13. Adventures in Nostalgia, Part 3
Everything stunk of coal spirits. Gina and Trevor flitted around the munitions room making holes in the giant casks of cyoctene, spilling liquid fuel everywhere, stripping detonators from their bombs and turning the place into the world’s worst fire safety hazard. Cheese did her own thing, hiding a few charges about the room, setting them with enough time to get us out of the building, and booby-trapping them in case any deer wanted to interfere.
The fumes made it hard to think. I put the blueprints aside every few seconds to cough and wheeze. Butch prodded me every time I lapsed or trailed off. She was running on empty, but acted more driven in spite of it.
“Spook, can we cut through this hallway here and make it back to the stairs?”
I shook my head. “Stairs are blocked off on these blueprints. The only ways to reach the portal trebuchet are the laundry stairway and the elevators.”
“But the elevators are rigged.”
“The deer can bypass them, I’ll bet. Double security measure. If the westerners try to take the building, the easties can shut off the elevator shafts. That way, invaders have to fight their way up twenty flights of stairs, across the building, and then down another half-dozen stairs to get to the weapon. Still, no freakin’ use to us.”
The sergeant put a claw on my shoulder, and squeezed hard enough to leave marks. “Then give me the good news, Spook. How are we getting out of here?”
I slapped the claw away. “Kitchens. They’re on this floor, just across from the trebuchet silo. No stairway, but there’s a dumbwaiter shaft going all the way down to the basement. We might have to lose some kit to fit in, but it’s big enough to rappel down.”
She gave me a grudging smile. “Good enough. Cheese, you done yet?”
“All set, sarge!” Cheese sounded almost cheerful. Adrenaline does strange things to warriors, I guess.
“Good.” The sergeant gathered the squad. Poke was bouncing on his pads. Cheese fiddled with her webbing and new bombs. Gina tried to brush coal spirits off her coat and wings, without much luck.
“Squad, our escape route is anticlockwise around the trebuchet silo floor until we reach the second door. Through that door, then the first door on the left to the kitchens. At the far end of the kitchens, we go down the dumbwaiter shaft, all the way through to the basement. Understood?”
We all nodded.
“Good. If we make contact, crossbows and knives only. No carbines. Any spark could set this whole place on fire for all we know. Check and prep all your incendiaries. We’re going to set the kitchen on fire behind us. I want them too busy putting out fires to chase us.”
Trevor cleared his throat. Any other bird trying to get the sergeant’s attention like that would get a fist to the liver. Trevor got away with it by always having something essential to say. Butch looked at him expectantly.
“There’s movement on the upper and lower floors of the silo. They’re not searching, but if they see us...”
Butch nodded. “Right. You heard him. Everyone stick to the wall and stay low. If we’re spotted, kill before they raise the alarm. If they raise the alarm, pop smokes and leg it. Gina, you’re on point with me. Poke, Griz, you two are rearguard. Cheese, you’re on demolitions, and Trev, you’re backup demolitions. Spook, try not to fuck everything up and we won’t use you as a meat shield. Understood?”
Again, we all nodded.
The silo room ran up and down almost the entire hotel, and the floors of the silo were about fifty yards across. The hole running down the middle was forty yards wide, giving us a fairly slim ring of actual floor to sneak across. Dull red bulbs dotted every dozen or so yards around the walls were the only illumination.
Gina and Butch slipped through the gap in the tarp first. They slunk forward a few yards and crouched down behind a pair of gigantic barrels of machine oil. After looking around, they beckoned us forward.
We crept from cover to cover, moving as quickly as we could without our webbing jangling and crackling like fireworks in a tambourine factory. Trevor was right. Shadows danced on the higher levels and lower levels, and hooves clacked on concrete above and below us. There had to be dozens of deer already in the silo, and it sounded like more were coming in.
We were about a third of the way around the room when a set of consoles crackled to life on the wall to the side of us. We all dropped to the floor as dim LEDs came to life and ancient crystal batteries whirred to power it all. I turned my head to the side, ignoring the cold concrete on my cheek, and looked at the console. It was a light map of Toi Thung. Little green dots for the eastern areas, blue dots for contested areas, red dots for the west with little yellow circles around important targets.
The light illuminated a square object covered in a tarp, something I’d thought was another crate. It was a table, covered in maps and surrounded by boxes for stools. We were in the middle of the silo’s command post!
I felt two talons tap me on the hip. Cheese was huddled next to me, laying flat on the floor. She gestured with her eyes across the silo, on the other side of the hole, one floor above us.
A deer was leaning against the railing, staring directly at our position.
I knew the type and I knew that look. He was a young dweeb, green as grass, doing guard work. He thought he’d seen something, and he didn’t want to get shouted at if it was nothing. We had maybe a minute until he called somedeer over to take a closer look.
Trevor had seen him too. He wriggled out from behind cover. There was enough light from the console that if the deer looked directly at him, we’d be toast.
Trevor lay prone and took aim with his crossbow. He was the squad’s sharpshooter. His target was fifty yards away, stationary, and there was no wind. At that range and with those conditions, Trev could make a lethal shot in his sleep.
An instantly lethal shot that would give the target no time to cry out or stumble around was a little trickier. I saw Trev’s beak move as he worked out the elevation, timed his target’s movements, and aimed exactly where the deer’s head would be when the arrow landed.
The deer leaned a little further over the railing, trying to peer around the makeshift stool that Butch was hidden behind.
Trevor fired on the exhale, just as the deer jerked back.
The shot missed it’s mark by inches. Instead of a clean shot below the ear, the arrow went into the deer’s neck.
He looked around, unsure of what had happened, and then pawed at his own neck.
I shook with terror. The arrow might have hit his jugular, and he’d be unconscious in a second. It could have barely skimmed his artery, and he’d be alive for several minutes, flailing around and alerting everyone in earshot.
The deer leaned forward onto the railing, teetering slightly, one of his hind hooves leaving the ground. I couldn’t see how much he was bleeding, not in this light. He made a noise between a cough and a choke, and I hoped by all of Zephyrous’ luck that we were the only ones who heard it.
Again, he teetered, still grabbing the arrow through his neck, not thinking or unable to cry out. If he fell forward over the railing, we were doomed. A deer slamming down several storeys before cracking his back on the edge of the portal beneath would be just as good as raising the alarm.
He slumped forward onto the railing, unconscious. His forelegs dangled over the edge uselessly, and his hindlegs twitched. Then, he stopped moving, and slid backwards onto the floor.
We were safe.
“Préparez-vous, vous tous les cerfs, et nous placer la bombe!”
Everything was blissful darkness for seconds after that voice crackled over the intercom, and then blindingly-bright strip lighting burst into life above every floor. We were all lit up like Hearth Warming’s Eve.
In the light, I could see that there were a lot more than a ‘few dozen’ deer milling around in the silo.
The entire squad froze. We all looked to Butch, awaiting her signal.
Then the door across the room burst open, the one next to the kitchen hallway. A deer colonel with fancy shoulderpads and a retinue of assistants, technicians and junior officers came strolling through the doorway.
They stopped dead in their tracks when they saw us. I don’t know how long both squads stood frozen for.
”Intrus!”
“SQUAD GO LOUD!”
We ran, and they swarmed us. I don’t know how we fought through so many deer, or how they came so quickly. They came sliding down firepony’s poles, pouring up out of tiny stairways dotted along the silo platform, swarming over the railings above and below us and taking what shots they could. There were hundreds of them, all screeching with rage and terror, charging us with knives and spears.
I can’t remember exactly how things happened. All the squad bar Poke and Griz formed a scrum, charging into the swarm of deer, stabbing madly and tossing aside our opponents the moment our weapons hit home. Poke and Griz guarded the rear, tossing out smoke grenades, tear gas, even vials of lockpicking acid, anything to slow down the crowd swarming in behind us.
The deer colonel stabbed Butch in the shoulder, and she took his neck half off with a lazy swipe from her poniard. Every deer that saw her tried to go after her, but she was unstoppable. The deer leaped over each other to get to her, only to be stabbed or impaled by the rest of the squad and thrown back into their comrades. We were almost going to make it.
Gina grabbed a deer as he tried to push a snaplock carbine against her muzzle and shoot. She aimed the gun away from her as he pulled the trigger with a hoof, but the blast set the cyoctene smeared across her coat and wings alight.
She screamed as the flames crawled over her, flailing and falling into the crowd of deer, setting everything she touched alight. I couldn’t understand why she sounded so strange. She was right there, and it sounded like she was underwater.
She must have pulled the pins on her flash grenades as she tried brushing the fire away, because seconds after that, everything went very loud and very white, and everyone around her got scattered. Our tight scrum got knocked apart.
The sergeant saved us all, then. Even with knives and spears and half a dozen bolts sticking out of her, she was the first one up, dragging us to our claws and clubbing any deer that got close. We crawled over stunned and confused deer as the smoke from the grenades filled the floor.
The deer across the railings and above us started raining down bolts and arrows in panic, forgetting about their wounded comrades. Something the size of a cigarette hit me between the wings with the force of a wet sack of cement, and I nearly went down. Three bolts hit Griz in the neck and face, and she went down instantly. I remember Cheese crying out, but she kept moving. Trevor popped more smokes, desperate to give us concealment.
Four of us made it to the door. I remember being half-dragged by Trevor, and the sergeant being practically slumped over Cheese. I didn’t see Poke die. I saw deer swarm over him, and I heard him stop shouting.
Trevor slammed a bodkin-knife through the eye of a deer who tried following us through the door. Then he slammed the door shut, and slammed a doorstop underneath it. It would keep the door shut for maybe ten seconds.
We were only a few feet down the corridor when we heard a shoulder slam against the door behind us.
“Peppercorn!” gasped Cheese. I grinned weakly. Just before we ducked into the first door on the left, Cheese took the strange, pulsing bundle, and lobbed it at the door to the silo.
We shut the kitchen door behind us. A second later, we heard a door splinter open. A second after that, a noise like a firecracker going off under a pillow. Then we heard more screaming.
“I’m a genius, huh?” said Cheese, weakly. Trevor patted her on the shoulder, and then he began to do first aid.
“I think you saved us, Cheese,” he said, “Now I’m going to try and repay the favor.”
He looked at the sergeant first, who wasn’t moving. She was bleeding from two dozen wounds, and the back of her head was caved in. He put a talon to her neck and looked for a pulse.
The sergeant was dead. Trevor paused only a second before he moved on.
Cheese was covered in superficial scratches and burns, and also had a nasty hole in her midsection oozing blood. It twitched and puckered with every breath she took, and her breaths weren’t coming like they should have been.
Trevor took a sealed bottle of water, and washed away what he could from the wound. He couldn’t tell how deep it was or how bad the internal injuries were. All he could do was patch it up and try to stop everything from falling out.
He took a small spray can and aimed it at the hole. Oatmeal-colored cream foamed out, medical cream, with an antiseptic effect. With luck, it would glue the hole shut enough that she wouldn’t bleed out. He packed on a clear bandage to keep the cream in place.
Then, he took a small syrette, like a tiny toothpaste tube with a needle at the end. Morphine. He lifted her arm and injected half of the tube into a vein. Not enough to knock her out. Just enough to keep her moving, and stop her falling over from the pain and shock.
Trevor moved over to me. At that stage, all I knew was the pain on my back. I knew I was dying. I knew whatever had hit me there had severed an artery or broken my spine or something, and that I would die because of it. I swore I could feel the blood pouring out of me.
I felt Trev roll me onto my stomach to look at my wing, and heard him chuckle.
“You’re one lucky spook, Gilda,” he said. “That bolt hit an inch away from your anterior artery.”
“...Hurts so bad...”
“It’s trapped against a nerve. I can’t take it out safely; you’ll never fly again and besides it might tear up a vein. All I can do is give you painkillers and pack it with anaesthetic.”
And so he did. Whatever he rubbed into my wing flared briefly, and then just cold numbness. I felt my left wing almost droop to the ground, and had to push it back into place with a claw.
He gave me half a syrette of morphine. The warmth spread through my body. I dragged myself to my claws.
I dropped the rope down the dumbwaiter and climbed down, barely noticing the pain in my wing. I had to use my claws and paws to hold on with the morphine coursing through my body.
Cheese and Trevor took the sergeant’s tags and set her incendiaries on a short timer. Cheese climbed in after me, and Trevor after her. He shut the dumbwaiter door after him, and when we had climbed down ten yards we heard the dull roar of incendiaries above us. The sergeant had been given her send-off.
It was slow and painful going. We had eight floors of dumbwaiter to climb down, and couldn’t make any noise. The dumbwaiter tube was aluminium coated in plaster, and any banging around would sound out like a drum. Any one of the rooms we slid down next to could be teeming with soldiers, and I didn’t fancy the armor of the thin dumbwaiter shaft against a hefty spear. Or a grenade.
I felt something running down my face. Some of Cheese’s smaller cuts had opened and were bleeding down onto me. I prayed she’d stay strong enough not to lose her grip. I did not want ‘crushed by falling squadmates’ as a cause of death.
We were four storeys down when Cheese tapped three times on my shoulder, signalling me to stop.
“Hook on to the ropes,” she whispered, “The munitions dump is about to blow.”
“We can’t stay in here, we’ll be cooked!” hissed Trevor.
“No time!”
We took out our clips and attached our webbing to the rope.
The building shook.
Then the shaft shook. It felt like it swayed in either direction, bouncing from side to side and bashing us against the walls. There was a grinding, rending noise, as if half of the building had collapsed and slid down to the ground.
Our rope snapped.
We only fell another floor before we stuck our arms and legs out and strained to hold ourselves against the wall. I felt little injuries tearing, and more blood dripped down on to me. We were alive.
A dumbwaiter panel slid open, and Trevor found himself face to face with a deer.
“Intrus!”
Trevor shoved something sharp into the deer, and we all tumbled down the shaft, half-sliding, half-falling. We made it to the basement in seconds, scrambled out of the shaft, and dived for the nearest cover we could find.
Something light and metal bounced down at the bottom of the dumbwaiter shaft.
I don’t remember much after the explosion. I was half-conscious and fighting off three deer who might have been in the basement or might have chased down after us. I remember Trevor saving me from a lethal spear blow, and losing an eye in the process. More incendiaries went off as I half-crawled and was half-dragged to the far room of the basement.
Cheese was setting up explosives on the walls and Trevor was firing off his carbine into the doorway, throwing everything he could out there to slow them down. Cheese was bleeding out of her side again, and it looked like Trevor was missing half of his face.
My guts were spilling out. I remember that part. Something, maybe a knife, maybe shrapnel, had cut my navel open, and strange wiggly grey-brown ropes were sagging outwards. I didn’t think about it.
I very calmly asked Cheese for some glue. She stopped her work for a minute, pushed my guts back inside me, and glued me back together.
The shooting stopped. I think Trevor had turned the previous room into a charnel house.
We blew the wall first. I don’t know how the pressure didn’t kill us. I definitely burst an eardrum.
The sewer was still flowing with water. It had been pouring with rain in the previous weeks, and that rain would carry us downwards to safety.
The last thing I remember before the team at the far safehouse woke me up was Trevor collapsing of his injuries, two feet away from our makeshift raft.
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......I see what your doing here. XD
Awesome. Very intense. Didn't really detect any decline in quality from previous chapters.
slipped through editing, though, and doesn't look like it belongs at all.
I've missed this.
ZOMBIE STORY RISEN FROM THE GRAVE TO EAT OUR BRAINZ!!!
I think I have to re-read this, because I can't remember anything that went on.
4392673 It's a general fanfiction rule that collaborative fics will die out before any endgame is reached.
They either become too bogged down with characters to keep up with, contributing authors not keeping pace with the others, or too many bad stories with plots that attempt powergaming or any number of other terrible writing tropes.
I was following one that I found interesting, but it has almost died off because of the second issue: too few of the authors contributing to the central story are keeping pace, which means the others can't even write their next parts as they don't know what's going to happen with the rest.
If you've been in any internet fandom to ever exist, you will discover this rule applies universally, with very few exceptions. The few that make it to the end are usually from groups of just a few writers with very strict rules for inclusion in the central story.
4391416 *beats you with a chessboard and wins by default when you're unconscious*
That's how the SMART gods play! *Screw the Rules, I Make the Rules!*
4390236 Wanna know how I got my scars?
I fell down some stairs.
sp1.yimg.com/ib/th?id=HN.608024428458869153&pid=15.1
I honestly almost gave up hope on this updating. Logged onto fimfiction this after noon and bam entries in my favorites box. Made my day to read these two latest chapters. Mainly this is one of the best "hidden side of the world" stories I've read along with your "We'll dismember it for you, wholesale!" story as well. I love the concept and especially how well you do it.
Holy shit? Has it been two years already?
Damn. Good chapter though... intense.
4396705 I imagine the point is so the reader, like Gilda, wouldn't understand it. Or maybe Gilda speaks French, I dont remember.
4397006 Oh, I see.
4396705
It was a string of near-nonsense when I fed it through translate. Something like 'Ready, you deers, set us up the bomb!
4395451
Fixed, thanks!
4396921
Getting close to two and a half years, from the first iteration of the first chapter...
4397950 Hehe, Chucky old boy, that was a joke. It's been a year and a half since your last update.
ICU, meet Glida; Glida, meet the ICU. The two of you are going to be spending quite some time together so I think you should get used to each other now.
Glad to see you're still with us, Chuck. I'm looking forward to catching up with our friends as they... well, try to avoid whatever horrible fate you have in store for them, I guess.
Especially Trixie.
4397946 My brain's french centre translates it as "Prepare yourselves, all you serfs, and place the bomb for us!"
Also, wow. Maybe it's been a while since the last chapter, but I don't quite remember that level of gore. Brutal wounds there.
Jeesh...
4399314 I got that it was intending to say "prepare yourselves everydeer, and set us up the bomb."
It would be that weird MLP everyone naming convention which seems oddly exclusive.
Oh man, coming back to this story is like stumbling across a friend you haven't seen since college.
Awesome to see it going again! The continuation of the flashback did not disappoint.
4401030 Yeah, MLP naming conventions are weird, but if they're specifically calling all the serfs (like one would call "all the carpenters" or "all the unicorns", then not slipping into the "every-" vernacular makes sense.
Another great, action-packed chapter. Not much more I can say, sorry.
4403070
It’s not “serf”, it’s “cerf”. (Or perhaps I should say, it’s «cerf».
)
4437335 Oh, so not social class, but rather species distinction?
4438277
Um, I guess. I think the previous attempts at translating it as “everydeer” are probably exactly right.
4401030 4438293 Well, guess I admit defeat then :)