Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Sixty-Three - People are Stupid

“With the advent of corporate police forces and national and international PMCs, there has been a sharp rise in the number of people willing and able to fight crime for the right amount of money.

Crime, it seems, is a constant among humanity. Especially in a world where the meaning of law is so vague and weak.”

--Excerpt from ‘The Lawless’ by an anonymous author. 2054

***

I was expecting a few things when I returned to the shelter.

I was hoping for certain things too.

Arriving to find all the civilians waiting calmly inside a row of trucks ready to go, with maybe a few volunteers guarding the entire lot would have been nice.

Instead I arrived to find a half-circle of scared people all staring at a spectacle that had shivers crawling down my spine. There were some men standing around, all of them armed with guns that I found all too familiar.

One of them, the biggest in the entire lot, was standing before the crowd. On one side, Monroe was on his knees, hands held behind his back by some dipshit.

“The Samurai’s gone! If you want to become pawns of these corporate fucks, then that’s on you. But me and mine, we’re making a stand. We’re going to take those aliens on!”

I stared, dumbfounded, as some of them actually cheered him on.

“I don’t suppose this was part of any plan?” Gomorrah asked.

“No, no it wasn’t. I told them to get ready to evacuate, not this shit.” I stomped out across the street, vaguely aware that Gomorrah was sticking close behind me.

The big dipshit paused mid-way through his speech as the crowd’s attention turned away from him and moved towards me.

“Dumbass! Come here,” I shouted.

The man looked around. “You want to talk, Samurai?” he demanded. “I’ll have you know that wh--”

“You, shut the fuck up,” I said.

Dumbass Two appeared out of the shadows of one of the nearby trucks, its holographic camo winking out as it moved.

“Dumbass, you see what happened?” I asked.

Reviewing the footage now. It seems as if a group of men, most of whom have criminal records and affiliations to a local gang, decided to take over the evacuation operation. Sargent Monroe protested. A small fight broke out and his squad was detained.

I nodded, then my gaze turned towards Speedy. The woman’s helmet was off, and her face was a mess of blood and missing teeth.

Private Samantha ‘Speedy’ tried to stand up to the leader of this group. He decided to make an example of her.

“If you think we’ll stand aside just because you’re some hot shot--” the big dipshit continued. His grip on his plasma rifle... my plasma rifle, tightened.

I slid Whisper over my shoulder. “I can see why you did what you did,” I said. My voice sounded surprisingly cold. I think it gave the man pause.

Reaching into my coat, I pulled out my Trench Maker and brought the gun up and around to point at him. “If you shoot me, my boys will--”

“You did it because you’re a fucking idiot,” I said. And then I shot him.

He stumbled back, the rifle clattering to the ground. The screaming started right after as he clutched onto the burning stump of his forearm, waving it around to try and put out the flames crawling up his pleather jacket.

That was a surprisingly nice shot.

“I was aiming for his head,” I muttered.

Someone screamed and started running at me with a machete of all things. He made it three steps before Gomorrah aimed an arm at him and turned him into a screaming ball of flailing fire.

The entire crowd shrank back as the man stopped, dropped and died in the middle of the street.

“No chill, huh?” I asked Gomorrah.

“Was that a pun?” the nun asked. Her emotionless mask somehow managed to convey disgust at the idea. “Regardless. We don’t lose points for killing people trying to harm us.”

“Kill her!” the dipshit in charge said.

Shutting down weaponry.

Only two of the thugs raised their pilfered plasma rifles and pulled the triggers. My heart almost skipped out of my chest, but they did a lot of nothing. The guns on my back slid out of my jacket and settled over my shoulders in one smooth motion before planting a couple of holes in the idiot’s legs.

“The rest of you planning to live through the rest of the day?” I asked. “Or do you plan on becoming alien chow?”

“Leaving the bodies to be eaten is irresponsible,” Gomorrah said. “We can incinerate them, lest they feed our nemesis.”

“You, you can’t,” Dipshit said. He was actually crying.

I kinda felt a little bad, but he was a dipshit. He’d stalled the entire group up. Some trucks were stationed nearby, but not nearly enough of them, and the crowd was notably outside of them.

“Monroe, you okay?” I asked.

“Yes ma’am,” Monroe said with the kind of strain in his voice that suggested that he wasn’t.

I sighed. “You other idiots, drop your weapons or I’ll drop you.”

“If we go with you we’ll be arrested,” one of them said. “We have warrants out for us.”

I blinked. “Is that why you staged a coup? You could have just run off.” I cut him off with a gesture. “Look, you’ve all just volunteered to be the, uh, backline people. There’s a word for that, right?”

“Rear guard?” Gomorrah asked.

“Good enough,” I said with a nod. “It’s rear guard or death. Your choice. And make it quick.”

I suspect they were the sort of thugs used to jumping when told to, because they did make it quick. I noticed a few of them slipping behind the crowd, but as long as they didn’t cause more trouble I had bigger problems to deal with.

“Gomorrah, can you organize people?”

“I’ve... done similar before,” she said.

“Cool. I’m going to get these guys back on their feet. We need to move, and soon.”

I moved over first to Monroe, who looked like he’d been kicked in the chest a few times, then over to Speedy. I winced. She’d been beaten black and blue, her teeth kicked in and one of her eyes was squeezed shut around a swelling mess of purplish skin. “Damn Speedy,” I said.

“Hey, it’s you,” she said. “I can still drive.”

I snorted. “Sure. Myalis? Can I afford some meds?”

Certainly. Your points have been climbing steadily for the last few minutes. The traps you’ve set seem to be effective enough.

Dumbass the First skittered over. It still held onto one of my plasma rifles, making it look rather silly as it wobbled over. “Hey there,” I said. “Can you run a scan on her?” I asked.

The drone bobbed and soon Myalis was giving me some suggestions that I more or less blindly accepted.

“You’ll be right as rain,” I told her as I waved Monroe over. “Can you get any of your guys who are hurt here? And any civilians that need medical attention too, while you’re at it?”

“Do you mind if I delegate that, ma’am?” he asked with a wheeze.

“Shit. Yeah, sure. Let Dumbass here check you out real quick.”

As it turned out, Monroe had a fucked up rib. His armour had taken the worst of the blows, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t winded.

“What will you do about him?” Monroe asked as he gestured to the idiot that started it all.

I looked over at the guy who was on the ground, kneeling with his stump cradled against his chest. I sighed. “Cuff him and toss him in the back of a truck? I’m sure someone will want him, stump and all.”

“Not nice to make fun of stumpy people,” Speedy said from her spot below us. She was looking a bit better already. Probably feeling better too if she had time to be snarky.

“I’m a stumpy person too,” I said with a wiggle of my super arm. “Does this kind of crap happen often?”

“Often enough,” Monroe said. “The aliens are only the most dangerous thing on the field. Not the only things that can kill you.”

I felt my good mood draining as that sank in. How many more people would I be trampling over without so much as a second thought before that number grew too big? Could I have handled things differently? Made it less likely that something like this would happen again?

A not-so-distant thump had me looking down the road. It was followed by a clatter of gunfire and a faint wailing. Something had set off one of my traps, one that was a lot closer than the others.

“Monroe, get everyone’s shit together. You have two minutes.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Speedy, we’ll see if your claims that you can still drive hold up.”

“You betcha.”

***