Under Dark Sky Law (6 page)

Explosions rocked the desert and she dove for
cover at the front of the vehicle. She slammed into Sanchez as he
followed suit. Great minds think alike. Her stupid pencil skirt and
restrictive jacket were getting in the way of her movements, so she
stripped them off, leaving her wearing nothing but the white blouse
and a pair of pink panties.

“Don’t even start,” she said and gave Sanchez
a look.

He shrugged but kept two hands on his laser.
“Wouldn’t ever dream of it,” he said.

“What in the fuck is going on?” she asked.
“Do you actually screen these guys before letting them go into the
field?”

Sanchez didn’t take his eyes off the area of
the enemy, but she knew there would be exasperation smudged across
his face. “This doesn’t have anything to do with my guys. Okay, so
they weren’t prepared to deal with something like this, but I have
no idea what’s going on with this attack. You know these guys?” he
said.

“Yeah, this is who we had a problem with
earlier—skeletons from south of the Tucson pits. I have a sneaking
suspicion they might have something to do with the riot that was
holding everyone up this morning. FYI, their armor is pretty tough,
but there’s a gap at the center of the throat. If you’ve got enough
downward leverage and a sharp enough blade you should be able to
pierce through it if you’re strong enough,” she said, thinking of
her successful skewering the night before.

“Duly noted,” he said and another explosion
shook the ground.

“I hope you weren’t too attached to any of
these guys—doesn’t sound like there’s going to be much left of
anyone. Hey—you got any hand to hand weapons on you?” she
asked.

He handed her two large KA-BAR style knives
on a belt holster. Nice courtesy, considering she didn’t really
have much in the way of a place to stow them. “Thanks man,” she
said and secured the holster while he attempted to use his cracked
communicator to radio a message into HQ.

When she peered around the corner, she got a
look at just how much trouble they were in. There weren’t many
additional vehicles next to the remains of the decimated military
convoy, but it looked like the skeletons must have come out of a
clown car because there were dozens of them.

“Shit,” Sanchez said when he noticed how much
company they had. They briefly took their eyes off the enemy to
consult about their next move.

“I think our best bet is going to be taking
out as many of those crazy fucks as possible, then taking that last
intact vehicle and making a run for the dome. We’re not in a great
position to fight them all off, and from the looks of it they’re
not short on ballistics,” she said.

He nodded. “Agreed. On three,” he said and
counted.

When he reached three they sprang into the
battlefield and she was especially careful not to fire wildly with
the high-powered laser. One shot from one of those things and it
would be lights out for either of them, and she didn’t want her
brains splattered across the desert like a ruined
jack-o-lantern.

There were five skeletons around their target
vehicle and she took a dive roll to the left as the two on her side
took pot shots. Luckily she was intimately familiar with the
mechanics of fighting in sand, and she rolled straight back onto
her feet. She took two shots, landing one in a skeleton’s chest,
and the other nailed another headshot right in the money zone. She
was rewarded with one exploding head and one skeleton brought to
his knees. She closed the distance to the one that was still alive.
He was coughing and gagging, but still waving around his laser.
With her left hand she withdrew one of the KA-BAR blades and
unceremoniously jammed it into the skeleton’s throat. Blood sprayed
into her face, its sick metallic taste flying through her mouth and
nose. She was glad she hadn’t talked to Calavera about closing up
the weaknesses in the skeleton armor yet. Some days were all about
the small favors.

Withdrawing the knife, she wiped the blood
out of her eyes and turned to face the next opponent. Sanchez had
felled two on his side, leaving one more to take care of. The
skeleton dashed up to her first, his laser raised for a head shot.
There was no room to retreat, so she took the next best option. She
bent her knees and sprang forward, tackling the skeleton into the
sand and knocking its laser out of its hands in the process. As
much as she loved firing a laser, there was nothing like a good old
fashioned knife fight. Poised in the exact right position again,
she took the knife and with one viscous strike she thrust it upward
through the fragile spot in the armor. The knife ripped through its
larynx, and she felt the knife jam into its hard palate before
coming to a rest. It never even had a chance to scream.

More Skeletons were already advancing from
the rear, and Sanchez had already taken the opportunity to jump
into the vehicle. The keys were already in the ignition, and the
engine was running.

“What are you waiting for, get in here!” he
yelled.

She took a running dash for the open door,
and had almost made it when a sick thunk in her abdomen made her
scream. Another skeleton had snuck up behind her, and had a knife
blade stabbed up to the hilt just beneath her ribs on her right
side. She turned to deal with the attacker, but he raised a laser
and fired a shot past the side of her head. It landed with a small
zap in Sanchez’s chest. From her angle she couldn’t tell if it had
hit him squarely in the chest or further towards the shoulder.

Bending back into a pose that was agonizing
with the knife still wedged beneath her ribs, she turned and fired
a shot into the side of the skeleton’s neck. She must have made a
bad shot or hit a strong point in the armor because its head didn’t
explode, and it didn’t immediately stop moving. She didn’t have the
right leverage to pierce its Calaca suit with her knife, and then
she remembered her last ditch defense.

More blood flowed out of the knife wound in
her side as she flexed forward even farther, grabbed the skeleton
by the head, and pulled it towards her face. It’s lips were exposed
through the face mask, and she planted a big smooch right on his
mouth. Within seconds he was gagging and choking. The paralysis
wasn’t instant, but it was quick enough for her to use the last of
her strength to push him out of the car.

She looked back to her left, and found
Sanchez bleeding profusely and passed out in the passenger seat.
“Motherfucker!” she cursed. There was no time to even close the
doors or move Sanchez. In the rearview mirror she saw more
skeletons advancing on the vehicle. The car surged forward through
the piles of sand as she did her best to stomp on the gas and steer
the damned thing from the passenger seat.

They were far from safe—they were flying
through the desert in a stolen vehicle with both doors open and
both occupants bleeding from serious wounds. She wasn’t even sure
if Sanchez was still alive. The sound of small explosions pitter
pattered the sand behind her, and she didn’t have the energy to
waste wondering if they were getting shot at with lasers,
traditional gunfire, or small grenades. She kept the gas pedal
floored and tried to keep them from flipping over when they rolled
across steep sandbanks.

Her vision was starting to get blurry, and
she knew she had lost far too much blood from the stab wound to be
safe. When she had gained a small amount of distance on the
skeleton crew, she ripped off chunks of her blouse and tried to
make a shitty pressure bandage around the knife. There was no way
she could pull it out—the knife itself was likely keeping pressure
on some of the veins and arteries it had sliced through on its
journey through her abdomen, and pulling it out would almost
certainly mean death.

But she refused to give in to the darkness
tugging at the sides of her vision. It was still hot out, but a
desperate chill was traveling through her body. Not good. She
didn’t have time for shock or unconsciousness. She was lucky that
she probably had significant desert driving experience on their
pursuers, as she was able to maintain her lead on the skeletons.
With a loud scream, she managed to get both doors closed, which cut
down on their wind resistance and increased their speed.

Now she was driving in nothing but her
blood-soaked bra and panties, and she was out of any extra fabric
to try and help out Sanchez. A quick feel for a pulse revealed that
he was still alive. Using one of her knives and the one hand she
was able to take off the steering wheel, she haphazardly tore off a
chunk of his own shirt and made another shitty attempt at creating
a bandage and a weak tourniquet around the area that seemed to have
been hit by the laser shot. She still couldn’t tell exactly where
it had hit or how bad it was beneath the tangled mess of charred
shirt, flesh, and blood. The taste of singed hair and blood was in
her mouth so strongly she didn’t know if she’d ever be able to get
it out. She’d be tasting death for a month.

It was an eternity, but she had finally
gained enough distance on the skeletons that she could no longer
see them in the vehicle’s rearview mirror, and on the horizon in
front of them she saw the first blip of the Phoenix dome. They were
almost there. They just might make it. Sanchez hadn’t heard any
reply from HQ over his communicator, but the thing had been damaged
in the crash, and it was possible that the message had been
received, but that they weren’t able to hear any reply. At least
that’s what the hopeful voice in her head was saying. If that
wasn’t true, then she’d have to make it all the way to the dome
proper before they got any back up.

Minutes passed and the dome got closer and
closer, but she was having more and more trouble keeping her hands
steady on the wheel. The pain in her abdomen was fading, but she
actually didn’t want it to. Going numb was just another sign that
she was drifting farther into shock. If she couldn’t make it at
least far enough to trigger the dome sensors that there was an
unauthorized vehicle approaching, then they stood very little
chance of surviving. Even if the skeletons had given up and gone
home, they would both die without some kind of medical intervention
in the very near future.

There was a period where she felt a second
wind coming, and thought that she just might make it, but then it
became clear that it was just her body’s last ditch effort before
giving up completely.

“Damn it,” she swore quietly. Her head made a
soft smack against Sanchez’s chest before she finally passed
out.

CHAPTER 7

One inhale and she knew that she was
somewhere within the dome. Ironically, she was so used to huffing
the toxic slew of the air out in the pits that the purified and
oxygenated air inside the domes always burned her nostrils for
awhile until she acclimated to the atmospheric differences. For
some, the shock of moving between the two environments was too
much, and some pits residents had died trying to get into a dome
the first time. As a runner, she could easily transition between
the different environments with little more to worry about than a
few stray coughs and some irritation.

The pleasant euphoria settling through her
body told her that she was in some kind of a medical facility,
hopped up on all kinds of good stuff. Normally she would have been
pissed—she could hardly ever afford to risk that kind of fogginess,
regardless of the kind of kind of pain she was in. However,
remembering the size of the knife shoved up to the hilt in her
gullet, she wasn’t really all that sorry for the drugs.

She was going to need the drugs to deal with
the dome drones anyway. Putting up with the normal officials
already took an overt effort on her part. Typically the military
bitches like Sanchez were at least tolerable—they spoke her
language of no nonsense. Putting up with the white collars, the
stiffs, they were a true headache to do business with, but the one
place that was worse were the hospitals. There was so many rules,
and so little warmth and even basic common sense at times. Decades
upon decades of working with a system bogged down with pointless
policies designed to avoid lawsuits had created a real monster. She
had nearly firebombed a clinic or two in her day—anger and excess
napalm made for a dangerous combination.

Before opening her eyes she raised an arm and
wiggled it around a bit. Plastic cording whipped against her wrist
and pulled at her hand. IV lines. Yeah, she was definitely in a
hospital. At least that meant she truly hadn’t been shot up with
Acromorphine and dumped in a holding cell to be picked apart by
rogue skeleton goons. She rubbed the palms of her hands against her
eyelids and opened them.

She was surrounded by the clean white and
shiny chrome furnishings of what was probably the main hospital in
the Phoenix dome. Spared no expense. Even if they didn’t figure out
who she was from the convoy they’d been attached to, a quick
retinal scan would reveal who she was. At least they knew the value
of a top runner, and she knew they wouldn’t just let her die. She
moved billions of dollars in cargo every year.

Despite the pristine cleanliness of the shiny
room that squeaked and squawked with a variety of machine churning
and pumping to keep her alive and well, there were so many
chemicals at play that over the raw sting of excessively filtered
dome air, it smelled faintly like the river running through the
flats. At the first sign of movement a nurse seemed to magically
appear to poke at the machines and check her vital signs. The woman
was scribbling furiously on an electronic tablet, a tight brown bun
bouncing on the back of her head as she dragged a pen across the
glass surface.

“How are you feeling,” she said to Xero
without moving her eyes from the tablet.