Modern/Delta Green - The Beginning of the End (COMPLETED)

[talien]

Music of the Spheres: Part 4 – What About Bob?

"Is he okay?" Randy stood over Bob's comatose form. He was sleeping soundly.

Judy's brow was furrowed. "He lost a lot of blood but he'll recover. He's suffering from minor hypovolemia. I'm more concerned about rabies."

"Can you give him a shot?"

"We started post-exposure prophylaxis. You're going to need one too. And Donny."

Randy sighed. "I knew that was coming. They hurt, don't they?"

"The cheap vaccines do. The WHO intradermal vaccination regimens aren't so bad, but…"

Randy rubbed his forehead. "But we cut the budget last year. I know, I know. How long is the regimen?"

"Fourteen days."

"Fourteen days!" Randy sighed. "I can't have all of us off the street."

"It's just a shot, hon," said Judy, her tone softening. "You faced down Rory with a shotgun…"

"What about Rory and Carrie? Can you treat them?"

"We've got a toxicology report sent out, but it's late." She checked her watch. "The girls should be in bed by now."

Randy shook his head. "I don't know what's happening to our town, Judy. Maybe a rabies outbreak."

"I checked Rory. There wasn't a bite on him. He may have gotten rabies, but it wasn't from one of the dogs. I'm vaccinating everybody to be sure, but they're going to be in a world of hurt for a few weeks."

"Bats?" asked Randy.

"Maybe. It's possible." Judy looked down at her clipboard. "It's hard to tell. Between Carrie's dogs and Rory I'm thinking we need to call in the CDC."

Randy looked heavenwards. "That's all we need." He glanced back at Bob. "What about him?"

Judy wore a sly smirk. "Oh, he'll be fine."

"What? I thought he was suffering from blood loss."

"An hour's rest took care of that," said Judy. "I wanted to keep an eye on him after the rabies treatment."

Randy's cell phone buzzed. He flipped it open and listened. Then he clipped it shut and swore under his breath.

"What?" asked Judy, concerned.

"The Arnold house is on fire."

Judy grabbed Bob's folded up uniform and plopped it on his stomach. His eyes flicked open a second too early – he'd been feigning sleep for some time now.

"Well look who's awake!" said Randy. "Get up Bob, we got work to do."

 

[talien]

Music of the Spheres: Part 5 – Burning Down the House

The Arnold house was engulfed in flames. At four in the morning, the flames lit up the surrounding countryside like the Devil himself just arriving for dinner.

Volunteer firemen hosed down the trees, too late to save the house or anyone inside.

Randy and Judy pushed through the crowd of onlookers to the fire chief.

"Norman, did they get out?!" asked Judy.

The Fire Chief shook his head. Judy, horrified, eyed the inferno that used to be a farmhouse.

"Stan did," said Norman. "Begs the question, doesn't it?"

Randy gave Judy's arm a squeeze. "I'll talk to him."

Stan Arnold sat expressionless on the back bumper of a fire truck, hands tied with baling twine.

"Stan? It's Randy. Stan, what happened?"

Stan didn't respond at first. He slowly turned a glassy-eyed, remorseless gaze on Randy. "A reckoning," is all he said.

Judy inspected Stan next, flashing a pen light in his eyes. "Could be an early stage," she said. "But I'm not sure."

Bob and Donny huffed up behind them.

"Cuff him, Donny."

Donny looked questioningly at Randy. "But…"

"He could have rabies, Donny. Now cuff him."

Donny turned Stan around and snapped zip-tie cuffs on his wrists. Stan silently complied as he was led to the cruiser.

"Randy…" began Judy.

"I know. I know!"

"What?" Bob, who wasn't privy to the near-telepathic communication between husband and wife, looked back and forth between them.

"We're going to have to quarantine the town. Call the CDC. It's gonna be a big mess, Bob. I need you to go back, get things ready, start making calls. I'll take care of things here and go back with Judy in the ambulance."

"Uh, okay. Yeah, sure. Sure."

When Bob left the scene, Randy and Judy allowed themselves a brief hug as they watched the firemen battle the inferno.

 

[talien]

Music of the Spheres: Part 6 – Space Pajamas

Bob was tired, despite resting in the hospital most of the day. Ahead of him the dirt road showed nothing but darkness, extending only as far as the cruiser's high beams.

He opened the window and turned up the radio.

"…KRVN FM, the River. News on the hour every hour. Officials at the University of Nebraska reported that yesterday's minor earth tremor measured less than 2.0 on the Richter scale. The quake is believed to have been centered in the area of Three Mile Lake in Arthur County 40 miles northwest of North Platte—"

The signal went to static.

Bob gave the radio a glance. He tried a different station. More static.

He flipped through all the stations. Nothing but static. Weird.

And then he saw something weirder. Out of the corner of his eye, caught in the spray of light from the cruiser, was a child-sized figure in a silvery suit.

It was so incongruous that it took a moment to register.

"What the hell?"

Bob put on the brakes. He backed the cruiser up, turned it slowly towards the field.

Moths and other bugs fluttered up in the bright light. But that was it.

Bob tried the CB. "Donny, come back."

Static.

"Donny, come back. I think I saw…I don't know what I saw. A kid in space pajamas, maybe."

 

[talien]

Music of the Spheres: Part 7 – Cracks

Donny had the radio on too, his mute passenger staring silently into space behind him. It creeped him out.

“…a cell phone tower in the area recently exploded in a mysterious incident that gave a lot of listeners quite a headache. Maybe those UFOs everyone keeps reporting are responsible! Speaking of foreign objects in the skies, we’re continuing our interview with Dr. Neal, exclusive on KRVN FM, the River. Dr. Neal, can you tell us more about what you’ve been up to at the Great Plains Cruciform Array?”

Donny checked his cell phone. No service. Hmm.

“Yes, thank you. I wanted to give you the exclusive here, live, on the radio. You see, we believe we’ve found SH-01, the Nemesis Star. That recent quake seems to have calibrated our signal that we've been lacking all this time.”

"Quake? You mean the recent 2.0 tremor?"

"Yes. That tremor was the fortuitous accident we needed to calibrate our array. That's how we found Nemesis."

Donny had read about the quake. Something about a deep-sea explosion.

“And what’s so important about this star?”

“Nemesis is a hypothetical red dwarf star or brown dwarf, orbiting the Sun at a distance of about 50,000 to 100,000 AU, somewhat beyond the Oort cloud. The existence of this star has been postulated in an attempt to explain an inferred periodicity in the rate of biological extinction in the geological record.”

“In English please.”

“We believe that SH-01 is the star that killed the dinosaurs. The star’s passage through the Oort comet cloud creates devastating comet storms that plague our solar system. The comets striking the Earth throw up dense clouds of debris, shutting out the sun’s light, and killing off all life.”

“And you think you’ve found Nemesis? Sounds sinister.”

“Yes. In fact, I have proof. What you’re about to hear is the frequency of SH-01.”

“And this is what the star sounds like? We can just put our ears to the sky—“

“Oh, heavens no! Time on this recording has been compressed, so that 73 seconds corresponds to 27 minutes. Since the frequencies of these emissions are well above the audio frequency range, we have shifted them downward by a factor of 44. It’s quite beautiful, actually.”

“And here it is, the soothing sounds of the Nemesis Star.”

Music started playing, but it wasn't classical music, or space beeping, or any noise Donny associated with stars. It was a song, sung by people. But it wasn't coming from the radio.

"You've got to get it together! Stop shooting at me! You're just a teenage industry. Why are the C.I.A. having fun? They think you're clever cause you've blown up your lungs…"

Donny looked around. The music seemed to be…coming from his head?

He looked over his shoulder at Stan. "Can you hear that?"

Stan's eyes were heavily lidded, as if he were falling asleep. A thin stream of drool slid out of the corner of his mouth.

"Guess not." He could somehow hear the song as well as static on the radio at the same time. Donny turned the radio off.

The music kept playing. It was stuck in his head.

"But I love to hear that crazy beat. Gets the people dancing on their feet and I love to live in paradise. I love my brothers on a Saturday night yeah."

Just then Donny hit a rough patch in the road. But it wasn't a rough patch, as Donny realized that the entire landscape was shaking violently. All around them, the telephone poles wobbled on their bases.

"Son of a—" Donny hit the gas.

One by one, the poles began collapsing. Each pole tugged another down with it, like a series of dominos, sparking electrical cables and bursting transformers. They began pacing the cruiser, collapsing faster than Donny could drive…

Donny revved the engine, hoping the cruiser was up to the task. It roared ahead as one of the poles spun sideways, sweeping downwards and nearly taking off the cruiser's lights.

"Yeah!" shouted Donny as the collapsing poles fell behind the cruiser. He was so caught up in the adrenaline rush of avoiding the poles that he barely registered the yawning crack in the pavement ahead of him.

Donny slammed on the brakes. The cruiser swerved and then they were airborne.

The cruiser floated around him. Donny caught sight of the air freshner that normally hung from the mirror bouncing off the ceiling. Then the car landed again on its wheels. Tires burst, axles snapped.

Donny felt as if he had been punched in the spine. He unbuckled the seat belt, which felt like a knife across his chest, and slipped out the door onto the cracked pavement.

The wheels were still spinning. Donny could make out a yawning gap from the beam of one cracked headlight. The cruiser was teetering on it.

"Stan!" Donny got to his feet, yanked the door open—

Stan lurched forward and snapped at Donny's arm with his teeth. Donny screamed, jerking backwards and involuntarily shoved Stan back into the back seat of the cruiser.

That was all the momentum the precariously balanced car needed. It flipped forward, bouncing a few times into the abyss. Donny caught a glimpse of one of the headlights spinning crazily as the car went down, illuminating the night sky. It was extinguished by a cacophony of crunching metal.

Donny wiped the dust from his face and looked around. It was pitch black. He wondered how far a walk he would have to Hayden.

But at least the damn music had stopped.

 

[talien]

Music of the Spheres: Part 8 – Crazy Beat

It took hours before Randy and Bob reconnected. They all felt the earthquake, but Hayden's fire department, ambulance, and law enforcement were already spread thin. With cell phones out, communication was severely curtailed. When Donny didn't report back from the station, they went looking for him.

Judy promised to have the ambulance stop by the house to check on the girls before returning to her shift. It was a sad testament to Hayden's state of affairs that there was nobody alive to rush to the hospital. Randy and Judy hadn't been able to reconnect with the phones down.

Donny was battered and bruised, but he was alive and Randy couldn't afford a man down. They took the Durango back to town together.

Main Street looked normal enough. People were walking about minding their own business, chatting away on their cell phones.

"Hayden doesn't look too worse for the wear," said Randy.

A businesswoman with a poodle on a leash stood in front of a snack truck, the phone screwed into her ear as she attempted to talk and buy a bagel at the same time. Nearby, two young girls with pixie haircuts, one blonde, one brunette, were listening to a single cell phone and giggling.

Donny looked down at his cell. "Uh, Randy?"

"Yeah?"

"I don't got a signal on my cell phone."

Bob held his phone up. "Me neither."

Randy checked his phone at his belt. "Me neither."

Donny looked back out the window. "So who are they all talking to?"

“Hello?” said the businesswoman, staring at her phone. “Hello?” She put it back to her ear, listened for a moment, and then dropped it back into her purse.

Randy pulled the Durango to a stop near the curb. Something was very, very wrong.

"Well that ain't normal." Randy slid one hand towards his holstered pistol.

Everything got very quiet. The businesswoman just stood there, as if she forgot what she was doing. When the bagel man handed her a bagel, she stared at it blankly.

The sheriff and his deputies got out of the SUV.

The businesswoman’s features suddenly peeled back in a look of indescribable, feral rage. Her polite expression was replaced by a convulsive snarl that shrank her eyes to slits and exposed both sets of teeth.

The businesswoman’s poodle ran into the street, trailing its red leash with the hand-loop in the end. A black car roared through Main Street, catching the poodle beneath the wheel and tossing its bloody carcass through the air.

The blonde-haired girl seized the businesswoman. Her companion backed away.

The young girl latched onto the businesswoman's neck and bit down, causing an enormous jet of blood. She shook her back and forth like a doll. Then she cocked her own blood-smeared face up to the bright blue sky and howled in what sounded like triumph.

BLAM! The blast went wide, just missing the blonde girl. Donny fumbled to reload the smoking shotgun.

Randy whirled on him, snapping out of his shock. "Donny, what in the hell!"

From behind them came the unmistakable hollow bang-and-jingle of a car crash, followed by screams. The screams were followed by another explosion, this one louder, concussive, hammering the day. Behind the bagel truck, another car swerved across three lanes of and onto the sidewalk, mowing down a couple of pedestrians and then plowing into the back of the previous car, which finished with its nose crumpled into the side of a building window.

The blonde girl cleared the distance between them at a fantastic rate. Donny was still in the middle of reloading when she launched herself at him, plunging her tiny feet into his torso. He managed to get one arm up, but that just gave her something to bite. She gnawed on his arm.

"AHHH!" shouted Donny.

The blonde girl's bobbed backwards, spitting a jet of blood from her skull. She slid off of Donny. Bob whirled his pistol on the other girl.

"WHO AM I?" The dark-haired girl suddenly screamed. She smacked herself in the forehead, spun three times, and then runs straight into a lamppost, again and again.

Her nose was broken, gushing blood down her lower face. A vertical contusion was puffing up on her brow, rising like a thunderhead on a summer day. One of her eyes had gone crooked in its socket. She opened her mouth, exposing a ruin of what had probably been expensive orthodontic work, and laughed. Then she ran away down the sidewalk, screaming.

"Back to the Durango!" shouted Randy, who had his own pistol out.

From the top floor of a building across the way, a window shatters in a bright spray of glass. A body hurtled out. It fell to the sidewalk, where it exploded. More screams from the street.

Randy hopped into the driver's seat as Donny and Bob followed suit. He threw it into gear and slammed on the gas pedal.

A man came running out of a nearby building, roaring wordless sounds at the top of his lungs, his shirt flapping behind him. He ran into the street.

Randy swerved around the man, barely missing him. He ran onto the other side, still roaring and waving his hands at the sky. He disappeared into the shadows beneath the canopy of the hotel forecourt and was lost to view.

"Where we going?" asked Bob, out of breath.

"Judy," was all Randy said.

 

[talien]

Music of the Spheres: Part 9 – Judy

The stillness of prairie grass in the dark hush before dawn. Beyond it, a traditional white clapboard house with an old barn that needs painting. The ambulance lay silently nearby.

The Durango pulled up to the Kaufman house. Randy hopped out, followed by Bob and Donny.

"I'm gonna check on the girls," said Randy, pistol down. "Donny, you're with me. Bob, you watch the door."

Randy found some solace in the door being locked. He unlocked it. "Girls? It's dad. You home?"

"Daddy?" Alexis came down the steps, the older of the two, a pretty blonde like her mother and just blossoming into womanhood. "What's going on? Television and radio have been out--"

"I know. The whole town's a mess. We're going to have to evacuate. Where's your sister?"

"Crystal's upstairs," said Alexis. "I've been trying to keep her calm."

Randy blinked. "Where's your mother?"

"Mom? I thought she was still at the hospital."

"You didn't see the ambulance outside?" asked Donny, peering through the curtains back at the ambulance.

"What? We've been upstairs. Oh, I see it now…"

Donny and Randy exchanged a look.

"Get your gear together. Pack up essentials. Only what you can carry. We're leaving right now."

"But what about mom?"

"We'll find her," said Randy sternly. "Right now I want you two safe so I can focus on finding your mother. Now go!"

Alexis nodded and ran back up the steps, calling to Crystal.

Donny allowed himself a smile. "Your girls are tough. Like their mother."

Randy didn't respond to his compliment. "Donny, I'm gonna stay in here with the girls. But I need you to check out that ambulance."

"Will do chief." Donny ducked back outside.

The ambulance rocked while Bob approached it with his pistol.

"What's going on?"

"Something," said Bob.

The back doors of the ambulance suddenly spilled open. Judy fell out with the ambulance driver and volunteer paramedic Dave on top of her. He was drooling, his eyes bloodshot, clawing at her face. She rolled over and plunged a syringe into his throat.

Dave shuddered. His eyes rolled in his head and he slumped off the ground, a marionette with its strings cut.

"Like I said," said Donny, "tough."

 

[talien]

Music of the Spheres: Part 10 – The Array

Judy rose, dusting herself off.

"You okay?" asked Bob.

"Yeah," said Judy. "The radio was all static and then right as we pulled up to the house Dave went nuts." She nudged Dave's unconscious body with her foot. "He'll be out for awhile, but he should be all right."

"Randy and the girls are inside," said Donny. "You sure you're okay?"

Judy nodded. "As okay as I need to be."

"This ain't a case of rabies, is it?" asked Donny. He looked at his poorly bandaged arm. "Because if it is, then I've surely got whatever Dave got."

"I don't know," said Judy, lips pursed. "But if whatever's making people crazy spread to the town…"

"Already did." Bob's gaze became unfocused as he recalled the girl's spattered brains. "We came straight here from Main Street."

Donny shook his head. "Total chaos, Judy. Everything's been turned upside-down. We have to get out of here."

"Well come on inside," said Judy. "You're no good to anybody with that awful bandage." She ushered Donny into the house like a mother hen. Bob kept guard outside.

Donny unwound the makeshift bandage and washed the bite wound under the kitchen sink. After checking that Randy and the girls were okay, Judy returned with a first aid kit.

"Judy," Donny said slowly as she unwrapped new gauze from the kit, "give it to me straight: what's the first signs of rabies?"

Judy shook her head. "You don't have rabies, Donny. Rabies jumps to its hosts from an infected carrier. It takes weeks to show up. Even if you had rabies, there's plenty of time to get vaccinated." She put some cream on the bite wound and finished wrapping it up. "Where did the incidents first start?"

"You got a map?"

Judy rifled through a kitchen drawer. "We use it a lot when we have medical emergencies in the middle of the night." She spread the map out on the counter.

"First it started with the Osbourne house here." He pointed with his good arm. Judy made a black mark with a pencil. "She said something about dogs going nuts. They killed Bill."

Judy nodded. "I saw what was left of poor Bill. Terrible."

"Then here. Rory came out to the ballgame." He pointed.

"Where's the Hamill house?"

"Over here." Donny pointed to a location that wasn't far from the school. "Why?'

"Because Rory didn't get infected at the ballgame. He came from his house. It's close enough for him to walk the distance to the school. Whatever happened, happened at home."

Donny agreed with that logic.

"And the Arnolds are here," added Judy, making an additional mark. "That allows us to triangulate a position to...here." She circled a spot roughly between the three points. It was four miles due west of Hayden. "What's in the center?"

Donny's brow furrowed. "The GPCA."

"The what?"

"The Great Plains Central Array."

Judy's eyes went wide. "The satellite dishes pointed at the stars?"

Donny laughed, then stopped laughing as the implications dawned on him. "You don't think...well now come to think of it, Dr. Neal over at the GPCA was talking about how that recent earthquake calibrated the dishes and he picked up on something from the stars."

"And the cell phone towers are down," said Judy. "That can't be a coincidence."

"I don't..." Donny stood up, pacing. "What if...what if...this frequency or whatever. What if it's subsonic? What if you can't hear it normally but if you're close enough to the array, it drives you nuts?"

"That'd be one explanation," said Judy carefully. She seemed to be teetering between contradicting Donny and agreeing with him, but the explanation was so crazy that she couldn't make up her mind.

"And then--and then they broadcast it over the radio!" Donny swore. "Son of a...that's it!"

"What?"

"The radio! There was a radio on at the Osbournes. And the earthquake hit right after they played the music from the stars on KRVN FM."

"When the radio went dead in the ambulance, that's when Dave went nuts." Judy covered her mouth in dawning horror. "The whole town..."

Her next exclamation was cut short by the sounds of gunfire.

 

[talien]

Music of the Spheres: Part 11 – Trust Your Government

Bob's warning shot didn't deter the intruders. The white-suited figures that crept out of the tree line around the house weren't trying to be quiet.

There were three of them. They were armed in full Nuclear Biological Chemical (NBC) suits complete with gas masks and M16s. They marched slowly, forming a perimeter, rifles at the ready.

Bob holstered his pistol and reached into the SUV for his shotgun. He took up a firing position behind it.

One of the soldiers touched his breathing mask, presumably to turn on a built in megaphone. "This is the Counter-Intelligence Field Agency. Put your weapons down!"

"I am a Deputy Bob Horner of the Hayden County Sheriff's Department! You have no jurisdiction here!"

Donny, Judy, Randy, and the girls crept to the doorway.

"What's going on?" asked Randy.

"Nothing good." Bob spoke to them over his shoulder without taking his eyes off the advancing men. "They claim they're government agents."

"That's good, right?" asked Donny, a former military man himself. "I mean, they're the cavalry. Right?"

"Judy, get the girls in the Durango."

"We are agents of the U.S. government! You are being quarantined in conjunction with Title 14, Section 1211 of the Code of Federal Regulations! Lay down your arms immediately!"

"Let's just give up!" said Donny, voice rising. "They're the good guys!"

Randy shook his head. "We don't know that. And I can't tell what they look like behind those masks."

Bob cocked his shotgun again. "I ain't giving up my gun."

Bullets peppered the porch, tearing through one of the columns in front of the Kaufman house. Bob returned fire.

"Go!" shouted Randy, shoving Donny in the direction of the Durango.

Donny stumbled towards the SUV, dazed by his crisis of faith.

Randy took careful aim with his pistol and fired. One of the white suits blossomed red and the man went down silently.

In the driver's seat, Judy revved the car. "Let's go!"

More gunfire strafed the ambulance. Randy worried about poor Dave before he shoved Donny ahead of him. Bob, still firing, hopped in at the last minute as the Durango tore off.

A bullet pierced one of the wheels. Bob retaliated with a well-placed shotgun blast as the Durango roared past the soldiers.

They closed the door on the carnage as the Durango limped on.

"Daddy," said Crystal, tears in her almond-shaped eyes. "Daddy!"

Randy tore his gaze from the window, trying to look everywhere at once. "It's okay honey, shh."

Crystal shook her head. "No, daddy, listen. The men, they mentioned Section 1211."

"Yeah?"

"That's the Extra-Terrestrial Exposure Law," she said quietly. "We learned about it in class when we were studying the Apollo 11 mission."

Judy, eyes on the road, frowned. "What does that have to do with any of this?"

"I dunno," said Randy. "But it ain't normal."

"That's just it," said Crystal. "The law was repealed in 1991."

"Still think the government's on our side?" Bob sneered at Donny.

Donny, head down, just shook his head. "This ain't right," he said quietly.

 

[talien]

Music of the Spheres: Part 12 – The Dish

"I don't like it any more than you do," said Judy. "But the Durango's not going to make it with that flat tire. We've got to find a new vehicle that can hold all of us."

"But Judy, you said yourself that this might be where it all started…" began Donny.

The GPCA radio telescope facility was located four miles due west of Hayden.

"Would you rather drive through the center of town?" snapped Judy. "Or take the Durango into the woods? We've got to get another vehicle and the parking lot of the GPCA is the closest. If we can get another car there we can take the main road out of town.

Nearing the facility, they could see a set of rails stretching across the flat plain. Large, moveable radio dishes were mounted on these rails while other, still-larger dishes were permanently stationed nearby. The entire array was nearly five miles long from east to west, two miles north to south.

At the junction of the cruciform was a small cluster of buildings, including a four-story tower topped by a gigantic dish over a hundred feet in diameter.
There was no one in the parking lot. Judy inched the car in, scanning the horizon. The Durango crept under the shadow of the main dish.

"It looks deserted," said Judy.

"Where is everybody?" asked Randy, suspicious. He spotted a black minivan. "There's Dr. Neal's van..." The vanity plate read: DRNEAL. The border read "Astronomers Peak After Dark".

Judy nudged the SUV in the direction of the minivan.

A body exploded into hood of the Durango. Judy slammed on the brakes. The girls screamed.

"Keerist!" shouted Donny. He and Bob hopped out of the Durango, leveling their weapons in all directions at once.

Bob pointed. "There!"

There was a sniper on the edge of the dish above them.

Randy tore the Durango's SUV open, positioning himself between the shooter and the girls. "Run to the minivan! Go! Go!" Bob and Randy returned fire. "Donny, get it open!"

Donny ran over behind the girls and, discovering that the minivan was locked, put a bullet through the handle. He yanked it open.

"Stay inside and stay down. Don't come out until we give you the all clear." Judy thrust Crystal and Alexis into the minivan and dove inside, slamming the door behind her.

Donny pawed through the driver's seat, desperately looking for keys. No luck. He got out of the minivan…

Windows shattered in a car near Donny's head. He ducked and ran back towards Randy.

"Are there keys in the minivan?"

Donny shook his head. "What are we gonna do about the nutjob on the roof?"

"Bob! Get the tranq rifle!"

Bob already had it in his hands. "Way ahead of you."

Donny reached for the rifle to grab it from Bob's grip. "I have rifle training—"

Bob yanked it back. "He's mine."

"I've seen Bob hit a deer from a couple hundred yards," said Randy. "He can do it."

Bob clambered up to the top of the SUV by bracing his feet on the passenger window. He leveled the rifle on its bipod and took careful aim.

Bob's comb-over fluttered. Another car's tire squealed in protest as the sniper's bullet grazed his scalp.

"Take the shot!" shouted Donny.

"Quiet!" snarled Bob. He slowly adjusted the scope. Then, taking careful aim, he squeezed the trigger.

Another rifle shot rang out, but the shot went wide. The sniper, whoever he was, tumbled off the edge of the dish. The normally non-lethal tranquilizer dart had become a death sentence.

The man spattered onto a car's windshield, setting off a blaring car alarm.

"Well if there's any more psychos inside, they know we're here now," said Donny ruefully.

Randy spun the chamber of his pistol. "Let's go pay the doctor a visit."

 

[talien]

Music of the Spheres: Part 13 – Jenny

Inside, an alarm was sounding. Donny opened the door to find an attractive woman covered in blood. She was curled up in a corner, wailing.

"Easy," Randy reached for her. "Calm down. Are you okay?"

"Careful," said Bob, nudging Randy's hand away with the barrel of his shotgun.

"Bob, we're still human beings," snapped Randy. "Now calm down miss…"

"He tried to rape me!” shrieked the woman, pointing.

Across the way was another man, naked on the floor. A butcher knife stuck straight out of his heart. His eyes were open, his mouth twisted in a sadistic grin.

"You did that?" asked Randy.

She lunged at him, hugging Randy for dear life. "H-h-he tried to – t-tried to—"

Randy patted her back. "Easy. Easy—"

Her head bucked as a bullet wound blossomed at her temple. The corpse shuddered, twitching violently.

Randy shouted at the dead woman's grip and the brains spattering his face. "What the f—"

"I had to!" shouted Donny. He lowered his pistol. "She was going to kill you!"

"With what?" Randy demanded. He shrugged the oozing corpse off of him. "With WHAT?"

Bob nudged her dead body. The spasming corpse finally let go of the small blade in her palm. A pocketknife.

Randy sighed. "Donny…"

"I had to," Donny said. "She had a knife."

"A blasted POCKET KNIFE Donny!" shouted Randy. "What the hell is wrong with you!"

Bob moved along to the elevators. "They're out. We'll have to take the steps."

Donny had already moved on, even as Randy stared after him. He glanced at the display panels. "I think that's a countdown." It was at T-minus ten minutes and counting.

Randy, shaking himself out of his shock, stood up to get a closer look. "And it's going to broadcast out."