Gray Panthers: Dixie (16 page)

“No you don’t, Chief! You get moving toward that dance floor!” Bronia bumped him with her hip, almost knocking him out of the booth and to the floor.

“Damned if I’m going to sit here any longer!” Guns looked at the girl with new admiration. “Ma’am, may I have this dance?” he recovered as he felt himself being pulled toward the dance floor. They joined the others and began to gyrate with the fast-paced music.

The song ended and a slow one came on. Jimmy and Guns started heading for the booth, but the girls wanted to keep dancing.

Suzy hollered, “Attention! About face! Forward, dance!” The men smiled and turned back around. The girls melted into them and slowly moved to the music. Guns felt the crush of Bronia’s ample breasts against his chest as the smell of flowers wafted up to him. He inhaled the scent from her hair, and as he closed his eyes he was once again with his wife. He clamped his hand against the small of her back and guided her in a special rhythm.

Bronia was surprised that the old chief allowed her to press into him. She had meant it as a joke, to shock him, but she felt at ease and protected as he guided her. As they danced, she thought of Scotty and how she had let him go. She breathed in Guns’s cologne and nestled her head into his chest.

Too soon, the group headed back to the booth. Dozens of beer bottles awaited them. Bronia’s two brothers eyed Guns as she pushed them over to slide into the booth, laughing at their protectiveness. Guns looked down at her and saw that her skirt had risen as she scooted across the seat. He caught a flash of panty before he turned away from the table and started toward the head.

The group at the table was enjoying the attention whenever someone noticed Short Blade among the group. Initially, the waitress was going to refuse to serve him, but he had spoken up.

“Ma’am, I have pledged my life in the defense of your planet, and you won’t even let me buy a drink because I’m hairier than any of you? I could be dead tomorrow.” Feeling chastised, the waitress took his order. The group at the next table overheard the exchange and bought the round.

Get back out there, coward,
Guns told himself.
Quit hiding in the head.
The weight of the wedding band hanging with his dog tags felt heavier than ever before.

“I’m a new man now!” Guns said with a laugh as he rejoined the group. He was relieved to see that Suzy was sitting next to Bronia, which meant he could sit at the end of the booth.

“Here, Chief!” Suzy jumped up right as he was ready to sit and shoved him playfully into the booth next to Bronia before squeezing in beside him. The scent of both girls and all the direct contact with them, along with the view, was driving him crazy. The girls appeared not to notice.

Hours later, as the group staggered from the club, Short Blade invited everyone back to the suite for drinks. No one wanted the party to end, so they made their way to the hotel.

Once inside, the girls shrieked with excitement when they saw the huge spa. They stripped to their panties and rushed to get into the water. Sinking to their necks in the bubbling water, they let out a collective sigh

“Oh, get over it, guys! You’ve all seen us in the showers and the head. Nothing new here. Now bring us some drinks!” Suzy playfully ordered.

Guns spied a bottle of champagne on ice next to a basket of fruit. As he uncorked it, the juice bubbled out and he grabbed four flutes. Handing each of the girls a glass, he smiled as they complimented him on serving them. Looking around the room, he saw that folks were dropping fast. Only he and Jimmy were left awake with the girls. He picked up Short Blade, carried him to his room, and stripped him naked before tucking his little buddy into the king-sized bed.

Back out in the main room, Guns repositioned and covered the bodies strewn on the floor and furniture so they wouldn’t get stiff or stepped on.

“G’night, all,” Jimmy said with a wave as he disappeared into his room. The girls began climbing out of the tub and Guns enjoyed the view without blushing.

“Ladies,” Guns said, motioning to Mary and Matilda, “if you will follow me.” He opened the door to Short Blade’s room and pointed out all the room in the massive bed. Pressing their wet bodies against the chief, the girls each kissed a cheek and then crawled into the bed, one on either side of Short Blade.

The other two girls, still wet and near naked, were waiting when he returned to the main room. “Come on, ladies,” he said, giving them the ‘follow me’ signal. He opened the door to Jimmy’s room. A loud snore confirmed his condition, “I think you can sleep safely in there,” he told them, motioning for them to go on in. Suzy gave him a peck on the cheek and disappeared under the covers.

“Forget someone, Chief?” Bronia asked as she reached around his neck and pulled herself up on tiptoes so she could give him a kiss. “Let’s go to bed,” she said as she slid back down and led him into the third bedroom. Guns felt the urge, but he couldn’t help thinking that the girl could be his great-granddaughter. He turned off the light and stripped naked as he went under the covers. Bronia rested her knee over his midsection as she laid her arm over his chest and rested her head on his chest. Her warmth and softness began to affect him. He put his arm over her shoulder and once again drew in the scent of flowers. He felt her breasts move in rhythm with her deep breaths, which gradually progressed to a soft mewing sound as she drifted off. With mixed feelings, Guns held her with both arms and let sleep overtake him.

Short Blade was the first one awake, finding the two naked girls cuddling with him in their sleep. He raised the covers to see that he was as naked as they were. One of the girls was holding onto his member, and he felt the warmth and constriction. He liked humans, but he did not have any thoughts at all of doing anything with the homely creatures that women were. When he tried to move, the girl’s grip tightened, and he felt pleasure. He glanced over at her and saw that her eyes were open. He shook his head no and then rose to use the toilet. Looking down as he stood over the toilet, he saw that he had done the unspeakable during the night. He’d thrown up.

Jimmy moved Suzy’s head from his chest as he got up to answer the call of nature. “Was it good for you, too?” he teased.

“You wish, old man.” Suzy looked down and realized that she was totally nude, with no memory of how she’d gotten there. She jumped from the bed and grabbed a shirt out of the open bag. Standing in front of the mirror, she admired herself in the black shirt with a skull on the front and the words Death from Above.

Guns had been awake several minutes when he felt Bronia begin to stir next to him. “Did you sleep good?” he asked.

“Mmm hmm. I just had one problem,” she said as she rolled over so that she was lying flat atop him. He tried to gently move her off him, but she wouldn’t budge as she looked him in the eyes.

“It’s going to happen, Billy, so lay back and enjoy.” She spread her legs as she slid down, holding his face with both hands.

Jimmy strolled into the main room wearing only a pair of boxers. “Good morning, happy campers,” he said, looking at everyone spread about the room. “Who’s hungry?” He picked up the phone and requested a breakfast buffet for twelve.

Everyone ate in silence, forcing the food into bellies that rebelled against even the thought of food. They glanced at one another and waited to hear stories they couldn’t remember from the night before. Matt and Tiny were the first to depart, with plans to play tennis. The rest started to slowly break up into groups as they got ready to leave. Bronia and Suzy promised to return the shirts they had borrowed.

“Well, that was a nice start for a liberty. What’s next?” Jimmy asked, rubbing his sore knuckles and remembering the punks from the night before.

“I was just thinking I’d lay out by the pool and get a little sun,” Guns answered.

“Little is right. It’s November!” Jimmy said, stating the obvious.

“In Arizona. Have you been cold yet since we started our liberty?”

Short Blade listened to the two men argue as he lay back in a stuffed chair by a window the sun was lighting up. He was soon out cold.

New Mississippi, planet Dixie

11 November 2128

Staff Sergeant Coyle was looking down on the street from the school’s roof. The streetlights were on and civilians had returned to their homes. They waved to him as they worked in their yards before dusk. Everything was quiet, and it seemed like peacetime. The other two shuttles had been reassigned, now that the school was no longer a holding facility.

Coyle saw Tanaka in front of the school talking with locals who had never seen an Asian before. Garcia was doing a walk-through of the interior of the school. The rest of the squad had already called it a night until they had to report for their guard shift.

Coyle debated checking up on Garcia, as he suspected the young specialist was in the cafeteria scrounging for a meal. The thought of something to eat that didn’t come from a bag helped him make his decision.

The hallway to the cafeteria was deathly quiet and dark, since there was no reason to have the lights on. The smell of cooking meat came from the cafeteria, and Coyle’s stomach began to growl. The light from inside the cafeteria produced three shadows on the wall visible through the open doorway.

Coyle engaged his suit and donned his optics, deciding to play it safe. Entering the kitchen, he saw Garcia first—or what was left of him, as Coyle didn’t see his head. Farther in the kitchen there were sounds of movement. Turning the corner, Coyle saw three huge Red Coats. He raised his beamer and took three quick shots from ten feet away. Each shot was a center body mass shot and dropped its intended target.

On the counter were a loaf of bread and a jar of jam next to Garcia’s beamer. Garcia’s head had been lopped off by a still-bloody sword that was in the paw of one of the dead Red Coats.

Just as Coyle began to quietly back out of the cafeteria, more Red Coats entered. Seeing the carnage, the Red Coat with the stripes of an NCO reached for a scanner on his belt.

Coyle again fired as the aliens returned fire wildly with their projectile weapons. A stray shot into the ceiling killed the lights, and the flame from the weapons lit up the room like a disco ball. The room shook from the blast of their weapons. Two of the aliens lay dead on the floor as Coyle noticed that he’d been shot in the arm. The shot had torn away his suit’s controls, leaving him visible. A scraping sound mixed with a soulful mewing came from the doorway.

A bloodied Jacka was on his side trying to get traction on the slick floor to escape into the hallway. His top left arm was still back where he had been wounded. The Jacka looked up at Coyle and closed his eyes in resignation. When he reopened them, he was alone in the dark.

Coyle tried to be as quiet as possible as he headed for the door, cursing his injury and loss of communications. He hoped to open the door and be met by his squad. The night was quiet as he saw the dark shadows of figures running from the school in all directions.

Letting the beamer hang from his patrol sling, he pulled his 10mm automatic and fired it at the moving shadows and into the sky until the magazine was empty. The noise and light show from the special ammunition had the desired effect. Shouting could be heard from all around the school, along with the firing of projectile weapons. As the shuttle began to take off, a red beam of light drilled through it and it fell back to the ground in flames.

Coyle began to feel a little lightheaded from his wound as he sat with his back to the school wall. Aliens were running out of the same door he had exited through earlier. He sat there and shot each of them through the back as a steady stream continued to pour out. Soon there were three dozen bodies in front of him as the night roared with silence.

“Anyone left out there?” Only silence responded to his shout.

Coyle got to his feet and started to feel sick. He looked at his wound, which only now had started to hurt. Reaching for his medical kit, he found instead just a torn pouch.

Staggering, he thought he might make it to the street and wave down a civilian. He didn’t hear the movement behind him closing in. A soft crunch made him turn in time to see the Jacka, arm raised and holding a sword. The Jacka’s uniform was bloodied where he’d lost his top left arm. Coyle closed his eyes in resignation, waiting for the blow to come as he raised his own bloodied arm to protect himself.

He felt the Jacka shove him to the ground and throw his beamer and 10mm off into the grass. He then cut Coyle’s uniform sleeve off at the shoulder, tied it around the wound on Coyle’s arm, and patted him on the head. The Jacka then slowly forced himself upright and disappeared into the night as Coyle blacked out.

New Mississippi, planet Dixie

12 November 2128

“We got a live one over here!”

Coyle could barely force his eyes open in the bright sunlight as someone plopped down next to him.

“How you doing there, buddy? You a Sammy or a Panther?” the stranger asked as he inspected the wound on Coyle’s arm.

Coyle, Paul E., Staff Sergeant, US Army—”

“Okay, Coyle, Paul E. Your life is going to change from this day forward.” The Gray Panther medic took a syringe and gently slid the needle into Coyle’s arm above the wound.

“Congratulations. You’ve just joined the immortals,” the medic said to the unconscious NCO. A hoverboard was brought over and Coyle was put on it to be taken to a nearby shuttle for evacuation.

General Black stood near a pile of roughly forty Jacka. The NCO in front of him was explaining that the Jacka had tried to break out during the night. He said the first casualty was a soldier who’d been making a snack in the cafeteria. His beamer was found by the food, unfired. Six dead Jacka had been found near his body, killed by a beamer. Part of a control unit from a suit was also found nearby, and they suspected the soldier had managed to escape after being wounded. A wounded soldier had been found near the stack of bodies without a control unit on his uniform. The fired brass surrounding him confirmed that he was the one who had sounded the alarm by firing his 10mm auto into the air, since no other combatant had used a 10mm.

“So this poor son of a bitch first gets trapped by a half-dozen hostiles. He manages to kill them all, and in the process he is wounded, unable to communicate, or use his suit to go invisible. He then has to run through a building of enemy soldiers, survives, and gets outside. Instead of hiding, he fires his pistol into the air so they can see his special tracers. He then sits down next to the door and shoots everyone coming out until he passes out from his wounds,” Black repeated back to confirm the story he had just been told. “Amazing.”

“One puzzle we have though, General Black. His weapons were not by him. In the dirt between his legs an enemy sword was plunged into the ground.” The NCO pointed to the sword still in the ground.

“Be sure to grab that sword and see that it gets to this hero. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it,” the general instructed.

Lieutenant Wright was finding it impossible that his entire squad was gone. He was shown where Specialist Tanaka had fallen while protecting civilians in front of their house. He was next shown the shuttle with seven men in it who had died of concussion when the shuttle was hit. Inside the school they showed him Specialist Garcia’s head next to his body. He was told they weren’t sure what had happened to Staff Sergeant Coyle. The lieutenant thanked the trooper for showing him the battlefield. He then went into the school and puked.