Disclaimer: I don't own any characters except Irbis and several innocent short-lived bystanders; everything else is Marvel's only.
5. First Lesson: Preys and Predators
Walking through the rocky, darkened landscape carrying Irbis's dead weight over his shoulder, which to make it all worse still insisted in remaining sore, Creed was not a happy man.
"I can walk, I can walk…" He snorted, repeating Irbis's shy attempt at making herself less of a hindrance. "Ya can shut yer yap an' keep it that way, 's what ya can do!"
Creed wondered how far off they might be from a road and houses. He needed to eat if he wanted his body to react faster. What in Hell had they poisoned him with!?
"I'm sorry I fainted." She sighed softly for the one thousandth time, "I'm sorry, but I couldn't control. I tried! I'm sorry…" And for the one thousandth time, she obeyed his growl and became silent.
Every time she mentioned fainting on him, not remembering what else she had done on him, he could once more feel the warmth down his back. And every time he had a hard time believing the blasted kid had actually gone so far as to throw up all over his back. Belong to his world? The blasted moron didn't belong to anyone's world! Growling without even realizing it anymore, he once more regretted her initiative of fainting all by herself, as they were reaching the surface, since he'd have loved to have knocked her out himself. Instead, he had just thrown her on the ground and shred his shirt to pieces. He felt on the verge of going berserk, but that was something he couldn't afford to do so he just growled and stomped onwards.
Then, at long last, he saw them: a row of half a dozen houses providentially perked on the top of an elevation and separated by a few hundred feet. Moving with renewed energy, he chose a gully that offered a better path up the cliff side of the elevation. Soon, he started moving more stealthily, trying to choose the best target. The first two-floor house had a closed garage and no extra car on the drive-way. The second one had an extra-car, though. Creed dropped Irbis and surveyed the two houses carefully.
"Are you going to rob dat car?"
Creed turned to her, growling, which for some reason that eluded Creed, surprised the girl. It would be so easy to just beat her face to a fine, bloody pulp.
"No, ya moron," he snarled, "I ain't gonna rob that car. The assholes would report it stolen first thing in the morning an' those mercenaries would know which car t' be on the lookout fer."
Taking a deep breath to control his rage, he decided it wasn't the girl's fault but the drugs'; they were driving him over the edge. In a random attempt to belly that violent impulse, he wet his lips and kept talking. "What I'm gonna do is get in that first house, kill everyone in it an' then steal their car, which should be in the garage. That way, there ain't gonna be no one alive ta report it in, an' the neighbours won't notice there's a car missing."
Irbis frowned attentively while he was speaking and bit her lip when he finished.
"But if dey don't go to work, deir bosses don't go try to contact dem and den call de police to check dem?"
"On a Sunday?!" He got up without loking at her, to avoid any temptations. "Follow my every move. Quietly, if ya think ya can manage that much."
Creed entered the house easily. He didn't even look for an open or unlocked window, he simply went straight for the flimsy back door, extending his claws and opening a small hole that rendered the lock useless. One minute, and almost no noise. Irbis, probably afraid she might get on his way, decided to stay quietly behind, in the neatly cleaned kitchen; but the killer had other ideas and motioned for her to follow.
He kept an ear on the girl as she followed him through the darkened house, avoiding banging onto several plant pots; up the carpeted stairs and down a short corridor with innumerous family and holiday photos lined up and down the walls; following under his shadow all the way to the door to the master bedroom. Irbis stood very still as he approached the bed and swiftly covered the mouths of both wife and husband and shook them up. The couple's wrinkled arms flailed around momentarily before clasping desperately to his arms.
"Not a sound," Creed spoke coldly, "and ya won't get hurt."
He waited a moment to give the couple the chance to calm down. Then, when he let go of their faces, he went around the bed and put a feet on its bottom, resting his left arm on it.
"Whatch'ya doin' tomorrow." He said it like an order, not a question.
Both wife and husband were in their late seventies or early eighties. The woman was thin and delicate, too frightened to say anything; the man wasn't fat all over, but did carry a large belly and looked around as if he was trying to find an escape out of the room. As if! It was the woman who answered: nothing, just the usual...
"Ain't that lucky!" Creed grinned at Irbis, repeating the old folks' answer. "Nothin' scheduled but cookin', readin' and watchin' TV." Looking back at his victims, he continued: "How's about family an' friends. Anyone's comin' over, or are ya expected ta call someone, or…"
"We usually phone our daughter and grandchildren after dinner," the old lady said softly, her body trembling as she kept the white sheet up to her chest.
The mutant once more turned to look at Irbis, looking straight into her eyes before going over to the old lady's side. In a quick motion he grabbed both by the neck and dropped them. They flopped down one over the other as Creed walked over to Irbis.
"You broke deir neck." Irbis commented softly, stiffly.
Creed looked back at his handy-job. "Yupe. Unlike popular say-so, I don't usually goes about rippin' guts apart an' gettin' everythin' bloodied unless my vics get me really pissed. Or unless I'm bein' paid fer it, obviously."
He failed to mention that, at this point, if he got a sniff of blood he'd probably go berserk. He looked back at her. "D'ya remember yer crap 'bout my world, where we goes about killin' an' dyin', and yer world o' perfect innocence and beds o' roses?"
Irbis frowned a 'yes', not understanding his point.
"Great. Now tell me, which world d'ya think these two belonged ta, huh? Yers? 'Cause, ya see, if they'd been smart, they'd set up a surveillance system connected ta the cops; they'd have good, solid doors and good alarms. Maybe even a guard dog. If they had had all that, I'd have moved on to an easier vic. As it is, they's dead. Why? 'Cause there's one single world out here, and it's nothin' but a world of preys and predators. Ya either line up with the predators, or with the preys. Take yer pick!"
She held his gaze steadily but didn't say anything.
It wasn't nine yet, when Creed got off the I-10 onto a small town by the name of Sierra Blanca. He quickly located a small diner and pulled over. He was tired and cranky; almost too tired to go berserk, actually. He'd been driving for three hours and a half while not having slept anything that night; the hours he'd been unconscious did certainly not count as sleeping. To make it worse, the old couple had been vegetarians so there hadn't been anything substantial for him to eat so far. Irbis, on the other hand, not only had taken an assortment of fruit which she had spent the first hours nibbling on, as she had fallen asleep and napped carefreely most of the drive. If he hadn't been so exhausted, he'd have kept her painfully awake just to relief his annoyance.
He looked at the restaurant from the car. They didn't have time to waste in a restaurant, no matter how hungry he might be. He woke the girl up when he grabbed her by her sweater and shook her roughly about a couple times to help her dispel any remaining sleepiness. Then, he pulled her closer to him, her hands gripping his arm, and silenced her complaints with a single glare.
"Ask fer four menus. Take-away." He shoved Irbis backwards and threw some money over to her. "Bring a couple beers and make sure they're cold."
As she walked away, Creed rested his head on the driving wheel. He needed to rest. The mercenaries would try to get on their trail – if they weren't already – and he'd rather not face them before having the chance to stop by his hideout in Dallas and pack up some toys. He swore under his breath. The one thing really pissing him off were those darned poisoned bullets, not to mention the IV they'd hooked him up to, according to Irbis, and which had kept him out. His healing factor hadn't got around clearing his system from the darned toxin; which meant he needed some toys if he was going to face the punks. He wondered for the millionth time what toxin they had used that could take his healing factor so long to push through.
He felt his muscles brokenly relaxed. His body might be able to put up with tons of abuse when his adrenaline levels were up, but when they went down and he relaxed… it was a whole different story. The warm breeze from the open window blanketed him, and he felt his body's imperious demand for rest sweep over him. He closed his eyes, telling himself he couldn't sleep just yet. Even if that was really the best he could do for his body to finish mending itself. He'd have to be in his best condition soon.
Steps on the gravel.
Creed forced his eyes open and stared at the black plastic of the steering wheel. Then he rested his chin on his hands, which were on the top of the wheel, and looked at the parallel long dark paths of asphalt cutting through the dull, light brownish land; cluttered with scattered buildings for the time being. Soon they'd be out on open land, though, and even scattered signs of human presence outside the highway would be sparse.
Irbis opened the door and got in, immediately giving him an account of what she had bought, how much it had cost, and finishing by out-stretching a hand with the change. Creed looked at it lazily.
"My lunch." He snorted. "And my beer."
He straightened himself and stretched his limbs as best he could without exiting the vehicle while she got the requested items from the brown bags.
"Mr Creed," she essayed softly as she handed him his food, "I know we don't have very time… I sleeped more dan you last night, and now in de car, so I'm not really very tired. Do you want me to drive while you eat?"
"No." And he didn't. He hated going in a car driven by someone else.
With a sigh, he got off and fully stretched every muscle in him. Then he got in the back.
"I'm gonna take a nap. Ya wake me up 'cause of any of yer bad drivin', I'll have ya runnin' after the car fer the rest o' the journey. Got it?"
Irbis shot out of the car with an earnest 'yes, sir' and quickly took the driver's seat for herself. Creed tried to relax. They had hundreds of straight ahead miles before reaching Dallas. How badly could the girl mess it up?
Murdock jumped off the helicopter and quickly made his way to the entrance. He'd been born piloting, as far as he could tell, and all his life had revolved around planes and helicopters. He particularly enjoyed scarying his colleagues with unexpected acrobatics, which had earned him the code name Murdock, inspired on the A-Team's crazy pilot; but his strongest affinity was with the flying aces of the First World War, and to prove it, he wore goggles of those days everytime he flew. Unfortunately, that habit had only underlined the code name he'd been attributed, instead of something like Red Baron, or simply Ace, as he'd preferred.
Taking off the goggles at the headquarters entrance, he gazed into the eye of a hidden camera, waiting for the machine to check his identity before unlocking the access door. Behind him, his colleagues were helping an old man out; the Colonel staying closer to him. Murdock hurried into the first room and went directly for the coffee machine. There was nothing he enjoyed more after a long flight than to have a nice, strong cup of coffee.
The room looked like a club, a snooker table in the middle with some targets for darts hanging on the walls, not to mention a wide flat screen next to a shelf filled with DVDs. The coffee machine was hidden amidst a collection of drinks at the bar.
"Murdock, I'm goin' down ta check on the mark." Stallone, blond and with a symmetric face, unlike his namesake, jogged passed the room. "Doc needs his blue bag ASAP, so ya better fetch it."
Doc, as his uninspired codename implied, was the group's medic. He was an organisation freak and enjoyed colour-coding the world around him, to make up for the general lack of order in life. As it was, he had organised several green bags, which carried emergency stuff for any kind of wound, strategically located at the headquarters and most used transports; and a yellow bag, which had all the required instruments to make the most reticent man sing like a bird. The blue bag wasn't used much, since it included medicines and what-not catering to everyday problems the men just needn't worry about, like high-collesterol, or colds, or whatever.
Having just switched the machine on, Murdock couldn't see a valid reason why he should abandon his position for the said blue bag, of all the things, especially when Froggie was just entering. A young blond whose French parents had become American before he was born, his French was as fluent as his English, a proficiency that was closely followed by a handful of other languages, including computer gibberish, as Murdock called it. Not that Murdock had anything against gibberish – he had a particular interest in flying gibberish, modern and old alike.
"Hey, Froggie. Get Doc's blue bag, will ya? I'm fixin' some coffee t'go 'round."
"Get some beers t' go 'round instead; not everyone's a coffee junkie." That unhealthy lack of interest in coffee, though, was something Murdock took personally.
The Colonel, piercing blue eyes and short brownish hair, was getting in as Froggie left, helping the elderly man – Torini, their employer – who was gasping and walking gingerly, his face terribly pale.
"There you go, Mister," Doc was saying, "just sit down and relax. Ya'll be as good as new in no time."
Murdock hoped the death of his men might have something to do with his sickly colour. The Colonel had warned the old man that Sabretooth should be killed as soon as possible, not cooped up for later termination. Murdock just hoped the mutant wouldn't find a way to somehow fight back when the old geezer went down to kill him. Their group might have avoided any damage during capture, but three men were dead and three more nearly so because of one half-senile bastard, and it didn't matter that they had been extras the bastard himself had insisted on participating in the hunt. Murdock simply didn't want any more hiccups in this job.
Dobberman, a giant black man who'd been acclaimed as Mister Universe for a few minutes before icing his target, a judge in the competition, entered and closed the door behind him. Murdock handed him a cup of hot coffee and he nodded a silent thanks. He'd had his tongue chopped off some months after the Mr. Universe stunt, and had become a sullen mute after that. Nevertheless, he enjoyed a good, strong coffee more than any other man in the group, Murdock aside.
Doc got up to see why his bag was taking so long to arrive when both Stallone and Froggie reached the door. "About time," he grumbled taking the bag off the soldier's hands. Above his head, Stallone signalled earnestly for Colonel, making both Murdock and Dobberman frown. Doc hesitated only a moment, but he had to make sure their employer wouldn't die before the job was over and their fees duly paid. Moreover, the blond man had asked for the Colonel, nobody else.
"What?" The Colonel asked in a low voice, going over the door and noticing Stallone's blanched face more clearly.
"We got a problem, Sir. Sabretooth..." He gulped. "Sabretooth broke loose."
The Colonel cursed and shook his head. They should have killed the damned mutant right when they had the chance. "Fine. Get as much footage of the mutant's movements in the cave as possible so we can plan our way in without any more casualties. And tell Greg I wanna know how the hell he got lose ASAP. Where is he, anyway?"
The man hesitated and avoided his boss's gaze. Bennet 'Colonel' Wilson frowned, suddenly worried. "What? Is Greg hurt? Is that why he didn't..."
"Colonel..." The seasoned soldier paled, as he finally recognised the look in his man's eyes. "Greg didn't make it."