DIRE : BORN (The Dire Saga Book 1) (22 page)

“Don't have time to lie down on the job right now.” I patted him on the shoulder. “Relax. Help her get into the armor. It held her leg together before, it'll do it again, yes?”

He shook his head in exasperation, but complied. With the assistance of Joan, Martin, and Guzman, they managed to wrestle me into the armor without mangling either the brace or any of my limbs.

They were waiting for me down the beach a little ways, keeping a respectful distance from the camp. Four figures, two of which I recognized. A third one was fat and bulky, and the fourth one looked to have a longarm of some sort on his back. I approached, and Sparky fell in with me as I did, rolling along and taking sidelong glances my way.

“You all right, Dire girl?”

“OH YES.”

The one with the gun jumped a bit as my voice boomed out over the icy bay. The others held firm, though they shuffled around a bit. They were wearing jeans and the blue jackets with the white eyes dyed onto them, along with black balaclavas. Nash waved as we approached, Skye just watched us come.  The fat one was a red-haired man with an easy smile. The shooter was a hard-eyed woman with no hair visible on her head. It was the fat one who stepped forward to meet me.

“Afternoon, miss Dire.”

“DOCTOR DIRE, ACTUALLY.” I halted, and Sparky rolled to a stop next to me. “WELCOME. DO YOU WISH REFRESHMENTS?” I gestured toward the kitchen, and the line set up outside of it. Looked like it was lunchtime.

“That's all right. I'm Carson, by the way. I speak for Munin.”

“DON'T KNOW HIM, HER, OR IT.”

He shrugged, took it in stride. “He's more or less in charge of our little club.”

“THE GANG, YOU MEAN.”

“We prefer to think of ourselves as a vigilante association,” he waved a gloved hand, gestured toward the camp. “Protecting good people by stopping the bad ones.”

“WELL, IT'S YOUR LUCKY DAY THEN. HOW CAN YOU HELP?”

“Straight to the point, huh? I like her, Bunny.”

The woman with the rifle smiled. It didn't touch her eyes, and it was gone in a second. Carson continued.

“You want the good news or the bad? You'll get both.”

“BAD FIRST.”

“Well. They're coming for you tonight. Rictus wasn't expecting you to run off the cops, so he delayed and called for help. Stig himself is coming up with his elites to hit you from the south while Rictus and his boys come in from the west. That's the plan, anyways.”

“YOU ARE ASSURED OF THIS?”

“We're the MM, it's what we do!”

Sparky rapped on my gauntlet. “It kind of is. They know things first, have a lot of ears and eyes.”

“SPIES, IN OTHER WORDS.”

“More like community-minded individuals who know the proper value of good intel.” Carson put his hands on his hips. “The good news though, is that Stig is coming out of his crib.”

“CRIB?”

“Well, it's more like a fortress. He's got an old pawn shop downtown and the building above it. It's the heart of their territory in the district, even if it's only a foothold. Too well-defended even for the Kriegers to dig'em out, much less us. But he's taking the field for the first time in ages. Coming here. And we know the route he'll take.”

“YOU'RE CERTAIN?”

“Well... We might have rigged the game a little. Wrecked a few stolen cars in strategic locations to block the other routes. He'll have to come up Broadoak Street to get here in time. We're thinking ambush. But he's going to have his boys along, and they're no joke. I wouldn't waste lives against them, even with intel and time to prepare. But you? You're bulletproof, aintcha?”

“MORE OR LESS,” I confirmed. “YOU CAN PROVIDE SUPPORT?”

“A bit. Or we can provide some extra guards at the camp.”

Sparky rubbed his jaw. “How many?” He asked.

“Maybe about fifteen volunteers. Every one of them armed.”

“That few?” Sparky frowned.

Carson spread his hands. “Hey... no offense, soldier, but there's a hell of a lot going on around here. If we pull too many people out to help you, the Kriegers will try to roll us up. Or the Graveyard Gang will come north, and no one wants that. But listen, if you take out Stig, you'll just be up against Rictus, here. He doesn't have good troops, or a lot of numbers. More than you? Yes. But you'll have a shot.”

He inhaled, and glanced at me. Chubby fingers tugged on one sleeve, as he considered. “Or... instead of having our folks guard the camp, you could double down.”

“DOUBLE DOWN? WHAT DO YOU MEAN?”

“Take our people with you when you go hit Stig. Take him out fast and hard, then swing north and hit Rictus immediately after. Do it fast enough, you can maybe do it before he starts his attack on the camp.”

Hm. Tough call. And he seemed to be waiting for an answer. I decided to buy time to think.

“A QUESTION ON ANOTHER SUBJECT. DO YOU KNOW OF THE COSTUME WHO CALLS HIMSELF BALLISTA?”

“Ah, yeah.” Carson coughed, glanced over to Nash and asked him the question. “You had a word with him earlier, yeah?”

“Uhhh. Yes. You ah, might want to keep an eye out for him,” said Nash. “He was in a bad temper when we told him about Scrapper. Said he was going to find you and ask some hard questions. He's not exactly a subtle guy.”

“SHE ALREADY SPOKE WITH HIM. VIOLENTLY.”

Skye whistled. “And you're still standing? He must've gotten into a better headspace.”

“WELL, DIRE DID HAVE TO CHOKE HIM OUT. BUT TOMORROW FORCE GOT HIM TO A HOSPITAL FAIRLY QUICKLY, SO THAT WORKED OUT.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa...” Carson coughed. “You mean to tell me you beat Ballista?”

“LIKE A DRUM. HE'S GOT A GOOD THROW, BUT HE TELEGRAPHS TOO MUCH.” It was the truth, and it had been the only thing that let me dodge some of his spears.

That got them looking at one another with varying degrees of surprise. All save for the hard-eyed woman with the gun. Her eyes never left me.

I looked back at her. “WILL YOU BE FIGHTING IN THIS AS WELL?”

“I'll be in charge. Of our people, at least.”

“WHICH DO YOU PREFER? STRIKING AT STIG OR DEFENDING THE CAMP?”

Her eyes flicked to the camp, back to me. “Your fortifications are nonexistent, and the terrain makes you hard to sneak up on at the cost of forfeiting all cover. Most of the Bloods can't shoot for shit so that will help, but you're still going to lose people. If I'm attacking Stig I get to use better cover, spring an ambush, and choose where to fight. Offense is generally easier than defense, and this is no different.”

I nodded, looked down at Sparky. “THINK YOU CAN HOLD HERE UNTIL DIRE GETS BACK?”

“I think we'll have to.” He smiled. “They might be bad shots, but I'm not. I'll light'em up as they come. It'll be like old times.”

“HM. DO YOU HAVE ANY DEFENSE AGAINST BULLETS?”

“Eh... Not so much.”

“WE'LL WORK ON THAT.” I looked back to Carson. “HOW LONG UNTIL YOUR PEOPLE ARE READY TO ASSIST WITH STIG?”

“An hour to get people ready. Another hour to get them out in position. You can't come flying in until just before nightfall, though, or you'll give the game away.”

“HOW ABOUT WALKING?”

“Eh, doable. You're still pretty distinctive, and we'd have to work to hide you.”

Bunny raised a finger. “If you let me pick the ambush site, I can send up a flare when we're ready to call you in.”

“THUS LETTING HER BE THE DISTRACTION, AND TAKE THE BRUNT OF IT.”

“Yes,” she admitted, without a trace of shame.

“NOT A BAD PLAN. LET'S DO THAT. GIVE DIRE A ROUGH LOCATION.” We talked it over with Carson until I was certain of the plan, and what they'd do. Finally, he shook my hand and we turned to leave.

“By the by...” said Carson. “Before he went off after you, Ballista insisted on taking Scrapper's body for a proper autopsy and burial. Said he wanted to make sure of how he died.”

I simply nodded, and kept on walking. I had nothing to gain by admitting my guilt or protesting my innocence, here. Ballista had already judged me. If they cared to do so as well, they could do it after our business was done.

Once back at camp, I tracked down Abernathy. “CAN WE BUILD A MOVEABLE MANTLE FOR SPARKY? SOMETHING OUT OF THICK WOOD, TO SLOW OR STOP BULLETS?”

She rubbed her hands together, considered the task. “Yeah, I guess so. Though if you want something that thick, moveable's kind of the wrong term for it.”

“WHAT IF YOU GET A FEW PEOPLE TO HELP HIM LUG IT AROUND AND MAKE IT BIG ENOUGH FOR THEM TO HIDE BEHIND IT?”

“That we can probably do. Do we have enough wood?”

Sparky pointed up the coast. “Same place we get the firewood from. Funland's full of it.”

“THAT WORKS. TAKE A FEW PEOPLE AND GO GET WHAT YOU NEED.”

Abernathy raced off, leaving Sparky shaking his head. “She's a good kid,” he said, his voice the softest I'd ever heard it. “I hope she lives.”

And that hammered it home. That made it more real. Up until now I'd been running on adrenaline, and meeting every threat with defiance because I literally had nothing to lose. But now? Now it wasn't just my life on the line. Now I had a whole camp full of people, kids included, to worry about.

And I couldn't save them all. We just didn't have the time, didn't have the resources, didn't have the training. Not all of them were going to make it out of here, and the best I could do was keep fighting and hope that enough of them survived to make it worth something.

I blinked back tears, glad for my mask. Glad for my armor. I'd stopped, there, at the edge of the camp, without even noticing.

I looked to Minna, hoisting a giggling Anya in her arms. I looked at Joan, wrapping up the chow line and carefully packing the leftover food away so that our people had enough to eat tonight. I looked at Sparky, who was talking with a few of the stronger-looking men, and pointing at the running speck of Abernathy in the distance. At Martin and Tooms, who were pressing bullets, and stacking them carefully into boxes.

I swallowed, as the tears streamed down my face now, and I barely had the presence of mind to kill my mask's speakers, before I sobbed. Surrounded by people happily preparing for a fight that would be brutal at best, horrendous at worst, I sobbed and shook.

And all I could think of was
dear god, is this what heroes feel like all the time? How the hell do they handle it?

No wonder Ballista had gone after me. If he'd cared about Scrapper even a bit as much as I'd unexpectedly come to care about these people... well. I'd try to take me out, too.

I came back to myself, gained control. I blinked away tears, hurried over to the showerhouse, and decanted from the armor. I got a drink and scrubbed my face... Wouldn't do for people to see. Bad for morale.

Then I strolled back to camp, stumping along on my leg brace. I found Guzman, and got the idle hands busy breaking up the ice. “She'll do a run for the chemical you need tomorrow,” I told him. “Just get the boats you can up on the shore in meantime. Truth is, we might be able to use some of them for cover.” He nodded, and set people to work. As for myself, I had a few hours to kill. I stole my most advanced tools back from Abernathy to work on the armor. The left leg's actuators had been a bit damaged by Ballista's grasp, and repairing it took a bit of time. The rest of the work consisted of working on the circuitry. I had a plan, and I needed a better synch rate for it. I managed 84.5, before I glanced up to find the sun sinking in the west. Dropping my tools off back in my quarters, I went over to check on Sparky before I had to leave.

He had basically a pair of doors in front of him. They were fitted to a pair of wooden arms that were harnessed around the wheelchair. He also had Tooms and Rick helping him practice with it. I watched as they raised and lowered the device. He had to move slowly, but with them bracing him he could easily turn, and even make decent forward progress with the shield up. With it lowered, it put a good solid foot and a half of layered planks between him and trouble. It had a slit in it for his eyes, and two holes for his hands.

“Good to go?” I smiled down at him, as reassuring as I could.
This might be the last time you see him
, I thought. I chased the errant thought from my mind before my smile could falter.

“Shit, I'm a tank!” He laughed, and his helpers joined in, Rick's busted jaw causing him to make 'Haw Haw haw' noises. That only made Sparky laugh harder, and I mussed his wispy hair.

“Take care of yourself, old man. Roy wouldn't forgive us if anything happened.”

“Worry about yourself, Dire girl. You got the tough job. And after that you get to come back and help us clean up. Well, if you get here before I take 'em all out, I mean.” He made little guns with his fingers, and shot sparks through the holes in the wood.

I nodded again, and eyed the sun. Too close for any more delay. I handed my tools back to Abernathy, wished her luck, and headed back to the armor.

I'd barely suited up, when the blue flare rose to the south. Pushing off, I flew low to the ground and as fast as I could without causing myself harm. A minute into my flight, gunfire chattered to the south. Damn, had they sprung the ambush early? Was the plan gone to hell already?