Chapter 41- Advanced Tactics
Julie panicked. She rushed to Matt's inanimate side and began to feel for a pulse or some other vital sign. The others stayed back. After a while she calmed down.
"Oh… he's alive…" she said.
"Of course he is!" Drake said. "He's freakin' invincible! He just needs some time."
"Only one problem with that." Flynn said. "We don't have time. We need to keep moving or we're sitting ducks. And with another unconscious body in our little group, we're even more vulnerable." At that moment, Matt stood up with a groan and shook his head. Somehow, he looked a little… different.
"Let's go." He said. His voice was a little musical, in a way. "We need to get moving again."
"Yes, that's what we figured." Flynn said. "But shouldn't you take a break?"
"Not yet. I can't afford to rest until this is over."
"That last time you said that, it nearly got you killed!" Julie said. She seemed a little too concerned for his welfare. Matt just smiled.
"It's alright. I'll be fine." He said. Flynn gave Julie and Drake a doubtful look but stopped arguing with him. They would never change his mind anyway. They finished their trip down Matt's hallway and entered into the regular body of the shadow realm. As seemed to be the pattern of the day, they were surrounded by fiends.
"OH SHIT!" Flynn shouted. It was becoming his trademark battle cry. The fiends who were facing them opened fire. Matt ruthlessly grabbed one of the fiends who had their backs to them, unloaded one shell into its head, and began to use it as a shield. He leveled his shotgun on the crowd and unloaded his second barrel. Several of the fiends were injured and two were killed. Flynn flung Keith's body off to the side and leveled his own rifle. Drake pulled out his 74 and began shooting while strafing to the left, towards Matt, who had thrown the body away and taken refuge behind a pillar.
"Hello, good sir." He said, scooting over to make room for Drake. Several shots from the fiends ricocheted off the stone. "We need to give Flynn and Julie some cover!" He blindly fired his shotgun around the corner.
"What about Brooklyn?!?" Drake said. He wondered, had Matt forgotten his own brother?
"Brooklyn will be fine!" Matt said. He pointed across the room. Brooklyn had taken cover behind a pile of bodies that he had probably created himself. Matt loaded two more shells into his shotgun and unloaded it blindly around the corner again. "Come on, I'm extremely ineffective at this range!" He switched positions with Drake and began to reload. Drake leaned around the corner and began to fire at the fiends. Several of them were advancing rapidly towards Flynn and Julie, using the pillars as cover. They were not, however, covered from Drake's fire, and he picked apart three of them before they realized what was happening. They fell back far enough to prevent their vulnerability, and took to firing at long distance.
Flynn and Julie were still pined down. "We need to get closer to the fiends!" Matt shouted. "Actually… Brooklyn!"
"What?!?" Brooklyn shouted back.
"Push the button!"
"Which one?!? There's about ten of them!"
"The one with the crosshairs on it!" Matt shouted. Brooklyn pressed said button. The barrel of his laser extended outwards and a scope flipped out of the top of the gun to replace the iron sight. The stock extended and a bipod flipped down from near the muzzle.
"Ooooo, a sniper rifle!" Brooklyn said. He took careful aim at the closest fiend and melted its head with one shot. "This is fun!"
"Just keep firing, Brooklyn!" Matt shouted. Drake leaned around the corner, trying to get a good shot at a fiend, but he was chased back by gunshots. "Just let Brooklyn take them out! Don't waste the ammo!" Slowly, steadily, Brooklyn knocked off the fiends. Then one of their shots came deadly close to his head.
"Sniper!" He shouted from side to side. "GET DOWN!" A shot flew over Flynn's head and he went prone on the ground, Julie dropping down the join him.
"Darn it!" Matt shouted. "We can't go anywhere with that sniper!" He looked quickly out from behind the pillar he had moved to. He ducked back very quickly as a bullet flew past his face. "Darn it! Hang on, I'm going to try and get closer!"
"You're insane!" Drake said. "This guy is fast, and you're so hurt that I doubt you can move fast enough to avoid him!" Matt smiled maniacally, then rolled out from behind the pillar and managed to duck behind another before the sniper shot another round down the hall.
"Give me some covering fire!" Matt yelled. Drake blindly fired around the corner at the sniper, who shot at his hand and missed. Drake pulled the gun back around the corner. Flynn and Julie fired single shots, but both ducked buck under cover when the sniper shot a round just over Julie's head. Brooklyn took another careful shot, and the firing stopped just long enough for Matt to get closer… and vanish.
"Hey, where'd he go?" Drake shouted.
"Not a clue!" Brooklyn shouted back. "He's a ninja!"
"A ninja with a taste for shotguns?!?" Drake shouted back.
"Don't ask!"
There was a loud blast from the end of the hall and a fiendish death cry. Matt was standing directly behind the fiend, his shotgun smoking, and the fiend had one large bloody hole in his stomach. The fiend fell to the ground and dropped his sniper rifle. Matt picked it up.
"Could be useful." He said, slung the rifle, and picked a few rounds of ammo from the fiend's vest. Everyone came out from their cover and regrouped with Matt. "Okay, now that that little crisis is over with, let's move on, shall we?" He reloaded his duck gun and turned toward the next hallway. There was a large door in the hall. "Hmm…"
"Can't you blow it down?" Flynn asked.
"No, this is a special door. It is unaffected by physical damage. We will need to solve this little riddle…" He traced the lines of type on the wall. "Hmm… difficult to translate. I know quite a few languages, but this is one I'm not familiar with… it looks like some combination of Ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian, but…" He scratched his chin. "…I've never seen this variant."
There was the sound of stone crunching behind them. They all spun on the spot. An entire army of fiends was behind them!
"OH SHIT!!!" Flynn shouted, and threw himself away from the door, behind a pillar. Their stealth now destroyed, the fiends whipped out there heavy weapons and opened fire.
"MOVE!!!" Matt yelled, and pushed Drake out of the way. For some reason Drake had frozen in shock. "COME ON!!!" He grabbed Julie by the scruff of the neck and yanked her out of the way. She had frozen too. Unfortunate consequence of Matt's heroics- he didn't get out of the way fast enough, and took two shots in the same leg. "Oh, shoot…" He slid down a pillar, unable to support his own weight any longer. He reached around the corner with his shotgun and pulled the trigger. "Come on! Return fire!"
Drake came to his senses. He ducked behind a pillar and opened fire on the fiends from his cover. He heard a strange beeping noise ignored it. That could wait. He leaned around the corner and pulled the trigger a few times, then looked up and saw a small pack attached to the pillar. Matt, who had his back to the pillar that was immediately in front of Drake, seemed to notice it too.
"GET AWAY FROM THE PILLARS!!!" He shouted. "They're rigged to explode!"
"What about you?!?" Julie said.
"Leave me! I can't move!" Matt said.
"No!" Julie grabbed his arm and tried to pull him up.
"Don't be a hero, darn it!" He said. "Save yourself! You're more important to the mission than I am! You're the only one who can hold that key! The world needs you alive! GO!" She let his arm drop, and, reluctantly it seemed, she ran back with Drake, periodically shooting over her shoulder at the fiends. The beeping got faster.
"Time to haul ass!" Drake said. They put on a burst of speed, hoping the Flynn and Brooklyn would make it out in time- Flynn could probably make it easy, but Brooklyn, laden with a backpack and that huge laser, probably couldn't move very fast. The beeping continued to speed up, then finally became one long beep. There was a loud explosion, the sound of architecture crumbling, and the sounds and smells of dying fiends. Drake threw himself forward, trying to put as much as distance between him and the flames as he could, and was mostly successful. The flames licked at his shoes, charring the bottoms, but it was negligible.
Drake rolled out of the dive and saw that Julie had almost perfectly imitated him. He smiled at the ridiculousness of it, but stopped smiling when he saw the silent tears running down Julie's face. There was no need to ask why. It was clear this time, definite. There was no way that Matt could have survived the inferno. Matt had finally died.