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Chapter 31 - Battle Without Honor or Humanity
🕑 Added 2025-01-26 13:37:27 +0000 UTCHis gun was gone. Mr. Moon hadn’t the faintest idea where it had been lost, but neither did he have the time to think over it. Before him was a massive bald man, covered in thick hues of dripping crimson blood. The man was grinning, almost as if he reveled in the chaos filling the barn.
Head still foggy, Mr. Moon dipped down, retrieving a Franchi SPAS-12 clutched in the hands of a massive dead Russian man. From the feel of it, there were still a few shells loaded in the pump-action shotgun. He gave it an experimental pump, testing the weight of it in his hands. It was heavy, just as he was used to, though for some reason his left hand felt the weight more. It was as if something had… changed with it. But what? His head was still terribly foggy. What had happened to his hand, if anything at all? It felt like there was an answer to that, but it was held just out of grasp.
He shook his head, right as the bald man let out a raucous laugh and began advancing. Mr. Moon whipped the barrel of the shotgun up, letting three blasts out in quick succession, all of which caught the bald man straight in the chest. The man was blasted back on the first shot, brought to his knees with the second, and on the floor with the third. A bloody, gaping hole was opened in his chest by the 12-gauge shells, one that which Mr. Moon could see pulsating organs and quivering muscle exposed within.
Yet, before his gun could lower more than half an inch, the bald man moved. He sat up, and for a second his eyes were as foggy and confused as Mr. Moon’s were. But then the confusion cleared, and the man was back up on his feet, snarling and laughing as one.
A shout came from the girl, on the other side of the hole in the barn, but Mr. Moon paid her no mind. He stared at the bald man with narrowed eyes and tossed away the now-empty shotgun. That man possessed a strange ability, something Mr. Moon had never seen before in his life, but he had little time at all to ponder it. Mr. Moon walked steadily over to a haystack nearby, grabbing a pitchfork from the side of it to level at the bald man. Regeneration. Limited, or unlimited? If it was limited – then he would find the limits and haul the body back to D.C. for the lab techies to ogle over. If it was unlimited, well, then he wouldn’t go down without a hell of a fight. That would at least give time for the civilian to run.
"Girl!" Mr. Moon shouted, keeping his eyes trained dead on the bald man's every movement, the head of his pitchfork pointed right at the man's chest, "Get out of here! Now!”
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Cass gave a little start at Mr. Moon’s words. They sounded almost entirely different than how he spoke earlier. And his hand… it was hard to see from where she stood outside the barn, but it looked to have grown back.
Still, there was no freaking way she was running now. Not after what that monster did what he did to Mark. Cass tossed away the Sig Sauer. It was empty and therefore useless to her. Frankly, even when it had bullets, the gun wasn't all that useful. Each shot she landed was shrugged off by the crazy man like they were mosquito bites.
Then amidst a sea of thoughts scattered by grief and panic, an idea floated to the forefront of Cass’s mind. The handgun wasn’t working. Mark’s strength had only slowed the madman. But there were still weapons available. When Mr. Moon used his shotgun on the man just a few moments earlier, it looked to have done a real number on him. Was the issue power? When Mark’s body melted into ashes, was it because the bald man was striking so savagely that his healing was somehow overwhelmed?
Cass blew a stray strand of hair away from her mouth as she watched Mr. Moon lunge at the bald man with his pitchfork. Power. The Sig Sauer did not have enough. Both shotguns were in the barn and empty of shells. But what about the car? Mr. Moon had a spare Sig in there he gave to her. A spare Sig, which was in the same case as a rifle he told her not to touch.
A rifle.
Cass sprinted around the side of the barn, ignoring the shouts and laughter from inside. A rifle would have good odds of having more power than a pistol. She yanked open the rear doors of Mr. Moon’s car. Inside, right where she left it, was a suitcase. Cass flicked open the clasps to reveal the disassembled parts of a rifle, and her mind grounded to a halt.
Crap.
Hands shaking with adrenaline, Cass bulldozed through her uncertainty and began to try and slot the parts together. The barrel was easy enough, it screwed into the main part of the gun. The stock gave her trouble, but then her eyes caught the gleam of a thin silver pen, one she was able to match the size of to a small round slot in the front of the stock. The pen clipped the stock to the gun. Then the scope slotted in on top, and the bolt slid in under that.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Power coursed through his bones like electricity flying through a power line. Adrenaline shot through his body like high-grade fuel being pumped into a race car. Jack was in his element, striking and tearing and laughing at the puny opponent before him. Similar to the bulky boy before, the lizard in the suit was able to regrow its limbs – doubtlessly some freaky lizard ability was given to it by a hidden shadow cabal watching the fight play out from the background.
Well, let ‘em watch. Jackie boy would give them a show, then find them, kill them, and wear their skin like a line of fashionable summer menswear.
Crackling warmth brushed against his back as burning oil splattered out of the burning engine of his noble steed. It had ignited shortly after he’d crashed it into the barn (for dramatic effect), but with the fire unattended, it had changed from a mere flicker to a healthy, roaring blaze threatening to consume the entire building. It was glorious. Never before had Jack felt such joy. Not during his yearly tax evasion, not during his battles against the Miami Police Department, not even back in ‘Nam.
This was true bliss. Jack could feel it, like the touch of an angel of war on his cheek.
A knife slammed into his eye socket, and Jack’s rare moment of inattention was split apart. The blade worked its way past bone, into flesh, tendons, and blood vessels beyond.
He…
His hands, strength soaring through them, grabbed the head of the creature in front of him and crumpled it like paper.
What was his name?
Why was he here?
He had a purpose. He knew that for sure. But what was it?
There was a man in front of him. A smaller man, one who looked just as confused as he felt, but that confusion did little to stop the smaller man from biting away at him with knife, axe, and pitchfork.
He replied in kind. As for why, he could not quite tell, only that it felt right. He would blink, and the smaller man's skin flickered, dancing between being covered with bright green scales, and then back to looking human, albeit a bit bloodied and scorched.
If he asked the smaller man what their purpose was, would that man know?
If he asked the smaller man what his name was, would that man tell him?
It was all so… foggy.
Why?
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Another roar leaked out from the barn, accompanied by the smell of smoke. Cass’s head whipped around while her hands scrabbled around the case to collect the scattered bullets for the single-shot rifle. There was smoke leaking out from behind the broken barn door. Something, or someone, had started a fire. In the extremely flammable barn.
Cass ran around to the other side of the car, hurriedly loading a round into the gun. She leaned down next to the hood and placed the wooden stock of the rifle on the metal to steady it. She peered down the scope past the broken doors.
Inside was a madhouse of smoke and blood. The pitchfork was no longer in Mr. Moon’s hands, having impaled itself right through the madman’s left shoulder. The madman himself was busy tearing Mr. Moon’s limbs off one by one, while Mr. Moon stabbed the man's neck with a knife in his still intact left hand.
From where Cass stared, far removed from the chaos inside, it looked like two rabid animals tearing into each other without care for hurt or death. Even as they savaged each other, wounds knitted back together, and limbs regrew. However, not all stayed the same. There was something in their faces, what little brief flashes Cass could see whenever one of them turned in her direction. She wasn’t sure at first, but the more she stared through the rifle scope, the surer she became.
They looked… off. Mr. Moon’s eyes were unfocused, his face flicking between rage and confusion. Like he wasn’t sure what he was doing here, but he could very much feel someone attacking him, so he retaliated in full. The madman’s face was only a bit different. It flickered between rage, jubilation, and that same confusion Mr. Moon had.
Those were emotions Cass never thought she’d see in any sort of fight, much less a fight to the death. Two men fighting, but neither of them seemed to know why they fought, only that they must, like animals following nothing but base instinct.
No matter. She didn't know what those emotions she saw meant if they meant anything at all. Cass steadied her grip on the rifle, captured her breath deep in her chest, and let her finger close on the trigger.
The recoil was far worse than any hunting rifle she’d ever fired before. It hammered deep into her shoulder, physically knocking her back a few inches. Cass jammed her eye back into the scope, just in time to see the madman’s shoulder turned into a fountain of blood and viscera. The man shuddered, but then the wound once more began to heal before her very eyes. Mr. Moon didn’t even acknowledge the shot coming from behind him, only taking advantage of the madman’s broken balance to tear the pitchfork out of the bald man’s shoulder to impale him in the stomach.
Damn. She’d been aiming for the head.
Cass yanked the bolt back to eject the spent cartridge, stuffing another one in as fast as possible. Her breath built up in her chest, her eyes steadied, and her finger descended on the trigger. This time she was ready for the recoil, but this time she missed. The bullet sailed past the bald man by mere inches.
The madman ignored this bullet like the one before. Leaving the pitchfork in his own freaking chest, he tore into Mr. Moon with his fists, each strike punching through the agent’s chest like his flesh was made of paper. Cass ejected the spent bullet.
A flicker of flame filled her vision through the scope, and as Cass reloaded and peered back down, she finally saw what the fire came from. The engine of the cop car that had crashed into the barn was aflame, roaring with an inferno the greedily gulped at all the dry hay, the insect-bitten wood, and the spare fuel for the tractor that the barn contained. Each second that passed saw the blaze get bigger, devouring haystacks, climbing walls, obscuring doors, and creating such great smoke that the two men fighting inside were barely visible.
Cass’s breath caught in her throat. For a brief second, she’d almost yelled out a warning to Mr. Moon.
But then the second passed and Cass’s finger curled on the trigger.
This time, the shot hit home. The recoil of the rifle barely phased her, with how Cass braced her body against it, so the sight of the madman’s head exploding filled her vision. The man’s body toppled, Mr. Moon’s body following it as he dove to the ground with his knife to tear at his opponent’s flesh.
Cass snapped the used round out of the rifle, replacing it just as Mr. Moon came back into view once more, an axe sticking out of his head. The madman stumbled upward, half his head still missing, to the point that Cass could still see pulsating grey matter exposed to smokey air.
The fire raged more fiercely than ever. Both men were bathed in flames. What flesh they had that wasn’t melting like candle wax under the heat was battered at by fist, knife, and axe. Neither man made to move out from inside the flaming inferno, seemingly laser-focused on nothing else but destroying the man in front of them.
Another round was sent screaming out of the rifle barrel, turning the madman’s head into a bloody mist.
And this time, she did not see him get back up. Seconds later the smoke filled her vision. Cass coughed violently but did not move away. She reloaded the rifle with the final cartridge in her hand and waited. Seconds passed, which turned into minutes.
Yet, there was no movement from the barn. Flaming timbers fell to the ground, their structure destroyed by the fire. There was no human movement. An explosion came from within the barn, one she assumed originated from the police car within.
Still, there was no human movement.
Cass waited. She waited with her finger tensed on the trigger, the rifle stock digging into her shoulder. She had to make sure.
The fire consumed more of the barn. The walls fell, revealing the inside. There were no bodies within. There was no Mark, no bald man, no Mr. Moon. It was all ash and flame.
Then movement. A man, half burnt but still alive, stumbled through the broken barn doors. His legs were on fire. There was an axe sticking through his shoulder, one that his right arm worked to remove. His left arm up to the shoulder was nowhere to be found.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The man in the charred suit stumbled out of the barn. The fog was unbearable, just the same as the flame licking at his wounds. Who was he? It nagged at him like a hole in his stomach.
What was his name?
Why was he here?
Who was the man in the barn?
The man in the suit blinked slowly.
Man in the barn?
Was there a man in the barn?
He couldn’t remember. For the life of him, he just couldn’t.
As he stepped through the doors of the barn… for some reason, he wasn’t quite sure why he was leaving the barn. Was there something wrong with it? His back felt awfully warm but…
What was going on with his back again? Nothing about it felt out of the ordinary… if he could remember what ordinary was.
As he stepped through the doors of the building he thought he was in at some point, a girl stared at him from the other side of a car. It was a nice car, albeit somehow familiar. Was it her car? She had good taste if it was hers. She stared at him through some sort of lens attached to a barrel. A gun, the man belatedly realized. She had a gun. Why did she have a gun? The girl seemed like a nice person. Why would a nice person need a gun?
What was a gun? The term sounded familiar. He should have known that, but he didn't. What a shame. Maybe the girl would know if he could remember how to ask.
At a second glance, her face was streaked with tears, and her eyes looked at him with hate. It was enough to weigh his shoulders down with sadness. She hated him.
But why? He didn’t want to be hated. No one in the world wanted to be hated. Right?
The man blinked and the question went away. What was he thinking about again? It was all so foggy. Even blinking felt like it took ages instead of seconds.
The girl. Maybe she knew him. Could she help him figure out what was going on? The man had a feeling he should know himself, but it was all so foggy.
There was a girl staring at him, strange emotions etched into her face. In front of her was a car. It was a nice car… or was it? He had a feeling it should be nice, but he wasn't sure.
Who was he? Why was he here? He had a purpose once, but for the life of him, he couldn't tell what that purpose was anymore. He looked around for anything that could tell him what his purpose was. There was a girl kneeling behind a car, maybe she knew?
It was hot. The summer sun beat down on him with all his might. Yes. Summer. Summer sounded right. But when the man looked up, there was no sun. It was nighttime. The moon was out in full view. How could the summer sun be warming him, if it wasn’t there? Was it summer?
The moon. There it was, the moon in its full glory.
The man blinked slowly. How was that familiar? It felt familiar and not familiar at the same time. His mind was much too foggy. He looked back down and straight ahead. There was someone next to the car. Who were they? Did they have a name?
The man couldn’t remember his.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Cass stared at Mr. Moon through the scope of her rifle. In her head, memories tore past like speeding cars on a freeway. Her dad fell to the floor in slow motion after a bullet ripped through his brain. A cloth was jammed over her head, with water following it to drown her on dry land. Revenge held off by a promise made to someone she cared for. Someone that she wasn’t sure was around anymore.
So much death over so little time, all because of those men. Fear, hatred, sorrow, and much more. Hatred curdled in Cass’s heart, laying there like a deep and festering wound that she wasn’t sure would ever fully heal. It was all she had felt while waiting in the bush by her house and more. None of this was caused by that dreadful nasty voice in the back of her head, though at the same time, she no longer had to resist the urge. Cass’s mind, at this moment, was as clear as day. The deal no longer mattered now that Mark was… gone. It would all end tonight.
Her finger closed on the trigger. The final round spat out of the rifle barrel. Mr. Moon’s body shuddered as the bullet snapped into his head, blasting it half apart as it traveled through the air to be lost in the fire.
And Mr. Moon fell to the ground like a puppet with its strings snapped, never to rise again. His body shuddered. His hands collapsed into ash, followed by his legs, his remaining arm, his chest, and then his head. The wind picked up, just as it had done for Mark.
The ash had dispersed, leaving nothing behind.
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Next chapter is the final chapter.
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