Descent into the Abyss

Chapter 29

Blake raced forward, his shadow growing darker with every step until a crackling arc sped by him. It skipped between the bare frames, snapping through the air with a violent ferocity.

"You can't escape me, Blake!! I will find you!" He could hear Kyle screaming behind him.

"Find this, you crazy fuck," Blake remarked, turning and looking through the gaps of the junked cars. "Hope you burn."

He climbed onto the rust encrusted roof of a small sedan, aiming at the open door where Kyle still stood, staring into the junkyard. Ego dared him to taunt Kyle as he aimed the Milkor, but he said nothing, instead only focusing on making this one shot count. As his index finger tightened on the trigger, a sudden loss of integrity beneath his feet changed everything. His right foot sunk several inches as the grenade sped forward, climbing through the air towards its target. A few degrees difference, Blake realized too late, was inflicted onto his aim as his foot had sunk. In the short run, it wouldn't have mattered, but as the meters sped by and the grenade traveled further away, the difference became obvious.

Wasting no time, Blake planted his stance, aiming a second shot as the first impacted. Cement and brick exploded outward, coating the air with a thick dust, but Blake already had his shot lined up. The second grenade launched true, speeding towards the open door and the stockpile, and Kyle.

"I'm not that lucky," Blake thought, debating on whether or not Kyle would get caught in the blast.

True to his thoughts, Blake watched Kyle meet the grenade with a devilish smile. The blond teenager threw his hands together and forward, smiling as the electricity sped forward. Arcs of blues, yellows, and white branched outward, consuming the projectile in a spiderweb of lightning. Over the hood of the first wave of junked cars, the grenade met the strands of energy, detonating on contact.

"Fu---" Blake began to yell, his own movement cutting off his speech, as he turned and ran from the chain explosion following him.

One after another, the junked cars became consumed in explosive fire and billowing black smoke. As he leapt onto the front hood of another sedan, daring a glance back, his stomach dropped. In the distance, still standing and watching him, Kyle remained. Hopping down and stepping away from the oncoming destruction, Blake aimed into the sky.

"Smartass knows he can set these off, but only if he sees it coming," He remarked under his breath, aiming into the sky with the Milkor.

Radio static crackled on his right, his peripherals catching movement. Twisting with a sharp jerk, he caught sight of the would-be assailant, fast approaching from his right. Blake's eyes grew at the sight of the man running towards him through the flaming wreckage, turning the weapon in his hands towards the immediate threat. As his finger squeezed the trigger and the grenade released, the man closed more of the distance between. Blake's mind recalled a key piece of information regarding the Milkor MGL as the grenade impacted against the side of a small rusted green SUV.

"With an explosive radius of four to five meters..."

Blake's eyes shuttered with rapid confusing blinks, staring into the grey skies. A high pitch ringing dominated his hearing, drowning out everything else as he rolled to his side. Across the debris and fire littered field, Blake found his assailant, or rather, most of him. The smoldering corpse, now a torso and legs of various hues of black and red, laid smoking in the nearby grass. Scents of burnt hair and cooked flesh filled his nose, his eyes searching for a closer source than the corpse, and finding one. A disembodied arm lay next to him, bubbles of blistered skin coating the charred flesh. His experience firsthand with corpses held back the bile in his throat, but every second he breathed in more of the putrid flesh, the bile inched upward.