Iteration #299 - See you later
Learning to care about someone can take a long time. A very long time.
"What's next?" said Rita.
Cage took a moment to put a burst into the mimic that Rita had just chopped into pieces – necessary, he had learned. "A straight jog, up the hill," he said. Damn, it sounded easy when you put it like that. He wondered if any of J squad were still alive. Not that it, you know, mattered. In the end.
A couple of dead soldiers lay near them; Cage and Rita took their ammunition although their batteries were done. This was what his life was now, thought Cage: taking what you needed, not thinking about it, moving on, not looking at the mutilated bodies anymore, shit happens, and it happens over and over again.
Surprisingly, they encountered no mimics in the run up the last slope. The first time they had reached the crest and looked around, suddenly realising they were off the beach, Cage had been almost ecstatic. He had not thought it was possible. Rita had pushed him through, unrelentingly, ruthlessly. The price for this small victory had been to see her killed, again and again. Sometimes she died bravely, facing the enemy with her sword raised. Sometimes she died screaming. Sometimes ... well, she always died, was the point.
Several times, he had cried to see her dead. That had surprised him: before all this he had never been much of a one for close personal connections. Cool Cage, that's what they had called him in college. It had made him very good at the career path he had chosen. Marketing, advertising, public relations: all things that required a handsome face and a calculating attitude. You know what his most successful advertising campaign had been? A line of handguns designed for teenagers. Sales had gone through the roof, he had won an award. And he had never even picked up one of the guns, or any gun. Hadn't needed to.
And then the mimics came and his agency collapsed and the only company doing any hiring was the military. His most valuable contribution to the war effort had been the idea that the dropship used by the Angel of Verdun should have teeth painted on it. He'd been pretty proud of that, and it had led to some rigged-up television interviews. Which had led him to General Brigham, which had led him, in a roundabout way, to his current stunningly awful situation.
Now they were sitting on the crest of the hill, looking out at the holiday resort, or what was left of it, down below.
"How many times have we been here?" said Rita.
"This is the third," said Cage. "We need a vehicle, but there's an ambush waiting for us, a whole nest of them, under that trailer on the far side. And there might be more. There are three vehicles we haven't tried yet. You see that bus? Let's go for that one. But wait a second." He pulled a water bottle out and took a sip. "There's no rush. Künera Dam isn't going anywhere. We should take a rest while we can."
Rita nodded, seeing the sense of it. She took a sip of water.
"Cage," she said after a while. "Have you ever left? Said, fuck it, I'll do what I want, I'm going anywhere that isn't here, who's going to stop me. You ever do that?"
"Not really," he said. "I stole a motorbike and went to London once, but that was mainly because I needed a drink. I was there when the mimics came up the Thames. How about you?"
She stared at the collection of rusting caravans and trailers. "No," she said. "I never did."
"You didn't take the opportunity to drop in on your family?"
She grunted. "That's the last thing I would do," she said.
"Huh. Where did you wake up?"
"In bed, with a helluva hangover. With some bloke. Never caught his name. A snorer. Really bad. Like he'd swallowed a chainsaw."
Cage laughed. He had never heard Rita say anything even remotely humourous before. "And that was the day before Verdun?"
"More or less. I tell you, I could have done without the hangover. And the bloke."
"How many times did you go around?"
She shrugged. "At some point you stop counting. You?"
"Same. Hundreds, maybe. So far."
They began to move down the slope towards the bus. There was no sign of mimics. They reached the bus and climbed in. Rita got out of her jacket and eased herself into the driver's seat. There were no keys but Rita pulled some wires from under the dashboard and began to strip the plastic from them, intending to hot-wire the vehicle.
"Don't tell me, your dad was a bus-driver?" said Cage.
"Car thief," she said. "And general crim. Got put away for beating my mum up one too many times."
Next time around, I won't be asking about that, thought Cage.
She touched two of the exposed wires together. There was a spark. The engine spluttered, spluttered ... and then caught.
And suddenly a troop of mimics erupted through the floor, from the ground below the bus. The bus began to turn over. Cage, even as he was flung from one side to the other, saw Rita take a tentacle in the chest, and another in the back at the same moment. She cried out.
He was thrown down. His jacket had been damaged somehow, he couldn't get up. He couldn't even reach his gun. He prepared himself for the sensation of a tentacle ripping into him.
But it didn't happen. Instead, a mimic slowly moved over to him. And stopped. As if it was looking at him.
He managed to get one hand free, and reached into the pocket where he kept his last-resort grenade.
He turned his head to look at Rita. Her lifeless eyes stared back at him. She was not, he suddenly thought, a particularly attractive woman. Not elegant, not classy, none of the things he had liked ... before all this. But she had become the centre of his world. She had become the only thing he had ever cared about.
"See you later, beautiful," he said, as he pulled the pin.
END