Reality Echo

The Cerberus warrior hammered his fist violently into the monstrosity’s throat, punching again and again with every ounce of his strength. Kane’s physique had placed the bulk of his muscle mass in his upper chest and shoulders, and now, as if he were some beast-reared jungle lord, he unleashed that power. His back and shoulders flexed and rippled with each downward stroke, the smack of his fist on the mutant’s vulnerable face and throat cracking through the forest. There was no grace, no art in this beating; the time for unarmed combat finesse had disappeared the moment Kane had been stripped of weaponry and forced to fight tooth and claw. The Fomorian hunter’s nose was a bloody pit in the center of his skull, and twisted lips coughed up a torrent of gore from where Kane’s fist had crushed its windpipe. Its arms flailed helplessly, trying to block the maddened assault, but in the end, it was useless.

Brigid knew that Kane would never die easily, and this day, he’d fought off the hounds of death seeking his soul.

“Baptiste?” Kane asked, bursting from his opponent’s grasp.

“Yes,” she said. She tapped her forearm, canceling the camouflage effect. Brigid looked the man over and saw that his forehead had been split open, a ragged gash that seeped blood into his eyes. His legs had a wobble to them, but he fought against the urge to collapse, shoulders rising and falling as he breathed deeply to regain his composure. “What happened?”

“I was jumped,” Kane murmured. “Everything since then’s been kind of blurry. I don’t even know where my weapons went.”

Brigid slid out of her shoulder harness. “Take this, then.”

Kane blinked, looking at the pistol and spare magazines in their holster. He looked confused for a moment, but slid his arms through the shoulder loops and drew the handgun. “When did you start carrying this?”

“I’ve had Grant keep a spare gun for me in his war bag,” Brigid said as she knelt by the dead Fomorian. She quickly took a strip of its ragged vest and tore it free, creating a long bandage. “No reason why you’d know anything about it. Come over here.”

Kane obeyed her command without fuss, so Brigid could tell that something wasn’t completely right with him. Her best guess, given the minimal blood loss and his uncertain stance, was that he’d suffered a concussion when he’d been struck in the head. Kane was fortunate that the heavy curved bone of the skull had made his forehead one of the most difficult structures to break on the human body. Still, with the blood seeping from the wound and pouring down over his brow, he’d have a hard time seeing. She tied the bandage around his head, but didn’t knot it too tightly. Too much pressure would only aggravate any head trauma that she couldn’t see right now.

“Thanks, Baptiste,” Kane muttered. Brigid offered her shoulder to allow him to stand back up.

“You’re going to be freezing to death in a few minutes unless we get you to shelter,” Brigid said.

Kane grimaced. “I can deal with the cold for now. It’s not as bad as it is higher up on the mountain. But we should be able to borrow a blanket or some furs from Epona’s scouts, shouldn’t we?”

“I’m not sure we can trust her,” Brigid began. “Even if she is on the up and up, I broke the rules and came into the forest after you.”

Kane smirked through the pain. “I’m a bad influence on you. Big guns, and wrecking diplomacy…”

“Cut the criticism,” Brigid admonished, “and activate your Commtact.”

Kane nodded and reached behind his ear to activate his comm device. “Grant, we’re trying to concentrate here. Shut it!”

“Well, it’s about damn time!” Grant cursed. “If I hadn’t shaved my head bald, I’d be a mass of gray hair by now.”

“Listen…my head’s a little fuzzy right now and I’m trying to climb a steep mountainside while half-naked,” Kane complained. “You throwing a fit on your side of things is not making my skull ache any less, got it?”

Brigid kept an eye on Kane’s progress. His body was already shiny with a sheen of sweat, gleaming off his rippling muscles as he fought against the incline. The steep slope was an effort for her, as well, her legs burning with each push. Brigid at least had the shadow suit to regulate her perspiration and body temperature as they climbed. Once they hit the open slope, which was at six thousand feet more or less, Kane’s wet skin would be exposed to a freezing wind. Hypothermia would be inevitable, and frostbite a distinct possibility.

“All right. Did you find out anything?” Grant asked.

“Yeah. I found out that the Fomorians have some old friends of ours working with them,” Kane said. “The Thrush Continuum.”

“What?” Grant grimaced.

“I’ll explain later,” Kane answered. “Right now, I can barely make heads or tails out of anything. What kind of explosives did you bring along?”

“The usual assortment of grens and plastic explosives,” Grant replied. “You got anything special in your war bag?”

“No, but I’m thinking that we can at least drop an avalanche on the Fomorian camp on this mountainside,” Kane said. “It’s not going to be a long-term solution, but we can retreat and regroup while they’re digging themselves out of the rubble.”

Brigid and Kane continued ascending, both of them thankful for the pine tree trunks that allowed them good handholds as they fought their way uphill. Kane’s knee buckled, and he slumped against the bark of a pine, eyes clenched in momentary pain.

“Let me help,” Brigid said.

“I’ll be all right,” Kane answered breathlessly. He rummaged around in the cargo pants that he and Grant took to wearing over the lower halves of their shadow suits. Finally he ripped open a pocket and found a foil envelope within. His fingers trembled as he tore into the packet, withdrawing a rustling mass of shiny metallic sheeting. Taking the corners of the thermal blanket, he wrapped them around his neck, tying the blanket into an improvised cloak that draped around his shoulders.

“Allow me?” Brigid asked.

Kane blinked, his eyes unfocused. “Better idea?”

“Somewhat,” Brigid answered. She untied the thermal blanket and pulled a utility knife from her belt. She sliced a slit in the center large enough to fit Kane’s head through. Then she patted through his pockets until she found a roll of cord. Gathering the blanket at Kane’s waist, she left plenty of room for his arms to move freely, but cinched the blanket so that he now possessed a shiny metallic parka to shield him. “You forgot that you had this?”

“I took a whack to the head, damn it,” Kane reminded her. “Plus, I thought I could last a little longer against the cold.”

Gunfire bellowed below and Brigid whirled. “Damn it, they’ve caught up to us.”

Kane fisted the handgun that she’d lent him. “It’ll take a lot to put them down.”

Brigid shook her head. “Give me that and my magazines back. You keep climbing.”

“Damn it, Baptiste.”

“You’re injured, and you’re the brightest, shiniest target on this mountainside,” Brigid returned. “I’m in one piece, and the shadow suit makes me harder to hit. And if they do shoot me, I’ll be harder to hurt. Get moving!”

Kane glowered at her. “Just be careful. The Thrushes didn’t just give them rifles—”

“Talk later. Run now!” Brigid snapped.

Movement rustled among the pines, and she whirled to face it, bringing up the big .45. A one-armed monstrosity lurched into view, holding a SIG AMT rifle in its hand. Brigit aligned the sights and fired two shots from her pistol, aiming at the troll-like face of the Fomorian hunter, her shadow suit’s faceplate optics enabling her to focus the handgun’s point of aim as if she had a laser targeting device on the pistol. A mass of cheekbone exploded off the Fomorian’s face with the first hit, the second round carving a ghastly furrow along the creature’s bald temple. The mutant dropped its rifle and clutched its wounded face with its sole hand. Brigid cursed the haste with which she’d fired her shots, wasting ammunition and making the man-eater suffer. It may have been a murderous beast, but unnecessary cruelty had never been part of any of the three Cerberus warriors.

As it was, she had bought herself some time, and glanced back to see Kane furiously scrambling up the hill. A large form in black leaped down by his side, and Brigid nearly whirled her pistol around to fire on it when she recognized the unmistakable bulk of Grant, hooking one hand under Kane’s shoulder.

“Move it, Brigid!” Grant bellowed, hefting his massive Barrett with one rippling arm. The .50-caliber rifle bellowed authoritatively to punctuate his command. “This slope’s going to be a no-man’s-land in a minute!”

Brigid spun back and saw that Grant had put the creature she’d shot out of its misery. Muzzle-flashes flickered among the trees, but the .30-caliber rounds found only dirt and tree trunks. Two of the Fomorian hunters were back in the forest, trying to finish the job they started. Brigid stuffed her gun into her belt and clawed at the mountainside on all fours, her lean and athletically toned limbs helping her to eat the distance between herself and the two ex-Magistrates near the tree line. A tree root for a handhold here, a leap off the trunk of a pine there, and mad pawing at the dirt were what she needed to climb as she’d never climbed before.

Grant continued to thunder away with his mighty rifle, bolts of blazing hot lead slicing down to cover Brigid against the advance and harassing fire of the Fomorians. Like some form of obsidian storm god, Grant cut loose. A tree trunk shattered under the impact of one monster .50-caliber slug, and the pine tree crackled, groaned and toppled, crashing to the slope and skidding toward the Fomorians. One of those mutated hunters let out a wail of horror as the tree toppled toward him like a massive emerald spear. Its long limbs sprang and hurled it out of its path, branches shearing off against other tree trunks, producing deep gouges in the bark. The impact of the plummeting pine broke another apart, but one shank of wood held on tenaciously, so that the tree was only bent, its top half dangling like a pendulum in the wake of the one-log avalanche.

Brigid scurried up to Grant as he reloaded the Barrett. She could see the tree line just past him. Grenades and explosive charges were wired together, nudged against tree trunks and two large, flat masses of granite that broke up the incline of the slope, giving the trees something level to stand upon. Though she wasn’t an explosives expert, she knew that Grant had set the explosives in such a manner as to shear off this particular chunk of forest and hurl it down the slope like a massive guillotine of stone, dirt and wood.

“We’ve got to move,” Grant said as he slung the rifle over one broad shoulder. “Take the detonator.”

Brigid took the box, and Grant scooped up Kane as if he were a rag doll. She followed Grant as he charged uphill, cradling his injured partner and held off pressing the trigger for the mass of charges planted at the tree line. Once they were a safe distance from the blast area, Grant would know. Brigid didn’t want to make that guess. If she fired the detonator too soon, they would be swept up in the torrent. If she waited too long, more Fomorians would scurry into rifle range and dozens of rifles would chop them to ribbons.

“Do it!” Grant ordered.

Brigid thumbed the stud, and the whole mountainside heaved violently. Behind her white-hot fire faded instantly into a plume of blackened smoke and airborne ash and dust. The air crackled with the sound of rock and soil peeling off the slope under a sharp wave of energy released by Grant’s explosive setup. The crackle deepened into an all-pervasive rumble, the thick clouds sucked down along with the avalanche as the rapidly descending mass of the mountainside created a vacuum. Trees snapped and exploded under the shock wave, but as much as Brigid focused on the receding landslide, even with the telescopic optics in her shadow suit, trees she knew to be four and five feet in diameter resembled nothing more than twigs and pencils as they toppled and pinwheeled through the turgid mass. The avalanche’s height was not the only thing that grew. It widened, spreading like a fan of rocky devastation. The rumble became less of a constant storm of sound engulfing them as the mass tumbled down to the valley below, but Brigid could still feel it vibrating up through her legs.

“Was that good enough?” Grant asked Kane.