Chapter 13 - Curahee’s Toll

  The pool of power within him broke open, and Cole took flight. The canopy flashed by in a blur. He brought his fall speed down as low as he could, letting himself hang in the air for a moment at the apex of his leap, maybe sixty feet off the ground, level with many of the nearby treetops. Below him, just like his NODs edge-detect feature, his eyes clearly outlined the zombies in red. They stared up at him, looking as confused as Cole felt. What was more, he could see several dim red glows elsewhere in the forest. Other packs of monsters? There was one glow in blue about a klick to his northwest, and he noted the spot as he started to fall back down toward the opposite bank.

  As the ground rushed up at him, he cranked his falling velocity as high as it would go and shot down like, well, like a meteor, he supposed. He braced his body for the bone-shattering impact of the ground as he plummeted between the two zombies. But slamming into the ground felt almost as gentle as jumping on a foam mattress. Some fucky physics were at play in Curahee. Newton would not be pleased.

  The zombies beside him blasted away. One of them struck a tree, pulping itself against the trunk in a spray of orange sludge. The other cartwheeled across the stream bed, ripping off an arm and a leg as it ricocheted between the trees.

  Even with what should have been a lethal fall taken to a gentle feather-touch, Cole’s wounded leg throbbed underneath him. But it looked like he wouldn’t be needing the Kali sticks after all. He looked at the shockwave in the mud below him and at the two utterly ruined enemies. He took back what he’d thought about this skill being stupid. It was awesome.

  “Whoo! I’m fuckin’ Mario!” he shouted, raising the clubs above his head and looking around as if there was someone nearby to cheer him on, other than a groaning, dismembered zombie who had survived. Barely. Bereft of an audience, he began to limp his way around the stream banks to finish off his cheerleader and see what bounty Curahee had to offer. The painkillers took the worst edge off the canine bite as he collected the last of the pulls from the scaled dogs and shamblers, but it still hurt like the Dickens. The dogs had left him either piles of their scales, which the analyzer identified as a lesser-quality armor crafting material, or more monster residue. One of the shamblers had dropped a dozen rounds of orange-tipped ammo in the same caliber as his rifle, and the other had dropped another gun part.

  The ammo duplicated his bolt, adding another 3% chance to cause rapid fungal growth with each shot. The gun part was a buffer spring that promised reduced recoil when using an element-enhancing bolt and enhanced the cycling speed of the gun by a further 4%. Wait, did fungus count as an element? He opened up the AR-10 again and swapped Jeff’s flat spring for the Curahee version. Cole was just glad to see that not every piece of loot in this god-forsaken forest was going to be mushroom themed.

  Everything stowed away in his pack and one of his partial mags topped off with the orange-tipped rounds, Cole continued in the direction that he’d seen the blue glow during his Meteoric Leap. Policing the bodies and sorting the loot had only taken about fifteen minutes, so he doubted the person could have gotten far. Still, it felt like his firing had drawn the enemies toward him from where that other person was, and they hadn’t come to back him up at all. Were they wary of approaching him? Had they taken the distraction as a chance to escape?

  Cole moved more slowly under NODs than he had during the day, compounded by the wound to his leg, though his enhanced resilience probably did as much to take the edge off as the painkillers. Those scale dogs were quick and vicious enough that a baseline human probably would have struggled with one. If he found Bart, Cole would have the medic take a look just to make sure it wouldn’t get infected. Maybe he’d even gotten a class related to healing. It seemed like Cole had gotten one related to his life as a paratrooper, and Roxy was a corpsman hoping to get something similar. So, it stood to reason that what you did in life at least somewhat influenced class attunement.

  Or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe latent classes influenced the choices a person made in life. Cole had missed out on the training leading up to Curahee, which had to have offered some clarity on classes and Lewis Fields.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “Make it up on the back-end my ass,” said Cole. Still, he didn’t regret not waiting another three months for the next shot at a Kicker position.

  A mile later, Cole found out why his neighbor hadn’t come to help. A body lay slumped against a tree. His appendages had been gnawed and worried by the locals, as had his guts. But it looked like what killed him had been the clean removal of his head. Cole looked around the underbrush, finally finding the missing head and swore. So much for having Bart check his wounds out. The death of a medic always felt extra rotten. Cole offered a quick moment of respect for the man who had risked his life to help others, only to pay the ultimate price. Then, he went back to the body and ran his finger over the wound, grimacing. He’d seen plenty of neck wounds in Syria, but none this clean. Nothing like a butcher carving a cut of ribeye. Even the bone was sliced through. Since none of the locals with their ragged claws seemed capable of leaving such a smooth cut, Cole was at a loss for what had happened. Bart’s gun was nearby, an M249 SAW with half a belt of 5.56 still ready to rock and roll, and no malfunction he could see.

  Cole shook his head. “I’m sorry, Bart. Looks like Roxy was right.”

  He circled around to Bart’s nearby pack, which had been torn open and his ration bars mauled. The rest of the contents were strewn about—including the flare gun they’d been issued on the staging pad. Whatever had done this must be long gone by now. Cole picked up the launcher and fired a flare up out of the canopy, then squatted nearby and pulled out a cheap vape while he waited.

  Just a few minutes later, a figure came barreling through the brush, dragon-headed hammer raised overhead. Morganstern stopped when she saw him and rested the haft of her weapon over her shoulder.

  “Psh, Airborne. Should have known you’d puss out. Miss your mommy?”

  “Every day since she died,” said Cole. Morganstern held out her hand, and it took Cole a moment to realize what she wanted. He handed over the vape, and she took a long pull and turned her nose up. “What is that?”

  “Cola,” he said.

  Morganstern frowned. “I thought those were banned.”

  “Not in Syria.”

  She tossed the cheap vape back to him, and he stashed it back in his pocket. “Whatever. Ready to go?”

  Cole jerked his thumb over to the tree where Bart had become a buffet for the local wildlife.

  Morganstern looked over and froze for an instant as she realized what she was looking at. The proctor clicked her teeth. “Shit.” She walked over and planted her hammer on the ground before looking over the body and circling to examine the head, as well. She ran a finger over the neck wound just as Cole had. “This was recent. You didn’t kill him, did you?”

  “No,” said Cole.

  “Well, you don’t seem too broken up about it,” she said, glancing back at him. She pursed her lips. “I guess you wouldn’t be.”

  Cole joined her. “Whatever got him, got him quick. Are there people besides us running around the forest with swords?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that,” said Morganstern. She straightened and wiped her hands off like she wasn’t bothered. Cole had seen that kind of bravado before. But the woman was on edge, now. And it would be far from her first time seeing a KIA, as well. It wasn’t the dead recruit bothering her; it was how he died. It must have been unusual for Curahee. So Cole was right to be concerned. “You staying in, then, Airborne?”

  Cole nodded. “If the tryout is still on. Got my class, already. Might be best to link up with some of the others, and then I’m going for that mountain. How are you getting his body out of here?”

  Morganstern shook her head and motioned him over. She grabbed the front of Bart’s plate carrier and pulled him forward, just far enough so that Cole could see the network of tiny blue veins connecting his body to the tree.

  “He belongs to Curahee, now. A few months and he’ll be another tryout’s monster.” The Kicker shook her head and squeezed Bart’s shoulder. She reached down to his helmet and unlatched the small camera and battery on the side. “I thought he’d make it. I really did.”

  Cole looked away as Morgan swept her thumb across her eye. Sometimes everyone’s masks dropped. It was more exposing than being naked for most soldiers. Morganstern deserved her privacy. She didn’t need long, and a moment later, she once again became the stone-faced warrior woman. She picked up her hammer.

  “You still got your flares?”

  Cole tapped the side pouch on his pack.

  “Good. I’ll do you a favor, Airborne.” Morganstern pointed west. “Howie and Roxy are four miles that way. Han and Ken are further north, already camped. Using a chem heater, if they’re being smart.”

  The implication was clear: find one of the other groups, stay together. Keep a low profile. Morganstern hadn’t mentioned Nona or Besson. Was that because she suspected one of them? Or because they’d slipped her monitoring?

  “Stay alive, Airborne,” said Morganstern, waving over her shoulder. She left the clearing so fast it kicked up a trail of debris and dead leaves in her wake. Nothing for Cole to do but focus on that task while continuing his mission.