Red America
Part Seven: Picking Up The Pieces
Kitty kept her head below the top of the tailgate of the converted truck she and the rest of her ragged comrades – Sam Guthrie, Dani Moonstar, and Jamie Madrox - were travelling in, as the bullets of dozens of Soviet soldiers hurtled towards them with unrelenting accuracy. Kitty flinched as one punched through the metal and slammed into the sandbags that were piled up behind the truck's rear window, spraying blackened, dirty sand everywhere. The heavy coughing of Hank McCoy's twin-linked machine guns made her feel a little more secure, as he worked the guns back and forth in a wide arc, sending steel-jacketed armour-piercing rounds ripping towards the pursuing soldiers. Risking a glimpse over the tailgate, Kitty saw one soldier folded almost in half by the impact of one of those rounds, his body suddenly crumpling like a puppet with its strings cut as his guts were sent flying across the wall of the tunnel, and silently spat a curse at the dead man – and then ducked right back underneath the tailgate as a bullet hurtled into the metal just below her left eye. She'd been phased at the time, just to be safe, but reflex reactions honed over a lifetime of fighting were a hard thing to overcome.
"Put your fucking foot down!" she yelled at Cecilia Reyes as the other woman pulled the steering wheel hard to the right and swung the truck around a bend in the tunnel. "They're gaining on us!"
"Don't you think I know that?" Cecilia shouted hoarsely, before a moment of inspiration seemed to strike her. "Hank, show her where the demolition charges are. Maybe that'll give us some breathing room…"
The big burly man nodded and, while the Soviet soldiers were still on the other side of the tunnel's lazy bend, knelt down to pull aside a heavy Kevlar-laced tarpaulin, under which were a number of thick blocks of plastic explosive. He picked one up, took a fuse from the bundle that was piled alongside the plastique, and handed them both to Kitty, his huge paw dwarfing Kitty's girlish fingers. "You know how to use these?" he asked, in a way that suggested he already knew what the answer was going to be.
Kitty nodded, and was pleased to see a gratified smile spread across Hank's stubbly features. "Yeah," she said. "I blew up a Russkie arms dump a few months ago with a bagful of these things."
"Good," Hank replied as he took up his position behind his guns again. "Then you know what to do with it, don't you?"
Kitty grinned, and, as the Soviet soldiers began rounding the corner of the tunnel, she jabbed the fuse's contact points into the soft plastique and threw the block down into the centre of the advancing troops. Before they could get organised enough to hurl it back at her, she found the explosives' detonator and pushed the small red button on its surface. The tunnel behind the truck disappeared instantly into a white-hot blizzard of collapsing rubble, with Russian soldiers screaming as they were crushed under huge chunks of masonry and concrete. As the truck sped away from the explosion's ground zero, the silence that followed it was almost eerie in its own way. Kitty sat back and exhaled deeply, wiping some dirty sweat off her forehead and lying back on the few intact sandbags behind her, and grinned at Madrox, who was sat opposite her. He smiled wearily back at her and gave her a brief thumbs-up before slapping a fresh clip of bullets into one of his automatic pistols.
"So… now that the Ivans can't blow us to hell, where to next?" he said, aiming at an imaginary target on the wall ahead of the truck.
"Hell in a handbasket, Yankee," Sam Guthrie said in a cold, reptilian tone as he pulled his battered flak jacket tighter around his body in order to try and keep out some of the tunnel's cold breeze. "Face facts – we ain't got no base. We ain't got no leader. Where the hell we gonna go?"
"Sam, shut up," Dani snapped, her face haggard and drawn, with a trail of blood running down one side of it like the tributaries of a river. "We don't know that Val's dead –"
"I do," Sam snorted angrily, jabbing a gloved finger at Dani as if it was the point of a knife. "I saw her get her goddamn head blown off by one of those Russkie bastards. So now we're out one leader and we ain't got clue one what to do next."
"Yes, we do," Kitty said, leaning forwards so that she could fix Guthrie with a flinty glare. It did the trick, and he shut up almost straight away with only a minimal amount of protest – which Kitty found herself pleasantly surprised about. "We're going to the Empire State Building, and we're going to find Logan." She paused, noting the astonished looks of everybody else in the truck with some trepidation before she continued "We need a leader, right? So let's go find one."
"Wait a second, kid," Madrox said, placing a concerned hand on her arm. "Don't you think we ought to be thinking about staying alive first? The Russkies aren't going to give up on finding us, especially after that little stunt we pulled back there."
"So?" Kitty snapped angrily. "So what? I'm sick of running, Madrox. I've been running from the Ivans since I was ten years old – I don't want to run any more."
"Nice idea, buttercup," Sam jeered, a crooked sneer creasing his face, "but just where were you expectin' to get enough firepower to get inside the Empire State? Hate to break it to ya, sugar, but we ain't exactly an army any more. Hell, we ain't even –"
Dani drew a pistol from her waistband and jammed it under Sam's stubbly jaw before he had any time to process exactly what was going on. "Shut. Up," she snarled. "I've just about had it with all your bullshit, Guthrie. Here are your options: you can stick with us and try to fix this mess, or are you can give up, roll over and wait for the Russkies to give you a third eye. Which is it going to be?" Sam scowled blackly and held both hands up as if he were surrendering. Dani smiled thinly at that, and clicked the safety catch of her pistol back on. "That's what I thought." Then she looked back at Kitty and tried to look a little brighter – without much success. "I think there's a temporary safe-house about half a klick away from here. If the Ivans haven't got to it yet, we could use that to catch our breath."
"Sounds good to me," Kitty replied wearily. "Let's go."
Elisabeth Braddock folded her arms across her chest and tried not to smirk as Major Grey paced across the floor in front of her, trying to digest what Elisabeth had just told her. "Let me get this straight," the black-coated woman said as she turned on one heel, her peaked cap held in one gloved hand, "you went against my direct orders and went ahead with the assault on the rebels before I had finished with Logan?"
"That's right," Elisabeth replied coldly. "Let me remind you, Major, that I outrank you – and furthermore, that this station is under my command, not yours. I felt it was in our best interests to make the first move, and so I made it. And as I think you'll agree, we have had excellent results. The rebels' war machine has been severely compromised – we captured medical supplies, several of their most high-ranking leaders, hundreds of weapons, and several thousand rounds of ammunition. As a matter of fact, I had one of their key leaders brought here for questioning." She nodded towards Lieutenant Drake, who crossed the room and opened the double doors to let in a couple of brawny soldiers who were carrying the limp, battered form of a blonde woman in bloody, torn military fatigues. The woman was sporting a lengthy crease in her skull where a bullet had evidently glanced off it, and her head lolled limply, as if she had no strength to keep it upright. "Major Grey, may I introduce you to Valerie Cooper."
Major Grey stepped forwards, intrigued by this new prisoner, and cupped the woman's bruised and blood-encrusted face in her right hand, raising her half-conscious gaze to meet her own. "She looks as if she's been shot," she said, redundantly. "Are you sure she doesn't need medical treatment?"
"We gave her all the medical treatment she needs," Elisabeth said in an abrupt tone. "Most of her wounds are superficial, save for that head wound. However… the field medic's report said she ought to make a full recovery once she gets a blood transfusion, and our own medics confirm that diagnosis." She walked closer to where Major Grey was standing, and gestured down at Cooper's limp form. "I'm still debating whether or not I should just have her executed once we've finished with her, or whether I could use her as fodder for my scientists' research." She smiled cruelly. "Doctor MacTaggert does love new subjects, after all." Her smile widened, and she continued "As a matter of fact, I have already had James Logan transferred down to her lab – I have asked her to work on a way of replicating his healing abilities for our soldiers. I think that would be a tremendous boost for the rank-and-file troops, don't you?"
Major Grey raised her eyebrows briefly. "I suppose so," she admitted, although Elisabeth could tell that it was only a grudging admittance at best. She ignored that small fact and basked in Major Grey's annoyance, since she knew she probably wouldn't get a chance as good as this for some time, if at all. She decided to make it last…
Logan blinked himself awake, and found himself bound, gagged, and hanging from a metal frame in what appeared to be a laboratory of some kind. He could feel cold metal biting into his wrists and ankles, and he could tell, without even looking to confirm it, that he was naked save for some coarse cotton undergarments. From the shadows up ahead of him he could see the glint of light reflecting off the surface of what he assumed to be glass, and he could smell the soft odour of a female human. "Come out where I can see you," he grunted, his tongue feeling fat and unresponsive in his mouth, and the piercing sound of a woman's laughter cut through the still air like a razor blade.
"Presumptuous, aren't ye?" said a voice in a soft, lilting Highland accent. Logan shivered against his will as the words seemed to slither down his spine. Then, a slender but bookish-looking woman moved from the darkness and he had a picture to go with those unsettling feelings. She was clad in a white lab coat and had a band preventing her chin-length brown hair from falling into her eyes. A small pair of rectangular reading glasses was perched on the tip of her nose, and she adjusted them slightly as she regarded her prisoner with a disapproving air. Then, she walked forwards and picked up a clipboard that had been laid on a table-top a few metres away from where Logan was hung up, before taking a pen out of her coat pocket and ticking off a few things with it. "Do ye know why ye're here?"
"No," Logan said, "but I bet you're going to tell me – so spit it out, bitch."
"Hmm," the woman said, as if she were briefly dismayed by the word. "Well, Comrade-Colonel Braddock would like to know if your healing gift can be replicated for our soldiers. Now, I can make this as painless as ye want it to be, Mr Logan – if ye do as I tell ye."
"Go to hell," Logan snarled as defiantly as he could. It wasn't much, especially after that red-headed witch's torture session had shredded his mental defences almost to breaking point, but it made him feel a little better to at least try to sound antagonistic. If she were intimidated, however, the Scottish woman didn't show it. Instead, she simply stepped close to him and brought her face level with his own. Her brown eyes narrowed to slits, and she produced a gleaming knife from one of her pockets. Logan could see the edge of it glitter in the light, and flinched reflexively, instantly disgusted with himself for doing so.
"Ye don't know anything about hell, boyo," she hissed, as if she were angry with him for even daring to mention the word. "Ye don't know anything at all." Then, as if she had achieved the effect she had wanted to produce, she pulled down one of her sleeves and showed Logan a set of numbers that had been crudely tattooed into her forearm. "See these?" she said bluntly. "These are identification numbers from the gulag in Edinburgh. I only got out because they needed my skills here – and I'll do anything it takes to keep from going back. Anything, ye hear me?" She paused, taking a deep breath to compose herself, and Logan could smell a definite shift in the pheromones her body was radiating like waves of heat. "Ye want me to go to hell, Mr Logan? I've already been there." She stepped forwards and scraped a few skin cells off his forearm deftly, depositing them into a Petri dish that she held in her other hand and ignoring Logan's brief grunt of pain as a small trail of blood trickled down his bicep. "We'll see if ye have to go too, I suppose."
Kitty pulled herself out of the sewer, wiped some stinking slime off her fatigues, and followed Madrox towards the run-down building that the rest of the rag-tag group of rebels were heading for. It was a crumbling tenement block, with rusting fire-escapes clinging forlornly to its outer surface like steel cobwebs, kicked-over garbage cans spewing trash and rotten fruit onto the sidewalk outside it, and creaking, half-off-their-hinges doors slamming open and closed in its front entrance. It was a brief distance towards it, but she stopped when Hank held up a closed fist silently, and hunkered back down into the alleyway that he had just left. "We have company," he said, and pointed towards the side of the building, where a small group of Soviet soldiers was standing. They were relaxed, chatting and laughing over the bodies of several rebels that they had obviously killed during their arrival. One of them was even knelt down beside one of the corpses, carving off pieces for the other men to take as trophies. He handed a bloodstained, ragged-edged ear to one of his comrades, and Kitty felt bitter bile rising in her throat.
"Sick bastard's enjoying it," she hissed, disgusted, and felt her hand ghosting towards the needle-sharp throwing knife at her belt. Cecilia saw her doing it, and grabbed her fingers before she could throw her blade.
"Wait a second, Kitty," she murmured, her brown eyes focused entirely on the small group of soldiers in front of her. "I ain't exactly happy to see them doing that either, but if you give away our position now, all you're going to do is get us into more trouble." Then, in an almost imperceptible movement, she slipped her pistol from her belt and screwed a silencer into place without making a sound. "Come on. We're going to get us some Russkie scalps, boys."
"Oh boy," Madrox said, glancing at the sky hopelessly, before he too drew a weapon and followed Cecilia towards the small group of soldiers. Kitty watched Hank and the other rebels with what almost amounted to a sense of wonder. They seemed to be able to move through piles of crumpled newspaper without making a sound, or through broken glass without disturbing a single shard. They were like living wraiths, and she felt a horrible sense of envy that they were able to do so without any mutant phasing abilities.
They moved to within twenty metres of their targets without giving them any sign that they were there, and when Hank felt the moment was right, he stood up out of his cover and bellowed "Now!" before spraying the soldiers with a lethal barrage of armour-piercing rounds from his rifle. Sam, Dani and the others joined him instantly, and Kitty dove forwards with both of her guns blazing. Getting up close with the trophy-collector she had earmarked a moment or two earlier, she smashed his nose with a savage backhanded blow from the butt of the gun in her right hand, and then emptied the magazine of her other gun right into his face, causing his skull to disintegrate in a shower of blood and bone and brains. His body tottered for a split second before it crumpled and Kitty was faced with another soldier, who had had enough time to bring his AK-47 to bear, unleashing a swathe of bullets as he did so. Kitty simply phased through them and drove the heel of her hand up into the man's nose, forcing sharp shards of bone right up into his brain. She screamed as she did so, rage and anger pouring from her vocal cords like boiling acid. Beside her, she could make out Cecilia and Hank fighting side-by-side, Cecilia's body apparently repelling anything the Russians threw at it – punches, bullets, knives, anything. Cecilia whirled on the point of one foot and jammed the barrel of her huge six-shooter right into a gap in one soldier's chest armour and pulled the trigger once. The man's chest evaporated a split-second after the gun's booming shriek had faded away, a good section of his chest armour disappearing with it.
To her left, as she struggled with a desperate-looking soldier, Kitty could see Sam and Dai performing equally well – Dani was simply dancing around one soldier's flailing fists and wildly-inaccurate pistol fire and picking him apart piece by piece, using sharp blows from her hands and feet to paralyse nerve centres and shut down his body one step at a time, before she drew one of her pistols and shot him between the eyes. He looked surprised for all of two seconds before he collapsed into a warm, steaming puddle of his own blood.
As for Sam, Kitty could see that something had snapped inside him. He had grasped his rifle by the barrel and was beating a clearly very-dead Russian's body to a messy pulp with it, screaming and sobbing and bellowing mindlessly until Hank grabbed him by the arms and said "Sam, calm down. They're all dead. You can stop now. Easy, son. Easy." It took several minutes for Sam to vent all of his rage and pain, and even then he had to take several deep breaths and sit for at least five minutes before he had fully recovered. By that time, though, the small group of rebels was inside the building and taking stock of their surroundings. As they entered the largest of the ground floor rooms, Madrox whistled loudly and gestured at the numerous cockroaches scuttling across the floor.
"Man, you get rid of one kind of roach and there are still hundreds of the bastards waiting to come back!" he exclaimed in disgust. Kitty felt one side of her mouth pulling itself up into a brief smile, and she put one hand on Madrox's shoulder and kissed his cheek encouragingly.
"Never mind, soldier," she said, "maybe we can spruce this place up some, huh?"
She revelled in his surprised expression then, and quickly walked off into another of the ground floor rooms, to see what else she could find.
What she saw then stunned her, and gave her hope that this crazy plan of hers was actually going to work. Thousands of rounds of ammunition, hundreds of weapons, and stacks of grenades were sitting in the middle of the floor, all of them looking like they had either been looted from the rebel forces or brought here by the Russians. "Damn, we really lucked out this time," Madrox drawled as he came into the room behind her, along with the others. "Russkies must have decided to use this place as an ammo dump."
"No, really, you think so?" Dani remarked sarcastically, before she walked over to one of the stacks of AK-47 rifles, picked one up, racked its slide and fired a few rounds experimentally into the wall opposite her, sending chips of plaster flying. "God, there must be enough ammo and weapons here to arm a whole division."
"It would seem so," Hank said thoughtfully, as he juggled a couple of hand grenades from hand to hand, "which means we can't stay here for very long, either. The Russians are likely to come looking for the men we killed once they realise they're not transmitting back to their base camp."
"Doesn't matter," Kitty said as she lit a cigarette. She took a grateful drag and exhaled the smoke in a blue-grey plume. "We've got enough weapons here to crack the Empire State like an egg – stock up on whatever you can carry and follow me out of here. We're going to end this…"