Pulse

THIRTY- FIVE

The settlement of Edinburgh leaped out of the darkness as Knight looked through the night vision site of his sniper rifle. From his perch high above the town, he shifted his view from target to target, but through the green-tinged sight it was nearly impossible to tell human from regen. A few he pegged as regens because of the way they loped through town, but the others, mixed in with fleeing, panicked townspeople, couldn't be discerned until they pounced on a victim. And by then, it was usually too late.

He willed Rook to hurry. He could only defend so many people at a distance. Rook would be able to help people up close and personal.

Knight shifted his view as movement caught his eye. A man stood on the roof of a home, swaying back and forth. But was he hiding or stalking? With the facial expressions of mania and abject fear being so similar through the lens, he couldn't tell.

A woman burst from the door and made for the dirt road.

The man leaped.

Regen.

Knight mentally anticipated the man's arch through the air and fired. The 25mm armor-piercing round struck the regen's neck and severed his head. The body struck the ground behind the woman, startling her. She turned and jumped back as the head rolled by her feet. Then she stopped, put her hands to her mouth and screamed. Then she fell to her knees and hugged the headless body.

She knew the man.

For a moment Knight wished to be somewhere else, but a second regen emerged from the darkness and kept his mind from escaping the horrors below. He fired twice. The first shot took off the regen's arm. The second, its head. The body fell to the side revealing the woman, torn apart. Dead.

Knight grimaced. He knew a losing battle when he saw one.

"Rook, what's your status?" he said into his throat mike.

"Almost… in town," Rook's out-of-breath voice came back. He'd run straight down the mountainside to duke it out in the thick of it, where he preferred to be. But Knight could see even that would do no good. They had to leave the island, and fast.

"I'm on my way down," Knight said. "We need to evac. Will cover as possible on the way."

"Copy that, little man."

Knight took aim, fired a head shot, and then picked himself off the ground. Holding his rifle in both hands, he ran for town, hoping to find the Mercury prepped for a quick exit.

Rook leaped a small white picket fence, a remnant of the visions of grandeur the settlers here had for the island, and entered a stretch of road that ran parallel to the ocean. He could hear screams farther in town, but the growing volume of voices told him the action was heading in his direction… which was the plan. He intended on becoming a one-man wall, keeping the regens at bay while the locals took to the ocean at the dock.

Rook continued running down the side street, heading for the main drag that lead up from the dock, through town, and all the way to the Manifold facility. As he entered the main street two woman nearly bowled him over. Nearly as mindless as the once-men-now-monsters chasing them, they ran past squealing like injured hyenas. Rook shook his head. It always amazed him how, when faced with a violent death, people reverted back to an almost animal-like state. He wondered if that's what drove the regens mad, being pushed to that near-death state over and over until the mind could no longer function outside of it.

He had little time to ponder the idea as the screams rolled downhill. With the main drag lit by a row of bright, Manifold-installed streetlights, he had no need for his night vision goggles, which was just as well because he could more easily pick out the bad guys — they were the ones covered in blood, but still running.

Kneeling to one knee, Rook raised his assault rifle to his shoulder, peered through the scope, and began firing quick, three-round bursts. The locals ducked their heads, as he knew they would, but continued forward, toward the gunfire, somehow intuiting that the bullets were not intended for them. Either that or a death by bullet was preferable to being eaten alive.

"Shake a leg, people," Rook shouted between shots. With his aim so obscured by civilians, Rook could only slow the advancing regens. He was lucky to get a good body shot, never mind a head shot. Despite his efforts, civilians continued to fall. As the main group of locals passed by, thirty people out of the original two hundred seventy-one, he lost sight of the regens.

The group spread around him and passed in seconds. The road ahead lay empty save for a few injured stragglers, which the regens quickly turned on as they healed from the bullet wounds inflicted by Rook. He quickly counted their numbers.

Twenty-seven.

Damn.

Twenty-seven charging normal people would be hard enough to defend against, even unarmed. But these things… they could heal like the X-Mens Wolverine on speed.

Rook unleashed with a blaze of gunfire until the magazine was exhausted. Several of the regens lay on the ground, injured, but healing. Remembering the capybara, he took aim at three of the injured regens and pulled the second trigger on this weapon, launching a 40mm grenade. The blast shredded the three injured regens and pocked two more with shrapnel. Rook fired three more grenades as quick as possible, only stopping to reload each round, turning the street one hundred feet away into a crater-filled inferno.

As the road smoldered and smoke rose into the night air, Rook could see movement within, but was unable to tell how many had been dispatched. He replaced the assault rifle's magazine and squeezed the trigger. Bullets flew into the haze, but there was no way of knowing if he was making a difference. As the bullets blazed, a splash of sticky wet liquid struck his face. Blood.

He flinched back, turned, and fired, riddling a headless body with bullets. The body fell back under the force of the bullets. Rook wiped the man's blood from his face. "I owe you one, Knight."

"Almost in town," Knight responded.

A shuffle of stones brought Rook's attention back to the smoldering road. Nineteen regens emerged from the smoke. Open wounds stretched together, linked, and sealed. Within seconds, each and every one of them was hale again. They ran for Rook.

"Better hurry!"

He unloaded the last few rounds from the assault rifle, dropping one of the regens, but there was no time to reload. He dropped the rifle on the ground and drew his two specially made, brushed chrome .50 Action Express Desert Eagles from holsters under each arm. If not for the wrist guards he wore, which locked the guns and his wrists into place, he would never have been able to fire the weapons, which packed enough recoil to snap a wrist. They could punch a basketball-sized hole in anything made of flesh and blood, but each weapon only carried seven rounds. Fourteen rounds total… eighteen regens. And he doubted he'd get a chance to reload.

The group charged as the fleeing townspeople reached the dock and began launching boats. They headed straight for Rook.

Aiming carefully, Rook began firing. Three regens dropped, two headless, one missing the better part of its chest. More fell, but not from lethalwounds…not for regens anyway.

Another lost its head from the side as Knight came up beside him.

"I never liked the Alamo story," Knight said, squeezing off another perfectly aimed shot.

"Me neither." Click, click. "I'm out." He holstered both weapons, not willing to part with either, and drew his long KA-BAR blade. Thirteen regens continued forward, frothing, growling, savage. Some were still healing from gaping wounds opened by Rook's Desert Eagle. They closed within fifty feet, picking up speed.

Then a grenade clunked to the ground at the center of the group. They paused to look at it.

"The stupid bastards are dumb as shit!" a voice shouted from behind. They turned and saw Jon Karn, loaded with guns and ammo. "Haul your asses back to the yacht. I'll cover you."

Rook opened his mouth to argue, then saw the weapon in the man's hands and thought better of it. Karn held a M134 Minigun mounted on a heavy-duty tripod. The weapon was impossible to wield as a handheld weapon, despite its popular use in movies, but Karn seemed to know that. He kicked open the tripod, knelt down, and fired three bolts into the town's only paved road, locking the tripod down. He stood, pulled the trigger, and as the barrel of the gun began spinning, shouted, "I said move! This is my town. I'll defend it!"

The minigun spat bullets at a rate of four thousand rounds per minute. The first regen struck was split in two from crotch to head.

Listening to the man, Rook and Knight bolted for the Mercury, intent on rearming and returning to the fight. As they approached the dock they could clearly see the surviving townspeople powering out to sea on an array of small ships. The Mercury and a fishing boat named Susie-Q were the only ships remaining. The wood of the dock echoed under their boots, both men stopped short of the Mercury. The mini-gun had stopped firing.

They turned to find Karn falling beneath the weight of two regens who had tackled him from the side. Knight took aim as Karn's screams came to an abrupt stop and a pool of blood slid out over pavement. Knight dropped both regens with a single well-placed round. He lowered the rifle and shook his head.

Rook nudged his shoulder and nodded toward the top of the hill. A horde of regens plunged toward town like an army. "Let's move."

Knight hopped into the boat, while Rook tossed the tie lines in. The dual engines roared to life as Rook climbed in. He reloaded his twin Desert Eagles and began looking for more weapons on the heavily armed yacht. They couldn't stay in town, but they wouldn't be leaving. Not with three members of the team M.I.A.

Better we all die together, Rook thought.