ALICE

Chapter 68: GREEN

 Chapter 68: GREEN

 Alice easily accepted her fate as the ground got closer, as she had done it a few times before. She spread out on the off chance she could slow down a bit, so that she wouldn’t hit the ground so hard.

 The pain hit Alice before the realization of what had happened. Rather than a crushing feeling as she hit the concrete, she felt her arm break, as well as a tight hand around her wrist. She was hanging entirely from her right arm, about ninety feet up in the air. Looking up, she saw Angel straining to keep her held.

 “Climb up me King!”

 Alice did so, eventually getting her good arm around his neck, in a sort of inverted piggy-back. Angel rapelled down the rest of the way.

 When they hit the ground, Alice panted. Adrenaline was coursing through her veins and she couldn’t pass out from the pain, even though it was overwhelming. Everything was in tunnel vision and she could barely hear. She sat down for a moment, against the wall so she could calm down.

 When things stopped being blurry, Angel came up to her.

 “King. We need to move. Use your sidearm.”

 Redd hit the ground behind her, checking the corner just in case. The gunfire still rang out, and reinforcements were coming for both sides. Alice got up, drawing her small Colt .45 and aiming it at the next corner with one hand.

 When they rounded the corner, getting behind a wrecked car for cover. Alice saw the large truck that had been full of the children they were trading, was burning, a side of it destroyed from a rocket launcher. The smell of burning flesh made Alice gag. There were innocent kids who had no future anyway, being burned alive.

 Redd grimaced as he signalled for Sterling 1 to move, crouch-walking to a few concrete plant barriers that at one point had gardens in them. The team was luckily on the outskirts  of the square, but were closer to the Natives than the LSF. They moved carefully, being cautious so as not to be seen by either side.

 Redd motioned to move to an alleyway, a movement that would necessitate a quick dash across about ten metres of open tarmac.

 Redd went first, aiming his weapon into the conflict just in case he was spotted. Angel went next, moving into a dive roll, towards the end. Finally, Alice brought up the rear. She was spotted for a moment by a Native troop, but she shot him twice in the chest, and it was assumed he’d been killed by the LSF.

 Alice moved into the alley, and when she was out of sight, she spoke.

 “Hey, what the hell is our way out?”

 “The truck. The truck we came in on.”

 “Okay,” Angel said. “That’s not too har-.”

 The building the three were leaning against crumbled above them, and they were greeted by a barrel of an armoured tank. Alice didn’t even bother talking she ran out into the street, away from the tank and the square. Redd and Angel followed suit, Redd opting to drop a grenade at his feet before moving them away very quickly.

 Alice looked quickly for anything she could put between her and the tank, and found a mound of rubble and other strange things. Clambering quickly up the small mountain, her boot crushed through an old dusty human skull. She ignored it and continued. Finally, she reached the top, where a large bomb with a warning on the side was wedged in between a car and three refrigerators. Alice scanned the warning, taking in the words; Warning, extremely toxic gas, do not puncture!. Alice grimaced as she got behind it.

 Angel and Redd all came up too, but none of them had anything to take out the tank. The grenade had barely done anything to it, despite it being underneath the tank when it detonated. Alice pressed against the bomb, accepting her death for the second time in as many minutes.

 Redd, however, wasn’t so quick to be ready to die. He leaned into his radio, “Base! This is Light, Sterling 1 team leader. We need a missile on our location, I repeat on our location. We have enemy armour on top of our position.”

 “Roger, coming in now, ETA fourty seconds.”

 “Okay.” Redd said. “We need something to hide in.”

 “The fridges!” Alice pointed to the powder blue refrigerators the three of them were standing on. Conveniently, there were three of them.

 “Yeah.” Redd said. “Okay, go, in, in, in. Now.”

 Alice dropped down, and cleared a skeleton of a small child out of the way. She threw it down the hill, ignoring the clatter of bones. She raised a latch and wrenched the door open, taking a deep breath before putting herself inside and shutting the door.

 She heard the slams of doors above and below her, and then just a moment after, a massive explosion. She felt a bolt of adrenaline, even though she had been streaming with it the whole time. She felt a clank and a heavy shock, and then a bleeding pain through her broken arm.

 Alice kicked at the crumpled door until it burst open, lighting up her surroundings. She rolled out, and, clutching her gun she walked out, saw the fridge had been blown nearly thirty meters away from the mountain of garbage and corpses. She limped, her knees sprained and bloody, to the nearest fridge, an ugly, Easter green one that she figured Redd had been in it. This door was especially crumpled, and she had to kick into shape before it could be opened. When it was, she saw Redd, curled up and bleeding a little from the head, but mostly okay. He groaned as he rolled out of the fridge, easing himself up into a standing position.

 Alice looked far and wide, eventually seeing the third fridge, against the wall, with a large, fridge-sized crater in the building above it. The appliance had flown out from the explosion, slammed into the building, and hit the ground. Alice looked at the fridge, and noticed a pool of blood underneath it.

 “No!”

 She ran to it, pulling on the door that was so twisted that it looked like a crumpled piece of paper. She kicked the soft metal until she could wrench the door off the hinges. Inside was Angel, who was in the fetal position. Angel was crying, whimpering the word No… over and over. Alice couldn’t see anything wrong with him until she pulled his disfigured body out of the lead prison.

 She heard a quiet ‘Shhhhhhhk’ as she took him out, and realized a piece of the back had bent inwards into a fixed shiv. Alice’s eyes opened wide as she realized Angel was impaled, and the more she pulled him the more blood he lost, and the more she disembowelled him.

 Alice put a loose strand of hair past her ear as she began to breathe quickly.

 “Angel, Angel, uh… Duchess? What do I do? What do I do?”

 “No… No…”

 “Duchess! How do I get you out of here?!”

 “Take… Take me off.”

 Alice bit her lip as she looked at the barbed spike he was lying against. “It’ll kill you…”

 “Then leave me!” He screamed as he looked down at the spike for the first real time. “Just leave me. The LSF might not kill me.”

 “Angel.” She looked to him, panic in her eyes. “You’ve got a daughter that needs you.”

 Suddenly, the look in his eyes went from a man who was willing to be left for dead, to one who would die another day.

 “Get, get me off!”