Ain't Talkin'

“You knew he’d run!” Markus hissed.

“Didn’t doubt it for a second.” Roche said. “Let’s go.” Roche jogged after the doctor, who even with a bullet in his shoulder, had picked up and kept sprinting down the end of the alley and just moved from sight.

The Res boys still looked back and forth at one another, wondering who to take orders from, especially since no one was giving any.

Briggs took the radio attached to his chest and bent his neck to speak into it, it crackled with static. “We lost the package, he’s running. In pursuit. Briggs out.”

Briggs stood against a brick wall snaked with old iron pipes.

“We’re moving out, pursue and track the target.”

Wellam and Thomas, with the other Res soldiers made their way over in a soldierly fashion.

“The kid stays with me, you lot do your thing.” Roche spat chew and fiddled with the inside of his lip with a finger.

“The hell he does. You let the doctor go, cut his binds!” Briggs hefted his rifle in the way military boys do, trying to be intimidating.

Roche grinned a little and stared at the ground beside Briggs’ feet before he spat there. “You wanna tango with me, beautiful? Back the fuck up.”

Briggs didn’t know what to make of this and stepped back.

“Good. Markus, let’s go.”

“I’m afraid we can’t let you do that.” Thomas wheeled around the alley and stood in their way, hands out at his sides like a crossing guard.

Roche felt the white peel off of the walker’s skin like an overripe fruit. Felt it pushing and curling off, misting.

It was trick Roche used often, a little bit of intimidation went a long way when you were dealing in wastelanders and mercs. This walker Thomas didn’t seem to realize yet that the trick rarely worked on other walkers, especially when they were decades older than you.

Roche put his feet apart, consciously aware that Markus stood behind him, and had stepped out to follow him. The kid was nothing if not stupidly loyal, for whatever reason. But, Roche needed him for what was to come next.

“You want this, Tommy? You sure you want this?” Roche kept the white inside, letting it out a nick and a prayer at a time. A little light, a little drip from beneath his coat, a little prickle on the back of his neck, but he knew that Thomas could sense not what was being let out, but how much more was being contained.

Thomas’ eyes shifted and his nerve faltered. Roche moved past him, Markus in tow.

The sound of guns being readied behind them made Roche turn, putting a hand on Markus and pushing him further ahead.

The Res soldiers had their guns half-up, not sure whether to aim or to stand down. Briggs had his radio tucked to his chin ready to transmit, but unsure what to say.

“Guns down, boys. We got this from here. You wanna swing in on a chandelier and save the day at the last minute and blow the college, go right ahead. But for now. the kid and I got this.”

Something about the way he said it made the Resistance drop their guns, stand at ease and look to Briggs for what to do. Briggs stayed quiet.

A single soldier kept his gun up, the youngest soldier that Briggs had called Torrence.

“I got him, sir!” Torrence shouted to Briggs.

“No, don’t!” Briggs put out a hand to stop him, but he was too far to do a thing.

When the gunshot rang out the streets awoke. Cries and muttering voices rose from the streets at both ends of the alley. Folk, mostly drunkards still awake at this hour, poked their heads out of saloon windows and down the alleys, looking for the origin of the gunshot. Worst, the gunshot go heard by the New San Fran coppers. Wouldn’t be long before they checked in with the Corp Mercs like the one Briggs had put down in the last alley, and the gig might well have been up.

Besides it all, Torrence had squeezed his trigger and fired a single shot, and seemed surprised that he had done so. The bullet buried in Roche’s left thigh, clipped through the muscle and missing the bone, a good through-and-through.

It fuckin’ hurt though.

White and dark red soaked Roche’s denims, and all he could see for a split second was the rage. When he held his hand out to the kid, Torrence and crunched his fist, he collapsed. Without nothing but his ether and that control and that energy that walkers had, he’d grabbed Torrence by the throat and crunched that voice box to splintered bone. Torrence was dead before he hit the ground, and Roche was turned and running by the same instant.

Briggs called it into his radio, and more shots followed Roche and Markus down the alley.

All around them, the city of New San Fran woke right up, and mercs, coppers and Corp soldiers bullied into the streets by the dozens and dozens and dozens.