Amy shot the last of them off his back, but the stairway had filled with soldiers again and the marksmen were now firing at Mike and Amy’s positions. He felt another round hit his leg, but he kept firing, willing the soldiers to break and run.
“Babe” had been playing ball since she was five years old. First two years of T-ball and then fast-pitch softball in a brutally Darwinian league. By high school she was considered one of the top pitchers in Georgia, an area that took its women’s fast-pitch seriously, and was going to UGA on an athletic scholarship.
She pitched accurately enough, and hard enough, that she could probably have taken down most of the front rank by simply hitting them with the grenades. However, that would have left the grenades rolling around on the floor to… “frag” Amy and Ghost. She considered the situation for just a moment, using pretty much the same thought process as if she was deciding to throw a grounder to first or second, then pulled the pin and spun her right arm in a whirlwind motion, slamming the grenade upward to ricochet off the roof and back down into the group. Before the first thud, and a cry of pain that could be heard even over the firing, she had spun another up and another…
Suddenly, there was an explosion in their midst and then another and bodies were tossed, screaming, to the floor. With the way clear he could spot the snipers on the landing and he engaged all three of them, hitting one simultaneously with shots from Amy.
The rush had fallen back but bodies littered the hallway, some of them simply wounded. He spotted one trying to crawl up the stairs and shot him, deliberately, in the head, then reloaded.
“More mags to cross-load,” he said, sliding one across to Amy. “There any bandages in the room?”
“No,” Amy said. “Why? Oh, crap!”
“Yeah,” Mike said, sitting up and leaning back. When his back touched the wall he felt like screaming, but he was afraid he’d pass out if he stayed prone. “Fight until you die or drop time.”
“Where have I heard that before?” Amy asked.
“Axes flash, broadswords swing,” Mike quietly sung. “Shining armor’s piercing ring. Horses run on a polished shield. Fight those bastards til they yield.”
“Midnight mare and blood red roan,” Amy replied. “Fight to keep this land your own.”
“Sound the horn and call the cry,” they sang together. “HOW MANY OF THEM CAN WE MAKE DIE!”
“What is that?” Babe asked from the doorway.
“’March of Cambreadth,’ ” Amy replied. “Heather Alexander. Very cool song. That’s the only verse I can ever remember. My dad used to play it.”
“I think I’d like your dad,” Mike said and coughed. His hand came away dark in the flare light, but he was pretty sure it was blood. It wasn’t a sucking chest wound but something had nicked his lung. “Follow orders as you’re told, make their yellow blood run cold. Fight until you die and drop. A force like ours is hard to stop. Close your mind to stress and pain, fight ’til you’re no longer sane. Let not one damned cur pass by. How many of them can we make die.”
“You know the whole song?” Amy asked.
“And lots of others,” Mike said, weakly. “Right now I’m thinking of one by Crüxshadows.”
“Who?” Amy asked.
“Great band,” Mike whispered. “I will not run, this is my sacrifice,” he sang, softly then coughed. “For I am Winter born…”
“Bad song, Ghost,” Amy said. “I really need you to hang in here.”
“I will, Amy,” Mike said. “I will. I hereby dub thee… Bo.”
“Why Bo for God’s Sake?” Amy asked, angrily. “It’s better than Thumper, I suppose…”
“For Boadicea,” Mike replied. “The Celtic warrior queen.”
“Oh. In that case…”
“Of course, she lost,” Mike added honestly. “And was dragged off to Rome in chains. But hopefully we’ll do better.”
“So, sing some better songs,” Amy said. “If you can.”
“How about poetry?” Mike asked.
“I hate poetry.”
“What, your dad never told you about Kipling?”
“Only ‘A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke,’ ” Amy said.
“Shame on him,” Mike replied. “This is the ballad of bo da thone, eerst the pretender to Theebaw’s throne, who harried the district of Alalone. How he met with his fate and the VPP at the hands of Harandra Mukerji, senior Gomashta, GBT.”
“What the hell is that?” Amy asked.
“The opening to the ‘Ballad of Bo Da Thone,’ ” Mike said. “And, speaking of which, there’s a bag in this room. A sample case. If I’m not… viable when support gets here, tell them the interior is contaminated and it’s a personal present from me to the President.”
“What’s in the bag?” Amy asked.
“That’s between me and the President,” Mike said, chuckling and then coughing. “Crap that hurts. All these women around and not a pad or a tampon to be had.”
“Mike,” Amy said, quietly. “I know you’re stressed and I know that things are tough, but we’ve really had a bad time, you know. Could you dial back on the…”
“Sexism?” Mike asked. “Yeah. Now I will. I needed to shock them before.”
“I can tell that you’re really a nice guy…” Amy started to say.
“Hah,” Mike replied mirthlessly. “Don’t be fooled. I’m a very bad man indeed.”
“No, you’re not,” Amy said. “Quit trying to tell yourself you’re…”
“Amy,” Mike said quietly. “There are times when I don’t know whether I’m going to slip all the way to the side of evil. There’s bad in me you don’t know. But I’ll tell you this; if I didn’t have… something that kept me on the very edge of good, I’d have happily lined up with those soldiers to rape you. And dug my fingers into your bleeding flesh to make you scream. I’m not just a little bit bad, I’m just about all the way bad. The sexist comments weren’t all an act. That’s how I really am when the stops are pulled out. The fake part is being a nice guy.”
Amy was quiet for a time and then shook her head.
“I don’t believe it,” she said and then held up a hand to forestall the protest. “Yeah, okay, you have your demons. But… well… I’ll get over what happened. I know I will. And, Mike, if you said you wanted to chain me to a table, just like the one in the room, and act like you were raping me, I’d do it. Because I know that I’d walk out alive and only harmed to the extent that I let you harm me. I trust you. I can just look at you and know I can trust you.”
“I hate that,” Mike said. “I really do. But… yeah, you’re right.”
“You’ve never raped a woman, have you?” Amy asked.
“Depends on the definition,” Mike replied. “I don’t think any of the hookers in the third world are actual volunteers. I keep that in mind when I fuck ’em. It helps.”
“I’ll give you a pass on that,” she said, shrugging. She looked down the hall. “They’re holding back.”
“Trying to figure out another way in,” Mike replied. “They’ll probably try the air shaft.”
“That’s behind us, right?” Amy asked, nervously.
“Yep,” Mike said and grinned. “Let ’em.”
Amy didn’t ask why he was willing to let them try, but she didn’t think the Syrians would like it much.
“In the fury of this darkest hour,” Mike whispered quietly, “we will be your light. You ask me for my sacrifice and I am Winter born…”
“You’re right,” Amy said. “Very appropriate. Is there more?”