Speaker 1: Chapter seven. Manny Mannie was used to war, he wasn't
Speaker 1: quite as used to being on the losing side of one.
Speaker 1: As chaotic as things gotten Sierda de Muerta, his guys
Speaker 1: had always held the upper hand. Manny had come to
Speaker 1: expect safe supply lines and reliable transport to and from
Speaker 1: the battlefield. During past offensives, the martyrs hadn't controlled the skies.
Speaker 1: His first hint that this had changed came when the
Speaker 1: fifty caliber machine gun atop their transport fired into the sky.
Speaker 1: It was soon joined by the echoing boom of the
Speaker 1: lead vehicle's twenty millimeter cannon and a sparking whoosh as
Speaker 1: anti drone rockets arched up into the sky. Nuts Reggie
Speaker 1: yelped as the gunfire jolted him awake. He drifted off
Speaker 1: a half hour or so into the ride. Mannie grabbed
Speaker 1: onto him and looped his own legs around the bench
Speaker 1: for stability. An instant later, the transport veered off of
Speaker 1: the road and into the high grass surrounding the highway.
Speaker 1: There was a flash somewhere to the left, followed by
Speaker 1: the roar and heat of an explosion. When Mannie looked back,
Speaker 1: he all the smoldering wreckage of one of their escort
Speaker 1: vehicles drones. He shouted into the journalist's ear over the
Speaker 1: blistering gunfire Manny scanned the skies as their transport plowed
Speaker 1: through the tall grass. Wounded soldier screamed as the vehicle
Speaker 1: banked and bounced and sent them slamming into each other.
Speaker 1: He caught sight of a small drone, maybe the size
Speaker 1: of his torso. It was matt black and an almost
Speaker 1: perfect oval. The only break in its seamless form was
Speaker 1: the bulge of a missile pod on its belly. A
Speaker 1: red light blinked above the weapon. The drone slowed to
Speaker 1: a stop, maybe a hundred feet above them. There wasn't
Speaker 1: time to think. The fixer shoved his journalist hard off
Speaker 1: the back of the transport and then leaped off himself.
Speaker 1: He hit the ground with a painful thump that knocked
Speaker 1: the air out of his lungs and the scents from
Speaker 1: his mind. For a second, the whole world was stars
Speaker 1: and shock. Many rolled to a rough stop against what
Speaker 1: felt like a large rock. Something cracked inside his chest,
Speaker 1: and then there was another explosion, this one louder and
Speaker 1: closer than the last one. The heat hit him like
Speaker 1: an ocean wave. Many was vaguely aware of the scent
Speaker 1: of burning hair, his hair. He cried out, but he
Speaker 1: couldn't hear his own screams. Many's ears rang like the
Speaker 1: inside of a church bell. It was several moments before
Speaker 1: the pain and shock subsided enough for him to open
Speaker 1: his eyes. He looked down at himself. First, his pajamas
Speaker 1: were scorched and his arms were scraped and bloody from
Speaker 1: the fall. His backpack was gone, but there were no
Speaker 1: signs of serious injury. None of his bones seemed broken.
Speaker 1: What remained of the transport smoldered half a football field away.
Speaker 1: He saw a few writhing, burning shapes inside Manny's stomach
Speaker 1: turned Reggie. The pain of the fall head momentarily wiped
Speaker 1: the journalist from his mind. Mannie scanned the field and
Speaker 1: found the other man curled into a fetal ball a
Speaker 1: dozen or so feet to his left. He ran over,
Speaker 1: gave the journalist a quick scan, and determined Reggie wasn't
Speaker 1: seriously injured either. A small slipper of shrapnel had pierced
Speaker 1: the other man's bicep. He was just as scraped and
Speaker 1: bloody as Manny, but also basically intact, except his eyes
Speaker 1: didn't quite focus when Mannie looked into them. Maybe a
Speaker 1: minor head injury, the journalist said something, a lot of
Speaker 1: somethings in fact, but Andy's hearing was all tenitis. There
Speaker 1: was no time to talk anyway. He hoisted Reggie up
Speaker 1: by the armpits, ignored the other man's pained expression, and
Speaker 1: pulled him along as he beat feet away from the
Speaker 1: flaming wreckage in the ongoing firefight. Another blast wave of
Speaker 1: rolled over him, this one more distant, and then another
Speaker 1: coming from somewhere above them in the sky. The extent
Speaker 1: of their injuries meant that their run was more like
Speaker 1: a hobble. Reggie had dislocated his unshrapneled arm, Manny had
Speaker 1: fucked his knee up in the fall and done something
Speaker 1: awful to his ribs. The two stumble staggered as fast
Speaker 1: as they could manage towards an abandoned gas station by
Speaker 1: the side of the old highway. They reached their temporary
Speaker 1: salvation and took cover inside the dusty, cobwebbed building. Cut cut, cut, cut, Cut,
Speaker 1: Reggie screamed as he slumped down against the wall. It
Speaker 1: took Manny a second to process the fact that he
Speaker 1: could hear again. You're all right, he shouted, You're fine,
Speaker 1: We're going to be okay. Manny had no idea if
Speaker 1: that was true, but he knew managing fear would be
Speaker 1: critical to their survival. The gas station had been abandoned
Speaker 1: for a decade or more. Most of the glass was gone,
Speaker 1: but the basic structure of the side counter was still intact.
Speaker 1: He and Reggie took cover behind it, careful to avoid
Speaker 1: the piles of shattered glass and shrapnel. There were old
Speaker 1: bullet holes in the wall all around them. At one time,
Speaker 1: there'd been a plexiglass window on the inside wall behind
Speaker 1: the counter, with a little bucket in it, so the
Speaker 1: cashier could do business at night without letting customers inside.
Speaker 1: Most of the plexiglass had been removed, leaving a gaping
Speaker 1: wound in the building's concrete hide. Manny stuck his head
Speaker 1: out of the hole and looked out at the sight
Speaker 1: of the massacre. Both transports had been hit. Much of
Speaker 1: the field was a flame. The six sweet smell of
Speaker 1: burning human flesh wafted over them like a dense fog.
Speaker 1: Manny saw two of the escort trucks still firing into
Speaker 1: the sky. There was another flash above as one of
Speaker 1: them hit a drone. It corkscrewed out of the air,
Speaker 1: burst on the ground and ignited the dry grass. What
Speaker 1: the funk do we do, Reggie shout asked. There was
Speaker 1: panic in his voice and quite a lot of pain,
Speaker 1: but the journalist didn't seem to have lost his wits.
Speaker 1: We need to get out of here, Manny said, Well,
Speaker 1: those drones are still occupied. The highway was a couple
Speaker 1: of hundred feet away. The civilian vehicles following them had
Speaker 1: scattered when the tack began. Some of them had clearly
Speaker 1: been hit by machine gun fire from one of the drones.
Speaker 1: Others had crashed, rolled into ditches and been abandoned by
Speaker 1: their occupants. Manny spotted one, an ancient white jeep that
Speaker 1: looked like it had taken around. Through the window. He
Speaker 1: could see blood inside the vehicle, but the engine and
Speaker 1: wheels seemed intact. The tree line of a sparse forest
Speaker 1: was just on the other side of the highway, a
Speaker 1: half mile away. If they could reach it, Reggie, he
Speaker 1: put a hand on the journalist's shoulder. The two men
Speaker 1: locked eyes, and many tried to force all the fear
Speaker 1: out of his voice. When I say so, run very fast,
Speaker 1: straight towards that white jeep. Understood the brit brought a
Speaker 1: hand to his dislocated shoulder and winced in intense pain,
Speaker 1: but then looked back to Manny and let out a
Speaker 1: sharp sigh. Fucking all right, shit yeah. Manny took that
Speaker 1: as a yes. He glanced back at the firefight in
Speaker 1: the field. The fire part was literal, now at least
Speaker 1: a full acre was aflame. The smoke seemed to have
Speaker 1: interfered with the drone sensors. That was probably the only
Speaker 1: reason their last two escorts had stayed unfucked for so long.
Speaker 1: Manny watched in horror as a large beetle black drone
Speaker 1: buzzed down low and opened up with a machine gun.
Speaker 1: He saw bursts of red as the rounds tore into
Speaker 1: the escorts gunner and flung him off the truck's bed.
Speaker 1: Time to go. Manny slapped Reggie's uninjured shoulder and sprinted
Speaker 1: as fast as his jankie ankle could carry him. It
Speaker 1: was increasingly obvious that his leg was supremely fucked. The
Speaker 1: middle of Manny's back itched the whole run in anticipation
Speaker 1: of a bullet that peculiar sense was even louder than
Speaker 1: the pain. They reached the jeep, Manny went for the
Speaker 1: driver's side door, pulled it open, and jerked back as
Speaker 1: the soupy remains of a pulped human being oozed out
Speaker 1: onto the asphalt. He heard Reggie start to wretch behind him.
Speaker 1: It was fucked in there for sure. The man he
Speaker 1: was sort of sure it had been a man, had
Speaker 1: taken a couple of rounds from a very large weapon.
Speaker 1: Many guessed they'd been fifty caliber mass reactive bolts because
Speaker 1: the impact had torn the man apart. He wasn't sure
Speaker 1: if additional rounds or bone shrapnel had hit the two
Speaker 1: kids in the back seat, but they were all exceptionally dead.
Speaker 1: Many pulled his shirt off and did his best to
Speaker 1: wipe the corpse from as much of the seat as possa.
Speaker 1: He hopped in and glanced over to the journalist. Reggie
Speaker 1: wretched outside, Hey, get the funk in, We don't got all.
Speaker 1: A concussive blast echoed from the field. That was one
Speaker 1: more escort down. The fight was as good as over.
Speaker 1: Manny felt a tinge of panic rise up in the
Speaker 1: base of his spine. Reggie still hesitated. Dude either deal
Speaker 1: with some gore in your clothes or stay here and die.
Speaker 1: Your choice. The Brits snapped out of it, went for
Speaker 1: the passenger door and hopped inside. Manny wasn't a great driver,
Speaker 1: or even a very good one, but this was a
Speaker 1: simple vehicle, and he was blessed with the motivation of
Speaker 1: not wanting to die. He turned the car back on
Speaker 1: and the engine woke up with a rich electronic hum.
Speaker 1: The fixer flipped the vehicle into drive and gunned for
Speaker 1: the tree line. The jeep bounced and swayed over the
Speaker 1: lumpy grassland ter rain. Reggie puked out the window. Manny
Speaker 1: felt nauseous too. He honestly wasn't sure if it was
Speaker 1: more for the pieces of people scattered inside the vehicle
Speaker 1: or sheer motion sickness. Fifteen seconds went by, thirty a minute.
Speaker 1: Manny allowed himself to think they might make it out
Speaker 1: of this alive. And then he heard the buzz, that sickening,
Speaker 1: familiar machine hum that every war zone kid knew, as
Speaker 1: well as the sound of their own mother's voice. A
Speaker 1: drone closing in. Manny jerked his head out the window
Speaker 1: and scanned the sky. The jeep had a pothole, and
Speaker 1: his head slammed to the top of the window frame.
Speaker 1: He saw stars and almost lost control of the vehicle entirely.
Speaker 1: It veered to the right and lifted up on to
Speaker 1: only two wheels. He righted the jeep, spun it back
Speaker 1: to the left, and gunned it again. As he turned
Speaker 1: the other way, he stuck his head out again and
Speaker 1: scanned behind them. There it was the black beadily fucker,
Speaker 1: buzzing towards them. It was close enough that he could
Speaker 1: see the glint of its camera optics and the barrel
Speaker 1: of the heavy machine guns slung underneath it. Manny knew
Speaker 1: it was picking up speed to compensate for the recoil
Speaker 1: of its weapon. It would be low on ammunition now.
Speaker 1: It'd probably wait to fire until it was too close
Speaker 1: to miss. The tree line was so near he could
Speaker 1: almost grab it. Another fifteen seconds and they'd be there,
Speaker 1: But the drone was close. They didn't have that long.
Speaker 1: He looked over to the journalist, get ready to bail,
Speaker 1: get ready to what Manny saw the muzzle flash, and
Speaker 1: in the same instant he spun the wheel hard to
Speaker 1: the right. The drones first round chunked through the back
Speaker 1: of the jeep cracked the axle and blew apart the
Speaker 1: left tire, but the jeep was in the air. An
Speaker 1: instant later. It flipped over like a drunken dolphin, and
Speaker 1: the rest of the drone shots blasted chunks out of
Speaker 1: the ground where the jeep would have been. By the
Speaker 1: end of the burst, the recoil had robbed the drone
Speaker 1: of its momentum and brought it to a spinning halt
Speaker 1: in the sky. The jeep rolled twice and bounced Manny
Speaker 1: and Reggie around like rocks in a tumbler. It hurt,
Speaker 1: it hurt shiploads, but Manny was high enough on adrenaline
Speaker 1: in fear that he could almost ignore the pain. Blood
Speaker 1: streamed from his forehead, something ached terribly between his shoulders.
Speaker 1: When the jeep came to a stop, he was deeply
Speaker 1: surprised to be alive. Let's go, he shouted to Reggie,
Speaker 1: not even a hundred percent sure if the journalist had
Speaker 1: survived the crash. Manny pulled himself up out of the
Speaker 1: open window and then reached his hands back blind into
Speaker 1: the jeep. While he scanned the sky around them. He
Speaker 1: felt reggie small hands grip his own. They were wet
Speaker 1: with sweat, maybe blood probably both. Manny squeezed pulled him up.
Speaker 1: The too hopped down because they could with their sundry wounds.
Speaker 1: The drone had probably veered around and started another loop
Speaker 1: so it could build up the speed for one more
Speaker 1: accurate burst of fire. Many couldn't quite hear the buzz yet,
Speaker 1: but he couldn't hear much of anything over the sound
Speaker 1: of his pounding heart. Reggie pulled ahead of him in
Speaker 1: a lopsided run. Manny tried to pick up speed, but
Speaker 1: his knee just wouldn't let him. Ah, there it was.
Speaker 1: He had three, maybe four seconds before that big gun
Speaker 1: opened up again. The tree line was only about a
Speaker 1: hundred feet away, so close and yet too far for
Speaker 1: him to possibly make it in time. I really didn't
Speaker 1: want to die here. I was so close to getting out.
Speaker 1: He thought of a picture he'd seen of the Bavarian Alps,
Speaker 1: white snow filled valleys and rich pine forests. I'm never
Speaker 1: going to see that or anything else. Reggie looked back
Speaker 1: as he neared the tree line. Many appreciated the gesture.
Speaker 1: It was dumb as funk, though idiot to run. The
Speaker 1: fixer bellowed at the top of his lungs. The journalist
Speaker 1: didn't hesitate this time. He bolted past the tree line
Speaker 1: and disappeared into the wooded thicket. Manny felt a weight
Speaker 1: lift off his shoulders. He was about to be torn
Speaker 1: apart by some nut fuck martyr with an itchy trigger
Speaker 1: finger and a joystick. But he'd done his job. He'd
Speaker 1: gotten his journalists to safety. Well not quite safety, he thought,
Speaker 1: but whatever best I could do under the circumstances. The
Speaker 1: hum grew louder. Manny tried to coax a little more
Speaker 1: speed out of his wounded leg, even though he knew
Speaker 1: he was too far away now to make the tree line.
Speaker 1: Even at a dead sprint. It would have been nice
Speaker 1: to see Berlin or Paris. Oh well. He heard the
Speaker 1: thumping sound of heavy gun fire and braced himself for
Speaker 1: the instant of agony that would precede his end. But
Speaker 1: instead he heard the sound of impact and crunching metal
Speaker 1: behind him, followed by a high pitched mechanical wine. Something
Speaker 1: heavy and black crashed into the ground ahead of him.
Speaker 1: He made it to the tree line, pushed through the underbrush,
Speaker 1: got perhaps twenty feet into the woods, and collapsed against
Speaker 1: a tree for a few seconds He just let the
Speaker 1: paine wash over him, his knee, his shoulders. He could
Speaker 1: feel something stuck deep in his back too, maybe a
Speaker 1: shard of glass or some shrie apneal. From the start
Speaker 1: of the firefight, he had quite a few deep cuts.
Speaker 1: The trauma nanites in his circulatory system had clotted most
Speaker 1: of them, but the deeper ones still oozed blood. It
Speaker 1: was hard to tell just how injured he really was,
Speaker 1: since his body was also covered in blood and viscerraph
Speaker 1: from the jeep's previous occupants espera. He thought, how am
Speaker 1: I alive? His brain gradually spun up to meet his body.
Speaker 1: Someone had shot that murder beetle out of the sky,
Speaker 1: But who Reggie? Where would he have gotten a gun?
Speaker 1: And the man was British. He couldn't shoot Reggie. He
Speaker 1: shouted over here. The brit called back. He sounded weirdly cheerful.
Speaker 1: I'm er think we've made some friends. For the first
Speaker 1: time in his life, Manny found himself face to face
Speaker 1: with two post humans. The first appeared to be a lady.
Speaker 1: She was hunkered up in the branches of a tree,
Speaker 1: and she cradled a very large gun in her hands.
Speaker 1: Most of her body sort of faded into the four wrist.
Speaker 1: She was only easy to see now because of her smile.
Speaker 1: The shine of her teeth was quite unlike anything else
Speaker 1: he'd ever seen. They appeared to be made of some
Speaker 1: sort of strange, swirling colored metal. Where a normal person
Speaker 1: would have had incisors, she had long, curved fangs. The
Speaker 1: other chrombed was a black man. He was of average height,
Speaker 1: with a muscular body and a wide build. His head
Speaker 1: was shaved, and he had a plump, friendly face and
Speaker 1: round cheeks that accentuated his broad smile. He wore a
Speaker 1: red kilt and a silver breastplate over his muscular chest.
Speaker 1: It gleamed in the afternoon sun. His only weapon appeared
Speaker 1: to be an enormous sledgehammer, larger than Reggie's entire body.
Speaker 1: He smiled and nodded in Manny. His whole body twitched
Speaker 1: as he stood there, as if a constant stream of
Speaker 1: electricity buzzed through him. Reggie stood in front of the man.
Speaker 1: It looked like the journalist had run into the post
Speaker 1: humans during his flight from the drone. He looked terrified
Speaker 1: in the friendly sort of way. Only the British could manage. Hey, y'all, Manny,
Speaker 1: said he wasn't sure how nomadic half god warrior people
Speaker 1: preferred to be addressed. Y'all seemed a safe bet, a guy, said.
Speaker 1: The woman up in the tree soap said the kilted
Speaker 1: man um. Can we help you? Manny asked? The man chuckled.
Speaker 1: He had a deep, throaty laugh that bounced off the
Speaker 1: trees and seemed to get louder as it reverberated. No, buddy,
Speaker 1: you guys look pretty near death. I'm gonna GISs. You
Speaker 1: don't have anything. I want nice pajamas, though he pointed
Speaker 1: down to Manny's blood soaked and burned pajama bottoms. The
Speaker 1: fixer's face turned red with embarrassment. They might have whiskey,
Speaker 1: said the woman. Ask if they have whiskey. The big
Speaker 1: man smiled, lowered his mall and spoke the name's schoofucker Mike,
Speaker 1: he said. The lady who shut down your drone is
Speaker 1: Topaz McMillan. Do you guys have whiskey? Manny didn't, but
Speaker 1: Reggie did. Holy fuck, he shouted, I actually do. Somehow,
Speaker 1: the journalist hadn't lost his backpack in the chaos. He
Speaker 1: unzipped the main compartment, dig around for a few seconds
Speaker 1: and produced a small metal flask. Reggie passed it off
Speaker 1: to skullfucker Mike, who took a belt of it and
Speaker 1: let out a dog's bark. He didn't bark like a dog,
Speaker 1: It was the exact sound of a large pound barking schofucker.
Speaker 1: Mike passed the flask up to Topaz. She took a
Speaker 1: poll in coued appreciatively. All right, Scully, I like these guys.
Speaker 1: They get a ride. A ride, asked Reggie. A ride
Speaker 1: to where? Two rolling fuck, she said, to the city
Speaker 1: of Wheels. Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here. I hope you
Speaker 1: just enjoyed the chapter you listen to. I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed the chapters to come. If you would like to
Speaker 1: read the text version of this book either on the
Speaker 1: web or on your e reader as an e pub
Speaker 1: you can find those on the website a t r
Speaker 1: book dot com. So again, the free ad free e
Speaker 1: pub and the text of every chapter will be on
Speaker 1: a t r book dot com. Thanks