"If we hit one more piece of bloody robot..."
"You will shoot something, yes yes. I'm tired of hearing you complain about road debris."
Something crunched under the driver front tire as Sniper attempted - unsuccessfully - to avoid a glint of metal in the road; the entire vehicle creaked with the effort, causing Sniper to mentally curse the rusted heap of junk - this rundown "unassuming" truck was all Ms. Pauling would allow them to take on this little recovery mission they'd been sent on, and with each passing mile and errant shudder of machinery he wondered if the damn thing wouldn't just fall apart under them.
"Yeah, well I'm tired of hearing you complain about this damn mission," he retorted, casting a sour glance at his passenger.
Spy sniffed and delicately waved a cigarette-bearing hand. "You will excuse me if I am suspicious of missions with no information provided. 'Go here. Get something. You will know it when you see it.' What, then, am I supposed to know? I have received redacted documents with more information on them than this."
"Heard it, commented on it, not interested in talking about it again," Sniper grunted, gripping the steering wheel until his glove squeaked against the worn leather covering. "I'm not exactly pleased about it either, but here's how this is going to work. First, you're going to quit talking about it. Second, you're going to do your spook thing when we get there, and I'll be watching from a roof or...somewhe- you see that too, right?"
Sniper extended a single finger, hands still wrapped around the wheel; Spy glanced down, followed the finger's angle, and then narrowed his eyes at the horizon.
"Smoke, yes?"
"Yeah, smoke."
They were heading to some backwater town in the middle of nowhere - Sandstill, Sandville, something like that - and, according to the last marker they were 25 miles from their destination. There was nothing but dusty, dry, and flat land in two directions, north and south, and to the west behind them was where they'd come from. Ahead of them was a smudge of rock formation in the far distance and rising from just in front of it was a pillar of smoke.
"I believe you should, as they say, step on it," Spy finally said, carefully twisting the embers from the tip of the cigarette and storing the remainder back within his case.
"We are not going to find this courier, nor what he was carrying."
Gravel, shattered glass, and smoldering wood crunched unevenly under Sniper's boots as he picked his way around what looked to be a destroyed convenience store. "And just what tipped you off to that, genius?" he dryly replied. "The fire? The shit everywhere? The bodies?"
"Thank you for assuming I would be stupid enough to state the overly obvious," came the clipped response as the Spy disappeared into the ember-lined doorway of some sort of store - the sign was charred and unreadable. "These are the bodies of civilians," came a muffled continuance minutes later, the voice steadily becoming clearer as the man came back out. "Little old ladies, men, women. Very few robot remains - these people were not prepared for defense, and it is my guess things were over quickly. They came in, took what they were after, and left. There will be nothing to find, this carnage is proof."
"A pile of dead bodies and no bots isn't convincing enough. Might be what they wanted wasn't here, or they weren't here for a courier at all."
The Spy removed the half-smoked cigarette from earlier from his case, lit it on the doorway, and strode calmly back out of the wreckage. "Fine fine, say the courier is here somewhere, whatever he had is likely gone and I doubt we are going to find his remains."
"I'm not going to call this a wash until we've seen more than just these couple of buildings."
"This entire town is little more than a couple of buildings, Sniper."
"Maybe, but look up the street behind you, what do you see?"
With an exasperated sigh, Spy turned. "I see more destruction, people shot in the back and dead in the streets. What is your point?"
"No fire up that way, and the buildings are more intact."
"And you believe that is where we'll find this courier?"
Sniper reached up to undo the strap holding his rifle to his back and swung it easily into his hands. "Maybe. But I'm leaning more toward that being where we'll at least find signs of what we're supposed to be looking for."
"I feel this is a waste of time."
"You feel like a lot of things waste your time, probably why Miss Pauling came to me with the specifics instead of you."
Spy glowered as Sniper shouldered passed, moving up the street. "What specifics?"
Despite his attitude, the Spy did have a point - Sandville (it was Sandville, right?) seemed to be a single main street and a few side streets, with a scattering of buildings attached to them. Most of the buildings nearest the road had been hit hardest and were the ones that were collasped inward and on fire - nothing to be found there besides wreckage and the dead.
Sniper carefully stepped over a severed arm in the road. It'd only been a handful of months since the robots produced by Gray Mann had ceased following what they'd assumed were central orders and had begun mass-producing themselves and attacking on their own, including making a total mess of Mann Co. - once the real factories and the dummy facilities the merc teams had been guarding were overrun, the robots had begun targeting seemingly random towns and warehouses across the world. The civilians - simple folk living out typical, simple (boring) lives, and even various militaries, were being outgunned and mowed down wherever the bots chose to hit.
These people here in Sandville were just regular folks, no ties at all to Mann Co., hardly even a standing police force, and nothing to justify why the robots had swarmed through here...save for this courier they'd been sent to intercept. Fat chance of that happening now, it seemed, but for the sake of the dead he felt they needed to at least thoroughly look. They'd been doing a lot of things for the sake of civilians lately, and while death didn't usually bother the Sniper the senseless, aimless, and useless death was starting to.
He had to pick his steps carefully; the road was strewn with shattered shop fronts and people, a misplaced step would mean a tumble at best and a sprained ankle at worse. Around him he could hear the sounds of things just...falling apart - ceilings and walls, plaster, stone, glass, all falling free and haphazardly piling wherever it fell, but...
There was something underlying it, something not right. A noise that was barely audible, but somehow out of place.
"Something's off-" Sniper turned as he spoke, then bit down on his words when he saw Spy was nowhere to be seen. "Bloody wonderful."
Taking a deep breath, Sniper turned back to face up the street and listened, holding his breath and slowly turning his head to try and get some sort of bearing on the noise. It was a thumping noise...something on wood, maybe? Not stone, not loud enough to be stone, so...wood, particle board, what were these shops made of? And it was coming from...ahead of him, to the left?
He peered up the road; it dead-ended in what looked like a motel that had been falling apart since before the robots had showed up, but it also seemed to be the most intact building left standing in Sandville. If there were survivors making that noise - which still seemed unlikely at this point - maybe they'd be there?
His suspicion seemed true as the thumping noise grew louder the further down the street he moved, but the sound was moving persistently to his left as he drew closer - not the motel after all, but one of the side buildings.
'I don't trust this street,' Sniper thought suddenly. He was fairly out in the open compared to how he preferred to operate, and maybe it wasn't a survivor making that noise. 'Must be having an off day...too trusting that this place is cleared out.'
Directly on his left was a narrow alleyway between two buildings, mostly intact and the closest cover he could duck into; he had just pressed his shoulder against the wall, his back to the motel, when he heard a sudden loud crash come from somewhere ahead and to the left. Whatever was making that thumping noise-
"-right into the street," he muttered, moving to carefully edge around the corner of the building for a look.
There was a woman spawled in the street on top of the remains of a door, bloodied and panting harshly, left arm held in close against her side and swinging a hammer with the other at the robot that was flailing on top of her. Sniper took a moment to let that sink in: a robot (a Soldierbot by the looks of it) was brawling with a woman in the middle of a ruined town. Where was its weapon?
The stacato of hammer on metal was interrupted by the crack of rifle fire, and the woman was showered with metal shrapnel and wire as Sniper took the top half of the bot's head off in one shot. The woman flinched and attempted to scramble backwards from the jittering body, awkwardly dragging herself away with her only good arm and staring at the Australian with a wide-eyed look.
Eject shell. Insert new. Next target.
It was so ingrained it was like running on autopilot, and through the ruined door of what he could only assume was a hardware store came four more Soldierbots - again, none of them armed...why? - and he mowed them down in quick succession.
And then...silence, broken only by the woman's panting and the shifting of debris as she dragged herself back.
"You all right?" he asked, glance flicking to her for a moment before training back on the doorway, waiting.
There wasn't an answer, just a pained grunt and the sound of shifting glass shards. When no more bots came pouring out of the shadowed doorway, Sniper finally turned to look at her.
The limp and obviously bloodied arm had glass and metal shards embedded in it around the elbow, she had cuts across her face and had bruises appearing on almost every inch of skin. Her demin pants were blood and oil stained, ripped around the knees, and there was a rather alarmingly sized bloodstain spreading from her left hip, or maybe it was soaking down from her left side as the simple pale green shirt she had on was soaked there as well.
The woman herself had (short?) brown hair clinging to her skull with sweat and blood, blue eyes and tanned skin, and had the pained look of someone who just got the snot beat out of them on her face.
"Are you all right? Able to walk?"
"Do I look all right? Who are you?"
Finally, a response - her voice was hoarse, a voice of someone who'd inhaled smoke or been talking at length.
"Can you stand?"
"I asked, who are you? What the hell is going on?"
Sniper began moving toward her, clipping the support strap back together and letting his rifle swing to his back. She kept crawling until the heel of her palm slipped over the edge of a crater in the asphalt, nearly sending her tumbling backwards.
He paused. "Hey, easy. If I wanted you dead you'd be dead, I couldn't miss you if I tried at this distance."
"Give me a name, damnit," she all but spat at him. "And some answers."
"Call me Mundy, and if you don't let me get you out of this street you won't live long enough to get answers out of me."
She stopped, chest heaving, and then she swallowed hard. "You don't look like a doctor to me."
He began moving toward her again, and this time she stayed put and allowed him to get within inches of her, only flinching away when he bent down. "I'm not going to hurt you, but I need to know if you can stand."
"With help, maybe. I think I broke a few things, here-" she pointed at the left of her ribcage - which made it likely that the injury was there and blood was soaking downward, not the other way around - and winced at the movement. "Felt a pop when I hit the counter, was thrown into it."
"Come on, up," he shifted around to grab her right arm at the elbow then looped a finger through a belt loop to help stand her upright, where she immediately swayed unsteadily. "Anyone else left in this heap?"
She shook her head slowly, then looked over his shoulder toward the store. "Hang on, my bags-"
"Leave them, you need a stiff drink and stitches." He began to try and lead her down the road, toward where he'd left the truck, but she leaned away from him and actually tried digging her heels in.
"Not to seem ungrateful, but I'm not leaving with some random stranger with a gun, nor am I leaving all my wordly possessions behind."
"You think you'd fare any better if more of those robots show up?"
"At least I know they're trying to kill me, I don't know a thing about you-"
"-I just saved your ass from a-"
"-excuse my interruption."
Sniper and the woman both turned, argument going silent as, abruptly, Spy materialized from the shadows of the alleyway. He was dusty and a bag dangled from one hand, and he gestured at it with his free hand. "Security tapes, all I had thought we were going to find here. It would seem you have outdone me, Sniper. Who is this?"
"Survivor, though for how much longer is anyone's guess," Sniper snorted, looking at the female in annoyance. She gave him a narrow-eyed glare.
"What that a death threat, buddy?"
"No, that was commentary on the fact you are bleeding out and need to be tended to."
"I've got stuff in my bag I can use."
"Oh for- get in there and go get this idiot's shit so she'll stop arguing, would you?" Sniper snapped at Spy, receiving one silent, raised eyebrow in return. "And you are coming with me before you keel over, got it?"
She turned her head to look directly at Spy. "A black duffel with a red bandana tied to it, and a hard case, about three feet long. They ought to be sitting by the counter, they're not heavy."
With a roll of the eyes the man turned and disappeared through the shattered doorframe; Sniper tugged and this time the woman came with him, leaning heavily on the proferred arm and stumbling often enough that finally he just slung her arm over his shoulder and more or less carried her along with her toes dragging the ground.
It was awkward and slow going, but finally they were at the truck; Sniper slung the tailgate down and helped her ease up on it, then moved to the cab and reached under the front seat to drag out a battered first aid kit.
She was staring at him when he came back around to her. "You're the only one left alive, then. How?"
She shook her head. "I don't know, I know how to duck? I don't stand in front of things with loaded guns?"
"What happened here?" he asked, popping the latches on the kit and opening it. Broken bones weren't something he could handle, but he had at least a working knowledge of field dressing. "Why robots? Why here?"
She began carefully - wincing and with her breath catching at every little move - to peel the blood-soaked shirt away from her side. "I d-don't know. I walked into t-town - ow, ow - only last night. This is just a little podunk town, all I wanted was some coffee and a sandwich - ow!"
He had reached to help her lift the shirt and had only barely brushed his fingertips against her skin...not the best of signs. "Sorry. Notice anything suspicious?"
"You mean aside from a squadron of killer robots? Nothing I'd consider suspicious - just people living their lives, this looked like a regular town."
"When did the attack happen?"
"Started maybe two hours ago, possibly longer? I was in the hardware store, needed a few screws and a spring...um, the mailman had just walked in...then, just, boom. Out of nowhere. Something blew up and the screaming started."
The further he got her shirt up the more convinced he was that this was beyond his skill; her side was similar in texture to ground meat, full of glass and wooden splinters and now dirty from dragging herself across asphalt. Sniper could suture, but not...not this.
"Shit, this is bad."
"No shit?" came the sarcastic reply, followed by a wavering laugh. "I feel like I got sent through a blender. Full of robots and fists."
"I'm going to clean this up the best I can but this is beyond me."
"I had a feeling you'd say that."
Out of the kit came antiseptic, water, cloth, tweezers. He began picking glass and splinters out and trying to rinse the dirt out; the woman squirmed and flinched as he worked, and eventually she thrust out her good arm and clamped her hand on the edge of the tailgate.
"I am going to fall over."
The truck shook and groaned as Spy, appearing as abruptly as before, flung a duffel bag covered in drywall dust and a battered and worn rectangular case into the bed behind the woman.
"I could say the same, your things weigh quite a bit."
Sniper looked up at him, jerking his head toward the cab and mouthing 'Pauling.' He received another eyeroll and muttered French as the other man moved away, getting into the passenger seat and slamming the door shut.
"Mundy, was it?"
"Yeah."
"Well, Mundy...before I pass out, thanks. And, why are you here?"
He tossed a shard of glass over a shoulder and looked up at her. "A package was supposed to be waiting here for us."
"See that building by the gas station there?"
"Yeah?"
"That was the post office."
The building in question was not a building so much as a pile of gravel. Despite himself, Sniper hung his head. "...right."
The truck shifted again as the passenger door opened and Spy climbed back out, a phone clutched in a hand. "She comes with us."
Sniper dropped the cloth and bottle of water he was holding as he suddenly had to jump up and grab the woman by the shoulders as she began tipping backward. "I thought that was sort of a given, mate."
"Miss Pauling has instructed me to bring her back with us at any cost," Spy went on, tapping the phone against a palm. "She seems to think that between the tapes I recovered and the possibility of this woman witnessing something informative, we may be able to ascertain what this courier was carrying and why the robots struck this town."
"Well isn't that just nice of Miss Pauling," Sniper snorted. "And if she hadn't said bring her?"
"One more body would not make this town any worse," Spy said quietly. "As it is, I doubt we will get her back in time."
"She's not that bad-" Sniper grumbled through gritted teeth. "-not yet, anyway. Bleeding out was a scare tactic just to get her to budge herself. She did get the snot kicked out of her though. Does the Medic know we're coming back with her in tow?"
"That will depend on whether Miss Pauling decided to inform him."
"In other words, no he doesn't, because I'm betting you didn't mention her state. Come here, hold her upright while I tie this off." He pressed a thick pad of cotton bandage to the worst of the shredded skin along the woman's side - she was only semi-lucid but still hissed unhappily - and then tied it off with Spy keeping the woman sitting upright.
"Pack this in, I'll get her in the cab."
"Have I mentioned I am not your servant boy?" Spy said dryly, not moving from where he stood at the tailgate.
Sniper slipped an arm under the woman's legs and one behind her head. "No, but if you're so damn concerned about your time being wasted, you won't leave me to do everything." He hefted the woman - she was heavier than she looked - and then purposely jerked his head toward the driver's side door. With an exasperated sigh the Spy came around and opened it with a sarcastic flourish, then stood back to give Sniper room to manuever the female into the middle of the seat, then slide in beside her and prop her up against his side.
"Just toss it into the back and shut the tailgate, let's get the hell out of here,"
The ride back was silent, save for the two instances where the woman woke up. The first time she was groggy and hardly seemed to know where she was, and also was not awake long. The second time she lifted her head from Sniper's shoulder, squinting at him blearily.
"Mundy?"
"What?"
"...Shiloh MacKenna. Thanks for not killing me."