ALICE

Chapter 19 - NINE

 Chapter 19: NINE

 Nine walked down the beach, keeping the butt of his M16 tucked tightly into his shoulder, aiming down the sights, scanning the sand and looking for Alice. He spotted the body that was lying facedown on the beach, sand around her soaked in blood.

 "She looks dead, I'll go put a round in her to be safe." Nine said to his commander, Kendo. 

 Nine was in a white jumper with a tac-vest overtop, and grey digital camoflauge fatigues. His boots were worn and were giving him sore feet, but that was all about to become irrelevant. He walked up to Alice, and put his boot on her head, aiming his rifle at the largest target, which was her torso. He flipped her over with his foot, seeing the mess that Redd's homemade bullet had made of this evil woman's body. As he pulled the bolt back on his gun, he saw a flutter of life in her eyes, and he let out an evil laugh.

 "Hey, Kendo, she's alive!" He laughed again as she began to move. "Ooooh... Girly can't get up?"

 Kendo walked over, saving Alice from any other humiliation. "What's wrong with her face? There's no scar."

 "Simple, Willy-Wack makes stuff to cover scars, and to make them. She must have been on some mission, or something. In civilian clothes and with willywack, maybe she was trying to look like a victim?"

 "Or maybe she is a victim, Nine." Kendo said.

 "No way. It looks exactly like Alice." He aimed his gun at her head, and put his hand on the trigger. "I'm killing her." 

 Kendo pulled a .38 Special revolver out of his hip-houlster, pulled back the hammer, and aimed it at Nine's head in just one fluent motion. "Nine, I know you wouldn't hesitate to kill her, even if you knew she wasn't Alice, so I won't hesitate to kill you now if you don't take that gun off of her."

 Nine looked at Kendo, then back to Alice. "Fine." He swung his rifle around to aim at Kendo. "Drop the gun, and kick it to me."

 "You know I'll kill you first Nine. This is a hair-trigger, I've got it pulled halfway down already. Just lower the gun, and this never happened. Otherwise, only I leave here, with your tags."

 He looked around, nervous as hell, realizing what a mistake he just made. "This never happened?"

 "Right. We go home, and we never talk about this again. On the condition that we don't kill this person unless we're sure that it's Alice."

 After another couple tension-filled seconds, Nine lowered his rifle with a sigh. Kendo gently released the hammer of his revolver so it didn't fire, although he wouldn't have minded if it did.

 Kendo had fought nearly every instinct in his body to not kill Nine.