The Hollowed, page 32
part #1 of Arcanum Endeavour Series
Before the man could answer, if he was going to answer at all, Dreadnought walked by.
There was Hell on Dread’s mind.
He stomped his boot and pressed the tread into the dying man’s chest. It bled like water squeezed from a sponge.
“Did you radio!?” Dread screamed at him in Mandarin.
“Yes!” Blood spat from his lips as he said it. He tried to push the boot from his chest. “Yes!” he wheezed again. “Yes! We called for a helicopter!”
Dreadnought removed the boot and the trooper drew a breath of agony.
“Anything else you’d like to ask?” Dread said to Apex. Even the team commander was amazed.
“Nope.”
Dreadnought shot the man and then shot the other one as well.
“Problem solved, then.”
“We’ve got five minutes before that chopper gets here,” Apostle said. “Let’s start moving bodies.”
The rotor-wash threw dust and smoke from the mine into a swirling tornado. Apex and Dreadnought stood behind a row of nine bodies, pinning their black baseball caps to their heads with one hand and holding their tactical goggles on with the other.
To everyone else, they were the two survivors of an unfortunate mine attack.
When the chopper touched down and the ramp cranked open, four armed guards spilled onto the road. Dreadnought’s grip on his rifle tightened but Apex played it off cool. Fake it ‘til you make it, he told himself.
He pointed to the bodies in front of them and reached down to grab the wrists of one of the wounded that he shot. Without a moment’s hesitation or even a second thought, the four helicopter guards started lifting dead bodies and ferrying them onto the chopper.
No one said anything.
With the nine bodies loaded, the four helicopter guards reboarded the aircraft. Apex and Dreadnought followed, disappearing into the belly of the beast as Apostle watched from a nearby building. The ramp lifted closed and sealed the two Hollowed inside.
Apostle said a prayer for them as the chopper lifted off and banked out of the cityscape. Then he made his way back to Kairos.
Dreadnought and Apex sat next to each other. With their goggles, caps, and stolen respirators, their faces were masked without suspicion. They just looked like tactical operators.
The helicopter ride was silent, as Apex hoped it would be. With supposed friends and brothers-in-arms laying at their feet, no one was willing to strike up a conversation with these hardcore-looking soldiers.
Both Dreadnought and Apex did their best to put on battle-weary body language. They rested their heads back and avoided eye contact, hunched forward and deliberately looked away from the bodies, and shook their heads intermittently.
Not even the pilots asked any questions.
But Dreadnought’s heart was on fire the entire time. He was seated across from four hostile targets that were unaware of his affiliation. Sure, he’d been captured before and been in the presence of the enemy when they weren’t shooting at him, but this was different.
All they had to do was ask a question, make a comment, or do anything that he was expected to also do as friendly personnel, and then it all would go south.
But while Dreadnought fretted about being inside an enemy helicopter, Apex was running contingency plans.
While Dread, Kairos, and especially Apostle thought that Apex enjoyed just the singular killing of Army personnel, the truth went deeper. His true satisfaction in the killing was rooted in the chaos it brought the Army. So, sitting in the helicopter with a plan to infiltrate the base and slip back out…that was just maddening, and it made Apex ecstatic.
The feeling of the helicopter bouncing on its suspension when it touched down on the helipad was bittersweet. They had arrived.
Silence on the helicopter made everything run smoothly. But the ride was over. They were in the camp and that brought new complications.
One of the helicopter guards hit the button to lower the ramp, and the hydraulics whirred it down to the tarmac.
Yellow lights flashed on pylons surrounding the helipads. They were the indicators that a medical evacuation was underway and that the choppers would be landing. A medical team was the first thing Apex and Dreadnought saw. Men and women in black uniforms with elastic gloves and the classic red-cross banded across their sleeves awaited with gurneys to transport the dead and wounded.
To keep in-character, they assisted in unloading the corpses. They passed dead soldiers down the line and to the gurneys where doctors and nurses wheeled them off the helipad to the back of an Army truck. Then the helicopter guards dismounted from the aircraft and Apex and Dreadnought followed.
For the first time, they stood inside the Army camp and got their first look. Everything they saw was vital to intelligence-gathering. They memorised anything they saw.
Jeeps were zipping around the helipads, some returning to their permanent position there and others leaving to ferry soldiers and officers to another location in the camp.
Then they came to their first snag.
One of the medical staff asked Dreadnought something. But it wasn’t in Mandarin. When the nurse asked, Dread put his hand on his rifle and looked to Apex.
“We’re under strict orders to speak the local language,” Apex jumped in before anything evolved and blew the mission. “Intelligence and security purposes.” The nurse nodded his head knowingly like it was just another day in a combat zone.
“Jump in the truck,” he said in Mandarin. “You should get examined by a medic at the aid station.”
They sat on the end of the bench in the back of the truck, sitting hunched under the canopy and looking out over the tailgate to continue the intelligence-gathering.
The camp unfolded in ways that The Hollowed never would have imagined. They bounced around in the back as the truck ran through potholes. The roads were dirt and gravel that was often reduced to mud with brown puddles. Soldiers walked from latrines back to their barracks wearing nothing but a towel and their combat boots. Personnel geared up for combat strolled through the alleyways and others were barely wearing anything that made them resemble a part of the Army. Rubbish was strewn about in the smaller alleyways. Soldiers sat on the small porches their demountable barracks had by the entrance and smoked cigarettes or gambled.
It was nothing more than a well-organised shanty town. Having so many people stuck inside a base didn’t appear to bode well with neither the base nor the personnel.
It was night-time when the truck rolled to a stop and they heard the engine shut off. Nothing but the street lamps, bon fires, and great halogen lights lit the camp now.
Along with the others riding in the back of the truck with them, Apex and Dread leapt out onto the ground. They stood outside one of the more permanent-looking structures, something the Army had put a little more effort into. Since the nurses and doctors began unloading the dead bodies and wheeling them inside this building, Apex assumed it was the morgue.
The two Hollowed made themselves invisible by grabbing each end of a stretcher and ferrying a corpse inside behind a gurney.
Two steel flap-doors entered them into a more organised world of sterilisation. White tiles and steel basins gave them the sickening chills like they had entered a chop-shop. One wall was lined with television-sized steel hatches. Dreadnought knew there were bodies in those slots. The weird part was that he knew he was responsible for some of them.
The coroner, or who they took as the coroner, directed them to put the stretcher on a steel slab at the far end of the room. They complied and headed off before a question was followed after it.
Apex nudged Dread after they put the body down and gestured to beside them. Two more steel flap-doors exited to another part of the building. They snuck out while the cadavers kept flooding into the morgue.
“We’re at the medical area,” Apex whispered to Dreadnought.
“Who are we looking for?”
“Apostle said to find a pathologist. They’d know what cancer looks like under a microscope.”
They headed down a hallway still made from tile and steel that wreaked of antiseptic and ammonia. If there were bodies constantly being stored there, courtesy of none other than The Hollowed, it made sense to drown out the stench that would undoubtedly follow.
When they waltzed through another set of flap-doors, they were taken unaware by the calming and upbeat reception music. The tile floor turned to green carpet, the smell wafted to vanilla and honey, and they found themselves surrounded by a dozen people.
They found the medical area, alright.
It was the waiting room for the non-combat aid station. Uniformed men and women sat around a coffee table perusing magazines with cups of coffee while Apex and Dreadnought stood in the centre of the room.
“Can someone tell me where I can find the pathologist?” Apex asked before someone else spoke. The receptionist, an enlisted man, pointed down the hallway on the other side of the room.
“The pathology lab is down there…why are you speaking Chinese?”
Apex, cool as a cucumber, drew the two vials with Kairos’ blood and held them up as evidence to prove they weren’t there to kidnap one of their specialists.
“New orders, under a new intelligence and security protocol. Local language only.” Apex tried not to sound rushed or nervous. “The issue to do so will be out soon. Which door was it?” he asked as they made headway for the corridor.
“Third door on your right,” said the receptionist.
“Thank you. It’s rather urgent.” Apex held his confidence like he knew exactly what he was doing, and marched down the hallway like he held sensitive material that he and his partner had just retrieved.
However, Dreadnought noticed one particular man in the waiting room.
The look on this soldier’s face was sceptical. His uniform sleeves were rolled up like no one else’s in the waiting room, and he had a tattoo of an ocean wave on his forearm. He looked trained; specially trained. The way he sat, the way his sleeves were rolled up, the watch he had on his wrist, and the kinds of boots he wore, they all spelled out that he was no regular infantry trooper. Dread tried not to stare.
They counted the doors as they went down the linoleum floored hallway until they came across the third door on their right.
Dreadnought closed the door behind them.
An officer, given the stripes on his uniform, was sitting behind a microscope when they entered. How convenient. He turned as they walked in and said something in another language.
“We’re under new intelligence and security orders to only use the local language. Do you understand?” Apex said. He liked how sophisticated and probable it sounded each time he repeated it.
“I understand. Is there something I can help you with?”
Dreadnought stood close to the door. It was just the officer in the room with his microscopes.
“There is,” Apex said. He drew his pistol and pointed it casually at the officer’s head.
But the officer laughed. Apex pegged the type of man they were dealing with. A sadist.
“The Hollowed…,” the officer sighed at the end of his chuckle. “…I’ve heard the stories, but I never thought I’d see them with my own eyes.”
“We’re in need of your services-
“Well, here I am. What do you need of me?” The officer crossed his legs and relaxed in his chair.
“Nice try, fucko. On the ground.” The officer cocked his head.
“Why?”
“Either get on the ground or I put you on the ground.”
After begrudgingly lowering himself to his stomach, Apex hadn’t moved.
“Hands out, dickwad,” Apex commanded. The officer complied and puts his arms out in front of him.
“I’m sure if you surrender, with the right information you give up, you can survive your trial,” the officer told them. Apex pressed the muzzle of his pistol to the back of the man’s head and stood on his fingertips so he didn’t try anything dumb.
“A trial? You really think you have the right to judge us?”
“You’re enemies of the Empire. You’ve committed…” The officer winced as Apex crushed the tread of his boots further into the man’s fingers. “…treason.”
“Treason, huh? In a country that’s not yours to a government that’s not ours?”
“Haven’t you…realised? The world is…our new Empire.”
The door opened.
The man with the ocean wave tattoo stepped into the room and paused.
Dread threw a punch before the door was completely open. It jabbed the side of the jaw and he stepped forward and threw the trooper over his hip to the floor, kicking the door closed in the process. He buried his knees into the soldier’s ribs.
It was okay. Apex had a plan for this.
“Take care of him,” Apex said as he holstered his pistol and pulled out cable-ties. “We’re taking this guy to go.” He restrained the doctor with the plastic ties, zipping them behind the man’s back and hoisting him to his feet.
As Dreadnought reached for his knife, the trooper found a second wind.
Even for a man of Dread’s size, he felt himself take to the air from the sheer strength the soldier exhibited. He crashed the ground.
“Son of a bitch…” Dread unclipped his rifle as quick as he could because he couldn’t open fire in the middle of an enemy base. The trooper was standing up just as fast.
When the enemy went for his sidearm, Dreadnought rushed forward and seized it, snapping it out of grip before a shot could be fired.
They tangled in close quarters, trading jabs and strikes in such close range that they were powered only by isolated muscles.
Dread threw a vicious headbutt and found an eyebrow which stunned them both. But this operator was tougher, stronger, and better trained than the henchmen they’d faced until now.
A kick that was only ever seen in movies swept Dreadnought’s legs out from under him and dropped him flat to his back. The trooper fell onto him and started throwing punches. There was a smile on the man’s face.
Apex was helpless. He could only keep the doctor secured because he couldn’t fire on the trooper giving Dread a beating without alerting base security.
But when one of the punches came down, Dread shifted his body and let it smash into the linoleum floor. With a grunt, he seized the arm and swung his leg to topple his adversary over so he was in the dominant position.
They continued this, trading blows and slapping hands and arms as they grappled and rolled, each trying to get the powerful position.
Eventually, Dread found himself kneeling over the top of the soldier and threw a punch with all of his bodyweight behind it. It was a shame it didn’t connect because it would’ve been a show-stopper. Instead, the trooper blocked it and delivered a rib-shot to Dread that reverberated across his entire lower-torso. He toppled off with a groan.
The soldier went back onto the offensive, even with blood seeping from his split lip. He had the determination of Apex and the former body of Kairos, which was a combination that could kill any of them.
Dread had to get back on his feet. His power came from a street fight, not a ground-fight. But the soldier was on him before he could muster the energy.
“Come on, you fucker…”
When the first punch was thrown, though, Dreadnought caught it. He dodged and pulled it to the side before whipping his leg over in a move that caught even this well-trained operator off-guard.
Dread threw the soldier off of him and scrambled to his feet. But the enemy tackled low, for the mid-section, and drove Dreadnought back into a stumble.
This was where Dreadnought’s size came to bear.
With his arms wrapped around the operator’s chest, Dread used the momentum and hoisted the body before releasing it mid-turn.
In a moment Apex would always bring up as long as he lived, he watched the trooper spin through the air and crash into the scientific equipment on the bench. Solutions spilled across the counter. Glass shattered beneath the body.
The trooper rolled off in a daze and hit the ground.
“Nobody…,” Dreadnought hissed under his breath. He unsheathed his knife and slapped his hand onto the soldier’s face, dragging him several feet by only the facial features and then turning him onto his stomach. “…stands in my fucking way.”
He slit the knife across from ear to ear.
“You’re coming with us now,” Apex said to his hostage.
They threw the pathologist to the ground and Dreadnought pulled a grenade from his gear.
It was unnerving for the pathologist to see the blood oozing from the operator’s neck. He’d seen some squeamish things as a pathologist and had to deliver devastating news at times, but the stone-still face of the operator was something else. Blood pulsed onto the floor. The mouth was ajar. The eyes…never had the scientist seen such an unbroken stare.
“Do you know what he’s doing?” Apex said. It was an unwelcome change back to reality for the pathologist.
Dread pulled up the pant leg of the officer’s uniform until it revealed his thigh. Then he duct-taped the grenade next to the groin area.
“He’s tying a string around the pin and the other end of that string is going to be tied to his wrist. So, if you think you’re going to say something stupid or do something to get us killed, we’re not going to shoot you. We’re going to pull the pin. Then you’ll have just a few seconds to contemplate what a fuck-up you just made. So, if I were you, I wouldn’t walk too fast.”
Dreadnought stood up which meant Apex could let the pathologist go. They cut the cable-ties.
“Get up, asshole. We’re leaving.”
Apex led the way out with a black leather case in his hands. There was a microscope in it complete with its portable power bank.
On his way out, however, Dreadnought locked the door then snapped the key off in the hole to keep the dead operator inside a secret for at least a few hours. They needed the time to get away.
“Where’s the nearest vehicle?” Apex asked the pathologist. The officer, walking very cautiously, pointed to the right.
“There’s a truck at the side for delivering specimens. We can use that.”
