Love Bug (21 page)

-49-

Eldritch watched with as much pride and satisfaction as his Em-Pak would allow. The battle raged on his video monitor and in every home, in every city controlled by the ERC. The citizens would now see
first-hand and up close, what they were up against. Sure, the fake Emo attacks had shaken some citizens up, but this was something different. This was real.

Now citizens would see what waited for their children if they refused to follow along with Eldritch. Now they understood the gravity of the situation. Their children were hostages of the ERC, of Eldritch, and he alone would decide who lived and who died.

“Mr. Eldritch?” Ortiz’s voice whispered through the radio. The Captain was silently creeping towards a Red that loomed over Xander. This would make for amazing footage. Hopefully, the camera on Captain Ortiz’s helmet would capture it.

“Go ahead
, Captain,” Eldritch grinned. His Em-Pak beeped and the smile faded.

“Sir
, the Red has Xander pinned,” Ortiz reported.

“I can see that
, Ortiz,” Eldritch snapped, returning to his characteristic unpleasant demeanor. “What is it?”

“Should I fire
, sir?” Ortiz questioned. “Your children…and your father are within the kill zone.” Ortiz still found it hard to believe that he was reporting the fact that Samuel Eldritch Sr. was alive and well.

“Oh, just kill that
nasty creature and get on with it,” Eldritch demanded. “As long as I have one child left and my father is brought back alive, I will consider this operation a success. Cora would be ideal, Xander is…well, Xander is acceptable.” Eldritch said the word as if it tasted foul. He had invested so much time and effort into Cora’s future. She was simply the more logical choice. But if he had to start over with Xander then so be it.

“Understood
, sir,” Ortiz answered and moved forward. The Red was busy, unaware of the proximity of Ortiz and the promise of death carried in his hands.

The Red gnashed its teet
h near Xander’s face and Xander froze.

“Smart boy,” Ortiz whispered. “Fighting that thing won’t end well. Just stay still a little bit longer.” Ortiz raised his gun, preparing to fire, but the Red suddenly stood up. It looked down at Xander and spoke,
and released the boy to whoever the other boy was.

Ortiz lined up the shot and prepared to end this, to achieve his objective and get the hell out of here before the Reds did anything else strange.

“
JESSICA!
” the unknown boy screeched and dove towards the Red.

“Jessica?” Ortiz mumbled, his face pressed against the stock of his gun. Who would name a Red Jessica? Who would bother naming a Red anything? No matter.

Ortiz’s moment of hesitation gave the boy time to reach the Red. Ortiz squeezed the trigger, but the boy’s momentum carried the Red out of the line of fire. The shot caught her on the corner of her shoulder, a painful injury, but far from fatal. Ortiz prepared his next shot, lined it up perfectly on the Red evenly between the V of his sight.
Click…click…click.
Ortiz had lost count of his shots in the insanity of the battle. He dropped his machine gun and began fumbling with the clasp that held his sidearm in its holster.

The Red pushed the boy
off her and turned to face Ortiz. She looked at her shoulder. The injury did nothing beyond anger her.

The Reds were animals,
Ortiz had been taught that. But these Reds had shown something very different. They had shown intelligence. At this moment though, those thoughts mattered little.

The Red snarled, small pillows of foam in the corners of her mouth.
Her eyes narrowed, the pupils constricted to small coal pinpoints that bore into Ortiz. She clashed her pointed teeth together and glared at Ortiz. Right now, this Red was very much a wild animal, an injured one at that, which meant she was far more dangerous.

Ortiz’s Em-Pak began its frantic electronic tittering as the Red dropped low to the ground and launched herself towards him, her jaws stretching open to an unbelievable width. Ortiz’s hands were slow and clumsy, fumbling with his sidearm. The weapon slipped from his grip and clattered to the ground, the noise resonating in Ortiz’s head like the tone of his own funeral bells.

-50-

The Red was going to die, or at least should. Xander really couldn’t have cared less. That thing was filthy, disgusting and it had put its grimy hands on him.
It had threatened him, cut him with her teeth and called him
food
of all things! Xander wanted that Red dead on the ground, riddled with bullets and slowly bleeding to death. He wanted all the Reds dead and the Emos too for that matter.

What Xander did care about was the soldier that currently fumbled with his sidearm, trying to stop the Red from peeling his skin like a banana. That soldier looked familiar
. He looked like someone he had seen with his father, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that this man was an ERC soldier and surely would take Xander back to his father, and back to the life he was born to live.

“Xander, let’s go,”
Cora’s dirty little Emo pet shouted, pulling at his clothes.

“Get off of me!” Xander snapped.

“Xander please,” Samuel pleaded. “We need to leave.”

“I am
leaving,” Xander responded, “leaving all of this garbage and insanity. I’m returning to father.” Xander snapped an arm around Remmy’s neck, pulling it into a tight hold. “Listen very carefully, Remmy. Don’t do anything stupid. You even think about something I don’t like and that’s it.” Xander pressed the barrel of his wrist gun into the side of Remmy’s head. “One flick of my wrist and your head is gone. Got it?”

“Xander
, what are you doing?” Cora cried and started forward. Samuel’s hand shot out and grabbed his granddaughter.

“
Cora, don’t,” Samuel warned. “Xander will kill him.” It was clear that his grandson had made his decision.

“Samuel,” Cora said weakly. She had come so close to saving Remmy and now her own brother was going to kill him.

“Hey! You, the disgusting Red!” Xander shouted. “Don’t or Remmy dies!”

The Red stopped. She had knocked the soldier to the ground and was circling back to finish the job.

“Jessica,” Remmy gritted, “her name is Jessica.”

“Fine,” Xander sneered. “
Jessica
, let that soldier up or I split Remmy’s head in half.”

Jessica snarled. Her teeth clashed together with such force that
it sounded as if they had cracked. The pearly rows of gleaming bone daggers remained intact.

“Remmy,” Jessica growled, her voice low and full of violence. “Remmy, this is getting to be old.”

Xander could see more Reds heading towards them.

“Get up!” Xander snapped, glaring at the soldier. “What is your name?” The young boy
’s voice carried all the authority of his father’s.

“Ortiz,” the soldier answered, “Captain Ortiz. Your father sent me to rescue you.”

“About damn time,” Xander sneered and yanked Remmy towards the soldier.

“Xander please,” Cora shouted. “Please stop this. Remmy saved you. Saved you twice! Just let him go! You don’t have to stay, but let him go!”
Cora could feel the hard, cold barrel of her own wrist gun pressed against her arm. She had one shot left. Would she really use it to kill Xander?

“Ms. Eldritch,” Ortiz yelled, his gun held at half ready, “your father has sent me to take you home. To take all of you home, even you Mr. Eldritch.”

“Young man,” Samuel shook his head, “I’ll be going nowhere with you and neither will my granddaughter. If Xander has chosen to leave, then that is his choice, but you must let Remmy go.” Samuel did his best to play into the persona of the person the ERC had created in his image.

“Let him go?” Ortiz asked. “Mr. Eldritch
, are you feeling well, sir? That boy is the only thing keeping the Reds at bay right now. The last thing I’ll be doing is asking Xander to let him go.”

Xander
moved beside Captain Ortiz. He still kept his arm tightly wrapped around Remmy’s throat, the barrel of his gun still pressed to the side of Remmy’s head.

Jessica paced, her energy and anger becoming more frantic. Cora could see that she wasn’t going to be able to control herself for much longer. She needed to get Remmy free immediately.

“Sir?” Ortiz called into the radio inside his helmet. “Are you seeing this, Mr. Eldritch?”

“Yes,” Eldritch mumbled as he frantically punched keys on his computer. Thinking that his children were dead, he had never bothered to check the signal being transmitted from their Em-Paks. Had he actually cared about rescuing them, as opposed to using their deaths for political gain, he would have checked the signals long ago a
nd found that Cora’s reported a malfunction and then went silent. Xander’s still transmitted loud and clear. “Captain Ortiz,” Eldritch said slowly.

“Yes sir?” Ortiz answered
, his word distracted and quick. He kept his sidearm trained on Jessica. The Red wasn’t going to play ball for much longer. Xander had the Emo subdued. The boy showed some real promise.

“Ortiz, listen to me very, very carefully,” Eldritch’s voice came through the radio, his words tipped in venom. “Cora has deactivated her Em-Pak. She is an Emo terrorist,
and so is my father. If you can subdue either of them do so, but otherwise they are to be given no special consideration. They are terrorists and I expect you to treat them as such.” Eldritch paused and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. “On second thought, just kill them, Ortiz. They made their decision and I will not suffer the embarrassment of it. Do you understand, Captain?”

“Understood, sir,” Ortiz grinned. “Perfectly.” This made the math of battle a little easier to calculate and balance. It removed a few problematic variables. Ortiz turned to face Cora and Samuel. His face no longer held the look of a rescuing hero. No, now Ortiz’s face was set in the hardened mask of a seasoned soldier.

Cora felt as if the air chilled. Goosebumps covered her arms and legs. The small hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Something about Ortiz’s look was very bad.

“Let Remmy go and we’re gone,” Cora offered, but it appeared to have no effect on Ortiz
or Xander.

“Ms. Eldritch,” Ortiz said, his eyes narrowed and cold, “I’m going to ask you one time and only one time to lay down your weapon. Mr. Eldritch
, I suggest you do the same. Your next decision will determine if I bring you back to the city in a helicopter or a body bag. What’s it going to be?”

“He knows we’ve deactivated our Em-Paks,” Samuel whispered to Cora. “Go along with what he says.”

Cora and Samuel unstrapped their wrist guns and tossed them to the ground. They then stepped back slowly, hands raised in surrender.

“Very good,” Ortiz nodded. He swung the barrel of his pistol level with Cora’s face. Ortiz had no patience for terrorist, no matter what their last name was. These two were never going back to the city.

Remmy watched as Ortiz’s finger flexed on the trigger. Time seemed to slow down, moving with the gummy stubbornness of honey. Cora was going to die. She was going to be gunned down and Remmy would be forced to watch.

“Remmy! Now!” Jessica snarled as she launched herself at Ortiz. Her jaws clamped around his extende
d arm. Bones splintered, crushed beneath the pressure of her powerful teeth and jaws.  Ortiz cried out in pain. The gun fell from his hand, clattering to the ground. Half of his arm followed close behind.

Remmy, sensing that time was short, stamped down on Xander’s left foot with all the force he could muster. Xander yelped in pain, the small bones of his foot crunched under Remmy’s heavy boot. His grip loosened and Remmy wrenched Xa
nder’s arm from around his neck. Bending Xander’s elbow in the wrong direction, Remmy used the motion to flip the boy over his shoulder. Xander’s wrist gun went off with a loud poof, peppering the ground near Remmy’s foot with metal shot.

Ortiz stumbled backwards, a look of pure shock etched into his face. He stared wide-eyed at his ruined arm that ended in a ragged, wet stump. Ortiz’s mouth silently mouthed words of disbelief. How had he been so stupid? He never should have taken his eyes and even more importantly, his gun,
off the Red. Ortiz thumped to the ground like an oversized toddler, his legs splayed out.

Jessica walked forward, her eyes burning with hunger and rage. “Usually,” Jessica smiled a toothy grin at Ortiz, “I don’t like my food aged. It makes the meat
tough and stringy!” She lunged forward, gnashing her teeth together. “But this time, oh my, my, my. This time I’m going to make an exception.” She dove towards Ortiz, but Remmy wrapped his arms around her waist, stopping her midair. Jessica thrashed wildly in Remmy’s arms, but he held on.

“Don’t Jessica,” Remmy pleaded. “Show them that you’re better than they are! Do what’s right!”

“What’s right?” Jessica snapped. “I’m doing what my nature demands. That is what’s right!” She beat her fists against Remmy.

Remmy let go of Jessica. She had been his friend, some small piece of her still was, but she was a Red and that meant there were different rules for her. And just as Jessica couldn’t demand that Remmy become a Red, he couldn’t ask her not to be one. Jessica simply was who she was.
He let her go. She dropped to the ground and dashed towards Ortiz.

The soldier scuttled backwards in the mud a few feet and then remained still. He had failed in his mission. The price of such failure was death.