Author's Note: Heh, I suspected some of you would be confused by that. If you read a bit closer, I made a pretty vague reference to Leeds in the flashback chapter.
Chapter 21: Kumi
Omega
Holy was still slightly perplexed at what Karla was doing, but followed her anyway. She seemed determined on finding out something, and Holy respected that. He kept following her until they stopped at what looked like an elevator. Holy watched, with slight amusement, as Karla slapped the control panel next to the door, only to curse when it didn't respond.
"Hey, Holy, I know you Elites are pretty strong, so I'm wondering if-"
"I am far ahead of you, Karla."
Holy crouched down and dug his fingers into the door. With a combination of brute force and friction, Holy managed to lift the door up a few inches. Then he quickly got his fingers under the door to improve his grip, and heaved it up with little apparent effort.
"Man, you just make it look too easy."
Holy smiled and looked through the door, and was correct in his assumption that it was an elevator of some sort.
"Is this-"
"Freight elevator. These things can tell you a lot about a building."
"How so?"
Karla dug several chemical flares out of her belt. She cracked them in half, and they began to glow a bright fluorescent green. She dropped them down the shaft, and saw them go down, hitting the bottom with a distant thud. By counting the seconds the flares fell, Karla managed to estimate that the shaft was about ten stories deep.
"Alright, we're done here. Lets go. We've got a survivor to see."
Still confused at what was going through Karla's head, Holy let go of the door and followed.
Robles
Paccone peeked over the ridge, and sure enough, saw three Marines and two civilians holed up in a small crater firing at a wave of advancing zombies, unfortunately, most of their fire was unfocused, confused, and overall not very effective in stopping the creatures.
"Carter, you stay back here and give them some support fire!"
"Yes sir!"
Leo immediately went prone and started zeroing in on the nearest targets. He managed to get a closer look at the Marines, and sure enough, Leeds was there. Kumi Leeds. He could tell because of that distinctive red headband she wore on her forehead. It wrapped around her head, under her brown-blonde hair, and was tied together at the back of her head to form two long "tails". She used to best friends with him and Sam when they were kids, but he hadn't seen her since he graduated from high school, and even though he never though for once thought that Kumi would be out of place in the Marines, he just never imagined seeing her here.
As Leo put down a withering blanket of covering fire, Paccone, meanwhile, tried to hail the other three Marines on his radio.
"Marines! If you can hear me, tighten up those lanes of fire, and start focusing on one target at a time! Aim for the head, or you'll just be wasting ammo!"
There was no reply, and Paccone almost thought they couldn't hear him until he saw the Marines look up in his direction and start scoring head shots. It looked like they would win this fight, until Paccone caught sight of even more enemies coming in. He primed and threw a grenade at the nearest pack of zombies, blowing them into bits of meat and bone, and punching a hole through the ring of zombies.
"Come on! Quit your pussyfooting and move it!"
The three Marines and two civilians made a dash through the hole, with Paccone and Leo giving them covering fire.
"Fall back! Follow me!"
Minutes later, Leo was catching his breath in a curiously familiar surplus store. One of the Marines, Cpl. Mann, walked up and saluted Paccone.
"Thank you for assisting us sir! We wouldn't have been able to get out there if it wasn't for you!"
Paccone waved off the comment and got straight to the questions.
"Alright, the first thing I want to know is who the hell you all are, since in our briefing, we had reports that there was no UNSC presence in this town."
"Well, they were right sir. We got stranded here after our Pelican crashed."
Paccone raised his eyebrow.
"Crashed? How?"
"Like you, we were out doing recon in the forest, got jumped by those things, and we hightailed it out of there, but they took a pretty big piece of our Pelican before we could get away."
"I see…"
"When we got out, it was obvious whatever was in the forest also got to the town. We found several civilians who survived the initial attack, but I'm afraid the two we've got here are the only ones left."
Meanwhile, on the other end of the store, Leo sat on an old ammo crate and began to acquaint himself with a very old friend.
"Jesus Kumi, it's been like what, years?"
Kumi smiled as she recognized Leo's familiar, boyish voice.
"Yeah, pretty much."
"Jeez, I just never I thought I would see you here! What the heck have you been doing?"
"Well, I went to take an Engineering course in a university at Reach, but…"
"I don't like the sound of that."
"But I got kicked out after I found that blowing things up was far more interesting than putting them together."
"Figures. What'd you do after?"
"Well, then my parents enrolled me in med school. Thought that it would get rid of my 'destructive' tendencies. Boy, were they wrong, but at least I actually managed to graduate."
"Wait, you mean to tell me-"
"Yep. Combat Medic Leeds, fully certified to cut you open and weld you shut again."
"If I ever get wounded on the battlefield, I'd much rather just die."
"Ha ha, very funny. You know, with modern medicine and all, I can graft several ounces of C12 plastic explosive onto one of your organs and you'd never notice a thing."
"You know, the thing about you that scares me is that I'm never sure whether you're serious or not."
"Alright ladies, listen up!"
Both Marines looked up to see Paccone picking up to submachine guns and putting them into special holsters on his belt.
"Currently, there is a dropship several kilometers from here, with hot food, nice blankets, and an in flight movie waiting for us in the landing pad. Unfortunately, we've got no ride, so we're going to have to hot foot it until we find one. That means, weapons and ammo only, and make sure you bring plenty of it!"
He punctuated his last sentence by slinging a bandoleer of battle rifle clips around himself.
"Any questions?"
Somewhere else in Robles
Sam sighed in frustration as the Warthog gave one final, dying gasp, and fell silent. She tried the ignition several times, but the engine wouldn't start.
"Damn, the thing's dead."
"And it won't be the only one."
Sam's heart nearly stopped at the presence of the new voice. She tried to turn to see what was behind her, but she felt herself planted to the spot.
"C-Colette…?"
She could only hear malicious laughter behind her.
"Hmmm, you mean to tell me there was a second with you? No worry, I shall find them. But first, what shall I do with you…"