Edge of Valor: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller(85)

The point pierced the General’s right eyeball. It punctured the cornea, drilling through the lens and plunged deep into the vitreous body.

Agony exploded inside his skull. Searing white-hot pain.

The General howled. Blinded, his hands flailed.

The man still on him, his arm surging forward for a second blow. The savage strike entered the side of the General’s throat.

With incredible speed and precision, the steel point of the tactical pen stabbed deep, gouging through muscle, tendons, and cartilage to rupture the carotid artery.

The General collapsed as if his spine had been ripped out of him. He landed hard on his back. The impact jarred him, knocking the breath from his body.

His one good eye bulged as he gazed unseeing at the ceiling, his vision draped in bright red. He clutched in vain at the liquid gushing from the hole in his neck.

Hot red blood pumped from his body. His lifeblood drained onto the concrete floor.

Dimly, he registered shouting and screaming. Figures bursting into action. Gunshots blasting.

His last coherent thought was one of astonishment. That this could be happening to him. That he wouldn’t get to finish his magnus opus.

That he, too, was made of flesh and blood and bone.

And then darkness claimed him.





63





Liam





Day One Hundred and Fifteen





Liam rolled off the General’s body.

The dropped pistol glinted. Not two feet away.

In one fluid motion, he grasped it as he rolled. He came up behind the man’s head and shoulders in a crouch.

He lifted the General’s torso. Using the man’s body as a shield, he shoved the barrel of the pistol beneath the man’s armpit. Still alive, the General gasped and twitched. Slippery blood coursed from his throat.

The world slowed.

For half a second, the guards stiffened, stunned. Their brains struggled to comprehend the rapid turnaround of the last second. Their weapons rose, but slowly, too slow.

The difference between action and reaction.

The determination between life and death caught in that frozen fraction of time.

Liam shifted his aim upward and fired a double tap.

Two bullets ripped into Dobson’s unprotected chest. He wasn’t wearing the bulky ceramic plates in his chest rig. With a startled gasp, he dropped.

Liam shifted and squeezed the trigger in rapid succession. McArthur looked down at the new holes in his torso, shocked. His body collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.

Mayhem erupted. Shouts of alarm. Bodies bursting into motion, hands going for weapons, carbine muzzles raising toward him.

Liam spun, searching for his next target.

It happened within the span of a second. Hundredths of a second.

Not seven feet away, Gibbs had a bead on Liam.

No time to react. No time to pull his muzzle to the left and fire.

Gibbs fired first. Three rapid shots. The rounds impacted the General’s chest and vibrated through the dead man’s flesh against Liam’s ribs.

The man filled his vision. The muzzle lifting, aimed toward his head. No way he would miss.

Two blasts.

A stunned look contorted Gibbs’ face. He crumpled.

Behind Gibbs, Luther spun toward the door, Liam’s M4 in his hands. He’d shot Gibbs in the back.

Before Liam could react, Redding pounded through the doorway.

Luther emptied a half-dozen rounds into his face. The man toppled, gurgling and gasping.

Three mercs plunged through the narrow doorway after him, bottlenecking at Redding’s fallen body, shouting in alarm, guns up but not shooting yet. Still in protection mode, not sure what they would find. They didn’t know the General was dead.

Across the room, Luther dropped to one knee and opened fire.

The first man jittered and fell. The second received a zipper of rounds from his crotch to his neck. He crashed backward onto the third hostile. He stumbled, weapon flailing.

Liam drilled two rounds into his skull. The reports exploded in the enclosed room. His ears buzzed.

There were too many hostiles. More swarmed into the kitchen and headed for the freezer. Luther lay down suppressing fire and drove them back.

“I count six more on the opposite end of the kitchen!” Luther said. “They’ve fallen back behind the stairwell!”

A hostile on the floor groaned. Liam swiveled and fired security shots into the heads of the operators on the floor. His slide locked back.

The air stank of blood, urine, and feces. Their bowels had loosened in death.

Liam dropped the spent Colt 1911 and dragged the General’s corpse off himself. With a sideways lurch, he seized a fresh carbine from the still warm but very dead hands of Dobson.

He came up on his knees and pointed the weapon at Luther. “You betrayed me!”

Luther didn’t turn around. He crouched behind the insulated wall. “I did what I had to do!”

Liam clambered to his feet. He staggered to the right of the doorway, seeking cover. He moved sideways, swiveling the carbine, and kept it trained on Luther.

Adrenaline kept him upright, but he was limping. His limbs weren’t working right. The intense pain left him shaken and lightheaded.

He tried to put it in a box and lock it away.

It didn’t work.

He’d reached the limits of human endurance. His tortured body was giving out on him.