down the mountain. Stripped bare of vegetation, it was a blank lifeless expanse, grey and featureless, dotted every few hundred metres with groups of huddled boulders, slumping against each other dispiritedly. The trail wound between them, snakelike, switchbacks and sinuous S-bends. The slope was gentle, the easiest route to the mountaintop. It would have been the most popular route for hillwalkers and the like. Especially under a warm sun and clear sky.

Before the Fall.

"Get Hudson and Hicks down here." Parry sipped from a water bottle.

It splashed quietly when he shook it. Not much left.

"The other slopes?" He tucked the bottle away in a belt pouch.

"North and south are nearly vertical. East is one big landslide." Baker ran a hand through his short blonde hair and squatted next to Parry.

He was short and stocky, bloodshot blue eyes fixed downhill. His mouth was set in a perpetual sneer and his voice was always a whine.

Parry was taller and slimmer, brown hair and eyes that were so dark as to be black. He turned them on Baker. "Make sure there's someone at the top of each slope with a shotgun."

"We've only got one pump-"

"A double-barrel will do." Parry cut him off, as was his habit.

Baker gritted his teeth. "We don't have much-"

"I know. Nothing for the SA-80s. Couple of mags of nine millimetre. I've got about twenty rounds for the Mausers. Best thing is, we've got almost two hundred shotgun cartridges."

"Be dead before we can use them." Baker sighed, giving in and sitting down.

"Get up off your arse. Go get Hudson and Hicks." Parry raised the binoculars hanging round his neck to his eyes.

The right lens was cracked, cataract-fractured. The left was dusty. Parry lowered the binocs and wiped it clear.

Baker got up, slowly, groaning as his stiff muscles protested. He turned away and began to trudge upslope.

"Baker."

He sighed again, shoulders slumping, looking over his shoulder. "What?"

"I like you better when you don't whine." Parry said, rubbing at the lens industriously.

"Then you must not like me very much." Baker resumed walking.

 

Parry stared down at the wrecked bus at the foot of the slope. It lay on it's side like a dead beast, a titan brought down by a swarm of hunters.

An apt enough analogy.

One of them poked it's head out of a window, bobbing erratically, spasmodically, as it looked around. Face pale and shrunken, one eye nothing but a dark pit, the other a conglomeration of tiny glittering compound eyes that bulged tumourously, it laboriously hauled itself out of the bus, revealing an emaciated body and six vestigial limbs projecting from it's ribs.

Parry wished he had his rifle.

It fell off the bus, clumsy and slow, a knife in one hand. There was blood smeared across it's legs. It left a trail of bloody footprints as it started up the mountain.

Parry lowered the binocs, remembering the crash. The speed of it, the stunning stop that had killed Bell, punching him through the windscreen in a shower of glittering shards, a prismatic meteor trail flashing in the dark. Jameson, head lolling on a broken neck, blood dribbling from his nose, black in the moonlight. Parker, trying to hold what was left of his face together.

Abandoning the dead and wounded as the things caught up, swarming round the crashed bus, driving them back with a hail of fire from the SA-80s, hot casings and muzzle flare everywhere, the gunblasts pounding eardrums numb, frenetic drumbeats to the God of War's rhythm.

A flash of lightning, lighting the sky like God's own torch, revealing the mountain before them. Kicking and dragging the survivors, faces pale and eyes glazed with terror, forcing them into some semblance of order, shooting the things at arm's length now, holding them back until the women and children were away and sprinting.

Brenner, dragged down and torn apart. Call, sweeping them back with his axe, tripped and buried under mutated bodies. McTeague, taking a dozen with him in the hard crump of their last grenade blast.

Parry thought back, replaying it all over in his head again as he watched the thing approach. Odd, how he had no thoughts in his head when it was happening, there had been no time to think. Just act.

SA-80s shot empty and discarded, pistols and knives and shotguns now, something like order resuming as they split into two groups, one moving, one shooting. Burning his fingertips on hot brass as he plucked empty cartridges from a double-barrel. Hicks screaming his Browning had jammed, over and over, like some sort of human Klaxon. Baker hacking down half a dozen of them with birdshot to the legs and screaming when they carried on crawling right at him. Hudson clubbing one of them down before shooting it point-blank, the powerful rifle bullet spraying ichor everywhere.

Three of them rising up from behind some rocks. Dumping the Browning, magazine well still gaping open, hungry for more bullets to spit. Revolver and knife, in close, smelling alien stench and looking into alien eyes.

Limited by human physiognomy despite their appearance, they attacked. He took the first with a stamp kick to the inside of it's knee, thrusting the knife deep into it's eye as he pistol-whipped the second. The third lunged in, scuttling jerkily, claws slicing his ribs and he gave it the .45 calibre bad news to the face.

Then moving, running, spinning and emptying the .45 and spinning again, running uphill, working against the implacable hostility of the slope, digging his feet in, making his lungs work harder, the unstoppable force pitted against the immovable object.

He came out of his reverie, and glanced at the thing coming his way. Halfway up now. He climbed down off the rock and drew a hatchet from a hip sheath.

 

"I don't give a shit, Hudson." Parry was cleaning the blade of his hatchet, wiping it on the leg of his jeans.

"You're not paying me enough for this, mate." Hudson's doughy face screwed up into a grin.

"You'll get overtime." Hicks said dourly, leaning his rawboned frame against a boulder.

Hudson set his shotgun down, glancing at the hacked body. "Couldn't you have just shot it?"

"Waste of a bullet." Parry sheathed the hatchet. "Keep your eyes open and check that pump-action. It's the only close defence you've got now."

"Yassuh, massuh." Hudson lifted the gun, three feet of black sleek steel and walnut worn smooth through use.

He worked the pump. Clickclack. The 12-bore was now ready to fire.

"You alright for rounds, Hicks?" Parry asked, turning his gaze onto the lean rifleman.

Hicks had the Mauser cradled in his crossed arms. Similar in length to the shotgun, but much slimmer, functionally elegant. It was WWII vintage, old enough to qualify as a museum piece in firearm terms, the wood and metal worn and dulled with the years. Yet it still worked, and it was still accurate enough to blow holes in the things while they were hundreds of metres away. The telescopic sight was the newest part of the rifle, though the lens was badly scratched.

"Full load, got half a dozen on me." Hicks gave his trademark sardonic smile. "Safety's on too, so I don't kill Hudson."

"Not by accident, anyway." Parry said, yawning. "I'll send you some food down shortly."

He tucked his hands into his pockets and moved away uphill, whistling.

Hudson and Hicks settled down to wait, weapons ready.

The things couldn't be far behind.

[FullAuto]

"Is there food?" Parry hitched his belt up further.

"Whatever we managed to grab in the crash." Lamb said dully from the ground by the campfire.

"Get up." Parry snapped, glaring down at him.

Lamb opened his eyes, squinting up at him for a second. Parry just stared, his dark flat gaze offering nothing, no reason, no threat.

Lamb shambled upright, loose-limbed, sloppy. He scooped his lank hair back from his forehead. "What?"

Parry nodded to the caves. "Go and see what we have. Get some food down to Hudson and Hicks. Get some of the women to scout around."

Lamb scowled. "Jesus, is there anything else I should do? Want your boots shined?"

Parry looked away, down the hillside, then into the gloom of the cave. Then he punched Lamb in the face.

Lamb fell, cupping his hands over his crushed nose. Parry loomed over him. "Do what I tell you." He put his foot on Lamb's chest and slowly pushed down. "You feel that? Whenever you get clever, remember your chest getting tighter and tighter."

Lamb gasped, writhing, blood spraying as he hyperventilated, great hitching gasps for air. Parry dug his heel into Lamb's solar plexus, pressing down harder, trapping the diaphragm.

Lamb arched his back, scrabbling for a weapon on the dusty rock.

Parry moved his foot suddenly, stepping back from the small explosion of blood as Lamb coughed his airways clear. "Don't leave your gun out of arm's reach, either."

He walked into the cave. It was dim and cool. He tasted moisture on the air; the mineral tang made his dry tongue rasp against his teeth, impatient for a drink.

Backpacks lined one wall, sagging, empty. Women looked up at him, blank-eyed. Children were cuddled close, looking wary but not particularly afraid, the danger too big for their young minds to grasp. They all made him feel guilty. "It's safe to come outside." He said, and turned on his heel.

He heard a few stir, the close walls of the cave bouncing sounds back and forth. He stepped over the legs of one girl, sat sleeping with her back against the wall. Glancing down as he passed, Parry recognised her. That scarred face in close-up as he'd dived to grab her hand, dragging her up and out of the bus even as the things swarmed in, tearing into the bodies of the dead and dying.

She was pretty, except for the purple discolouration of the left side of her face. It started at her hairline, directly above her left eye, bisecting the eye and carrying on down her cheek, the line just passing by the corner of her mouth, before curving back and down, disappearing at the base of her neck.

"Scuse me." A woman carrying a baby pushed past.

Parry stepped aside and knelt by the girl. She was young, not yet twenty. A thick sheaf of dark hair spilled across her face, covering some of the discolouration, concealing her ear completely.

He got the odd urge to see if it was the same colour, and stroked the long thick wave of her hair back behind her ear.

Parry was surprised at how much he enjoyed it, the cool almost-weightless feel of it, how smooth it was, how it stroked over his fingers.

Her ear was the same colour. Her eyes were blue. For some reason, he didn't take his hand away. He noticed her fluttering eyelid was half purple and half pink, divided neatly.

"Hello." She said.

She didn't look surprised or bothered by his touch. He took his hand back anyway, reluctantly. "It's safe to go outside."

"Ok. Thank you." She shut her eyes again.

Parry fisted his hand against the need to touch her again, grinding his fingertips into his palm, driving away the touch-memory of her hair. He walked back out under the hot sun.

Lamb's blood spotted the rocks by the fire, but he was gone. Parry stayed away from the smouldering embers, stripping off his thick camouflage jacket. He was too hot as it was.

He folded the jacket neatly, draping it across a rock. His belt was next, heavy with ammunition. Bullets clicked together in their pouches, the currency of death. His knife and hatchet clacked together as he set the belt down. The .45 was next. Another museum piece. Still shooting straight fifty years after the war it was used in had ended.

Parry took a deep sighing breath and looked around. The mountaintop was roughly circular, with almost half of it taken up by a mound of boulders that had been toppled and cemented together, creating caves. They didn't look like much, being barely big enough to stand up in, but they had narrow holes in each ceiling, which could be used to collect water or to let smoke escape from fires. The entrance was wide enough for two men to stand abreast, easy to defend from a superior force. He had explored them for almost an hour last night, and found them extensive enough to house two or three times their number.

Parry sat down and stretched out, clamping his teeth down on a groan. The cuts on his ribs were fiery with pain, the crude stitches barely holding the edges together. He closed his eyes against the harsh sunlight, already beginning to sweat. The heat would speed dehydration and exhaustion. Hope it rains. He groped for his belt, unfastened a pouch and took out his water bottle.

He drank the last of his water, lukewarm and slightly gritty. His mouth soaked it up, desert-dry. He listened to the women talk mutedly.

"Boss."

Parry cracked an eye open. Hunt, one arm in a sling. Parry sat up, relishing the itch of belt-chafed skin. "Thought you were flat out."

"I was." Hunt sat on a rock by Parry's jacket. "Got any nine millimetre? I can't use a shotgun with a broken arm."

Parry hauled his belt over and rummaged through the pouches. "Mags or rounds?"

"Either. Both." Hunt managed to smile. "Anything to avoid getting close to them things again."

"Bloody right." Parry found a pair of slim black magazines and, after a moment, handed them both over.

Hunt knelt, drawing his Browning. The black semiautomatic pistol gleamed in the sun, as still as death. Hunt jammed the muzzle between his knees and fumbled a mag.

"Do you want me to do it?" Parry asked, picking up his revolver.

"Nah. Have to get used to it." Hunt pushed the magazine into the butt of the pistol until it clicked home, then picked up the gun.

Bracing the front sight against the edge of the rock, he pushed forward, forcing the slide back, cocking the weapon. He pulled back, letting the slide snick into place. Then he ejected the mag and fiddled a 9mm round from a belt pouch. He thumbed it down onto the top of the stack of bullets inside the magazine, then pushed it back into the gun. He glanced up, saw Parry watching. "Every shot counts."

"Aye aye." Parry broke open his Webley, the ejector spraying empty cartridges all over his lap.

"Don't know why you use that thing." Parry noted Hunt didn't holster his gun, just applied the safety and tucked it in his belt.

"Lot more reliable than an automatic." He thumbed rounds into the chambers, one at a time. "That Browning jams, you have to clear the pipe, probably eject the mag. I just pull the trigger again."

Parry snapped the revolver shut with a snap of his wrist. Hunt grinned. "Am I close defence for Lamb again?"

"You can back me." Parry tucked the revolver into a jacket pocket. "Set yourself up with a sawn-off too. For use at extreme close range."

"Nice one." Hunt looked around, the considered his words for a second. "You think it's a good idea putting Lamb and Baker together?"

"They can whinge at each other for once." Parry said. "Have a think about getting down to the bus."

Hunt winced. "There's a dozen of them down there. At least. That's if no more turn up, and they always do. You know that."

Parry shook his head. "Not the point. We've got sod all water, a bit of food, a few guns. We can't hold here."

Hunt grimaced. "You've got a plan?"

"Go down there. Have Lamb and Hicks give us cover. Get the women to empty the bus of everything useful and bring it up here."

"That'll take a day or two. There's tons of-"

"Then we hold for a day or two." Parry said, getting up.

"You make it sound so simple, boss." Hunt rose too.

"It is simple. Lamb and Baker relieve Hudson and Hicks in four hours."

"I don't think they'll be able to hold it in for that long." Hunt said, grinning.

Parry blinked.

"Joke. Sorry." Hunt glanced away, uncomfortable.

"Get something to eat." Parry moved on, picking up his jacket and belt.

Draping both jacket and belt over his shoulder, he circled the mountaintop slowly.

 

Hudson tapped Hicks on the shoulder. "I have got," he said with the air of one delivering a royal proclamation, "an absolutely immense bogey up my nose."

Hicks shook his head and went back to the rifle scope.

"I can just feel it waiting there, you know? Biding its time." Hudson nodded knowingly to himself.

Hicks scanned the slope again, panning slowly across the whole mountainside. He had learned to tune almost all of Radio Hudson out. The occasional burst did get through, but it never lasted long.

There were a few things down by the bus, wandering about, apparently aimlessly. Out of rifle range. Shame. He moved on to the clumps of rocks that dotted the slope, watching each one carefully through the scope for five minutes, then pulling back and watching with the naked eye for more peripheral detail.

"That's it." Hudson said suddenly. "I've had enough. I'm going to pick it."

Hicks started counting mutants.