Breaking Through Read online

  “Enclave is probably above us,” Michael explained. “That was just a scouting party. Word will spread fast between the Clans, though. Nothing stays a secret out here for long.”

  “And that’s bad for us?” John started putting the survival kit back together.

  Tom moved around the counter and toward the back of the store. “If the Duster’s know where we are, the Rats will know soon enough.”

  “I don’t get it. The Dusters help the Rats?”

  “The Dusters don’t help anyone,” Michael said. “Only thing they care about is their Dust connection; hence their name.”

  “Bunch of junkies,” Tom muttered. He made his way carefully around several display stands, to the back wall. After giving the balcony a guarded glance, he moved underneath it. He put his back against the wall and made his way along it toward a lone door at the far end. It stood open slightly. He eased up to the threshold then listened for any movement beyond.

  Michael motioned for John to follow and started after, limping carefully on his injured leg. He winced at the first few steps, then held his breath and forced his way silently across the floor. John moved to help him, but Michael immediately waved him off. “It’s okay, man. I can do it”

  The bandage had hardened around his leg, but was still malleable enough that it flexed and stretched with his movements. After several awkward steps, he’d figured out how to move so that his limp was barely noticeable. He put a hand on the back wall, and leaned against it for support.

  John gave the balcony a final glance, then followed the two men underneath it. His eyes stung, aggravated by the dust filled air. He backed up against the wall and reached reflectively into his pocket before remembering his Gel was at the bottom of the ocean. He cursed and squeezed his eye shut, trying to work tears over the lenses.

  “You okay?” Michael asked.

  John rubbed one eye gingerly with his the palm of his hand. “It’s just my Optics.” Michael gave him a confused looked then John shook his head. “Bad genes.”

  After several seconds of rubbing and squeezing, John finally decided that if he ever got back, the NAU would just have to break down and supply him with a replacement set. It had taken John almost thirty minutes to get his first pair onto his eyeballs, and almost double trying to take them off. He’d inherited his father’s aversion to having things around his eyes. He gritted his teeth, held his eyelids open and worked each lens out in turn, tossing them unceremoniously onto the dirty floor. His eyes still itched, but he knew it would only be a matter of time until they didn’t.

  He panned his light over the store, the beam reflected off broken glass and metal shelves, expecting another skiff to show up anytime and blow them away. The thought made him feel helpless. It occurred to him that this was what refugees back home must’ve felt like, as he patrolled the skies of contested zones during his many peacekeeping missions. It was an eye opening experience.

  Tom turned away from the door and whispered, “You sure about this?”

  Michael gazed back out through the store, pale moonlight streaming in through the decaying facade. “Without knowing exactly where Tim is, moving through the streets is dangerous,” he said, finally. “We were extremely lucky last time.”

  “He’s got to be close,” Tom countered.

  Michael shook his head. “It’s too risky”

  “And this isn’t?”

  “I don’t like it any more than you do,” he admitted, “but we’ll have a better chance against a handful of junkies than we would against the Skiffs.”

  Tom wasn’t convinced. “I don’t know, if we…” He trailed off and both Michael and John followed his gaze outside.

  White light silently swept down the building opposite them and came across the street toward them. A thunderous blast of wind and sound followed as another skiff roared down the avenue outside. Clouds of dust blew through the store in the wake of the engines, and all three men turned to shield themselves from the onslaught.

  “Go!” Michael yelled, shoving Tom forward.

  Tom drove his shoulder into the door and forced his way into the corridor beyond. Michael hurried through next and as John turned to follow he saw six silhouetted figures dropping down on the street outside. Soldiers.

  A small silver canister sailed through the open glass display windows and clattered across the floor before bouncing off a counter in the middle of the store. A second later, it popped and thick smoke began pouring from both ends.

  John ducked through and slammed the door shut behind him. “We have company.”

  “Up!” Michael motioned to the flight of stairs at the end of the short corridor they’d entered.

  Tom was already moving, taking the steps two at a time. John grabbed Michael’s left arm, threw it over his shoulder and pulled him along. They’d gone up three flights when they came to the first door. Without hesitation, Tom kicked his foot forward. It burst open, slamming hard against the wall.

  They stood at one end of a long corridor, lined with several open doors on each side. A small figure darted out of a one doors, across the hall and through another without giving them as much as a cursory glance. He couldn’t have been any older than ten.

  Dirty clothes and boxes of junk flanked almost every door and bags of trash rested against the wall, waiting to be collected. Power cables snaked through the piles of junk, branching off into each room. A deep humming resonated through the corridor from some unseen generator. Every few seconds the pitch would change and the already dim lights would flicker.

  “We need to keep going,” Michael said.

  John held up the light for Tom. “Here.”

  Tom eyed it for a moment, then took it and clicked it on.

  They moved down the hall, carefully checking the rooms on either side as they passed. Tom moved with knowing purpose, light in one hand, pistol in the other, clearing each door in turn. He might have been an asshole, John thought, but he was no slouch in the tactics department. He held Michael’s arm firmly in place and followed closely behind Tom.

  In the first room they passed, two old men sat on wooden crates looking at the intruders with worried apprehension. Bright white hair, which frizzed out in all directions, reminded John of the look cartoon characters got after being zapped with 50,000 volts. They looked malnourished; their skin pulled tight over bones and weakened muscles. Boxes filled with junk were stacked atop more boxes overflowing with more junk, and lined every wall in the room. The two beds on either side looked suspiciously like desks covered with ratty blankets.

  The rest of the rooms they passed were similar to the first; filled with junk and barely enough room for two or three people to sit, let alone sleep. Every single person looked like they hadn’t and a decent meal in weeks. John counted twenty in all, ranging from barely ten to well over sixty or seventy. There was no sign of the masked people from the balcony.

  The corridor took a ninety-degree turn after the final room into another, shorter corridor. Heavy power cables curved around the corner and snaked down the short distance to a room several feet ahead on the left. The only other door stood at the far end, closed.

  Tom stopped at the corner then motioned for John and Michael to move pass. They made their way pass the open door, catching a glimpse of a large thrumming machine, vibrating excessively. A dirty face, eyes wide in fear, peered over the generator at them, watching them intently.

  Tom moved to follow just as the first soldier come out of the stairwell, his bulky body armor making his movements jerky, almost mechanical. Bright orange flashes filled the dimly lit corridor as bullets spat out of his rifle. The report reverberated through the corridor as plaster and paint erupted out of the wall behind Tom as he dove for cover.

  He lost his grip on the light and it went sailing through the air. His knees hit first, sending a painful jolt through his body as he twisted his body to keep from face planting onto the floor. Palms slapped down hard, and he used his momentum to push himself back up.


  “Go! Go! Go!” Michael shouted, pushing John forward.

  John reached the door and tried the handle. Locked.

  “Kick it!” Tom screamed, moving back to the corner. He fired off three rounds blindly around the corner and pulled back abruptly. Gunshots rang out and plaster blossomed out of composite walls, filling the corridor in a thick cloud of dust.

  John put his back against the wall, gritted his teeth and launched a powerful forward kick. His boot connected with the door, expecting it to shatter into a thousand tiny pieces. It didn’t. The wood cracked and bowed around his foot, but held fast.

  Tom fired off three more shots. “Come on!”

  “Son of a bitch!” John shouted and backed up for a second attempt.

  Several more gunshots rang out, their cadence different from the rest and a fraction of a second later the wall at the end of the main corridor exploded.

  The blast sent Tom sprawling backwards; he came down hard on his back, the impact driving all the air out of his lungs. For a second John thought that he was dead, but Michael was already pulling the dazed man to his feet.

  The thunderous cacophony dwindled away as sounds muted around him. A painful ringing drowned out every other sound, and when he shouted it sounded like he was underwater. “Come on you bitch!”

  His foot slammed into the door. He felt it give a little, but remained closed.

  Behind them another silver canister bounced silently off the destroyed wall and landed up right between a chunk of composite and a shredded bag of clothes. As John’s foot came forward a third time, the ends of the canister popped open and smoked poured into the corridor.

  His kick was solid, the door burst open and all three piled through into another stairwell. With no plan other than survival, John raced up the first flight, taking them two at a time. He spun quickly around the landing and continued up the next flight. Michael was right behind him, using the rail to pull himself along and Tom followed closely on his heels.

  After passing four landings, none of which had exits, John was beginning to wonder where they would end up. “Any clue where we’re going?” he shouted over his shoulder as he rounded the fifth landing.

  “Does it matter?” Tom shouted back.

  It was hard to argue his point.

  They passed two more landings before coming to the first door. An old sign, hanging awkwardly in the center, read, EXIT. A heavy chain secured the metal crash bar to the handrail mounted on the wall next to it, a chunky padlock dangled between. Neither the chain nor lock looked like they’d been touched in years.

  “Yeah.” John said, drawing his pulser. He aimed and fired a single dart into the body of the lock. The crack of the lock blowing apart was louder than the soft whistle of the pulser. The chain rattled as it fell from the door and without wasting a second, John kicked the crash bar.

  The door swung wide, slamming back against an exterior wall. It opened up to what appeared to be an expansive rooftop-parking garage. Moonlight shown on the long abandoned lot, littered with long abandoned cars and trucks of all sizes, all stripped down to their frames.

  The three men spilled out of the stairwell and stopped short, all realizing the same thing, there was no escape here.

  “Oh, this is great. Just great!” Tom snarled.

  The rooftop lot was wedged between the Landen and Kotch building and another windowless high-rise, a hundred feet away. They’d exited near the street side, where several stories below the avenue disappeared into the forest of buildings. Skiff engines thrummed somewhere behind them, shadows danced on the street below as the craft hovered on the opposite side of the tall department store building.

  Michael moved first. “Come on.”

  A wide alleyway separated the parking garage from a plain composite building that rose up another two or three stories. It was hard to tell without actually having any windows to judge levels. They dodged around several wrecks, and as they neared the alley-side, the skiff engines changed pitch, powering up.

  “They know,” John said, peering over the edge, looking for anyway off the roof.

  “No shit,” Tom said. He had his pistol trained on the door and slowly walked backward, around the hulk of a long passenger car. It sat on old rusted-out axles, angled diagonally across the faded lines of the stall.

  Several feet away from the car, the bulk of a six-axle passenger van lay on its side. Considering the rest of the lot, John thought that the spot would provide them the most cover, such as it was. Passed the van, a ramp descended into the lower levels of the garage. The thought of making a break for it occurred to him, but he knew, even with a head-start, they’d never make it to ground level before they were sandwiched in by the skiff and armed Rats behind them.

  “We’re going to have to fight them off here. Catch them all coming out the door,” Michael said, slamming another magazine into his pistol. He knelt down behind the front wheel well of the car and checked the rest of his magazines. Only two left.

  Tom took up position behind at the rear, keeping his pistol leveled and ready. “And the skiff?”

  John peered over the rail again. “Can’t we just…”

  A series of muted pops brought their attention back to the stairwell. Several silver canisters arched out of the darkness and bounced across the empty pavement. They rolled apart and exploded in rapid succession, brilliant flashes of white light and thunderous claps of sound filled the night air. John dove behind the overturned van and landed in a ball. Gunfire filled the air, joined by pangs of bullets hitting metal. Chunks of composite blew out of the ground around them.

  John crawled up to the front edge of the van and saw several armed figures emerging from the stairwell, rifles blazing. He extended his pulser then fired off a quick barrage of darts. At least a few of them found their targets, slamming into one of the armed figures and throwing him backwards. Rifles panned, blasting away at the new threat. John scrambled back for cover as bullets slammed into the ground in front of him.

  The skiff appeared around the far side of the Landen and Kotch Building, coming around in a wide arc. Its searchlight panned around and locked on the Michael and Tom. They hunkered down in the shadow of the car, but John knew the wreck offered no protection to the skiffs heavy cannons. Sitting ducks. If he didn’t so something now, they were dead. He was up and moving before he knew what he was doing.

  John sprinted away from the overturned van and fired wildly behind him. He’d made it ten feet when the light found him, engines whined as the skiff turned to face him. He angled around another car and flinched as the auto-cannons opened up. Composite erupted as bullets chewed into the ground behind him. He leapt over the hood of a small compact car, hit the ground beyond and rolled sideways. His hand slammed against the ground, and his pulser popped out and skidded away down the ramp. The path of destruction continued past the car for another five feet before the guns went silent.

  He scooted up behind the car, cursing himself for being so stupid. He peered over his shoulder and was nearly blinded by the searchlight.

  Great plan, John.

  More gunfire rang out, quieter than the skiffs cannons. John realized it must have been Michael and Tom. Apparently, the skiff also made the connection and the light panned away, leaving him in darkness. Purple and orange after images danced in his vision.

  “Get up, you asshole!” he ordered himself. He took a deep breath and moved for his pulser. He snatched it up and moved back up the ramp, where the two men blindly fired over the car at the Rats. He saw two more had fallen, sprawled out awkwardly behind their comrades.

  The searchlight centered on them, and John saw the skiffs turrets lining up. Their expressions told him they knew as well. He had to help them and knew there wasn’t anything he could do. He brought the pulser up anyway and fired.

  As he brought the pulser back down against the recoil, a blast of orange and blue energy shot through the air, slamming into the front of the skiff. The air around him seemed to electrify and sizz
le and every hair on his body stood on end. The searchlight blinked out of existence in a shower of sparks as bands of colored energy blossomed out from the impact. From somewhere across the alley a continuous stream of energy pulsed into the skiff.

  “What…” John whispered, the pulser in his hand fell to his side.

  Engines roared as the skiff’s front end lifted in the air. The stream of orange and blue vanished briefly, and as the skiff attempted to bank away, a second blast slammed into its side, sheering the right side engine strut clean off. The engine shot high into the air, leaving a twirling trail of smoke behind it, as streamers of energy played across the skiffs fuselage. The remaining engine screamed under the strain.

  Michael and Tom scrambled away from the torrent of destruction, as the stream of energy cut down the side of the skiff. They’d made it halfway to John when the skiff exploded in a massive fireball. The shockwave sent the men sprawling and sent large pieces of debris spinning into the air. The fireball rolled up and away, dissolving into the air above the skiff as it plummeted down and slammed into the ground below.

  A second explosion engulfed the skiff and the two wrecked cars on either side. The streamer of energy, which had followed it down, vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. John ducked, avoiding a flying piece of twisted metal that bounced off the ground behind him and clattered down the ramp. Slowly, he stood back up and took in the view in disbelief.

  “Holy shit,” He muttered, moving around the small car, now littered with bullet holes. He jogged up to where Michael and John were pulling themselves off the ground. “You guys okay?”

  Several gunshots rang out before they could respond, and all three dove for cover. Bullets zipped by overhead and Tom slapped the ground. “Shit!”

  “Do these guys ever quit?” John shouted, trying to see where the gunfire was coming from.

  Michael slapped his last magazine into his pistol. “Rats don’t know the meaning of the word.”

  “I—”

  Another energy blast shot out from the far rooftop, and the air popped and sizzled around them as the super-heated bands of energy tore through the three remaining soldiers. Blood curdling screams filled the air as limbs were sheared off and holes tore through bodies. The energy stream traced a line through the men and reduced the doorway behind them to a gaping hole. After several seconds, the beam vanished in a buzz of static, leaving them in darkness.