A/N: Hey lovelies! Welcome back to another chapter c: I wanted to throw up a quick warning here that this chapter gets pretty graphic and pretty dark, so bear in mind that it's gonna get heavy. I don't know if it will be considered 'triggering' for some, but it can definitely be a read that'll be hard to swallow.
Hope y'all enjoy nonetheless, and I apologize if it upsets anyone!
Happy reading, happy writing!
~TheKonfessionist signing out
Glasgow stumbled out of the cramped bathroom and had to latch onto the door frame, if only to keep his wobbling world steady as he looked outward to a nearby window, his mind carrying the annoyed thought of where the fuck am I? His eyes caught the scorching rays of the rising sun, and he flinched away with one hand clasped to his forehead to protect his overly sensitive left eye. The sun was brighter than he remembered it being, almost searing... actually, everything was brighter than he remembered it being. Colors were bolder, things around him would turn shapes if he tried looking at them directly, and everything had an almost orange-tinged hue to it, like he was looking at the world through orange lensed sunglasses.
He blindly felt for said sunglasses amidst his swimming vision but found that they weren't on his face.
Fuck.
When he lifted his head again and felt sweat bead down his neck, causing his shirt to stick to his slicked body, he clasped his 9-inch blade with the brass-knuckled handle at his side. Licking the salt from the corner of his dry mouth, he grinned to himself excitedly as he reviewed his orders;
Shoot to kill.
High casualties tolerated.
Danger near, use caution.
Target missing.
Those were Sumner's orders, hidden behind the cramped bathroom's mirror where it was scored into the old, craggy paint for whenever Glasgow regained consciousness. He never was taught how to read, and so knew only very few basic words like doctor, food, and free, and so Sumner—as their squad leader—always had to relay information to him in his own secret code of quick drawn pictures if he wasn't around to directly deliver his orders.
A bulls eye target; shoot to kill.
A head with x'd out eyes; High casualties tolerated.
A hollow triangle with a skull in the middle; Danger near, use caution.
A light bulb, which was Winona's call sign, followed by a question mark; Target missing.
Angel eyes' missin', git yer useless puke-suckin' ass up. Glasgow growled at himself as he bopped his temple with the heel of his palm and shook his head, as if hoping it'd get his vision—and his fractured mind—back to use. It wasn't the first time he woke up and didn't remember anything of the last few hours, but to forget almost the last day? He knew he was drugged, and was definitely the last to wake up of the three of them, but he'd confirm his suspicions later when he killed the son of a dick-gargling slut that knocked him out and secured their target.
Glasgow, armed only with his favorite blade, as it was hidden just behind the bathtub in one of Sumner's obvious 'back up stashes', opened the back door of the one-story house he occupied to step outside. Avoiding the main street was his only choice, as the rising sun gave too much visibility, and if he took the back way he had more cover behind the houses if he kept low and quiet. He quickly scanned his surroundings; a man-made tin shack with a busted door was just ahead of where he stood, with blood-streaked walls and the familiar smell of decay that wrung his nostrils, and it brought back too vivid memories of meals he taught himself to be hungry for; to his right, a two-floor house wept with white smoke out of every possible opening, like the shattered windows, holes in the side paneling, and the kicked down back door. The smoke rose to the air to disintegrate in the sunlight before it could even reach the broken street. When he looked out to the main drag, he saw a still standing house just opposite of the smoked out one, surrounded by the debris of other homes that didn't withstand time.
Non-toxic, he surmised, upon sniffing at the air to hock it back into his mouth and spit it on the ground. Jus' plain smoke. Ain't one'a Zhang's lit'le beauties, neither... she woulda poisoned it.
Just before Glasgow could take another careful step out onto the back stoop of the house, he watched small hands claw their way outward from the kicked open door—followed by a scrawny little body dragging themselves out from under the smoke, to drop themselves into the dirt with wheezing, struggling coughs. He watched as they—a little girl—with frazzled blonde hair and gangly limbs—sat up in the dirt with blood that wasn't her own streaking her flowered nightgown, and she trembled as she wailed tearfully back into the silent house.
"Mommy—?" The little girl tried, hiccuping through her sobs and she finally got up to her feet shakily. "Mommy! Mommy!" She screamed desperately.
It was then that Glasgow felt a jolt run through his body—the ever familiar twinge of sadistic thrill, plucking at every rubber band and strip of duct tape that kept him put together enough so he looked somewhat convincingly human; it was like trying to redress a predator, that walked on four legs and snapped at its prey with gnarled teeth, but it wouldn't look anymore human than if it walked on only two legs and wore people's clothes. The sheep could still see through such a disguise if he got close enough. It had been so constricting, tightening upon his stomach and throat, keeping him from indulging in his appetites lest one bite would burst his shrunk stomach, and the Thing—something ominous and dark—stepped forward in his subconscious, grinning unnaturally and saying that it was starved.
He would feed it.
The terrified cries of the little blonde girl threatened to reawaken something in him that he was forced to bury a long time ago... the Thing that enjoyed hurting people, that Sumner tried his damnedest to make go away, but you can't make something like that disappear; you could only force it into hiding.
And the Thing didn't mind the dark.
He watched as the little girl hobbled on the back porch, crying to herself as she slapped her tears away with bloodied hands, looking as if she was debating on running back into the house. She was silent now despite her sobbing, unable to call for her mother again, as she crouched on the ground and hugged her knees to her face, rocking herself back and forth pitifully in her helplessness.
Glasgow couldn't take another second of watching it as the sadistic thrill threatened to crash down on him, but he couldn't bring himself to step forward as he was trained to heel. He could almost feel Sumner standing behind him, gauging him with a look so sharp it could cut the grotesque thoughts right out of Glasgow's brain—but when he turned around, his squad leader wasn't there.
That's right... Sumner wasn't there, holding the Thing's leash after muzzling its smile.
Thing wanted to come out. It was worse than a monster—worse than pure evil—it was telling Glasgow to tear into everything he could, to carve himself into everyone he broke and mark them in such a dehumanizing way that if they happened to survive the mutilation, they—Glasgow and the Thing—would be left with their victims... scarred upon their very body... forever.
The glasgow smile would be with them for forever and ever. It wouldn't leave them until their bodies would be picked clean by the buzzards or leeched into the irradiated soil under their gravestone.
The little girl wasn't right for the smile—no, no, not today. Maybe when she was older, if she lived that long. Most children that were small and scrawny like her didn't live past 10 years old, and she looked to be about 7.
And besides... it wasn't fun if they weren't strong enough to fight back.
Glasgow stepped off the back stoop of the house he hid in and walked on towards the small child, his boots crunching over the crumbled dirt and the weathered rocks, but not until he whistled between his tongue and teeth was she finally aware of his presence. Her head snapped up to him, her blue eyes bulging in complete fear, with her mouth parting open as if to scream but it lodged itself in her throat. She tried to run off in the opposite direction, even though Glasgow didn't walk any faster than his same leisurely gait toward her, and laughed when she fell from stepping on a sharp rock and tumbled into a nest of dry weeds, crying in pain as she clutched her bleeding foot. When he came to her, he bundled the front of her nightgown under one fist and pulled her up off the ground to plant her back down both feet, making her whimper from being set on her injured limb carelessly.
"Up 'ya go, lit'le darlin'," He cooed almost condescendingly as he hunched his back and leaned his hands forward onto his knees, coming to eye-level with her and she couldn't stop gawking at his wrong eye and he called back into the house. "Hey! Glas' reportin' in, you aw'right in there?"
"Suck my cock!" Harriet yelled back from somewhere on the second floor, followed with some muffled sounds of a scuffle and Sumner demanding cooperation.
"Yeh, they're aw'right," He cackled and looked back to the little girl before him with the wide smile still plastered on his face. "What's yer, name, hmn? Wait, wait—dun' tell me, I wanna turn this int'a game. 'Ya like games, lil' girl?"
When she didn't answer him, still too frozen in fear to respond other than the quivering of her bottom lip, he cocked his head with a little hum and she sniffled before nodding once hesitantly.
"Well whatta coinkee-dink, I love games. Here're the rules—if I guess yer name righ' in a few tries, 'ya gotta do somethin' fer me... buh' if you win—I'll letcha go. Fair? I think tha's fair. So, is iiiiit—... Sally?"
Skiddishly, the little girl shook her head and her bottom lip quivered more as fresh tears ran over the blood stains on her face.
"No? Well, how 'bout Becky? Stacy? Vanessa? Jennifer?" She shook her head timidly at each suggestion, clutching the front of her bloodied night gown as well, and her face tightened more and more with each guess—looking close to breaking apart right in front of her, as if he had been too close to her name.
A small smile came to his cooled face as he looked back into her eyes. "Janice? Janelle? Jenna? No? How 'bout Jenny?"
The little girl, Jenny, released a small noise that sounded like a strangled whimper and her teeth bit into her lip again, as if it'd stop her chin from shaking. He almost laughed at how pathetic and small she looked, but instead it rattled on inside his head, cruelly, and he only grinned wide and bared his teeth.
The Thing—the glasgow smile—it was coming out more and more with every tooth that was revealed under his parting lips.
"Jenny, now? Well, ain't that a sweet name? I knew a Jenny, once... hell, pro'lly knew tons of 'em. You ain't special." His eyes glanced toward the house without rotating his neck, and then they flicked back to her as he raised his knife—the handle pinned under his hand on his knee—to use the blade to tuck a lock of hair out of her eyes. Jenny shut them quickly and trembled in place with her knees buckling in terror upon feeling the tip of his knife trail down her jaw.
"...Yer old lady still inside?" The smile faded from his face as he mused aloud, his expression cold as his tone turned accusatory in a sing-song voice. "Your mommy? She givin' my people trouble?"
"Ple- Please," She rasped. "D- Do- Don't hurt m- my mom." She begged, her eyes still tightly shut and her head bowed, too afraid to look at him again.
"Ah, ah, I won the game—not you. S'winner pick, lil' girl," Glasgow pressed the flat of his blade against her cheek threateningly. "So 'ya know what I want? Scream fer yer mama."
Fat tears began rolling down her cheeks as she shook her head firmly, hiccuping on breaths that wouldn't fully reach her lungs with snot rolling along her upper lip. Glasgow put a hand on her shoulder and she shrunk away, her lips tightly pursed together as her jaw freely trembled now.
"Scream!" He boomed in her face but she shook her head defiantly once more, and the smile on his face slowly faded away as he kept the knife pressed to her cheek. Grabbing her by her hair, the leverage practically took her feet off the ground as he flung her away like a weightless rag doll, listening to the way her body hit the ground and she immediately shrieked so loudly from the pain that it made his ears ring like he'd never hear again.
From the upper floor window of the house, he heard Harriet cuss loudly in Chinese ("nǐ māde bī!", she taught him that, once) before her head went out the same window to call down to him; "We gotta runner!"
No sooner had she warned him did a woman with short, strawberry blonde hair come barreling out from the smoke wafting out the back door with blood smearing down her soiled, silk nightgown from her bruised nose and cut temple. Glasgow's arms were already open to grab onto her the moment her bare feet left the door step and she yelped furiously, bucking her legs and clawing wildly at his arms to get free; he only whooped with boisterous laughter as they both went crashing to the ground, him toppled on top of her to keep her down, clasping both of her wrists under each of his overpowering hands to keep her held down, and then straddled her stomach so she had no hope of forcing him off her.
"Aren'cha a beauty?" Glasgow commented in amused fashion as she glared at him from under a tight brow, her nostrils flared to show no weakness through her expression but he could see it in her eyes—especially when she tried to kick her legs out from under him, attempting to find some way to turn herself onto her side to find her screaming daughter, who only laid on the ground several feet away from her and sobbed.
"Don't hurt her!" The woman under him howled threateningly as she tried throwing out punches at him, but both hands were immediately pinned back down on the dirt. "Don't hurt my daughter!"
"If I wanted'tuh hurt her, I woulda by now," The unnatural grin returned to his mouth, his eyes scanning over her face as if examining her. She had a nice mouth, the kind that turned slightly downwards at the corners as if she were constantly frowning, and all he could think—with immense excitement—was watta unfortunate mouth... perfect t'fix right up, tho'.
"Jenny, run! RUN!" She shrieked back to her daughter with her golden hair splayed across the ground, trying to shove and hit him off of her. Before she could scream again, her mouth just parting to yell, Glasgow had the tip of his blade hooked into the inner corner of where her lips met and she immediately stopped, staring back at him with the same bulging and terrified eyes her own child had given him moments before.
"You gotta mouth that needs fixin'," He whispered, feeling a coil in his gut come alive as if it were on the receiving end of a live wire—oh, how he missed the heat! The way it boiled over in his chest and sent his heart into a frenzy as if it were trying to dance off of hot coals. "I kin fix it. Lemme fix it."
"Glasgow!"
"One sec, doll. That's jes' my superior trynna crawl up my ass," Glasgow stated in a teasing whisper with a single finger held up to the woman's face in a 'wait' gesture, and she used the opportunity with her now freed hand to try and punch him in the jaw. Her attempt was thwarted, however, when his knife went plunging clean through her palm to nail it back on the ground. The mother howled as Sumner neared the scene with Harriet following quickly behind, Samantha wielded at her side and splattered with blood and chunks of brain of whoever else had been trapped upstairs.
"You're getting distracted from the mission," Sumner accused sourly as he held his pistol in two hands, the barrel pointed at the ground. "We have to rescue Miss Parker!"
"Then rescue 'er," He responded flippantly and looked back at the older mercenary with a patronizing smirk on his face, which bore his sharpest of teeth, as he tore the knife out of the woman's hand—replacing his knee and weight over it so it remained trapped under him. She wailed with her eyes rolling as if she was losing consciousness from the sheer pain. Sumner grimaced at the sight before him, with his eyes flickering between the crying little girl, the woman that laid under his subordinate with his knife penetrated clean through her hand, and then to Glasgow's own amused face as if challenging him to stick around.
"...Don't do something you'll regret." Was his reply, his finger twitching over the trigger of his pistol as if he were thinking about rehoming the bullet in Glasgow's sick brain. He knew the twitch was intentional—enough to get his attention but not enough to seem threatening, since the wrinkly fuck's number one rule with guns was "don't linger on the trigger, twitcher". The rhyming was intentional to make sure even a damn gob-stuffed fuckass could remember it.
"'Ya should take yer own advice, old timer," Glasgow warned in a mocking voice in return.
Sumner's finger tightened a fraction as the woman under Glasgow began to scream, her legs flailing helplessly under his body where she was pinned into the torrid dirt, as the tip of the sharpest edge of his blade began slicing through the edge of her mouth, moving toward her ear so smoothly it was like a shrill noise amidst the silence—met with very little resistance. Her daughter sat several feet away with her bleeding foot curled against her side and her hands slapped over her ears to drown out her mother's agonized screams, though her own had joined in.
"Sumner, we ain't got time," Harriet reminded their leader as she gripped a hand on his coat arm, sending a one-eyed glare at Glasgow as well in disapproval. "We gotta find the vaultie."
"Can't save e'ryone out here, tho' I know how much 'ya loooove playin' Captain Good Guy! So's it gunna be this cank'rous bitch, or our ever lov'ly target? She's yer new favorite, ain't she? I dun' blame 'ya. She's a cutie." Glasgow chided with a hearty laugh, withdrawing the knife from the new gaping wound in the woman's splitting mouth. Blood poured down the side of her face, staining her strawberry blonde locks a crimson red and it pooled in the back of her throat, making her choke. He clamped a hand over her mouth tightly to shut it, forcing her to swallow her blood alongside her pained shrieks.
Sumner stared him down with a sober glower, his green eyes dark as he weighed the options in his head despite Glasgow already knowing how the remainder of the exchange would go; he already knew the choices the patronizing old bastard would make because 'the good ones' were always just that predictable, and him, more so, because he was a soldier who thought it was his privilege to save even those who weren't worthy enough for it. Glasgow sure as hell wasn't worthy, as hard as Sumner tried to reform him, because Glasgow knew he was a twisted son of a bitch and he certainly didn't need fixing. He liked being twisted and he was always honest enough about it. In the end, Sir Tobias Sumner still wouldn't turn his back on his uncontrollable subordinate because he got too invested in the lost cause... like the hero that he was. The guy was his own bad guy in the same breath he used to try and save someone from jumping off the ledge.
Sumner turned his eyes back to little, bleeding and sobbing Jenny one last time before ducking his eyes away to look back at Harriet.
"Create cover and secure the next residence—two hostiles and Miss Parker are inside so proceed with utmost caution and bias. We have a mission to complete and a target to secure, regardless of whether or not the weak link of our chain would grace us with his presence."
Harriet's mouth tightened into a thin line of further dismay, looking to Sumner with one curious eye. When she looked back down at Glasgow bent over the woman that choked on her own blood, struggling to pull free just to breathe, she made a small noise of distaste in the back of her throat and stalked off to the middle of the street.
"Sick fuck," She muttered under her breath as she left the two alone. Sumner glared at him with a dark countenance about his form, his finger still hovering over the trigger of his firearm, but it was still no more threatening now then when he first made it obvious.
"Remember what happens to weak links," He muttered grimly.
"Dey break?" He teased with his own ear to ear smile, his tongue flicking out of his mouth lewdly with a gargled noise, taunting his superior.
Sumner suddenly leveled his weapon in both hands at him with an invigorated heat lighting his eyes, and Glasgow actually felt a small spike of uneasiness—the smile frozen on his face though his elation disappeared. A certainty crossed the older man's eyes and it was so clearly resolute that Glasgow knew he made a mistake and had finally pushed too far and got too arrogant. Once that realization crossed his mind did the rapid succession of exactly two bullets come, but the first, which clipped a little too closely to his head, momentarily deafened him enough in that ear that he didn't hear the second one; he only knew it was delivered through a second flash that lit up the muzzle on the exit of the second bullet.
He went sprawling sideways into the dirt with a hand clapped over his aching ear as it rung with the cacophony of a startling alarm siren in his head.
"Fucking son of a skull-fucked whore!" Glasgow howled furiously as he thought that he had been shot, that Sumner actually shot him, but when he brought his hand from his ear to his eyes to examine, there wasn't any blood. He then sat up to see a precise shot dead center in the mother's skull—and looking further ahead was her little girl, staring back at him with dead blue eyes as she pitched sideways from her sitting position, her little hands falling from where they had been clasped over her ears, her face terrified even in death.
Sumner mercy killed them both.
"You God damn—" Glasgow was up on his feet in an instant, enraged that his fun had been stolen away from him and charged at the older mercenary without logical thought in foolhardy fashion, wielding his bloodied blade. No sooner had he let out his battle cry, however, was he flipped onto his back on the hard ground, and all of Sumner's weight in his 6'7" inch soldier body was impressed upon him by only one knee knelt down into his chest—his hand with the knife still in it pinned under Sumner's other boot heel, poised to grind down onto his fingers until they broke, one by one on the knife's handle. The hot barrel of his recently fired pistol neared the underling's gullet alarmingly, and if he swallowed hard enough, he knew he would feel the burn.
"I only keep you around so you have constant reminder of what you could be, and yet you squander your talents at every opportune moment on your old knuckle-dragging proclivities—and without even having the decency to do it while walking upright on two legs. What an insult. What a waste." Sumner hissed down at him and Glasgow only silently flared his nostrils and felt liquid—blood—fill his mouth as pain began to blossom almost jarringly in his jaw, and it registered in his mind that he had been punched before even hitting the ground. The pus-suckin' cunt actually socked me.
Then he felt the firearm's mouth press firmly against his throat, right at the cusp of where his jaw met his neck and sizzled the skin. He hissed through clenched teeth because he wasn't giving Sumner the satisfaction of making a sound worth listening to. The gun wasn't removed until the sizzling stopped and the older mercenary looked satisfied.
"Tell you what—you survive possible infection from that, I'll be gracious enough to consider keeping you on the team." Sumner stated viciously as he got back to his feet, kicking the knife out of Glasgow's hand. He bent over, picked it up for himself, cleaned off the blood on the younger man's shirt, and walked away with his back facing him—unthreatened and unafraid.
Glasgow sat upright, glaring after him with a murderous rage filling his eyes and he spat out the blood that poured into his mouth, his tongue slicking it off his teeth—his back teeth had cut into his cheek upon the delivery of the punch. When he got up to his feet, his clothes streaked with dirt and blood, his eyes lingered on the body of the half-carved mother in front of him. The work was incomplete and the glasgow smile within him scowled in disapproval, returning back into the shadows with a still growling stomach.
It still demanded victim—play toy—a pretty face to carve into—a mouth to splice and spit inside.
Glasgow would feed the Smile in good time... and Sumner was lucky he didn't have a pretty enough face to offer it.
Sumner heard the reporting gunshots of a brewing fire fight as he neared the street, quickly ducking behind nearby cover—the burnt out frame of a corroded car—and readied his pistol as rogue bullets from the opposite side of the street pockmarked the road and concrete around him. The Smith's house, where the gunfire was coming from, was releasing thick plumes of milky smoke from almost every heat-shattered window, and it lazily curled towards the cloudless sky above their heads as it carried to the wind in fading tendrils. When he looked around his cover, he saw Harriet some several feet to his front right, crouched behind a metal trash can with her power fist on her lap as she tried to reload Winona's recovered 10mm pistol in her hands, grimacing at the stray bullets that nearly grazed her.
When his eyes wandered towards the second floor window on the right hand side of the house, he saw the flashing rebounding off the smoke at the rapid fire shots and counted them as well as timed the intervals between each bullet; it wasn't a forceful sound so the shooter didn't have a rifle; it wasn't the sharp piercing fire of a 10mm, nor as quick to shoot, and had no auditory characteristics of a .32 or a 9mm. He timed 6 rounds, several seconds of a halt to reload, and then another 6 round fire.
".44 magnum, unmodded! Keep your head!" Sumner called over to Harriet just as Glasgow came to his side, pressing his back against the car door with his eyes leveled over the trunk to the same window.
"Glas', that's 40 caps!" Harriet declared as she lifted over the trash can and fired back at the window, swiftly ducking back under cover when a bullet ricocheted pierced through the trash can lid a few inches from her face. "Shit!"
"'Ya want yer money now, or kin I fish it outta my ass later?" Glasgow yelled back in sarcastic response.
"Go stick your dick in a centaur's mouth!" She boomed, chancing another shot before ducking behind cover again.
"So we callin' numbers and loser runs distraction 'er what?" He asked as he turned his attention to Sumner during the shooter's reloading. "Or I kin flip a bottle cap!"
"I'll do it! I want to hear three send offs!" He grimaced as he offered up the small firearm in his possession to Glasgow.
"Oh, I'll give 'ya three, old timer." The younger merc only grinned and looked over the trunk of the car again, fixing the grip in both his hands as he readied himself to come out from under cover. "Now!"
Sumner bolted out from behind the car to run towards Harriet's cover behind the tin trash can. He heard rounds pelting ground somewhere behind him, unaware if the hostile was following the distraction or not. The shooter had the chance to fire only two bullets before the sound was intermingled with that of the distinct firing from his own pistol in Glasgow's hands—triggering three exact rounds—and the magnum barrel from the window was gone. Sumner dropped behind Harriet in a hard kneel, both of them observing the upper window tensely until Glasgow called to them.
"All clear!"
"If you're in there, Jack Smith!" Sumner yelled to the house as Harriet handed off to him Winona's 10mm and replaced Samantha, her power fist, upon her left hand. "You've got your hands on the final member of our cavalry, and we'll retrieve her with or without your cooperation! If you send her out unharmed with our supplies you stole, we'll leave peacefully!"
The three mercenaries exchanged tense glances between themselves and the front door and all of the the broken out windows on the bottom floor, waiting for any response to their offer. Sumner checked and reloaded Winona's pistol in his hands by pure subconscious memory as he kept his eyes trained on the porch, watching the remainder of white smoke leak out from under the front door where it rolled across the worn out Welcome mat. He aimed down the sight of the 10mm right at the door, Glasgow readied in the same stance from behind the car, and Harriet only watched with her eyes on the front most window that was closest to them; they needed another way in if things went sour and she already had that in mind.
But soon the door swung open, exhaling flighty smoke, and the three remained alert and focused as they waited for someone to step out.
Glasgow was the first on his feet to meet Winona as she stumbled out onto the front walkway wearing nothing but her undergarments and a shell-shocked look that plundered any consciousness from her eyes. Her front side and arms were streaked with a staggering amount of blood, the knife held limp at her side also dripping with it, and in her wake did she leave naked and bloodied footprints on the cracked pavement.
"Hey, doll—'ya alright, there?" Glasgow inquired as he tucked his pistol into the back of his pants and neared her cautiously.
Winona raised the blade from her side threateningly when he got too close, her eyes still bleary and lifeless as if her body was moving on its own, and he immediately took a step back and put his hands slightly up in a gesture of no ill will.
"Heya, heya, hey. S'jes' me, doll face. Just Glasgow." He supplied gently. "C'mon, let's put the knife down, 'kay? Yer safe now."
"She's a goner," Harriet muttered as she kept behind the trash can still, eyeballing the knife in Winona's hand with some alarm in her face.
"It looks like the same could be said about Jack Smith," Sumner commented back in a mutter as he kept his weapon drawn and neared the two in their stand off, but still kept a moderate amount of distance between himself and Winona.
"Sumner, waddo I do?" Glasgow asked from over his shoulder with his eyes still on her and his hands upraised in front of his body non-threateningly.
"Just talk to her, near her slowly and take hold of the knife—don't use any sudden movements and keep speaking gently."
"Hear that, baby? We're jus' gunna talk, just you n'me, aw'right? Ain't gotta stab me in my good eyeball 'er nothin'." He continued speaking calmly as he took small, measured steps toward her with his hands still up for her to see. Winona remained still, her eyes almost downcast as if she wasn't seeing him at all, but the knife remained poised in front of her and readied to shank him if he got too close.
"That's good. Remain calm, Glasgow. Calm and slow." Sumner directed quietly as he watched them both. He didn't think he would have to shoot Winona, even if she attacked Glasgow in her current state, and surmised that his subordinate could shake off a stab wound from a girl half his weight if that was what the outcome would be—unless he could harmlessly unarm her.
"Das it—drop it fer me—c'mon, now—" He hummed as he was finally close enough to take the blade from her, and it slid out from her fingers with quick ease to be tossed away to the side. She stood before her three guards, numb with eyes that went unsearching, and Glasgow wrapped an arm around her to pull her in close to his side to help keep her steady. Her bloodied hands remained limp at her sides and her face didn't seem to register that she was being held.
"We gotcha, doll face, we gotcha. Yer safe."
"Harriet, secure the residence and locate Jack Smith," Sumner ordered back to her as she finally came out of hiding, deeming it safe enough to go about business. "Engage in any opposing hostile behavior with extreme prejudice—"
Just as he spoke, an unnatural glint came from the second floor window right at the corner of his vision.
"Down!" He yelled moments before a couple uncertain shots rang out in the silent street from the window. Harriet ducked back behind the trash can at his side immediately, and Glasgow kept Winona wrapped in his arms as he dove out of the way with her—protecting her head and torso with his own body from where they were sprawled across the front porch as Sumner lined up his shot accurately and fired.
The gun was dropped out the upper story's window where it landed in the brittle shrubbery below, and he saw part of a head, a child's hand, and an arm sleeved with Jangles the Monkey print pajamas before the gunman's lifeless body slumped and dropped back inside and out of view.
"...Shooter neutralized. All clear." He responded as his arm, with his gun, dropped back to his side.
"I thought 'ya blitzed the fucker—!" Harriet snapped at Glasgow as she got up to her feet and the garbage can finally tipped over onto its side, spilling smelly rainwater and trash of days past onto the street.
"I did!" He barked back as he sat up, looking back down at Winona underneath him and he testingly shook her when he realized that she was out cold. "Doll face s'out! Can't tell if she's hurt 'er nah with all the blood on 'er!"
"Harriet, secure the house—locate Smith and the two gunmen. Proceed with caution." Sumner interrupted firmly with his eyes still trained on the second floor window.
"On it," She grumbled compliantly as she went around Glasgow on the front step, having to step over an unconscious Winona to get into the house to explore.
Sumner followed after her but stopped short of Glasgow, kneeling beside him to examine the young inventor—checking her breathing and airways, as well as her pulse and the steadiness of its rhythm. Once he was satisfied with her strong vitals, he turned to checking over her body for serious injuries and found none as he smeared away the blood with his own bare hands, and none of it surged up from hidden wounds of any sort.
With that much blood, he already expected that none of it was hers.
"Stay with her, I'll clear the house with Harriet and locate our missing belongings." Sumner shook his head as he pointed off to the Harris house with two fingers. "Take Miss Parker there, it's already been secured. You'll find her belongings in the master bedroom so get her cleaned up and dressed. We'll rendezvous with you there."
"Any survivors in this massacre, boss?" Glasgow asked as the older man got to his feet, picking up Winona bridal style in his arms with some adjustment. The only time the younger mercenary called him boss was when he was trying to pretend that he wasn't sore—and Sumner knew Glasgow would be sore about his kills for days.
"...No. The last house we had two males—one elderly—the female, and the child. The young male resisted and the elderly one was caught in the crossfire... and we know what happened to the other two." He responded dourly as Harriet poked her head back out of the house, just as Glasgow gave a hateful scowl.
"The shooters're dead. Woman an' some kid. Jack's in the hallway ahead," She nodded back into the house and disappeared inside, leaving the two men to glare at each other before Sumner turned away first and followed her in.
Entering the living room of the house, from where he stood in the doorway, parallel to the joining hallway that seemed to lead to a kitchen at the back of the house, was Jack Smith's dead body. Harriet was knelt beside it in a spot that didn't happen to be pooled with blood and Sumner made his way over as well to make his own examinations; it was hard to tell exactly how many times Smith had been stabbed, but the chest of his shirt was shredded amidst it soaking his blood, and his stomach was slit open so deeply that it gaped up at the two mercenaries like another mouth. His dead eyes and almost shocked expression stared upward at the crack-riddled plaster ceiling, as the floorboards under him hungrily sopped up the blood that flooded into their seams.
It was a vicious attack... one that was desperate, frenzied, and overkill.
Sumner looked to the blood patterns surrounding Smith's pulverized corpse as he remembered the way the blood stuck to Winona—and he saw the clean outline of two peculiar and similarly shaped spots, just beside where Harriet was now crouching, where Winona knelt down on both knees and repeatedly stabbed Smith. It was a clean pause symbol amongst the splattering, where her knees had made the outline and kept the old wood floorboards from swelling with blood. She had done it for some time, he noted, as his eyes circled the mouth of the hallway and saw the flecks that draped the walls and old picture frames from when she pulled her knife out to drive it back into the man, sending cast-off bloodstains.
"The wound on the abdomen came first," He concluded as he looked over Smith again. Harriet's eye rose to meet his face as she remained crouched, and his own eyes gathered in more of the scene and hallway before he stepped over Smith's body to circle himself to another viewing position from the kitchen. "See there? There isn't any blood under him. He bled out after falling. Defensive wounds mark his hands and arms but not enough for this kind of brutality. She cut him open firstly, he collapsed, and was then unable to fend her off as she knelt beside him and repeatedly stabbed him through the chest."
"How many times?" Harriet whistled as if impressed, though her face showed uneasiness.
"That's difficult to say. There's too much blood to tell... but she had the time to do it as many times as she wanted. Through the gunfire, I'm sure his family upstairs didn't hear any of it."
"Hard t'think the princess did all this."
"...We all saw how she looked when she stumbled out of this house. I've seen my best soldiers look through me with those exact eyes after seeing a man obliterated from the feet up after stepping on a rogue landmine." Sumner sighed with a shake of his head as he, once again, looked over Jack Smith's corpse. He turned into the kitchen to see a small breakfast table dressed in a sheet with summery yellow and white gingham print spotted with grime, and he ripped it off the table to bundle it up and toss it over to Harriet—who caught it as she rose to her full height.
"Lay this over the boy upstairs. We'll bury the children later."
"The others?" She inquired, tucking the table cloth under one arm.
"We'll leave the doors open on our way out... leave them for the animals is all we can do." He rubbed his chin quizzically, the thumb of his real hand brushing his facial hair. "We'll have to wait for Miss Parker to wake up before we can continue on to Megaton. We can't very well travel if she's still unconscious and we run into another threat."
"Not much 'tween here and Megaton." Harriet tried to reason, almost grumbling at the idea of being stuck in the town for another few hours until their target woke up again.
"It's still another two day walk. We're not taking another risk from here on out." He replied firmly and looked to her for any objection. She, surprisingly, gave none verbally though her eye said something different in her silence, and she walked away from him to go up the stairs and cover the boy like he instructed. Sumner turned away from Smith's body once he knew Harriet was upstairs and he went to the kitchen sink, leaning against it with hands on the edges to stabilize himself as he peered out the back window—his head bowed low in guilt as he rubbed his eyes with his real hand.
All this happened on account of him. If they had kept walking yesterday evening, they could've possibly found shelter beside a hill that at least covered their backs; a cave etched into a rocky side; a fallen tree where they could've thrown a tarp over; anything. It was ultimately his choice that they stopped in 'Spoon'—this hellhole of 'good old Virginia' called Andale—and led Winona and his entire team to their almost certain deaths. If he hadn't woken up that quickly, or if none of them were able to overtake the Wilson residence, or if Winona hadn't been able to defend herself against Jack Smith, Andale would've made an improper grave for them all.
The old soldier replayed in his head the way she looked when she stepped out of the house... her dragging feet, the blood that marred her almost naked body, her eyes, and he shut his own as he plopped down into a chair at the table and pressed a palm to his temple tiredly.
Yes, it was all his fault.
He knew before agreeing to the contract that Winona Parker was going to be his last mission, and that was something he didn't mind, because he found her to be delightful and her intelligence stimulated the educated man he was that his cohorts could barely tickle. There were worst missions to have as your last; killing an innocent civilian because of a petty brawl that marked them as good as dead; sweeping a town contracted as 'no exceptions' and having to clear their hospital full of sick, injured, and already dying folks that screamed and pleaded to live; gunning down an entourage meant to protect one man who was leading a peace movement that was thwarting a major drug supply of watered down jet in their crusade.
It was a bad day, that last one. The peacemaker was a good man. Most of Sumner's missions involved killing good men because that was what the Talon Company was best at, aside from taking any contract that reeked of no small sum of caps... and he needed the money. Regrettably, he needed the money, and he was a soldier through and through. It was all he knew that he was great at.
So yes, Winona would be his final mission. He was an old mercenary that made a costly mistake and he didn't know if even he could trust his own judgment anymore... but he would take his money once they returned Target 2, James Parker, and Target 1, Winona Parker, back to Tenpenny Tower, and he would leave the Capital Wasteland. He wouldn't look back. Washington D.C. was just as crooked and political as it was before the war.
Sumner decided right then and there that it would be time to finally go to New Vegas.
There was a boy he had to find.
A/N: Sooo... do we hate Glasgow now or nah? (deepest apologies) And this brings us to the final piece of "Custom of the Wasteland", with the next update (Friday - 4/27) featuring Butch DeLoria! After that, the schedule will return to normal Friday postings.
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