Deadman - Book 3 Chapter 33: Countdown

I squeezed the cerberus trigger and sent a salvo of red death hurtling toward one of the power armored combatants that had moved ahead of the others. I burned through the remainder of my power pack, popped in a fresh one, and kept firing. By the time that one was through, the figure was hunched and fell forward, putting up a puff of dust with the force of his fall. His allies climbed over him to keep moving toward me. He was number one.

I popped in another pack, and another, repeating this process on two more of them. That brought me to three. I tossed the cerberus to the side, and pulled out my rifle. Several pot shots started to get close to hitting me, so I activated my shield bracelet. It flickered to life just in time for a shell to shatter against it, and a bolt of lasfire to disperse just in front of my face.

I raised my rifle and aimed, not at the power armored figures, but past them. I lined up shots, and fired, one after the other. I didn’t need to tag anyone with a headshot, if I created a hole in their suit, that was a death sentence this deep into the dead zone. That may leave them irradiated and mobile though, and I couldn’t have that. I emptied two clips, missing only a few shots to the dispersal field of the power armor in the front of the group. That brought my count up to ten.

The ones in power armor began to surge forward. Some of them blasting me with lasguns, and others raising hammers and staves arcing with blue lighting. I tossed my rifle to the side and drew the two laspistols. Without their wall of power armor, the soldiers behind them were vulnerable. I fired with abandon into the now vulnerable group even as I was blinded by the red dispersions across my forcefield, the highlighted forms in my vision allowing me to continue tracking everyone. Fifteen, sixteen, I tagged two at once with one shot, that was eighteen, then nineteen. The ten power armored forms were nearly on me.

I tossed my pistols to the side, took all the grenades out of my pack, yanked the pins out with my teeth, and through them behind the power armored combatants toward the lines they’d given up on protecting, then drew my sword from the ground, squeezing the hilt and activated the vibrating edge. I roared and charged to meet the nearest of them.

“For the martyred prophet! For God and country!” The nearest of them yelled as he returned my charge with his hammer raised high.

That explained their fanatic pursuit. I drove my sword through his chest to the hilt, smelling his blood boil against the blade of my sword before I yanked it free up through his shoulder. That was twenty.

An explosion rang out from where I’d tossed the grenades, that brought me closer to thirty, but I wasn’t able to keep an exact count on that one. The nine remaining armored enemies attacked at once. I’d killed dozens of power armored foes in the recent past, but that was different. I’d used surprise, brutality, and fear to keep the advantage in those fights. Surprise wasn’t an option anymore, and their fanaticism was overriding their fear. That left me with just one option.

I let red completely overtake my vision, and drew the maximum amount of rads into my body, feeling heat suffuse me completely as bright green light bled through my skin. I caught a hammer by its head, and slammed my sword into the top of its owner’s skull. Number thirty two attempted to sweep my leg with his stave, but I leapt over it, grabbing his helmet and channeling enough heat through my hand to fuse his helm to his face. Thirty three managed to drive his stave into my shoulder and send a thousand volts through me, but I pushed through it and cut him down as well. Thirty four and five attacked as one, alternating hammer blows in an attempt to keep me from being able to recover. They died as one too, as I kicked one with enough force to throw him into the other, then drove my sword through both of their hearts at once. Thirty six, seven, and eight all fired their rifles at me at once, causing my forcefield to flicker. Before it fully faded I had removed ones arm, another’s leg, and the third was bisected. With my field down I took a slug to the shoulder before reaching number thirty nine, the last of them wearing power armor. It forced me to drop my sword, so instead I leapt onto him, and punched his helmet again and again until his skull was pulp, the armor of his face crushed, even as small arms fire rained on me from all around.

I lifted the body to grant myself some cover, and threw it into the crowd, that was number forty. I dove for my sword in the brief lull that granted me, and received a shotgun blast to the side for my trouble. I felt the pellets start to push themselves out of me as I slammed myself into the enemies lines. I carved through the next five like they were butter, my activated sword gliding through their unarmored forms. Unfortunately, on my next wide sweep the power in the sword faded, and the blade itself got firmly embedded in forty-seven and eight’s chests.

I ducked a volley of shotgun fire, and a woman behind me lost her head. I counted that as forty-nine. I grabbed the shotgun, and kicked number fifty with enough force to shatter his chest. Fifty-one, two, three, and four were dropped quickly by my stolen weapon. Once it was empty, I used it to bash in the skulls of fifty-five and six.

The group started to react more quickly to me. A rifle fired through my cheek at point blank range, a knife was driven into my calf, and number fifty seven managed to empty a revolver into my chest before I yanked the knife from my calf and drove it through his skull.

I heard one yell, “For the prophet!” Behind me, leaping onto my back with a grenade pin pulled, and the explosive still in his hand.

I grabbed his arm, flipped him, and forced the arm that the grenade under his chest. With number fifty eight, I was thrown into the air, and landed with a heavy thud onto the ground and stomach full of shrapnel and bone. The forty left surged onto me, and I started to lose myself to the red as they struck me with their guns, risked close range shots, or just tried to immobilize me for the others. Everything up to seventy four was a blur of clawing, biting and rage. The warm taste of blood and radiation overwhelmed my senses.

For a moment they managed to hold me down, I was weakened and crazed, and they continued blowing chunks of flesh off of me between the beatings, and stabbings, pushing the limits of even my healing abilities. I had just enough sense to see one of them approaching with a sword, my sword. He raised it high to drive through my chest.

“No mercy for demons. You die as the prophet ordained. Your parents should’ve had the sense to kill you when you were born, as we, the chosen, do.” He started to stab downward.

“Fuck you!” I screamed and I felt all the energy I’d pulled into myself explode outward. The sword was blown away, as were all of the soldiers holding me down. Intense heat and percussive force killed most of them instantly.

I felt completely drained, and staggered slightly as I stood. Number eighty-seven was the first to start running. I caught up to him before he could gain any real speed and crushed his head with a hammerblow from my fist. The last thirteen had the good sense to start running, even their fanaticism wearing thin at the pile of bodies that surrounded us. Eighty-eight tripped on a corpse and shot himself in the head. Eighty-nine tried to shoot me down when he realized he couldn’t outrun me, and I tore his head apart at the jaw. I threw his corpse to knock down number ninety, whose head I stomped in on the way to number ninety-one. The next eight went down with throats torn out by teeth as I attempted to recover my stamina while finishing them off. Number one hundred fell to his knees and started praying. I could hear him begging for protection up until the moment I snapped his neck.

I fell to my knees after that. I was covered with sweat, blood, and viscera of all kinds, and was panting heavily. My clothes were completely destroyed, and even as I sat there I felt wounds knitting…though more slowly than they had been at the start. I tried to stand, and fell backward, my legs giving out. My eyes felt heavy, and even as I tried to force them to stay open, they fell closed, and then there was only blackness.