CWCollateral: A Tale of the Resistance

by Manajerkop

What happens when innocent bystanders get fed up with enduring the fallout from Sonichu's zappin' adventures? REVOLUTION, that's what! Experience Sonichu from a whole new perspective, as the PVCC fights to end the tyranny of Christian Weston Chandler.

8. Chapter 5: Jerk Ops

CWCollateral: A Tale of the Resistance

by Manajerkop

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Chapter 5: Jerk Ops

March 22, 2004, CWCville slums, PVCC "Slumberland" headquarters

BANG! BANG! BANG!

"You keep squeezing it too hard," Zoey warned Kevin, frowning as all three of his shots went wild and cratered the backboard. "I keep telling you – you don't have to crush the trigger. Just…click it. Like this." She drew her own pistol and blasted a hole in the nearest wooden Sonee-target's face. "Click."

Kevin sighed in frustration, ejected the spent clip, and reached for a new one. Zoey was definitely a good teacher, but he just didn't connect that well with firearms. So far today he'd managed to hit two targets completely by accident, and only one of them actually counted as a fatal wound.

He needed to step up his game, and he had to do it before midnight. "Operation Rift" was the talk of Slumberland now, and the anticipation of a first mission was nearly killing him. He'd been going stir-crazy in the PVCC headquarters, even though most of the Honey Badgers were more than happy to talk with him. Most. Serge wasn't particularly good at conversations, Nick wasn't too interested in him, and as for Sugarplum Fury…well, the less said to her, the better.

In the time between his induction and now, Kevin had quickly grown reacquainted with his long-lost Shopping Center pals. Jake, Matt, and Allie always seemed to have a truckload of stories to share about their experiences - both before and after they'd joined the resistance. Allie still wouldn't divulge any information about the burn on her face, but he knew from the look in her eyes that it had something to do with the chus. Hell, everyone seemed to have a gripe against them…all but Nick and Serge. The sniper had killed his fair share, true, but then again, he'd signed on with the PVCC as a soldier of fortune. Serge just liked to fight. His beef was with Chandler himself, and if Chandler's creations got in the way, then it was their own damn fault.

As for Kevin, he and Zoey had spent the last two days shooting off pistols at the indoor firing range and getting him fitted for a set of equipment. The Honey Badgers' combat outfit was definitely mid-level in terms of gear – a pair of thick leather boots, a shoulder strap with a painted wooden badge, extra clips, a flashlight, dust mask, and of course the leather belt with his hunting knife and pistol. The unspoken rule of the PVCC was that the better a squad you were in, the better the gear you received. The Picklemen were the best of the best, therefore, they got Kevlar, grenades, and M4s. At the opposite end were squads like the BattleAXEs, who were lucky to even get three pistols total.

And as for the gun practice, well…

BANG! The next shot impacted on the backboard and fragmented into pieces. The targets remained intact.

Zoey shook her head. "Try breathing out just before you fire. It'll get easier, trust me."

"It's not," replied Kevin angrily. "Why do I have to learn this now? If they're as easy to kill as you say they are, why do we even bother shooting them?"

"The ferals aren't what you should be worried about," Steve commented from the doorway behind them. "It's their parents we'll be using the guns on."

"Hey, Steve." Zoey glanced over her shoulder and removed one of her earplugs. "Any more news from Al?"

"Nah, he's just been revising our patrol route for Rift," replied the Jerkop, and nodded at Kevin. "How's he doing?"

"Terrible," Kevin spoke up before Zoey could answer.

Steve frowned. "You've been at this for two days. You must have improved at least a bit."

"Yeah, he has," said Zoey. Kevin wasn't going to argue with her there. The first time he'd ever fired a gun, the recoil had smacked him right in the cheekbone. Since then, he'd remembered to grip the pistol more firmly.

"If you're looking for motivation, those little bastards killed Kuri's family," added Steve, and promptly left the room.

"Did they really?" asked Kevin, and turned to Zoey. "She never said anything about…"

"We found Kuri living on the streets a couple years ago," explained the Jerkop. "One feral Sonee had eaten her family into starvation…this was before we really knew the chus were breeding, obviously."

"Are they really all that bad?" Kevin placed his gun on the table and checked one of the hastily-assembled "field guides" that Al had made for each of the squad members to use. "They just look so damn harmless. Kind of…dare I say it…cute."

Zoey laughed bitterly. "Harmless? Home-bred larvae, maybe. Not ferals. And as for the cuteness factor…well, you just hang on to that thought until we go out later tonight." She gestured to the firing range. "And speaking of which…"

Kevin gritted his teeth and raised the pistol. It was going to be a long day.

Eight hours later, 11:43 p.m.

"Lighters, fuel, ammo, canteen refills!" shouted Amanda from her seat behind the card table. "Last chance! Anyone?"

"I'm good," replied Jake as he buckled his shoulder strap. "Kevin, you need anything? First time, you know…"

Kevin laughed. "The way I've been shooting, I'll probably need about ten extra mags per chu."

"Oh, stop that." Allie gave him a friendly punch and resumed tying on her boots. "You're too hard on yourself. Remember, we all had to go through training too. Most of us flat out sucked."

"Not Serge," grunted Kuri in perfect imitation of the large Russian as she pored over her copy of the field guide. "Little wooden shock-pigs no match for Serge. Need better fight."

"Yeah…anyway," continued Allie as she turned back to Kevin, "you just stay with Jake and I and you'll be fine. They're not all that danger-"

Jake's face abruptly turned about three shades whiter.

"Oh…right." Allie smiled awkwardly. "Sorry, Jake."

"It's…it's fine." The Jerkop sounded as though he'd just had his soul sucked out. "Don't ever say that again."

Kevin blinked confusedly. "What's he…"

"I'll tell you later," muttered Allie, and began bunching her long hair into a ponytail. "Don't worry, just concentrate on…"

"Evening," a muffled voice sounded from the doorway.

Kevin looked over his shoulder as Al entered the room wearing his trademark welder's mask. The Legend rarely ventured outside his office unless the situation required his immediate attention, and even then, he usually relied on Steve and Zoey to sort the more minor things out. Matt had told Kevin that Al was in charge of coordinating his tactical plans with the other Jerkop squad leaders like Emily and Blanca, and therefore he seldom went on missions himself unless they were of the utmost importance to the PVCC.

The Honey Badgers turned and saluted as their commander strode up to them. Al raised a hand.

"At ease," he said, and turned to Kevin, Jake, Allie, and Kuri. "I just wanted to give you four some information before Steve comes to take you out on patrol. He's going over the plan with the other active squad leaders right now." The Legend glanced at Kevin. "Shaw, how are you?"

"Uh, I'm fine, sir."

"I'm Al. Don't sir me," Al corrected him. "Now I just wanted to let you know; you might think you know the CWCville slums pretty well, but odds are, you've never even heard of the abandoned zone – that's the place Steve's taking you tonight. Scrapland's some pretty rough terrain, and you'll be taking the old canals to get there. Just follow the others and don't do anything stupid. As for the chus…" He chuckled. "Use your imagination. I'll be debriefing you and the others when you get back. Understood?"

Kevin nodded.

"Good." Al looked at the other three Honey Badgers. "Watch each other's back and don't get separated. Chandler knows we're up to something, so it's a safe bet that the EHPF are gonna be out in force tonight. We'd prefer that we didn't need to extract you, but I've got Matt standing by with the Battle Bus just in case." He turned and headed for the door. "Good luck, and good hunting. See you at the debrief."

Almost as soon as Al disappeared, Steve entered to take his place. The Jerkop squad leader wore an intimidating array of combat gear, including his kukri, a revolver, and a silenced P90 submachine gun that Kevin had never seen before. A black-painted dust mask concealed his nose and mouth, and he'd wisely swapped his white sweatshirt for a dark grey version.

"That's it," said the Jerkop with grim satisfaction, and pointed to his four-man squad. "We've got the final green light for Operation Rift." He withdrew a collar and leash from behind his back and stepped over to Sugarplum Fury's cage. "Kit up and meet me at the garage in five minutes. This city's full of little chus that need exterminating, and I intend to show our dear administration that the Honey Badgers do not give a shit about how many are out there."

Fifteen minutes later, CWCville slums, abandoned zone

Kevin thumbed through Al's chu field guide as the pickup truck bounced and rumbled down the gravelly road through CWCville's abandoned zone. It was all he could do to keep his mind off the task at hand.

Navitaricius sonee, explained the smudged typewriter print below a hasty sketch of a small fat rabbit-like Pokémon, is the first stage of evolution for the male Electric Hedgehog Pokémon species – the larval form of an adult Sonichu. Better known as Sonees, these small creatures are often easily mistaken for Pikachus or Pichus by uninformed observers, and indeed are closely related due to the merge in 1998. Their female counterpart is the Rosey, better known as Navitaricius rosey. Sonees are recognizable by their Pikachu-like yellow and brown fur coat, their soft, undeveloped headspikes, the presence of armstubs and large blue sneakered feet. Much like the Rosey's skirt and bow, the origin of said sneakers remains unknown. The normal cry of a Sonee is simply its own name, but much like the Meowth, they seem to possess a rudimentary intelligence which allows them to learn and recite certain words and phrases, most notably a shrill "Yay!" for displays of excitement or happiness. At the age of 3, a Sonee begins to develop a set of small, sharp teeth for defending itself and dispatching smaller prey. Like Roseys, they cannot generate full bolts of bioelectricity, but may generate a small spark from their cheekspots to ward off intruders. A large feral population…

It was still hard to believe he'd never seen even one of these creatures in the six years he'd spent in Soup Hotel #4. Kevin and his hobo friends had gone salvaging nearly every night, yet they only encountered raccoons, stray dogs, and the occasional mugger or junkie. Never a Sonee or a Rosey. And now suddenly the PVCC were all up in arms about exterminating the entire population as a sort of warning to the Chandler loyalists.

In truth, Kevin still didn't understand the hatred for these things. They looked harmless and cute enough to him – no more threatening than a fat Pichu. Yet Kuri despised (and regularly devoured) them, Steve and Al were always talking about the best ways to kill them, and Jake…Jake seemed to be terrified by something about the creatures.

"This is it," Jake muttered to Kevin as the truck turned a corner and began slowing down. "We're coming up on the canal entrance now. As soon as we stop, go over the side and assemble on Steve. Watch your footing and stick close to me."

The Jerkop nodded and flipped the guide shut. Stowing it in his pocket, he flipped open his holster strap and placed one hand on the pistol. Allie glanced at him and gave him a thumbs-up.

You'll be fine, she mouthed.

Kevin smiled at her. Allie was really starting to grow on him as a friend, not just as a fellow revolutionary. She'd been a big help in his first few days at Slumberland: showing him where the amenities were, sharing information about the squad history and the PVCC in general, and best of all, she always had something to talk with him about. She'd come a long way from the Burger King in the CWCville Shopping Center, that was plain to see.

The truck braked and stopped at the side of a dilapidated gravel road. This was new territory to Kevin. A week ago, he would never have believed that downtown CWCville could contain such a run-down place as this "abandoned zone," but he was here, he was looking at it, and unless the Honey Badgers were all lying, he was about to walk right into the heart of it.

"Everyone out!" ordered Steve from the front passenger seat as he stepped down onto the roadside with Sugarplum Fury in his arms. "Safeties off! Jake, Kuri, check the perimeter."

"Got it," replied Kuri as she and Jake leapt over their respective sides of the truck's bed. Allie nodded to Kevin, then followed suit, heaving her giant flamethrower over the edge before she herself jumped down. Kevin clicked off the safety on his pistol, took a deep breath, and swung himself down. The gravel crunched beneath his boots as he hit the road.

Looking around, he could barely see the lights shining from skyscrapers and other buildings on the east side. This part of the slums was populated mostly by barren trees and bushes, gravel, rust, and long-abandoned apartments, stores, and hotels. Paper waste and plastic bottles of CWC Cola lined the streets, sometimes piled as high as a man's chest. There weren't any people in sight, but Kevin noticed a flaming barrel further up the road. He had a feeling he didn't want to meet the human inhabitants of the abandoned zone, hobo-friendly though he was.

"Clear left!" called Kuri from behind the truck.

"Clear right!" Jake shouted.

Steve nodded and raised a fist. "Assemble." Kevin and the others obediently gathered around their squad leader to await his orders. For their own sakes, they made sure to stand outside the radius of Sugar's leash.

"Right," continued Steve, scratching the honey badger behind her ears. "We're on our own for the next four hours, or else until I say it's time to go. Unless you're bleeding out and about to die, we're continuing this patrol. Kuri and Allie, you're Team One, Jake and Kevin, you're Team Two. If I ask you to go recon an area, you keep one eye on your teammate's back at all times. Understood?"

The Jerkops nodded.

"Excellent." Steve gently placed Sugar on the ground and gave his revolver's cylinder a quick spin. "Let's have some fun. Sugar, seek."

Sugar let out a savage growl and spun around once, then trotted off away from the road. Steve and the others began following her at a safe distance.

"How come she doesn't attack him?" Kevin whispered to Jake.

"Sugar's known Al and Jake since they found her," the Jerkop explained under his breath. "They somehow managed to domesticate her, but she doesn't usually let anyone other than Zoey, Nick, Al, or Steve actually handle her. Kuri nearly lost a finger yesterday, or so she says."

"Damn. I'd hate to see what she does to th-whoa!" Kevin stumbled over a small pile of trash, but kept his footing. Jake grinned and kept walking.

"Watch your step," Kuri advised him as she passed. "It only gets worse where we're going."

Kevin nodded and hurried ahead to catch up with Jake.

They'd reached a place that could only be the entrance to these canals everyone had been talking about. Beyond the gate of a rusted chain-link fence lay a large concrete channel and a few metal ladders. A hastily spray-painted sign that read TO SCRAPLAND hung from a cord between the two highest gateposts.

"Good to be back," commented Steve as he reeled in Sugar and nudged the gate open with his boot. "Come on." He tugged at the honey badger's leash and nodded to his squadmates. One by one, Kuri, Jake, Allie, and Kevin followed their leader through the gate.

The Scrapland pathway itself looked like something out of a classic post-apocalypse setting. Piles of rusting metal and paper waste lay strewn all across the bottom of the dried-up canal, making it resemble a giant clogged artery. Given the state of the city and the person in charge of running it, this was actually quite the fitting comparison.

There was no direct path down into the canals from where they were, but Steve led the squad over to a small open utility hatch a short distance away. Kevin leaned over the side and shone his flashlight down into the darkness below. He could just barely make out the floor.

"All right, single file down," ordered Steve as Sugar leapt up into his arms." Kuri, you first. Scope it out."

"Gee, thanks." The Jerkop rolled her eyes, grabbed the sides of the ladder, and slid into the access tunnel. In seconds, the darkness had swallowed her up.

"Okay, clear," Kuri called out from what seemed like miles away. "Send the rest."

Steve nodded to Jake, who quickly hopped on the ladder and climbed after his squadmate. Allie quickly tied a rope around her flamethrower and lowered the bulky weapon into the hatch, then followed Jake as soon as it was safely down.

Kevin took a deep breath and lowered himself over the edge. The steel rungs were coarse and rusty, but they held his weight all the same. Hand over hand, he climbed down, keeping his eyes fixed on the world above as Steve and Sugar grew smaller and smaller. After what seemed like five minutes, he felt the ladder give way to solid concrete, and stepped down to the floor.

Click. The Jerkop switched on his flashlight and clipped it to the handy attachment on top of his shoulder strap. The PVCC ran a lot of late-night operations to mess with Chandler's biological clock, and as such, they needed their operatives to have both hands free, even in dark places like this. Kevin let his eyes adjust for a few moments, then walked over to join Jake again.

Once Steve had safely climbed down with Sugar tucked under one arm, the hunt could resume. As the Honey Badgers made their way further into the underground canal, Kevin began to notice a few strange and unsettling signs of human presence. Graffiti covered the smooth concrete walls in a colorful mix of profanity, anti-Chandler slogans, and sloppy pornographic drawings of various combinations of male and female chus in various sexual positions. Many of them portrayed the Rosechus as having male genitalia. Further down the tunnel, the content of the drawings began to grow less and less juvenile and more ominous. Signs like TURN BACK NOW, SCRAPLAND IS DEAD reigned supreme, and the furry porn gave way to unsettling drawings of small pink and yellow creatures covered in blood.

"Ignore them," Allie suggested reassuringly. "Just a few coked-up salvagers letting off steam."

Kevin gave her a weak smile, but he felt his fingers tighten further around the grip of his pistol all the same. This was an evil place – an art gallery of nightmares. By now, the city lights were a mere blur behind them, and nothing lay ahead but darkness and uncertainty.

After about fifteen minutes of following Sugar through the canal's many twists and turns, Steve raised his hand and called a halt. The Jerkops immediately stopped and assembled around him.

"I think we're at the old junction to the sewers," he mused, and tossed a piece of beef jerky to the honey badger. "Jake, remember that old stairway shortcut I told you Al and I used to take?"

"Yeah?"

Steve pointed to a rusty door and some stairs set into the side of the tunnel. "Take Kevin and see if it's still standing. Meet us up ahead at the halfway point when you find it."

Jake glanced over at Kevin, then looked back to his squad leader. "All right, we'll check it out. Don't leave without us, okay?"

"Wouldn't dream of it," replied Steve. "Watch your step." He nodded at Kuri and Allie to follow him, then continued on down the canal.

"Good luck, you two," Allie called over her shoulder, and disappeared after Steve. Soon the three Jerkops were nothing more than flashlight beams moving back and forth in the darkness.

"Ah, I was afraid he'd have us doing this," muttered Jake as he walked over to the doorway and began gingerly climbing the metal steps. "Okay, looks like these ones are safe. Come on." He shoved the door open with one shoulder, provoking a sharp squeal from the rusty hinges. The two Jerkops quickly stepped through the doorway into the sewer junction, leaving the dark canal behind for a while.

The dilapidated metal walkway was lit by the faint yellowish glow of utility lights overhead, but at least it was more comforting than the pitch black canal. Kevin followed Jake closely, keeping an eye on the tunnel behind them as they made their way toward the sound of rushing water. The smells of sewage and decay hung thick and heavy in the air, even through the dust mask covering his nose and mouth.

"Goddamn it." Jake waved his hand in front of his face with disgust. "Smells like the mayor's office in the Shopping Center."

"No, this is…cough…this is much nicer," replied Kevin.

Jake laughed. "Ah, it's good to have you back. We all missed you, you know that? Matt and Allie and I? We never forgot."

Kevin smiled, touched by Jake's kind words. "What are the odds, huh?"

"Oh, probably the same as…" The Jerkop stopped so suddenly that Kevin nearly collided with him. "Wait. Don't move." Taking a few steps forward, Jake reached over his shoulder and slid the shotgun out of its straps. "Okay, stay close. We're definitely in feral territory now."

"How do you know?" whispered Kevin. His heartbeat quickened as he steadied his own pistol.

Jake pointed to a small scrap of pink fabric wedged between one of the walkway railings and the floor. "Skirt cloth. Roseys never travel alone. There must have been a whole pack that went right through here on their way up to the surface." He chambered a shell with a loud click-click. "Keep your eyes open. Blue plastic, pink cloth, hair bows, candy wrappers, chu shit…you see any of those, you let me know."

Kevin was beginning to have serious second thoughts about the whole "cute" aspect of Sonees and Roseys.

The next few minutes passed in terrifying silence as Jake and Kevin made their way through the deserted sewer tunnels. The rushing water sounded extremely close now; perhaps it was flowing down though some pipe next to them.

"Runoff from the Hogwash area, probably," explained Jake. "These pipes were abandoned back when Chandler closed off this section of the city. We think it had something to do with the ferals. The chus breed so fast…they needed a safe place to dump their bastard offspring without drawing attention from the humans in CWCville."

"Well, it worked on me," Kevin muttered. "I've never even seen a live one yet."

Jake flashed a sinister grin. "Oh, you will. I bet you twenty bucks they're watching us right now."

"That's a serious wager," chuckled Kevin. Real US currency was something of a rare item in CWCville at the moment, especially since the mayor had implemented his new C-Quarter and W-Quarter-based economy. The custom-minted coins held next to no value in the international market, so therefore many of the wealthier and more sensible human citizens chose to store their money in other Virginia-based banks, and pay smugglers to transport suitcases of cash in and out of CWCville. And yet Chandler continued to wonder why the economy of his city was so awful.

"Just don't get too worried," continued Jake as he ducked through a small opening in the dry sewer pipe. "They might be small, but they're slow. If they're here, we'll see 'em soon enough."

Kevin followed him through without a word. His heart was still hammering against his ribcage. Up ahead was a larger room with a rusty, half-destroyed stairwell on the far wall. Looking up, he could see that it presumably led to either a higher level of the sewer, or else to the surface itself.

"Is that it?"

"Looks like that's our way up," Jake said with a satisfied smile. "We should probably test it first…see if it'll still hold our weight. We wouldn't want Steve or the girls breaking a leg, now would we?"

"Definitely not." Kevin walked up to the stairwell and scratched a bit of rust off the rail. "Want me to go first?"

"Nah, I'll do it. You follow me and hold on to my shoulder strap in case it collapses, okay?"

"Gotcha."

Step by step, the Jerkops began ascending the stairs with the utmost caution. Kevin stowed his pistol and grasped his partner's shoulder strap just above his shotgun holster, keeping his other hand on the railing in case he needed to act as a human anchor. Jake moved slowly, delicately, testing each step with his foot before pressing his entire weight down on it.

About thirty feet up, they came to another door that led further away into the CWCville underground. The stairway continued on past, and Jake was adamant about reaching the top prior to any further exploration. But first, he insisted they take a breather.

"You sure that's a good idea?" asked Kevin, eyeing the wobbly stairwell suspiciously. A rusty creak echoed through the room as some ancient beams above them ground against one another.

Jake nodded. "Better supports. We haven't broken it yet. Here, sit down and have some water."

Kevin obediently sank to the floor and unfastened the canteen from his belt. The cool liquid was a small measure of relief against the cloying sewer stench at the back of his throat. He gulped down a few mouthfuls and leaned back against the loose metal railing.

For the first time, he noticed the rusted pipes running around the stairwell from the second floor. What looked like a pair of fat fleshy maggots or worms squirmed disgustingly around the edges of the largest rust hole, presumably foraging for nutrients in the sewer waste that accumulated in the pipes. Kevin winced in revulsion and took another swig from his canteen.

"So, how do you like it so far?" asked Jake, oblivious to the worms in the pipe behind him.

Kevin swallowed the water. "I thought there'd be more shooting and blowing up cars."

Jake laughed. "Not so much these days. We're seriously outgunned because of all the loyalist mercs running around, but as for cars…did Amanda ever tell you what a Baby Boomer is?"

"Nope." Kevin shook his head. "Do I want to know?"

"Let's just say that it's a surprise that's worth the wait." Jake stood up and grabbed his shotgun. "Okay, let's keep moving. They're probably wondering why we're taking so long."

"Yeah, I kinda want to get out of here ASAP," admitted Kevin as the Jerkop helped him to his feet. "This place just plain creeps me out. Hold on, I need to stow my canteen." He looked down at his belt and began reattaching the grey plastic container.

Jake smiled and took a careful step forward onto the next set of stairs. "No worries. Take your time, Steve said we've got all night if w-"

"GOO-GOOOOOOOOOOO!"

"AAAAAHHHHH! FUCK! GAAAAAHH!"

BANG!

Kevin's head snapped upright at Jake's scream of panic and the thunderous shotgun blast. The Jerkop's face was covered in what looked like a misshapen blob of yellow, brown, and black fur with two of those fat pink worms sticking out of it. Not worms, he realized with sudden terror. Arms. Armstubs.

"JAKE!" Abandoning the canteen, Kevin leapt forward to help his friend. Jake had gripped his attacker in both hands and was trying to pry it off his face, but its teeth were sunk deep into the flesh of his cheek, anchoring it firmly in place. Drawing his hunting knife, Kevin swung the blade in an arc, directly toward the center of the creature's back.

CRASH!

The entire section of stairway in front of him buckled and collapsed in an explosion of rust and metal, taking both Jake and the little animal with it. The two plunged silently down the shaft, still locked in combat as they vanished into the large cloud of dust rising up from below.

"JAKE! NO!" screamed Kevin as he grabbed the railing and peered into the darkness. There was a muffled thump, and then nothing but the groans of unsteady metal beams. As the dust cleared, his friend's broken body slowly came back into view. Jake lay still and unmoving, sprawled across a large pile of rubble. His face was drenched in blood, as was his left leg. Kevin felt his stomach churn as he realized a jagged chunk of steel had plunged straight through the Jerkop's calf. A dark red pool was already beginning to spread beneath him.

Suddenly, horrifically, Jake began to move. His arm flopped limply at an angle usually reserved for double-jointed people. Kevin could see a white shard of bone protruding from his elbow.

"Kevin…" choked the wounded Jerkop as blood bubbled from the corners of his mouth.

Paralysis and fear had Kevin firmly in their grasp. He couldn't move a muscle. Every ounce of his willpower was telling him to run down and help Jake, to move him away, to go get Steve and the others…to do something, anything. But all he could do was look down in horror as his friend gasped and coughed beneath him.

Then a new set of noises reached his ears. At first, they sounded like the squeaking of mice or rats, but Kevin quickly picked out individual words in the midst of all the distant chatter below.

Oh, fuck me, he thought as he recognized the sounds.

"Wosey!"

"Goo-gaa!"

"Nee!"

"Sonee!"

"Goo-goo!"

First one, then three, then a dozen, then a whole crowd of pink and yellow chu larvae spilled from the mouths of the pipes below, converging on Jake's body with shrill cries of glee and excitement. As the injured Jerkop struggled and groaned in agony, a single Rosey toddled forward and sat down beside his impaled leg.

"YAY!" it squealed happily, and sank its piranha-like teeth into the ragged flesh, ripping off a bloody chunk of exposed muscle.

"EEEEAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH!" shrieked Jake as the feral swarm descended upon him with the enthusiasm of jackals who had just discovered an entire elephant carcass. Kevin let out a choking, strangled sob as he watched his friend vanish beneath a writhing sea of fuzzy bodies. A hand broke the surface for an instant, but a Sonee quickly leapt up and gnawed Jake's thumb off at the base. The hand shuddered and flopped back down. It was quickly absorbed into the frenzy.

Kevin couldn't watch any longer. Jake Linneman was done for. He had to get out of this death trap before more of the larvae decided to go for him instead. Wiping the tears from his face, he drew his pistol and staggered upright toward the door.

"SONEEEEEEE!"

A piercing pain shot through his leg. Kevin yelled and looked down to see one of the fuzzy yellow abominations biting at his jeans, its sharp white teeth shredding the denim to ribbons as it tried to get at the tender flesh beneath. Its fleshy pink armstubs were firmly wrapped around his boot.

Bracing himself against the railing, Kevin raised his other foot and brought it as hard as he could directly onto the little chu's head.

"NEE-"

The Sonee let out a shrieking cry of pain, but was quickly silenced when one hundred and sixty pounds of force crushed its entire skull like a tiny watermelon. Blood squirted out across the brown leather boot as Kevin stomped down again and again, smashing the creature to pieces between the floor grating with each frenzied blow. Finally, nothing remained except a few scraps of skin and a crushed green eyeball floating in a puddle of gore.

The thick pipe beside him began rattling up and down. Inside, he could hear more of the bloodthirsty chu larvae crawling towards him. Kevin kicked his way through the weakened metal door and broke into a panicked sprint down the adjacent sewer tunnel. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a Rosey jump out of the pipe opening. The little creature's skirt billowed open like a miniature parachute as she gently floated to the ground and began waddling after this new prey.

"Wosey!" she cried, and raised an armstub toward the fleeing Jerkop.

With a chorus of squeaks and cries, an avalanche of Sonees and Roseys poured out of the pipe and immediately set off after the lead Rosey. Their stunted legs were pathetically unsuited for chasing down fleeing victims, but Kevin had a feeling that they knew the layout of this sewer a whole lot more than he did. Steve, Kuri, Allie, and Sugar were on their own now, but at least they were together. Without Jake, Kevin's odds of survival had been drastically cut down.

He had to get up to the surface, and he had to do it fast.

Thirty minutes later, CWCville sewers

Kevin Shaw was well and truly lost.

For the last half hour, he had hurried down the tight, damp tunnels of the desolate CWCville sewer system as fast as he could, always keeping one eye on the darkness around him. The horrors that had devoured Jake were almost certainly still searching for fresh meat – even the Jerkop's entire body couldn't feed that large of a swarm.

There had to be a way out somewhere…a ladder or another stairwell or a manhole or…or something. He simply didn't know where to go, and worst of all, he had no way of remembering where he was. All the tunnels looked the same to him, and he didn't have the time or the energy to try and figure out his position. His bitten leg had stopped bleeding, but the Sonee's teeth had still inflicted deep cuts into his skin. Furthermore, Kevin didn't know what kinds of diseases or pathogens the creatures carried in their mouths. He had a feeling Jexis would want to take a good look at that wound when he got back.

If he got back.

A sudden clatter of metal echoed in the distance. Kevin jumped and turned toward the source of the noise, but saw nothing but the pipes and the concrete tunnel wall. Every sound spooked him now. His imagination was running wild: turning every shadow into a waiting Sonee or Rosey, amplifying the gentle drip of water into the patter of oversized sneakered feet, and making even a simple breeze feel like a furry face brushing against the back of his neck.

Not only was Kevin lost, he was actually starting to lose it too.

There had to be some way out. When Robert Chandler founded CWCville, he must have had enough sense to build access ladders and other points of entry into the sewer system to let the construction workers in. Now most of the ladders had rusted away, but it would be ludicrous to assume there was only a single one left intact.

Rurururururururururr…

Kevin stopped in his tracks as a rumbling noise grew louder and louder overhead, until it passed right above him. A car! He had to be right below the streets now. Maybe he'd wandered all the way back to the slum district. Maybe he was even within walking distance of Slumberland! Once he got to the surface, he'd try to make his way back to the PVCC headquarters and call in some backup to save Steve, Kuri, and Allie. Zoey and Al were still there, and so was the Battle Bus…

The rumbling continued moving up ahead, punctuated by a loud hiss of exhaust. The vehicle, whatever it was, sounded big. Very, very big. It must have been a delivery truck, or something along those lines. Kevin crept forward silently, following the noise as best he could. It was hard to see anything in this dark, cramped environment, let alone keep track of a moving vehicle through sound alone…

There! Another rusty door lay set into the wall further up the tunnel. Nearly crying with relief, Kevin dashed over, pushed it open, and stepped out into…

"Whoa," he breathed as city light flooded in from outside, illuminating a huge and very run-down sewage treatment room. Large ruptured and rusty water tanks lay scattered about here and there, while still more piles of scrap metal and garbage crowded the once-open space. The floor was poured concrete, covered by a scattered layer of crumpled-up paper waste.

But what truly drew Kevin's attention was the large transport truck backing into the treatment plant from a ramp that presumably led to the surface. That must have been the vehicle he'd heard, but what was it doing, and more importantly, why was it here? Squinting as his eyes adjusted, Kevin could barely read the large yellow stenciled letters on the side of the truck's container.

E…H…P…F…

"Shit!" Kevin gasped, and scurried for cover inside one of the stinking, mildew-filled water tanks. The horrific stench filled his nostrils immediately, but it was better than being zapped to death by Chandler's personal army. Through a hole in the side, he had a perfect view of the truck and the surrounding area. As long as he didn't draw any attention to himself, he should be fine.

As he watched with bated breath, the truck ground to a halt. Two Sonichus in full EHPF uniform flung open the cargo bay door and leapt down to the concrete, while another stepped out of the passenger seat. Kevin guessed there was still a driver as well. Killing them was out of the question; they had him outnumbered four to one and he still wasn't too confident about his pistol accuracy. Plus, he was sitting in an enclosed metallic space. One bolt of electricity, and he'd be fried like a wasp in a microwave.

The chus were talking amongst themselves now. Kevin leaned forward to listen, and thankfully, he could just make out their conversation over the rumbling of the truck.

"…lucky bastard. How many d'you think you made…let's just say…last six months?" asked the foremost officer.

The chu to his right let out a roar of laughter. "GodJesus, you never stop, do you? All right, lemme see if I can remember." He held up a gloved hand and began counting. "One, three, seven, thirteen, nine…you know what, I think it was about seventy-two if we count those three on the east side the other day. No way they're walkin' away babyless, if y'all know what I mean."

The two Sonichus whistled and clapped their partner on the back.

"Good for you, man!" shouted the first. "Keep 'em coming!"

"I got an idea! Let's go find some more china after we finish feeding them," suggested the other chu. "Those Rosechus don't got anything better to do."

"Well come on then, you better help me if y'all wanna get laid tonight."

"No homo!" laughed the boasting one.

The Sonichus quickly formed a fireline from the inside of the bay to a patch of concrete nearby. Kevin squinted to see what they were unloading…

…and nearly threw up in his mouth when he realized what kind of cargo the truck had been carrying.

Bodies. Men and women, boys and girls as young as four…all as limp and lifeless as store mannequins, tossed roughly from chu to chu like they were bags of garbage instead of real human corpses. One by one, they were cast down into a small pile, stacked carelessly in a grotesque imitation of a burial mound.

Kevin hugged his knees to his chest and struggled to suppress the sheer red fury that was tearing a hole in his heart. Tears streamed unchecked from his eyes, soaking the collar of his shirt and his dirty, smudged jeans. All he could do was sit there and cry silently until he heard the truck's engine start up again. The vehicle rumbled away, leaving a black exhaust trail and a pile of dead citizens in its wake.

So this was where the vanished ones ended up. Now he knew what had happened to Billy, Laurie, and everyone else who had dared to cross Chandler. All murdered…executed and dumped here like worthless sacks of meat. All because they'd found the courage to stand up for the good of their city. All because they were there.

Once the noises had faded away, Kevin stumbled out of the tank. His eyes had turned glassy and red, and he seemed to be wandering in a zombielike state of disbelief, sorrow, and hatred. Step by step, he walked closer and closer until he'd reached the corpse pile. Kneeling beside the lifeless bodies, he drew in a single shaky breath as his gaze fell upon a pair of joined hands. He followed the arms to their owners, and realized with a shock that they were both men – a gay couple who must have chosen to die together rather than be split apart by Chandler's reeducation program. Beneath them, a little six-year-old girl lay rigid and cold in death, her eyes open and staring up at a ceiling she could not even see. A single electric scorch mark marred her pretty face.

Collateral damage.

Kevin twisted away and immediately vomited, heaving up a slimy mess of half-digested food onto the concrete. Another wave of nausea struck without warning, then another, and another, until he was just coughing up strings of mucus. A bitter hatred for Chandler and all his chus thundered through the Jerkop's skull, and quickly manifested itself as a single, powerful word.

Kill.

Staggering to his feet, Kevin began looking around the room for a shovel, a can of gasoline, anything that would help give these people a proper burial or a quick cremation…

"Wosey."

Kevin stopped and turned to see a single Rosey clumsily making her way toward the pile of corpses, a hungry look in her green reptilian eyes. Behind her, a small group of other feral chus had found their way to the sewage treatment plant through various pipes and other access tunnels. All were waddling straight for their freshly delivered all-you-can-eat buffet.

Suddenly, everything made sense.

After we finish feeding them...after we finish feeding them...feeding them...feeding them...feeding them...

A soft giggle worked its way out of Kevin's mouth as the puzzle pieces fell into place. The giggle increased to a chuckle. The chuckle grew in intensity until it became a full-blown laugh, and before long, that laugh had quickly turned into a truly frightening noise usually reserved for the interior of an insane asylum. Madness gripped the young Jerkop as he reached for his hunting knife and slid it out of its sheath with a merciless grin.

Kill.

Ignorant of Kevin's oncoming madness, the first Rosey reached the pile and immediately began chewing on a dead woman's cheek. Before she could swallow her first mouthful of flesh, Kevin snatched her up in one hand. With his other, he thrust the knife right between her eyes and twisted it around, hard, a full 180 degrees. The chu was dead before she even had time to scream.

The Jerkop hurled his victim's bleeding corpse into the nearest wall as hard as he could, laughing hysterically as the pink fuzzball exploded into a sticky mess of blood and organs. Dashing forward, he kicked a Sonee and decapitated it with a single powerful blow. Kevin watched its head sail away into the distance, trailing drops of blood as it spun through the air like a football.

The other chus recoiled, squeaking in fear and confusion as Kevin plunged further into their midst. The big hunting knife flashed from Sonee to Rosey to Sonee, slashing and stabbing each of the abominations in turn. A few wisely turned and headed back to the safety of their pipes and tunnels, while the rest continued on toward their goal of the food pile. To get there, though, they'd have to get past the murderous Jerkop.

And Kevin was not about to allow any of that.

"WOSEEEEEEY!" shrieked another of the female chus until Kevin picked her up and twisted her head off like the cap of a soda bottle. A torrent of blood poured out of the stump of her neck, spilling down over her soft fuzzy body. He tossed the headless feral away and speared another through the belly on the end of the knife. The Rosey cried and gasped as the Jerkop lifted both her and his weapon into the air, then tipped it forward. She slid off and fell, leaving a thick smear of blood on the shiny steel blade. Kevin stomped on her head just to be sure, flattening her skull against the concrete.

"Son…NEEEEE!"

ZZZAP!

Kevin winced in surprise as he felt a tiny shock prickling down the back of his leg. He turned and looked down to see a single Sonee standing two feet away with an armstub pointed right at him, its face all scrunched up with what had to be intense concentration. Kevin could have disemboweled it in half a second, but his berserk rage had given way to curiosity now. He wanted to know what exactly the feral had done to him.

As he watched, the Sonee's cheekspots flickered with sparks. A tiny bolt of energy erupted from its face and lanced straight down the outstretched limb, finally bursting into the air and bridging the gap between the tip of its armstub and Kevin's knee.

ZZZAP!

Pathetic, Kevin thought as he grabbed the little chu and started carving its face apart.

"GOO-GOO! GOO-GOO! GOO-GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" it screamed as each new cut sliced open its skin and muscles to reveal the pale white sheen of bone beneath. Desperately, it tried to conjure a third spark, but Kevin quickly poked the knife into its cheekspot, piercing straight through the skin into the bioelectric organ itself.

ZZZAP! The spark seared straight up to the knife's rubber grip and rebounded back into the Sonee's mutilated face. Kevin hurriedly dropped it as the feral shuddered and jerked like an epilepsy victim, its body gushing black smoke from every orifice…even its eyes. Finally, it let out a last moan of agony and lay still, its limbs still twitching as wayward bioelectricity coursed through them.

Unbelievably, the Sonee had just electrocuted itself.

Could that work on their parents if we shot one in the face? wondered Kevin. He still didn't know how exactly these crimes against nature worked – at any stage of their lives. At the moment, however, he was getting a few good impromptu lessons in Sonee and Rosey anatomy.

And speaking of which…

"Wosey!" another feral cried from above. Kevin looked up to see that a single Rosey climbing out of an open ventilation shaft in the ceiling. Given her lack of fingers, she immediately slipped and fell, but her skirt spread out beneath her, preventing the feral from plummeting to a quick death. Like the world's smallest paratrooper, she angled herself towards Kevin's head, ready to sink her sharp little teeth into the soft flesh of his…

Squish!

Crunch!

"SEEEEEEEYYYYYYYY!" the Rosey screeched as the hunting knife's pointed tip skewered her from below, plunging its way up through her bottom until it embedded itself in her ribcage. Warm blood gushed over the hilt and onto the Jerkop's hands, coating his already-bloodied fingers in sticky red liquid. The impaled feral screamed and wept, writhing uselessly around the six inches of razor sharp metal that now rested uncomfortably inside her torso.

Kevin hastily took hold of her head and began sawing the blade up and down, cutting his way right out of her body.

"GOO-GEEEE! GOO-GEEEE! GOO-GEEEE! GOO-GEEE!" the chu cried with each excruciating stroke. Kevin heard her ribs splintering, her muscles tearing apart like crepe paper, her stomach and liver rupturing and bursting like tiny water balloons…

Squish!

"WOSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY!"

The gleaming steel point of Kevin's knife erupted from the Rosey's belly like some ridiculous parody of the chestburster scene from Alien. As the Jerkop sliced her apart from the inside, her mutilated organs slopped out and dangled grotesquely from her split torso, dripping with blood and various juices. At last, her heart gave out.

Kevin - now firmly beyond the point of no return - never even felt a fraction of remorse at all the grisly murders he'd just committed. Disgust, certainly. If he hadn't been desensitized enough before watching Jake die, the corpse pile and the displays of unimaginable cruelty from Chandler and his vile creations had most certainly pushed him over the edge. They'd murdered his friend, and bloody retribution was now falling upon them.

Raising the dead Rosey in one hand, Kevin drew back his arm and hurled it as hard as he could directly into another Sonee, knocking the feral back about three feet. Its spine snapped audibly.

A bone crunched behind him. The Jerkop spun around and gutted a Sonee with a vicious slash, then stepped over the convulsing chu and dashed back to the corpse pile. About three of the little creatures had begun feeding on the outermost bodies, ripping off pieces of skin with their tiny teeth and filling the air with a chorus of "YAY!"s. Oblivious to the world, they indulged themselves greedily, stuffing their faces with fresh meat that their grandfather had indirectly killed for them.

They stood no chance against Kevin.

With a single crushing stomp, the Jerkop squashed the first Rosey to a pulp beneath his boot before she even knew what had happened. The remaining Sonee and Rosey tried to flee, but were both snatched up before they could run six inches. Kevin threw the male chu directly into a pile of jagged scrap metal, impaling it through its little body in three places. Gripping the last Rosey's belly fur, he heaved upward, tearing a huge patch of skin right off of her torso and revealing the muscles and organs beneath. Her skirt somehow stayed on.

"WOSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY!" she screamed as Kevin knelt and began scrubbing the hard floor with her exposed belly, painting the concrete with strokes of dark red and tiny bits of flesh. Bit by bit, he was wearing her down to the bone.

"NEEEE!"

Kevin turned and raised his knife, but it was too late. The last thing he saw was a black-and-yellow blur hurtling through the air towards his…

BANG! The Sonee exploded into a fountain of gore as a hail of buckshot shredded its body to pieces in mid-leap. Kevin yelled in shock and shielded his eyes with the back of his hand, wincing as slimy scraps of brain and organs pelted his face and arms. Another two blasts sounded from over near the ramp entrance, followed by a cacophony of panicked cries and footsteps as the little chus presumably fled this new destroyer.

When Kevin finally uncovered his face, he was no longer alone. A single woman with messy shoulder-length auburn hair, pale skin, and freckles stood a few feet away, sliding a handful of shells into the shotgun cradled in her arms. A steel baseball bat was tied sloppily across her back.

Jake's shotgun. Jake's bat.

"Where'd you get those?" snarled Kevin as he drew his pistol and pointed it straight at her head.

The woman glanced up, shrugged, and resumed loading her weapon.

"There wasn't much left when I found him," she muttered, so softly that Kevin had to strain to make out her words. "And he wasn't using these. I'm guessing he was your friend or something?"

Kevin nodded and lowered the gun. This newcomer was just a salvager, and nothing more. She was no threat to him. "Yeah. Jake Linneman…that's his name."

"Bless him, he died the way no man should die," mused the woman in a distant-sounding tone as she approached him. "But you, what's your name, boy? How'd you come to be here on a Feeding Day?"

"I'm Kevin," said Kevin, trying his best not to grimace at his new friend's considerable stench. "We…Jake and I…we're with the PVCC resistance."

A lopsided smile spread across the stranger's freckled face. "I guess you'd be looking for a few friends of yours, then? Tall icy guy, flamer girl, Smurf girl, skunk-wolverine? Seen 'em all. Passed through the north tunnel thirty minutes ago."

"Wo…sey…"

Kevin looked down to see the sole surviving Rosey trying to crawl away, dragging her exposed intestines on the concrete and leaving a large red streak behind her. Raising his pistol, he pulled the trigger and blew her tiny brain right out of her skull. BANG! The chu flopped forward, twitched a few times, and quietly died.

"Where did they say they were going?" he asked as he stowed the gun.

The woman absent-mindedly started scratching her abdomen through a hole in her worn t-shirt. "They didn't. That tall guy saw me with your friend's stuff and tried to cut my head off with this weird metal boomerang thingy. I barely got outta there before they sent that mutant skunk after me. My name's Linda, by the way."

"Okay. What exactly do you do down here?"

"Salvaging, sometimes." Linda smirked at the mangled bodies of the chus she and Kevin had just slaughtered. "Sometimes hunting. Mostly both. Scrapland gets boring at night, and we all gotta eat."

Kevin was taken aback. "Scrapland? Where is it?"

Linda grinned. "Pretty damn close. We're standing right underneath it." She stepped past him, selected a mostly intact Rosey, and set off up the concrete slope, holding the corpse by its feet. "Come on."

"What exactly is Scrapland?" asked Kevin as he hurried after his new friend.

"Pretty much the last place any sane person'd wanna live in." Linda shucked off the Rosey's skirt and bow and tossed them aside without a second thought. "'Course, nobody's sane no more. We used to live in a big shantytown up top – that was before the Sparkies started dumping all their babies into the sewers. Ferals come up once in a while to play in the old park west of here. Tammy likes to play with 'em too. Her favorite game's called Kick-a-Chu."

"Ah." Kevin realized the sort of "play" the woman was talking about. "Who's Tammy?"

"My little sister. Looked after her since Mom and Dad and my two brothers and my other sister went away to visit Uncle Christian."

The Jerkop felt a twinge of pity for this poor homeless woman. Was there no end? How many more lives did Chandler have to ruin before the city just up and died like it had been threatening to do for years now?

Kevin stopped and glanced over his shoulder. He'd almost forgotten.

"What about the bodies?"

Linda shook her head. "No use. Every day, they bring more. Every day, the babies get to eat more. Every day, their parents make more eggs. No matter what you do, there'll always be more. I'm sorry, kid, but it's the truth."

"No," the Jerkop replied with a frown. "We have to."

They'd reached the top of the ramp by now, and Kevin could finally see where this place had gotten its name. Part shanty town, part junkyard, and part construction site, Scrapland had obviously been a large amusement park in a previous life, but its history under Robert Chandler was swept aside all the same when his son turned this part of CWCville into the abandoned zone. Half a Ferris wheel towered above the entire area, its meshwork of steel beams twisted and rusting beneath its own weight. There had used to be a roller coaster stretching around the length of the park, but now the decrepit tracks served as a sort of border for Scrapland. Various other rides and attractions lay ruined and in pieces everywhere Kevin looked. The only thing missing, oddly enough, was the crowd of hobos he'd imagined lived around Linda.

"Aren't there any others here?" he asked.

"There used to be," replied the woman as she led him into Scrapland. "Me and Tammy, we're all that's left. Everyone else either moved away, or else the ferals got 'em."

Each new revelation was another thunderbolt in Kevin's brain. The whole despicable cycle was clear to him now. It was a win-win situation for Chandler. The adult chus kept their offspring out of the more populated areas of CWCville by feeding them regular offerings of executed prisoners and the occasional hobo that wandered into their midst. The people of CWCville remained unaware of the potential danger beneath their feet, the Sonees and Roseys were happy and full, and the mayor himself had a perfect way to get rid of anyone who opposed him.

The idea made Kevin feel like throwing up all over again.

Linda led him over a pile of rubble toward what could only be described as a scrap metal cave. A deep channel had been dug in the ground and covered with a makeshift shield of steel beams and other sheet metal, all sloppily welded together. Four fire barrels burned around the structure, illuminating the surrounding area with their warm flickering light. It was dark inside Linda's home, but Kevin could see a few pieces of furniture…also all crafted from trash and salvage. Well, if nothing else, the woman was certainly a resourceful character.

"Tammy?" Linda called out. "Tammy, we've got company!"

"Damn right you do." Steve Morrison sidestepped out into the open from behind a collapsed cotton candy stand, pushing a young woman with very long auburn hair - the same color as Linda's – ahead of him. His razor-sharp kukri was pressed close to her throat. With his other hand, the Jerkop squad leader aimed his Colt Python at the older homeless woman. "Put that shotgun down and step away from my squadmate."

"Linda!" cried Tammy as she struggled to put a few more millimeters between her neck and the curved blade. "Linda, help me!"

"LET HER GO!" roared Linda, and raised the shotgun.

Steve cocked his revolver. "You want to think about telling us where you got those weapons and why you're traveling with one of my Jerkops?"

"You want to think about letting my sister go and getting the hell away from our house?" snapped Linda.

Steve laughed coldly. "House? Lady, it's a fucking cave. You could've saved yourself a whole lot of trouble if you'd just told us what you were doing instead of running away. Now you've pushed me past the point where I play nicely." He drew Tammy in even closer to the kukri's edge, enough to leave a tiny indentation in the skin of her neck. "Those two girls with me? They're both pointing guns at your head right now. As I said, drop the shotgun."

"Do it," advised Kevin.

Linda knew a hopeless situation when she saw it. She grudgingly placed Jake's shotgun on the ground. Kevin snatched it up and hurried to Steve's side.

"You all right?" growled the Jerkop as he released his grip on Tammy and pushed her away. The woman stumbled forward and immediately dashed forward to hug her sister.

"Jake's dead." Kevin's voice was heavy with guilt. "It's my fault. I wasn't watching him when he…"

"No. It is not your fault," Steve replied angrily. "You don't say things like that in my squad. I won't have you destroying yourself over something you couldn't control." He sheathed his kukri. "I know Jake was your friend. He was a good soldier, too. You can tell Al and I what happened to him once we get back for the debriefing. For now, you hang onto that shotgun. We've got a long way to go and a lot of chu spawn to kill before we're in the clear."

"The EHPF…" Kevin felt a chill race down his spine. Did Steve even know about the dumping ground…about the piles of bodies…about the sickening Feeding Day ritual? "I saw…they were…"

The Jerkop's eyes narrowed to blue slits. "You saw the truth. Now you know why we have to kill them all."

"How long?" asked Kevin. He was still having a hard time believing something like this could have been going on for what had to be at least several years. "How long have they been-"

Steve ignored his question. "Later. Go regroup with the others. I'll handle this. Sugar, clear!"

The honey badger leapt out of a small burrow in a nearby mound of dirt and trotted over to nuzzle her master's leg. Kevin hadn't noticed her at all – Sugar must have been trained to set traps and conceal herself.

"Kevin!"

Allie and Kuri emerged from their respective hiding places and sprinted over to greet their newly-returned comrade. Kevin was surprised to see that both girls had accumulated a fair share of scratches and bruises, as well as a few unique battle markings. Kuri's teal-painted skin was now soiled with a sizable number of bloodstains that most likely hadn't come from her. One sleeve of her sweatshirt had been shredded up to the shoulder, leaving her left arm and part of her t-shirt exposed. Allie, on the other hand, looked like she was wearing blackface. Prolonged use of her flamethrower had given most of her body and clothes a dark coating of soot. Tear streaks ran down her face; she'd obviously been crying, most likely after the squad found Jake…

"Good to see you in one piece." Kuri grinned and gave him a welcoming pat on the shoulder. "You missed all the fun."

"Not quite," gasped Kevin as Allie slammed into him with another of her trademark bear hugs. "Ow! Hey, take it easy – you're gonna break my spine one of these days."

"Jake…" The girl sounded as if she were holding back a scream of uncontrollable rage. "What…what happened?"

"They set us up, Allie." Kevin returned the hug, pulling her close and running his fingers through her hair comfortingly. Seeing what he'd been through that night, it was the best possible thing anyone could have done for him. "We walked into their trap, and they…then they killed him. I'm so sorry, Allie, I'm so sorry…"

"We'll kill a hundred chus for him," growled Allie, and fixed his eyes with her own blistering gaze. "A thousand. You and me and Matt. We'll kill them all."

"And what about me?" Kuri spoke up indignantly. "They killed my parents. They killed my brother and my sister. Don't forget, Jake was my friend too, and if you two think I'm gonna let you hog all the hoglets…"

"That's enough," ordered Steve as he rejoined the group with Sugar in tow. "I've straightened things out with our new friends here," he gestured to Linda and Tammy, "and they seem to know the chu concentration patterns pretty well. We're only a few blocks away from a place called McIntire Park – it was scheduled to be replaced with a YMCA, but Chandler overturned the building permit for some reason. There's a playground there, an old concert stage, a chalkboard wall…"

"Just tell us how many there are," demanded Allie impatiently.

Steve shot her a chilling smile. "According to them, enough to give us a fair bit of headway on avenging Jake."

"That's good enough for me," added Kuri, and removed her scrap-forged tekko-kagi from her belt. Looping the straps around her wrist and forearm, she tilted the weapon and watched the firelight glinting off its three steel claws. "Let's do this."

"Wouldn't have it any other way," replied Steve, and set off across Scrapland toward the aforementioned park. Sugar sniffed the air, growled, and quickly took the lead. Kuri grinned in anticipation at Kevin and Allie, licked her lips, then hurried after her squad leader.

Kevin waved a quick goodbye to Linda and Tammy as he and Allie turned and followed suit.

"Remember, PVCC!" he yelled. "Find us if you want in! Slum district!"

"We're in! See you soon, Kevin!" called Linda, and waved back before ushering Tammy down into the safety of their cave.

"Well, this is it. Bet you're ready for payback." said Allie. "I sure as hell am."

Kevin gritted his teeth. "I just watched one of my best friends die right in front of me. I saw the EHPF dumping bodies in the sewer for their children to eat. I killed a dozen Sonees and Roseys down there tonight." The pained grimace transformed into a sadistic smile. "I've never been more ready for payback, Allie. Now let's show them what they get when they fuck with the Honey Badgers."

Ten minutes later, CWCville abandoned zone

The maze of uninhabited buildings loomed above Kevin's head like monoliths of crumbling brick, each one more disturbing than the last. All around him were signs of a once-thriving section of the city, left to rot through the ignorance and irresponsibility of the man who was supposed to be making sure things like this didn't happen. He hadn't seen a single other person after leaving Linda back in Scrapland…not even a flaming barrel or a scrap shelter.

The Honey Badgers were walking right into the heart of the abandoned zone…the prime hunting ground for CWCville's feral Sonee and Rosey population.

The squad had been making their way down a network of alleyways, trying their hardest to stay off the roads. Even though the abandoned zone rarely saw any traffic apart from the occasional lost tourist, Steve insisted they keep to the side passages as much as possible to avoid any unnecessary encounters with the EHPF. Judging from all the sirens in the distance, the chu police were out in force tonight - most likely dispatched in response to some of the other Jerkop squads' misdemeanors. Operation Rift wasn't entirely about larval extermination, after all.

Steve had gleaned a fair amount of valuable information concerning their targets from his discussion with Linda and Tammy…after he'd smoothed out the unpleasant feelings between him and them, of course. The two women were fairly experienced in the art of chu-hunting, and they'd been more than happy to share a few of their most effective strategies with the Jerkop.

According to what he'd told Kevin, Kuri, and Allie, the ferals were nocturnal; they slept during the day and only ventured out of the sewers at night to scavenge for small prey, garbage, and the occasional hobo. They almost always traveled in packs for companionship and protection, and had even learned to coordinate simple attacks like the one that had led to Jake's death. They weren't exactly any smarter than their homebred brethren, but certainly more experienced and able to act on instinct.

Being Sonees and Roseys, they were naturally attracted to things like playgrounds, candy, cookies, music, Mary Poppins, other chus, toys and games, soft pillows, and other similar items one would normally associate with the most stereotypical of babies. The sole difference between ferals and homebreds was simple – a naturally-ingrained defensive "cutesy" demeanor that vanished if they were denied the benefits of a pampered childhood for an extended period of time. Take away these luxuries, and a very different creature emerged to fill the soft fuzzy shell of a homeless larva.

This was why they were headed for McIntire Park – to catch the ferals completely off guard in an open environment. Down in the sewers, the Honey Badgers had been easy prey in unfamiliar territory, but in the streets of CWCville, they now took on the role of predators.

"Why did we even go through the sewers in the first place?" muttered Allie as she fiddled with the fuel intake valve on Trogdor the Burninator. Kevin had been wondering the same thing since the attack, and he was pretty sure Kuri was, as well.

"Al and I went on recon missions through those tunnels dozens of times," replied Steve, "back in the days when Scrapland was still full of hobos. There weren't that many ferals back then…we just assumed a few Sonees and Roseys fell or wandered down manholes and their parents just forgot about them. We thought they'd just starve to death, since there wasn't enough food for them to evolve and they were too young to breed. Of course, when we learned Chandler was purposely displacing all the unwanted larvae into the sewers…"

"You didn't answer my question," continued Allie.

Steve sighed. "I…I made a mistake, and I wasn't thinking straight." He glanced over his shoulder at Kevin. "I shouldn't have sent you and Jake out on your own. I thought you'd be safe…that there weren't so many ferals around the area. But I was wrong. They're expanding towards the slum district. I underestimated them, and it cost me both a good soldier and a good friend."

Kevin was genuinely surprised. Was this actual remorse from Steve Morrison? The man played both of his roles as a comrade and a drill sergeant very well, but up until now, he'd never sounded truly sad. Then again, Kevin had never seen Steve lose a squadmate before, either. How many unknown soldiers had served in the Honey Badgers, and more importantly, how many had lost their lives under his command?

"Hey, is this it?" asked Kuri from the end of the alley.

Kevin hurried forward to see what she was talking about. Beyond the next street, a large flat area of overgrown grass and weeds stretched out for nearly a full square block. Several smashed picnic tables and benches were scattered here and there along a trampled dirt pathway, and there might have once been trees around a small pond on the northern side. Without proper care and maintenance, the former were now stumps and the latter had dried up into a patch of mud. Near the entrance to the park, Kevin could see a dilapidated gazebo and a large painted sign that displayed MCINTIRE PARK in faded pastel colors. Further down the path was a pile of rubble that had probably once been the concert stage Steve mentioned earlier.

But what really piqued Kevin's interest was the playground in the distance…or more specifically, the cluster of tiny pink and yellow blobs moving around inside it.

"Yes, Kuri. We're here." Steve patted her on the shoulder. "McIntire Park. Scope it out for me, would you?"

"Gladly," replied the teal-painted Jerkop as she shrugged off her backpack and withdrew a pair of binoculars from within. Nick might have been the better long-range scout, but Kuri Tatsuno was a born hunter. She'd lived on Mt. Coronet for years with nothing more than a Lunatone, a few survival supplies, and her clothes. Tracking prey was her specialty.

"Hmm…" she murmured, scanning the various play structures and silently marking down the targets in her head. "I count fifteen or sixteen…no, make that twenty…twenty-five. Probably a few out of sight and one or two more outside the killzone."

Steve stroked his mustache. "Excellent. Kuri, you're my backup. I'll be the bait. Apparently, these chus like to play a certain game that our friends back in Scrapland were kind enough to teach me."

Kuri giggled. "I'm in. Don't take too long."

"Have I ever?" Steve looked up at the two other Jerkops and smiled. "Right. Kuri's in charge while I'm drawing them out, so don't do anything until she gives the word. Understood?"

Kevin and Allie nodded simultaneously.

"Good. Second rule of chu baiting: do not disturb the master at work or question his methods," continued Steve as he drew his kukri and gave it a few practice swings. "I believe in teaching by example, and if all goes well, you two are about to get one hell of a lesson tonight. He rolled his head from side to side, audibly cracking the tendons in his neck. "So let's get right to the fun part. Watch and learn."

The Honey Badgers quietly moved across the street and ducked into the long grass covering McIntire Park. Kevin could hardly see a thing inside the tall field, but judging by the growing sounds of laughter and cries of "YAY!", they were slowly making their way in the right direction towards the playground where the little chus were busy frolicking. He zeroed in on Allie and followed close behind her so as not to get lost in the grass.

Up ahead, Steve had simply given up trying to push through all the giant weeds and spiky thistles that covered McIntire Park, and was now hacking out a path using his kukri. Sugar trotted after him, stopping once every few seconds to shake off the clumps of cut grass that had become tangled up in her sleek fur. Kuri wisely stayed a good five feet away, no doubt remembering the many embarrassing injuries the honey badger had heaped upon her during the infamous training process she and Nick had put Sugar through.

Finally, Steve stopped and held up his fist in a wait gesture. "Okay, this is it. Remember the plan." He reeled in Sugar and petted her behind her ears before turning back to the squad. "Keep quiet, stay low, and watch my back."

"Go get 'em, tiger," urged Kuri.

Steve rose to his feet and stepped right through the grass into the open. As soon as Sugar smelled the familiar scent of chu larvae, she began bristling up and growling softly. Her muscles tensed, and for a moment, it looked as if she was about to charge forward and start mauling Sonees and Roseys left and right.

"Sugar…safety on," Steve ordered under his breath. He slipped the kukri back into the curved sheath on his shoulder, safely concealing the wicked blade. At his feet, the honey badger obediently calmed down and grew silent. She knew every one of Steve's commands by heart, having learned them over the four years she'd served in the PVCC. To the ferals, she would most likely appear to be nothing more than a big stripy lovable dog, who only wanted to play and run around with them.

Not that the chus had noticed her or Steve, anyway. Kevin, Allie, and Kuri all inched forward, side by side, to the edge of the long grass for a better view. The large group of Electric Hedgehog Pokémon larvae appeared to be evenly mixed by gender. There were about thirty in total: all cavorting on the playground equipment, zipping gleefully down the slide one by one, attempting to push each other on the swings with their armstubs, digging and playing in the sandbox, or else running aimlessly in circles around the central play structure. A small group had gathered beneath the teeter-totter, and its members were now unsuccessfully trying to climb up onto the seats. They were far too short and much too clumsy to even get on, yet still the little beasts persisted.

Over in the picnic area, more ferals had pushed over a wastebasket and were now rooting through it like stunted pink and yellow raccoons, trying to scavenge whatever leftovers they could. A single tiny Rosey sat on the ground beside the fallen can, sucking on an ancient half-eaten lollipop with audible squeals of delight. Nearby, a Sonee had somehow trapped itself – all but its blue sneakered feet - inside a bag of Doritos and was now stumbling around, trying to free itself.

Kevin choked back laughter as the walking chip bag slammed into the side of the garbage can with a hollow metallic thud and fell over onto its back, its feet flailing uselessly in the air. It was only now that he truly realized just how utterly pathetic they were outside of their subterranean habitat. Under the street, they'd been a pack of merciless hunters, but in this exposed environment, they were nothing less than the absolute easiest creatures in the world to kill.

Steve approached the struggling hoglet, smiling kindly as he knelt down and gently pulled the Dorito bag off of its head. Taking care not to make any sudden movements, he reached out a hand toward the feral and beckoned to it.

"There, there," he said in an alarmingly tender voice. "It's okay, little guy. The big scary bag's all gone now. Come on, I'm not gonna hurt you. It's okay. Come on."

"Goo-goo." The Sonee looked from Steve's outstretched fingers to his face, wondering who the newcomer could possibly be. This person couldn't possibly be one of those other big meanies who kicked his friends and poked them with shiny toys and turned their fur all red and made them go to sleep forever. It was nice. It had saved him from the scary darkness! It loved him.

"Sonee!" squeaked the little chu, and waddled forward to hug his new best friend.

The big hand shot forward and closed around the creature's fuzzy torso, easily lifting it up off the ground. The Sonee giggled and squealed with glee as Steve swung it around and around in circles, all the while making airplane noises with his mouth.

"Brbrbrbrrbrbrneeoooowwww!"

"WHEEEEEEEE!"

"What's he doing?" Kevin whispered.

"Just wait. He always likes to draw in the others," Kuri replied absent-mindedly, her eyes focused on the spinning Jerkop and his new playmate.

"SONEE! SONEE!" giggled the Sonee. "WHEE! YAY!"

Across the playground, the other hoglets had finally noticed just how much fun their friend was having. They quickly stopped whatever they were doing and shuffled over to watch the show. Before long, most if not all of the playground's occupants were clustered together in a big group. A few waddled right up to Sugar and began prodding and petting her with their little armstubs as she fought to keep herself from breaking loose and disemboweling the entire crowd then and there. Kevin imagined that if the honey badger could speak, she would probably be screaming in disgust and swearing at the top of her lungs right about now.

Steve (who must have been incredibly dizzy by this point) kept whirling around and around like a living, breathing carnival ride. The airborne Sonee, on the other hand, was having the time of its life. Below, the crowd of pink and yellow ferals wandered closer and closer, eager to have their turn at this new game. They'd grown excited now, hopping up and down on their stumpy feet like a pack of retarded rabbits.

"Wosey!"

"Goo-goo!"

"Sonee!"

"Wosey!"

"Goo-gaa!"

"YAY!"

Kevin could hear their nauseating little voices growing louder and louder every time the Sonee soared over their heads. Steve's performance was working them into a frenzy. Beside him, Kuri rose to one knee and tensed herself for action.

"Game time," she chuckled, and readied her tekko-kagi. "Watch this."

Allie quickly unbuckled Trogdor the Burninator and set the flamethrower down gently in the grass where she could easily locate it again. Drawing her knife and pistol, she gave Kevin a firm nudge on the shoulder. "Come on, get ready."

Kevin immediately reached for his hunting knife. Shooting the ferals just wasn't as much fun as the close range alternative – he knew at least that much from experience. If he and Allie ever hoped to properly avenge Jake, they'd have to make sure that every chu they killed died in as much agony as possible, and until the larvae decided to evolve kneecaps, there wasn't much a bullet could do that a blade could do better, slower, and far more painfully.

Outside in the open, Steve slowed down and staggered dramatically from side to side, his head still spinning from the "airplane ride." The Sonee in his hand made a little "aww" noise, clearly disappointed that the flying game had ended.

"Sonee," it whined, tugging at Steve's fingers with its armstubs. "Sonee!"

"What did you say?" The Jerkop's voice suddenly turned as cold as winter frost. "Say that again, you little bastard."

The Sonee drew back in surprise. "Nee?"

"I said…" Steve raised the creature up to his face and stared right into its vapid green eyes with a gaze that could have cut steel. "Say. That. Again. You. Little. Bastard."

"S-S-Sonee?" it asked tentatively.

Steve held out his captive at arm's length and nodded understandingly. "I get it. You liked the flying game, right?"

"YAY!" The Sonee clapped its armstubs together in delight. More flying? This was going to be the best day ever!

"Well, it just so happens that I know another flying game." A sadistic grin spread across the Jerkop's face. "I just learned how to play it tonight. It's called 'Kick-a-Chu.'"

The hand opened. The Sonee dropped like a plump yellow stone.

Steve's steel-toed boot rushed up to meet it.

CRUNCH!

The crowd of ferals screamed in terror as the broken corpse of what had once been their playmate sailed away through the air and smashed against the big sign next to the park. The Sonee burst open like a ripe tomato, splattering bloody entrails all over the painted wood. It hung there for a couple of seconds and slid down, leaving a thick red streak all the way from the center of the sign to the ground.

A flash of steel, and Steve's kukri was out and in his hand.

"Who's next?" he snarled, raising the curved blade.

Wailing and crying, the Sonees and Roseys instantly turned and made a beeline for the nearest shelter they could see. Unfortunately for them, that "shelter" was only the McIntire Park playground.

"Keep them inside the perimeter!" shouted the Jerkop as he dashed after the fleeing ferals. "Everyone move in! Sugar! SAFETY OFF!"

"GrrrRAAOWWRRR!" roared the honey badger, and shot forward like a guided missile with fur and teeth. In less than three seconds, she'd torn a Rosey into four bloody chunks and was now in the process of ripping a Sonee's head off with her powerful jaws. Caught between two equally painful rows of razor-sharp teeth, the chu could only kick helplessly and shriek until his fat little body fell away with a squishy popping sound. Sugar crunched down hard and sucked out her victim's brain through its skull like a human enjoying a peanut butter-filled pretzel. Spitting out a slimy mess of bone shards and indigestible cartilage, she padded over to the decapitated Sonee's still-twitching body and began messily chowing down on its innards.

"Okay, we're in business! Go! Go!" Kuri leapt up and ran to head off the herd. Kevin and Allie glanced at each other, then followed suit.

Inside the playground, Steve slid to a halt as he noticed a Rosey trying to pull herself up a ladder to the apparent safety of the big play structure. She had figured out a way to climb by wrapping her arms around each rung, then heaving herself up at a snail's pace. Steve observed this pathetic attempt for a few moments, then sliced her left armstub off at the shoulder. The big Nepalese knife neatly cleaved through skin, fat, meat, and bone in one swing, leaving the small pink creature dangling by one rudimentary "hand". Another cut opened her skirt from waist to hem. Steve caught the piece of torn cloth as it fluttered down and promptly tore it in half. There would be no parachute to save this Rosey.

"WOSEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYY!" the dangling chu shrieked as she fought to keep from slipping. Her static cling could only keep her attached so long. Big fat drops of blood fell and splashed on the wood chips below, painting them a glistening dark red. She had no skirt now, and if she let go, she would fall to her death. If she tried to hang on any longer, she would bleed to death.

In the end, it was Steve who made the decision for her. Pressing the razor edge of his kukri against the very tip of her remaining armstub, he began sawing back and forth ever so carefully, taking off only the tiniest bits of flesh with each stroke.

"!" bawled the dangling Rosey as the cold steel bit deeper and deeper. She couldn't let go now – the knife had her pinned to the ladder rung. All she could do was cry, struggle, and wait for the end.

Finally, Steve sawed through the last strip of skin connecting his victim to the end of her armstub. With a pitiful scream, the feral Rosey plunged earthward…only to be met by the four-inch wood chip that the Jerkop had propped up beneath her. The jagged spear plunged straight into her stomach, impaling her like a punji stick. A thick dark stain quickly spread across her belly and began soaking into her fur as she squirmed and twisted – nothing more than an insect on a pin.

Steve turned and left the Rosey to die a slow and agonizing death. It would take at least another five minutes for her to bleed out. Besides, he hadn't even started with the little freaks yet.

Over by the swings, a Sonee and Rosey broke and ran…or rather, toddled…for the safety of the grass, leaving the rest of their comrades behind to face their destroyer and his striped hellhound. They hadn't gone two yards before Kuri burst out of the field like a pale blue she-devil and fell upon them with a diabolical laugh. Snatching up a chu in each hand like a pair of wriggling fuzzy cymbals, she drew her arms apart and slammed them together in the most unspeakably brutal clap of all time.

CRUNCH! SQUISH!

Blood and crushed organs squirted between her fingers as the Sonee and Rosey were instantly pulverized, fused into a grisly mess of gore, shattered bone, and yellow-pink skin. Kuri squeezed her hands together tightly like a car compacter and was rewarded with four faint pops from within. Two dislodged pairs of glassy green eyeballs burst out of the dripping flesh-ball and fell away into the blood-soaked grass, where they were quickly crushed one by one beneath the Jerkop's boots.

Heaving the pair of mangled corpses away into the field, Kuri leaned down and disgustedly wiped her dripping hands on her jeans as she strolled toward the playground. She made a mental note to bring a pair of gloves on the next patrol. On the other hand, her skin was probably more red than blue now, seeing as how the impact of her two victims had sprayed a thick mess of blood all over her face.

In the span of a single minute, the McIntire Park playground had quickly fallen into a state of utter panic. Sonees and Roseys huddled together inside the big play structure, under the teeter-totter, in the sandbox, and even under piles of trash in the garbage can. Their diminutive brains weren't designed to handle stress very well, which made them all the more dangerous when they had the advantage of numbers and all the more vulnerable when their friends and playmates were being slaughtered all around them.

For Steve Morrison, it might as well have been an all-you-can-kill buffet. The Jerkop sauntered up and down the length of the playground casually, stroking his mustache as he perused the plentiful selection of waiting victims.

"Hmmm," he pondered aloud, peering through the darkness at five pairs of tiny, frightened eyes. "Maybe…you? Or maybe…you? Or maybe…GOTCHA!" he yelled, falling to one knee and grabbing a fat little Sonee from beneath the pile of wood chips it was trying to bury itself in. The pudgy chu wailed as Steve cruelly kicked over its hiding place and hurried across the playground to a picnic table. He sat down and placed his new victim on the wooden surface.

"Ooh, you're a chubby one," he taunted, pricking the hoglet's belly with the tip of his knife. It squealed and sobbed as a small trickle of blood leaked out. "Tell you what…I'm going to help you lose a few pounds for swimsuit season. You're gonna have all the china in CWCville after the Roseys get a look at you. So what do you say, fatty?"

The plump Sonee struggled to its feet and tried to waddle away, leaving a walnut-sized turd where it had been sitting.

"Now look what you did," said Steve in mock disappointment. "I think I'll call you Chris-Chan." He whacked Chris-Chan in the face with the kukri's wide blade, breaking the Sonee's nose and knocking it flat on its back. "Nurse, prep the patient for surgery."

The Jerkop stood up and walked back to the ladder. The impaled, armless Rosey lay twitching in the wood chips, barely clinging to life as a froth of blood slowly bubbled from her mouth. Steve knelt down, picked her up, and carried her back to his makeshift operating table.

"Sorry about that, Chris-Chan. Nurse was busy reading. Guess which book."

"Goo-gaa…Soneeeeeeee…"

"That's right, A Farewell to Arms. Sorry, that was a terrible joke." Steve chuckled and swung his kukri down, shearing right through the Rosey's waist and embedding the blade a full half inch into the wooden plank. Her ragged skirt and the lower half of her body fell away from her torso, trailing intestines and a spurt of blood. Wasting no time, Steve reached into the body cavity and ripped out a twisted mass of ribs and organs, essentially turning the chu into a grotesque puppet. Shoving a much larger stick up into her hollowed-out torso, he placed the whole scarecrow-like invention beside the dazed Sonee and started speaking for it like a ventriloquist. "Oh, Doctor Stee-eve, we're ready for you!"

With a final gasp, the Rosey shuddered and died.

"Excellent," said Steve. "Nurse, hand me my scalpel."

"Yes, Doctor," said Steve, passing himself the kukri.

"Now our best course of action would be to make three sizable incisions…here, here, and here," said Steve, poking Chris-Chan's flabby gut in three different places. The Sonee let out three more screams of pain as the sharp point pierced its skin. "Then we'll simply extract the excess fat."

"Sounds like a plan, Doctor," said Steve.

"Indeed," said Steve. "Shall we, Nurse?"

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!" shrieked the Sonee as the kukri entered its belly and slit it wide open with all the ease of a jacket being unzipped. Writhing and wailing in agony, it hardly noticed as Steve peeled back a large flap of skin and began scraping away the yellow adipose tissue beneath the surface. Twice more the knife plunged down and twice more Steve performed the same horrific operation. By the time he'd finished extracting the excess fat, Chris-Chan's mutilated torso had shrunk to the size of a normal Sonee's, and a quivering pile of bloodied fatty tissue lay beside it. Unfortunately for Steve, the feral had also crashed into slumber…or, in this case, unconsciousness. The sheer amount of pain and panic it had endured during its "surgery" had caused it to pass out.

"We're losing him!" the Jerkop yelled, and knocked the scarecrow Rosey right off the table with a single dramatic sweep of his arm. "Dammit, Chris-Chan, don't you die on me! Nurse! Get me the defibrillator, stat!" He placed his hands flat, one over the other, on the dying Sonee's chest. "CLEAR!"

Steve pushed down, hard. The unconscious infant exploded beneath his palms, spraying its insides all over the picnic table as if it had been some kind of water balloon packed with meat and blood. The tiny skull crunched, and soon pinky-grey pieces of brain were mixing together with the flattened mess that covered most of the table's surface.

"Time of death, oh-now-hundred hours," Steve muttered solemnly as he rose to his feet and plucked a few bone shards out from between his fingers. "Next!"

Kevin didn't know whether to be shocked, disgusted, terrified, or impressed. Maybe a bit of all four. Steve was, without a doubt, the most disturbingly creative Jerkop he'd ever met in the entire PVCC, although he had to admit that Kuri was doing well enough on her own end. She'd wound the chain of one of the swings around a Rosey, lashing it to the crossbar at the top of the swing set. When she was satisfied with her handiwork, she grabbed the attached seat and pulled it down, hard. The contracting chain literally squished the creature to bits, sending body parts and burst organs raining down on her from above.

"Come on, Kevin!" she called, waving through the red mist that surrounded her.

"There's a bunch still inside," Steve hinted, nodding toward the large structure in the center of the playground. "Go nuts."

Kevin shook his head to clear it and immediately snapped out of his observation state. Unless he started stepping up his game, Steve, Kuri, Allie, and Sugar were going to kill all the hoglets themselves.

Readying the big hunting knife, he stepped forward and entered the playground. The feral chus immediately pressed themselves as far back against the plastic-coated steel bars as they could. One Rosey screamed and made for the slide, perhaps thinking she might make a quick exit down the slippery plastic chute. It might have worked, too, had she not stupidly made her presence known to Steve.

As she jumped in and desperately pushed herself forward, the Jerkop's kukri burst through the center of the slide, its sharpened edge pointed directly between her rapidly-approaching legs. The little creature struggled to slow herself down, pinwheeling her armstubs uselessly in the air, but there was nothing she could do – gravity was in control now.

"WOSEEEEEEEY!"

The Rosey slammed into the blade at full speed, crotch first. The impact didn't quite bisect her…the knife only stopped when it had cut halfway through her ribcage, splitting her lungs and heart.

"Damn." Steve peeked out from beneath the slide, surveyed his handiwork, and shook his head in disappointment. "They never go all the way through." He reached up and yanked out the kukri, letting the clothespin Rosey slide the rest of the way down on a trail of her own blood. Her own intestines had spilled out of the rift where her legs joined the rest of her body and now hung free like pinkish-blue ropes.

Kevin walked up to the play structure and reached through the bars without a second thought. A Sonee tried to bat his fingers away with its armstubs, while another feral actually attempted to bite him. Fortunately, this one was far younger than the chus he'd seen in the sewers. Had it been just a few weeks older, it might have been able to pierce the Jerkop's skin. The Sonee's toothless jaws snapped and nibbled at the tip of his thumb, dealing about as much damage as a very light pinch.

"Gmmph-gmmmph," it mumbled around the thick finger in its mouth.

Kevin had had enough. All of his curiosity was long gone by now, replaced only by irritation and vengeance. Clenching his hand into a fist, he drew back his arm and lashed out, punching the feral dead center in the face. The Sonee reeled back with a yelp of pain, but Kevin lunged forward before it could get too far away. Grabbing the stunned chu around its torso, he withdrew his hand back through the bars.

"Goo-gooooOOIIEEEEEEE-" CRUNCH! The Sonee's head snapped forward as its spine shattered instantly. The chubby little body – too big to fit between the painted steel bars - folded inward as Kevin pulled it right through the side of the play structure. By the time he'd wrenched it free, the feral resembled nothing more than a crumpled and crushed doll. A quarter inch of bloody bone protruded from its shoulders where its neck had snapped, and the head now dangled limply from a stringy cluster of tendons and spinal cord. Somehow, horrifically, the creature was still alive, albeit completely paralyzed and wheezing for breath that wouldn't come.

Grasping the Sonee's head with his other hand, Kevin ripped the entire thing clean off and tossed it back into the structure for the surviving ferals to scream at. It was pretty much the same as uncorking a wine bottle, only much more satisfying. For a few moments, he thought of tipping the decapitated corpse up like a fuzzy beer stein and drinking its contents, but common sense prevailed in the end. Anyway, the foul little demons probably all had a good two dozen diseases apiece, and he wasn't particularly looking forward to gulping down a mouthful of tainted chu-juice. With a satisfied smirk, he threw the headless body away and reached through the bars for a second victim.

A choking, strangled shriek rang out from the sandbox. Kuri had discovered a pair of Roseys trying to hide beneath the surface, using tiny drinking straws they'd found in the trash to breathe. She'd unearthed one, but not before forcing a few lumps of sand down the tube into its mouth. The feral was now stumbling around like Al after a particularly intense poker night, clutching at her throat as she wheezed and coughed up the grit in her lungs. Ignoring the panicked throes of her first victim, Kuri tapped the sandbox gently with her fingers, edging nearer and nearer to the buried Rosey. She bent down to the straw and watched it quiver as the little creature below desperately sucked in air.

Without a word, Kuri took a deep breath, closed her lips around the end of the straw, and blew.

Whump! A bulge appeared under the surface as the Rosey swelled up and burst like an overfilled balloon, her lungs and belly expanding so fast that her entire chest cavity ruptured before she even realized what had happened. The sand quickly turned red as a thick bloodstain spread outward from the point of the explosion. Kuri didn't even bother digging out the remains.

"Arrrrhgh…ghhrrrrgrgrgh….woseyurgh...hrrrrrgh…guhhhhhh…" wheezed the other Rosey. The sand it had managed to hack up was now turning red. Staggering forward, it tripped and fell over the side of the sandbox with a squishy thud.

Kuri decided that it would be more entertaining to let the little retard heave its own lungs out. She had other babies to kill. In fact…

A panicked squeak sounded behind one of the picnic tables. She looked up to see a Sonee trying its very best to conceal its misshapen body behind a wooden table leg. Unfortunately for it, that "very best" concealment left both of its armstubs and ears poking out for the world to see.

The Jerkop rolled her eyes. This was almost too easy.

The frightened feral never even had a chance. Kuri snatched it up by its long, pointed ears, shaking her captive in midair as it shrieked and bawled in immense pain. Raising her tekko-kagi, she punched the Sonee right in the torso. The three sharp steel claws impaled it instantly, but Kuri wasn't done yet. She carefully pushed the feral's body all the way down to the weapon's hilt, firmly securing it in place so she could keep on killing the others while it was still alive.

On the opposite side of the playground, Steve was exercising his sadistic side through his new unofficial job as a Sonee-surgeon. He'd grabbed another of the little yellow-and-brown chus from the dwindling population within the play structure and had placed it down on the picnic table where Chris-Chan had met his end. The creature struggled helplessly, beating against his hands with its tiny armstubs. When that failed, it squeezed its eyes shut and fired off a tiny spark from its cheeks, perhaps hoping that this would somehow make the big nasty stranger let go.

"Oh, stop that," scolded the Jerkop, and upended the Sonee on its head. He looked puzzled, shook it gently, then tapped the creature at various points on its stomach, behind the tail, right above its feet, and around its pelvis. The hoglet continued crying as blood rushed to its head, but was only able to kick its captor now. And seeing as how it didn't have any legs, this escape attempt worked about as well as the spark had.

Kevin glanced up from the Rosey he was currently disemboweling to see what his squad leader was doing. Steve was obviously looking for something on the Sonee, but he had no idea what on earth it could possibly…

"BINGO!" yelled Steve in delight as he finally located the correct nerve point half an inch below the navel. A tiny red pickle instantly slid out through a hidden flap of skin between the little chu's legs. Suspending the crying feral with one hand, the Jerkop raised his knife and began batting the dangling organ back and forth with the tip of the blade.

The Sonee didn't like this at all, and assaulted his ears with a fresh wave of sobs.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH! WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!"

"Shut up." Steve placed the kukri on the table, inserted two fingers into his victim's mouth, and forced it open. The Sonee tried to bite down, but without teeth or adequate jaw muscles, there was no way it could defend itself. In less than two seconds, the Jerkop had it by the tongue. "Didn't your mommy ever teach you it's not polite to talk back to your elders?" He pinched his fingers shut, tearing out the wet piece of flesh. "Of course she didn't. That's a lot better, don't you think?"

"AAGHHHGURURGGEEURGH!" shrieked the Sonee through the gout of blood filling its mouth. It grasped helplessly for the severed tongue in Steve's fingers, perhaps believing it could somehow reattach the entire thing if it could just grab hold of it…

The Jerkop rolled his eyes and flicked the tongue away with his thumb and index finger, putting at least three yards between it and the now-speechless Sonee. Flipping the chu upside down again to make sure it didn't choke to death on its own blood, he gripped it by its feet and eyed the revolting half-inch of red skin dangling from its crotch.

"You mutants make me sick," he spat in revulsion. "You're all just fuzzy parasitic lumps of cancer that your parents threw out here because they wanted to keep fucking each other all day." He pressed the edge of his kukri against the creature's belly and began inching it upward, shaving off the soft peach-colored fur like a barber with a razor. "Well, at least that won't happen to any of your kids when you evolve. Not after this."

Shick!

"HURGHEEEEEEEEAUGH!"

The sharp steel blade sheared right through the Sonee's penis, lopping it off at the base. The little red pickle spun as it fell, smacked against the table, then rolled between the wooden boards and dropped to the ground. Steve glanced down, lifted a boot, and nonchalantly crushed the organ into nothing more than a smear on the concrete. Turning back to his victim, he gave the shrieking feral a gentle squeeze and chuckled as a thin stream of blood squirted out of the ragged wound. It looked as if it were pissing cranberry juice.

Kevin couldn't tear his eyes away.

Steve raised his knife to finish the job, then shrugged and tossed the neutered Sonee over his shoulder. It hit the ground hard…unfortunately for it, not hard enough to kill it or even break its legs. All it could do was lie there helplessly, moaning and twitching in a haze of indescribable pain and misery.

"You'll be fine," chuckled the Jerkop heartlessly. "Enjoy the rest of your life, you fuckin' abomination." He sat down and wiped his knife off on the wooden bench, then glanced up at Kevin, who was still staring at him in awe. "Hey, there's still a few left. Don't be shy; go finish that one and get another before…"

"Honey Badger Lead, Tomgirl Lead, come back, over," Jackie's familiar voice crackled through the walkie-talkie on his shoulder.

Steve sighed and sheathed the kukri. "Go ahead, Tomgirl Lead, over."

"Steve, we're compromised. Blanca's squad accidentally woke up the hive. EHPF are swarming all over the place – they'll be heading to the abandoned zone as soon as they realize we're after their babies. Get your team out of there as fast as you can, over."

"Copy. See you back at Slumberland. Out." The sadistic gleam quickly faded out of Steve's eyes as he clipped the radio back on to his shoulder strap. "All right, playtime's over! Allie! Kevin!" - he called to the two Jerkops – "Round up any stragglers and bring them to the trash can. Kuri, finish up and give them a hand. Sugar, safety on!"

The honey badger looked up from the carcass of her fifth larva and growled. Her muzzle was stained red, and she seemed irritated that Steve had interrupted her meal. Nevertheless, she shook herself off and scurried back to her place at the Jerkop's side. Steve knelt and patted her on the head. "Good girl."

Atop the teeter-totter, Allie let out a quiet sigh of disappointment and looked down at the Sonee she'd been torturing. Its arms now hung in tatters from its shoulders. She'd force-fed each stub into the joint where the equipment's frame connected to the crossbar, slowly squishing away the meaty little tubes with every rise and fall of the teeter-totter. Picking up the moaning chu in one hand, she quickly smashed its head against the steel frame in the same manner as one would crack open an egg. It was an act of mercy, compared to what she'd been putting it through.

Kevin was working on his third victim with a large wood chip when Steve's order reached his ears. Disappointed that the fun had to end so soon, he picked up the Rosey's twitching, splinter-ridden body and hurried over to join the rest of his squad.

Steve bent down and heaved the garbage can back upright with one push, showing no interest in the terrified crying and squeaks of surprise emanating from within. Kevin knew there had to be at least three more larvae hiding beneath the trash. Kuri arrived with a tiny Rosey and promptly tossed her into the wastebasket. The chu squealed in fear and surprise as she bounced off the side of the can and slid down to join her fellow ferals in the stinking pit.

"You too, Kevin," urged Kuri. "Come on, hurry up."

Kevin stepped forward and dropped his Rosey in without a word.

"Right. Any others still alive out there?" asked Steve. "That last one I did doesn't count – he's as good as dead right now."

Something rustled next to Kevin's foot. Glancing down at the layer of trash strewn about down there, he noticed a flash of yellow fur and a terrified green eye staring back up at him. A lone survivor.

For a moment, he considered just leaving the Sonee there and forgetting to tell the others that he'd seen it. What would the little creature do, now that all its brothers and sisters were dead or (in one case) sterilized? It had no home, no family, not even anyone to play with it. All alone in the world, surrounded by death and pain…it was almost pitiful.

Almost.

Images of Jake's mutilated body and the nauseating corpse pile in the sewers flashed through Kevin's head as he reached down and plucked the Sonee right out of its hiding place. No. They weren't cute. They were only Chandler's bastard grandchildren, born to dispose of anyone who dared to oppose the mayor. Kevin remembered how he'd just stood there in horror, unable to move as the little abominations swarmed his injured friend like hungry maggots, chomping and biting and ripping and tearing and…

"Hey!" Steve smiled as he noticed the struggling fugitive in Kevin's grasp. "Nice find." He nodded to the trash can. "Toss it in with the rest. We're leaving."

"What about them?" asked Allie, kicking the wastebasket as Kevin stepped forward and dropped the Sonee into the pit on top of the others. It landed with a muffled yelp. "What do we do with them?"

"That's where you and Trogdor come in," replied Steve. "Kuri? Soak 'em."

Kuri shrugged off her backpack, unzipped it, reached inside, and withdrew an unmarked aluminum bottle. She twisted off the cap and upended it over the mouth of the garbage can, coating the interior with a clear liquid. The unmistakable smell of gasoline quickly saturated the night air.

"We're going to send their parents a message," the Jerkop explained as Allie retrieved her flamethrower from the grass. "That no matter how many loyalists Chandler throws at us…no matter how many larvae his chus shit out for us to exterminate…no matter how many of our brothers and sisters fall in battle…the Honey Badgers don't care."

"Honey Badgers don't give a shit," added Kuri.

"Damn right," said Allie, and lifted Trogdor the Burninator's mouth over the fuel-soaked wastebasket. "For Jake."

"For Jake," replied Kevin, Steve, and Kuri solemnly.

FWOOOSH! Allie gave the trigger a quick squeeze and stepped back as a sheet of fire exploded out of the garbage can and climbed a full three feet upward before it dissipated into smoke. Muffled cries and thumps began emanating from the makeshift oven as the little chus pawed helplessly at the walls of their prison in a futile, desperate attempt to escape the roaring inferno. The sides of the cylinder began to glow; the combustible trash had burst into flames and was now roasting the Sonees and Roseys alive.

Finally, the noises from the can grew silent. In the distance, a siren blared.

"Let's go," Steve muttered. "Let their parents handle the cleanup." He reached for the walkie-talkie on his shoulder and twisted the dial to the right frequency. "Truck Six, Honey Badger Lead, come back. We're holding at McIntire Park with Sparkers incoming, over."

"Truck Six here. You ready for extraction, Steve? Over."

"Copy," replied the Jerkop. "We got what we came for. Get us back home, ASAP. Over."

"Good job. ETA four minutes. Out."

One hour later, Slumberland

"So how'd the debriefing go?" Matt asked from his seat beside the fireplace as Allie and Kevin trudged wearily through the door. Most of the other Honey Badgers were fast asleep, Kuri was in the shower room washing off her paint, and Steve had stayed behind to speak with Al about the next day's assignments. At the moment, the three of them were the only ones still awake in the barracks.

Kevin slumped onto the sofa, and was quickly joined by Allie. "About as well as you'd think. We fucked up, no questions there."

"How many times am I gonna have to say this? It wasn't your fault," snapped Allie. "You'd never even seen a feral before – how were you supposed to know they were waiting for you?"

"I just…I can't believe it." Matt stared at the floor and took a deep breath. "He was my best friend. We…we met each other in middle school. Then all this bullshit happened with Chandler and… and now…ah, fuck it all. Damn it. Damn it."

The Jerkop sniffed and covered his eyes with his hands. Kevin could hear him sobbing quietly over the crackling fireplace, and his own eyes grew moist as he remembered those days of patrolling the Shopping Center as a mall cop. He'd had a future then…a brand new life in CWCville with boundless possibilities and a circle of friends. Now that future had been shattered, that life was no more, and with Jake dead, the only old friends he had left were Matt and Allie.

A single tear rolled down Kevin's cheek. Then another, and another, and another, until he could no longer suppress the sadness that had been building inside him for the last few hours. Hurriedly wiping his eyes on his sleeve, he stood up and headed for the sleeping room before either one of the Jerkops could say anything.

Kevin slowly pulled off his jacket and boots as if in a trance and placed them in a pile next to the worn floor mattress he slept on. Jexis, Amanda, and Nick were already asleep around him, still unaware that one of their squadmates now lay dead and devoured in the tunnels beneath CWCville. How would they react when Al broke the bitter news the next morning? Sadness? Rage? Indifference?

Angry thoughts filled Kevin's head as he lay down and closed his eyes. Why him? Why had fate chosen to inflict so much collateral damage upon him and his friends, yet kept Chandler and his Electric Hedgehog Pokémon alive, wealthy, and privileged? What a cruel world. What a stupid, cruel world.

He couldn't lose them. Not now, not ever. No matter what, he wouldn't let Chandler take them away like he'd taken Billy, Laurie, and now Jake. He could never forget the people lying there in that corpse pile beneath the city…those glassy dead eyes that seemed to stare directly into his no matter which way he turned…the pale cold skin and horrific eternal expressions of pain and misery…

But now the faces had changed in his mind. Instead of the unknown citizens from before, most of the dead people had transformed into someone he knew. Laurie and another woman lay hand in hand on top, locked together in eternity just for the crime of loving one another. Jake and Matt and Billy were there too, all cold and lifeless and crumpled on the ground. Kel was slumped on her side with her head pressed down against the pile, next to a horribly burned young woman he somehow knew to be Allie.

And beneath them all, right where he'd found the young dead girl, lay his little sister Lucy.

A hand shakily touched his arm. Kevin opened his eyes to see Allie staring down at him pleadingly. Her eyes were shiny with tears.

Can I? she mouthed. Please?

Kevin nodded sleepily and rolled over. He felt a slight fuzzy sensation in his chest as Allie gratefully climbed in beside him, but was far too tired to ask what was wrong or if he could do anything to help. It might have been for the best, though. By the time she lay down and pulled up the blankets, he had already crashed halfway into slumber.

The two Jerkops quietly drifted off to sleep side by side, and were soon lost in pleasant kaleidoscopic dreams of dying chu larvae, Beatles music, and peppermints.