Storm Front
By:
R.L. Carmine
Dunant,
Arcadia
January, 2024
"`Member first we met?" Her
words were rough, but her tone was calm; a paced delivery that told of
experience and comfort. Slim fingers shoved through the long, narrow stretch of
hair turned straw from repeated bleaching, shaved high on the sides so as to be
a mohawk, but laying loose about her head.
From her seat on the edge of her desk she eyed the warehouse floor,
cracked tile and a layer of dirt, before looking up at him as he stood in the
shadows, his wife at his side.
He nodded, fumbling for the Zippo in
the pocket of his leather motorcycle jacket, dark blue. "Course I do,
Lacey." It was cold in his hand, the rectangle of scratched and dinged
brush-finished metal, a pleasant sensation since becoming Chosen, everything
above room temperature felt warm. With a sharp flick of his wrist, the lid swung
open, and his thumb struck the wheel. "It was downtown Richmond, about a
year after the Virus. If you were old enough to bleed, it was only just."
A pause, long enough to light the stick of tobacco and paper, sounded by the
faint crackling of burning things as he pulled smoke into his lungs. "The
city was still fucked. Codi and his gang hadn't been out there as such more
than a couple weeks; leastways not as Tribe Darkfall. You were roaming about,
parents dead, strung up close to some guy for protection in trade for that
little frame of yours getting in and out of tight spaces to scavenge
things." The cloud crept from between his black lips, accompanying each
word. With a quick push, he expelled the rest and then took another drag.
"I was looking for Codi, hearing he'd survived, and looking to make a few
connections for supplies. Ran into you that way. Back then, though, you went by
'Ring'. Course, back then, you didn't look anything like now." He eyed her
from her knees to her collar. “Filled out nice.”
Smiling, she suppressed a laugh,
always knowing he had one of maybe three things on his mind. "I look old,
Vic. Older than you. You still look like you're barely in your twenties,
Pandora's looked like a teenager as long as I've known her," she said,
motioning towards the uncharacteristically silent woman behind him. "But the
rest of us, we age. We age, and it shows, and forty is not long off for
me." Lacey sighed. "I had such a crush on you back then. Such a
schoolgirl crush."
"This why you called, Lacey? You
looking to reminisce about the old days? Because I can think of a few hundred
places that might be a tad more comfy than smack in the capital of the one
country that really ain't too fond of me." He shrugged. "Helena’s
missed you, and it’s been years since we’ve all four spent time locked in the
bedroom for a couple days enjoying skin time." A smile crooked his lips. “Got
a new boy, runaway from the state here, named Jasper. `Bout nineteen, pretty
thing; he’s fun, too. Hell, you know you're always welcome at my place.”
"I heard you were in the area and
I figured I'd save myself the trip." Sliding off of the desk, the soles of
her boots crunched on the broken tile, but she paid it no mind as she made her
way towards her two guests. "I was sorry to hear about Jess. He was a good
kid. I'm glad that Erica and the girls made it, though."
“At least he managed to finally take
out that fucker, Nathaniel Hodge,” he whispered, mood shifting.
As he slouched, Pandora stepped to his
side, eyeing Lacey forcefully with her ghostly, near luminous, green eyes.
"A different topic." Her voice was musical, and in its haunting
nature matched the ashen skin and milk-white hair that otherwise clashed with
her Asian features.
Reaching aside he wrapped his arm
around his wife, drawing her close. "It's okay, love," he said before
shifting his focus to Lacey. "He always liked you, even when he was
growing up in that awkward stage.. I figured, hoped, maybe what with Pan and I
being what we are, all fancified and 'Chosen', he'd get some of that, be more
resilient than Joe Average, but I guess we're not lucky like that. I have to go
about watching my kids die, as I live this life, and just hope that they live
long enough to grow old; immortality coming the old fashioned way, through
genes and generations. Through the girls, and whatever little ones they
have."
"That's part of why I asked you
to swing by." Holding up her data gauntlet she unplugged a chip from one
of the ports and held it up. "I've been working on a little proggie that
may allow a wetwired person to infodump their graymatter. At least, that's the
plan, though where information and consciousness, self-awareness, cross
paths...smarter people than I are still trying to figure that one out."
Reinserting it back into the port, she closed the housing. "It could just
prove to be little more than a database of straight information. Not even ready
for beta right now. Close, but not quite."
"So I can have my best friend
sitting in a toaster on my desk for the next fews centuries? I'll hate to lose
Sy, but I don't think he'd appreciate that." He shrugged. "Besides, the last thing I need is to
be two hundred years on and still listening to him nag me about smoking."
"Doesn't hafta be a box;
scientists are jumping with genetic engineering and robotics nowadays. We've
come pretty far. Maybe just five or six years before we can implant the
personalities in flesh or `bot."
"Because there's no potential for
creepy there."
A smile cracked her lips. "You're
one to talk. `Sides, I totally see you perving something like this."
Vic shrugged. "Suppose I could
find someone I really don't like and kill `em five or six times like that.
After a while, though, it would get pretty..."
Her phone rang; ghost line hacked from
the state-run cable division handling phone, vid, and VirtNet service for
ninety-nine percent of the Arcadian population. For a moment she stepped away,
one of the few who could get away with cutting him off mid-sentence, and
bantered with the person on the other end; a client. Tapping the earpiece she
cut the call and sighed. "I gotta do this thing; I've been putting them
off for a couple of days."
"Need a hand?"
"Not `less you've been boning up
on your Virt." She waved him off and leaned back, grabbing her jacket from
atop the desk. "These kids down the street are new to the trade. They have
a chair they built, unregistered, they want me to do first run in it to make
sure everything's up to par and they're not going to get busted by cops. You
know, the opinion of a professional."
"You've pissed off the Arcadian's
plenty, Lacey; you just be careful."
"This coming from you, the man
who helped assassinate their president."
"Yeah, but in a crunch I have the
luxury of immortality." He gave her a little smile. "You need me,
just call."
"You got it." Striding
across the small expanse she gave him a hug with barely a look to Pandora, more
out of discomfort at seeing her possibly disapproving expression. Stepping back
Lacey offered a limp salute and spun on her heels, heading off in the direction
of a back room. "Gotta grab some gear, just in case. You can let
yourselves out."
With a slow, heavy scraping sound of
metal on concrete, the warehouse door closed behind them. Stopping, Vic glanced
back over his shoulder.
"I do not like her," spoke
his wife. "She still wishes you to be hers alone."
Chuckling, he slipped another
cigarette between his lips and lighted it. "I love you, Pan. You have no
reason to be jealous." A shrug. "Besides, we both have already had
her, and my first time at your near-insistence, back in the day. That time she
got really fucked up, and was all tranqed out. Hell, you sat there and watched.
Helena had a fit when she realized what happened." Cocking his head he
eyed her. "You're not suddenly going to tell me you're jealous of Helena,
too?"
"Helena...knows her place."
Raising an eyebrow he exhaled, pausing
as the cloud of smoke twisted around on the wind and then dissipated.
"That's not very convincing, and I'm not use to this from you, love."
"These things I consider, Victor,
from time to time."
"You are mine, and I am yours,
forever. That's how it plays, Pan. You push and I push, it's our nature, but
you of all people should be comfortable in the fact that I'm not going
anywhere, just because I see a pretty piece of ass, or talk to someone I've
rolled sheets with." Plucking the cigarette from his mouth, clenched
between his fore and middle fingers, he stepped away only to spin around and
point at her. "Don't play one of your games with me, hon. I know you've
gone through serious shit in your life, that the soul within me turned you down
in previous incarnations across tens of thousands of years and that's all kinds
of going to make you feel insecure from time to time, though honestly I have a
difficult time seeing you as such. But fact of the matter is that I am here, with
you, as I have been for nearly thirty years. You are my equal, something you
should be able to see on a daily basis. The others are my friends at best and
pieces of meat I objectify at worst. Who knows where Amby or Sy's sister Ivy or
one of the others I actually dated are nowadays; God forbid they were still
around. But you occupy an entirely different level in here," he
proclaimed, thumping his chest with his thumb. "One they can never
reach."
"Now you are being overly
defensive, love, and I mean that not as accusation, for we are both extremists
and I understand how you, as I, can be." Moving closer on him, she laid
her hands upon his arms, her cheek pressed to his chest. "I did not wish
to upset you, I was simply airing my feelings. I am sorry." Smiling, she
wandered off towards the alley where they'd parked the car. "And as for
Amby, two decades past...I used a wall as my canvas, her life my color."
Down the block sat the cargo van,
matte black and otherwise nondescript. Inside, however, the unit of Arcadian
Primaries sat at the ready, eight across the benches in back, one at the wheel,
and two more at the cramped surveillance center.
"Subjects emerging,"
announced the driver, Corporal Stephen Byrnes. Glancing over his shoulder at
his commanding officer, Lieutenant Jacob Hodge. "We got here just in time,
L-T."
Hodge's eyes, cold and seemingly
absorbing all light instead of bearing reflection, shifted to the surveillance
officer. "Can we get an ident, Perkins? Is that Lacey Blue with the
male?"
His fingers working the joystick,
Perkins focused the cameras mounted in the front of the van on Vic and Pandora,
then zoomed. "Checking known photos and age progression
extrapolations."
Turning back to the driver, the
commander's eyes narrowed. "They see our lights?"
"No sir. I shut down just before
they came out."
Shaking his head, Hodge spoke aloud
what was just going through his mind. "Damn, they look familiar."
Halfway down the block, at the mouth
of an un-lighted alleyway, Vic paused, glancing down the far end of the street,
and then back in the direction of the van before both he and his wife
disappeared between the old buildings.
With a quick response from the system,
Perkins shook his head. "Well the female is not Lacey Blue; I'll keep
running them through the database and..."
The dull eyes opened wide as Hodge
grabbed the handle of his pistol. "Storms!"
"Shit." At the back of the
van, the sergeant of the unit, Bonner, rose from his seat and moved forward.
"They are not on mission, Jacob." Before he could reach him, however,
Hodge had already turned to meet his concern with a hard stare.
Relaxing his grip, the lieutenant
shook his head and tapped his ear piece. "Unit two, sit-rep?"
The radio crackled with the initial
de-scrambling protocol, and then came a voice from a second van parked around
the corner on a cross street. "In position and holding."
Leaning in close, Bonner delivered his
words to Hodge's ear at a volume that even Hodge himself could barely make out.
"You and I go back, I remember when the Storm Front killed your dad, but
you are the mission commander; Blue is your responsibility and you personally
can't go off map."
"Unit two, male and female
subjects headed in your general direction..." Interrupted by one of the
warehouse's garage doors rising, Jacob paused. From the darkness inside, a
compact car exited onto the street and made its way passed the van. Neither he
or the driver bothered to hide, as the glass prevented anyone outside the
vehicle from seeing in. "Land, pursue and detain the new targets. Use
extreme caution, as they are suspected of being the so-called First Couple of
Chaos."
"Oh hell," came Land's
reply. "Confirm suspect ident."
"Storms. Vic and Pandora."
"Confirmed, unit one."
Tapping Byrnes on the shoulder, Hodge
motioned behind them. The corporal started the engine and wheeled the vehicle
around, his commander bracing against the edge of the surveillance console.
"Repeat: use extreme caution. Subdue at a distance if possible. Report on
status in ten minutes from mark or upon apprehension, whichever happens
first."
"Acknowledged, unit one."
"Three, two, one..."
"Mark. Unit two out."
Breathing a deep sigh, Hodge collected
his thoughts. He wanted so much to be the one to apprehend the leader of the
Storm Front, but going off on his own was what got his father killed, something
he knew quite well, if few others did. Vic Storms had become Nathaniel Hodge's
white whale, and no matter what he attempted, what angle he followed, even
finally taking a couple of loyal units and going after Storms's son to get to
the man himself, that monster was always just out of reach. Partially it was
why Jacob himself joined the service, but also why his younger brother and
sister wanted nothing to do with the "family business". Obsession and
a lack of patience, those two things were what undid Jacob's father, and for as
much as he loved his father, he refused to fall into those same traps.
"Keep distance, Byrne. Highpoint's sat is eying the area; she isn't going
anywhere we won't see."
---
The 1970 Boss 302 Mustang was beyond
old. Calypso Coral, it certainly wasn't low-profile, but in the shadows of the
alley, it seemed to almost disappear, as if the darkness itself was helping to
obscure it from view. The veil of black seemingly shifted only upon the
approach of the couple.
"I can't believe you fucking
murdered Amby," he growled.
Cocking her head, she eyed him with a
faux-innocence; much like a feline who knew it had done wrong, and in full view
at that, but expected to get by on its cuteness. "Are you truly that upset
with me?"
"I was fond of her; she wasn't a
bad lay." Rotating his wrist in tight circles, it gave a pop as he glanced
around, then set his hand upon the chrome door handle. "Did you see
them?"
"Of course, my love." She
smiled. "They try to be inconspicuous, but after so many years of
confronting them, and those not all too different, they do so seem to be
oh-so-obvious in the execution. Always the same. Always wishing to wrap their
fingers around our flesh with such strong desire that they undo
themselves."
Opening the door he flicked his
cigarette against the far wall, and then stopped long enough to light another
as she slipped into the passenger's side. "Then let's help them out,
love."
"With their execution?" In
her voice, there was almost glee.
"Precisely," he replied, drawing
forth one of his two forty-fives checking the clip of the blued, placing it
back in his waistband, and then doing the same with the nickel-plated piece in
his shoulder holster. For a minute they waited. Then another minute slipped by,
followed by a third. "Hmm."
"Perhaps we are the foxes and they
the dogs, and what they truly wish, in those temporarily-beating hearts of
theirs, is the chase."
"I wonder if there's a Hodge with
them. I could use to kill another one of those bastards..." He thought
about the conversation with Lacey, and the death of his son those summers ago,
in what had become a cracked, dirty and dry desert of a parking lot around the
abandoned shopping mall his son and the second generation of Storm Front had
converted into their headquarters. "If Nathaniel managed to actually breed
before Jess got him." Sliding into the seat, he slammed the door and
turned the ignition, shifting into reverse and out the other end of the alley.
Pushing on the brake and the clutch, he yanked the wheel and shifted back into
first as the car spun out onto the road and then darted out around the long
way, with his eye on coming around the far end of the street.
"You wish them to see us?"
"I so do." Shift to second,
and he accelerated around the turn, shifting to third. "Right up until
I..." and then he caught sight of the other van. "Shit!" Hitting
the brakes and clutch, he slipped back into first in a moment of hesitation.
"Two teams on the street, and not a one on the alley."
Pandora's eyes narrowed as she cut
them in his direction. "Lacey."
"I told that girl!"
The rear and side doors of the van
burst open, and the second unit of Arcadian Primaries sprung forth, rifles in
hand. Save for the sidearms of the two officers, the troops packed Draskov
eighty-eight eleven models, no bigger than the average submachine gun, secured
back-channel by Arcadia's intelligence branch, Highpoint, from the new power in
Europe, the Eastern Consortium. The Draskov's jammed less often than the
Arcadian-made Simner Corporation's Sigma Fives, and packed an internal cooling
system by way of the Asian company known as Takai.
The troops were barely out the doors,
not even boots to ground, when they started firing the compact yet high
explosive anti-armor rounds for which the Draskovs were specifically designed.
Shifting into reverse at nearly the same instant, Vic got the car not five feet
before the first rounds took the tires and peeled the front end like a
firecracker in an aluminum soda can. The engine rattled and died, spraying
fluids onto the pavement.
"Step out of the vehicle, hands
in view," Land demanded. "Those are the only warning shots you
get."
Pulling the cigarette from his lips,
Vic rested his hands atop the steering wheel as he turned to his wife.
"They shot my car."
"I could call forth the Wisp to
take us from this place and..." Her voice trailed as her eyes fixed on
his, and she nodded.
Slowly opening the door, hands
visible, Vic stepped out as she did similarly. Standing out from behind the
door, he focused on Land. "Who are you?"
"Shut-up, terrorist!"
"You're not a Hodge; there's too
much life in your eyes." There was disappointment in his tone. "Go
home."
Drawing his pistol from its holster,
Land stepped forward and in front of his men. "Get on your knees,
now!"
"Mistake." Vic's hands were
lightening as he went for his pistols, flinging the cigarette from his fingers
as he did so. With Land in front of
them, his men were forced to move to reacquire their targets.
Meanwhile, in the shadows, Pandora could feel the Wisp -- ancient pan-dimensional shadow beings -- feeding off of the turmoil, and aching to take part. It made her smile.